Run Of The Mill Socialist

There’s a right winger in the comments of that last Guardian article complaining that the left...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:39:48 +0100

There’s a right winger in the comments of that last Guardian article complaining that the left aren’t “classy” enough.

…I’m not quite sure what they were expecting.

Nigel Farage flees barrage of abuse from Edinburgh protesters

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:32:02 +0100

Nigel Farage flees barrage of abuse from Edinburgh protesters:

Party leader takes shelter in police riot van as demonstrators chant: ‘Ukip scum off our streets’

Farage was first forced out of the Canon’s Gait pub on the Royal Mile after the landlord took fright as the demonstrators disrupted his casual press conference with shouts of “racist”, “scum” and “homophobe”. Out on the street, as the fingers pointed and taunts escalated, he was rejected by one taxi and turfed out of a second.

Then, finally, the harassed and ill-prepared handful of officers were forced to push him back into the Canon’s Gait, slamming its front doors shut, as the demonstrators chanted: “Nigel, you’re a bawbag, Nigel you’re a bawbag, na, na, na, hey!” with gusto

feeling a wee bit proud of my country this morning

Proud of this city.

turnoffthisentry: “Taxi Driver refused to take him.” Bless...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:29:22 +0100

turnoffthisentry:

“Taxi Driver refused to take him.”

Bless this nation of crazy leftists.

Beautiful.

its-salah: Following his release from Guantanamo Bay, Sami...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:28:16 +0100

its-salah:

Following his release from Guantanamo Bay, Sami Al-Hajj, a (former) Guantanamo Bay detainee, dashes towards his eight year old son Mohammad and swoops him up in his arms, hugging him and planting tender kisses on his face in their first reunion after seven years.

After being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for seven years, during which he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, including being physically, sexually, and psychologically abused, Al Hajj was released without any charges held against him.

Al Hajj, a journalist for the Al Jazeera network, was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 while on his way to do camerawork for the network concerning the war that had recently broken out in Afghanistan. It has been speculated by both Al Hajj’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, and Reporters Without Borders that the main reason that he was incarcerated for so long was due to the US Miliary’s desire to make him an informant against Al Jazeera, as most of Al Hajj’s interrogations consisted of American interrogators questioning him about the (Al Jazeera) network.

While in Guantanamo, Al Hajj wrote a poem titled Humiliated in Shackles to his son Mohammad:

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.

When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.

Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.

The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.

They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.

They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.

Their temptations seize
My attention like lightning in the sky.

But their gift is an empty snake,
Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,

They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.

But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.

Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.

To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.

Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.

I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?

After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?

My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.

I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors’.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.

Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous.

I would have reblogged this just for these lines:

“They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.

But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.”

thepeoplesrecord: Detroit’s emergency manager outlines slash...

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:39:58 +0100

thepeoplesrecord:

Detroit’s emergency manager outlines slash & burn “restructuring” plan: Slash wages & city services, privatization
May 14, 2013

Detroit’s emergency manager released a report on Monday, outlining a “comprehensive restructuring plan” for the city involving savage cuts to city workers’ jobs, wages and pensions and the shutdown of services to a large section of the population.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr, a former Washington, DC bankruptcy attorney, as emergency manager on March 14. Under the state’s emergency manager law, Orr was mandated to issue a preliminary Financial and Operating Plan within 45 days.

The plan was drawn up in close collaboration with Andy Dillon, a former hedge fund manager and Democratic Speaker of the State House of Representatives, picked by Snyder as state treasurer.

The report begins with a lie, claiming that measures about to be unleashed in Detroit are aimed at improving the “governmental services essential to the public health, safety and welfare of its citizens.” In fact, the aim is to extract every penny possible from the working class to pay back an estimated $9.4 billion in debt, which currently costs the city $246 million to service, or 19.3 percent of the General Fund budget.

Orr’s former law firm, Jones Day, represents some of the same Wall Street banks—including Bank of America and UBS—that have profited from its financial misery.

In the report, Orr paints a dire picture of the financial state of Detroit. Unemployment has tripled since 2000 and is now officially at 18.3 percent. State revenue sharing has fallen by $160 million, or nearly 50 percent from its peak of $334 million in 2002. There has been a 40 percent decline in income tax since 2000, with a loss of $145 million.

These conditions are an indictment of the capitalist system. They point in particular to the devastating impact of the financial crash of 2008, which led to hemorrhaging of the auto industry, a wave of foreclosures and sharp cuts in federal and state aid. But nowhere is there any suggestion that the corporate and financial elite should be made to pay for the catastrophe they wrought. As a hatchet man for the banks, Orr, like Obama and the Republicans in Washington, is seeking to exploit this crisis to further enrich the financial criminals at the top.

