tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81453207420326896412024-03-05T05:03:52.822-08:00Not A Dinner PartyReiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.comBlogger823125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-25820385436476187562018-11-06T01:35:00.003-08:002018-11-06T01:35:36.494-08:00Grenfell Effigy: When burning cardboard is more offensive than burning actual people.<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
As disgusting as those who burnt the Grenfell effigy are, and they are scum, they did not cause the the actual deaths of 71 people. They burnt some cardboard.</div>
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The people who did cause the deaths of 71 people, who burnt children mothers, fathers and grandparents, friends and neighbours to death in their own homes, those responsible for leaving the survivors homeless and doing nothing to address the causes, they remain free and are allowed to go about their lives with no vilif<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">ication, no looking over their shoulder, no threat of either vigilantism or justice.</span></div>
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The effigy and those who laughed at it, those who laughed at Grenfell and its victims, they are symptomatic of a deep sickness in our society. They deserve our contempt for sure. And more.</div>
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But to allow those in the media responsible for spreading that sickness to get away with their endless vilification campaigns against the poor, to get away with turning our anger and hatred against lowlife nobodies, whilst they distract us from and shelter those in power who effectively lit the match that killed 71 of our people, that is part of the sickness too.</div>
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Our disgust and anger at the racist trash behind the effigy burning is righteous. But where is the anger at those really responsible for actual deaths? Why does the media want you to be angry at nobodies burning cardboard?</div>
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Because they want you to forget that the rich and the powerful burnt people.</div>
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They do every day, all over the world. Inflammable cladding in Grenfell or white Phosphorus in Yemen, the British ruling class burn the poor. And nothing happens. Nothing ever does.</div>
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We get angry at a media managed spectacles of petty loutishness, while the powerful get away with mass murder.</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-53196521811305144022018-09-20T11:44:00.002-07:002018-09-20T11:46:03.049-07:00Immigration: "Legitimate concerns". Nah mate, just racist bullshit. And that's official.<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hey, guess what? Turns out your "legitimate concerns" about immigration really were just racist scapegoating after all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, you know, next time you raise the existence in the UK of working class people who just arent the same colour or born in the same place as you as somehow being detrimental to "white working class" wages and living standards, we will all know that, actually, you are, and always were, just another pathetic useless racist sack of shit.</span></div>
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See also : <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-workers-uk-tax-treasury-brexit-migrants-british-citizens-a8542506.html">migrant workers contribute £2,300 more per year to UK than average British citizen, study reveals - The Independent - 19/09/2019</a></div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-57330593633074318342018-09-20T04:54:00.004-07:002018-09-20T04:54:56.294-07:00PigGate two years on. How we laughed. But tory far right were laughing all their way to power.<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Three years ago today the <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"type":104,"tn":"*N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/piggate?source=feed_text&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARAH5cROXzeh07lLk7xgGhmBDCy-kFmuLBE1CuAckVn2lI4KaS66Yqn3FnvRzGqVxk6k11tvVBZeCAEe8WW5tPzNtfoBHYFLJzduovJJmbMosHgkMR-j4QT2sk14EXL4_LhxxNI67L6yej-fovwNzEBA--W4zZzCuK1PDLW_87Z3Ap-Bzu4iesM&__tn__=%2ANK-R" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="font-family: inherit; unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm" style="font-family: inherit;">Piggate</span></span></a> scandal broke. A story of dubious origin from right wing tory donor Lord Ashcroft using Brextremist Isabel Oakeshott as his delivery vehicle.</div>
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We all laughed and cheered as Cameron's position became untenable, his reputation fatally compromised.</div>
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But this was a ruthlessly manipulative psyop to discredit Cameron as part of a fratricidal far-right coup in the tory party and, by extension, the UK. A coup that is still unfolding.</div>
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It is generally speaking as important to look at who is behind the story as it is the subject of the story if you really want to find out what it is about.</div>
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(It's still funny though.)</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-10058070444347390272018-08-21T04:43:00.002-07:002018-08-21T04:43:30.461-07:00George Jackson will never die.<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
I wasn't quite yet twenty when I read George Jackson's 'Blood In My Eye'. He was in his twenties when he wrote it. He hadn't yet reached twenty when he was jailed in 1961, sentenced to one year in prison for robbery. He was still in his twenties and still in prison when he was murdered by the US state forces while attempting to escape with his comrades a decade later.</div>
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I read his words, an angry young man speaking to me, an angry young man, in the clearest terms, with passion and belief, about injustice and resistance and revolution. Although from a different time and culture, his writing resonated to me, hit me to my core and probably had the greatest political impact on me than any of any other communist writer.</div>
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In his words and his actions, George Jackson was one of the greatest inspirations in my life.</div>
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He was martyred 47 years ago today. He was 29 years old. He lives on as an inspiration to other young men and women who need from the depths of their heart and soul to fight and resist for a better world they will themselves never likely see.</div>
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<i><b>"I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me."</b>, George Jackson, 23 September 1941 - 21 August 1971</i>.</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-42371503764280854552017-11-07T01:16:00.002-08:002017-11-07T01:18:01.862-08:00Limp Labour, the Paradise Papers and a Zombie Government's living death. <div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 6px;">
We are only six days into November and how many crisis has this government had deal with just this month? Its like they are hiding from the last scandal by jumping under the wheels of the next one. Every day brings a new scandal. A new revelation of sleaze, incompetence, cruelty and corruption. And yet they remain in office in no danger of being evicted from the corridors of power, no new general election on the horizon until 2021. A zombie government, decaying from within, s<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">tumbling, flailing aimlessly but still attacking the weak and vulnerable to feed its mindless greed.</span><br />
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Even John Major's government in his final months wasn't this shambolic and discredited. This is the weakest government since, well actually since it was elected first time in 2010. This tory government has been tottering on the brink since day one, seven years ago. Why is it still standing?</div>
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Only one thing has kept this vicious, corrupt, sleaze ridden tory disaster in power for seven painful grueling years. And that is the Labour Party. Their own weakness, cowardice, complicity and corruption means they are as terrified of taking power as the tories are of losing it.</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-37064278855025885632017-05-26T04:02:00.000-07:002017-05-26T09:54:09.900-07:00Salman Abedi: How David Cameron and Theresa May brought their Libyan Revolution to Manchester.If the Labour leadership had any guts at all they would go all guns blazing on the developing Abedi collusion scandal. This tory government was central to unleashing hell on Libya, it sent scores of British Libyan terrorist exiles it had given aid and shelter to, back to Libya as its boots on the ground in their 2011 war on Libya.<br />
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British born Salman Abedi was one of them. His father had been a member, in the 1980s and 90s, of the (proto-al Qaeda) Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a fanatical sectarian murder gang that brought terrorism to Libya and was sheltered and funded by the UK. <br />
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Salman was still a kid when Cameron waged his war of terror in Libya. Yet somehow this kid ended up there fighting inbetween breaks from school in the UK. <br />
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He can only have got there the same way his dad and his mates did. On British transport flights courtesy of MI6, carrying British supplied guns, paid for by British money, under the cover of the bombers of the RAF. <br />
