The True Face Of Capitalism.

      The people of Greece are still experiencing the deepest and most rapid decline in social conditions of anywhere in Europe, with all its attendant miseries. The average salary in that unfortunate country has shrunk to a miserly £17,000 per annum. That is of course if you are working, and that is certainly no guarantee, with unemployment running at 25.9% and youth unemployment at 49.3%. With this economic disaster heaped on the people of Greece, under the dictate of the Troika, (EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers), unrest and crime grows rapidly. In parallel with this, state repression increases and so the prison population grows, and in Greece it grows at a staggering rate.

      The Greek prison system is by far, the worst in Europe, and could compare unfavourably with some Third World countries. Overcrowding is away beyond anything acceptable in any civilised country, and is not going to be resolved any time soon.

     With many prisons already at double or triple capacity, hundreds are stuck in police holding cells, many in pre-trial detention, which has an 18-month limit under Greek law. These detainees have no yard access and are kept locked up for months as their cases wind at a snail's pace through the overburdened justice system.
     The Council of Europe's latest annual penal statistics, published in May and covering 2011, show Greek prisons were at 151.7 percent capacity on September 1 that year, with 12,479 inmates crammed into 8,224 available places. The number of inmates has increased steadily. In January 2010, Greek prisons held 11,364 inmates, according to the Justice Ministry's website. On Nov. 1, they reached 13,147, according to Greek prison system figures obtained by the AP. That doesn't include those, like Aslanis, held in police stations.
       Recent Greek prison system documents from late 2013 list a higher capacity number of 9,886 places across the country, but the number is deceptive as it includes at least five prison wings in two prisons that remain shut due to budget cuts.-------

        Bad as the prisons are, the prison hospitals move into a category of their own, somewhere close to the seventh circle of hell in Dante's Inferno.

      — Inmates held in Greece's only prison hospital are refusing food and medication as part of a protest campaign against their severely overcrowded living conditions.

      The Korydallos prison hospital west of Athens is designed to hold 60 men but currently houses more than 200, rights groups and prison staff said Monday. Most are HIV positive and many others suffer from communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and scabies.

      Protesters posted statements on Facebook and Twitter saying at least 178 of the inmates have been refusing prison food for the past week, while some HIV positive inmates are refusing to take antiretroviral drugs to draw attention to their plight.-------

       It is in the face of this barbarity that we have seen a wave of hunger strikes in Greek prisons. On one recent occasion it was a hunger strike that stretched across the entire Greek prison system. Today their are still individuals on hunger strike, attempting to draw attention to the injustices that they suffer.
      This is the price that the people of Greece are paying as the Troika carries out its experiment to turn Europe into a Western sweatshop, to compete with its rival, the Eastern sweatshop bloc. Greece is capitalism with the gloves off, it is the true face of capitalism.

This from Contra Info:

     A doctor who examined the comrade at Koridallos prison on Thursday morning, November 13th – during the fourth day of hunger strike – reports that 21-year-old Nikos Romanos has lost 3.2 kg of body weight and feels intense weakness and fatigue even after very mild exertion, such as walking from the cell to the prison infirmary. His blood glucose level (measured by finger stick) was 64.
Between the 13th and the 14th of November, 75 prisoners in the Ε wing of Koridallos men’s prison abstained from meals in solidarity with their fellow inmate Romanos.

Read the full article HERE:

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Who Pays For The UK Recovery?

       Yea, the nights are fair drawn' in, it's getting' cauldur, for some that is a fearful dread. In this country of millionaire economic recovery, this winter, approximately 3.5 million people will not be able to to heat their homes adequately. Age UK states that an older person dies every 7 minutes from the cold weather, then there is the increase in cold related illness, if it doesn't kill them, can leave their health impaired for the remainder of their lives. The winter figure for England and Wales is 206 cold related deaths a day. Every winter, across the country, elderly people die from living in homes they can't afford to heat, yet the big energy companies see their profits go through the roof. The UK energy watchdog states that this year suppliers of our energy will see a record profit £106 from every customer, up from £53 the previous year. In 2009 the big energy companies averaged £9 profit from each customer, since then they have enjoyed a staggering 1,100% increase in their profit per customer. That is a crime against the elderly of this country and people should be held to account for those deaths. 

       Another symptom of this millionaire economic recovery is the increase in evictions, and the threat of eviction, even although you have no rent arrears. Citizens Advice Bureaux states that it has seen a 38% increase in the number of people consulting them over the fears of eviction, even although they have no rent arrears. Eviction by private landlords is the most common cause of homelessness encountered by their offices. The housing shortage, and increase price of houses see landlords increasing rents to unaffordable levels. Some tenants have been faced with eviction after asking for repairs, the landlord making the excuse he wants to sell the house. Others have been faced with eviction after informing the landlord that because of changed circumstances they have moved on to housing benefit, even although they have no rent arrears. Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “Tenants are being treated as cash cows as a chronic housing shortage pushes up prices and forces renters out of their homes. Competition for properties means that tenants are easy to replace, increasing insecurity for people trying to create a home in the private rented sector. “We see people who will be forced to move away from work, school or family and friends, which can ramp up commuting and childcare costs or disrupt children’s education.”

