A swamp

Image courtesy of Ray Davies. 

          Looking at today’s politicians is a bit like looking at the lives of charlatans. Across the Atlantic we have the Trump saga of corruption and delusions, the Biden affair of having classified documents lying hither and thither about his home and various offices. Over here at our end of the swamp we have in that chamber of pomp and privilege, the House of Lords, one of their members, millionaire Michelle Mone, faces accusations that her husband has been linked to at least three tax avoidance schemes by HMRC, so she takes “leave of absence” from her place in the house of ermine, which means of course that she doesn’t have to disclose her financial affairs. Down among the millionaires in that misnomer, The House of Commons, when in fact it is a house of millionaires, we have ex Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi being fined by HMRC for a reported sum of over a million pounds for avoiding having paid a reported sum of over £3 million in tax. According to him and his cronies, it was an oversight and not deliberate. This is a man who is reputed to have a personal wealth of £100 million. Now one would imagine that a shrewd business millionaire would have the sense to employ a shit hot accountant to make sure his tax affairs were in order, just to keep his “good” name. Will we hear of an accountant being dismissed? Knee deep in wealth, failing to pay over £3million in tax in a tax avoidance scheme, just an oversight, yes and the moon is made of cheese. Of course we know that one Boris Johnson is never far removed for scandal, lying and bluster, well true to form another little piece of skulduggery has surfaced. It appears the Boris was strapped for cash and needed a guarantor for an £800,000 loan, and according to a report in The Sunday Times, a meeting was arranged between Canadian business man Sam Blyth, Mr Sharp and Boris with the idea of Mr. Sharp being a guarantor for Boris’s loan. Mr Sharp was later appointed as chairman of the BBC, an appointment that is made by the Prime Minister and Culture Secretary. Are you reaching for your mask to try and avoid the stink coming from the sewer that is politics today. When will we wise up and bring this festering sewer of a swamp to an end, can’t you hear them laughing at us. We struggle to heat our homes, put food on the table and are told how to live our lives by multi-millionaires who see £3+ million tax avoidance as an oversight. Do we really think this is the way to organise our lives? Is this the society that we want for future generations?

Image courtesy of Global Witness.

Visit ann arkyu's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Quiet.

           Though we have millions of people who take their anger on to the streets and show it in other very visible means, direct action etc., we should not forget that quiet multitude. Their silence does not equate with acceptance of this unjust capitalist system. They are aware that their lives are not what they could be, they are aware of the inequality. These are the people we have to convince that we can build a better world for all, without that quiet majority we are going nowhere. They want a better world, we have to raise their anger, so that they will join us on the streets, in strikes, in solidarity with all those in open struggle against this festering greed driven capitalist system. 

                                             Image courtesy of Kids Creative Chaos.

Another wee gem of a poem from the Chinese poet Xu Lizhi.

"Conflict"

They all say
I'm a child of few words
This I don't deny
But actually
Whether I speak or not
With this society I'll still
Conflict

 

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A Con.

 

          Our lives are plagued by spivs and conmen who prance about in expensive clothes and sit in the corridors of power. One such spiv, a boss of an energy company, has just stated that high energy prices are here to stay, this is after the energy companies have made billions in profit. What these spivs and conmen don't mention is that wholesale gas prices have plummeted. The reason energy prices sky rocketed  in the first place was the imperialist blood bath in Ukraine and Europe stopped buy Russian gas. At that point in time the price of wholesale gas jumped to around 800p per therm. There little secret is that it has now dropped to 150p per therm, below what it was before the Ukraine affair. Have you noticed this in you energy bills? No you haven't, the reason being the statement made by that energy boss, high energy prices are here to stay. They don't want to see those billions in profits shrink, they're on a bonanza and loving it. How does it feel to be continually ripped-off by a bunch of very rich and greedy spivs and conmen. Like I said before, they are laughing at us, what are we going to do about this continuous plundering of the ordinary people, to fatten the bank accounts of the parasite class of spivs and conmen and furnish them with more expensive yachts, private jets and gas guzzling limousines?

Image courtesy of Catalyst Commercial

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Everywhere.

        An extract from an article in Enough is Enough. In truth, we are everywhere, we are everybody. I think well worth a read, a very interesting read and food for thought.