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David Cameron and William Hague stood up in Parliament and bragged about their role in arming these terror gangs that destroyed Libya, butchered Muammar Gaddafi, sent half its population into refugee exile in neighbouring Tunisia, and brought slave markets, chaos, ethnic cleansing and still ongoing civil war to those that remained.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoyj__qNWkgmRKXM1gmugWuMCzN3RqhUZ_z_EXIe59UFPuxc-QIZeSPIgLHiZ1ccVE8bzWdn_HejhSWQ6FE-Sj1IW9t0W93vMqLIrNMCDUJ5PnKwZnnkexM19x5XDC2eKHu4x8EUfPMo/s1600/125089346.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="1024" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIoyj__qNWkgmRKXM1gmugWuMCzN3RqhUZ_z_EXIe59UFPuxc-QIZeSPIgLHiZ1ccVE8bzWdn_HejhSWQ6FE-Sj1IW9t0W93vMqLIrNMCDUJ5PnKwZnnkexM19x5XDC2eKHu4x8EUfPMo/s320/125089346.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This is as clear cut a case of collusion as you will ever see. Even more so than the murky, but long proven and exposed, connections between British intelligence and sectarian loyalist paramilitary murder gangs in the six counties, this time the Prime Minister openly announced it. <br />
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As Home Secretary and in regular contact with the UK's intelligence services through the Joint Intelligence Committees, Theresa May would have been central to greenlighting the recruitment of terrorists and sending them to Libya and elsewhere. And, crucially, in her role as boss of the UK Border Agency, in giving them entry to live in the UK and the British passports that allowed them to travel across borders unhindered.<br />
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<span data-offset-key="d4rl4-0-0"><span data-text="true">That one of those terrorists, taking the training and contacts he had been granted only by the collusion of the British government's work in Libya, has come home and used his skills to bring the Libyan "revolution" back to the UK, should be hammered home by the opposition. </span></span><br />
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<span data-offset-key="bs5uh-0-0"><span data-offset-key="8vq7a-0-0"><span data-text="true">That 22 innocent people, many of them children, died in Manchester is intrinsically linked to the many thousands more innocents that died in Libya, and are still dying today, often washing up on Europe's beaches. It is a scandal of monumental proportions and needs to be brought fully to public attention</span></span></span></div>
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(Of course, it is pertinent to remember that large sections of the English Left fully supported this "revolution" and the terror and destruction it wrought, and still do support it as it continues in Syria)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyyRT33QElHm2vEMk6LEe5_q9j4MWooAh66_sPm-HIxphTxstQ3xmb80gCmi75cTBCnxVdRX05r4TuVT4N3X81vfOmbZ_Q9UG9RgJzVzSBrxkVNha5xXJv3AwLvOSbI8QUopKBnploMuQ/s1600/143669281.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="977" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyyRT33QElHm2vEMk6LEe5_q9j4MWooAh66_sPm-HIxphTxstQ3xmb80gCmi75cTBCnxVdRX05r4TuVT4N3X81vfOmbZ_Q9UG9RgJzVzSBrxkVNha5xXJv3AwLvOSbI8QUopKBnploMuQ/s320/143669281.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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To imagine that Salman Abedi, who was sixteen years old and still at school when he was first sent to fight in Libya in 2011, and was a frequent traveller to what is left of that country to engage in further acts of terrorism at will, up until just a few weeks ago, could do so without the full knowledge of the British intelligence services is beyond credibility. <br />
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Indeed they admit Salman Abedi was "known" to them, in actual fact he has to have been in direct contact with them. We also know that British intelligence and special forces are on the ground even now in Libya continuing to sow chaos and destruction, just as Salman Abedi and his father and brother were.<br />
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From Ireland to Afghanistan, to Libya and Syria, collusion between British intelligence services and the most ideologically reactionary and sectarian terrorist death squads has been standard operating procedure for British counter insurgency policy against states and movements it wished to overthrow for at least half a century or more.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht2pL_QWEP8I2RDct4fIE2eTOPFP703VWg4_kjXXhJzux3NHuChMum59Lwotv0gbcU3-8kV2ql7ws-SrCX5pNqh7m7mxwXKuG3DTrfMnVsl0Y1l1ILGSgXeAdY9F3SBrx7QydGOqNgHuA/s1600/David-Cameron-Libya-710416.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="590" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht2pL_QWEP8I2RDct4fIE2eTOPFP703VWg4_kjXXhJzux3NHuChMum59Lwotv0gbcU3-8kV2ql7ws-SrCX5pNqh7m7mxwXKuG3DTrfMnVsl0Y1l1ILGSgXeAdY9F3SBrx7QydGOqNgHuA/s320/David-Cameron-Libya-710416.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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There are so many questions that absolutely must be raised and demanded to be answered. Jeremy Corbyn should be calling for a full inquiry into what was known and by who. Who greenlighted Abedi, as a child, being recruited to fight in Libya? In fact we know the buck stops with Cameron, Hague and Theresa May. Now is the time to bring them to account.<br />
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<a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/collusion?source=feed_text&story_id=10156159548327067"><span class="_5afx"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz">#</span><span class="_58cm">Collusion</span></span></a><br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-78237862414756797672017-05-26T03:49:00.001-07:002017-05-26T03:49:08.598-07:00Salman Abedi and MI6: Nets full of holes. <div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed">
So we are supposed to just accept without question that Salman Abadi, a young man "known" to British intelligence services as a member of a terrorist gang causing chaos and destruction across Libya, who they knew was a UK recruiter for this gang to send other terrorists to Libya and Syria, whose family were brought to the UK by British intelligence services as reward for the role in the terrorist opposition to Gaddafi in the 90's, we are supposed to just accept that this guy <span class="text_exposed_hide">...</span><span class="text_exposed_show">and his family could just pop in and out of the UK on flights to Libya (actually most likely to Tunis) and back whenever it takes their fancy, without any contact at any time with British intelligence services?<br /> Without anyone even noticing, not even a suspicious glance from a diligent customs officer?<br /></span></div>
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My missus cant get off a plane from Tunis without getting pulled out of the customs line for questioning about "the situation in Tunisia" by intelligence officers.<br /></div>
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But yeah, this guy, "he just slipped through the net".</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-34257773084209699782014-12-19T01:00:00.002-08:002014-12-19T01:10:09.494-08:00UK planning Bahrain base with eyes on Iran<div id="divTitle" style="background-color: white; padding: 10px 0px;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 32px;"><b>UK planning Bahrain base with eyes on Iran</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial;"><b><a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/12/18/390841/royal-navy-looks-at-base-in-bahrain-with-eyes-on-iran/">http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/12/18/390841/royal-navy-looks-at-base-in-bahrain-with-eyes-on-iran/</a></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/james.stuart.948494">James Stuart</a> for Press TV UK Desk</div>
<img alt="Speculations are rising among observers that Britain" src="http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20141218/390841_UK-BAHRAIN.jpg" height="223" width="400" /><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Britain's announcement
that it is planning to build a £15 million navel base in the protest
racked monarchy of Bahrain came as a surprise to many observers, not
least as it would seem to be in contradiction to both the UK's cuts
in naval spending, and their professed support for human-rights and
democracy in the region. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Bahrain has been at the centre of
continuing protests since 2011, but unlike many of the region's
nations where uprisings against governments that were perceived as
challenging the west's interests have received much media attention
and covert backing from the west, Bahrain's democracy movement has
all but been ignored despite having endured severe repression,
including scores of deaths, allegations of torture and arbitrary
detention by Bahraini security forces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img src="http://www.defendtherighttoprotest.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Protest-in-Manama-Bahrain.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So the announcement of
British Royal Navy plans to build a permanent military presence there
has been met with dismay by opponents of the Bahrain regime and is
considered as providing a major bolster to the Bahrain monarchy and
as being a strong endorsement from Britain that they will continue to
give support for whatever measures the regime takes to suppress the
democracy movement. This would perhaps explain why the Bahrain regime
is reportedly footing £13 million of the £15 million bill for it's
construction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From it's side, the UK government insists that
it needs a permanent presence for it's navel forces in the Gulf
region to combat piracy. However, the Royal Navy currently has
mine-sweeping vessels based in Bahrain which are primarily aimed at
countering Iran's navel defences on the other side of the Persian
Gulf. It is expected the new base will be able to host destroyers and
the currently under-construction Queen Elizabeth class aircraft
carriers. Many observers see this as a direct attempt to contain and
challenge Iran and to provide a stable base for British backed
insurgency operations in the region, most particularly in Iraq, Syria
and, potentially, in Iran itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bahraini
opposition activist Nabeel Rajab reacted to the news by stating that
the UK was “</span>t<em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">he
only country that openly supported the dictatorship in Bahrain and
clearly oppos[es] our struggle for democracy and human rights,”.
Nabeel continued, “Taking into consideration the silence of the UK,
Bahrain paying that [is] an award to them and for that reason
Bahraini people are upset as the information [is] coming out.”