According to Orr his plan has three principles. The first is “improving public safety and promoting reinvestment in the city.” These are code words for ridding the city of “undesirable” elements, including large numbers of unemployed and impoverished workers, and making way for the redevelopment plans of multi-billionaires like Little Caesars owner Mike Ilitch and Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert. Already hundreds of low-income and elderly tenants are being evicted from apartments in the downtown area targeted for the development of upscale housing and shopping.

The second principle, according to Orr, is “evaluating and restructuring the City’s long term liabilities.” This means slashing the pensions and medical benefits of tens of thousands of retired city workers and their families. In his report, Orr complains that there are now more retirees, 18,500, collecting benefits, compared to 10,000 active city workers. The emergency manager, he states, plans to “reduce or eliminate certain healthcare costs for both active and retired employees” and “suggest modifications to the [pension] plans…”

The third principle is “evaluating and streamlining the City’s operations,” which entails an acceleration of the plans by Democratic mayor David Bing to downsize the city by eliminating services in areas deemed too poor or under-populated.

The city, Orr writes, has already developed strategies to address what he calls the “surplus land” issue, using three neighborhood categories (steady, transitional and distressed) to determine whether services in these areas will continue. This strategy, which would be incorporated into the comprehensive plan, would include a “coordinated program of foreclosures, demolition, public/private partnerships and targeted investment.”

In a press conference Monday, Orr said that the privatization of trash collection, transportation and other services were “all on the table.” He pointed to nearby Pontiac, Michigan as a model for his plan.

In that city, as the New York Times recently noted, the EM “overhauled labor contracts, sold off city assets and privatized nearly every service Pontiac once provided to citizens…Its Fire Department belongs to a nearby township. The city’s payroll, once numbering more than 600 workers, now amounts to about 50 public employees. Even parking meters have been sold.”

Other parts of Orr’s plan include:

* Reviewing “options for shared services and contract services” for the Detroit Fire Department, which has been slashed to the bone, leaving only 812 ill-equipped firefighters to cover 139 square miles.

* The possible full privatization of the Department of Transportation, which has already outsourced management duties and cut routes for its depleted bus fleet and employees.

* Turning “daily operations and programming” of the city’s remaining 17 recreation centers “over to experienced entities capable of providing improved services,” which would include “fee-based programming provided by third party operators.”

* The selloff of the Department of Public Lighting.

“The Emergency Manager believes that it is in the best interest of the citizens of Detroit for the City to exit the power supply business,” he writes. Beginning in 2014, the city will “pare down the current number of streetlights from approximately 88,000 to approximately 46,000,” providing lighting only to the “main thoroughfares and population centers.”

The first step will be to transform DPL into an “authority” with the power to issue debt. Once the city pays for infrastructure improvements, the system will be handed over to a “third party,” most likely the electric monopoly DTE Energy. Three years ago, the City Council and Bing administration approved a $150 million deal to buy 100 percent of the city’s power from DTE Energy, replacing the electricity produced by the city-owned lighting department. Before becoming mayor, David Bing, sat on DTE’s board of directors for two decades, and former DTE CEO Anthony Early was the chairman of his election campaign.

Also being targeted for privatization is the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, one of the largest municipal water departments in the nation. Orr writes that he will evaluate all options regarding public assets, including “entering in partnerships with other public entities, outsourcing of operations and transferring non-core assets to other private or public entities in sale, lease or other transactions.”

In regards to labor costs, Orr says the city has “made great strides” under the Consent Agreement reached between the city government and the governor last year, “in reducing costs imposed by its numerous active and expired collective bargaining agreements between the City and various labor organizations.”

This included the unilateral implementation of “City Employment Terms,” which froze or reduced active employee benefits, reduced or eliminated pension and retiree medical benefits and imposed a 10 percent wage cut. It also gutted seniority protections, expanded management rights, changed shifts, hours of operation and overtime procedures and revised or eliminated job classifications.

Nevertheless, Orr complains that these concessions have not been uniformly applied to all bargaining units. The emergency manager’s “labor strategy will be developed with a view that any concessions are equitably distributed across” the city’s entire workforce.

While the emergency manager law suspends the city’s duty to bargain under the Public Relations Act and empowers him to “reject, modify or terminate” collective bargaining agreements, Orr states that he has willingly negotiated with the unions. In this, he is counting on the complicity of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions to reach what he calls a “consensual agreement” and block any resistance by workers to the demands of the banks.

“Overall, employee headcount ultimately may be lower in the future than it is today,” he adds. At the same time, a new “compensation structure” will be established to retain “high performing individuals,” by which he means the army of highly paid consultants and turnaround specialists he is bringing in to help loot the city.

