The Socialist Way

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

Tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets won't stop them masses

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian have poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square yet again, and of course into the streets of cities and towns from Alexandria to Suez, from Lower Egypt to the Nile Delta, remonstrating against the savage repression released by the army and the security forces over the past few days and demanding an end to the rule of the US-backed military junta.

Scores have been killed and over 2,000 wounded. Fierce street battles continued into the early morning hours of Tuesday in the streets surrounding Tahrir Square. An official at the main Cairo morgue confirmed to the Associated Press that the bodies of 35 victims of the crackdown had been brought there by Monday.

Tear gas and rubber coated steel bullets supplied apparently by an American company along with live rounds have been used on those participating in the protests.

Among the wounded, some had lost eyes and suffered grievous head wounds from the tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, buckshot and live rounds fired at the unarmed demonstrators. Soldiers and state police were ordered to aim for the head. Other civilians were callously beaten with truncheons, some apparently to the point of death.

This is worst bout of violence in Egypt since the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak earlier in the year. Video footage has been circulating of police apparently beating protesters, including some lying on the ground. The International Federation for Human Rights accused the policemen of using live ammunition on protesters. Some reports indicated that demonstrators were responding by hurling stones and Molotov cocktails, but having been glued to Al Jazeera English live stream for the last few days I have not seen any evidence of such retaliation or retribution.

Crowds in Tahrir Square have been growing today in answer to a call for a one million man march in the capital and across the country.

Confronted with this new widespread and popular uprising, the country’s civilian cabinet, installed by the ruling military council and headed by former Mubarak minister Essam Sharaf, offered its resignation. The resignation, which was announced on state television, was seen by some as an attempt to placate the mass protests, possibly suggested and ordered behind the scenes by the military junta; if so this is just another political manoeuvre.

The one thing that stands out to me more than anything; is that the world of capitalism and the ruling classes and indeed throughout creation, is now in conflict and being challenged by the masses and multitudes who are increasingly questing and searching for something which is completely different to what we currently have, what that exactly is, has yet to be decided, but I think that we are on the road to some monumental change, that this is a time of history in the making; what we can expect in the next few months is anyone’s guess really, but let’s hope, pray and cross your fingers that it comes peacefully?”

Monday, 21 November 2011

swigs and roundabouts in Spain

Modern electoral politics is like the game of swigs and roundabout’s; you take a mouthful of this and a mouthful of that and then you go on a trip on the political roundabout. In reality it's always a draught that the working class ends up in.

Take yesterday’s Spanish election for example, the right-wing Popular Party won the 2011 parliamentary election, according to the latest vote count, with the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) having now conceded defeat.

With 78 per cent of the poll now counted, the opposition Popular Party has won around 44 per cent of the vote and is expected to gain an out-and-out majority of 187 seats in the 350-seat lower house of the Spanish parliament, as Reuters reported shortly after the polls closed on Sunday.

The Socialists lost a third of their seats as voters dumped a government that presided over a dramatic economic slump which has left 23% of Spaniards out of work.

Outgoing Prime Minister Jose Luis Roderiguez Zapatero, who led the PSOE, introduced tough austerity measures in 2010, including a five per cent salary cut for public servants, a pension freeze and a rise in the retirement age from 65 to 67 years.

This has been for Spain the season of funerals, healthcare, education, transport, public services have all been declared dead, given symbolic burials by grim faced citizens, so deep have been the cuts in public spending. And a resigned population now awaits the axe to fall again, and it will.

Once hailed as one of Europe's success stories economically, politically and socially, Spain is facing problems of large deficits, 21 per cent unemployment (5 million are out of work with youth unemployment at 48 per cent), no growth and a generalised malaise. The Spanish socialists who spearheaded bold reforms such as gay marriage, legislation against domestic violence and the re-examination of Spain's fascist past, lost on the economic front. They went to bed with capitalism or rather tried to run it and the result annihilation at the polls.

Spain is a fine example really of the utter failure of the reformist road which can never be made to work in the interests of working people anywhere in the world, and it is in actuality time to get off that political roundabout.

Inspiration

Sorry, that I have not been able to blog as much as I would have like during the last week; and rally, to be absolutely honest with you this is due to the fickle little fact that I had a falling-out with my mother; and over all things that of the Occupy Movement, which I found upsetting, and of course, made somewhat worse, because she is 75 young.

It seems very strange to have this generation difference of opinion at our time of life, and as I am myself almost 56, but then again this is indeed something that has been an issue ever since I decided that I was a Socialist many years ago now, and would do whatever I had to do, to be part of a movement that would bring change into this, the rotten world of capitalism.

I hold my contempt and abhorrence of the system that we are all forced to live under, with such passion, and yes, with such fury and with such intensity of “vehemence”. The sooner that we get rid of the hold that capitalism has on the world, could not be soon enough as far as I am concerned; it’s just a shame that along the road that one takes as an activist, that you have to fallout, as a consequence, with those you hold “close” and those you “love” indeed the most!”

Being a Socialist has a price tag that many a revolutionary will discover comes with the ideas and simple philosophies that we propagate; it’s not an easy path to take and the last thing that you intended was to take issue with family or friends, and it’s made much worse when you realise that they have been taken-in by the reactionary, backward-looking views put-out by the capitalist media, or that they somehow refuse to be freethinkers, instead they allow the print media or the BBC news to do the thinking for them. Sometimes I really do despair and feel the hurt when they try unintelligently to put you down and without recourse to facts. I feel and hate the ambiance of this situation, the hurt the emotion, the mountain that seems now even more the harder to climb; but you have to rise above it all, that’s part of the course, the passage that needs navigation, the tide, we need to turn back today and every day.

Some inspiration..

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Doncaster is an unemployment black spot - do you hear that Ed Miliband?"

Today’s unemployment statistics are I fear a foretaste of worst to come; and the Unemployment figures in parts of east London have risen by almost 16 per cent over the last year.

Figures released today showed the jobless totals in Newham have risen from 10,265 to 11,877 in the year to October, an increase of 15.7 per cent. In Tower Hamlets the figure rose to 11,486 from 10,147, a 13.2 per cent increase.

Of those unemployed, 3,295 in Newham are aged 18-24, while 3,424 are in that same bracket in Tower Hamlets.

London saw a rise of 10.8 per cent in unemployment, with the total seeking work now 236,912. The total number of people across the UK out of work is 2.62million, with 1.02million young people jobless. That's the highest total for 15 years.

Youth unemployment in the UK has risen above the politically sensitive 1 million mark, as fears grow of a lost generation of workers amid the worsening economic conditions.

Grimsby, Doncaster and Blackpool were named as black spots with high rates of young people not in education, employment or training. Parts of London, such as Hackney and Newham, also showed a similar pattern, according to the Work Foundation and Private Equity Foundation.

Oh yes Doncaster, were 20,000 pensioners are living in fuel poverty, now we are told this is a youth unemployment black spot, it is also the Town that Ed Miliband represents in the House of Commons – lucky then for him that he isn't the keys holder to 10 Downing Street.