Contradictions.

         How would you describe this present day society? You could write a book, a very long poem, or even make a movie. There are so many contradictions in this society, it would be difficult to capture them all. The glaring opulence side by side with destitution, the avalanche of information and the absence of knowledge, and so it goes on.
        I lifted the following quote from arrezafe and think it does an excellent job in highlighting the contradictions in this society that show it to be a flawed, unacceptable idiotic and cruel human structure. 

 

 

The following is a comment on arrezafe:

       How are we fed? Through hope and progress? (so the machine keeps moving)
Como nos alimentamos? Con esperanza y progreso (para que la máquina siga moviéndose)

Let me quote something:
Voy a mencionar algo:

“We have bigger houses but smaller families; - Tenemos casas más grandes pero familias más pequeñas,
more conveniences, but less time; - más comodidades, pero menos tiempo
We have more degrees, but less sense; - más títulos academicos pero menos sentido comun
more knowledge, but less judgment; - mas conocimiento, pero menos juicio,
more experts, but more problems; - mas expertos, pero mas problemas,
more medicines, but less healthiness; - mas medicionas, pero menos salud
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, - hemos ido y regresado de la Luna
but have trouble crossing the street to meet - pero tenemos problemas cruzando la calle para
the new neighbor - conocer al nuevo vecino,
We’ve built more computers to hold more - hemos construido mas computadoras para
information to produce more copies than ever, - almacenar informacion para producir mas copias que nunca
but have less communications; - pero tenemos menos comunicacion
We have become long on quantity, - hemos ampliado la cantidad
but short on quality. - y reducido la calidad
These times are times of fast foods; - son tiempo de comida basura
but slow digestion; - de digestion lenta
Tall man but short character; - hombres alto de baja moral
Steep profits but shallow relationships. - enormes benificios pero pequenyas relaciones
It is time when there is much in the window, - Es la epoca donde hay mucho en la ventana
but nothing in the room. - pero nada dentro de la habitacion

--authorship unknown
from Sacred Economics”
― Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

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The Illusion.

           When it comes to this Covid19 pandemic, each country points to other countries as doing much worse than they themselves are, it all helps to keep the people on the side of the government's ineptitude in the handling of the pandemic. At the moment Brazil is coming in for some heavy criticism as the pandemic runs wild, mainly over the poorest regions of that country. Yes, the pandemic is decimating large swaths of the population, yes, its health service is being crippled, and yes, it is run by a macho idiot who tells the people to stop whining, says about his family that his daughter was a mistake, and also says that if your son show signs of wanting to be gay, slap him and you'll see his attitude change. So Brazil has not got a lot going for it at the moment.
        However if we look at the most recent figures regarding covid19, they make interesting reading. They should be making us ask some very serious questions of our lords and masters, the political ballerinas that hold sway over our lives.

Brazil:
population 211 million, approximately,
covid19 cases, 11,483,370
covid19 deaths 278,229
deaths per million of the population, 1,318 approximately.

United Kingdom:
population 66.8 million, approximately,
covid19 cases, 4, 245,166
Covid deaths, 125,279
deaths per million of population, 1,874, approximately. 

       So we are doing much worse than Brazil in deaths per million of our population, and our political ballerinas are strutting about spouting our success. Are they unaware of these figures, or as usual they just ignore the facts they don't like. We have to ask questions and we have to demand answers.

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Hypocrisy.

         The government's £4.8 billion "level up" and "regeneration" scheme is not what it seems, far from taking the most deprived areas and trying to make them more affluent, It appears that it is more a matter of taking affluent areas and making them more prosperous. Some areas likely to gain from the fund happen to be well-to-do Tory areas, for example, surprise, Chancellor Sunak's rather posh area of Richmond, fits their criteria for aid, as well as local government secretary, Robt. Jenrick' constituency of Newark, they fit into the loaded criteria for funding, where as some of the most deprived areas fail to meet that criteria, for example Salford and Barnsly, among the most deprived areas in the country.
         No more than we would expect from the bunch of well heeled hypocrites and parasites that form what is called Her Majesty's Government. At least we can say that is a statement of truth, I think the title sort of hints at which side they stand and who they represent. 

