GUNS, GREED AND GAMES.

        While the corporate  greed machine gears up to make a killing at its latest cash cow, the London Olympics, I think we should do our bit to get in the mood. After all we the tax payers have paid a lot of our money to help them get a start on their greed feast. We have sunk a lot of our pensions and social services' money into this military exercise in an attempt to help out those sleazy, sweaty handed shareholders secure their fat pension pots, so let's not lose our enthusiasm at the last lap.

Graphics from HERE:

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THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT.

Peter Kropotkin, The Spirit of Revolt

        "There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life; everywhere they are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order."

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LORDS OF THE RINGS!!

From "A World to Win"

Lords of the Rings take over London

      When a café owner has to change its name, shops are banned from having a certain number of linked rings in their window, roads are barred to ordinary motorists and thousands of police and soldiers occupy a quarter of a major city, it can only mean one thing – the Olympics are here.

And when corporations are provided with a tax-free zone for the duration of the Games, you know that the shadowy International Olympic Committee is running the show. Tax exemptions were granted by UK tax authorities as part of a package of concessions demanded by the IOC. They apply to corporation and income tax for non-UK companies and individuals working on the Olympics between 30 March and 8 November this year.
         The IOC’s charter states that their mission is “to promote Olympism throughout the world and to lead the Olympic movement” and “to oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes”. This is hypocrisy writ large from the owners of the Olympic rings logo.

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WORKERS EVICTED BY RIOT POLICE.

This from The Greek Streets: 

Friday July, 2012, 18.50 GMT+2 

       More than 2,000 people gathered in solidarity outside the factory gates already. However, members of PAME (the stalinist trade union) decide to leave, using the pretext of their solidarity demonstration in central Athens on Monday.

      The workers of “Greek Steelworks” (Elliniki Halivourgia) in Aspropyrgos, near Athens, had been on a strike since early November 2011 (see our steelworkers tag for background to their struggle). At dawn today, at least five riot police vans arrived at the factory and riot police raided the building soon thereafter. At least six strikers have been detained. A small number (approximately 30) of scabs have entered the factory since. There is a call for a solidarity demonstration at the factory at 5.30 this evening, while people in solidarity are already gathering at the gates.

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VOTE FOR NOBODY.

     We have always know that this type of society gives a myriad of choices, almost limitless, but all about how to make micro adjustments to the system, the choice that is denied everybody is the choice to change to an alternative system.

This extract is from an article on Void Mirror that details this in more detail:

Policy-makers nit-pick over the finer details but preserve the core, and in the wider population, in opinion polls, national elections and everyday conversation, ‘everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them having one about the totality.’ And so we’re left with a set of choices; pointless policy debates over taxation, budgets, bail-outs, bonuses, regulation – everything on the agenda is a set piece of fine-tuning and tweaking but never questioning the legitimacy of the whole - the social machine in its entirety.

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WHY AFGHANISTAN?

          The war in Afghanistan has been a costly, bloody and brutal affair, it has been 11years of savage conflict where the NATO countries have poured in money and young lives. The total NATO deaths has passed the 3,000 mark, of those more than 2,000 were American forces and over 400 were from UK forces. On top of that there has been tens of thousands of physically injured and mentally scarred young people from the NATO forces. Then of course there is the figures that get very little coverage in that babbling brook of bullshit, Western media, Afghan civilians killed. The figures are horrendous, according the UN figures almost 13,000 have been killed in the last six years, 2,332 in 2011 alone, a 10% increase on the previous year. Then it being a capitalist war we have to look at the financial side. The estimated cost to the US tax payer, calculated up to September this year, will be a staggering $487.6 billion, and to the UK tax payer it will be £20billion. How much is that in social services?

        Why have the Western nations poured so much in suffering and money into this poor country? To catch/kill, Osama bib Laden? To bring democracy to the Afghans? Well they have succeed the first mentioned, at what cost? They have of course failed miserably in the latter.

       However could the reason for this costly savage slaughter be clarified by this extract from a BBC article:

 

      Afghanistan is known to have vast reserves of oil, gas, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium. In late 2011, a consortium of Indian companies inked a deal to begin mining some of the country's large stores of iron. But the country is known to have a wider array of mineral resources; in 2010, the Afghan ministry of mines claimed a value of its reserves of nearly a trillion dollars, then carrying out tours to promote investment in them.

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       Of course a Western compliant puppet government in Afghanistan would see them control those assets as the have done in Libya and Iraq, with Syria and Iran in their radar.

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IS IT THE BIGGEST.

         People on the streets across Europe, but as we know, it isn't just Europe. From the Middle East to America, to South America, people are calling for change, with more pain, corruption and deprivation coming our way the anger will rise, the call for change will get louder.
         In Mexico this was billed as the biggest demonstration in the world, perhaps not accurate,  but it is up there with the big ones.

