Organizing Revolt from the stimulator on Vimeo.
Friday, 14 February 2014
It's The End Of The world, And I feel Fine.
Organizing Revolt from the stimulator on Vimeo.
Crooks And Liars All.
Once again our lords and masters in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption have shown their duplicity, and what they think of the minimum wage. It seems that our Oxbridge millionaire Tory MP's are being advised on how to get round minimum wage legislation by naming interns as volunteers. Hey presto, you don't have to pay them at all. Fairness, justice and we are all in this together.
This from The Void:
Read the full article HERE:
The breath-taking hypocrisy of both the Tory Party and the TUC was laid bare this week after an astonishing document emerged which advises Tory Party MPs on how to dodge minimum wage legislation by renaming interns as ‘volunteers’.
The leaflet, which was published on the Graduate Fog website, provides legal advice on minimum wage legislation along with a template letter that can be used to fob off any enquiries to MPs about their use of unpaid interns. This shoddy attempt to dodge the rules on paying workers comes in the same week that David Cameron announced in Parliament that his Government was naming and shaming firms which don’t pay minimum wage.
Bank Liquidity, Or People's Health?
The full extent of austerity measures can't really be measured as
it is the next generation that will carry a lot of the scars. The
deeper the austerity the further into the future the damage goes.
Greece is the financial Mafia's biggest European crime against a
future generation. The extreme poverty inflicted on today's
generation of the people of Greece destroys lives in the present, but
the harm to the next generation could be far worse.
According to Doctors of The World, medical aid group, at this
moment in time, 25% of Greek's can't afford health care. This of
course hits the most vulnerable, elderly, sick, pregnant women and
children. Like the rest of Europe, parents in Greece had the kids
immunised, this has now rapidly fallen away. In Greece immunisation
of a child over its first six years, costs between €1,400 and
€1,800, to an impoverished family this is beyond them. Doctors of The World also claimed that over a recent nine month period they examined
10,633 children and found that 6,580 had not been immunised, that is well over 50% of children not being vaccinated. They
also stated that every day they see two and three year old children,
who have not been vaccinated. Another of their findings, is the
appalling fact that since 2008 to 2011 the number of stillborn babies
has increase by 21%. This is the direct result of the policies of the, the European Financial Mafia, the Troika, (ECB, European Central Bank, EC, European Commission, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers.)
What will the future be like, growing up in a country where child
vaccination is disappearing and infant mortality rising, where
unemployment is running at 27%, and over 60% among the young, what
will this do for the quality of life, for family life? These are just some of the many hidden
crimes perpetrated by the financial mafia, in its plundering of the
public purse. Generations of deprivation, with all the attendant
physical and mental health problems, for no other reason than to fill
the coffers of a banking system that got drunk on gambling, and lost.
Thursday, 13 February 2014
Challenging The Arms Trade In Scotland.
Challenging the arms trade in Scotland
What's
the link between Edinburgh and drones, or Ayrshire and the teargas
turned on democracy protesters
in
the Middle East? What does Dundee
have
to do with the repression in Bahrain? Find out at an info and
skills-sharing day in Glasgow on 15
March.
Bringing
together campaigners from across Scotland and Northern
England,
CAAT's Campaign Day is a great opportunity to pick up information and
campaign skills.
-
Discuss
how we can use the referendum debate to rethink the arms trade,
whether in an independent Scotland or as part of the UK.
With top-level arms dealers due to
meet in Scotland a few weeks later and the opportunity to challenge
Edinburgh Science Festival's support for a drones company in April,
it's an important time to get involved!
www.caat.org.uk
Solidarity Is Our Weapon.
Trade unions and NGOs rallied outside Cambodian Embassies around the world on 10 February demanding the release of Cambodian garment workers detained since the beginning of January. The campaign is set to escalate as they were not freed at the court hearing on 11 February.Read the full article HERE:
In a show of global solidarity, demonstrations took place in Brussels, Canberra, Dhaka, Geneva, Honduras, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Manila, Seoul, Sri Lanka, Tokyo and Washington D.C.