</span></span></span></em><img src="http://www.anselm.edu/academic/history/hdubrulle/europe1945/graphics/Suez%20Crisis%201956.jpg" height="267" width="400" /><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /><br />The UK gave up maintaining a major naval prescence in the
Persian Gulf when it and France were forced into humiliating retreat
over their Suez invasion, when they were militarily defeated by
Egyptian forces under the leadership of President Gamal Abdel Nasser
in 1953. Since then the British have relied upon a much reduced naval
presence in the Gulf, largely allowing the US to take the dominant
role. However, this news that the UK will be joining the US's Fifth
Fleet in having a permanent base in Bahrain would tend to confirm
that the British do not consider themselves out of the game as a
global naval power, and still intend to make their stamp on the
region. The British invented the concept of “Gunboat diplomacy”
at the height of their imperial rule in the 19</span></span></span></em><em><span style="color: black;"><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></span></sup></span></em><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
century, and it would seem they are keen to keep the tradition alive
in a region where many see them as having played a destructive and
divisive role for centuries.<br /><br />For the British, securing their
interests in the oil-rich region is of paramount importance in a time
of economic crisis. The fall of the Morsi government in Egypt, and
the failure by British and US backed terrorists to overthrow Assad in
Syria combined with the continued stability of an increasingly
assertive Iran, has left the west's “Arab Spring” project looking
badly stalled. </span></span></span></em><img alt="Hostages paraded on TV in 2004" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/03_02/hostagesES2303_468x269.jpg" /><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /><br />As Russian and Chinese influence and money
continues to provide a strong alternative for trade and relations,
the western powers are feeling the need to ratchet up their direct
presence in the region once again. With the US “pivot to Asia”
taking military resources from Iraq and Afghanistan to be redeployed
in an attempted “containment” of China, the UK military will be
expected to fill some of the gap. The British have never forgotten
their humiliation in the Gulf at the hands of Egypt in 1953, nor more
recently, when in 2004, and again in 2007, Iranian Revolutionary
Guards detained British special forces Royal Marines and Royal Navy
sailors after they entered Iranian waters.</span></span></span></em><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />The
British will be hoping that a major permanent naval presence in the
Gulf will mean they can once again hold the whip hand in the
region.</span></span><br />
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-15971623650095912582014-12-17T22:13:00.002-08:002014-12-17T22:28:50.918-08:00England: Porn, Protest, Paedophilia, Power and Privilege.<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
The English will protest outside Parliament about the banning of porn showing fisting and golden showers, but not a raise a peep when it comes to the people ruling them from that Parliament abusing, raping, and in some cases, murdering, vulnerable, desperate and forgotten children.</div>
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They will seethe with rage at the tabloid stories of non-white men sexually exploiting white teenage girls (whilst booking their lads away trip to the brothels of Thailand), but elicit barely a tut at news of cabals of child abusers within the highest echelons of government.</div>
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Perversion and violence from politicians and policemen is hidden behind smoke screen misdirection of salacious tales of child abusing has-been pop-stars and tv personalities, the connections of privilege, property, power and perversion being swept under the carpet as the big by-gone names are sacrificed to protect those with big, and real, power.</div>
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Evidence, long known, but until now suppressed, of our lost children being imprisoned in brothels for the powerful, under the perverse euphemism of "care" leads to no more than the shaking of heads and the turning of the page, so we can gawp at tweenie celebs papped in bikinis and titter at advertising masquerading as news.</div>
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In a civilised society, revelations of Prime Minister after Prime Minister presiding over cabals of rapist paedophiles and the murderers of children within their governments should trigger a wave of anger and horror that would shake politics and the seats of power to their foundations. The politicians and the policemen that are, often literally, in bed with each other to hide and protect their depravity, should be being hounded and vilified and dragged out into the public.</div>
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But we are not a civilised society. We are a society run by barbarians in suits. Savages with good PR, who have presided over and nurtured a culture that fetishises the sexual objectification of girls and young women, that celebrates the hedonistic worship and pursuit of impossibly youthful flesh. Which elevates abuse and greed as principles of leadership and common sense, and preaches hypocritical empty "morality" whilst deriding the combination of education and empathy from which genuine morality grows. Where "respect" means fear, and compassion is written off as gullibility and weakness.</div>
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But in a society where politicians will happily see brown skinned children starved and blown to pieces in the pursuit of corporate profit, why would anyone be surprised that they view the children of the poor at home as being little more than disposable toys?</div>
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And in an environment where "lad" culture promotes intimidation, sexual assault and rape as no more than a short cut "pick-up" technique, and little girls are taught by MTV that sex is all you have to give to the world, that your body and your face is all that is of value about you, a society where 1 in 5 women and girls are raped or sexually abused in their lifetime, 90% of them by someone they know, should we be surprised that, actually, no one really gives a shit? Not enough to actually do anything about it anyway.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">But lets have a demo to protect the right to watch face-sitting in pornography. We don't want anyone to think we are a nation of prudes now, do we?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">VIP paedophile networks 'shut down police investigations which got too close', retired officers claim (Daily Record)</span></h1>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/vip-paedophile-networks-shut-down-4807801" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/vip-paedophile-networks-shut-down-4807801</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Porn Protesters Stage Mass 'Face-Sitting' Outside Parliament (Huffington Post)</span></h1>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/12/porn-protest-pictures-face-sitting-parliament_n_6314604.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/12/12/porn-protest-pictures-face-sitting-parliament_n_6314604.html</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">100,000 assaults. 1,000 rapists sentenced. Shockingly low conviction rates revealed (The Independent)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/100000-assaults-1000-rapists-sentenced-shockingly-low-conviction-rates-revealed-8446058.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/100000-assaults-1000-rapists-sentenced-shockingly-low-conviction-rates-revealed-8446058.html</a></span></h1>
Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-1777460768680694682014-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:002014-11-16T11:56:09.488-08:00Scottish National Party Still Greatest Progressive Threat To UK Political Establishment - Independence Fight Is Far From Over<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
<i>My latest with Press TV, abridged comments (with audio) at the link </i><a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/11/15/386157/scotlands-salmond-could-be-the-threat-to-britain/"><b>HERE</b></a><i>, and my full written reply below...</i></div>
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<b>Press TV:</b> "Well, yesterday the SNP chose its new leader Nicola Sturgeon. She also vowed to continue the fight for her nation’s independence from the UK. Given the fact that Alex Salmond is quitting as the SNP leader and Scotland First Minister, do you think Britain will take Salmond’s warning seriously?" ----<br />
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<b><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=809822066" href="https://www.facebook.com/james.stuart.948494" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">James Stuart</a>:</b> The British political establishment have learnt to take Salmond very seriously. And, unlike Westminster politicians, he is known to follow through on his promises.</div>
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When SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond resigned on September 19th, the day after the referendum, there was some gloating that he was a beaten man. But the weeks since have proven the contrary, the Scottish National Party is soaring in the polls. By resigning his position and handing over to his very capable and equally politically formidable political partner, Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond is now unfettered by the responsibilities of leadership, and the gloves are off in his fight for independence.</div>
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It is seen as very likely that Alex Salmond with stand for election to the British parliament in May 2015, probably targeting a seat of a senior Liberal Democrat politician, the coalition partners of the ruling Conservatives, and then lead a substantial block of SNP MP's into Westminster, where it looks probable they could hold the balance of power in a hung parliament, leaving Salmond essentially calling the shots over who is able to form a government. Salmond has promised to hold the British establishment's "feet to the fire" over their pre-referendum promises of extra powers for the Scottish parliament, and he looks well placed to see his promise through.</div>
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So Salmond is actually left looking stronger, and more of a threat to the British political establishment than at any time in his career. They should certainly take his warning very seriously indeed.<br />
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<b>Press TV</b>: "-Salmond says the Scots could take the matters into their own QUOTE democratic hands, what exactly do you think he meant? Or, put better, when in her inauguration speech at the SNP conference yesterday, Sturgeon said she hoped she could see Scotland independent under her watch. Why didn’t SHE warn London about her next move as Scotland’s First Minister in waiting? I mean how significant is Salmond’s threat?" ----<br />
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<b>James Stuart:</b> If the UK establishment parties fail to deliver in their promises for more develed powers to Scotland, then they have essentially broken their covenant with the Scottish people. And if the SNP has a majority of Scottish seats to Westminister in May 2015, as the polls suggest, and the SNP is able to form another majority government in Scotland in 2016, then the SNP has a democratic mandate for rule from the people of Scotland that the UK parties do not. The UK government would have no political legitimacy left in Scotland.</div>