On the eve of the report’s release, Orr’s press secretary Bill Knowling said, “Unless we change and restructure city operations, it’s not going to get any better. That’s a message to the capital markets… If we stop providing services, and basically stop functioning as a city and only paid our debts but kept collecting taxes, we couldn’t pay it off in 20 years.”

Here Knowling may have said more than he intended. The essential purpose of Orr’s plan is to transform the city into little more than a cash machine for the banks and big business. To pay off the wealthy bondholder in the next few years, instead of twenty, will require the suspension of city services for virtually everyone but the well-to-do and a limited number of workers who service them.

As for his boss, Orr made it clear he is essentially a dictator for the banks and oblivious to the concerns of the working people in the city. “The public can comment,” he told WWJ radio, “but it is under the statute, it is my plan and it’s within my discretion and obligation to do it. This isn’t a plebiscite, we are not, like, negotiating the terms of the plan.”

Source
Photo

flipupcapsandcrewnecksweats: middleclasscommunist: thesubversivesound: Noticed how most...

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:04:53 +0100

flipupcapsandcrewnecksweats:

middleclasscommunist:

thesubversivesound:

Noticed how most rebuttals from British people in the anglophiles tags are always shitty classist remarks along the lines of “Well, you wouldn’t be an anglophile if you had to live along side all the dirty subhuman chavs and neds that populate our cities”

Well done, you’re all fucking idiots.

Yup. Anglophiles may piss me off, but compared to some of the “rebuttals” they can seem pretty alright.

on the flipside, anglophiles could be seen as the problem since their narrow minded idea of “british people” is more or less limited to middle class famous people

True enough. There’s certainly a lot of problems with the concept of “anglophilia”, but I think we need to remember that criticisms of it should be held to the same standards.

I’ve posted quite a bit before about the problems with anglophiles, but that doesn’t make it OK for some people to repeatedly bring out the “chav” stereotype.

Ultimately, we have to hold everyone to the same standards, rather than deciding merely to hate a certain ideology no questions asked. We also need to accept that good points can be made within frameworks we disagree with.

I’ve seen people who, while criticising American anglophiles, feel they need to rebut every point, including ones about the NHS and such the like. To me this feels strained, as it is well understood that even amongst the Tories people disapprove of the American health system. The motive of these arguments seems to be based on the idea that there can be no legitimate reasons to like or want to move to England. I think this needs to be laid aside in favour of more logical argument.

Basically: I don’t like anglophiles any more than the next guy, but that doesn’t mean I approve of the use of stereotyping and elitism to argue against them, or that I think they can never be right about anything.

thesubversivesound: Noticed how most rebuttals from British people in the anglophiles tags are...

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:35:14 +0100

thesubversivesound:

Noticed how most rebuttals from British people in the anglophiles tags are always shitty classist remarks along the lines of “Well, you wouldn’t be an anglophile if you had to live along side all the dirty subhuman chavs and neds that populate our cities”

Well done, you’re all fucking idiots.

Yup. Anglophiles may piss me off, but compared to some of the “rebuttals” they can seem pretty alright.

thesubversivesound: full-commujism: crazydepressednihilist: pizzavanguard: Remember when the...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:44:08 +0100

thesubversivesound:

full-commujism:

crazydepressednihilist:

pizzavanguard:

Remember when the libertarian party tweeted that gay people could get married and defend their weed farms with semi automatic rifles bought with bitcoin in a libertarian utopia or some shit like that

is this real omg

The left doesn’t even need to try making fun of libertarians anymore, they do it quite adequately themselves.

Have a feeling this might be fake, but I had a good laugh anyway so.

here-lies-andalusia: Bernadette Devlin, socialist politician...

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:25:00 +0100

here-lies-andalusia:

Bernadette Devlin, socialist politician & activist, Northern Ireland.

"In America, we often take for granted that parents have an absolute right to decide how their..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:14:08 +0100

“In America, we often take for granted that parents have an absolute right to decide how their children will be educated, but this leads us to overlook the fact that children have rights, too, and that we as a modern society are obligated to make sure that they get an education. Families should be allowed to pursue sensible homeschooling options, but current arrangements have allowed some families to replace education with fundamentalist indoctrination.”

- The dark side of home schooling: creating soldiers for the culture war (via englishteacheronline)

This!!!!!!!!!!!

(via positivelypersistentteach)

ffs can you all stop calling people chavs you elitist shitheads.

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:48 +0100

ffs can you all stop calling people chavs you elitist shitheads.

thesubversivesound: First Thatcher dies, then Ferguson retires. Somewhere there is a scouser with a...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:13:28 +0100

thesubversivesound:

First Thatcher dies, then Ferguson retires. Somewhere there is a scouser with a lamp and one wish left.

guardiancomment: ‘With the headlines about a five-year-old...

