A Worker Is A Worker, Is A Worker, Is A Worker!!

       You have got to hand it to our corporate lords and masters, they never give up on their policy of trying to eliminate all workers organisations. The last thing they want is for the workers to be organised to defend their wages and conditions. Of course they get the backing of the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, who crap on about the evil unions destroying everybody’s day by calling a strike, and the government responding with legislation to “limit the power of the unions”. One other the trend, is to get the workers “self-employed”, you do our work, but you are not one of our workers, you’re on you own buddy. Uber is probably the best known, but there are others. At the moment the people who “work” for Deliveroo are classified by the company as individual contractors, so the company refuses to recognise the union. With ”self-employed”, zero hours contracts, and part time work, the workforce is fragmented, apart from losing out on all the normally accept conditions, that were won by unionised struggle, and go with a “job”, such as holiday pay etc., it makes it more difficult to be organised to protect you pay and conditions, let alone fight for improvements. The bosses are well organised, they know the need to be organised, as they see the true position, bosses and workers are on opposite sides. The workers have to take a leaf out of that book, and realise the need for all “workers”, no matter the label that the bosses put on them, to be organised. The bosses know and accept that it is a struggle of opposites and they will pull out every dirty trick to get the advantage for their side of the battle. We have to do the same, come together, organise to support each other, and see the boss class as the enemy of our desire for that better life for all.

This appeal from Labour Start:

        Since November, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) has been attempting to gain recognition (a collective bargaining agreement) from Deliveroo in London.
        If the IWGB is successful, it will be the first collective bargaining agreement in the UK's so called "gig economy" and will force Deliveroo to recognise their riders as workers.
        This will give them the right to the minimum wage, paid holidays, legal protection against discrimination and more.
        Deliveroo has rejected the initial request, but the union remains determined to succeed and a tribunal case is currently pending. But it shouldn't take a tribunal case to compel Deliveroo to do the right thing. They should recognise their drivers as "workers" and should recognise the union for the purposes of collective bargaining now.

Please click here to send a message to Deliveroo telling them to recognise the union now.

       And please share this message with your friends, family and fellow trade union members.

Thank you!



Eric Lee

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

Have A Paracetamol.

         Well here we are, once again in the midst of the period when the illusion goes even crazier. Having struggled all year with such problems as heating your home, feeding your kids, and due to the cuts in social services, you are running ragged caring for your ageing parents. Now all your anxieties, fits of depression, loneliness and loss of confidence, can be sorted. It is just a matter of the right perfume, shower gel, super razor, or getting rid of your dandruff. How foolish of you, you didn’t realise that happiness comes in coloured boxes, the more boxes, the more happiness. Your job prospects are enhanced, if you would just pick the right four-wheel drive car. Your self esteem will grow, your sex life will be more exciting, and your standing among your peers will know no bounds, if you just run out and buy that new outfit. Yes, it is the season of the grand illusion, our society has found the secret of happiness and fulfilment it is to be found in coloured boxes. 

        Gone are the thoughts of those 58,000 homeless in England, up by a third since 2010/11, a large proportion of them working, the 3,400 families with children living in B&B’s, steadily increasing since 2011, and those 3,600 people sleeping rough in England, (a low estimate) up 30% since 2014. All lost in a mist of tinsel and coloured boxes, and illusions woven by that babbling brook of bullshit. I guess their problem was that they didn’t buy enough coloured boxes to enhance their lives. I have no doubt there will be a splurge of consumerism in search of happiness, and come January, the old anxieties, depressions, insecurities, loss of confidence and loneliness will return. They’ll be fuelled by the usual realities of this capitalist system, zero hours contracts, low wages, increasing prices, benefit sanctions, job insecurity, and wars and turmoil across the planet. The answer to our problems doesn’t lie in coloured boxes, these are the paracetamol of the system, an attempt to temporally relieve the pain. The answer lies in changing the system, away from the a greed driven capitalist system, to one of mutual aid communities. 

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God Gave It To Me.

 

 The shrinking country of Palestine.

        The Israeli Palestine situation, is one where the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, has drowned the truth in a sea of biased propaganda unprecedented in modern history.  The picture of a country with one of the most powerful armies in the world being continually under threat from a fragmented dissipated country whose people are enslaved, is surely the pinnacle of illusion creating. A lie so gigantic, propagated for years by false and distorted "information". The web of lies, selective reporting and exaggeration is so vast and widespread, that those who try to disentangle it in an attempt to produce the truth, are deemed insane. 