It follows a call by IndustriALL Global Union, UNI Global Union and the ITUC to show international support for 23 people arrested in the capital Phnom Penh during demonstrations by garment workers fighting for a fair and living wage.
In the past few days, two workers have been released. Of the remaining 21 detainees, 16 began a hunger strike on Sunday.
Paint Your Face With War Paint?
In honest reflection, I think we have to admit that we have made a
real mess of the planet. Apart from ripping the planet apart to
plunder its finite resources to feed our excesses, we swamp its
rivers with noxious chemicals, and fill its atmosphere with deadly
pollutants. We destroy its forests and devastate all other forms of
animal life, as they get in the way of our “progress”. Basking in
the illusion that we are making our lives better, we destroy our only
home. We fail to grasp that spaceship earth has no escape capsule.
Greed of the few, which is contagious, is sold as “progress”
while tinsel and fancy gadgets cover the scars of our bleeding
planet. What we should bear in mind is that the planet is much more
adaptable than we are as a species, it will change and go on
spinning, while we slowly eliminate ourselves with our ever growing
greed and arrogance.
Is it too late? Can we rescue our only home? Who knows, but
any chance of rescuing our once beautiful home will require a mass
revolution of consciousness among the ordinary people, a destroying all the old tablets of
stone, a burying of the myth of “continuous growth”, a levelling
of the quality of life of the people across the planet, an end to the greed driven
excesses of the few at the expense the many. What ever rescue plan we
come up with, will most certainly need to be based on co-operation,
mutual aid, sustainability and mutual respect of all life on the
planet. The rescue plan for our survival must sit firmly on the
foundation of material needs rather than material desires. A realisation that more
pretty coloured boxes does not equate with a better quality of life.
This from The Year Of Black Clothing:
Read the full article HERE:In the Middle East, those questions look like birth defects from residuals of depleted Uranium. Beneath the Arab Spring lie unattainable food costs. In China, you have nets built around factories to prevent suicides and screens projecting sunrise and sunsets since you can’t see them through the smog. Throughout Latin America you have displaced villages and toxin spewing factories demolishing forests. Throughout the affluent nations, you have chronic debt, depression, and people buried under their possessions and gadgets as real world connections wither.You have a world overrun by resource wars, power grabs, ponzi schemes, crushed egos, isolation and separation induced anxiety and depression, suppressed populations, and unthinkable wealth. But you have no middle ground. You have no escape.
Tomorrow’s World!
See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
Chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.
Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.
Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.
Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.
In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know its got to be good.
Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit’s what its all about.
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
You Are Many - They Are Few.
As surveillance becomes ever more widespread and detailed, covering all aspects of our lives, it is more and more stupid to suggest that this is all for our own protection and safety. When whistle-blowers are imprisoned for exposing government excesses and duplicity, and governments pry into your ever email and phone call, it is obvious who they are protecting, it's their own power structures.
An excerpt from an interesting article in Anarchist News:
"Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep have fallen on you,
Ye are many - they are few"
- Percy Bysshe Shelly; The Mask of Anarchy
Marie Mason was sentenced to decades in prison for property crimes in an ELF action. Check out "Attorney Claims USA Chills Rights of Environmentalists: @ supportmariemason.org. Recently, Daniel McGowan's parole was revoked as punishment for his political speech. Read "Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communications Management Units (CMU) For My Political Speech @huffingtonpost.com. Edward Snowden is in exile. Chelsea Manning is in lock-up. Jeremy Hammond faces decades for hacking the military industrial complex. Glenn Greenwald is under assault for reportage. Sara Harrison is in forced exile. Julian Assange cannot leave an embassy compound. Barrett Brown faces decades in prison for a non-crime and is now held under a gag order designed to keep the world from learning how federal courts have become a weapon for assaulting free speech. NATO 5's Mark Neiweem's "ideology" was used by prison authorities to justify extension of his sentence.Read the full article HERE:
In short, there is a war being waged right now, an undeclared Dirty War, by a fascist control state hell-bent on ideological cleansing. The police state targets militants, radicals, and critics. The prison complex, outsourced to corporate profiteers as the capitalist concentration camps, is the solution to prevent the next Occupy. What you are witnessing is the convergence of technologies, surveillance, and militarized "crime" control. Connect the dots and it becomes clear that we are staring down the barrel of the most un-free system ever devised.