          If we wish to "level up" our country, we will have to do it ourselves, do it by organising in the communities, work places and on the streets, through forming co-operatives, mutual aid and taking control of the means of production and distribution, We know how to manufacture and build things, we know how to distribute them, and we know how to do that in a democratic and just manner, seeing to the needs of all our people. We do not need "the economy", that is just a means for transferring wealthy to the powerful and privileged. The capitalist system is not "God" given, written on tablets of stone, it is simply a man made system of exploitation that will always widen the gap between rich and poor, under its so called laws, the rich will always get richer, the poor will always get poorer. 

        Or we could continue as we are doing and be pillaged and plundered by the wealthy and privileged, handing our kids and grand kids a heritage of more poverty and deprivation.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

 
MUST WE TOLERATE.
The giggling audacity of the rich
midst the pitiful anguish of the poor,
those bloated laughing cavaliers
using pillage to secure
their lives of arrogant excess,
a pirate’s plundering tour.

WHERE IS IT WRITTEN.
That this world must be
a place where the many toil and sweat
grinding out their meagre existence
in poverty, hunger and debt,
while the hubristic greedy few
live the life of a pampered pet.

LET’S TRY AGAIN.
No more war, no deprivation
a world of sharing, a world of giving
a chance for all to grow and prosper
in a culture of friendship and forgiving.
With true love and understanding
we can create a new way of living.

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I'm Free!

       

        The following comment was left on my previous post by Loam, thanks Loam. 

      I was twice in prison during the dictatorship of General Franco and I understood that I had two alternatives: resign myself or try to get out of there as soon as possible. For the first option I did not need anyone, for the second, yes.
        I say this because we tend to forget that we live in a prison, very decorated, but a prison that resignation and individualism reinforces. If we want to get out of it we need each other, we need all our energies to be directed towards that goal. Otherwise, we will be forging our own slavery and the slavery of future generations.

          It is a point that so many people fail to see, we live in a society where we have no real say on the shape or direction of the society in which we live. All those decisions are made by the people with the wealth, power and privileges, and that shape and direction will always be to their benefit. Our purpose or "duty" as far as the power mongers are concern is to keep the wheels of production turning and then consume the crap we make, ever increasing their wealth and power. We can be surplus to their requirements and be abandon, we can be used as cannon fodder in their power struggles, but never receive the any of the blood gained fruits of that struggle. We are wandering a manufactured world of tinsel and froth, of shiny bobbles and illusions, all scattered to appease us, a form of paracetamol, while the wealthy and powerful live lavishly on our sweat, poverty and submissiveness. As Loam says, we need each other to come together with the aim of ending this imprisonment and freeing tomorrow's generations from this insidious prison.

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Plundering.

 

          Look at the numbers under this system and you see the glaring inequality, you realise the magnitude of the plundering by the few of the riches produced by the multitude. Numbers paint a picture, in this case a picture of blatant robbery of the fruits of the labour of the many, the inhumane exploitation of the many. Under no stretch of the imagination can any of this take place in a democracy. This world has yet to experience democracy, and if we persist with the present system of capitalism and its unavoidable greed driven excesses, we never will see democracy, just ever growing inequality and endless wars to increase and defend the power and privileges of the plunderers.  

 

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End Of Normal.

     Some words of wisdom from Not Buying Anything, There is nothing I would wish to add to this piece, suffice to say, read, think and act.

The following from Not Buying Anything:

 

Image by Pawel Kuczynski

        You don't need a crystal ball to see what lies in the near future for humanity. It is increasingly obvious.
        Here is what I see just from a little looking around - there are, and will continue to be, great changes occurring with increasing rapidity.
Why?
Cascading crises. Pick any one.
Economic crisis.
COVID crisis.
Variant crisis.
Climate crisis.
Environmental crisis.
Extinction crisis.
Biodiversity crisis.
The list goes on and on, but it does not matter.
         We already have enough going on to let us know that business as usual is over, and it is not coming back.
         There will be no "going back to normal" because it was that normal that got us into each and every one of our current crises.
          To go back to normal would mean to go back to a continued path to extinction of not only humans, but all life on Earth.
          There will also be no Great Reset.
          There is nothing left for capitalism to reset. Decades of unchecked greed have sucked the life out of everyone, and everything.
         There is nothing left.
          There will, however, be a Great Remembering, and it might just save us.
          This will be where the tired and worn out workers of overdeveloped nations begin to yearn more for slower, quieter lifestyles than they do for more money, more work, and more stuff.
         People are deciding, appropriately, to quit consumerism all together. They can see it is a dead end.
         The more principled ones will also quit jobs that support the creaking machine of consumerism, and shift toward endeavours that support the health of our communities and ecosystem.
         Regardless of what happens moving forward, one will be better served by having a simple, more self-reliant and local lifestyle.
          If there is any "reset" it will be this - community and cooperation are becoming more important than cash and competition.
         The only things that will make the massive and rapid changes of the near future easier to deal with as our multiple crises continue to cascade and coalesce into collapse are:
Simplicity.
Community.
Cooperation.

