Anarchoblogs

       Hello Greece, we in the UK are following hard on your heels, as you plunge into orchestrated deprivation, we are right behind you. Recent figures show that we in the UK saw average hourly wages fall faster than most European countries. Since 2010 UK average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have fallen 5.5%. This is worse than Spain, 3.3%, Cyprus, 3%, countries that have faced financial turmoil. The only countries that suffered a worse deteriorating hourly wage were Greece, Portugal and Holland. Compare the UK drop with the European average drop of 0.7% and you see the rate at which we are racing towards the sweatshop economy. The UK workers will have lost £6,660 by the time the next election comes round. The present millionaire cabal sitting in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption have presided over 35 consecutive months of falling real wages. The pattern is set to continue as price rises outstrip wage increases, where there are any wage increases.
       Do you honestly see this changing? Do you believe that voting in another smiling suit will make up any of that lost income? Only a fool would accept that a change of party, from tweedle-dee to tweedle-dum will sort out the falling living standards of the ordinary people. I suppose it is wrong to say “falling” living standards, “falling” implies some sort of unavoidable accident, the correct phrase in this instant should be “driven down” living standards. There is no accident in the way things are going and it is certainly not unavoidable. Everything is going to plan, cheap labour and everything privatised, that is the real aim of this financial Mafia plan. We are well on our way to be part of that corporate dream, sweatshop Europe.

   

       Bulgaria, one of Europe's poorest countries has had 41 days of mass protests, and yesterday, Tuesday 23 July, crowds surrounded the parliament building, trapping the members of parliament and their staff inside. Later riot police cleared a path to allow the MP's and staff to leave. Earlier on today the riot police cleared the mass protest from the front of the parliament building.     

      What is it that is bringing the Bulgarian people onto the streets? Surprise surprise, it's that same two faced beast we are all facing at the moment, austerity and corruption. Wake up people of Europe, all your parliaments are the same, forcing austerity down your throats to save their bankster friends in the financial Mafia, and all are oozing the stench of corruption. They all sit and legislate to legitimise the plundering of the public purse, every piece of legislation makes you poorer and their bankster friends richer. This is their only function, all they have to do is try to get it done with as little trouble from the people as possible. If that fails and the people rise up in anger and disgust, then the heavy hand of their state apparatus, police and riot police, will be given a free hand. Like I keep saying, every country in Europe is getting the same treatment, some more rapidly than others, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Bulgaria are well into the process, the other countries are following the same path, the pace is different. It will not stop until they get their sweatshop Europe, or the people put an end to this insane system of greed and exploitation by the few, at the expense of the many. What is a country if it is not its people?

      The corruption and greed that poisons  our lives is now so blatant that there is not a country on the planet that doesn't have the people on the streets clashing with the state apparatus. Rio de Janeiro, still has people protesting after the massive riots of a month ago, Portugal's recent protests have the financial Mafia feeling nervous, At the weekend the Spanish people vented some of their anger on the streets of Madrid. We could go on picking country by country, but the picture would still be the same, anger at exploitation, greed and corruption, and that anger is always pointed at the state and its festering marriage with the corporate/financial world. The anger of the people will not simply disappear, the illusion of democracy has fallen, the smoke and mirrors have vanished like morning mist, leaving a clear view of the hypocrisy and corruption that oversees the will of the people. There is a battle of wills taking place, the will of the corporate/financial world and the will of the people. If we all realise that they need us, but we don't need them, then we are more than half way to victory.

I am the crowd

I swim in the quagmire of poverty

its hooks, its barbs, tear my flesh

rupture my dreams,

I hold my breath for centuries

hoping to break through, gasp pure air.

Through the murky mire

I see bright things, shiny things sparkle

I see women in fine dresses, men in silk shirts

I ask myself

why do I swim in this cesspool?

I want the light and warmth of rectitude

to caress my labouring body,

seeds of my dreams to bloom

like wild flowers in a meadow.

One day I will use my boundless strength

to haul this torn, battered being

out of the morass

onto the warm grassy bank,

when I do;

woe betide you, women in fine dresses

woe betide you mister in your fine silk shirt

should you ever try to get in my way,

for I am the strength of the world

I am the crowd.