        This short little video goes some way to explain, in very simple terms, the the Israeli position and the media response.

 Not Aleppo, Gaza.

Not Aleppo, Gaza.

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The Hand Of Hypocrisy.

 

        I wrote this post, The Hand of Hypocrisy, away back in March, 2011, since then we now know that our policy in Libya has borne the fruit of chaos, the disintegration of civil society, continuous bloodshed, misery and death, but it has now disappeared off the scene from our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. We set off to do the same in Syria, but those nasty Russians jumped in to upset the equation. So now the Syrian people will just have to tolerate a longer, darker hell, and greater bloodshed. From 2011  to 2016, can anybody tell me what has changed in this imperialist world?

 The Hand of Hypocrisy:

         As Western Cruise missiles blast holes in Libya's infrastructure, killing Libyans to save Libyans, and possibly laying the ground work for a civil war, nobody is saying where they go from here. How long will the no-fly zone last, don't know. What do we do if the Libyans killing Libyans drags on in a long stalemate, do we send in the Western cavalry to take sides and give one side a wee push, more or less guaranteeing a prolonged civil war and possible occupation. Just to keep the peace mind you. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the moral policemen are up to the necks in shit. The idea that this will be a nice clean surgical operation with all of Libya being ever thankful to the West is an illusion. We have been “policing” Iraq since 1991 and Afghanistan since 2001. When does our involvement in Libya end and at what cost? Not counting the Libyan deaths and injured, there is already one American plane down with one pilot missing, and we have just started.

        Setting aside the human horror of what is happening in Libya and casting a glance at the financial side, there must be questions. Each time a Tornado jet runs a sortie it takes approximately £30,000 of fuel. How many have we run so far? If a Tornado is brought down there is the £50 million cost of a replacement. Each cruise missile that is fired cost £500,000. There have been more than 110 cruise missiles fired so far. A quick calculation comes up with £55 million already up in smoke and misery from cruise missiles alone, with the arms industry rubbing its hands at the thought of all those being replaced. I don't know what proportion of those cruise missiles were fire by the UK but I reckon that we would fire our fair share. Then of course we have our submarines out there in the Med. and I have no doubt our boys wanted a shot at firing their gear off, I wonder what it cost to send a sub to the Med. and then fire off a few £500,000 missiles? While this little pygmy war is being played out in Libya, let's not forget our long running and on going £4 billion a year affair in Afghanistan.
        I know you can't put a price on human life but at a time when we in the UK are being faced with draconian cuts to every fibre of the social structure of our society, wage cuts and mass unemployment, is this the right policy. Can we in the UK really afford to strut around the world bombing democracy into other countries? When we look at the figures of death and misery resulting from our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan can Libya be justified?
      Meanwhile in nearby Yemen and Bahrain protesters are being brutally crushed but no call for a no-fly zone. Well Bahrain is really a US naval base, which is very handy to have so near all that oil, and Bahrain is also on best buddy terms with that other autocratic despot regime, Saudi Arabia. So we don't want to upset that little power structure do we? Then of course no call for a no-fly zone over Israel while it carried out its policy of genocide in Gaza 2008/09
      It's all hypocrisy and is really about oil, resources and power, the Western powers have proved often enough that when it comes to the people of the Middle East and Africa, they don't give a shit.

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The Liars And Cheats Competition.

 

          The Western electoral system of "representative democracy" is sold as a system where the people are in control and decide who should run the country, However it is a system that the rich and powerful bunch of parasites, love and endorse, why? Simple because it creates that illusion of people controlling their destiny, and in no way changes who is actually in control. Elections are merely a platform for the various factions within the power mongers club, on what little variations they wish to make in their carving up the wealth of the country. A slight shift in power from one bunch of over privileged parasites to another, without the need for blood. What is more, the wealth they are slicing and dicing to their own particular advantage, is a wealth that is totally created by the individuals that vote and support the illusion, and have no real say on how that wealth should be divided. Elections are nothing more than a liars and cheats competition, the group that can convincingly spout the greatest lie, is usually the group that gets the bosses seat, until the next election charade. 

