That Was The Year That Was

It has come to that time of the year again, a time when I reflect on what has been and what I feel is to come!

Wow, 2010, have you been eventful or what? In the UK we had our general election leaving us with the wonderful Con-Dem coalition. This has heralded in a new wave of budget cuts which we will begin to feel in the coming year. We have already seen anger at the way the Lib-Dems have turned their back on their tuition fees promise made in the run up to the election.

This quite nicely bring me onto the topic of the tuition fees protests. It has been many years since a student movement with the size and power we have seen at Millbank [link] and Parliament Square [link]. This year we have seen a reawakening of the student body to the activism of yesteryear. Now in this post I am not going to go into massive detail about the movement but what I will say is this, it has given me renewed faith in this generation. If you had said at the start of 2010 that 10s of thousands of students would march into London under a common cause to show their anger at the powers that be I would have laughed. We are meant to be the apathetic generation, "generation meh", but no more. We have shown that we can still mobilise and be powerful and from here we can build.

However this has also brought with it a darker side to the year. The police retaliation to the multiple protests and the resulting white wash of the media has left a sour taste in our mouths. First people were kettled into an area that they didn't want to be in so they went into Parliament Square to free up space. Then they were beaten, contained and even charged at by police on horseback. The tactics were heavy handed resulting in a man being pulled form his wheelchair twice [link] and one man was even left with brain damage after being hit over the head with a baton, the police even attempted to expel him from the hospital were he required emergency surgery for 3 hours [link].

Needless to say in the days following we were bombarded with stories of how the police were valiant heroes in the face of feral students from all the major media outlets. Some reports went as far as to claim protesters had pulled police from horseback [link], when the truth is very different [link]. This has caused a great number of people, both at the protest and not, to question the validity of the news and with it has woken up more people to the bullshit that we are fed every day.

On the other hand there has been a great change in the nature of news outlets this year with the fabled Wikileaks fiasco taking centre stage. Now Wikileaks has been around for a few years now but it is in this year that they have stepped up their game. The idea of Wikileaks is that officials can anonymously submit leaked documents and after removing personal details and ensuring the documents do not endanger people the documents are placed into the public domain [link]. This has opened up a new era in reporting in which the governments can no longer lie to our faces safe in the knowledge that their lies will stay under cover and never see the light of day. This movement has the power to fundamentally change the way governments operate and their relation with the people they govern. It is this that has so scared the people in power and caused the knee jerk reaction we have seen this year.

Obama stated as he took to office in 2009 that ""Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known" [link], oh how things have changed. After Wikileaks released around 250,000 embassy ties the mood of governments both at home and in the US turned sour. Political pressure was put upon websites connected with Wikileaks to force them into abandoning the site. Furthermore Julian Assange was arrested on dubious at best rape charges [link]. This shows to an ever increasing number of people that the powers that be these days only value free speech when it does not put them in a bad light. An encouraging effect of the political pressure is the backlash of DDoS attacks against the websites that have turned their back on Wikileaks and the way in which no matter the pressure applied by governments around the world the website has stayed functional even if it has had to change servers multiple times. This shows that even in the face of adversity free speech will succeed.

A major reason for the backlash of power against Wikileaks is the amount of information released in regards to the lies around the invasions and ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Videos of indiscriminate murder and destruction were released to an angry public as more and more of our people die over there. This year and last have been the deadliest in the history of the Afghanistan war [link] showing that rather than winning we are in fact losing, and badly. Not only this but the war is spilling more and more over into Pakistan threatening the stability of the entire area [link]. I'm not going to go too much in to depth on this matter but I will add that this again is another area where the reports by the main media should defiantly be taken with a pinch of salt. The "embedded" reporters must only report what they are told to by the army and thus cannot be fully trusted to be telling the true story. Now I wont go through a million examples but I will suggest you watch "The War You Don't See" by John Pilger [link] before believing everything bring said by these "embedded" reporters.

This year my faith in humanity was put into question again by the horrible Pakistan floods in July [link]. The floods killed (directly) thousands and displaced many many more. They resulted in an estimated £30billion in damages. With the war in Afghanistan spilling over resulting in the death of civilians the floods were the last thing Pakistan needed. Whilst this is a saddening event in it's own right it's the response of the British public that was more depressing. As the floods subsided the problems did not, as with any large floods the whole infrastructure was destroyed leaving many with nothing and at risk of cholera and other such diseases. There was a response and some aid was sent but many feel not enough. The TV and radio reports were filled with people saying that they wont support aid because of Pakistan's political stance. Now I understand that some people don't agree with Pakistan but this doesn't mean we shouldn't help their people when they are in need. The fact many turned their noses up at donating any money at all to help the civilians in need makes me sick, it shows the true dark side of humanity but alas I shall not go on too much about this as there is a lot to cover!