      Where are all those capitalist democracies? Across the world country after country is making it clear that the present political system, is no longer acceptable. More than a month of street protests in Turkey, the same in Brazil, daily protests in Greece, mass protests in Italy, Portugal, Spain and more than a year of on going protests in Egypt. We could go on and on across the globe, but staying in Europe, among other countries, we have seen massive protest in Bulgaria, where the people now realise that they are being ripped up, and sold off to the corporate world.

        The Bulgarian people are pissed off at their countries assets being sold to the corporate world. As well as mass protest calling for the power companies to be nationalised, due to stratospheric price increases. There is also a demand to nationalise a recent discovered gold mine, where there are said to be 18,000 tonnes of gold ore, with an estimated value of $793 billion (US). At the moment the gold mine is owned by a Canadian company Dundee Precious Metals, and it is stated that from the value of all the gold mined there, less than 1% will remain in Bulgaria. Bulgaria, a poor country with $793 billions worth of gold in the kitty??? This is corporate asset stripping on a large scale.

       Asking our corporate master's puppets, your national government, to please give us a little more of what is ours in the first place, is guaranteed to produce more of the same, austerity, perhaps administered with a different smile. The state and the corporate world are one in the same thing, and you and I are not in their club. We are at best paid pawns, at worst, worthless dispensable entities. If you want that to change, then it is the system that has to change, not the smiling face at the podium. 

      The European Union today is a corporate entity brought about to bolster the European capitalist camp, allowing it to compete with the other power blocks around the world. It is however finding it rather difficult, so it has set itself on a road to improve its chances of competing in the big boys league. First it has to get taxes down for the corporate world, this entails getting rid of social services, so that governments wont need to raise so much in taxes. Then it has to get wages down, which they have been quite successful at since 2008 as wages in the UK have shrunk by 10% since then, but have further to go. The third piece of their strategy is to shred employment regulations, allowing them to offer zero hour contracts, give the employee four hours today and six two days later and so on. and be able to hire and fire at will.

      If you are in the under 25 age group, Europe is not a nice place to live. Across Europe, in this age group there are more than 26 million unemployed. In Greece the under 25 unemployment rate is 62% and in Spain it is 57%. These figures in what is one of the richest areas in the world is undeniable proof  that the system doesn't work in the interests of the ordinary people. Every under 25 belongs to a family, a family that is seeing its living standards pulverised. It is 26 million young people being denied their right to develop to their full potential. All in the interests of big capital, corporate greed.

     After a recent meeting of the leading financial Mafia's European puppets, where they discussed this under 25 unemployment problem, (crime), they trumpeted there very generous solution. They would allocate £6 million pounds to help alleviate the situation. £6 million divided between 26 million young people, works out at about 24 pence each. This overwhelming generosity will do  fuck-all for the under 25's, it will all be gobbled up in the bureaucracy, giving some extra bureaucrats a fat salary to hold more meetings.

      We are being developed into the biggest sweatshop in the world, and we seem to be going along with the plan in a quite and willing manner. Enter into their economic debates and we have lost, we don't want to manage the cuts, austerity, tough decisions, better, that is just more of the same with a different time span. We want to change the system, scrap this greed driven, everything must have a profit, parasite lead, insane, unjust system of exploitation. We can create a community based world of co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability, a system that sees to the needs of all our people. A world that will release the full creative energy of that 26 million young unemployed, allowing them to enrich all our lives. We have the resources, the imagination, the ability and the dream, all it now requires is the will. 

       Europe is a rich capitalist continent, it is a big slice of the developed world, and yet visit any country in that continent and poverty is rife and growing. If capitalism can't eradicate poverty in its richest and most developed areas, what chance is there of poverty being tackled in the poorer areas. No matter which country you pick, take Germany, Europe's biggest economy, held up as an example to the rest of Europe. In this paragon of capitalist efficiency, 15.5% live below the poverty line and would be nearer 25% if it was not for public assistance, (2010 figures but have increased since then), while child poverty has doubled since 2004.
 