The power projection is a response to Occupy. The singular significance of Occupy has been lost in all the scribbled incoherence generated in the media. Its significance is this: In all prior rebellions, authorities were able to divide the movement by offering concessions to one group, separating them, neutralizing the "organizers" or "leaders" and causing the rebellion to collapse. In all other movements, everyone went back to their assigned seats, went back to dragging stones up the side of the pyramid.
This time, brute force simply bent the resistance into the shadows, seething and stewing, waiting for the next evolution. No one could be compromised. Welcome to the next evolution: Welcome to the ARMY OF THE 12 MONKEYS!!
We're A Very, Very Rich Country.
So according to our lords and masters,
the pampered Oxbridge parasites, the Cameron cabal, the flood damage
will get what ever money it takes and, no need to divert money from
overseas aid to the flood disaster, we are a very rich country. Well
that's good to hear, perhaps we will now see the reversing of all
those austerity measures that are creating different kinds of
disasters around the country. These are not natural disasters, but
man made disasters, the direct result of the Cameron cabal's
ideological policies. How about reinstating all those public sector
workers that have been paid off, because we couldn't afford them?
After all, we were told that the severe austerity and massive
redundancies were because we didn't have the money, but now Cameron
has let it be known that have, there is all the money we need, as we
are a very rich country.
We can't afford a welfare state.
It is the usual claptrap bullshit
we expect from the political class, a phrase to suit an occasion,
truth is irrelevant. I'm not saying we are not a very rich country,
on the contrary, I have always spouted that we are a very, very rich
country. However, the economic structure of the country is ideologically
driven to suit the corporate world, it could just as easily be driven
to suit the needs of the people. No matter how you look at it, it is a class thing, the
class with all the wealth, hold the levers of power, and they are not
about to adjust things to reduce their own wealth in favour of
bettering the conditions of you and I. They will continue their drive
to increase their own wealth and power. If we the ordinary people
want the economic structure of the country to be working for the
benefit of all, then we as a class will have to take those levers of
power into our own hands. Our are we going to wait for the compassion
of the corporate moguls and their political lackies?
Tuesday, 11 February 2014
Corporatised Totalitarianism.
What a wonderful Grammy award acceptance speech by the New Zealand singer song writer Lorde. It is not often that we hear such truths spoken in the midst of expensive suits, dickie-bow ties, thousand pound dresses, and champagne. Perhaps she can put her speech into song form, and try to blast it to No.1
This from Snoopman News:
Thank you soo much everyone for making this song explode because this world is mental. (Laughter). Planet Earth is run by psychopaths that hide behind slick marketing, ‘freedom’ propaganda and ‘economic growth’ rhetoric,[1] while they construct a global system of corporatized totalitarianism.
As American journalist Chris Hedges has identified, a corporate totalitarian core thrives inside a fictitious democratic shell.[2] This core yields an ‘inverted’ totalitarian state that few recognize because it does not look like the Orwellian world of Nineteen Eighty-four.[3]
This corporate totalitarian core is spreading outward from America. Planet Earth is being rapidly militarized by the world’s major and significant states, including their police forces.[4] Meanwhile, state surveillance is becoming universal[5] and torture is outsourced to gulags.[6]Read the full speech HERE:
Monday, 10 February 2014
Western Bankrolled Genicide.
At what point will the Western states give up on Israel, how far down the genocide road must it go before the Western states take action, and it is completely isolated? Are they prepared to see a history where there are no Palestinian people, where the Palestinian lands are part of a Greater Israel, all based on the mutterings of some ancient mythical being. This is a state that is built on the belief that they are the "chosen people" and therefore all others are inferior. Day and daily this unfounded arrogance spreads havoc and misery among the Palestinian people, grabbing their land, destroying their crops. demolishing their homes, terrorising the inhabitants. All the while, the West looks the other way and America bankrolls this genocide being carried out by a state of zealous religious fundamentalist thugs.
