Apologies for inactivity

Apologies to regular class warfare visitors. My PC has been out of action for a while - problems with the CPU overheating - and I hope to be posting again shortly.

Masked cops try to provoke violent riot

This is absolutely fuggin disgusting and begs the question just how many protests that have turned violent have actually been started by undercover cops? Though it has long been suspected, this time there exists video footage that cops do actually do this. No doubt It happens all the time.

A peaceful demonstration turns violent, the TV news flashes pictures of mayhem, the issue is completely forgotten, and the protesters are entirely discredited and their cause undermined.

Is it really a surprise to know that police*engineer* these outcomes?

Here we see three masked police, posing as radicals, caught red handed trying to provoke violence at a meeting of the so called" Security and Prosperity Partnership" in Quebec. The whole episode was caught on video

Brasscheck TV comments:

It's the oldest trick in the book and the French have a phrase for it: "Agent Provocateur".

Bizarrely, US protesters NEVER seem to get their heads out of their arses and see it coming no matter how many times it gets pulled on them.

In contrast, one labor leader at the Montebello meeting of the so called "Security and Prosperity Summit" in Quebec earned the title "leader" and not only detected this crap as it was talking place, but confronted the government-employed criminals involved and forced them to stand down.

This kind of activity isn't legitimate police work. It's thug-for-hire work on behalf of fascists.

Next time you see one of these hulking morons with a mask on his face holding a rock or stick, rip off his mask and photograph him. Don't expect a shred of help from the gutless news media exposing these vermin. They'll never follow up on the story, but the photographs are a deterrent.

Police State Britain - no one can be trusted

A quick flick thorough today’s British papers shows Police State Britain is functioning well.

The Telegraph today tells us the familiar story of Jared Ahmad, 27, arrested after completing a 20-minute journey to Salford Crescent, Greater Manchester. He claims, and I don’t doubt him, having been in that predicament myself, he was unable to buy a ticket because there was no ticket machine at the station at which he got on the train, and no conductor on board his train.

In their wisdom, the ever vigilant British Transport Police arrested him, banged him up in cell and took both his fingerprints and a sample of DNA. Both will now be stored on a national police database. There again, he did have a non-British, Moslem-sounding sounding name.

The Mail informs us that two pensioners, Mr and Mrs Richards, the latter wheelchair bound, were accosted by shopping centre security guards in Hull. The guards spotted 79-year-old Anthony Richards taking a photograph of his wife at the entrance of a new £200 million retail centre and were having none of it. They were ordered to put the camera away.

Mr Richards and his wife Betty were told the ban on people taking photos was to stop terrorists gathering intelligence, and staff were instructed to follow "anyone acting suspiciously".

There you go then, how suspicious can you get? You just can’t be too careful these days. Those pensioners might well have uploaded those snaps to the internet for Al Qaeda to see.

Mr Richards rightly observed it was load of bollocks: “It's quite ridiculous. It makes you wonder what is happening to the world. They don't stop people taking photographs in Paris of the Eiffel Tower or the Millennium wheel in London.”

This said, me and another comrade, out getting stock footage for a socialist video we were planning, did get pounced on four times by cops who ordered us to stop filming or face arrest, on one occasion taking our names and radioing them in to se if they tallied – in Trafalgar Square, outside the Houses of Parliament, across the river from the Houses of Parliament and just up from Buck House.

I digress…Shopping centre manager David Laycock backed his guards' vigilance. He said: "It's our duty of care to check that all pictures taken are for legitimate reasons. Photographic reconnaissance is a proven potential risk," he said. "It is not realistic for security staff to assess who might be taking photographs innocently or otherwise. “

Again, utter bollocks. Anyone ever been on Google Earth? You can bloody well zoom into any building in Britain, and quite close up, and measure distances in feet and inches of all the alleys and back roads in the vicinity. Any terrorist wanting to attack a shoppie could get the lay-out in five minutes flat. You can even zoom into Guantanamo Bay!