           We are post, we are autonomous, we are anarchists, we are communists, we provide humanitarian aid in Ukraine, we chase the uprisings, we are brutal feminists and we look after each other, searching for truth and yet disoriented, we fight in our neighborhoods and look for every opportunity to throw a stone. We come from the solidarity movement with Latin America, from the housing struggles of the 80s, from the fading Antifa of the 2000s, from the anti-globalization movement, and finally from today, which does not yet have a name. We want everything and nothing

 

         The world is decaying. The Greens, in their compulsive good face game, try to stop or heal this decay with aloe vera. The fascists try to breathe new life into the decaying world with their necromancy of family, fatherland and Christianity. The old capitalists just continue as before. And the left, in its unsurpassed wisdom of the both-as-also dialectic, also tries its hand at the necromancy of concepts from the 19th and 20th centuries, also adding a pinch of aloe vera to the alleged magic potion that gives them the feeling of moving forward. Even the disciples of Andreas Malm pay homage to a despondent Leninism that trivializes the seizure of power in questions of militancy and pressure to act. Gramsci and Lenin would turn in their graves.
         We stand stunned before what nowadays calls itself revolutionary politics, and yet is only a pile of rubble of left-wing social-democratic politics, which pounces resentfully on the FDP, still has not gotten over the betrayal of the SPD of 1914, and does not realize that the Greens have taken these “Punch and Judy” parties to their side as welcome idiots, in order to comfortably consolidate their project of Green Capitalism without causing a stir:

 

Continue reading HERE. 

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Anarchy.

 

       For January, 2023, “Read of the Month” we at Spirit of Revolt bring you three for one, three copies of Practical Anarchy from early 1982. Apart from the interesting information contained in the pamphlets, it let’s us know that the struggles of today are part and parcel of the struggles of yesterday. It is one long continuous struggle for peace, justice and freedom for all, that is yet to be won. Why not have a browse through our website of thousands of interesting pamphlets, posters, banners, videos, photographs, periodicals, letters and much much more all to do with anarchist and libertarian socialist history and actions, an Aladdin's cave  of the history  of the struggles of the ordinary people. Probably the largest anarchist archive in Scotland, and still growing.  

READ ON LINE.

 

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Illusions.

          A lot of people live under the illusion that we should rely on our MPs to sort out the fossil fuel use and move to green energy sources, in an attempt to avoid a climate and humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions, the very survival of humanity. However, a wee glance at the connections of some of our leading MPs and members of the House of Lords gives an insight to the interests and money sources of some of those in power, should make you think again, as I keep saying, they are laughing at us, for how long will we tolerate this danger to our survival?

This from The Mirror.       

Dozens of members of the House of Lords have investments worth millions of pounds and senior roles in oil and gas companies, prompting accusations of unethical conflicts of interest.They total 43 in all, including 33 who have shares worth a minimum of £50,000 in 19 oil and gas companies, and 10 who chair, direct or advise 15 fossil fuel firms.
       Research shows 23 are Conservatives, three are Labour and 17 are without political affiliations. Two peers with shares in Shell – Conservative Baroness Noakes and crossbencher Lord Burns – sit on the House of Lords’ Industry and Regulators Committee, which heard evidence on net zero climate policies last month. The figures were uncovered by investigative news website The Ferret using the official registers of interests. A trawl of MPs’ interests shows donations and gifts from fossil fuel firms and climate contrarians

This from the Guardian.

 

Oil companies, petrostates and climate contrarian thinktanks, businessmen and unions have given at least £5m to MPs over the past 10 years in the form of donations, expenses-paid trips, salaries and gifts. A trawl through parliament’s register of interests suggests Conservative politicians are far more likely to accept support from such sources. The Guardian is not suggesting MPs were paid for their votes, which is forbidden by law, but the scorecards highlight the legitimate lobbying activities of outside organisations who have most to lose from action to stop global heating.

        Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon, received more than £1m from fossil fuel companies, all of it declared and legitimate. Zahawi spent much of his parliamentary career working as chief strategy officer for Gulf Keystone Petroleum, which paid him £52,325 in backpay in October 2015 and a monthly salary of £20,000 from October 2015, rising to almost £30,000 a month in August 2017, and some £330,000 in bonus payments. He stopped working for the company on becoming a government minister in 2018 (at which time he received a final payment of £116,000). He also declared shareholdings in Genel Energy, an Anglo-Turkish oil and gas exploration and production company, and a donation from Amjad Bseisu, the chief executive of the UK-based oil company EnQuest. Until August 2015 the former oil exploration company Afren and the former Canadian oil company Talisman, which was a major producer from the Alberta tar sands, were clients of Zahawi & Zahawi, a business advisory service. The Guardian contacted Zahawi’s office for comment, but received no reply.
        Alan Duncan, a former Foreign Office minister, also has close ties to the petroleum industry. After leaving a post in the international development ministry, Duncan, while still an MP, registered as a non-executive chairman of Fujairah Refining in the United Arab Emirates, for which he received £8,000 a month for a job involving three weekend meetings a year. Along with a severance package, payments totalled £90,000. The majority owner of that refinery is the energy company Vitol, owned by the UK businessman Ian Taylor.
        Duncan formerly headed the Conservative Middle East Council, which arranges trips for Tory MPs with funding from businessmen with ties to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. He has made multiple trips to Oman and Saudi Arabia as a guest of the host government or its supporters, and has received gifts of a watch or cufflinks on a number of occasions from the sultanate of Oman.
        A former employee of Royal Dutch Shell, prior to 2009 Duncan declared incomes from Arawak Energy (an undisclosed amount), a company involved in oil exploration and production, and Harcourt Consultants, a firm he established to advise clients on the oil and gas industry.
         Alistair Burt, whose 2015 register includes £5,000 income for work as a non-executive director of the oil exploration company President Energy; John Hayes, Conservative MP for South Holland and The Deepings, who has declared an expected £50,000-a-year salary from an oil firm, BB Energy; and Conor Burns, a trade minister, who has declared £10,000 per quarter since 2011 for 10 hours’ work for Trant Engineering, an oil and gas engineering firm, totalling more than £300,000.

       

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons, has ignored the Conservative whip on more than 120 occasions, mostly on issues related to Europe, but he has generally followed the party line in voting 10 times against measures that would bring emissions down. He has cast doubt on the reliability of scientific forecasts and blamed “alarmism” for high energy prices.
       There are few direct donations from fossil fuel firms. Michael Gove, the current chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and former environment minister, received £10,000 from Tullow Oil in 2010.

        Do you think they want to cut out their very lucrative pocket money they grab over and above their MPs salary, which we pay? I will repeat, they are laughing at us.     

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Assange.

 

        An appeal on behalf of Julian Assange and whistle blowers in general. The state will always try to silence those who try to tell the truth about the state's illegal actions in an attempt to lull the public into believing the state is squeaky clean and a benevolent institution. It is very important the we protect those brave individuals who make public the foul actions of the state.

       I’m writing to you on the ignominious anniversary of the day the first detainees arrived at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in January 2002. Twenty-one years later, no one responsible has been held accountable for this legal black hole, where men were held without charge, counsel, or judicial review until the Supreme Court forced a modicum of due process.
       With tragic irony, it is Julian Assange ⁠— who published the documents that exposed the extrajudicial practices and government lies ⁠— who has been in Belmarsh Prison (widely known as “The British Guantanamo”) for nearly four years, after the seven years of detention in the Ecuadorian embassy.
       I write to invite you to join me on January 20th, when I will be testifying before the fourth sitting of the Belmarsh Tribunal.

           Inspired by the Russell-Sartre Tribunals of the Vietnam War, the Belmarsh Tribunal brings together a range of expert witnesses — from constitutional lawyers, to acclaimed journalists and human rights defenders — to present evidence of this attack on publishers and their sources, and to seek justice for the crimes they expose.
         The First Amendment — and the life of Julian Assange — are at stake. Join us in person or online.

In solidarity,

 

Jesselyn Radack
Director
Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR)
ExposeFacts

Twitter: @JesselynRadack

              DONATE NOW

WHISPeR Project at ExposeFacts 1717 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington, DC 20006 USA Donate by mail 

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Power.

     

                                                                                                                                        

                                       Image courtesy of 38 Degrees.                                                                                                                                                                                                  With the savage attack on our living standards by the wealthy parasite class and workers striking to defend the living standards of all ordinary people, we would do well to remember, we hold all the power, all we have to do is use it to bring down this festering greed driven system of capitalism. 

We Have The Power.

Empty streets,with empty shops,
queues forming at the job centre,
doorway beds and hungry children,
watched over by mean eyed cops,
foodbanks growing by the hour.
City razzle-dazzle just rusty remnants,
shopping malls now empty caverns,
home to starlings, pigeons, magpies,
zero hours, part-time workers live in,
homes where ambition fails to flower.
Shiny politicians peddling illusions,
grin and bear it, there’s pie in the sky,
follow the Messiah, he’ll get you there,
quietly swallow their empty promises,
so they can live in their ivory towers.
This world exists by our acceptance,
blindly following their biased rulebook,
failing to realise that we the people,
builders of the world by sweat and pain,
are the ones who really hold the power. 

 

         Bearing in mind what this savage attack on our living standards is doing to the health and well being of our kids and elderly, we must be prepared to bring about justice and fairness by any means possible. We owe that much to the next generation. We can stop them laughing at us by acting on our righteous anger.