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New SNP leader, and First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has already said she expects to see independence for Scotland well within her lifetime, that the 1.6 million votes for independence were the base camp from which we will reach the summit and that the goal is an independent Scotland. Far from the independence issue having being settled by the referendum, it would appear the real fight is only just beginning.<br />
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-65886237829271502222014-11-01T11:43:00.000-07:002014-11-01T11:43:57.733-07:00Was the referendum just the start for Scotland's independence campaign?<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
Below is the full text of an interview I did with Press TV on the consequences of the Scottish independence referendum.<br />
The abridged version can be read at this link:<br />
<a href="http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/11/01/384423/majority-of-scots-back-2nd-referendum/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/11/01/384423/majority-of-scots-back-2nd-referendum/</a></div>
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<b>Press TV Question : </b><br />
<i>An independence referendum was held in Scotland on September 18, with No winning by 55% to 45% for Yes. Despite the No campaign’s victory, we still see that majority of Scots want another vote on the independence. What’s your take on that?<br />What is the benefit of independence for Scots?</i></div>
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<b>My Answer:</b> Many people, not least those in the British political and state apparatus, believed that the no vote on the 18th of September would be the final nail in the coffin for the Scottish independence campaign. And in the depression of the immediate aftermath, for many independence campaigners, it did feel it could be that way.</div>
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However, only a few weeks on and we are seeing the opinion polls showing there is now a small majority in favour of independence, and a substantial 2/3rds majority who believe there should be another referendum on independence within a decade.</div>
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This turnaround is not actually very surprising. The No vote won by a margin of just over 5%, and did so on the back of a massive media campaign of fear mongering, particularly by the BBC, who were fully exposed as not a public service broadcaster, but as the British state broadcaster, which were especially targeted at older voters who were led to believe they would lose their pensions in an independent Scotland. Similar claims were made about the future of the NHS in Scotland.</div>
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This was combined with vague promises of extra fiscal and political powers to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament that were dressed up, with no actual formal commitment, as “Devo-Max”, the idea that Scotland could have full control over its finances and resources, with just foreign affairs and the military kept under British state control.</div>
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This was backed up with "The Vow", published in the most widely read tabloid in Scotland, the Daily Record, which was allegedly made by the three main UK party leaders, Miliband of Labour, British Prime Minister Cameron for the Conservatives and Deputy PM Clegg for the Liberal Democrats. “The Vow,” which implied a “Devo-Max” settlement is widely accepted as swinging the vote to a No, seen as a safe half-way house option by many voters.</div>
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However, within hours of the referendum result being announced, Prime Minister Cameron was already back tracking on any promise of new powers for Scotland.</div>
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And in the last week it was exposed that the so called “Vow” was a fabrication, compiled not by the Party leaders, but by the editorial staff of the Daily Record newspaper.</div>
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Along with this was the announcement by Cameron that UK military forces would once again be bombing Iraq, made within days of the referendum result, and privately admitted by government insiders that it was a decision made before the referendum, but not announced until after in order not to influence the result.</div>
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And the cost of the bombing campaign was touted at £2 Billion, a cost greater than that which was suggested as being the "unaffordable" cost of Scottish independence.</div>
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Then was the announcement that rather than state pensions being safe in the UK, they are to be cut drastically, plunging many pensioners into even deeper poverty.</div>
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And then Lloyds TSB's announcement of 9000 job losses. Much was made by the No campaign of Lloyds and other banks threatening job losses as a result of Scottish independence. In fact those job losses were already planned.</div>
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And the privatisation and dismemberment of the National Health Service, a process started under the previous Labour government, is stepping up a gear now.</div>
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So with all this in mind, it is hardly surprising that many of those who voted No to independence are now feeling cheated and betrayed.</div>
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The most obvious expression of this has been in recent opinion polls which are showing that the Labour Party has lost all credibility in Scotland, and is heading towards disaster in its Scottish working class heartlands in next years UK general election.</div>
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Meanwhile, the pro-independence Scottish National Party, is soaring in the polls.</div>
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So rather than the referendum being the end of the Scottish independence campaign, it now appears to be just the beginning.</div>
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The most striking feature of the independence campaign was the way that ordinary people became politicised and energised about politics in a way that has really never been seen before in this country. And that shows no sign of dying away. The SNP has seen its membership triple from 25,000 to over 80,000 in the weeks since the referendum. Political debate is still very much a major topic of conversation for ordinary people in Scotland now.</div>
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And so it is becoming ever clearer to the majority of Scots, particularly working class Scots, that the only way they can guarantee that the resources of Scotland are used in the best interests of the people of Scotland, and not squandered on endless wars and subsiding the greed of the wealthy, and the corrupt banking system, is through full independence.</div>
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If, as looks likely, there is a large number of SNP MP's elected to Westminster in 2015, and another SNP majority government in Holyrood in the Scottish elections in 2016, this creates a major headache for the British political establishment, who would have no legitimacy to continue their rule and their austerity policies in Scotland. This headache could quickly become a major political crisis if, as is expected, there is another hung parliament in Westminster, where no one Party has a majority, leaving the Scottish Nationalists holding the balance of power and potentially forcing Labour and Conservative parties into a pact in order to maintain a functioning government.</div>
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This will be exacerbated further if the promised UK referendum on leaving the EU takes place and the majority of English voters choose to leave the EU, but Scottish voters choose to remain.</div>
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What would be the legitimacy then of the British government to decide Scotland's future? With no political mandate in Scotland the mainstream UK parties have lost their moral right to rule Scotland. The political battle to end their rule has in reality only just begun.</div>
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<img alt="James Stuart political commetator from Edinburgh" src="http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20141101/384423_James%20Stuart.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-18867898866885328062014-09-04T04:51:00.001-07:002014-09-04T04:51:04.567-07:00"Hope over Fear" Scottish Independence Campaign Is A Working-Class Movement for Progress.<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/g4f9J0bFixk" width="480"></iframe>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-3836793470301401372014-08-07T00:20:00.001-07:002014-08-07T00:20:28.293-07:00Israel, the SWP and white privilege.<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Okay, I know you are all going to be shocked to the very core of your being, but brace yourselves. Im sharing a Socialist Worker article. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">And it gets even more Twilight Zone. Cos Im going to quote Tony Cliff now. Here it comes...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">“Israel</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> is not a colony suppressed by imperialism, but a settler’s citadel, a launching pad of imperialism. It is a tragedy that some of the very people who had been persecuted and massacred in such bestial fashion should themselves be driven into a chauvinistic, militaristic fervour, and become the blind tool of imperialism in subjugating the Arab masses.”<br /><br />Spot on. I guess it's the stopped clock syndrome. Infinite monkeys with typrwriters scenario.<br /><br />But what about this...<br /><br />- "Many Israelis hate this corruption, and are angry with the government. They see that the country is tumbling into poverty and the division between the poor and rich is rapidly increasing. Many realise that the education system has deteriorated. People are angry at all of these things.<br /><br />This does lead to an understanding of solidarity between workers, but this solidarity is easily contained within the context of the Israeli worker against the Israeli boss. It does not extend to Arabs.<br /><br />There have been many strikes in Israel, but they collapse once the question of the security of the state is raised. Many Israeli workers want a larger share of the pie, but they do not want share it with the Palestinians." -<br /><br />Absolutely true of course. But doesn't it apply just as much to the situation in England? In the US? Undoubtedly. Change "Israeli" for "English" or "whites", and "Palestinians" and "Arabs" for "immigrants" or "non-white" and it still pretty much stands as a statement of the imperialist nation labour aristocracy and Euro-settler white supremacist culture. And THAT is where the SWP, and the rest of the left, when push comes to shove, fall back in line behind their own imperialist ruling class. Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Russia, China, Zimbabwe, DPRK, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, etc, etc etc. When it comes to imperialism and their own ruling-class vs the oppressed, former colonial, rising nations and peoples of the global south, when it comes to the Labour Party, to the trade unions, to any serious resistance or analysis that deal with the "the question of the security of the state", the SWP et al, and indeed the class they aspire to lead, well, "they collapse... want a larger share of the pie".<br /><br />And for an Englishman, to an American, they see the whole world exactly the same as an Israeli sees Gaza. A threat to their privilege. And not even really human.<br /><br />"You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general: the same as what the bourgeois think. There is no workers' party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England's monopoly of the world market and the colonies." Engels, 1882.<br /><br />plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.<br /></span><br />