Mr Richards, meanwhile should thank his lucky stars his name is not Ahmed. They’d have had him in a headlock, handcuffed and his DNA taken in a jiffy.

Famine or Feast? Britain alone wastes 20 million tons of food a year

Crikes, the story would have passed me by if Alan’s blog hadn’t alerted me to it. I’m getting slack in my old age. Hot on the heels of two earlier postings (here and here) on world food shortages and how the UN is begging for $500 million to help provide food assistance to the world’s starving millions, comes news that Britain is throwing away half of all the food produced on farms, according to the starkest estimate yet of the amount of edible produce we

The Independent reports: “About 20m tons of food is thrown out each year: equivalent to half of the food import needs for the whole of Africa. Some 16m tons of this is wasted in homes, shops, restaurants, hotels and food manufacturing. Much of the rest is thought to be destroyed between the farm field and the shop shelf.”

The cost of the waste is put at a staggetring £20 billion ($40 billion) and eighty times the amount that the UN is asking for to feed the starving largely in Africa and Asia.

Forty-four per-cent of the population of Burundi is starving – that’s bout 4 million people. The food thrown away in the UK last year would meet the equivalent of Burundi's shortages more than 40 times over.

Lord Haskins of Skidby, a former government adviser on rural affairs and chairman of Northern Foods has urged governments to press their citizens to help "avoid disaster by dramatically reducing the ... unacceptable levels of food waste, which are a shameful feature of most modern consumer societies". He called recent controversy over supermarkets' free distribution of plastic bags "a red herring". He argued, "If consumers ate a bit less and wasted a bit less you'd help to solve the problem. If the world was vegetarian then you'd solve the problem completely." One-third of wheat grown globally is fed to livestock reared to end up on the dinner table.

Tony Lowe, the chief executive of FareShare, the national food charity, said: "Unfortunately, we live in a world where many people do not have access to food in general, and good-quality food specifically, while at the same time millions of tons of perfectly fine food are being disposed of. In the UK alone, the extent of food poverty is staggering, as millions of people with low or no income find it harder to access affordable, nutritious food."

If this is the amount of food wasted in tiny Britain, then it begs the question just how much is thrown away each year globally. Whilst we have over 800 million on this planet chronically malnourished, the simple truth must be that the earth produces enough food to make the planet morbidly obese. As ever, the profit motive kicks in and whether you are obese or emaciated depends, as ever, on your purchasing power.

Meanwhile, the Independent provides a list of ten tips to help cut the waste mountain. Note this is not ten tips to stop global hunger, like abolishing capitalism, freeing production from the artificial constraints of profit and establishing a global system of free access to the necessaries of life! While critical of the current global food “crisis” the Independent simply accepts capitalism is here to stay and suggests individuals change their personal habits. The master class gets off ‘scot free’ again!

Blair is awarded the Medal of Freedom

"What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sun-shine, and the heart-felt joy,
Is virtue's prize: a better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach and six,
Justice a conq'ror's sword, or truth a gown,
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.“
(Alexander Pop, Essay on Man, EPISTLE IV)

There must be a lot of people out there who get the words “freedom”, “peace”, “war and “terror” all muddled in their heads. I mean, it was only a few years ago that the two biggest promoters of international terrorism on behalf of US oil interests, namely Messrs Blair and Bush, received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. According to the provisions of Nobel, the winner of the Peace Prize "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” See what I mean?

Now we hear news that Tony Blair is honoured this evening by a Texan university with strong links to President Bush (his missus went there). The university will hand over to the greedy, money-grabbing bastard thousands of pounds to give them a talk about utter bollocks.

As The Sunday Times reported:

“Blair has turned down an honorarium that goes with the Medal of Freedom but has asked for a cash fee to speak to students and children from deprived backgrounds after the award ceremony.

“He will become the sixth recipient of the medal awarded by the Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas since it was inaugurated in 1997 in honour of a Republican senator and foreign affairs adviser to Bush’s father.”