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:14:18 +0100

guardiancomment:

‘With the headlines about a five-year-old using a gun marketed as “My First Rifle” barely faded, the NRA invited attendees to “[s]hare the excitement with spectacular displays and fun-filled events for the entire family”. The grade schoolers present shared the organization’s attitude towards the products that have caused the deaths of more American children in two years than the very tragic US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I like guns because guns are fun,” said 9-year-old Kaykay Mace’ - Top 10 things you missed at the National Rifle Association Convention

…wow.

"No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them."

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:55:50 +0100

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.”

- Assata Shakur (via ethiopienne)

thepeoplesrecord: FBI billboards not about Assata Shakur; it’s...

Mon, 06 May 2013 22:44:40 +0100

thepeoplesrecord:

FBI billboards not about Assata Shakur; it’s about repressing the black community
May 5, 2013

Following the ludicrous announcement that the Obama administration has placed Assata Shakur on its “most wanted terrorist list”, the FBI has erected billboards in Newark, New Jersey announcing its recently increased $2 million dollar reward. However, any critically thinking person knows that these billboards are not about capturing Assata Shakur but sending a message to the rest of us. Interestingly, perhaps just a coincidence or not, Newark, New Jersey is the place where a theater co-owned by Shaquille O’Neil, recently reneged on an agreement to show a popular independent film about the life of another former member of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Is Assata Shakur in New Jersey? No, she is not and the FBI and the Obama administration know exactly where she is, in Cuba where she has lived since being granted political asylum by its government in 1979 after escaping from prison.

This is not about Assata Shakur, it is about sending a message to the Black community and those that live within it who stand up to police violence, oppression and murder of residents, one of the very reasons for the formation of the Black Panthers. It is about the political repression of those who advocate on the behalf of the many political prisons being held by the United States government often in torturous conditions. It is about sending a message to anyone who would take up arms in defense of life, liberty and true freedom in a country that is home to the largest prison population in the world which the federal government and various corporations use as slave labor. It is about sending a message to those that would dare stand up and point out that the US government is the most violent entity on the planet and one that commits acts of terrorism against non-white people and nations on behalf of maintaining the American imperialist status-quo.

Why else would the U.S. government seek to name Assata Shakur as a domestic terrorist after all these decades? We are talking about a woman who was shot twice while attempting to give herself up to police who were co-operating with Federal authorities to target and assassinate or otherwise eliminate members of the Black Liberation movement just as they had done and admitted in a civil lawsuit to doing to Martin Luther King Jr.

The FBI and its corporate media wing fail to report the details of the sham case built against Assata Shakur after failing to win convictions on other trump up charges. The corporate media is failing to point out that a police officer, a state witness against Assata Shakur for the murder of another police officer, has recanted his testimony and admitted to lying on the stand. Medical personnel stated that because of nerves severed by a bullet, Assata Shakur would have been physically prevented from firing a weapon and it was also stated that her wounds indicate her hands were raised when she was shot consistent with her claim that she was giving herself up.

Just as Assata Shakur has pointed out that COINTELPRO utilized and received full cooperation from the corporate media to demonize and alienate freedom fighters from the people who supported them, corporate media today is still fulfilling that role. The concept of a free and independent press in America has always been a fraud and it remains so today.

Source

Read more about Assata Shakur & find a link to her autobiography here.

sinidentidades: STOP SB1128 & HB1938 Texas Representative...

Sun, 05 May 2013 22:23:41 +0100

sinidentidades:

STOP SB1128 & HB1938

Texas Representative Giovanni Capriglione (R) and Texas Senator Patrick (R) have both proposed bills that would essentially end ethnic studies in Texas by September 2013 unless we do something about it.

Sign the Petition

Contact your representatives to fight against these bills. Need help finding out who represents you? Click here.

Helpful links to keep yourself updated on protests and the progress of the bills:

Stop TX SB1128 & HB1938

Stop TX SB1128 & HB1938 Facebook

SB1128 Bill Information

HB1938 Bill Information

A picture of the plaque that was unveiled yesterday in...

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:16:35 +0100

A picture of the plaque that was unveiled yesterday in Inchicore, Dublin, commemorating the role and service of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.

ut4ps: Race matters.

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:04:16 +0100

ut4ps:

Race matters.

You think ‘ironic racism’ is ironic because you’re saying something racist when...

Sat, 04 May 2013 21:24:21 +0100

You think ‘ironic racism’ is ironic because you’re saying something racist when actually you’re not.

It’s actually ironic because the only way you can think to be ‘funny’ is to base your ‘joke’ around not being racist, when actually you really really are.

misskayvee: Charlie on President Obama Nailed it.

Fri, 03 May 2013 18:21:55 +0100

misskayvee:

Charlie on President Obama

Nailed it.