        France, Europe's second biggest economy, sets another fine example of capitalist efficiency with youth unemployment at 26% and rising, and 23% of 18 to 24 year olds living in poverty, on top of that, there are approximately 11 million people in France living in poverty. In that second biggest economy there are 2 million people living on less than €640 a month.
 

       Here in the UK we have 3.6 million children living in poverty, that's 27% of all children. In some local council areas the figure is in Third World realms with 50% to 70%. My own local area of Springburn in Glasgow has 52% of children living in poverty. Poverty in the UK has seen the number of people seeking help at food banks soar by 170% from 2010 to 2013, the number is put at over 500,000 people needing a hand out with their food. 28% of adults state that they scrimp on food to feed others in the family.

 

      Italy, has millions too poor to heat their homes and almost 2 million children living in poverty, the highest child poverty % in the 25 European nations. In May, Italy's National Statistics Institute, (ISTAT) stated that 25% of Italians were heading towards deprivation, while the number already living in poverty has doubled in the last two years. The ISTAT report also found that 14.3% of the population was seriously deprived in 2012 up from 6.9% in 2010. It also stated that 14.9% were heading towards poverty.
 

        Spain, 27% unemployment, those under 25 and not studying the figure for unemployment is 57%. If you move south in Spain the unemployment reaches 40% in some areas. 1.9 million households have no breadwinner, 10% of the population have had no work for two years or more and 3 million live in extreme poverty with less than €3,650 a year, and a further 3 million get by on less than €7,300 a year.

 

        All of these figures are dwarfed when we visit Greece which has taken a full frontal attack from the financial Mafia that rule the European capitalist world.

       For the whole of Europe the unemployment rate is a little over 17%, that is approximately 84 million people can't find work in Europe. If the rich developed heart of capitalism carries so much poverty, and the misery that goes along with that poverty, only an idiot would believe capitalism can solve the problems of the ordinary people. There is not a hope in hell that capitalism can eradicate poverty in any country, it was not intended to, it was a system devised to make the business class rich and that is what it will do until we the people dismantle this exploitative and repressive system of injustice and greed.

ann arky's home.

You might say that Venezuela’s “revolution” (really, mild social democratic reform bankrolled by oil money) has been more associated with a single figure, whereas Bolivia’s most famous for victories scored by its powerful social movements, such as the “Gas War”, with the President Evo Morales coming to power after these events.

But, coverage of the region in English-language press (mainstream and leftist) is pitiful. Venezuela caricatured as a dictatorship on one hand, praised as a new model for socialism on the other. (And anarchist critiques that I’ve seen, I haven’t rated them highly either.)

I don’t know what I think of developments there, so I’m looking forward to this event, provided it’s informative, discursive and has more questions than party lines.

      Spain, like Greece is trying to contain the anger of the people by clamping down on the independent media. Stifle the flow of information and people begin to feel isolated, less able to fight back. To maintain the present system of rule by the financial Mafia, the state has to be the only mouth piece, it is of the utmost importance that we support all those independent reporters and photographers who tell it like it is.

      Spain, like Greece, is at the sharp end of the financial Mafia's rape and plunder campaign. Stratospheric unemployment, slashing of social services and a fast-track to a sweatshop economy. With the "austerity" comes the devastation as the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) complicit corrupt politicians surrender the environment to the corporate world all in the name of that magical "growth",  but, like the people of Greece, the people of Spain are also fighting back. Protests, strikes and all forms of direct action are an ever increasing part of life.

      Circumventing security systems, today a Greenpeace activist has jumped on the roof of the super-protected Spanish Parliament and deployed a banner in defense of the battered Spanish coast.

       As usual the anger of the people across Europe at the slashing of their standard of living, goes more or less unreported in our babbling brook of bullshit that passes for mainstream media. Week in week out some where in Europe people are on the street displaying their disgust and anger at the corruption of the puppet governments of the financial Mafia. The message from the bullshit factory is that everything is going fine and the people realise that they have to make sacrifices. The reality is that the people are aware of the smoke and mirrors of the corrupt political careerists and the financial Mafia, that awareness is backed up by anger. Anger that should, with justification, explode and drive this economic system that favours the parasites to the dustbin of history. There is an old Korean saying that fits the moment,