Strikers in Britain have lost more ground in the ever marching fight against direct action:
Low paid strikers, those in most need of their wages, will now no longer be able to top up their wages from the government for days missed due to strike action.
This will now be a strong incentive for politically active workers to give up and carry on working - if they strike they run the risk of losing their home.
Three documentaries by Adam Curtis. They cover the ideas of freedom and how we have been duped in to being part of a freedom that is not free. I recommend watching all of them if you have the time but no matter what you should definitely watch the last one. It is quite shocking really. THE TRAP - Adam Curtis
“We now have to send a very clear message to people in Greece: there is a choice. You can either vote to stay in the euro, with all the commitments you’ve made, or if you vote another way you’re effectively voting to leave.” -David Cameron on how to deal with the Greek crisis.
This clear message I am going to assume shall be full of such subtle threats as “incredibly dangerous” to go it alone and if you leave you will get “extremists and xenophobia” not to mention the lack of support Greece will get if they leave.
“Maybe our rhetoric has been too dogmatic in the early stages because we needed to persuade people it was necessary.” -Nick Clegg on being ‘austerity fanatics’.
I see two problems here. We live in a democracy, surely we should be telling the government what they should be doing, no matter how they feel about it and no matter how ‘wrong’ it may be. Secondly, if he was persuading that means he was exagerating and sifting the information so that the facts leant towards austerity.
I see the great powers of the west grasping tightly at the seams of Europe and the capitalism that they all know and love. They caused this situation by telling the rest of the world - this is how you do it! and now they try to fix it by telling us - this is how you do it!
What is an extremist party? Labour was once one and the Green party is one. Are they dangerous? Are extremist parties just parties that have actual views and not vote winners? Is it possible to lump Socialist extreme parties with Fascist extreme parties? By grouping these parties together they all become ‘dangerous’ and the politics of the ‘grey’ continues.
All quotes and information from this BBC news report
An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.
| — | Michael Hastings, Congressmen seek to lift propaganda ban (via soupsoup) |
This documentary brings up both GSK and Cadburys (Olympics supporters) amongst others and the way they are dodging paying their taxes.
Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) are a vigilante group who will find and shoot drug dealers.
Action against drugs and the associated crimes is a good thing - illegal drug use and the procurement of it causes a lot of crime. But the methods this group use are very questionable.
Just realised there is no way I can answer questions so I will answer them here:
Why shoot them? - I have no idea, It seems like the group looks more for punishment than reformation of the character and that is not good for society.
Music is an important part of life, it can create and enhance emotions but it can also, like any other art, promote opinions. Whether you agree with them or not it makes you think and it makes you question your own opinions.
Here are a few youtube links to some of these songs:
I’m sure its no suprise that the two leaders want peace. What country in their right mind would want a forever war. To say they are both committed to peace makes no comment on how they are seeking this peace. Israel could be seeking peace by removing Palestine completely. Palestine could be seeking peace by bombing Israel in to submission.
It would seem that Palestine wishes to gain peace by moving back to the initial agreement and is backed by the International Court of Justice. But they will not get any support in actuality because America is on the Israeli side - as is most of the Western world (because most are on America’s side). This has so far failed because no one will listen and so instead they have tried as hard as possible through guerilla means to attack Israel and get their cause global recognition. It is instead reported by the mass media as terrorism against civillians. However, when an Israeli missile takes out a block of flats to kill one suspected ‘terrorist’ it is fine. When a school is attacked it is fine.
It would also seem that Israel is looking for peace with Palestine, but through quite peculiar means. “[O]fficials said last week that they did not expect him to accept a key Palestinian demand to halt all settlement building in the occupied territories before reopening any talks.” It seems like the sort of peace that is only so because the enemy isn’t fighting back. Like when the school ground bully keeps taking the ‘nerds’ sandwich but the teachers see it as alright because the nerd never complains and doesn’t fight the bully. He will actually go over and offer them to him. That is not peace, that is abuse.
Israel is using the history of abuse against Jews to stop any rebuttal of its abuse against Palestine. If a country or an institution argues against Zion, Israel makes it an argument against Jews and so the international community will not support it - Who would want to get a reputation like Hitler or the Russian Tsars. It seems amazing that a country full of people who understand the results of persecution will happily persecute another country without battering an eyelid. I will not deny that some Israeli’s do protest against the illegal occupation but the state, the institutions seem not to care.
They are committed to peace but that means nothing. The international community needs to step in and do something. Nothing military, nothing physical. In a metaphorical sense they need to grab the two by the scruff of the neck, pull them apart and sit them down until they make a deal that is fair for both. No use of religious texts saying it is the land of the Jews, no use of previous abuses as evidence of everyone hating the Jews. Instead it needs to be a fair trial that takes the needs of the people and needs to be agreed by the people, not by external or governmental powers.
I could go on so long with the Israel-Palestine question.
On the 30th of April thieves attacked a woman in her home and stole her possessions. Nothing unusual or exceptionally horrific about this at first glance, its merely a robbery. But there is more: Mrs Winnal is 94, is now in hospital and no one has come forward as a witness, so there is now a reward.
What sort of a place is the modern world pensioners are being beaten for their possessions - which are often pitiful at the best of times. To steal from a pensioner is a sad affair when there are so many ‘rich’ pickings, but to then believe it is also acceptable to beat them. Something is seriously wrong with the society that breeds people like this. She would not have been able to resist in anyway the break-in but they still beat at her until she needed medical attention. The BBC says she is in a ‘critical but stable condition’ - why did they need to attack her?
But this is not the end to the sad state of the world. To entice people to come and give evidence they have offered a £5,000 reward. You can come at this from two directions for why this is a terrible state of affairs: The safety of people like Mrs Winnal is put at such a low amount, for one thing. Or that it takes £5,000 for someone to be bothered enough to help catch criminals. Offering a reward does help to catch criminals but should it really be the case where wehaveto offer rewards.
We seemingly live in a society in which people are blinkered from the possibilities of life: If the people who attacked this lady had broken in to a manor they could have taken away a greater haul but no they see a quick and easy, smash and grab - small input, comparitively greater rewards. It also speaks greatly of the respect we put to the weak and vulnerable, they are not to be protected but to be exploited. Secondly our society brings us up as consumers of money. Get a job, why? because the pay is good. Gamble, why? Might win big! Come forward as a witness, why? Yeah, why bother?