         An extract from an interesting article on the American election from Anarkismo.net:

       In demonstrations across the United States, protesters have raised signs saying, “Not My President!” Obviously they are not denying that state machinery has given Donald J. Trump the position of head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, ruler of the mightiest and wealthiest state in the world. What they are denying is Trump’s legitimacy for the position, his moral right to claim the presidency.
     Under the capitalist system, electoral democracy serves several purposes. One is that it permits factions of the ruling capitalist elite to struggle over their different programs (based on differing interests) and to make final decisions—without civil wars or establishing a dictatorship (both of which can be costly).
      Another major purpose of capitalist democracy is that it fools the people into thinking that they run the country. It lets them think that they are free people, not subjects of a very rich minority. It distracts them from the fact that the day after an election, most adults go to work (those who have jobs) and take orders from unelected bosses. This goal requires that they see the government as legitimately representing the voters.
      That became an issue even before the end of the campaign. Expecting to lose, Trump insisted that the election was “rigged.” He refused to say whether he would accept the results if he lost. Politicians and pundits, Democrats and Republicans, were aghast! They cried that it was contrary to the whole system to not accept the election results. It was essential to peacefully hand over power. They reminded us how George W. Bush had lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but that the Supreme Court majority had given the election to Bush—and that Gore, as a loyal supporter of the system, had not fought it. Even earlier, Richard Nixon believed that he had lost to John F. Kennedy only because (Nixon told close friends) the Daley machine in Chicago had fraudulently over counted votes for Kennedy. But Nixon did not make a fuss. That was supposedly the American way!

The Rigging of the 2016 U.S. Election

       The most obvious aspect of the unfairness of the 2016 election results is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. She won almost 3 million more votes than Trump. Due to the distribution of the votes, however, she lost in the archaic Electoral College. In the 18th century, this was originally created to be a buffer between the voters and the election of the president, to be a compromise between large and small states, and to strengthen the power of the slave-holders. The distorting influence of the Electoral College is increased by the “winner take all” rules of almost every state, so that Democrats in Texas and Republicans in New York might as well stay home. No other capitalist democracy has such an indirect system; in all others, the “popular vote” is just the “vote.” Despite its obvious injustices, the establishment has never made an effort to alter or abolish the Electoral College.

Continue reading HERE:

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America's Full Spectrum Domination.

          I have no doubt what so ever, that Trump will continue America's imperialist pedigree, the question is, just how brutally will he pursue that policy of American aggrandisement, just how savagely will he use its horrendous military power.        

       It didn't take America long to go from a colony to a coloniser. This fresh new nation born around 1783, in just over 100 years went from a British colony to a colonial power. Its first conquest was the brutal conquest of the Philippines in 1898-1902, the first time American troops fought on foreign soil. That seems to have turned its lords and masters in to colonial addicts, and set the pattern for this "fledgling" nation. From then until the present day, America has invade, occupied, propped up vile dictators, overthrown elected regimes to set up puppet regimes, all to the greater glory of America's wealthy elite. It would be difficult to find a country in Europe, Far East, Middle East, South America, that doesn't have a US military presence on its soil. American military personnel are based in more countries than any other nation on the planet. America is truly the world's  largest imperial power, ever. Anybody who sees America other than a powerful imperialist nation, is not looking at the truth history tells us.

        The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide.
       In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing’s 2002 Map 1 entitled “U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of ‘Permanent War’”, confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries.
       The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries.
        In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide.
        These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).

       No country in modern times has ever invaded more countries than America, its list of military interventions and occupations outstrips all others. Though never invaded, it has never been at peace, its invasions and intrusions into other countries are an ongoing litany of death, destruction and misery, a modern Dante's Inferno, for other nations and their people.

       The Global Policy Forum list more than 200 American military and clandestine operation in foreign countries from its birth up to 2004, since 2004, we are all well aware of America's military interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere. 

        This is the lie that the West, lead by America, is a force for peace and democracy, it is in fact, just another phase of brutal imperialism. The only thing new about this phase, is its world wide domination, and its unimaginable military destructive power. Until we all take up the struggle to get rid of the nation states, and take control of our own lives, we will have to live the lie, and live in the fear of Armageddon. 

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The Lie We Live.

        I posted this video near the beginning of the year, It seems even more relevant now that it was then. So I thought it might be a good idea to do it again, near the end of the year. Who knows, perhaps we will eventually realise that the Earth has no escape capsule, and do our utmost to sort out the mess we have created.

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When The People Strike Back.

        Well as 2016 draws to a close, I think that one thing we can say about the year, is that it wasn't a quiet year on the streets across the world. Europe, South America, Africa, they all saw people in protest against the established system. What will 2017 bring? It certainly hasn't got any better for the ordinary people of this world, so one should expect the protests to increase in numbers, duration and grow in determination and in anger.