Image courtesy of Real Movement.

The Invisible.

We live there— yes— there
A little bit above the dead
But quite a bit below the living
Where poverty is a dream
Deprivation a reality
Our daily bread an illusion
We sigh--we weep—
As ruthless poverty
With its cold claws
Tears the heart from our children
We ask—WHY?
Surrounded by opulence
Invisible to arrogant greed
Anger simmers beneath the surface
We seek equality
We will have justice
If blood is the price
So be it. 

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Rebel.

 

         The Government has decided to take the gloves off and use dictatorial methods to stop the workers from defending themselves against greed driven exploitation. The anti-strikes legislation going through parliament at the moment is a direct attack on workers rights, it moves the UK state into the realms of a despot regime. This legislation is at the behest of the state's bed partner the big corporations. They are desperate to re-capitalise their rotten splintering system of capitalist exploitation. Big business wants a free hand to savage the pay and conditions of the workers in an attempt to fatten the bank accounts of the millionaire/billionaire parasite class. The only way they know how to do this is to exploit and squeeze the workers pay and conditions. 

Image courtesy of Labour Unions.

         This legislation must be destroyed, not just by the workers, but by all the ordinary people, as it is an attack on all our conditions, an undermining of our standard of living, for nothing other than profit for the few. We are expected to accept whatever the corporate world throws at us and submit docile fashion to allow them a free hand in plundering the conditions of the ordinary people of this country. We must organise in our communities and workplaces to support every strike action, every workers dispute, and make it clear, that enough is enough, our time has come. If we allow this legislation to work in any shape or form, it will be proof that they are laughing at us, while we crawl in search of crumbs.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

Emotions.

          I love poetry, some more than others, there can be so much emotion encapsulated in a few lines, a vid picture can appear in a verse. I find Xu Lizhi's poems very moving. "I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That" is a poem that I'm sure those who work at boring repetitive jobs can identify with the words and emotions.
        Xu Lizhi a young Chinese poet who took his own life on 30 September 2014, at the age of 24, in Shenzhen, China.

"I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That"


The paper before my eyes fades yellow
With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black
Full of working words
Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages...
They've trained me to become docile
Don't know how to shout or rebel
How to complain or denounce
Only how to silently suffer exhaustion
When I first set foot in this place
I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month
To grant me some belated solace
For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words
Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons
Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early
By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,
How many days, how many nights
Did I - just like that - standing fall asleep?

-- 20 August 2011

 

Shy, quiet, introverted, solitary

In 2010, Xu Lizhi went [from his home in rural Jieyang, Guangdong] to work at [a] Foxconn [electronics factory in Shenzhen], beginning life on the assembly line. From 2012 until February of this year [2014], over 30 of his writings were published in Foxconn’s internal newspaper Foxconn People (富士康人), including poems, essays, film reviews, and news commentaries {…} Xu posted the titles of these writings on his blog in a post called “The Maturation Given to Me by a Newspaper,” indicating his gratitude for this platform for his literary aspirations. The first time his friend Zheng (pseudonym) read Xu’s poetry, he was astonished to discover that this young man could be so talented. Henceforth, Zheng always looked for Xu’s writings in the newspaper.
           Zheng’s impression was that Xu was a shy boy, “of few words, but not silent.” “Xu asserted his convictions, but he seemed quite solitary – very much the air of a poet.” When Zheng heard of Xu’s suicide, his entire [week-long] break for [China’s] National Day was shrouded in grief. He could not go outside for days.

          Turning feelings into poems; fearing they be read by family

          Most of Xu’s early poems were descriptions of life on the assembly line. In “Workshop, My Youth Was Stranded Here,” he described his conditions at the time: “Beside the assembly line, tens of thousands of workers [dagongzhe]1 line up like words on a page/ 'Faster, hurry up!'/ Standing among them, I hear the supervisor bark.” He felt that “Once you’ve entered the workshop/ The only choice is submission,” and that his youth was coldly slipping away, so he could only “Watch it being ground away day and night/ Pressed, polished, molded/ Into a few measly bills, so-called wages.”

Readthe full article HERE.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

NHS.