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Israeli society: No room for change</h1>
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<b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;">Collusion with the oppression of the Palestinians lies at the root of the Israeli left’s weakness, according to socialists Natalie Adler and Ron Oppenheim</span></span><br /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.600000381469727px;"><a href="http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/16806/Israeli+society%3A+No+room+for+change">http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/16806/Israeli+society%3A+No+room+for+change</a></span></span></b></div>
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<em>The Zionist dream of creating a homeland for Jewish people in historic Palestine produced a nightmare for the citizens of Israel and Arab countries. Constant war and the brutal oppression of the Palestinians have transformed the popular acceptance of Israel around the world into deep revulsion over its actions.</em></div>
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This was most notably seen in the huge anti-war movement against Israel’s recent assault on Gaza. But one place seems to be an exception – Israel itself.</div>
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While Britain and the US have witnessed people rise in mass movements against the imperialist policies of their government in the “war on terror”, Israel has seen very little opposition to the state’s wars.</div>
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<em>In fact, as last week’s elections showed, Israeli society is moving even further to the right. Natalie Adler and Ron Oppenheim are two young socialists who recently left Israel.</em></div>
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Racism and war distort Israeli society. It is a colonial settler state built on the ruins of Palestine. As a colonial enterprise, Israel is dependent on the backing of imperial powers. In return it acts as imperialism’s watchdog in the Middle East.</div>
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Israel has created many myths to justify its actions, among them that it is a democratic and enlightened society founded on socialist principles.</div>
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But Israel has very few progressive forces. It is a society where even those who consider themselves to be on the left accept the basic premise that Israel should remain a Jewish state. This means that there are no strong ideological grounds for Israel’s left to found itself on.</div>
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Most of the left see the 1967 war – when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on Jordan, Syria and Egypt, occupying the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Hights – as the root of the present conflict.</div>
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They advocate a two state solution, with Israel keeping the majority of historic Palestine while giving some territory back to its original inhabitants.</div>
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This is a fatal flaw, for it keeps the left firmly within the boundaries of Zionism. What’s missing is an understanding of the history of Zionism itself and that Israel was founded on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. In this light, it becomes obvious that the 1967 war was part of a larger scheme to grab more land.</div>
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Moshe Machover and Akiva Orr, two Israeli anti-Zionists, wrote The Class Character of Israel in 1972. In this pioneering Marxist analysis they wrote, “The permanent conflict between the settlers’ society and the indigenous, displaced Palestinian Arabs has never stopped and it has shaped the very structure of Israeli sociology, politics and economics.”</div>
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<span class="crosshead" style="font-weight: bold;">Campaign</span></div>
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The Israeli left accepts the “necessity and legitimacy” of Israel’s existence. The same people who will campaign for peace, want a halt to aggression towards the Palestinian civilians, and advocate returning the occupied territories also accept the lie that Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, is “backward and must be dealt with”.</div>
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So if Palestinian civilians are killed during a military operation it is because Hamas uses them as “human shields”, or because they “operate in densely populated” areas. This is why many left wing intellectuals in Israel supported the war on Gaza, as they did the 2006 war on Lebanon.</div>
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Many on the left would genuinely like to see Palestinians having freedom and a livelihood – but the moment that Israel’s existence comes into question, they are swept up by nationalism.</div>
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This means there is no genuine socialist tradition in Israel despite the feeling among many Israelis that it was founded on “socialist principles”.</div>
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Much is made of Israel’s origins as an apparently egalitarian society. In the 1950s the difference between rich and poor was the lowest in the Western world.</div>
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The Israeli trade union federation, the Histradut, was a key plank of the foundation of the country. In the first decades of the state it employed the majority of workers. But this union was formed to exclude Arab workers – it was a union that sought to organise only Jewish workers.</div>
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This same principle was applied to the Kibbutz movement, the “egalitarian” farming communities. The Kibbutz was once a central part of Israeli society, and was often regarded as a socialist experiment.</div>
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In reality these farms were built on land seized from Palestinians – much like all the early Zionist settlements. Despite the equality of life inside the Kibbutz for Jews, Arabs were excluded.</div>
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And many of these “socialist” enclaves have now disappeared. Today Israel has one of the highest disparities between wealth and poverty in the western world. Israeli society is riddled with corruption.</div>
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Many Israelis hate this corruption, and are angry with the government. They see that the country is tumbling into poverty and the division between the poor and rich is rapidly increasing. Many realise that the education system has deteriorated. People are angry at all of these things.</div>
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This does lead to an understanding of solidarity between workers, but this solidarity is easily contained within the context of the Israeli worker against the Israeli boss. It does not extend to Arabs.</div>
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There have been many strikes in Israel, but they collapse once the question of the security of the state is raised. Many Israeli workers want a larger share of the pie, but they do not want share it with the Palestinians.</div>
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Tony Cliff, a Palestinian Jew who came to Britain in 1947 and went on to found the Socialist Workers Party, wrote, “Israel is not a colony suppressed by imperialism, but a settler’s citadel, a launching pad of imperialism. It is a tragedy that some of the very people who had been persecuted and massacred in such bestial fashion should themselves be driven into a chauvinistic, militaristic fervour, and become the blind tool of imperialism in subjugating the Arab masses.”</div>
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This transformation from the “oppressed to the oppressor” has shaped Israeli society, and bred deep-seated racism that permeates all walks of life.</div>
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<span class="crosshead" style="font-weight: bold;">Aggressive</span></div>
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Racism offers an excuse for being oppressive. The other side are “like animals” so they are “aggressive”. But “our actions” are legitimised in the “interest of national defence”.</div>
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This racism is advocated through education, politics and the media. But it is not just directed at the Arabs and Palestinians.</div>
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There is a high level of racism within Israeli society itself – between the Ashkenazi (European Jews) and Mizrahi (oriental or eastern Jews). There is discrimination against the Mizrahi – they are paid less, and it is harder for them to get jobs or to rise in the ranks in the army.</div>
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But these divisions are superseded by the fear and hatred towards the Palestinians. So many at the “bottom” of Israeli society are also those who vote in large numbers for the more extreme Zionist parties.</div>
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Most of the characteristic “Israeli ways” are formed by the colonialist nature of the country.</div>
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On a subconscious level many Israelis understand that the Palestinians have suffered, but they fall back on racism as a mechanism that can help them cope with this feeling.</div>
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At its core Israel is a military state. It is a country constantly at war, because its very existence depends on denying rights of the Palestinians.</div>
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Those Israelis who refuse to serve in the army have a much harder time finding work. The army offers very prestigious and well paid jobs, as well as funding higher education. It is very attractive to the majority of Israelis, especially from among the poor.</div>
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But it is also within the army that some of the bravest opposition voices have emerged, but always at a high personal cost.</div>
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One soldier told us that once he was posted to Palestinian areas he began to confront the ugly truth of Israel. He discovered that Palestinians live in terrible conditions, and was disgusted by the way the military “handles the Occupied Territories”.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 10px;">
When soldiers were bored they would start shooting into crowds of Palestinians, and the Palestinian police would be blamed for “starting an incident” if they fired back. Soldiers he knew would take their weapons and grenades home during the weekend “to kill Arabs”.</div>