Reminiscent of the conditions of the Nobel prize, this Medal of Freedom, presented every two years, goes to those who have “furthered the cause of freedom throughout the world”. With such Orwellian double-speak, the university found they could present the award in previous years to Bush’s father and also to presidential hopeful John ‘bomb, bomb, bomb’ McCain, Margaret Thatcher, General Colin Powell, and General Tommy R Franks. So Blair is in good company and, if “Medal of Freedom” refers to the number of lives you take away multiplied by the lies you tell then he’s very deserving of it. So if any readers have their eyes on this medal in two years time, you’d better start killing like there’s no tomorrow, lying like a bastard and kissing arse as if your life depended on it.

Although Blair has found time to collect the Medal of Freedom this week, he has not yet arranged to pick up the Congressional Gold Medal awarded by the US Congress for his support in the “war against terror”

For Blair the big attraction is the money – nah, not the flogging of the medals on ebay, but the multi-thousand dollar speakers fee. Seems it was only five minutes ago I was blogging and spouting off about the £millions he is lined up to make since stepping down as Prime Minister. Presumably the money he is raking in from JP Morgan is just not enough.

His missus has also latched on to the money-for-talking game. It was only a few weeks ago that the Telegraph reported that she was being gven £75000 for doing three talks.

Back in 2005 Cherie was criticised for accepting $30,000 [£15,000] for a 90-minute talk in Washington while her husband was over in the US trying to persuade Bush to cancel African debt.

That same year she embarked on a lucrative speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand. Speeches included slides and questions and answers about her husband’s role as a father. And whilst in Melbourne there was anger after it was reported that her £17,000 fee for speaking at a charity dinner dwarfed the £6,774 which was raised for a fund for dying children.

Beats me why anyone would pay a penny to listen to anything either of the Blairs have to say on anything. As PM from 1997-2007, Blair bent over backwards to serve the interests of capitalism, lying to and betraying the workers who elected him at every opportunity; the fact that he lasted 10 years, despite oozing sleaze from every pore, suggest just what a good job he was doing for Britain’s corporatocracy. And when George Bush wanted someone, anyone, to sanction his invasion of Iraq, it was Blair who could be depended upon the come up with the “45 minute” dossier he presented to parliament and the British people as a pretext for the invasion, and which has now been proved fraudulent.

Medal? I’d give the sod the Royal Order of Pinocchio, like the one Bush was presented with.

Harry, the blood-drenched hero of Helmand

Your print off and keep poster of Hero Harry (click to enlarge)

‘PRINCE Harry’s army comrades hoisted him on their shoulders after learning he was being withdrawn from Afghanistan yesterday – singing: “He’s ginge, he’s loud, he’s done us f****** proud.”

‘Emotional squaddies who had fought side-by-side with the hero royal during his ten-week frontline tour continued: “He’s here, he’s mean, his gran’s the f****** Queen. Nice one Harry.”’ (The Sun yesterday)

The Sun, in 11 pages of sycophantic coverage of the Harry the hero of Helmand story (inclusive of a pull-out poster), proudly reported yesterday that Harry had killed 30 Taliban fighters - a far cry from his earlier comments, when the press reported his words on hearing he was being posted to Iraq: ”I’m shitting myself”.

The Sun was not alone in prostrating itself in front of this blood-soaked parasite, the servility was ubiquitous: The Dailly Mail gave ten pages to the story, Daily Star (5 pages), Daily Express (10 pages), Daily Mirror (14 pages), Daily Telegraph (5 pages), The Times (7 pages). How much of this coverage of Harry’s exploits was given over to the millions killed as a direct result of the post 9-11 invasion of Afghanistan, or to the real reason that country was invaded – oil? What, you really need me to answer this for you? A cursory look at The Sun’s coverage would suggest the whole “Harry in Afghanistan” thing was stage managed; one huge photo-posing opportunity to boost the popularity of the royals and to gauge public support for what is becoming a very unpopular war.