This year was catastrophic for the Gulf of Mexico with the Deep Water Horizon oil spill causing the largest environmental disaster for decades [link]. The amount of oil that erupted out of the drilling hole is unprecedented and at such at depth that the effects may not be known for years to come. 13 people lost their lives and many have lost their livelihood due to this disaster. The problems faced by BP were great when stopping the leak especially due to it's depth which resulted in the long time it took to stop the oil spilling out. I'm not going to place blame because this is a very complex issue and rather then pointing the finger this issue should be a wake up call. Our dependency on oil has meant we have had to drill deeper and deeper where the oil is a high pressures. This disaster will not be the last and most likely not the biggest as long as we rely on fossil fuels for our lifestyle, there's only so long they can last.

During 2010 the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted grounding much of the air traffic over Europe [link]. This caused widespread disruption amongst travellers and commuting workers. The issue highlighted the vulnerability of our transport system and of international business in our age. We were lucky that the eruption was not larger and that the cloud did not remain in the atmosphere for longer. It shows a need for backup plans to be in place in case an event like this happens again for it goes to show that even in our advanced society we are still at the mercy of mother earth. However there is an upshot of this eruption, as a volcano erupts it releases CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. During this eruption though the amount of CO₂ released was less than what the planes it grounded would have released making it the first carbon neutral volcano [NewScientist 25/12/10 pg.23].

As I have already mentioned there is a cyber-war going on over Wikileaks. However this year we have also seen the start of a new cyber-war one that is more immediately threatening than the one oer Wikileaks, I am talking about the Stuxnet computer worm [link]. This was a worm that infected many industrial control systems, most prominently in Iran. For a long time it was unknown what the purpose of said worm was but it has recently came to light that the worm was intended to target centrifuges working at a certain rate required to enrich uranium. Due to the nature of the worm and the fact that it's impact was generally centred around Iran (suspected of enriching uranium for nuclear weapons) suggests that this worm was in fact created by a state in order to hamper Iran's ambitions. If this is correct (which it most likely is) then we have step boldly into the realm of cyber-warfare and this is just the first shot. In this case the damage was limited to simply breaking centrifuges but it is obvious that this could have been a lot worse if whoever programed the worm desired it to be. We have entered a new level of war and there is no going back.

Now I have talked a lot about what has happened in the past year but now I shall set my eyes on how I feel the next year will go. I'll start off with a safe bet and say that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue and so will the bloodshed. Combat troops may begin to be removed from Iraq but these will be replaced by peace time troops and more private arms. The war in Afghanistan will get worse and continue to encroach on Pakistan. A lot of civilians and soldiers will die, there is no doubt about that.

Another safe bet is that the Gulf of Mexico will not fully recover for many decades, if ever. The amount of damage caused by the Deep Horizon spill will not fade away over night no matter if the media simply forgets about it. We already know a lot of the claims put in against BP will not be settled as many of the people do not have full financial records (they catch the fish and sell it cash in hand) so I doubt there will be any major reparations on the part of BP. They will continue to be hugely successful and this event will be but a small slip on their radar.

Now as we've already seen I can't help but be doubtful that there will be any major changes to that way the bankers operate. The very people who lost all of the money are getting billion pound bonuses and we already see dozens of adverts on the TV telling you it's easy to get a loan in half an hour, be that at 2000%APR. Indiscriminate lending got us in this mess and I see no end in sight. There will be no long lasting effective reforms in banking and we are doomed to boom and bust for many generations.

Now there is a chance however that due to the huge cuts being made (in many cases unnecessarily) by the Con-Dem government will lead to a double dip recession. We have already seen the growth in the economy slow down and with the cuts in public sector jobs a lot less people will be able to spend to keep the growth going. We will see huge cuts across the board, including the likes of the NHS, meaning these next few years will be very hard, especially for those worse off already.

One thing I do see happening is an increase in the number and the severity of protests. There will be more student protests, more union walkout and more strikes as the Con-Dem government attack everything and anything public they can. The people will not take this sitting down and that means there will be an increase in civil disobedience. We are seeing the dawn of a new pro-active age, or are we seeing a recurrence of the 1980s? Either way it means there will be a lot more action in the coming year.

