Campaign for a Democratic Europe

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:18:00 +0000

It's the right of every Englishman to have his country robbed blind by the banks

You can see why, after 50 years of putting up with Europe, this was finally the issue where we couldn't take any more. Because the bastards were insisting we impose a vague regulation or two on our bankers and speculators, those brave and tireless souls who invest round the clock to keep us safe with not a thought for themselves. Well, the French had the audacity to suggest someone kept an eye on them from time to time. Haven't bankers suffered enough?

So, just like in 1940, we stand alone, and hopefully at every bus stop, you'll hear the plucky British saying: "Blooming Krauts, who do they think they are telling us our bankers aren't allowed to rob us blind? That's the right of every Englishman, to have his country robbed blind by bankers. Now Frau Merkel wants to make them only rob me nine-tenths blind until they get themselves straight. Well, we fought off the Luftwaffe, so we'll see off this lot an' all."

Soon we'll hear heartwarming stories of national pride, with old-age pensioners on the regional news saying: "I had £20 put by for a new hearing aid, but instead I've sent it off to Goldman Sachs to let them know I, for one, am willing to carry on getting fleeced by them, whether the Frogs say I can or not." And charming letters from children will be published, saying: "I wanted to stop those Europeans make nasty rules for our banks, so I sold my rabbit to the butcher and gave the money to Fred Goodwin. It might not be much, but it's all I've got".

There are many reasons to be suspicious of the European Union, but it seems the ones we're supposed to be annoyed about are when they pass rules stopping employers from making people work longer hours than anywhere else, or insisting on extra holidays.

And the City of London wasn't necessarily the most loved institution, so it's taken quite an effort for the Government to present an attempt to tax them slightly as a similar act to Hitler's invasion of Poland. So maybe other unpopular groups ought to try a similar strategy. Paedophiles should issue a statement saying: "Would you believe what they're suggesting in Strasbourg? They want a law regulating our porn sites across the whole European Union." Then the Daily Mail will scream that we simply can't tolerate this unconstitutional bullying.

And anyone caught going berserk in a public building with an axe can spend all week debating whether a European axe law would destroy our sovereignty and what the Hungarians were offering and whether we're isolated outside the Euro-lunatic zone, and, with a bit of luck, they'll have half the country in a state of confusion and the other half screaming, "At last! An axe murderer prepared to defend Britain!", while it's gently forgotten that decapitation shouldn't, on the whole, really be celebrated at all.

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:13:00 +0000

Wool Bwitannia

The Pomp and pageantry that draws the Wool over our eyes ... In a time of mass unemployment, homelessness & poverty you can almost hear our dear Royal Family echo the words, "Let them eat cake"...

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Keiser Report on RT

Every week on RT Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines. This week Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert report on downgrades, gold bars and third worlds. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Taki Oldham, director of The Billionaires Tea Party, about tea parties, “astroturfing” and Ayn Rand.

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Decentralized Global Rebellion against Neoliberal Economic Policies

In this edition of Press TV's On the Edge with Max Keiser, Max discusses the link between the worker's struggle in Wisconsin and the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia with the journalist and blogger, David DeGraw.

DeGraw believes what we are seeing in Wisconsin, Egypt, Tunisia and all over the world is a decentralized global rebellion against neo-liberal global economic policies. He believes the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, the IMF and the World Bank are the constituents of this destructive force.

Watch Max Keiser's excellent Keiser Report on Russia Today (available on Web, Youtube and Freeview)

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:09:00 +0000

Who they're working for

Shocking new financial manouevres by the British government show who it’s really working for.

[Y]ou must first understand that the government is not managing the economy for the people of this nation. It is managing it for a tiny transnational elite, a kind of global gated community. To the people inside the gates, who fund the Conservative party, who own our politics, the media and the banks, the rest of us are an inconvenience, to be bribed, threatened or fooled.

more...

Orwell's Memory Hole: Blame Britain's foreign policy for the terror thre...