       From the "Fishball Revolution" in Hong Kong to the massive labour reform protests in France, 2016 was a riotous year. The counties included in this edition are Greece, France, Belgium, Italy, Chile, Turkey, Bahrain and South Africa. Music: Funky Shit by The Prodigy 

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Interesting Times Ahead.

         I have never said much about Trump, what can you say, except that he is the manifestation of the inherent insanity within in the system. We can be sure that his rule on the throne of the American Empire will not be a quiet one.

     This summing up of his coming reign, from 325, by American, William T. Hathaway, gives us some idea of the "interesting" times ahead, and how we got here.

      “May you live in interesting times” was a curse the ancient Chinese hurled at their adversaries, wishing them strife, oppression, and struggle. It applies to us now because for all the uncertainties a Trump presidency holds, it will certainly be an interesting time, filled with opportunities for resistance and perhaps revolution.
Big T’s pedal-to-the-metal exploitation of humanity and the planet will accelerate the vicious policies of his two predecessors, poisoning the environment, forcing our financial will around the world, killing thousands of people in imperialist wars, manipulating other nations, modernizing our nuclear weapons, and jailing dissenters at home. Fortress America will continue to expand globally as prison, sweatshop, and fire base.
       After all our years trying to change this country, how could we end up with this?
     To answer this question and avoid falling into catatonic despondency or self-destructive rage, we need an historical perspective. What we are experiencing now is the long war the ruling elite is fighting to maintain its grip on the world. The current phase began with the collapse of Keynesian capitalism, which flourished from the 1950s into the ’70s, when the primary consumer market was in the capitalist headquarter countries of North America and Western Europe. Corporations were able to stimulate domestic consumption and quell worker discontent there by acceding to labor’s demands for better wages and conditions. That led to a 30-year bubble of improvement for unionized workers, predominantly male and white, that began to collapse in the ’80s as capitalism gradually became globalized.
        Then to maintain dominance Western corporations had to reduce labor costs in order to compete against emerging competition in low-wage countries such as China, India, and Brazil. Also international consumer markets became more important than the home market, but reaching them required low prices. So capitalist leaders reversed hard-won reforms, forcing paychecks and working conditions in the West down. And they tried to keep control of crucial Mideast oil resources by tightening their neo-imperialist hold on that region: overthrowing governments, installing dictators, undermining economies.
     This aggression generated armed resistance: jihadist attacks against the West. Our response has been the current holy war against terror. All of this horrible suffering is just one campaign in capitalism’s long war for hegemony. Any dominator system — including capitalism, patriarchy, and religious fundamentalism — generates violence.

Continue reading HERE:

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The State, The Strangulation Of Freedom.

         I often rant about the state, and how it doesn't serve the people, but serves a bunch of over privileged parasites. I spout about how it is at the root of wars, repression, genocide and strangles individual freedom. I go on about its desire for control and standardisation, its lack of humanity, and by its festering marriage with corporate capitalism, how it turns each human into an economic unit, which becomes superfluous if non-productive. No matter how I try, I can't put it as fluently and as eloquently as  anarchist/poet/writer, Jesús Sepúlveda does in his book, The Garden of Peculiarities.  

       This is a short extract, from that book, on the state:

       The State exists because it territorializes itself. It builds itself through colonizing territorial expansion. This expansion comes about through the forced deterritorialization of the original inhabitants from the lands that the state has appropriated. This appropriation implies the mobilization of military force that the state can use to expand or maintain its territory. This has meant wars and genocide. But the state also has its experts to write history; they turn the facts around so as to justify their atrocities and obligate following generations to repeat the meaningless official litanies written by the experts.

       Education, then, is nothing more than the institutionalization of disciplines of training and domestication, a training ground where children and adolescents are taught to perpetuate the dominant system. There they learn to give way to the dominant order and they begin the process of reification. On these parade grounds or schools of social indoctrination, the ideology that legitimates the system is reproduced. New members of society internalize a false consciousness, which inflates in them like a lung until everyone repeats with more or less success the same discourse. Its idea is that everyone says, dreams, and thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds. And if it has its faults, it doesn’t matter because they can be fixed. Thinking anything different is to be part of the anarchistic ranks, to go crazy or to call to insurrection. According to Adorno, standardization obliges the subject to choose between mercantilization or schizophrenia. There is no exit from this binary mold. In this society, preferring the garden to cement is seen with distrust. And depending on the political wind of the moment, this preference can cost one’s life. When the system breaks and sheep escape from the flock, prisons grow with criminal efficiency, as well as coups d’etat, raids, tear gas, repressive measures, war, etc. While all of this is occurring, the state rein forces its propaganda through radio, television and newspapers. And so the state materializes itself in the minds of individuals.

