Racism sells, it always has.

Below is an article from Sky News on a series of adverts set to appear on billboards in New York's Subway. Words such as those to be used in this advert have been used throughout history to justify the slaughter and enslavement of innocent peoples for hundreds of years. 

Famously this occurred on the continent that is now called North America and saw the deaths of perhaps millions of indigenous people to the Americas. The civilised white man crossed great ocean spans and with it the supposed right to spread the way of 'civilisation' to people considered 'savages'. They did so by first the sword, then the gun and today, through debt slavery thanks to the World Bank and IMF.

Terms such as ‘savages’ have been used in more recent wars such as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Words such as ‘gook’, ‘rag heads’ and ‘sand nigger’ are all commonly used by people inside and outside of the military to dehumanise and justify modern day holocausts. Where America and the UK have not actively taken part in modern day massacres they have played their part indirectly as part of a global, military industrial complex, which arms dictators, that our government have backed or put in place, who then use their weapons eventually on their own people, just as Saddam Hussein did in the 1980’s, right up until more recently in Bahrain as part of the Arab Spring. 

The military industrial complex is in full boom, war is good for business and it seems that the business currently is focused on suppressing your own people. Adam Thomas of UKTI DSO speaking at the Special Operations Forces Exhibition Conference (SOFEX) to Shane Smith of Vice News recently explained that the security industry is worth $180-190biliion and that their estimates for the next 4 years see this doubling to over $400billion dollars. By security they mean homeland security, border security, anti-immigration, anti-drugs, oil field security etc. This spending is estimated to be 2-3 times more than will be spent of defence tactical spending.

If they are spending it, it means they are using them and that is a terrifying prospect for us all.

"The right relationship is everything" JPMorgan Chase & Co

http://news.sky.com/story/987227/anti-jihad-adverts-to-run-in-new-york-subway

By Hannah Thomas-Peter, New York Correspondent

The head of a group that has won its fight to run controversial adverts in New York subway stations referring to some Muslims as "savage" has told Sky News that she will fight "to the death" for the right to offend people.

Pamela Geller runs the American Freedom Defence Initiative (AFDI), which has taken out ads that read: "In any war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."

The posters are due to appear in 10 New York City subway stations next week.

They were initially rejected by the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) because of the use of demeaning language.

But in July a Manhattan court judge ruled this was a violation of the first amendment rights of the AFDI and they should be allowed to run.

Ms Geller told Sky News that she was unconcerned the adverts might make the subway network a target for violence.

She said: "Were there similar ads on the London buses and trains on 7/7? You know there weren't.

"I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages.

"I won't take responsibility for other people being violent.

"I live in America and in America we have the first amendment."

Ms Geller, who is a prominent supporter of Israel, stressed that she was not referring to all Muslims as savages, only those who engaged in what she characterises as "Jihad".

She believes that America is under threat from some Muslims who wish to impose Sharia law on the country, and her group has launched similar campaigns before.

The release of the adverts coincides with widespread anger in parts of the Middle East over an anti-Muslim film made in the US and released on the Internet.

Next week heads of state from all over the world will be converging on the city amid heightened security for the UN General Assembly.

The Washington DC MTA has deferred the placement of the controversial ads "out of concern for public safety, given current world events".

But New York MTA Transportation spokesman Aaron Donovan said: "Our hands are tied."

There had been some suggestions that the city's transit body was trying to find a way to stop the adverts appearing.

However, another spokesperson for the MTA told Sky News it appeared the ads are definitely going ahead, although he was unable to say on which day, and at which subway stations.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, told Sky News: "Our basic position is that the first amendment means that everyone is free to be a bigot or even an idiot like Pamela Geller.

"We wish she wasn't provoking and inciting hatred, but in America that's her right.

"We encourage Muslims to exercise the same right to publicly denounce such adverts.

"The real danger is the spread of hatred in our society, which can lead to attacks on innocent people."

The banker never goes broke

If someone were to grab you in the street at night and rob you, you would like to think that once the crime had been reported to the authorities that the perpetrator would be arrested, tried by a jury and found guilty of their crime. So what happened with the banks?

Since 2008 we have had 4 years of scandal which has cost you and I billions of pounds, in fact depending on where you get your figures from it could have cost us as much as £1trillion. When you start to get to figures of trillions you must in your heart start to know that things have gone out of hand. Professor Brian Cox comically stated that we have 'spent more on bailing out the banks than we have on science since Jesus'.

Polly Curtis from the Guardian asked in September 2011 the following:

How much did the banking crisis cost the UK taxpayer?

Last December (2010), the National Audit Office published a second report into the costs of the bail-out. That report concluded:

The scale of the support currently provided to UK banks has fallen from a peak of £955bn to £512bn, but the amount of cash currently borrowed by the government to support banks has risen by £7bn [to a total of £124bn] since December 2009.