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:04:00 +0000

Orwell's Memory Hole: Blame Britain's foreign policy for the terror thre...: "In her excellent novel, White Teeth, Zadie Smith reminds us that Britain has never been inhabited by one homogeneous tribe with one homogen..."

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:41:00 +0000

Egypt on the brink of a bloodbath
by Thierry Meyssan

The mainstream media are enthralled by the demonstrations in Egypt and are heralding the advent of a Western-style democracy throughout the Middle East. Thierry Meyssan refutes this interpretation. According to him, antagonistic forces have been set in motion, the outcome of which will turn against the order imposed by the United States in the region.

more...

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:57:00 +0000

The Crisis of Civilization

The Crisis of Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.

Weaving together archival film footage and animations, film-maker Dean Puckett (The Elephant In The Room) and international security analyst Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed – author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It - take you on a surreal journey through an alarming tapestry of global systemic failure.

Offering a stunning wake-up call proving that ‘another world’ is not merely possible, but on its way, they warn that the inability to recognize the interconnections between different crises is preventing us, as a civilization, from saving ourselves.

http://crisisofcivilization.com/film/

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:01:00 +0000

The Real MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. stood for revolutionary transformation; he is used today to support policies that he fought against.

More at The Real News

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:07:00 +0000

Flamenco Against the Banksters

Video of one of a spate of anarchist flamenco actions against banks in southern Spain, this one in Seville. For many more similar videos see here

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 19:38:00 +0000

Russia Today: Ex-ambassador claims UK capitalized on Afghan adventure

The UK's former ambassador to Kabul has slammed the British army commanders in Afghanistan, accusing them of sacrificing an effective war strategy to cost-cutting – a revelation that RT’s military analyst Evgeny Khrushchev says outshines WikiLeaks.

Khrushchev says Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles revealed that the British military used their NATO mission in Afghanistan as a “military safari to enhance and to expand their UK military budget.”

“What the ambassador failed to say is that it was the British military presence on the ground in Helmund province that jump-started and exponentially expanded the opium production from southern Afghanistan to all across the country, under the watchful guidance and protection of the brave British soldiers,” Khruschev adds.

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:52:00 +0000

UK diplomat admits: 'We went to war to keep the Army busy'.

Now we have it from a member of the corrupt old British establishment why the British army was so keen on going to Afghanistan. It feared cuts in manpower if it couldn't be used somewhere!!

"Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles said he had been told by the former head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, that if he did not re-deploy battlegroups coming free from Iraq he would lose them in a future defence review."

"In a written memorandum to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, he said the Afghan campaign had seen 'unprecedented' resources diverted to the Army, and that most soldiers appeared to be 'enjoying' it."

Predictably, Dannatt denied the allegation to which Cowper-Coles replied,'He is lying, I am afraid. I can recall him saying it, sitting in his office in the Ministry of Defence.'

Another reason given was that it was a face-saving exercise.

"Sir Sherard said British commanders also saw the mission in Afghanistan as an opportunity to redeem their reputation in the eyes of the Americans after the criticisms of their performance in Basra."

"The war in Afghanistan has given the British Army a raison d'etre it has lacked for many years, and new resources on an unprecedented scale,' he said."

Raison d'etre? Well, if you think about it, if the British army was not in Ulster, Iraq or Afghanistan where else could it go to shoot up the population? The streets of Birmingham, Manchester and London?

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 23:21:00 +0000

Carnival of Resistance

A film made of the student demonstrations against tuition fee increases last year. Tuition fee increases were one of the early austerity measures implemented by a reactionary Coalition government. What will happen when other austerity measures begin to hurt people? Will young and old join together with the trades unions in an organized resistance against the concerted attacks against them being made by the capitalist system and its gangsters-in-charge?

Will the rest of this country now follow the example of our young?

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:07:00 +0000

Imperialism & the Crisis of Capitalism

Veteran left-winger, Tariq Ali, links the global struggle against the Evil Empire to the unrest and rebellion now beginning to manifest in Britain as a result of the austerity measures taken by the Coalition's ruling elite in response to the self-induced crisis brought about by the greed and fraud of the banksters.