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He said he entered the army as a “good Israeli boy” and left questioning every aspect of Israeli society. He discovered the secret history of Israel, from the plan Dalet (known as Plan D) – the blueprint for the ethnic cleansing in 1948 – to the realisation that the wars we were told were instigated by “the other side” were started by Israel in order to grab more land.</div>
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When Israelis question these myths and lies they face being ostracised from family, friends and work. Many of those who come to similar conclusions end up leaving, or being forced to leave the country.</div>
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This is the harsh choice the left in Israel faces – accept Zionism and accept that there will never be justice for Palestinians. Or advocate a one state solution, that is a democratic state for Arabs and Jews. But this means rejecting the notion of a “Jewish only state” and accepting that Palestinians have a right to return.</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-81736141170809645092014-05-25T18:04:00.000-07:002014-06-19T11:14:13.236-07:00SCOTTISH GREEN VOTERS, SAY HELLO TO YOUR UKIP MEP. WELL DONE.<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Looks like UKIP got their first MEP in Scotland. The Unionists, from the Guardian to the tories, are crowing and cheering this as a great defeat for the SNP. The same SNP that came first (again) in</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> this election and maintained it's vote from 2009.<br /><br />Because let's be frank, given the choice between Scottish independence and fascism, even the pinkest of English liberals will not be able to stifle a smug cheer for fascism.<br /><br />Well, anyway, fucking shame on anyone in Scotland who voted UKIP, you are a fucking disgrace to our nation. 10% for a far-right, anti-immigrant, islamophobic and blatantly ANTI-SCOTTISH party is disgusting, nay, more, it is humiliating. You have now elected as your representative in Europe someone whose party holds Scotland and our democracy in utter contempt, who wants to blame not just our minorities, but every single one of us as a nation, for the economic shambles the neo-liberal politics that UKIP champions has created.<br /><br />But you know what, I blame Green voters the most. What the fuck were you thinking? This result in on your heads. You were told again and again, the last seat was a straight up fight between the SNP and UKIP. The Greens were not in this game, but by throwing away your vote on them, you took enough votes from the SNP to allow a right-wing scumbag to win. Rather than vote for the SNP, which shares at least some positions with the Greens (not least on independence and investment in renewable energy) and works well with them in parliament, you instead got elected someone who represents the anti-thesis of everything you believe in. You fucking mugs.<br /><br />Sad day for Scotland. Couldnt give a fuck about how England voted anymore. You are all fucking useless cunts.</span><br />
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Scotland's Ukip MEP: I'll take on Salmond over immigration</h1>
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<time content="2014-05-25T00:00:00+01:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime" datetime="2014-05-25" property="dc:issued" style="margin: 0px;">Sunday 25 May 2014</time></div>
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THE man who has become Ukip's first elected politician in Scotland has vowed to campaign against Alex Salmond's plans for greater immigration under independence.</div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/ukip-scottish-candidate-ill-take-on-salmond-over-immigration.24313688</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0DCukOq_js">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0DCukOq_js</a></span></span>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-43968918539662464702014-04-20T01:05:00.000-07:002014-04-20T03:02:03.656-07:00KILL THE POOR: FOODBANKS - THE NEW COMMUNIST THREAT!<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Just when you think the Daily Mail has plumbed the deepest, filthiest dregs...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">No ID, no checks... and vouchers for sob stories: The truth behind those shock food bank claims</span></h1>
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<li style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 1.4em;">Mail on Sunday undercover film exposes abuse of charity</span></b></li>
<li style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 1.4em;">Scroungers flout Trussell Trust's '9 visits' rule to stock up</span></b></li>
<li style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: 1.4em;">Repeat visits undermine the Trust's claim of 913,000 users</span></b></li>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><br /></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">By </span><a class="author" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Simon+Murphy" rel="nofollow" style="color: #003580; cursor: pointer; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">SIMON MURPHY</a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"> and </span><a class="author" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Sanchez+Manning" rel="nofollow" style="color: #003580; cursor: pointer; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">SANCHEZ MANNING</a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><br />Read more: <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2608606/No-ID-no-checks-vouchers-sob-stories-The-truth-shock-food-bank-claims.html#ixzz2zPZk5k00" style="color: #003399; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2608606/No-ID-no-checks-vouchers-sob-stories-The-truth-shock-food-bank-claims.html#ixzz2zPZk5k00</a></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">So, "Free" food banks? Basically a communist plot to undermine welfare "reform"! And you know they give food to asylum seekers too? And people who might not be on the verge of actual death through starvati</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">on?<br /><br />It isnt enough that they create the propaganda for demonising and vilifying the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, so that right-wing governments can claim popular support for ripping down the welfare system and throwing hundreds of thousands of the already poorest and most vulnerable into destitution.<br /><br />No, that was just the start. Now even charity, even this last thin line of hope, of subsistence, this too must be attacked, must be vilified, must be held down and killed.<br /><br />If anything demonstrates that for the tories and their kind, this isnt just about economics, about politics, about budgets, even just about taking from the poor and giving it to the rich, it is this. This is pure, callous class hatred. They really do want to see the poor suffer, poverty is not enough, you must starve. They genuinely will not stop until people are dying, not in the ones and two, but in the hundreds, then the thousands. Until millions are suffering the most unbearable hunger and pain, and then they can point and say, "They didnt work hard enough" as they wallow in their stolen, inherited loot and laugh at the "stupidity", "laziness" and "ugliness" of the poor.<br /><br />They enjoy to see us suffer.They hate us. They fear us, and loathe us. And they want us servile or dead. And they know that millions of selfish, greedy, shallow, corrupted, soulless sheep will fawn and crawl before them, whilst turning to put the boot in against their poorer neighbour on their behalf.<br /><br />They laugh at us. And so they should. Because as always we will do nothing about it. Their contempt at our weakness is justified. They are the ruling-class for a reason. And until our class, as a class, has the guts, the passion, the determination and the hate to make ourselves the ruling-class and turn those parasites into fertilizer, we will have no one to blame but each other - which is exactly what they want.<br /><br />As for the "journalists" behind this piece of poison, Simon Murphy and Sanchez Manning, Hell has a special place for you. Hope you get there soon.</span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><br />DEAD KENNEDY'S - KILL THE POOR</span></span><br />
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b style="border: 0px none; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">"Kill The Poor"</b></span><br />
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Efficiency and progress is ours once more<br />
Now that we have the Neutron bomb<br />
It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done<br />
Away with excess enemy<br />
But no less value to property<br />
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:<br />
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The sun beams down on a brand new day<br />
No more welfare tax to pay<br />
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light<br />
Jobless millions whisked away<br />
At last we have more room to play<br />
All systems go to kill the poor tonight<br />
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Gonna<br />
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight<br />
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Behold the sparkle of champagne<br />
The crime rate's gone<br />
Feel free again<br />
O' life's a dream with you, Miss Lily White<br />
Jane Fonda on the screen today<br />
Convinced the liberals it's okay<br />
So let's get dressed and dance away the night<br />
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While they:<br />
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight</div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br style="border: 0px none; color: black; font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;" /><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></span>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-15489144175387243772014-04-08T10:06:00.003-07:002014-04-08T11:11:04.563-07:00Scottish Independence would by "Cataclysmic" for NATO and western imperialism.<br />
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<span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;">And </span><a aria-haspopup="true" aria-owns="js_89" class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=8534485796" href="https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeGallowayMP" id="js_90" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19.31999969482422px; text-decoration: none;">George Galloway MP</a><span style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19.31999969482422px;"> and the rest of the loyalist Left wants us to "vote naw", because...well, because why? Because it seems to me, if the British ruling-class is starting to panic and saying independence is "cataclysmic" for their imperialist interest, then perhaps thats a pretty damn good reason to vote Yes!!...</span></h1>
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Former NATO secretary general says Scottish independence would be "cataclysmic"</h1>
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<span class="views-label views-label-title">by</span> <span class="field-content"><a href="http://www.cityam.com/profile/guy-bentley" style="color: #0098da; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Guy Bentley</a></span></div>
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<span class="field-content">April 8, 2014, 8:24am</span></div>