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HOW MUCH IS A WOMB WORTH?

      We all know that capitalism has no morality, but capitalism is nothing but for the people who run the system, so it follows that those individuals have no morality. We read day in and day out about how this corporate body and that corporate body put profit before human life and limb, all in the interest of fluffing up a group of shareholders' bank accounts. It's how the system works, profit is the GOD and people are sacrificed on its high altar. However, even a hard nosed anti-capitalist like myself is sometimes stunned by the depth of depravity that the system, by that I mean the people who work he system, will sink to. It seems that thousands of women, mainly poor women, in the state of Chhattisgarh in India, have had their wombs removed so that the hospital could claim an insurance cheque form the government. The stories that are coming out are that women went in for minor complaints were told that they would contract cancer if they didn't have their womb removed. Some of those women, being poor were intimidated by the medical staff and though they had gone in for a back complaint or some other minor ailment, had their wombs removed. It doesn't seem to be the odd rogue doctor, but seems to be across the state. According to some estimates, there have been 50,000 hysterectomies performed across the state in the last 30 months. In each of these cases the clinic/hospital can claim from the government, 30,000 Rupees, approximately £348 per operation. This is no back street con trick, this is done by those Oh so respectable professionals in their shiny suits, those pillars of society who drive home to their des-res in the leafy suburbs. Human bodies are just another commodity from which to extract profit, after all that's what the system is all about. 

Information from BBC article:

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THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY.

 

Taken from  an article on Killing King Abacus:   

   

        So indeed, on all fronts, the American ruling class is fighting for democracy, because democracy is perhaps the most effective swindle that any ruling class has ever come up with to keep those they rule in line. Abstract equality, the ideology of rights, the myth of the “common good” and the work ethic all work together to blind the exploited to the real conditions of their existence, to create false hopes for changing those conditions within the context of this society and to allow the masters of this world to present their interests as the interests of all. Our liberation depends on our rejection of the democratic swindle, not in favor of some other form of rule, but as an aspect of the rejection of all rule, of every form of domination and exploitation. If the most reasonable response the American soldiers in Iraq could make to their situation is mutiny and desertion, our most reasonable response here is to move toward insurrection through autonomous direct action and attack against the institutions that dominate our lives. But our reasons are not those of the rulers, and will appear to them as barbarous madness. But as to their opinion, why should we give a damn?

Read the full article HERE: 

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FREEDOM FOR ALL.

        Secularism, one of the many building blocks on the road to freedom or all.

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UNDERDOG WORLD STRIKE.

UNDERDOG WORLD STRIKE

I am a foreigner and I'm walking
Through new streets
But before I want to I see the same deeds
Inherited by few a power machine
That crushes you and strangles you
Right in your sleep
But be it me, or it's you, the leisure class
I think we all know:
That be it punk, hip-hop, be it a reggae sound
It is all connected through
The gypsy part of town...
Let's go!
It's the UNDERDOG WORLD STRIKE!
And let your Girl Scouts lip-synch
About the freedom
Just the way you like them,
But soon enough you'll see them
Soon enough they all turn around
And soon enough you'll see them
In a different part of town
But be it me, or it's you, the leisure class
I think we all know:
That be it punk, hip-hop, be it a reggae sound
It is all connected through
The gypsy part of town...
Let's go!
It's the UNDERDOG WORLD STRIKE!

Gogol Bordello
UNDERDOG WORLD STRIKE lyrics

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SYSTEMIC COLLUSION.

        The ordinary punter knows that the entire financial system is no more than a private fiddlers club, a very lucrative scam only open to those and such as those. The continual "shock, horror" by our political class of "Honourable Members", at each of the many revelations of blatant corruption, just re-affirms their complicity. The financial system stinks to high heavens and the political class are part and parcel of that smell. After all most of those sitting in those marble halls of the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are millionaires and they them selves will have some of their ill-gotten gains swilling around in that very lucrative slush pot of the financial world, and no doubt will have "connections" to the top of the fiddlers club. They are all doing very well from the corruption and fraud. It is you and I that take the hit.

A quote from a more detailed article by Naomi Wolf:

 

It is very hard, looking at the elaborate edifices of fraud that are emerging across the financial system, to ignore the possibility that this kind of silence – "the willingness to not rock the boat" – is simply rewarded by promotion to ever higher positions, ever greater authority. If you learn that rate-rigging and regulatory failures are systemic, but stay quiet, well, perhaps you have shown that you are genuinely reliable and deserve membership of the club.

Her Heading:

        "The media's 'bad apple' thesis no longer works. We're seeing systemic corruption in banking – and systemic collusion." is the only conclusion available. But then again we always new that.