Thirty deaths, Harry? Well done! But...how the hell do you know it was thirty? Did you run over and count the blood-stained corpses and say “this one’s mine, that too…?” Thirty? I wonder how many widows and orphans that means?

Did you kill them in hand-to-hand combat? No – in any such fight any one of that thirty would have torn you a new arse. Your killing was done long distance, with a machine gun and whilst you and your comrades-in-arms were better fed, better trained and much better equipped and no doubt outnumbering the enemy. Seriously, does anyone think you would have been allowed into any conflict situation where the odds were not stacked 100-1 in your favour? Bollocks!

So he’s back home, because he is now a target for the enemy, his cover blown. Whoa, is this not an occupational hazard of a soldier – to kill or be killed?

Undoubtedly, the standing of the royal family has received a huge boost thanks to Harry’s killing spree in poverty-stricken Afghanistan, and no doubt postal workers will be giving themselves hernias humping the postal bags up to Buck House, cram-packed with fawning and congratulatory letters from Britain’s ageing royalist population who have swallowed all the shite about Harry fighting for freedom and democracy.

Yup, this site is not only against war, and waste and want, it's against royalty. But unlike many anarchist and lefty sites, it does not see the royal debate as simply meaning “do we shoot them or do we hang them?" Neither does this site campaign for the abolition of the monarchy as if this was a single issue worth one millilitre of workers' sweat. Class Warfare takes a more considered view, recognising that if the monarchy were to go we would merely carry on living in a republic as wage slaves, every aspect of our lives subordinated to the priorities of the profit system.

That there are many prepared to support this outmoded institution is the problem (checkout the picky at the end of this posting, one of many The Sun has on its website…nauseating!). That there are members of the working class prepared to accept unearned privilege and its necessary opposite undeserved poverty, prepared to defend and support a symbol of power and hierarchy, prepared to demand that their fellows share these submissive values, shows how collectively immature we are as a class, and the real battle facing socialists. If we truly respected ourselves, our class, there would be no question over whether or not to kowtow to the House of Windsor.

A thousand years or robbery and butchery by their ancestors have placed the royal family at the top of the social pile – the great-great-offspring of the biggest bunch of murdering thugs who ever walked. A thousand years of revelling in the brute force allowed them by society where the art of being human was underdeveloped. That the descendants of bloody sword-arm rule are still in place shows that the process of social development is still incomplete.

To this day, the symbols of monarchy - the ermine, the mace and the fabulous diamond-encrusted crowns - are merely echoes of the warlord-plunder origins of the institution. Deprived of any real power these days, they serve instead as part of the vast machinery promoting the ideas of hierarchy, leadership and subservience in ways far more effective than Orwell could have imagined. A machine designed to enforce the subordination of the vast majority to the tiny privileged minority!

In ancient Rome they had bread and circuses to do that; pleasing the populace by keeping stomachs full and seeing people in the arena being worse off than themselves. Today we have the dole and monarchy placating the crowds with a TV to see people better off than themselves.

The monarchy is the capstone in the arch of power. The pinnacle of the greasy pole which little leader-wannabes climb in admiration, desiring to be like them. Each one waits their turn patiently, for a fleeting moment of recognition by the paragon of leadership. We are taught from childhood to look upon the monarchy as a mirror of ourselves, reflecting virtue, honour and duty;
when, in fact, it is a fun-house mirror that makes us look like pygmies.

The real issue is not one about whether we are for or against the monarchy, but rather whether we are for or against ourselves, our class; whether we are pathetic sheep that need leaders and monarchs to look up to, because we are so unsure of ourselves and our worth. A little, perhaps a lot, of maturity is needed; time to discuss how we can run our own lives for ourselves, without leaving it to others. And when that happens, when that maturity comes, we together will run past the monarchy like a juggernaut, ignoring it for the miserable and anachronistic side show that it is. Then we will have mastered the art of being human.

In Laughter, Truth?

Introducing the next US president. Why wait until November? It's probably the most accurate portrayal of elections in the USA, and funny too.