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Scottish independence would be "cataclysmic" for the West and would be celebrated by Britain's enemies, according to the former secretary general of Nato, Lord Robertson.</div>
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Speaking at the Brookings Institute, Lord Robertson said global stability could be threatened by a "debilitating divorce" between the UK and Scotland.</div>
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Taking the debate over independence well beyond the shores of the UK, Robertson urged Britain's allies to speak out against Scottish independence telling the audience, "this is not a purely domestic matter, even though it's a decision that will be taken by the Scottish people."</div>
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The former Labour politician warned that the decision to be taken by the Scottish people later this year would affect not only them but generations yet to come and those overseas had every right to make their voices heard.</div>
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However, a spokesman for Scotland's first minister Alex Salmond hit back, arguing that an independent Scotland would make a positive contribution to the world and that "It is disappointing but not surprising that Lord Robertson fails to recognise any of that in this crass and offensive speech."</div>
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-41138859846276511882014-03-20T11:50:00.000-07:002014-11-05T09:05:32.239-08:00Russian "imperialism" and the crisis in Ukraine. What is the answer? FUCK NATO. <div class="userContentWrapper aboveUnitContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 14.079999923706055px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-top: 15px;">
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<span class="userContent">A lot of liberal bleating that Russia's role regarding Ukraine and Crimea is "imperialist", so they can have an excuse to sit on the fence safely behind their own ruling class, which always seems to be the place you will find them.<br /><br />Now, ev<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">en if Russia was acting as an imperialist power, which it isnt (try actually reading some Lenin instead of just taking the word of Socialist Worker or whatever liberal rag you allow to think for you), even if it was, it would not make one jot of a difference to the position of any anti-imperialist in the west.<br /><br />Because quite simply, the main, in fact the only real enemy is at home. The defeat of western imperialism is our only concern in any conflict.<br /><br />It is 100 years since World War One started, and still the liberal left is making exactly the same pathetic arguments for its own cowardice and collaboration in the face of the crisis-stricken and bankrupt imperialist ruling-class's inevitable push for war.<br /><br />And so equally inevitably, the 'third-camp' pitches its tent under the safe and comfortable cover of the imperialist tree.<br /><br />"A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war.<br />...<br />Socialists must explain to the masses that they have no other road of salvation except the revolutionary overthrow of “their” governments, and that advantage must be taken of these governments’ embarrassments in the present war precisely for this purpose. "<br /><br />Lenin, Socialism and War (1915)<br /><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s+w/" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s+w/</a></span></span></div>
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Fuck NATO!<br />
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-46604972464464551402014-03-18T10:23:00.001-07:002014-03-18T10:23:46.964-07:00Scottish Independence Referendum 18th September 2014 - Six Months Until Scotland Makes It's Choice Between Two Futures...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NclkfOjQle0" width="480"></iframe>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-53709339661038239062014-03-03T14:37:00.005-08:002014-11-05T09:07:02.010-08:0030 Years Since The Miners Strike - A personal reflection.<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">30 years since probably the greatest act of class war resistance on this island in its history, the Great Miners Strike of 1984-85.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Believe it or not, before the strike, as an 11 year old kid, if asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> would have said "policeman" or soldier". The strike ended not long after I turned 13 and after I had seen first-hand the pit village I spent so many happy years of my childhood put under siege by tooled up riot police and turned into a battlefield, all I wanted to be was a revolutionary.<br /><br />In the following years, the mine was closed. The pit-village no longer exists, the sacked miners and their families vindictively socially cleansed, their community extinguished forever, their homes razed to the ground and replaced with expensive, soulless, new-build houses for the Thatcher generation middle-classes.<br /><br />30 years on, my anger still burns just as fiercely. I still look back and think "what if we had won? Where would we be?". A better place for sure. It wasnt just the miners that were beaten into defeat, it wasnt just "The Unions". It was all of us. And no other leader has stood for us as unflinchingly, as resolutely as Arthur Scargill.<br /><br />The scum and the scabs of right and of left may throw as much dirt at him as they like, try and belittle him, his legacy, his politics, but whatever they say, he is worth a million of any of them. Their hands are dripping in the blood of generations of our class, worldwide.<br /><br />Arthur Scargill never flinched in taking them on, and we owe him and the hundreds of thousands of miners and their families who fought and sacrificed not just for their jobs and communities, but for all of us, our undying gratitude and respect.<br /><br />Learn their lessons and next time we will win. We must.<br />" <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=108319229189455&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arthur-Scargill/108319229189455" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Arthur Scargill</a>, Arthur Scargill, We'll Support You Ever More".</span><br />
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Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-75412883283998435272014-02-17T04:22:00.000-08:002014-02-17T04:24:59.025-08:00Video: The Arab Sting And It's Consequences For The Global South<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Video recording of </span><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=546638546&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/sukant.chandan" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Sukant Chandan</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> (of <a href="http://sonsofmalcolm.blogspot.co.uk/">Sons of Malcolm</a> blog) and </span><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=732591090&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/dan.glazebrook.9" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Dan Glazebrook</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> (of <a href="http://rebelgriot.blogspot.co.uk/">The Rebel Griot</a> blog) giving a presentation on The Arab Sting And It's Consequences For The Global South.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Was originally streamed live on 16th Feb. Skip to 11min 30secs for the start of the presentation and avoid all the pre-match chair shuffling and sandwich sharing...</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-arab-sting-and-its-consequences-on-the-global-south" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-arab-sting-and-its-consequences-on-the-global-south</a><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Speakers:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Dr Abdal Aziz - Aljud Charity </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">George Shire - Zimbabwean Liberation War veteran, scholar and political activist</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Ammar Waqqaf - Syrian Social Club </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Dan Glazebrook - Author of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Divide-Ruin-imperial-strategy-crisis/dp/0991030311">'Divide and Ruin, The West's Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">Chaired by Sukant Chandan, Sons of Malcolm </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">On the third anniversary of the pro-nato uprising in Libya, the Libyan Aljud Charity and Sons of Malcolm presents an important conversation exploring the consequences of the 'Arab Spring' on the middle east' and North Africa, and more widely what this has resulted for the the vast majority of Humanity in the GlobalSouth.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">This event brings together speakers and attendees who are critical and radical voices loyal to the independence and Black and Brown liberation struggles of the GlobalSouth against white supremacy and imperialism.</span><img src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01836/Libya_1836406b.jpg" />Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-88022178761234266772014-02-10T16:05:00.006-08:002014-02-10T16:24:06.958-08:00Scottish Government effectively abolish ConDem Bedroom Tax in Scotland<br />
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<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">It is perverse that Labour are claiming credit for this. The Scottish National Party government did not need a single Labour or other opposition vote to pass this. And it is Labour councils across Scotland that were prematurely implementing the tax by sending out eviction notices. Of course if Labour MPs were bothered enough to get off their corrupt arses to turn up in Westminster to vote for their own bill, this would never have needed to be done. But they didnt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bedroom Tax: Hated Tory tax is banished from Scotland after vote lasting less than 10 seconds</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">(extracted from Daily Record - 6th Feb 2014)</span></h1>
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Scottish Government Finance Secretary John Swinney (SNP) announced he would provide the full funds needed to undo the Con-Dem cut.</div>
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Delighted campaigners were last night organising a Glasgow rally to celebrate their victory.</div>
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Bin The Bedroom Tax Coalition’s Sean Clerkin said: “This is the news everyone who has been involved in the campaign has been waiting for.</div>
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“I want to commend the Record for their fantastic coverage of this unjust policy.”</div>
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Swinney confirmed the lifeline as his £30billion budget for 2014-15 was approved at Holyrood.</div>
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He said the Scottish Government will spend more than £244million helping those affected by UK Government welfare cuts between 2013-14 and 2015-16 – at the expense of spending in other areas.</div>
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He confirmed an additional £15million has been found so the entire £50million required would be available in benefits to social housing tenants judged to have a spare bedroom.</div>
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Swinney said: “None of the funding is a solution to the bedroom tax. This is about mitigation, about picking up the pieces from Westminster’s iniquitous policy.</div>
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“The only real solution is to scrap the tax and this Government believes the only way to do that is for this Parliament to have full powers over welfare in Scotland.”</div>
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Scottish Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) said, </div>
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"This is not a long-term solution but it’s enough to ensure people are protected from the effects of the tax.</div>
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The only real solution is to scrap the tax for good.</div>
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We are in the ridiculous position of having to find money to mitigate the impact of a policy imposed on us by a government we didn’t vote for.</div>
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To make matters worse, we are being forced to ask Westminster’s permission to allow us to spend all of this money – Scotland’s money.</div>
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But the cost of mitigating the tax in Scotland is a drop in the ocean compared to the £2billion of welfare cuts being inflicted on Scotland’s most vulnerable in the current year.</div>
<img alt="Nicola Sturgeon speaks in Perth" src="http://i3.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article2468774.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Sturgeon-2468774.jpg" height="320" width="226" /> <img src="http://i4.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article3116032.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/JS13868876-3116032.jpg" height="212" width="320" />Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-77726171528125636632014-02-10T15:57:00.003-08:002014-02-10T16:29:30.780-08:00The Left and Scottish Independence: Break Britain or Save the Empire for the Workers?<br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">One of the most common arguments we hear from leftists against supporting Scottish independence is that this will somehow weaken or divide the British Labour Movement & the struggle for socialism. You will hear this line from Labour Party hacks all the way through to anarchist idealists.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">But it completely fails to address this simple fact. There is NO united British labour movement. There is NO struggle for socialism. There is not even anything approaching a serious resistance to cuts.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">There is nothing happening now that will in anyway be threatened by Scottish independence.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Quite the contrary is true. Scottish independence will actually, pretty much at a stroke, meet the demands of most of the campaigns that do actually exist; whether it be over the bedroom tax, immigration rights, ending welfare cuts, anti-war, anti-nuclear, etc.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">And by doing so this can only provide a positive example for those fighting against the commonly held belief south of the border that cuts & war are necessary, that there is no alternative. Because the alternative will be right there, just next door. Far from weakening the position of the working-class in this island, it will strengthen it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Really, the real fear behind this argument is this; that independence will weaken not the spurious & ill defined 'labour movement', which no longer even exists in any meaningful sense anyway, but the Labour Party. That without Scotland, England will be condemned to endless tory governments. We will put aside the rather offensive implication that the nation of Scotland should continue to have to suffer Tory governments that is never votes for, just on the off chance that Labour get elected sometimes, and point out two things.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">One, Scotland has only twice provided enough Labour seats to determine the outcome of a UK general election. Twice. And the last time was 38 years ago. Every other time a Labour government has been elected, it has been elected on a majority of English seats.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Second, F*** Labour. Does anyone still actually believe that the Labour Party & the trade unions are just holding back waiting for their moment before they take power & nationalise the top 200 monopolies & send the Royals into exile? Has anyone ever seriously believed that at any time in the last 20 years?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Labour MPs couldn't even be bothered to vote for their own bill to end the bedroom tax. It could be gone, right now, and the ConDems left in disarray. But no, they couldnt even bring themselves to do that. And meanwhile the biggest trade unions, largely based in the public sector, are falling over themselves trying not to rock the boat as they continue to implement government cuts on their behalf.</span><img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/3/30/1364668146325/Protest-bedroom-tax-Liver-008.jpg" /><br />
(Labour thought of it. England voted for it. Scottish Govt axed it.)<br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">So much for the 'British labour movement'.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">So what then is left of the argument? 'We want fewer borders, not more'. By keeping powerful, aggressive imperialist states intact? Nice try hippy. But if there is ever to be unity of peoples it will only come about when the imperialist states have been broken and shattered, and THEN we could see some global unity being actually able to develop - and even then it wont be coming from anywhere north of the Med or the Rio Grande.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Unless by breaking down borders you mean you just want the British Empire back ruling the world, which, frankly might not be far from the truth when it comes down to it for some of these white 'one-world' defenders of 'universal human values'. You know, the ones who dropped spreading 'civilisation' for delivering 'civil-rights'. On cruise missiles.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Okay, so I guess that's it. Don't be coming at us with your 'no borders', trying to claim the red in the Union Flag is for some mythical 'working-class unity', when we know it is the stain of the blood of the workers of the world. It just won't wash.</span><br />
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<img src="http://www.scotsman.com/webimage/1.3013068.1374687329!/image/174139006.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_595/174139006.jpg" height="226" width="320" /><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">They call us 'narrow nationalists' and hint at fascism and racial hate, division and sectarianism, oppression & impoverishment, even though they know it is contrary to the ideals of every single political formation in Scotland that supports independence.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">But these are the defining characteristics of the Kingdom they wish to keep 'united'. Of the people they find themselves standing alongside. This insatiable need to dominate and divide, hate and plunder, all wrapped up in the red, white & blue. That is the nationalism the 'internationalists' defend when they oppose Scotland's independence.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;" />
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">Because in the final analysis, it really is this simple. Breaking the British State will be the greatest achievement of the people of this island in 300 years of bloody Union. And it will be the greatest gift we can give to a world where not one corner has not at some point felt the boot of British imperialist brutality on it's neck. And where far too many still do.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px;">'Yes' in 2014 isn't just for the people of Scotland. It is for all the people of this island. All of the people of this world. It really is that big. This small little corner of northern Europe can make a decision that really will make a difference world-wide. A modest one perhaps, but it is real and; it is very much achievable. No, it isn't the Bolshevik revolution. No one ever claimed otherwise. But it is revolutionary. And if you can't understand why, then you really do need to go homeward and think again.</span><br />
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<img src="http://socialistresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/mailchimppic.jpg" height="122" width="320" />Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-9450581388601449442014-02-10T15:55:00.001-08:002014-02-10T16:35:22.786-08:00Sucks that being gay is illegal in Russia. Or at least it would if it were true...<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Sucks that being gay is illegal in Russia. Or at least it would if it were true...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">"The age of consent currently stands at 16 since 2003, regardless of sexual orientation.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Transsexual and transgender people can change their legal gender a</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">fter corresponding medical procedures since 1997.[note 1]<br />Homosexuality was officially removed from the Russian list of mental illnesses in 1999 (after endorsement of ICD-10).<br /><br />As far as adoptions of children: Single persons living within Russia, regardless of their sexual orientation, can adopt children. Russian children can be adopted by a single homosexual who lives in a foreign country provided that country does not recognize same-sex marriage.[15] A couple can adopt children together, as a couple, only if they are a married heterosexual couple."<br /><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLGBT_rights_in_Russia&h=UAQGv90LB&s=1" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Russia</a><br /><br />So, perhaps not 100% perfect then, but still pretty damn legal.<br /><br />Meanwhile, In the good ol' US of A...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/05/gay_people_are_still_being_arrested_for_having_consensual_sex_in_some_red.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/05/gay_people_are_still_being_arrested_for_having_consensual_sex_in_some_red.html</a></span>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-84368612084080904162014-01-01T20:53:00.001-08:002014-01-01T20:53:12.266-08:00DPRK: Kim Jong Un's New Year address for 2014 [English]<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/STjSMAE9u_0" width="459"></iframe>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8145320742032689641.post-220167222507130182013-12-31T22:18:00.001-08:002013-12-31T22:18:10.613-08:00Chinese President Xi Jinping's New Years Message 2014<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">"Our ultimate goal is to in pushing forward the reform is to make the nation more prosperous and strong, society more fair and just, and people's lives better"</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">"The universe is boundless, the stars shine bright. Seven billion people share our world. People should help each other. People in the same boat should row together. We should seek common development."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">"The Chinese people are working hard to achieve the Chinese Dream. It is our hope that people in other countries can achieve their dreams too."</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ej17UGBrXwM" width="480"></iframe>Reiver97http://www.blogger.com/profile/00980598914914672816noreply@blogger.com0