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Racism.

UK democracy in action.

       So the discussion is now about should Harry and Meghan be stripped of their titles. The establishment love this sort of debate, it lends legitimacy to the subject of privileges and titles, when the whole subject matter of hereditary titles and privileges is unsustainable. Then there is the inquiry into is there racism within the royal household. What a stupid question, the whole edifice of British royalty is built on the racist view that we British are superior to the indigenous peoples that we subjugated and plundered, and had every right to invade and take control of their lands and resources for the greater glory of the crown. If that's not racism on a grand and brutal scale, then the word has no meaning. 

An ordinary day in UK democracy.

 

      British royalty is the pompous edifice to white power and the class system, never will you see an African, Indian or any other member of the so called British Commonwealth sitting on the UK throne, or next in line, that just would not be tolerated by the powers that be. Yet they try to fool everybody by saying they are going to look to see if there is any racism in the royal household and its entourage.

Kneel before your superior.

 

     Royalty is an archaic system from a barbaric past, and has no place in a sane and civilised society. Pomp, privileges,and hereditary power are a bulwark against democracy, it is simply a system of fiefdom and serfdom with a host of appendages to make sure you know your place, when to kneel, when to courtesy, when to touch your forelock.
      Instead of having a debate about the obvious in an attempt to justify injustice, it should invoke anger and disgust, and a desire to rid our society of such injustice and inequality, once and for all. Enjoy the ecstasy of your righteous anger. 

 

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Towards Anarchism.

        With the pandemic tapering off and austerity and unemployment facing the ordinary people, people will no doubt be looking for solutions to this onslaught of poverty. So we at Spirit of Revolt, thought that this month’s “Read of the Month” should perhaps point to one solution that is a possibility of solving our problems. It is another pamphlet from Errico Malatesta, "Towards Anarchism", from our John Cooper Collection, T/SOR-3-52-97.
      Have a read and perhaps delve into the multitude of pamphlets, booklets posters and other anarchist/libertarian socialist material we have on line, look, learn and act.

Read "Towards Anarchism" on line:

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Be Prepared!

        Democracy European style, well Greece is part of the European Union, and I haven't heard any objections from any of the other members of what is happening in Greece. What is happening in Greece is being watch by other EU states, they are looking and learning, should they need to introduce more severe population controls in their own patch. No condemnation, just observation.

 

 

       Rest assured, the states are aware that the debt mountain that has been paid to their corporate masters needs to be paid back to the financial mafia, and the only method acceptable to their corporate masters is austerity for the people. This time round it will be austerity big-time accompanied with massive unemployment. They will be expecting and preparing for unrest and anger to spill over onto the streets, so population control will be a priority on their minds.

 

 

        As I have said before, their plans are well advanced, to defend their wealth, power and privileges, where are our plans to to regain our freedoms and protect our living conditions?

         A recent Oxfam study found that since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s richest 10 billionaires have seen a wealth increase of half a trillion dollars – enough to pay for every person on the planet to get a vaccine. In this UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill discusses with economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis what is driving the staggering wealth inequalities and how governments are offering socialism for the rich, and austerity for the rest.

 

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Our Streets.

Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera.