However that bring with it the fear that the police force, already heavy handed, will continue to increase the level of force used against protesters. We already frequently see police horse charges and people bloodied up. This year we have seen Alfie Meadow's almost die at the hands of police and as much as it sadness me to say it I would not doubt that we see another Ian Tomlinson this year. I just hope that some time some how the police tactics get re-thought and protocols re-drawn.

This year has had it's ups and it's downs. Next year promises to be as exciting as the last. I for one am looking forward to seeing how it will unfold. Comment with your ideas and have a happy new year, let's hope to god it's not our last.

Stay Alert, Stay Free.

PROTIP: V for Vendetta is awesome!

P.S. This is likely to be my last post until after the exam period in January.

Like Pigs To The Slaughter

We are winning! We'll at least that's what they want us to believe.

How many times have you turned on the news to get a story of our progress in Afghanistan/Iraq [link] only to be told moments later that the number of casualties is increasing at an ever faster rate [link]? Now I may not be an expert but that doesn't really make sense. If every day we are making progress then how are we constantly losing more and more troops?

It just takes a look into the history books to see why they call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires". Not only did the Soviets get defeated there [link] (with a little help from the US funding the Taliban but that's another story) but also us, the British, have been defeated on Afghan soil, not once, but twice [link1][link2]. These are but two states that have been defeated in Afghanistan and there are many many more [link]. It is obvious from the history of this region that any war would inevitably be long and drawn out leading to a large number of casualties, Mission Accomplished indeed.

As the war in Afghanistan continue it is becoming more obvious that this war is not going to be confined to within the borders of Afghanistan. It began subtly with drone attacks starting to edge across the border into Pakistan as early as 2004 [link]. It is estimated that between 2004 and 2010 there have been 200 strikes into Pakistan, 100 happening between 2009 and 2010. This signals a shift in the battlefield. The war is shifting across into Pakistan, a nuclear state[link], which promises to further destabilise the country and the area. Pakistan has been at war and close to war with it's neighbour India many times throughout it's history [link]. This is particularly scary due to the fact that India is also a nuclear power. With conflict possibly spilling further into Pakistan this brings a real threat of war if Pakistan were to become destabilised.

As the Afghanistan war threatens to destabilise yet more of the middle east at least it means we are protecting our own shores? Nothing could be further from the truth, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raise the risk of an attack if nothing else [link].

We are being sold lies in an effort to continue these illegal wars which are now only causing more death and lowering global stability and security. The people here do not agree with the wars [link] and they are quickly turning into unjustifiable slaughterhouses. We need to get out, how many more lives are these illegal wars worth?

There are many more issues to be covered here but I'm not going to create a sprawling post right now so this is your lot at the moment.

Stay alert, Stay Free.


Any comments are always welcome, keep the discussion alive.

The Lies, The Slander

Now I am unsure as to how this post will go, I have so much I want to say and much of it is in an incoherent mess within my mind but I feel like if I wait too long to post this I feel as though it may never be made and will not be an accurate portrayal of my feelings.

Any way I and around 30,000 other people marched onto parliament square on Thursday the 9th of December 2010 to protest against the increase in student fees, the education cuts and generally against the effective privatisation of the education system within this country.

The measures put forward by the Con-Dem government will put further education out of the reach of many of the young people of this country under the guise of cutting the deficit. However this is not the case, how can increasing fees in 2 years decrease the deficit now and help us get out of the current crisis. A crisis which was caused by people taking out loans that they could simply not repay. How are the majority (not all as some, namely the upper class, student will be able to) of students be able to repay a debt of around £40,000. A lot of this debt will go unpaid which will do no favours for anyone. We already have the highest fees in Europe [link] why should they be any higher? Do we want a system similar to that of the USA were parents need to start saving from the birth of a child in order to send them through education or indeed for people to be completely priced out of further education. We need educated people to build a future for this country.

Furthermore the idea that cutting the funding by 80% or even 100% for the arts is a good way to ensure our education system is well funded and world class is an utter disgrace. Other countries are investing in their future whilst ours is cutting back, I say cutting back more like cutting out. This will cause the closure of many universities which many less well off students rely on again pricing students out of university.