Sunday 9 February, this from Middle East monitor:
Israeli settlers routinely destroy
Palestinian olive groves, or directly attack Palestinian villagers
and farmers, like the stone-throwing attack pictured above, where
villagers at Assira al-Kibliya were attackec by masked settlers [file
photo]
Early this morning, settlers uprooted and destroyed over 400 olive saplings in the village of Sinjil, located north of Ramallah.
According to the mayor of Sinjil, Ayoub Sweed, a number of settlers raided the village, and carried out their attacks on agricultural land in which olives saplings were planted. He noted that this was the third attack in less than a month.
He also pointed out that the olive saplings that were uprooted were planted as a part of the village's reforestation project funded by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which aims to reclaim and cultivate the land. The number of saplings that were uprooted in less than a month is estimated at about 3,000 saplings.
Sunday, 9 February 2014
Dreams Are More Than A Walk To A Ballot Box.
Yet another country sees the anger of the people flare up. Where in Europe is the capitalist success story, poverty, unemployment, corruption are the hallmarks of the developed world's capitalism. Less marching quietly to the ballot box and more direct action is the growing pattern. A cross on a piece of paper can never placate your anger, nor satisfy your dreams.
“He who sows hunger reaps anger,” warned the red graffiti on a Sarajevo government building this week. The message hinted at the depth of poverty and disillusionment in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that has driven people to join demonstrations across the divided country, where the unemployment rate is about 40 percent.Read the full article HERE:
Secret Deals, Secret Courts, To Protect Profits!!!
Secret deals between governments and multi-national corporations, can't be good for the general public, or they wouldn't be secret.
This from the SumOfUs:If it is signed, future laws designed to protect consumers, our health, and our environment could be overturned in secret courts by corporations that claim the laws harm their profits---
It's
a corporate lobbyist's wildest dream -- a huge global trade deal that
would let corporations like Monsanto sue our governments if they
passed laws to protect the environment or keep life-saving medicine
affordable.
This month, tens of thousands of American SumOfUs members and friends
have called Congress to demand it rejects a bill to give President
Obama "fast track" authority to sign the TPP -- and support
is starting to fall away. But it's not
enough.
In the US, corporate lobbyists are pushing hard for Congress to
approve. Elsewhere, governments are facing no scrutiny as
they get ready to sign away our democratic rights to make
laws that protect the public interest. Unless we do more, we may lose
this fight.
That's why our community is stepping up. This week, we're
getting ready to launch a major effort to stop the TPP in its tracks
-- and with your support, we're not going to stop fighting until
we've won.
If
enough of us can chip in just $1, we can launch the first steps of
our campaign and start working together to stop the TPP and save our
democracy.
The corporations behind the TPP know the public won't like what's in
the deal. That's why the full contents are still secret -- only
high-level government negotiators and the 600 corporate lobbyists
have access.
But we know enough to know that the TPP has to be stopped -- and
enough to know how we can stop it with your help.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is called a trade deal, but it is
really a corporate wish-list aimed at attacking everything from
environmental protections to affordable medicines to internet
freedoms. Worst, it gives corporations impunity from
governments or citizens that want to reign in their power.
In fact, it is probably the most important international treaty
you’ve never heard of. The TPP is being negotiated between the
United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and other Pacific countries
-- making it nearly global in scope.
There's lots wrong with the TPP, but the unaccountable systems it
would set up to allow corporations to sue governments are one of the
most frightening. If it is signed, future laws designed to
protect consumers, our health, and our environment could be
overturned in secret courts by corporations that claim the
laws harm their profits -- and there is nothing we or our elected
governments could do to stop them.
If
you can, please chip in $1 today to take a stand for democracy and
against the TPP, and fund the fight to stop this corporate power
grab.
Paul and the team at SumOfUs.org
How Many Bad Apples In This Barrel?
Each time we hear of a cop doing something illegal, we are inform that it was just a case of a bad apple in the barrel. How many bad apples have you heard of in this particular barrel?