"Austerity measures are creating a new mood all over Europe, not just in this country with the student rebellion. All over Europe there is a new mood, people wanting answers, people knowing instinctively that there is an alternative, as of course there is an alternative, and the alternative is to challenge the domination of this form of capitalism ... We have to carry on, young and old together, fighting against a system that tries to stop us and that tries to punish us for all its own mistakes."

And on the nature of the struggle Tariq observes, "There has to be a constant fight back. This is nothing new, it's a continuum. And it will carry on being a continuum as long as successive British governments, Labour, Tory or Coalition are linked into the American war-machine. This is a tiny north-European country. It should not have such a large military force, it should not be attached to the American Empire, but it is ... we have to understand the reasons ... the British economy is highly dependent on global capitalism. What happens to that capitalism affects how Britain is governed, affects how capitalism rules in this country and the alternative to the imperialist system requires an alternative form of rule in this country which says very clearly and firmly that the market and profit are not the priorities of any progressive state. Once you've said that then you can move progressively forward."

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:23:00 +0000

Seeds of Revolution?

The video below was filmed for the Coalition of Resistance at the Youth, Students and Educational Workshop in Camden, London, UK last November. It highlights a 15-year-old speaker who shares his experiences following the student demonstrations against tuition fee increases.

Listening to him, it is clear that the experience of a mass demonstration has given this youth a sense of political militancy which he otherwise might have missed out on. While demonstrations are largely ignored by our ruling elites and suitably vilified by their media whores they do provide a sense of solidarity and common purpose which the otherwise alienated individual might never experience. And the real, repressive face of the state is seen by all to raise its ugly head in the violent methods of the Police who, after all, are only doing the dirty work of the politicians who rubber-stamp their methods.

Here is a young student who has woken up to the nasty realities of the world we live in. He is one of many others who underwent a similar experience during those recent demos. As the swingeing spending cuts being implemented by Britain's reactionary Coalition government hit its people we must hope that the students' reaction heralded just the beginning of many more similar and greater demonstrations against the state and the capitalist system. For in doing so, the people of Britain would be joining to bring about a far greater revolution, already beginning to take place in other parts of Europe and the World.

For more read Counterfire.org

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:23:00 +0000

War on Terror? War IS Terror!

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:35:00 +0000

Biden: "We are not leaving in 2014"

Recent utterances by US Vice-President, Joe Biden, confirm that US occupation forces in Afghanistan have no intention of leaving in three years' time.

The release of large amounts of classified documents has shown how eager the administration is to tell the American public the exact opposite of what they are telling one another. It seems that the classification system isn’t even necessary for this, however, as Vice President Biden, fresh off of pledging to the American people that the US would be totally out of Afghanistan “come hell or high water, by 2014” has now told a completely different story to Afghan officials.

Biden was in Kabul last Tuesday when he promised Karzai a lasting American commitment to the country well beyond 2014, when NATO forces are scheduled to turn over security of the nation to Afghan forces.

So despite any pretence to their public by US or UK politicians it looks like the Evil Empire sees its current occupation of Afghanistan (as well as Iraq) as part of its long-term geopolitical strategy of global 'full spectrum dominance'.

We have already seen how NATO, the cat's-paw of US neo-colonialist foreign policy, was pulled into helping police a military occupation thousands of miles away from the north Atlantic, causing that organization to morph into a global military force as NATO International. Some of us remember the empty promise made by NATO, during the days of the Cold War, that when the Warsaw Pact dissolved itself so would NATO. Far from dissolving itself NATO has grown into a global military force.

Currently there are some 150,000 NATO troops, predominantly from the United States, and NATO estimates that there are 25,000 Taliban forces in the country, which is the exact same estimate they made a year ago. Despite claims of “progress” in the war, violence is still on the rise across the nation.