Read the full article HERE:

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CORPORATISM AND WAR,

Simple and yet comprehensive in its explanation,  it should be on the national curriculum.

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TRUST YOURSELF.

 

Well said.

Dan Barker on Atheism Being Positive.

"I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil–you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality,

peace and joy.Trust yourself."

Dan Barker in "Losing Faith in Faith"

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SECURING WHOSE WORLD?

        With the hullabaloo about Olympic security and G4S, a little information on the Goliath corporate beast that goes by the name of G4S is perhaps welcome. This is no ordinary corporate beast, this one is the spearhead of the financial Mafia's privatisation program and in being so has made billions from tax payers money taking over security, prisons, police stations, migrant detention and a host of other parts of the state's control and repression facilities. It's tentacles reach across the world and slither into any area of repression that any state wants to privatise. All done with tax payers money at an extortionate profit to G4S.

 

This from A World to Win:

G4S - 'securing' their world, not ours

        Despite its inability to fulfil its London 2012 contract, the rise and rise of G4S is the story of the privatisation of the state and an increasing emphasis on “threats” and “security concerns” aimed at keeping people in thrall to authority.
     G4S is no ordinary corporation. It operates in more than 125 countries and has 675,000 employees. Group turnover last year was £7.5 billion, mostly derived from state contracts around the world, with 30% of revenues coming from “developing markets”. Pre-tax profits were up 2.1% to £531m.
      The self-styled “world's leading international security solutions group” has cashed in on the drive by the state to divest itself of more and more functions like prisons, crowd control and significant parts of the police service. As the company’s website declares: “In more ways than you might realise, G4S is securing your world.”
Of course, it’s not “our world” so much as their world – the rich, the bankers, the state, and the corporations that G4S helps to secure. And nowhere is “security” more on the state’s lips than in Israel, which continues to occupy Palestinian lands in defiance of countless UN resolutions.

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RIGHTEOUS ANGER.

       When it comes to the media, that babbling brook of bullshit, reporting on the "CRISIS" in Europe, all they report is of the meetings of the financial Mafia and their servants, the political class. They will comment on how the rating agencies are shuffling their betting odds, and we will be told how the bond markets are screwing this country more than that country. Very rarely will it report what the "CRISIS" is actually doing to the ordinary people and what those people are doing to defend themselves against rape and plundering of their standard of living. All this reporting is a public relations exercise for those responsible for the "CRISIS", but never a word about those at the receiving end.

      Greece is in turmoil with poverty and deprivation rampant, and below is a glimpse at what is happening in Spain. As the financial Mafia continue with their assault on the public purse of the European people, we can expect to see more of this type of real resistance. Enjoy the ecstasy of your righteous anger.

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WOODY GUTHRIE, TODAY'S VOICE.

      Sorry, a day late. It was on 13 July a hundred years ago that Woody Guthrie was born, and though his songs, among other things, chronicle the 30's depression, he could have been writing about today. 

This from Care2:

 

At 100, Woody Guthrie More Relevant Than Ever

        Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of American icon Woody Guthrie. I grew up on Guthrie’s music, though at the time I had no idea that “This Land Is Your Land” was written as a protest song. Nor could I have any sense that the centennial of his birth would be marked by the same urgent need for reform and the same defiant protest that made Guthrie a legend.

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PHOTOGRAPHING CONFRONTATION.

Some excellent advice from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ.

        With clashes in Spain and especially in Madrid growing in intensity I thought I'd post a few pointers to those photographers who want to cover riots and other such turbulent events. Since 2005 I have recorded, dozens of violent confrontations here in Greece and I hope that these pointers will help keep you safe.

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RACIST CRAP.

       This comment is in no way intended for the vast majority of those who read this blog, but just for those few who vomit bile and crap whenever they open their mouths or sit in front of a computer screen.

Emotional Reasoning “... you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.”

        I have always liked a good reasoned argument, however sometimes you receive a comment that is so irrational, the only thing to do is ignore it for the reason stated above. There are those who believe that because you write on a blog you must print every thing that is flung at you, sorry, not so. Sometimes I receive a lot of irrational racist crap and I don't feel in the least that I am compelled to repeat that kind of shit on the blog. I know that the poor miserable souls that send this sort of stuff get off on seeing it in print, and they probably think they are in some way upsetting me. Well, again, sorry, I just feel sorry for you, you are probably rather dim and live in a lonely distorted world, a world with very narrow horizons. I have a little piece of advice for you, if you really want to see your crap in print, then write it out and stick it on your computer screen, then you will be able to see it every time you look at the computer.

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SMART PUDDLE.

Some amusing accuracies from Douglas Adams.  Left Hemispheres:

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