November 15, Writers In Prison Day.

      Across the globe, on a regular basis, those who through their writing, attempt to draw attention to injustice, inequality, to human degradation and institutional repression, find themselves at the receiving end of these scars on humanity, and end up in prison. Those responsible for such crimes against groups and individuals do not like exposure or criticism. However, these voices of dissent, those courageous enough to throw the light of publicity on these matters are at the forefront of the struggle for justice and equality, and we should always show our solidarity with their efforts. To draw attention to those imprisoned writers, in 1981 International PEN, Writers in Prison Committee created 15, November as The Day of The Imprisoned Writer as an annual international event. It is important that we recognise and support, those writers who resist all attempts at the repression of the basic human right of self expression and the right to freely impart information. Without dissenting voices we live in the darkness of ignorance.

      So today, spare a thought and take up your pen, or strike your keypad to defend those, who find themselves in prison for defending us. 

 Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Accelerating To Deprivation.

     This government's eager complicity in the financial Mafia's drive for sweatshop Europe is seen in the number of ways in which they offer their business friends helpings of free labour. They give interviews proclaiming unemployment is falling and the recovery is gaining ground. However, unemployment is falling because thousands of people are on workfare, a government gift of free labour to the corporate greed machine, and as for recovery, well among the ordinary people the recovery is a fairytale. The millionaire's Old Boys network, our government, has now started another way of forcing young people to work for nothing, their “traineeships” scheme. Of course their millionaire buddies in businesses like Boots, Poundland and Kwik-fit, to mention just a few, are more than eager to take on board as much free labour as they can get their hands on. Why employ people for a wage when your friends in government hand you free labour.

       Another smiling comment from the millionaire cabal in charge of our drive to deprivation, is that inflation has fallen from 2.7% to 2.2% and this should ease the pressure on the general public. What a load of bullshit, in that “fall” there is hidden the fact that food has risen by 4.6% and energy bills are set to rise in the region of 10%, how this will ease the pressure on the ordinary household budget has yet to be explained.

     With workfare, traineeships, zero hours contracts, part-time employment, bedroom tax, rocketing food and energy prices, and ATOS killing off the disabled, this government has pressed the accelerator as we spiral down the deprivation road. Sweatshop Europe here we come. 

 

An excerpt from an interesting and informative article by The Void:

Unpaid workers on these schemes are counted as employed, a handy distortion of the figures for a Government that claims they are bringing down unemployment.  With the numbers in part-time work, precarious self-employment or workfare all at record levels, and wages falling far behind inflation, the true picture of the labour market is far from good news. Recent Housing Benefit statistics* show that the number claiming help with housing costs remains at record levels.  Over 5 million people are on this benefit and for the first time, in July 2013, the number of working Housing Benefit claimants topped one million.

 Read the full article HERE:

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Undercover Police, Circled A Radio.

      The latest from Circled A Radio, a chat with author of "Undercover" Rob Evans, an exposure of the UK's undercover police.

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The Ever Threatening Presence Of Big Brother.

This information and appeal from OpenMedia:

      Now we know why the TPP Internet censorship plan has been kept so secret.

Wikileaks just made public secret documents that show how industry lobbyists are trying to impose an extreme Internet censorship scheme.1

We knew it was going to be bad. We knew it could mean that entire websites and families could be kicked off the Internet. We knew it could lock out the deaf and the blind.

But the TPP Internet censorship plan is even worse than we thought. The leaked documents reveal that:

• U.S. President Obama is trying to impose laws that would clamp down on free expression, compel your Internet service provider to track your Internet usage, and impose extreme penalties for everyday online activities.
• The TPP would create secret transnational Internet censorship courts. It could override national courts and national laws.2

      Yeah, it’s that bad. This leak could change everything -- but only if people know about it. We need to raise a loud public call at this unique moment:

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SHARE ON FACEBOOK NOW

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SHARE ON TWITTER

THEN, SHARE THIS WEBPAGE WITH EVERYONE VIA EMAIL: https://openmedia.org/censorship

      The leaked documents have revealed that the United States government and lobbyists are nearly alone in pushing the most extreme parts of the TPP’s Internet censorship plan.3

    However, the leaked draft also lets us know which countries oppose these extreme new rules. And here’s the good news: many countries are pushing back.4

      The more voices we join together, the stronger the message we can send. It’s that simple. Your action today will make a difference.

Thank you. We can do this,

     Steve and Josh, on behalf of your OpenMedia.org team

P.S. If you’re still reading this, it means you care. This plan is worse than our worst fears. Your small team here at OpenMedia.org are working hard to make sure people know the truth about what’s going on. Can you do your part by chipping in what you can today towards our campaign?

 

Footnotes

[1] Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Source: WikiLeaks

[2] How the TPP endangers access to knowledge, technology, and information. Source: Public Citizen.

[3] Leaked treaty is a Hollywood wishlist. Could it derail Obama’s trade agenda? Source: Washington Post.

[4] The Trans Pacific Partnership IP Chapter Leaks: Canada Pushing Back Against Draconian U.S. Demands. Source: Michael Geist.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Workers Know Your History - Athens Polytechnic, November 14 1973.

 

      At the moment Greece is in the hands of a fascist grouping, directed by the financial mafia in the name of the Troika. The recent history of the people of Greece has been a long and brutal struggle against tyranny of one sort or another. It has been one continuous struggle for freedom since the German occupation during the Second World War. November 14 is an important date in that struggle.