A Con-Dem proposal for paying the first year or two of the poorest 16,000 or so student does little to compensate for those who are just above this threshold who will be left to suffer the full brunt of the fees. Furthermore the fact one or two years is payed doesn't help when the people still come out with more debt then they would previously, some A LOT more.

Alas at the moment I do not wish to dwell on why these cuts and increases in fees are a terrible idea. I would prefer to dwell upon the illegal and out of proportion response of the police to these actions.

Firstly I shall start on the point of police horses. The whole idea of having an animal in this sort of situation is sickening and cruel. Sure these animals are trained but there is only so much an animal can take. An excuse often used for police brutality is that the person gets stressed out. Now we are logical animals and have more of an understanding of the situation, an animal no matter the training will not understand the situation. That amount of noise and violence will stress out a horse and cause it to become dangerous, both to us and the police [link] as well as itself. This is animal cruelty and must stop.

I shall take a step back and explain what I meant by violence in relation to police horses. A tactic used a lot on Thursday was to charge into the crowd of protesters (never mind some were as young as 13/14) in an attempt to separate them. The crowd however is not always able to separate resulting in people getting trampled causing great damage to the person. This causes great fear as people could well die under the hooves of these horses. If a person is faced with the possibility of death or serious injury they may well throw whatever they have to try and stop this. The protesters did not target the horses in a malicious manner and even when something was thrown in a last ditch attempt at self defence it was undoubtedly aimed at the police on the horse. This means that the police by introducing the horses lead them directly to harm which is cruel and should stop.

Furthermore the actions of mounted police aside the rest of the force were also staggeringly heavy handed and illegal. As we entered parliament square we were instantly kettled, few, very few, people were able to leave from that point onwards the majority had no chance of leaving and had no real access to toilets or food and water. This is a direct attack on our freedoms and human rights and is an attempt to anger the masses into escalating the violence. A lot of violence was due to people aiming to leave the kettle, especially near the end when we had been detained for at least 6 hours. The majority of the demonstration were peaceful, no matter what is portrayed in the media, and we were all trapped on Westminster bridge for around 3 hours. This serves no end but as an attempt to scare as many of the first time protesters from protesting again. This is not however the effect it had, if anything it has made many protesters question the establishment and yes the police.

The kettling and the provocation it caused is just the tip of the iceberg. The sheer force that the police used against unprotected people is astounding. Now I can understand some force in order to keep people out of parliament, after all these peoples jobs have been manipulated to mean that their duty is to protect a government that is gong to cut their jobs. However the sights that I saw cannot be fully described by my words but I shall simply tell it like I saw it. People of all ages returned from the front line after clashes literally pouring with blood from their heads and young girls crying their eyes out along side old women hysterical with fear. People with broken bones were sent back into the kettle and denied medial help leaving them to have makeshift slings made until they were aloud out.

The violent methods used by the police did nothing but anger the protesters and escalate the violence. Images of fences being carried across the top of crowds were pounced on by the media and the masses told that they were being thrown at police. This was NOT the case. Fences were being taken to the front line. They were not however, being used as weapons. What actually happened was that the fences were being placed between the protesters and the police in order to protect the protesters from the truncheons of the police.

A person was nearly killed after being hit by a truncheon to the head. As a result of this he got bleeding on the brain, he was then denied medical assistance by police officers before an ambulance worker intervened [link]. Another protester was dragged from his wheelchair multiple times. We are expected to be thankful that they did not open fire? What has happened to this country? It is disgusting but it will not stop us. As long as the government acts to destroy out country we will continue to fight.

Now the point of this post is not to be anti-police because in most situations the police are necessary and a force for good but I fail to see how nearly killing people is for the people. We will hold solidarity when you are cut if you march. We will march for the more general cuts then just in education. This is our fight, this is your fight. Rise together and win together, solidarity until the end.

I'm sorry this post has been a lot more opinion and first hand experience than being backed up by sources as usual but this has made me very angry. I will endeavor to make a post supported by more factual sources next time but I hope this has made you question a few things said by the media and at least entertained.

Stay alert, stay free.

We Are Free

The governments of this world are growing out of touch. They do not understand the internet and it's culture at all. This is shown by their attempts to close down Wikileaks [link for now at least].

Wikileaks as I have said before is a website that enables people from around the world to release documents detailing lies fed out by their governments, effectively allowing whistle blowing without the immediate threats encountered if they were to approach a more conventional outlet. This has allowed us to begin to level the laying field. It allows us to know if we are being lied to and the real motives behind the governments actions.