• Since 2007 the UK has committed to spending £1.162 trillion at various points on bailing out the banks. This figure has however fluctuated wildly during the period and by March 2011 it was £456.33bn. That total outstanding support was equivalent to 31% of GDP in March (2011)

The banks, bankers and their friends have taken money, your money, gone to the casino and gambled it away. Then to top it off and kick you a little more whilst you are down, they have been saved by us, with our money, again.

I wonder if you went to the casino and gambled all your money away and went bust would the bank give you another £250,000 loan so you could keep your home, or would they evict you and your family and sell it on for a fraction of the price to one of the many vultures that would no doubt circle?

Yet despite this not one of these lying gamblers have been arrested and dragged down to the Old Bailey to face charges for enslaving future generations to debt slavery. However we look at it the debt that these criminals have thrust upon us today will eventually rest on the shoulders of tomorrows children.

A documentary on Channel 4 in 2010 called Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story estimated that our children, as it stands, will be in debt to the tune of £73,000 before they are even born, and you were going to worry about tuition fees?

They are stealing their future.

Worse than this, in some countries, the casino dwelling banking terrorists responsible for the global financial meltdown have actually been put in charge of pushing through austerity measures aimed at keeping their friends at the dinner table, eating heartily, whilst the rest of us scrimp and scrape to feed our young and put a roof over our heads. The Great Dictator, I mean actor, Barack Obama on the other hand has passed some of the most unnerving banking legislation, proving that he is a banking President and then rated himself 3rd or 4th best President of all time. Congratulations. You stole from your public to pay off the banks.

The greatest transfer of power and wealth from the poor to the rich has taken place on their watch, under our noses and yet still we take it.

This year also saw the Libor scandal hit the news. Fraud, whichever way you look at it, it is fraud. Bankers at Barclays colluded to fix the Libor rate how and when it suited them, noticeably around the period of the Lehman Brothers Collapse, following a chat with someone from our central bank, The Bank of England.

You couldn't make it up.

Yet still no one has been arrested and Bob Diamond, former Barclays Bank CEO who earned somewhere in the region of £100m in his time with Barclays between 2006 and this year, walked away with a £2million pay off, even though the Financial Service Authority had doubts about his appointment in 2010, to ensure his availability in the event that anything came up.

In the meantime these banking terrorists are in the middle of a printing frenzy of paper money, which only serves to increase the cost of living. Each round of Quantitative Easing devalues the pound already sat in your pocket.

"Give it up Ben (Bernanke) QE3 is a flop, you can buy up all of the agency mortgage backed securities in the world but as long as you are paying IOR at a rate that is way above market, all you are going to accomplish is to drive up commodity prices" Forbes 2012 ~ Louis Woodhill 

We face cuts to essential services, pay freezes and our pensions are being hijacked by governments we elect, to supposedly serve us, to pay for their mess. Whilst they are at it they pitch us against one another by playing public sector off against private sector. The reality is neither one of the people who work in either of these sectors caused this mess, yet we are being made to pay for it and we point the finger at each other whilst the people who are actually responsible sit on beaches in the Caribbean supping cocktails. Whilst we have had to learn to cope, make do & mend and get by, the number of millionaires in England has increased by 17% in the last 2 years.

It is high time we stopped believing the government and media lies, lies that it is our fault this depression is upon us. It is time that we pointed the finger, together, at the real people responsible; the banks, bankers, their government puppets and their special interest corporations. Which finger you point, I leave to you.

Was it something I said?

The summer holidays are over and with it the sound of screaming kids enjoying the last days of any real freedom they will ever know, until Halloween that is.

For the most part my summer was spent inside an office doing mundane tasks; Australian comedian Steve Hughes calls this 'working maximum hours for minimum wage'.  Never one to feel too hard done by I decided to take my nephews to an old haunt I frequented many a time as a youngling with my Grandfather, Hunstanton. It was relatively close by with the changeable weather in mind and good enough for their first visit to an English seaside.

An early rise was compounded by a bit of late night research and the sudden realisation I hadn't sorted out a lunch for my better half, who being a coeliac (allergy to wheat and gluten) makes it hard to find somewhere to eat out without having first checked out the eateries. The last time I checked it was fish and chips and not a lot more.

The journey was uneventful, I had the pleasure of my eldest nephews company, who requested the mandatory 'air in the night' by Phil Collins to kick start the journey. With a captive audience I decided to broaden his musical horizon and wean him off JLS and reacquaint him with Bob Marley, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin. He was not impressed. 

When we arrived it was clear to see not much had changed in the 14 or 15 years since I last visited the town. The old car park seemed to have the same old vans parked in it, with the same faces walking around the same market. We headed down to the sea straight off and I watched as the ever entertaining youngest of my nephews chased the waves for the first time.

The waves were not in the same league as those of Bells Beach but it was fun for the younglings.