 The following from Act For Freedom Now:

Barcelona – Update on latest arrests (Spain)

05/03/2021 posted by round robin/it)

       As part of the riots that broke out in Barcelona during the last two weeks, 8 anarchist comrades were arrested on the night of February 27th during a cop charge.
      On Monday morning, the Mossos d’Esquadra (catalan police) searched two squatted warehouses, in Mataró and Canet de Mar, neighbouring towns of Barcelona, where they seized material.
     After a statement on Tuesday at 5 p.m., the judge validated the arrests without bail and sent them all to preventive prison.
      The charges against the 8 anarchists are: attempted murder, organized criminal asociation, conspiracy, unauthorised demonstration, aggression, public disorder, assault and violence against public officials and damages.
     The comrades decided not to answer the prosecutor’s questions, but to answer only to their lawyer.
      The next day, they all received a PCR test and, according to the new anti-covid rules, they were forced to get vaccinated. (?!!)
       They are now in solitary confinement in Brians 1 prison and for the moment they are not allowed to receive any clothes or money.
      A team of three lawyers is taking care of their defence.

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Austerity Normal.

             That coterie of platitude producers known as MPs, who meet in their private club, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, have had 8 pay rises in 10 years, while NHS staff have seen their pay frozen. Now that same bunch of self interested careerists decide to give the NHS staff a 1% pay rise, at the same time the body that regulates the MP's salaries as stated that MPs will not receive a pay increase of more than £3,000. Compare that £3.000 increase with what 1% would amount to for NHS staff, some where around about £170 per year. At the moment The basic annual salary for an MP from 1 April 2020 is £81,932, plus expenses, whopping subsidised meals, and fancy foreign travel junkets. Those expenses are very generous, and come with a comfy pension scheme. Who do you think serves the country best, the NHS or the MPs. Parliament can close down for generous holidays, and the country merrily functions. Close down the NHS for generous holidays and see in what sort of mess society becomes. It is unthinkable.

 

          However this is the type of society we tolerate, we pay pompous privileged careerists generous salaries, we allow them to pile up obscene wealth through the contacts of their privileged position, and let them administer austerity to the rest of us. When do we get the will to tear down this edifice to inequality and corruption, we have the power? When do we decide that we want the fruits of our labour to come to us, the real wealth creators. There is a tidal wave of austerity coming our way, we accept it and stunt the futures of our kids and grand kids for generations, stand by and watch homelessness grow, food banks proliferate and poverty spread like a new pandemic. 

 

        At the moment the state has in place, due to pandemic legislation, population controls sufficient to stop wide spread protests, which it will try to cement into some sort of permanent legislation, while its propaganda wing preaches that we will soon be back to "normal". There is no "normal", there is only deeper austerity, and unless we take back control of the streets, austerity will be our continuing "normal". We must have the right to vent our anger at gross injustice, inequality and blatant corruption, and the only places we can do that are on the streets, in our workplaces, and in our communities. Their plan is already set, where is ours, in defence of our freedoms and conditions?

 

 Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

No Friend.

  

          The following article will be seen by many as good news, as indeed it is, but we should not be fooled into thinking that we can gain a fair and just world through the courts of law as they stand, we should not forget that they are inexorably linked to the police and the state and are no friend of the people. After all they are part and parcel of this unequal society and have a vested interest in keeping a hierarchical system where power lies in their hands and they hold a privileged position in that society. They would certainly draw the line at a horizontalist system where they hold no power, privileges or considerable wealth.
       We can only seek freedom and justice outside a system built on, and that relies on, power and wealth, and the privileges grabbed by these conditions.Never the less it is great news that an climate activist has been freed to carry on her fight against this ecologically disastrous system of profit privileges and greed.  Thanks Keith for the link.       

The following from World Review:

         A court ruling in India has delivered an urgent message this week - not just for their country’s own government, but for the world: “In my considered opinion, citizens are conscience keepers of government in any democratic nation,” said the judge. “The offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of the governments.”
       With these words, the judge released on bail the 22-year-old Indian climate activist, Disha Ravi. Her alleged offence? Editing and sharing an online “toolkit” which advised fellow activists on how to support the country’s farmers’ protests’.
       The protests, which farmers argue are necessary to defend their livelihoods in the face of new laws, have rocked the nation since last summer - becoming a symbol of wider revolt against both deregulated capitalism and state oppression, as Ravinder Kaur has written.
       Ravi’s post was consequently widely shared, including by the Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg. Yet the kickback to the toolkit was also swift: within hours, the hashtag #GretaThunbergExposed was circulating on Twitter, implying the climate campaigner was part of an international conspiracy against India.
       Effigies of Thunberg and other supportive international celebrities were burned in the streets, President Narendra Modi later appeared to echo the sentiment, claiming that some “foreign powers” were engaged in systematic efforts to “malign” the image of Indian tea, while the Delhi police alleged that Ravi was part of a global conspiracy to defame India and stir unrest.
       This week’s court ruling has attempted to squash these dangerous claims: “The freedom of speech and expression include the right to seek a global audience,” added the judge. 