      Nation states assemble their repressive apparati—police and military—to protect the transnationals and expand a lifestyle of standardization based on the reduction of humans into economic units of production and consumption. With this, a new kind of territorialization and labor slavery is produced. The technology and the goods that the global minority, dominant class uses are manufactured in sweatshops that operate with the logic of exploitation. Schools and factories are centers of control imposed by the state. In order to abolish the state, it is necessary to abolish factories and schools. The authoritarianism that the civilized order reproduces in these institutions is responsible for ethnic cleansing, political genocide, and social exploitation. In order to construct a work without hierarchies, jails, propaganda, or coups, it is necessary to sweep, away the state. And it depends on us to wipe it off the face of the earth.

Continue reading HERE:

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Rebel Rebel, Break The Rule.

        In this society we have choices, well at least two, subservience or subversion, which road will you choose and where will it lead you? In subservience you abandon your inner self, you bow your head to the will of others. you are a neat unit in a controlled society, your role is handed to you. In subversion you reach into that inner self, you seek the real you, you choose the shape and pattern of your life, you seek to realise your potential, you live your life.

This from The Bureau of Public Secrets:

      The dance of revolution is a continuous project, floating free, perpetually changing, always focused. The music it moves to is pure energy, weaving three interdependent melodies: participation, founded on the passion of play; communication, founded on the passion of love; and realization, founded on the passion to create. Refusing the value of appearances, the dance makes itself invisible to those who see only appearances; the spectacle of the commodity cannot defend itself. The dance can never be a closed system, it never mystifies itself; rather, it realizes itself in its own supersession, in the sublime movement of subversion, where a pirouette returns to itself not as itself, not as it was born, but changed, reconceived in a limitless perspective. Subversion devalues each fragmented element in the hierarchy of appearances; each isolated commodity — whether it be inanimate objects or objectified human beings selling themselves in the marketplace — is projected into the significance of the WHOLE, all possible connections are made as we dance closer to the totality of our lives. Subversion is the only language, the only gesture, that bears within it its own critique. Its force is pleasure seeking itself. In the language of subversion we begin to sing, our whole lives begin to move in the rhythm of the song: thus we create the dance: thus the revolution becomes our daily life.

[February 1970]

The Rebel

Rebel rebel break the rule,
What does it matter that a “wise” man sees a fool.
Not for you the herd’s dull beat
Making tomorrow, yesterday’s repeat,
Living out the life of a clone
Marching with the crowd but always alone.
Shaping your life from some dusty tome
Playing it safe, staying at home.

Rebel rebel break the rule
Swim in the sea, never the pool.
Live your emotions, feel the surge
Follow your dreams, chase the urge.
Make life though short, an exciting game
Not a mad march for fortune or fame.
Capture the moment, live it now
Being alive your only vow.
Rebel rebel break the rule
In the end,      you’re humanity’s jewel.

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Another Massive Oil Spill.

         I have no doubt that there are lots of people, spouting the wonders of modern technology. who considered that the water protectors trying to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock were over reacting for some ulterior motive. Well not a stones throw from the stand off between the water protectors and the oil greed juggernaut, the wonders of modern technology have let us down again, with disastrous effects. A massive oil spill, estimated at more than 170,000 gallons of crude oil has just leaked into a tributary of the Little Missouri River and over a hillside. It appears that the monitoring equipment failed to detect the leak, so nobody is sure for how long it has been leaking. So far two dead cows have been found at the site. Thanks for the link Loam.

This report from Mint Press News:

        A pipeline just two and half hours’ drive from the Indigenous water protectors’ ongoing stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline has leaked over 170,000 gallons of crude oil into a tributary of the Little Missouri River and into a hillside, it was reported late Monday.
       Monitoring equipment failed to detect the leak, and it is unknown how long the spill near Belfield, North Dakota had gone on before a local landowner discovered it on December 5.
       At least two cows have been confirmed dead near the site of the spill, reports the Pioneer Press.
       The Belle Fourche pipeline is operated by the Wyoming-based True Companies, which is the same company behind the 2015 pipeline rupture in Montana that sent over 40,000 barrels of crude into Yellowstone River. Indeed, at that time it was reported that the operator had a “checkered environmental history,” with 30 recorded pipeline leaks and multiple federal fines on its record.

Read the full article HERE: 

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