This from 21st. Century Wire:
This from 21st. Century Wire:
Published on Jan 31, 2014
Lawful Observer is assaulted by
9986 and then his colleage lies in order to carry out unlawful arrest
of Lawful observer whilst filming police assaults at protest against
Fracking on Barton Moss Road, Irlam, Salford on 14/1/14. After the
camera was turned off, 08076 David Kehoe breaks camera strap in order
to seize camera from lawful observer. Because of advanced storage
technology, the video data was stored by the device to be recovered
when the camera was eventually returned on 31st January 2014.
Uniformed hired thug for IGAS David Kehoe blatantly lies about what
is said, even though there is a camera pointed at him recording his
lies.
Transcript of court case 28/1/14:
Usher - "can you stand at the end"
Freeman - "I claim common law jurisdiction, I do not consent and I wave the
benefits"
Magistrate - "Can you repeat that"
Freeman - "I claim common law jurisdiction, I do not consent and I wave the
benefits"
Magistrate (to other two magistrates) - "I don't think we have had that before"
Clerk - "Are you Steven Spy?"
Freeman - "I am Steven of the family Spy"
Clerk - " Are you Steven Spy?"
Freeman - "I am Steven of the family Spy"
Clerk - "Where do you live?"
Freeman - "I live on the land"
Clerk - "Can you confirm your date of birth"
Freeman - "I believe that would be hearsay evidence, your honour"
Clerk - "If you honour is satisfied we have identified the defendant, we can
continue".
Prosecution - "The prosecution is not satisfied that there is sufficient
evidence to substantiate the charge, therefore we withdraw the case"
Clerk - " Do you understand that the prosecution is withdrawing its case"
Freeman - "No I do not understand, but I do comprehend"
Magistrate - "Whether you understand or comprehend, the prosecution is
withdrawing its case, so the case is dismissed and you are free to go"
Freeman - "Thank you, your honour".
Further developments are:
A police complaint was made online on 3rd February 2014 using GMP online form. This was ignored by GMP and a formal police complaint was attempted at Newton Heath police station today at 2pm. Log 940 5/2/14. The civilian worker ECO 66653 Elley claimed that getting an Inspector down was "not the way it is done". He said the procedure was for an Inspector from Swinton would call. An Inspector Windsor from Swinton police station phoned and filled in a complaint form. I have also emailed the complaints section at complaints@gmp.pnn.police.uk so that there is a further record of the complaint. GMP has a history of ignoring complaints. Make sure there is a record of your complaint. They have 21 days to deal with the complaint before formal litigation is started.
Further consideration should be given to David Kehoe's activities before this event:
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/4...
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Transcript of court case 28/1/14:
Usher - "can you stand at the end"
Freeman - "I claim common law jurisdiction, I do not consent and I wave the
benefits"
Magistrate - "Can you repeat that"
Freeman - "I claim common law jurisdiction, I do not consent and I wave the
benefits"
Magistrate (to other two magistrates) - "I don't think we have had that before"
Clerk - "Are you Steven Spy?"
Freeman - "I am Steven of the family Spy"
Clerk - " Are you Steven Spy?"
Freeman - "I am Steven of the family Spy"
Clerk - "Where do you live?"
Freeman - "I live on the land"
Clerk - "Can you confirm your date of birth"
Freeman - "I believe that would be hearsay evidence, your honour"
Clerk - "If you honour is satisfied we have identified the defendant, we can
continue".
Prosecution - "The prosecution is not satisfied that there is sufficient
evidence to substantiate the charge, therefore we withdraw the case"
Clerk - " Do you understand that the prosecution is withdrawing its case"
Freeman - "No I do not understand, but I do comprehend"
Magistrate - "Whether you understand or comprehend, the prosecution is
withdrawing its case, so the case is dismissed and you are free to go"
Freeman - "Thank you, your honour".
Further developments are:
A police complaint was made online on 3rd February 2014 using GMP online form. This was ignored by GMP and a formal police complaint was attempted at Newton Heath police station today at 2pm. Log 940 5/2/14. The civilian worker ECO 66653 Elley claimed that getting an Inspector down was "not the way it is done". He said the procedure was for an Inspector from Swinton would call. An Inspector Windsor from Swinton police station phoned and filled in a complaint form. I have also emailed the complaints section at complaints@gmp.pnn.police.uk so that there is a further record of the complaint. GMP has a history of ignoring complaints. Make sure there is a record of your complaint. They have 21 days to deal with the complaint before formal litigation is started.
