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.

Fear

Fear is no longer an emotion, it is a product. A product being sold to us everyday without us even noticing. It is the fuel of this capitalist dream and those dispensing the fear hold the power over the terrified masses. Fear is what is controlling us and it is the fuel burning away at our freedoms. We need to reinstate fear as an emotion and not a product in order to be truly free.
Fear is a natural response to a threat and is perfectly natural and healthy. That is as long as the threat actually exists. However more often then not we are being lead to be fearful of threats that simply do not exist simply in an attempt to control. You watch the TV and see images of death and destruction, the news shows us engaged in another futile war whilst the soaps get involved in large murder plot lines. All to remind you that you are indeed mortal, something that instills fear into most people. This is however, not the end. We are then bombarded with advertisements for products we don't need telling us that we wont get laid if we don't buy there new wrinkle cream or anal bleach. By ensuring the consumer is scared the companies can manipulate this to sell their worthless products. There is money to be made out of fear.
It is not only the corporations that can profit from fear but also those who are instated to protect our best interests, our governments. The buzzword this past decade was terrorism, any news article could be sexed up with the words terror or extremist and result in the audience lapping up what ever spews from the newsreader. In a state of fear the people become sheep. The staggering number of CCTV cameras and the simply deplorable ID card scheme are both products of fear. The threat of terror is amplified to simply ridiculous levels in the media to create this level of fear in order to produce enough flag wavers to allow the government to have it's way. The fear created clouds people's judgement and makes them more susceptible to manipulation.
To illustrate the amplification of the threat from terrorism I give you the fact that almost 400 times more people die in car crashes in developed countries than from international terrorism (link). What does this tell us? Is it that we should be petrified of driving? No. It is simply that the threat of terror is so small it is almost negligible. The fact that road accident are so frequent and terror isn't results in the skewed view of the world we see on the news. To put it simply drama sells and terror attacks are dramatic. The whole idea of a terror attack is to create fear and due to the way the news portrays terror the attacks often have their desired results. What happens when we realise that a certain terror group isn't as scary as we first were lead to believe? After all isn't terror a new thing to the 21st century. Well the faces and names simply change. The people we are told to fear varies over time, I mean weren't the reds meant to have killed us all by now?
However terror is not the only thing we are taught to fear. If you were to take the threats printed in the news all seriously life would be impossible. Every other day there is breaking news that causes cancer or if toxic or can kill you in any number of ways. People buy into fear so if you can print a story with a scary headline people are going to buy your paper or magazine or even watch your show. So by increasing the fear in peoples lives the media companies increase their profits which intern allows the advertisers to pick up on the fear and take it running. A scared society is a stupid society.
So as this has dragged on for a while and I am positively knackered I shall round it up here. Basically a lot of what we fear is not scary. It is often blown out of proportion to fit others needs. Threats are not always as overt as those posed by politicians discussing terror, some are much more covert. The media paints a picture of a terrifying world in which everything must be feared, the advertisers then pick up on this and offer their products as the only solution. We need not fear the entire world, we need not fear each other. I believe in the intrinsic goodness of man despite the atrocities we have committed, I believe people are good. The more we succumb to this state of fear sold to us the darker the world becomes. No wonder the depression rates are always increasing, we are taught to be scared of everything and everyone. Once we see the true beauty in life, the beauty obscured by fear, we will be free. You need not be afraid simply think next time a politician or a news article or whatever tell you you need to be scared because most of the time, they are wrong. We live in a wonderful and beautiful world, too often is this forgotten. Stay happy, stay free.
Also if you enjoyed this post you may enjoy this mans work:







P.S. I realise this article has a lot of my own views as apposed to factual content but I feel this blog belongs here. If anyone has any thoughts or arguments to do with what I have written then simply comment below and I shall expand upon this.