     These are the conditions of the ordinary people in this rich millionaire controlled country, these are the building blocks of the millionaire economic recovery. As the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, it's called capitalism.

 

 

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European Democracy At Work.

      The Greek police probably rank as the most brutal police force in Europe, a very high percentage are members of Golden Dawn, the Greek right wing fascist group. Immigrants come in for some very brutal treatment from both Golden Dawn and the police, and thousands of immigrants end up in concentration camps dotted about the country. Of course it is not just immigrants that feel the harsh hand of the police, protesters old and young take a very high risk of injury if they take their protests to the streets. This is democratic Europe at work, repression by riot police tooled up like military units.

    Today students in Greece were heading to their university only to find it occupied by riot police, and were met with violent confrontation. The students gather in thousands in the centre of Athens, where they were again met by a massive riot police attack.
     Greece has been the financial Mafia's first stage of the experiment in creating a sweatshop Europe, and obviously the people will not take to this without resistance, and that's where the state's police brutality and repression come in. If they can beat the people of Greece into subservience, then the rest of us can look forward to the sweatshop Europe experiment spreading more rapidly to the rest of us.

This from Roar Mag:

     Schools in Greece have been occupied for a week. After today’s student protest, riot police blocked access to the university and attacked the students.

      It’s been some time since we last heard from the Greek movement. But, thanks to the Greek government and its riot police, today became a day of large student demonstrations, clashes with the cops, injuries and rising tension. First, let’s see what happened. Early in the morning, the Athens Law School students arrived at their university in order to carry out their assembly decision, which included a symbolic occupation of their university until the 17th of November — commemoration day of the 1973 student revolt against the military dictatorship.

       The problem was that the school was already occupied by the riot police. The Athenian Universities’ rectors had decided to apply a peculiar “lock out” of------

Read the full article HERE:

 

  

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Direct Action Gets Results.

      Our struggle take years, and direct action is a cornerstone of that struggle. It is inspirational to see this determined and positive direct action by ordinary people against the powerful multi-national oil corporations.

Once pristine forest lands. Where do the moose graze now?

Published on Nov 5, 2014

      Over the past four years, the Unist'ot'en clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation have literally built a strategy to keep three proposed oil and gas pipelines from crossing their land. Concerned about the environmental damage a leak could cause on land they've never given up, they've constructed a protection camp to block pipeline companies. As opposition to the development of Alberta's tar sands and to fracking projects grows across Canada, with First Nations communities on the front lines, the Unist'ot'en camp is an example of resistance that everyone is watching.

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Another Act Of Inhumanity By Israel.

       Some stories you hear or read shock you, others its surprise. This particular story filled my stomach with churning rage, but no surprise. Somehow it is what I would expect of that fascist apartheid state, the anger is because they get away with it time and time again, while the international community looks the other way.  This brutal state acts out its policy of land grabbing and genocide with impunity, so there is no surprise when they act against anybody who might try to help that neighbour, just anger. I am of course talking about the brutal state of Israel. A state that international justice seems incapable of criticising. It is up to the ordinary people of the world to do their damnedest to bring the state of Israel to its knees, We must boycott all Israeli goods, and publicise their every brutal and unjust action, of which there are many. So when purchasing goods, check the bar code number, and if it starts with  729, dump it, it was made in Israel. There are other codes for Israel, check them out HERE.

     This is the story that didn't surprise me, but filled we with anger and disgust.

This from The Local:

    Norway's doctor of peace for Gaza, Mads Gilbert, has been hit by a lifetime ban from entering the region by the Israeli government on Thursday.

     Israeli authorities cited security reasons as to why they have shut doctor Gilbert out from the Gaza Strip.

      The Norwegian 67-year-old has travelled to and from Gaza to treat Palestinians. This summer, the chief physician who lives and works in North Norway, was back working at Shifa hospital, Gaza, where he treated over 50 days many of the 11,000 injured. The doctor was attempting to return to the region in October to help in the hospital and was stopped by Israeli officials from entering. Gilbert says: “When we came back to the Erez border station, the Israeli soldiers told me that I could not go in to Gaza.”

    Now the Israeli government is stating it is for security reasons that Gilbert is banned, according to an email from the Norwegian embassy in Tel Aviv. The embassy took up the case on Gilbert's behalf after he was refused entry last month.

   Norway's Secretary of State, Bård Glad Pedersen, said to VG: “From the Norwegian perspective, we have raised Gilbert's exclusion from Gaza and asked Israel to change their decision. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is still difficult and there is a need for all health workers.”

     Gilbert himself believes the decision is connected to his critical comments against the state of Israel.

       The outspoken peace activist wrote a letter to the global media in July this year, evoking the extreme conditions at the Gaza hospital he worked in.

Who is doctor Mads Gilbert?

• Born in Oslo, 1947.
  
• Head physician specialising in anesthesiology at University Hospital of North Norway.
  
• Over 30 years working in international conflict areas, especially Gaza.
  
• Awards include Fritt Ords Honorary Prize (2009).
  
• Appointed Commander to the Order of St Olaf (2013).
  
• Received PhD at University of Iowa.

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Police Brutality, Solidarity Is Our Weapon.

 Israeli police pepper spray an arrested injured man.

       Police brutality is everywhere, they are the first line of defence that the state uses to repress attempts to change the system. That is if we ignore the education system, where teachers are the soft police, the real first line of their defence, when that fails, the hard police come in to play. From America, where an Afro-American is killed every 28 hours by a white policeman, to regular incidents across Europe where heavy handed police tactics result in the death of an individual, then there is South Africa, where miners were gunned down en-mass, and Mexico where, recently, 43 students and teachers were abducted and murdered. In this country our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, always report such events here as an anomaly an unusual event. However, in this country, close to 900 people have died during or following contact with the police since 2004, yet as far as I am aware, not one single police officer has been convicted since 1969.

       Often these deaths are followed by protests, as in Ferguson, in America, and the ongoing protests in Mexico over the disappearance of the 43, and the present protests across France after the death of Remi Raisse from a police stun grenade. However solidarity across borders would have greater effect, the problem is universal, the response should be universal, it is the same system that is killing our people.

 Turkish police rush forward for an opportunity to boot a man on the ground.

This from Contra Info:

       On November 11th, 2014, anarchists symbolically occupied the offices of the AFP (Agence France-Presse) in the affluent neighbourhood of Kolonaki, central Athens, to protest the police murder of Rémi Raisse in the ZAD of Testet, France. Comrades handed out leaflets in Greek and French, reading: “From France to Greece, let us transform the foci of resistance into a signal of rebellion towards the oppressed of the whole earth. Solidarity is our weapon.”

Age is no protection from police brutality.

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Glasgow Games Monitor.

A wee message from The Glasgow Game Monitor 2014:

Hi all,

      We've updated the Housing Monster event page on the site. It now has youtube clips of all the films, a list of non-academic (accessible) reading materials, and some photos of the event. Please circulate to anyone who might be interested in viewing the films or accessing the reading material. http://gamesmonitor2014.org/fighting-the-housing-monster-film-and-discussion-event-sat-nov-1st-kpc-11am-4pm/

     We've added people who gave their names at the end of the event to the Games Monitor 2014 list. The traffic is very light at the moment but if you don't want to be on the list, our apologies, just unsubscribe at the bottom of the page. Also this is an announcements list, so if anyone wants to contact the group please contact us personally or use the contact address: gamesmonitor2014@googlemail.com Thanks to everyone who came, we all enjoyed the event! We'll let you know if anything else is planned. Cheers, Glasgow Games Monitor 2014

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Aftermath.

         Of all the war poets, my favourite is Siegfried Sassoon, Born, 8 September, 1886, died 1 September, 1967.

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A War Painted In Pastel Shades Of Lies.

 

       The babbling brook of bullshit, mainstream media, backs the establishment in painting WW1 in glorious pastel shades of lies, here is an extract from an excellent article stating some of the truths of WW1 From Stop The War:

     Dominic Alexander debunks ten myths being used by politicians and historians to rebrand World War I in the centenary of its outbreak.

---

1. The war was fought in defence of democracy
         This is contradicted by the basic facts. Germany had universal manhood suffrage while in Britain, including Ireland, some 40% of men still did not qualify for the vote. In Germany also, there were attempts to justify the war on the grounds that it was being fought to defend civilised values against a repressive, militaristic state, in the form of Russian autocracy.
2. Britain went to war due to a treaty obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium
        There was no clear and accepted obligation on Britain to do this, and, in fact, before the Belgian issue appeared, the war party in the cabinet was already pushing for British intervention on the entirely different ground that there were naval obligations to France. These obligations had been developed in secret arrangements between the military of both countries, and were never subject to any kind of democratic accountability. The Germans even offered guarantees over Belgian integrity, which the British government refused to consider at all.
3. German aggression was the driving force for war
        However aggressive the German leadership may have been in 1914, the British establishment was at least as determined to

Read the full article HERE:

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Lest WE Forget.

     November 11, Remembrance Day, lest we forget, I can say no more than I have already said, so will just repeat something I posted back in July 2014.

       That babbling brook of bullshit,the mainstream media, always gets it wrong. At the moment it is pouring out lots of hate rhetoric against Russia, but precious little against the murderous onslaught by the Israeli state against the people of Gaza.

     Also on the WW1 "celebrations", they throw their weight behind the establishment view, of it being a heroic and glorious battle for democracy, which we, being the democratic half of the contest, won of course. I wonder what the German people think about that?

      What we should never forget is that the blood letting that goes by the name of WW1 wasn't won, it was an armistice. It was stopped because the imperialist psychopaths were faced with mutinies, rebellion and spontaneous out breaks of truces between the ordinary soldiers on the front line, some of these young men paid with their lives in front of a firing squad for the act of humanity. At home, the imperialists were faced with another battle, strikes and civil unrest across the continent of Europe. Another factor that brought the war warmongering nut-cases to call a halt, to the greed driven slaughter, was the fact that the death toll continued to soar and the maimed continued to be carried home, they were simply running out of canon-fodder. WW1 was an unimaginable spilling of mainly young blood, to further the aims of greed driven imperialist ambitions, in other words, greed and nothing more.

   Up to the start of that unnecessary blood letting of WW1, Europe had no democracy to defend. After the bloody event, Europe had no democracy anywhere. 100 years after that imperialist blood letting, we the ordinary people are still fighting for democracy in Europe.

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War Is A Racket.

     Nice to hear the truth from a military mouth, Major General Smedley Butler, served as high ranking officer in the Marine Corps and then wrote a book called "War is a Racket". Perhaps a bit simplistic, but his hearts in the right place.

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A Class War Welcome For Iain Duncan Smith.

A call from The void:   

       

      Iain Duncan Smith is hosting a Jobs Fair at Chingford Assembly Hall, Station Road, Chingford, E4 this Friday November 14th.  Class War will be welcoming him from 10am and are planing to make a day of it.  Speakers including the future Chingford MP Marina Pepper, – the local Class War candidate – along with John McArdle from the Black Triangle campaign are expected to speak at noon.  Expect vengeance.  Please spread the word and help make this big.

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Can We Join The Dots?

 

      We all know capitalism produces wars between countries, and has done so more or less, since the system crawled out of the slime to infest the globe. What most people don't seem to recognise, is, it also causes wars within countries, wars between the ruling elite and the ordinary people. As capitalism is global it is difficult to find a country where the people are not in open conflict with the powers that be. The Ferguson riots in America, though classed as racial, racism is an aspect of capitalism. Mexico, the recent disappearance of 43 students and teachers and the ongoing violent protests, is the capitalist state attempting to crush any resistance to its exploitation. Recently we have seen over 100 protests across Ireland against watercharges, as capitalism tries to squeeze more profit from the ordinary people. In Brussels, there have been violent clashes as more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets against that common aspect of capitalism, “austerity”. In London we have just had more than a thousand masked anti-capitalist protesters take to the city centre.

      It would be extremely difficult to find a country where the people are not at odds with the system, across the globe unrest, anger and disgust are the feelings of the people, all have a growing hatred of a system that ties them to poverty, while they produce an abundance of wealth, that invariably ends up in the hands of a small greed driven bunch of parasites. With so much anger and unrest, it seems strange that the system is still managing to bleed us dry, perhaps we just have to join the dots between these world wide protests and we will see the system collapse.

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War.

A poem by my then, 11 year old grandson, Ros:

 WAR.

War is a bullet in someone's chest.
War smells like gunpowder.
War tastes like sour lemon.
War sounds like people screaming and crying.
War feels like a cold hand.
War looks like a broken picture of a family on the floor.
War lives in a box bullets.

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Remembrance Day, What Are We Forgetting?

      We are approaching "Remembrance Day", when we will be treated to  a cacophony hypocritical speeches by the solemn faces of those who sent us to war, expensive suits with the obligatory red poppy, who see war as a necessary way of protecting their wealth and power. We will hear the false voices of those who believe it is acceptable to shed the blood of others, while they reap the plunder and the spoils.

 

       What will be missing from this militaristic spectacle will be the voices of those who speak the truth of what war is, and why we still have wars. No one will be allowed to point the finger, no one will be held to account for the pointless slaughter of countless millions of young men and women, 99% of which come from that group that never see the "spoils of war", the ordinary people. To the victor and the vanquished, the result is the same, the ordinary people of both sides, pay with blood, and the ruling class lift the gold and the glory. They have always spoken of the war to end all wars, well, that has still to be fought, and it is called The Class War.

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