 

         It always astounds me how out of touch those posh prats are that frequent The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. It seems our millionaire leader, Sunak, is rather shy about stating if he uses private health care, refusing to give a straight answer on a recent TV interview. However last year a newspaper reported that he used a private health care GP, who gives on the day appointments and charges £250 for a half hour consultation. Sunak and his rich cronies make such statements that choosing private health care is a personal choice. How many ordinary people can fork out £250 for a half hour GP consultation? How can anybody expect these people to even understand the life problems of the ordinary people, why should we even expect them to value the NHS when they cocoon themselves in private health care. These people see everything as a business opportunity, and under capitalism there is a lot of money to be made out of people's ill health and other health problems, what price is a child's life. Why do we let those rich parasites, who don't give a shit about our health, make the decisions on the NHS. Isn't about time we got rid of them and made these decisions on community based mutual aid and co-operation between communities? As I've said before, they are laughing at us.

                                              Image courtesy of Nuffield Trust.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Spivs.

Image courtesy of Muswell Hill Sustainability Group

All of the above.

           Nobody likes getting ripped off by spivs and con artists, so why do we tolerate being ripped off by big corporations? Through this winter ordinary households have put up with cold homes to the detriment of everybody, especially kids and elderly, while the energy companies have been making billions in profits. What these energy companies and their minders the state don't mention is that wholesale gas prices are now as low as they were just before the war in Ukraine. A mild winter in UK and Europe has driven gas prices down more than 4% to 178p per therm. The last time we saw gas below 180p per therm was before the war in Ukraine. At the start of that imperialist bloodshed the price of gas rose rapidly to 329p a therm, skyrocketing to 875p a therm by August. The energy companies were very quick in raising their prices to make sure they still made a huge profit. It has now been steadily falling to pre war levels but there has been no watching drop in price to you and I.
           You have to admit, you are being ripped off by spivs and con artists who live in the lap of luxury at our expense. How long will we allow ourselves to be mugs to the billionaire parasite class, how long will behave like milk-cows to the capitalist system, how long will we pay for an Oxbridge education for that millionaire/billionaire parasite class while we struggle for a decent life?
            Of course the energy companies are not the only rip-off merchants in town. Denise Coates CEO of bet365 had an annual salary of £250 million plus £97.5 million in dividends to March 2022. Making her the highest paid executive in the UK. Where do you think that money comes from? They are laughing at us.

 

Image courtesy of Express.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

Our Time.

 

                                             Image courtesy of The Mirror.

            The capitalist system is in crisis and it is relying on its minder the state apparatus to come to its aid. As the insane economics of the capitalist system tries to re-capitalise by squeezing the workers and ordinary people, the workers are resisting by strike action and other means. The state’s part in this domination of the people for profit is to create legislation to make strike action more difficult or impossible. The present members of The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are doing their capitalist master bidding and are drawing up draconian anti strike laws. This should be a rallying call for all ordinary people in work or not, to get behind the strikers and organise in their communities and workplaces and make this new legislation unworkable, this is not a struggle between workers and employers, this is a struggle for a decent life for all. We have had centuries of exploitation and struggle for a decent life while watching the rich get richer. Our world today is controlled by billionaires drunk on their greed driven profit seeking mania and a cavalier attitude to the suffering of others. The only voice that the establishment should hear is the rallying call from the ordinary people, enough is enough, our time has come.

                                                     Image courtesy of CNN

 

Image courtesy of Market Watch.

 

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Barbarism.

          In Italy the vindictive state sits silent, and callously watches a man slowly die, when it is their hands to prevent this state murder. This is raw cold-blooded state power in action, This brutal act is for no other reason than to uphold the rotten stinking carcase that is the state institution and its bed-fellow, capitalism. There is no way of reforming the festering marriage of state and capitalism, as they are so intricately intertwined and interdependent. The only way to stop these acts of vindictive barbarism is the total destruction of that blight on humanity, state and capitalism. We all have to choose which side we are on, barbarism and exploitation, or freedom and justice for all, there is no middle ground.

The following from Act For Freedom Now.

DEMONSTRATION IN SOLIDARITY WITH ALFREDO IN THE CENTRE OF MILAN

         This evening [December 29th, 71st day of hunger strike by Alfredo Cospito] a presence of about 300 comrades gathered at the end of via Torino, on the edge of piazza Duomo, heavily enclosed for the occasion by almost 30 armoured vehicles and a large contingent of police agents. After an hour of speeches under the shadow of Milan’s cathedral in solidarity with Alfredo’s struggle against the 41 bis prison regime, we moved in a demonstration along the crowded via Torino. Amidst slogans, chants, firecrackers and speeches by the various groups and collectives that were present, the demonstration moved to piazza XXIV Maggio, where it disbanded.

       We relaunch the mobilisation and invite everyone to the demonstration in Rome on December 31st under the DNAA, ‘National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate’!

Alfredo out from 41 bis!
Everyone out from 41 bis!
Against every prison!

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