Further consideration should be given to David Kehoe's activities before this event:
http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/4...
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Medical Records For Sale!
According to this government, there is
nothing that can't be sold for a profit. Up until now your medical
records were private, personal between you and your doctor, well now
that is all about to change. Your medical records are now just
another product from which profit can be made. It could influence
whether you can get insurance or not, your job application, whether
you can get a mortgage or not. All and sundry will be able to buy
your personal medical details for their own personal gain. Another
step down the road to total surveillance, your are watched, spied on
and now your personal medical records are up for scrutiny.
This from SumOfUs:
Starting this year, private companies will be able to
buy information on us from the NHS’s new universal patient database
-- including everything from mental health conditions, sexually
transmitted infections and diseases like cancer -- all linked to your
postcode, gender and ethnicity.
We’ve all been opted into the scheme by the
government without our knowledge. And the clock is ticking --
the government has said they will upload our data in a matter
of just a few weeks. If we’re going to stop this, we have
to act now.
It doesn’t really get more personal than what you discuss with your
doctor. They know the most personal things about us -- like whether
we’ve ever been depressed, had an embarrassing infection or
struggled with drug & alcohol problems.
The government claims that individuals won’t be able to be
identified. However, many experts have warned that under the
current plans, we could easily be singled out through simple
cross-referencing of other databases -- especially if you have a rare
or unusual condition. Imagine your employer finding
that you might have had an abortion when you were a teenager. Or your
insurance company finding out you are HIV positive. The
consequences for us as individuals could be huge.
We know that when we act together, we can bring about real change.
When we fought to get High Street names like River Island and
Edinburgh Woollen Mill to sign up to protect Bangladeshi factory
workers, we won! Now we need to step up to defend something
precious -- our right to privacy.
NHS
patient data to be made available to drug and insurance firms,
The Guardian, 19 January 2014.
Price list for access to medical data, Health & Social Care Information Centre, January 2014
Price list for access to medical data, Health & Social Care Information Centre, January 2014
How Long Are They Going To Get Away With It?
The so called “crisis” was in 2008
and here we are in 2014 and the ordinary people are still being
kicked in the teeth, under the guise of “balancing the books”.
The “crisis” was a wonderful opportunity for the
corporate/financial greed machine to put pressure on the political
class to create a sweatshop Europe. Of course the political class
willingly agreed, they are the managers of this ideology of
“austerity” and its resultant misery and deprivation.
The sad truth is that they seem to
be getting away with their callous disregard for human dignity. In
their eager endeavour to placate their corporate/financial masters
they have introduced a series of measures to syphon all wealth
upwards, to plunder public assets and privatise all social services.
In doing this they slash the living standards of all the ordinary
people.
We've had to make some tough decisions.
They have introduced slave
labour under the nice sounding name of “workfare”. This scheme
gives the corporate world an army of free labour to swell their
coffers. The big corporate names are queuing up to grab a share of
this free bonus to the balance sheet. At present there are more than
180,000 people in “government supported training and employment
programmes”. This is growing as the threat of sanctions force
people, who in most cases are already in poverty, to accept this
slave labour scheme, or face total deprivation.
Another inhumane scheme they
dreamed up to cut social spending, is the bedroom tax. If you, for
what ever circumstances, find you have a “spare room” you are
forced to move to a smaller house, and there aren't any, or lose a
portion of your council tax benefit. Recent statistics show that
there are well over 500,000 people facing the threat of homelessness
due to this inhumane, ideology driven, attack on the poorer section
of our communities.
Probably the most brutal and
callous of their schemes so far, is their attack on the disabled.
They always give these savage attacks nice sounding names, in this
case it is called the disability assessment process. This translates
as, cut disability allowance. The government has paid millions of pounds to the
firm ATOS, to carry out this attack on the wellbeing and dignity of
the disabled, and so far they have done this with an amazing
ineptitude and indifference to those being “assessed”.