However for obvious reasons this has not gone down well with the powers that be. How can they claim to be for the people if there is a constant stream of documents being released that states otherwise? For this reason the US and European governments have been making attempts to shut down Wikileaks without taking into account how this wonderful thing known as the interenet works.

Firstly there are the relentless DDOS[?] attacks, an attempt to overcrowd the server and cause it to crash. This was successful in temporally bringing down the site [link]. This however is as said a temporary thing and after some time the site was back up and operational after all the attacks.

However the game then took a step up, international governments began applying political pressure on the companies owning the servers that Wikileaks was hosted, such as Amazon [link]. This caused the site to be taken down but alas again this was only temporary. The beautiful thing about the internet is that it is based on free speak and this means that there are a great number of able people out there that believe in this cause. This has lead to the site being "mirrored" and hosted in numerous places all over the world. As one is shut down another opens, it's like a game of cat and mouse but this time as the mouse is caught another 5 appear.
Another attempt to end Wikileaks has been made recently with the arrest of founder Assange [link]. This will not in anyway bring an end to Wikileaks as this site is not a single man, it is not a collection of men, it is an idea. An idea of freedom and liberty that cannot and will not be extinguished no matter how many arrests are made. Once something like this is out on the internet there is no way of stopping it, Wikileaks has already stated categorically that it will not stop due to Assange's arrest [link].

It is now that we see that the governments are out of touch with the internet culture and are genuinely scared. This Wikileaks battle has shown that we can make them accountable for their lies and misleadings. It shows that whilst they may try with all their might that the internet will remain free, that whilst it may not be the most direct form of action that whilst we have the ability we can remove the veil over our eyes on the internet. This is truly a wonderful time. I hope that this Wikileaks escapade will encourage others to whistle blow and not be scared, for it is now that we know we can be free.

Stay alert, Stay free.

A New Beginning

One good thing about the Torys, they're waking up this generation to the absolute bull that comes from downing street and the media. They can kettle and they can shutdown Wikileaks but they can't shut our eyes once they have been opened.

A new generation took to the streets, a generation that supposedly doesn't care. Sure this is over fees which many feel will effect them financially in a direct way, for many this is the first time they feel as though their way of life is under direct attack by the government. It feels normal for a change to take up a banner and march in the street, I don't feel marginalised for wanting to go out and show my disgust with the way things are ran.

There has been a shift in the consciousness of the young people of this country. No longer are they content to say "If you don't like it then move" or "At least its better than [insert country name here]" and for that I thank the Torys and their elitist regime. This is an exciting time to be a student, we finally have an enemy we all identify with. Cameron the smug upper class weasel that we all resent and Clegg for lying straight to our faces.

What is most exciting though is not that students and none-students a like are fighting against cuts in their thousands, it's that there are thousands of people simply mobile in the streets. One act of civil disobedience over an issue will make it more likely that they will continue onto other issues. The police have tried to quash the protests for this reason, planting police vans and kettling protesters to try and scare us from returning. Alas all it shows is that the powers that be are scared, the Lib-Dems changing dates and venues for meetings shows this. As Thomas Jefferson once said "When governments fear people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." We are witnessing a scared Government, we are regaining our liberty.

However there are two sides to this post. As you may all now Wikileaks released a great deal of documents dealing with the Iraq and Afghanistan war as well as other documents. My opinion on the matter is that information should be able to freely move and if there is evidence of the Government lying to it's people then we should be able to access this information, obviously information on current operations should be kept secret to protect our troops but I feel as though we should have a right to know if we are being lied to. Yet as we stand on the brink of our generation waking up we are confronted with outright censorship by our freely elected governments. Wikileaks has been shut down and has moved servers many times in the past weeks due to political pressure. This is a blatant act against freedom of speech and information. When we live in an age were we are told that North Korea fired unprovoked into South Korea [link] before discovering this is may not the case at all [link].

We are entering an age were the government is more open to blatant abuses of power and attacks against our freedoms yet we are also seeing more and more people wake up and fight back. It may be student fees and education cuts that have got people onto the street but there is a sense that this is only the beginning. These are exciting times, the balance of power is shifting. We can fight and we can win. A mere few months ago that sentiment would seem ridiculous to many but now it seems this thought has penetrated the zeitgeist. This is merely the beginning of the war, the people together will never be defeated.
Stay free.

We will march on the 9th, we will march until we win.