And while Asia is still the primary focus of attention the US is increasingly looking to Africa as the next big source of energy supplies necessary for its interests. More of that anon...

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 03:27:00 +0000

Anonymous, WikiLeaks and The Matrix Generation

Throughout history, each new generation has questioned and rebelled against what had come before. Generations X and Y grew up with the dot-com bubble and ubiquitous digital technology. This group of teens and young adults today has largely been viewed as tamed, apathetic, and glued to their screens. Yet, now the little known underground subculture of hackers that was brought to worldwide attention by WikiLeaks seems to call for a shift in this view. Here arose a pocket of passionate activists united through sharing ideas beyond cultural and geopolitical boundaries in the spirit of the open source principles. This has brought fire to a public contaminated by cynicism. Perhaps this generation is following the age-old tradition of youthful idealism rebelling against the inequities of the established order after all.

Each age has had a literary imagination that guided it. There was the Tolkien masterpiece, Lord of the Rings and then Star Trek. Now, The Matrix has become a central story of this generation. What is emerging now is the Matrix Generation.

In an article called Generation W: WikiLeaks Ignites a New Generation of Hacktivists, Urizenus Sklar (Jan 4, 2011) described how the challenges of this age have ignited a new generation of hacktivists that is indicative of an emerging worldwide culture of dissent among the younger generation. He characterizes this as reacting to the governmental abuses of the George W. Bush era. But, in reality the current malaise goes much deeper than a particular regime, as an ever evolving cancer of corruption and abuse of power has been emanating from Washington for some time and has become pervasive as a corporate and government model all over the world. People are now starting to confront in a more widespread fashion the systemic moral corruption that has been building and WikiLeaks has catalyzed and empowered this backlash ...

more

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:18:00 +0000

Taliban can fight Forever

Continuing the TRNN discussion between Paul Jay and Rahimullah Yusufzai why the Afghan 'war' is unwinnable ... and an occupation equally fraught with disaster.

More at The Real News

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:40:00 +0000

Afghanistan: from Occupation to Permanent Occupation?

One has to ask why the US keeps shifting its goal-posts for troops withdrawal. While the spin put out to the public is that US/NATO still hopes to win this so-called war on terror the reality is that the presence of US/NATO in Afghanistan has geopolitical motives and, as such, is an Occupation and not a war. The fake War on Terror, launched after the 911 conspiracy, was simply the ideological rationale fabricated by the warmongers to hide their naked aggression in what is nothing more than 21st Century colonialism or Full Spectrum Dominance.

The US has over 700 military bases across the world.

It was never a question of whether the Evil Empire would 'win' in Afghanistan but simply one of how it could enter that country and establish its bases for a permanent military presence. The fake war on the Al Qaeda bogeyman gave them that excuse. And unless US/NATO is hammered into submission by the Afghan resistance we can expect to see them in that country for a very long time.

Meantime, our ruling elite will continue to shed crocodile tears over the blood sacrifice of countless innocent Afghan lives and those of our young men and women as they become cannon-fodder in the interests of the US Military-Industrial-Political Complex and business corporations. The evil pretence will go on and on and on...

More at The Real News

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:28:00 +0000

Afghanistan's Untold Story

Blogger Michael Caddell on Radio Free Kansas interviews Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, co-authors of Invisible History, Afghanistan's Untold Story.

Those who want to understand the history of Afghanistan up to and including its occupation by US/NATO forces need to read this book and listen to this interview.

"Invisible History presents a fresh, comprehensive analysis of Afghanistan's political history that begins at the roots of tribal leadership and ultimately emphasizes our current political moment and the impact of ongoing US military intervention. Fitzgerald and Gould tell the real story of how the US came to be in Afghanistan..."

PDF Excerpts

INVISIBLE HISTORY BLOG

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 19:46:00 +0000

Wikileaks and the New Global Gestapo

The US Department of Justice has issued a subpeona against Twitter demanding customer account details of Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Rop Gongrijp, and Icelandic MP, Birgitta Jonsdottir.