The ATOS
assessment has seen more than 10,000 deaths that can be related to
this assessment process. That is 10,000 disabled people who have been
caught up in this ATOS assessment process, and dying. I think part of
Michael Meacher's statement in the House of Commons last year is
worth quoting,
"The fundamental issue is this: how can
pursuing with such insensitive rigour 1.6 million claimants on
incapacity benefit, at a rate of 11,000 assessments every week, be
justified when it has led, according to the Government’s own
figures, to 1,300 persons dying after being put into the work-related
activity group, 2,200 people dying before their assessment is
complete, and 7,100 people dying after being put into the support
group? Is it reasonable to pressurise seriously disabled persons into
work so ruthlessly when there are 2.5 million unemployed, and when on
average eight persons chase every vacancy, unless they are provided
with the active and extensive support they obviously need to get and
hold down work, which is certainly not the case currently?"
Six years on from the “crisis”
and these policies are set to continue indefinitely, they are
policies that suit the corporate world, privatising everything, cheap labour, zero hours
contracts, and eight people chasing every job, which helps to keep
down wages. So why should they change them? If we don't like them,
then we will have to be the ones to change things. The political
class are part and parcel of the corporate/financial world, they have
nothing to do with our world. We are mere dispensable units to be
used or discarded according to profit levels. We mine, make, grow,
and distribute everything on this planet, We don't need the parasites
on our back, we can create a much fairer world on our own, but they
do need us.
The Glasgow Looting Games 2014.
The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow are
now 40% over budget and at present the cost is £500 million. Of
course you and I know that every big project ends up well over budget,
as the rip-off merchants and the corporate greed machine milk the
system, pushing the costs ever higher and higher. The corporate bodies
walk away with the loot and we are left with the bill. Cheap land
grabbing, gentrification at the expense of the local people, and
fat-cats having a ball as they lap up the cream, that's what the games
are all about.
This from Glasgow Games Monitor 2014:
Read the full article HERE:What he doesn’t say is that private investment in large-scale Games Events has for some time been predicated on making profit from land and property development. Now that the easy profits of the property boom are over – only hanging on through billions of state subsidy, ‘help-to-buy’ policies, and the continuing privatisation of social housing – private capital is showing it doesn’t give a fuck about the Commonwealth Games and sport. No wonder that no city is willing to host the Games in 2022: they know that they will only be subsidising the private property market, defending failed ‘legacy’ objectives, and having to deal with the growing public complaints and resistance over land-grabbing, gentrification and displacement.
The Glasgow Games Monitor will be
speaking at the Unite Community Union Branch meting on Wednesday, 12
February, John Smith House, 145/165 West Regent Street, Glasgow G2
4RZ.
Subjects to be discussed will be the
necessity of political organisation related to the Games and Clyde
Gateway projects, and building for a meeting on the East End, and
citywide social housing crisis, planned for March.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Nice Flowers, Rotten Smell!!
Strike coming at Dutch flower giant
FloraHolland
Valentines Day means flower sales, but
at the moment there is little love between the auction giant
FloraHolland (over 20 million flowers and plants in daily sales!) and
the two unions representing the company's thousands of workers, CNV
Dienstenbond and FNV Bondgenoten, who will hold a 24-hour warning
strike beginning on the evening of February 7. SEND A MESSAGE TO FLORAHOLLAND!
Workers at the company have been
fighting in vain since last year for a new CBA and a decent social
plan for hundreds of workers who are losing their jobs and others who
will be transferred to new locations in a major restructuring
announced in October 2013.
Frustration came to a head at a meeting
between the unions and the FloraHolland Board on January 17, convened
to overcome the impasse on CBA negotiations. The company announced
that, contrary to what had been agreed, the purpose of the meeting
was only to discuss the social plan!
Negotiations on both contentious issues
have reached an impasse, leaving the unions no alternative but to
take strike action. They've asked for your support - CLICK HERE to
send a message to FloraHolland in support of the union's demands.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
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