 

     November 1973 saw the start of the massive uprising in Athens against the military junta. It started at the Athens Polytechnic on November 14, and rapidly escalated to a popular anti-junta revolt. It turned into a brutal shedding of Greek blood, when in the early hours of November 17, tanks crashed through the gates of the Polytechnic. The Junta was eventually overthrown. Sadly that struggle for freedom has been way-laid by the corrupt system of “representative democracy” which has led to the present situation where the people of Greece are being raped and plundered by the financial Mafia and offered up on the altar of corporatism. Though the uprising started on November 14, the people of Greece mark the event with large demonstrations on November 17, to honour those brutally killed and injured in the start of Junta reprisals. Demotix has some photos.

 

     However the struggle continues, not just in Greece, but across the world, people are now aware of the greed and exploitation of this system of capitalism and are rising up against the inequality and in justice. Just as the military Junta was overthrown, so will capitalism, but this time we will get it right.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

A Bird With Two Right Wings.

     I like this poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and left activist, though he is speaking about America, it fits well with our own political system here in the UK. You can find more of Ferlinghetti's poems on Poem Hunter.

Bird With Two Right Wings

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who's busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

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World Wide Solidarity.

An appeal for world wide solidarity from IUF:

Colombian trade unionist murdered! Oscar López Triviño was murdered on November 9 in the Colombian city of Bugalagrande a day after he and other members of his union, SINALTRAINAL, received death threats from paramilitaries. The union had been on hunger strike at Nestlé beginning November 5. The IUF joins with the national center CUT and unions around the world in condemning this assassination of yet another Colombian trade unionist and calls on the government to swiftly bring the perpetrators and organizers of this crime to justice through a full and transparent investigation, and to provide all necessary security for other union members at high risk. Click here to send a message to the government of Colombia!

E-mail: iuf@iuf.org Rampe du Pont-Rouge, 8, CH-1213, Petit-Lancy (Switzerland) www.iuf.org Follow us on Facebook and Twitter Subscribe to IUF NEWS by e-mail  Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Employers' Grand Theft.

      We are always hearing our UK lords and masters, the millionaire cabal, spouting about being tough on crime. Top of their list are “benefit cheats”, though when it comes to fraud ,this group is small-fry. Benefit fraud compared to tax avoidance, is just a fraction. According to the DWP the amount lost through benefit fraud is £1.2 billion a year, but according to HMRC, the amount lost to the treasury through tax avoidance is approximately £30 billion a year, though other experts put the figure much higher. However, the smaller of the two gets pursued through the courts, while regards the larger one, we are told that the government is looking at ways of dealing with that. Benefit fraud is actually much smaller than errors in the system. The amount over paid by the DWP department errors is £2.2 billion, and the amount under paid by department errors, £1.3 billion. So what this means is that if they eradicated errors and benefit fraud tomorrow, and paid people what they were due, the benefit bill would rise. Therefore, economics would suggest that we let the "benefit cheats" carry on as usual and concentrate on the big boys, the tax avoidance mob.

        Another form of fraud that doesn't get much coverage from the powers that be, is wage theft. Figures released in the USA show that 64% of low wage workers have cash stolen from their pay packets by their employers every week. This figure includes 26% who are paid less than the minimum wage, approximately 75% of workers due overtime rates have part or all of that stolen by their employers. The figures also show that the average low wage worker is robbed by their employer of a staggering $2,634 per year in unpaid wages, which works out at about 15% of their salary. Remember, if you're a low paid worker, you are probably on or near the breadline, yet these greedy bastards steal from you.

      Although these figures are for the USA, I have no reason to believe that our UK employers are any less unscrupulous than their American counterparts. It is par for the course, exploit the employee, cheat them of as much of their agreed pittance and maximise your profit. It's called capitalism.

Vi9sit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Prosperity And Austerity - Them And Us.

    The European Commission has stated that the UK still has a structural government budget deficit of 5.7% of GDP, where as the eurozone as a whole has minus 1.5%. This after our millionaire cabal, sitting in those Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, have slashed our social services by attacking us with three years of “austerity” that was supposed to take us to the land of prosperity. However, the land of prosperity that they refer to is not for you and I. Austerity is now to be a permanent feature of our lives, public sector jobs will continue to be sacrificed at the alter of privatisation. Wages will continue to be squeezed well below inflation, that is the prosperity that is facing you and I. There will be no let up in the squeeze on the living conditions of the ordinary people, as this is the demand of the financial mafia, that band of thugs in suits, known as the Troika, (E.C. European Commission, E.C.B. European Central Bank, I.M.F. International Mankind Fuckers), their aim is a European sweatshop economy to compete with their Eastern sweatshop competitors. They see more prosperity for them if they can get the living conditions in Europe down to a level on par with those Eastern sweatshop countries. 

     Under the stewardship of this bunch of financial vultures, the people of Greece have been plunged to a level of deprivation not seen in Europe for many a decade. In spite of this, it is not enough, the vampire Troika, has demanded a further push to deeper deprivation for the people of Greece, and has demanded that a further 15,000 public sector jobs must go by 2015, this with unemployment at present sitting at 27% and almost 60% among the young. This is not because the Troika hates the people of Greece, this is the path they want for all of Europe, the end of the public sector, the privatising of all public assets, and a continent of low wages. Excellent fertile conditions for the corporate world to exploit and grow fatter.
     Burgeoning prosperity looms on the near horizon, but it is for the financial Mafia and their parasitic friends. This will continue unabated, unless we the people decide to take control of our own lives, destroy this festering cancer called capitalism and build that better world based on mutual aid and co-operation. There is no point in trying to modify the present system, there is no point in believing that there is such an animal as compassionate capitalism, it is a ruthless exploitative system of selfish greed and can only survive by the plundering and rape of the planet and the exploitation and enslavement of the people.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk