Anarchoblogs

   

    The media is now full of all those well heeled “experts” calling for deep cuts in government spending. We are bombarded with headlines reading; “Business leaders have demanded that the government start making public spending cuts this year to reduce the UK's £178bn deficit.” Not only are they calling for deep cuts but they want them now, or even yesterday. At least two employers’ groups, the CBI and the Institute of Directors have spouted that faster cuts in government borrowing are needed to restore credibility in public finances.

      It sounds all very scientific and fair, except that there is no science behind these statements, just greed. Savage cuts in government spending means more out-sourcing to the private sector, (the CBI mob) and of course eventually less tax for them to pay as government spending drops. As for the “fair” part, well, not one of those mouthing off about cuts in government spending will be in the least hurt by those cuts. No that honour falls on you and I, we are the ones that will suffer under any government spending cuts, health, education, pensions, social benefits, the young, the elderly, the unemployed, (and that army is set to grow) the low paid, even those who may think they are reasonably comfortable, they also will feel the pain. Yet not one of those who will be harshly treated by these cuts is in any way responsible for the government’s debt. The debt is there because a bunch of greedy sleaze groomed parasites blew billions in their blind quest for pots of cash for nothing, sometimes called fancy accounting. They blew it, they screwed up big time, and it looked like some of them would go out of business. So their minders, the equally sleazy parliamentarians, over burdened with their expenses, came running to the rescue and handed them billions of our money. Our generosity is now to be repaid with a kick in the balls, to which we are supposed to say,”thank you kind sirs, for saving the financial spivs, of course this should be said with a slight curtsey.

     Well why don’t we kick back and refuse to accept any cuts in our living standard, refuse to accept working longer to get our reduced pensions, refuse to see our kids education going done the tubes, refuse to see our national health system decimated and privatised, refuse to accept wage freezes or wage cuts that would return this generation and the next back to the Victorian era. What would function in this world if it was not for the working class, we built this world, it is our world, it’s time to take it back.

    

     8,000 marched through Glasgow on the EIS demonstration on Saturday 6th. On Monday 8th March a two day strike by public service workers. The cuts are coming fast and furious as well as deep and vicious, so let's keep the fight against them coming just as fast and furious. These cuts are across all sections of the working class and demand a class wide response. Working or unemployed, retired or in education, these cuts are aimed at you. It is important that we organise across union borders and into the community. It is being demanded that we pay for the bankers greed and the sleazy politicians incompetence. They will not in any way shape or form suffer from these cuts, they just implement them, while enjoying massive salaries, unbelievable bonuses, expenses and mind blowing pensions. This bunch of spivs and parasites must be faced down, we can't afford to let them send the next generation back to Victorian times.

       Why do we have to appeal to them for a decent standard of living? We make everything, we distribute everything, then we beg them to give us a decent life. I’m sure we could come up with a more just and sustainable system without using too much imagination Why put up with a system that sees a bunch of incompetent greedy parasites cream off a life of unearned opulence while we struggle for a decent life. We have the power, the skills, the resources, and now the opportunity, all we are lacking is the will, the will to transform this wage-slave system into a society built on mutual aid, voluntary co-operation and free association and based on sustainability. A society that sees to the needs of all our people, a society of justice before greed and profit.

Woman and Children Facing Threat of Violence Left Hanging by Toronto Community Housing‏
Woman and Children Facing Threat of Violence Left Hanging by Toronto Community Housing

Picket TCH Head Office,

931 Yonge Street,

Thursday, March 11, 11.30 AM

Yen Tang reported serious threats from a male neighbour to the police. The Catholic Childrens' Aid Society took the matter seriously enough that they wrote a letter saying that the children should not be living where they were. TCH staff told Yen that she would be placed on an emergency transfer list, a home in another part of the City was suggested and she was told that it would be ready within three months.

Not able to stay in the place while she waited for the transfer, Yen and her kids moved in temporarily with some friends in another TCH community. However, local staff informed the friend that her rental subsidy would be taken away if Yen continued to stay there. She and her children have now had to move into a place that is far from their school. They are having to double up in a situation that is not sustainable for anyone involved.

After three months, Yen visited the unit she had been promised and saw no signs of work having been carried out on it. She checked in and was told that the male neighbour was denying the threats and the transfer was now on hold. An OCAP delegation went to TCH to deal with this. We explained that the issue was not to decide anyone's guilt beyond reasonable doubt but to act decently and reasonably in the face of a very likely threat to the safety of a family. Yen was put back on the transfer list, with the usual pretense that the decision to remove her was a miscommunication.

Yen and her kids have been waiting much longer than the promised three months and a recent letter to TCH asking when the matter would be resolved has gone unanswered. This family has suffered enough and faced enough disruption. They have a right to a decent and safe home.

Please support our action to win this basic right for Yen Tang and her children.

About:

           Women have fought for their rights and others throughout the decades and are still doing so. Glasgow Women’s Library is teaming up with the Workers Educational Association to offer 6 sessions showcasing some real Firebrand Women and the campaigns that they worked on which have allowed us the rights that we have today. Come along to hear the inspirational stories of the role women played in these campaigns.

A NEEDLESS SEA OF TEARS.

Though we live in a world of callous commerce

and know justice

is an altar where the caring are sacrificed,

see freedom as a river that runs parched

in the fierce desert of poverty,

our thoughts cannot be chained

our dreams will not be caged.

We will think beyond the profit race

dream beyond the market place

in friendship clasp each human hand

with compassion try to understand

our differences, our hopes, our fears,

dragging this world from its needless sea of tears

 

      

       Why should somebody who has worked all their life and paid tax and national insurance, now be told they will have to work longer before getting their pension? Why should parents be told that the education for their kids will be cut? Why should someone on benefit be told that their benefits will be cut? Why should the elderly be told that their care will be reduced? Why should someone working away diligently to earn their bread be told that they are now unemployed? What have these people done wrong? The simple answer is that they paid billions to the bankers. So now they have to suffer. In a situation like this, peasants with pitchforks comes to mind

        I believe that the people of this country should be watching and learning from the Greek resistance, perhaps it might also stimulate and inspire parallel movements in this country and other countries whose people are likewise pissed-off because they have to bear the costs of a crisis they did not cause and a “recovery” that is in fact a recovery for the elite financial parasites and nothing to do with them, except that they are expected to take the full force of all the cuts. Who can criticise the people for trying to safeguard their standard of living. However the Greek resistance would need allies elsewhere to succeed and vice versa. This capitalism global crisis is just one of recurring crisis in a catalogue of various grades of crisis and as usual is a burden for the working classes of the world. However every crisis in the capitalist system should be seen as an opportunity not just to reform but to destroy the system and replace it with a fairer and more just, non-exploitative system that sees to the needs of all our people. To suffer the brutal onslaught of this crisis while missing a chance to grasp the opportunities that it offers would only make this crisis a greater tragedy for the working class.

        Perhaps it is time the peasants remembered where they put their pitchforks.

The following appeal for solidarity with Mexican mineworkers in the 'Los Mineros' union comes from the online labour solidarity site Labour Start. Note that the workers have occupied the mine.

Some 1,200 members of Mexico’s National Miners’ and Metalworkers’ Union, or Los Mineros, have been on strike since July 2007 at the Cananea mine over health and safety and other contract violations. Grupo Mexico – the mining giant which operates Cananea – and the Mexican government have continuously tried to end the strike and crush the union. The Government of Mexico has threatened and jailed union leaders, illegally frozen union bank accounts and failed to investigate or prosecute assassinations of union members. On February 11, a federal court gave Grupo Mexico permission to fire the striking workers and terminate the labor agreement, effectively eliminating the right to strike in Mexico. The Mexican government has threatened to use armed force to gain control of Cananea. The Los Mineros members at Cananea are resolved to continue occupying the mine until a fair labour agreement is reached. Los Mineros is one of the strongest and most democratic trade unions in Mexico.For more information see the ICEM and IMF websites.

We support Los Mineros in their fight for justice against the Mexican government and the attack on labor and human rights posed by Grupo México throughout the country, and specifically at Cananea. We call on the Mexican government to withdraw its threats to use armed force in Cananea and instead seek a peaceful solution to the conflict that respects the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. Your government’s interference in union governance, its threatening and jailing of union leaders, freezing union bank accounts, declaring strikes illegal and failing to prosecute the killers of union leaders, are serious and unacceptable violations of basic human rights.

  

       Anarchism attempts to create a society of free association, voluntary co-operation and mutual aid, and free from the greed devouring drive for profit. Most people would agree that it is a desirable aim, the difference of opinion is usually in how do we get there. Do we get there with or without violence? Can violence ever be justified in an attempt to create a better world? I don’t believe there is an absolute law on the matter, circumstances and those involved must be the final arbitrator. My own personal opinion seems best expressed by Martin Luther King in the following quotation. ---”As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked - and rightly so - what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government.”

      Today, as at the time of Martin Luther King, we see the corrupt governments of America and Britain and a rat bag of others throwing indescribable massive violence at innocent peoples of other lands in an attempt to solve their own problems while condemning all other violence that may arise as a result of their actions. Where should the ordinary people of the world stand on this? Since it is always the ordinary people that suffer in such action, it is obvious if we wish to be free from this violence we must unite and put an end to the power of the state, talking to the state apparatus has never stopped the state’s violence, we must create a society where it is the people that are involved, that make the decisions, not the war-lords nor the corporate greed machine.

     I believe that anarchism is the ultimate social system for humanity. It is based on the individual’s rights, it is free from coercion, it aims for sustainability, and is based on those basic but fundamental principles of , free association, voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. To some it is an impossible dream but in reality it is possible if the will of the people so desire. We are governed by consent, we can withdraw that consent and create our own new world free from war, poverty and exploitation.