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Showdown.

       We are now being told that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we will soon emerge from this pandemic. That of course means different things to different people, to the financial mafia, the corporate bosses and their minders, the state, it means get back out there, put on your harness and start grafting to make their tills ring, start sweating to fill their coffers. It will also be their dream that you will go back under worse conditions than before, new contracts stripping away at your rights and conditions, slices off your income, and more unemployed chasing your job, to make you too nervous to demand justice, for fear of joining the unemployed.
      However, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel as an opportunity to restructure the way we live, how we shape society for the benefit of all our people, instead of scratching a survival while we feed the ravenous insatiable appetite of a corrupt parasite class, that has plundered and pillaged the fruits of our labour for generations.
      There will be choices, there will a need for decisions, and we have to be the ones that make these decisions, we have to be the ones who make those choices and they must be for the benefit of all in society. There is no compulsion to go back to the society of gross inequality, injustice and corruption. I'm sure we all have the imagination to visualise a fairer society, to organise resources in a fairer manner. All it takes is the collective power of the people, solidarity among the people, and community organisation. I doubt that there will be a better opportunity than now, for us to come together take control of our lives, and build that better world for all, free from the profit motive and the slavish dictate of "the economy".

        The following is an article by David Graeber published posthumously in the Jacobin. Thanks Tommy for the link. 

 

David Graeber: After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep

        At some point in the next few months, the crisis will be declared over, and we will be able to return to our “nonessential” jobs. For many, this will be like waking from a dream.
      The media and political classes will definitely encourage us to think of it this way. This is what happened after the 2008 financial crash. There was a brief moment of questioning. (What is “finance,” anyway? Isn’t it just other people’s debts? What is money? Is it just debt, too? What’s debt? Isn’t it just a promise? If money and debt are just a collection of promises we make to each other, then couldn’t we just as easily make different ones?) The window was almost instantly shut by those insisting we shut up, stop thinking, and get back to work, or at least start looking for it.
      Last time, most of us fell for it. This time, it is critical that we do not.
      Because, in reality, the crisis we just experienced was waking from a dream, a confrontation with the actual reality of human life, which is that we are a collection of fragile beings taking care of one another, and that those who do the lion’s share of this care work that keeps us alive are overtaxed, underpaid, and daily humiliated, and that a very large proportion of the population don’t do anything at all but spin fantasies, extract rents, and generally get in the way of those who are making, fixing, moving, and transporting things, or tending to the needs of other living beings. It is imperative that we not slip back into a reality where all this makes some sort of inexplicable sense, the way senseless things so often do in dreams.
       How about this: Why don’t we stop treating it as entirely normal that the more obviously one’s work benefits others, the less one is likely to be paid for it; or insisting that financial markets are the best way to direct long-term investment even as they are propelling us to destroy most life on Earth?
     Why not instead, once the current emergency is declared over, actually remember what we’ve learned: that if “the economy” means anything, it is the way we provide each other with what we need to be alive (in every sense of the term), that what we call “the market” is largely just a way of tabulating the aggregate desires of rich people, most of whom are at least slightly pathological, and the most powerful of whom were already completing the designs for the bunkers they plan to escape to if we continue to be foolish enough to believe their minions’ lectures that we were all, collectively, too lacking in basic common sense do anything about oncoming catastrophes.
      This time around, can we please just ignore them?
      Most of the work we’re currently doing is dream-work. It exists only for its own sake, or to make rich people feel good about themselves, or to make poor people feel bad about themselves. And if we simply stopped, it might be possible to make ourselves a much more reasonable set of promises: for instance, to create an “economy” that lets us actually take care of the people who are taking care of us.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk    

Keelie 16.

      Once again the wee pocket rocket of radical criticism and info, the Glasgow Keelie is out, its new March edition, issue No.16. now available. Info on the 1911 Singer strike, plight of migrants and asylum seekers, the world's biggest workers strike, and much, much more. Always a valuable and enjoyable read, spread the word, The Glasgow Keelie, make it your paper, send in you stories, grips and criticisms of this system of corruption and inequality that we live under. 

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