As well as this the subpoena goes onto demand all the IP addresses of the 670,000 people worldwide who connected to the Wikileaks account.

Iceland's Foreign Minister, Oessur Skarphedinsson, said it was not acceptable that US authorities had demanded the information.

"According to the documents that I have seen, an Icelandic parliamentarian is being investigated in a criminal case in the United States for no reason at all," Skarphedinsson
told Icelandic public radio RUV.

"It is intolerable that an elected representative is being treated like that," he said.

Birgitta Jonsdottir said that "(The) USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since 1 November 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?"

Jonsdottir helped release a video that showed the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians. "I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone," she said.

The same could be said by the 670,000 other individuals that the US government is now seeking to terrorize through the obtaining of their IPs. What should we expect next? Targeted hacking by the CIA, mass arrests or a class action?

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:29:00 +0000

The Evil Empire, Drugs and Racism

The Anglo-American Empire's 'War on Drugs' is as credible as its 'War on Terror'. Both are a fake of the kind George Orwell warned us about. Once the pretend 'Red Menace' vanished into thin air with the demise of the Soviet Union, the Anglo-American axis was left with no bogeyman with which to frighten and bully its populations into doing as they were told, never mind a huge loss of their civil liberties on both sides of the Atlantic.

The carefully-fabricated 911 was the moment when that spurious 'War on Terror' was launched, the moment when both Bush II and his English sidekick, Tony Blair, steered their ships-of-state into the depths of totalitarianism, war criminality and government-sponsored evil. Just as the 'War on Terror' permitted the Anglo-American axis to perpetrate evil in the form of genocide, the 'War on Drugs' permits its secret services to profit hugely from the black market on drugs. Now we hear that "85% of all drugs produced in Afghanistan are shipped out by US aircraft." Why doesn't this surprise us?

After what the Axis has been responsible for in its respective pasts (including the British-sponsored opium trade in the nineteenth century) it should not surprise us that the behaviour of our rulers has really not changed. All that has changed is the spin and packaging required to convince us proles that we really do live in democracies where governments operate in our interests rather than their own.

The 'War on Terror' was quite cleverly devised, where the enemy was identified as both non-white and an historic enemy of the Christian west, Islam. So not only could the proles identify an historic non-white enemy but exercise a deep-seated racism that anyone who is not white is, by definition, not only inferior but shifty and dangerous. The whole thing was devised on shock and awe with the collapse of the Twin Towers and the emotional hype of Islamic 'terrorism' that followed and which continues to this day.

This writer has consistently argued that the much-vaunted 'special relationship' between Britain and the US is only a special relationship insofar as the interests of Anglo-American capital are concerned and where British governments continue to hang onto Uncle Sam's coat-tails for the military power it allows them to associate with.

Without it, Britain would stand exposed as a post-imperial nation, disunited and in demise. And the price required of us all by our ruling elite to continue the pretence is paid daily in the blood of our young men and women who are sent out to die fighting the Axis' military adventures and others who pay the price in becoming victims of the Empire's drugs black-market.

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:19:00 +0000

US & The Deathly Deficit

Another edition of the Keiser Report, probably the only intelligent financial report available on any TV channel which reports the scams on Wall Street and tells it like it is.

noreply@blogger.com (Rory Winter) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 03:25:00 +0000

The BBC, the Police and Tommy Sheridan

BBC lies, pro-zionist and right-wing anti-union tendencies are highlighted on this blog from time-to-time. Here is a case of outrageous bias by BBC Scotland regarding the recent trial of the ex-leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, Tommy Sheridan.

Which yet again begs the question, in what other country in the world outside of this Disunited Kingdom do the proles have to pay for a television channel which is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the ruling elite?

Campaign for a Democratic Europe

Mark Steel: Hands off our greedy bankers

It's the right of every Englishman to have his country robbed blind by the banks

Orwell's Memory Hole: Blame Britain's foreign policy for the terror thre...