The elder stateswoman of the group wanted to have breakfast before heading down to Old Hunstanton so we elected to find the old cafe we had always gone to for a cup of tea and some toast; I still have vivid memories of hearing the news there that Ayrton Senna had died at Imola in 1994, sat with my juice. Moving up the hill the old cafe was nowhere to be seen, it had gone, but another promising little family place was situated across the road so we gave it a chance and took a look at the menu.

As my family filed in through the door I noticed a young family already sat in the corner with their breakfast fresh on the table, a man with his girlfriend and 2 children. He was no older than me and his partner a few years younger perhaps, he had his top off and was covered head to toe in tattoos. Having had one or two myself in the past I am a fan of good art work on a human canvas, but this man was sporting St George's Cross, a British Bull dog and 'Made in England' on his leg.

My family deliberated at the till on what to eat and I turned to wait outside, the atmosphere seemed to get a little tense.

I do not think my family had particularly noticed but an uncomfortable feeling over came me and within a couple of minutes the young family were hurrying out of the cafe. Was it something I said? Was there a sign I had missed that said 'no blacks, no Irish?' No, but it is something I have experienced on more than one occasion in the past, I imagine they must have truly believed whatever they had read in the Daily Mail that week. As a child I remember occasions where people would stare at my mother for having a child considered 'half caste' and later of 'mixed race or heritage' but had never thought anything more about it since then until I saw the reaction to my nephews, their mother and I.

Why should I have, are we not all of mixed heritage? After all this is the 21st century...

What were our crimes I wondered? Other than my sister sporting the Hijab and myself a wild, Hendrix-Esq Afro? Nothing, other than not being white in a country that now, in some ways, views Muslims and Islam the way some people used to view Black people and Jews.

These are strained times for all of us regardless of our cultural upbringing, the only real difference between any one of us. The cold war has been replaced by the war on terror and putting with it a whole new section of the worlds population in the cross hairs of people that feed and are fed on fear. It is this very fear that will no doubt lead my nephews, and many other children of a similar age, into a new era of hate that no one will be truly able to explain the reason for why, other than 'they just do'.

I wish I had asked the gentleman why he felt the need to take his family out of the cafe but at the time I felt he was not the sort to debate and held the door for him as they shuffled past. I missed an opportunity to offer a positive experience to him and his family of people that are different in some ways, yet alike in so many ways more.

It left me wondering whether this is how it will always be, with my nephews blissfully unaware of the animosity and mistrust in the world around them until it hits them in the face, perhaps quite literally as it did with me, with this man, his children and others like them growing up to fear, needlessly, someone based purely on the fact that their bodies have a little more melanin than them or that their way of showing their faith to God differs?

We are shaped by our environments but I am an optimist, reformed and hope for a better world, one that will eventually learn to see through the propaganda and hype played out to us by the media and lead to us embracing each other as a common species, not as individual races.

All the world's a stage

Unless you have been on a visit to another planet or stuck somewhere in the the outback without a 3G connection you will know that the London Olympics has been underway for the past 2 and a bit weeks.

What would be amazing is if the athletes told the corporations where to go

From the moment Danny Boyle's opening ceremony finished until the final curtain today, August 12th, the majority of the UK has remained transfixed by the drama unfolding in the Olympic theatre of dreams. 

What awaits everyone the day after is a more sombre affair: the recession or as some are now calling it, the 21st century depression.

The Olympics has been something I have pretty much boycotted since Sydney 2000; Athens 2004 was tainted for me by drugs offenders, Beijing 2008 by human rights oppression by the Chinese authorities and their refusal to accept Tibet as a sovereign state and London 2012, a chance in a life time to witness an event this big at home marred by a terror state military presence and surface to air missiles being placed on peoples apartments in the name of safety and security. 

Despite all this, during London 2012 I have still found the earth minutes to sit down and watch David Rudisha, the 800m legend, Usain Bolt and his meteoric brilliance and Mo Farah. What it has reinforced in my mind however is the power of distraction that is television, the social conditioning box. This happened coincide with a period of time flying a desk at work, working 9-5. It has dawned on me just how well the system works for everyone except us.

This is my first blog since July 22nd, in that time plenty has happened both to me and around me to write or type until my fingers bled. War criminal Tony Blair is back working for Labour, no doubt hoping the majority of the country have forgotten about his blood thirsty ways (not me Tone). Israel continue to apply pressure on the 'good people of free nations' to side with them in a war against Iran and Syria is a basket case of civil unrest and blood shed that has led to the UK government handing the unknown rebels funding, but not arms. In the actual Olympics themselves there was of course Danny Boyle's much divisive opening ceremony and of course there was the shameless plug by the BBC during the sprint finals on Nazi eugenics, the legacy of 'super slaves' from Jamaica and why black people dominate sprinting, but that however is a story for another day, and lets not talk about the Euro Millions lottery that just so happened to roll over every week the Olympics were happening. Who runs the lottery anyway? 

Tomorrow will see us awaken to the chorus of 'Olympic Legacy' where Cameron has pledged to fund athletes up until Rio 2016 with the same backing that they have received since securing the London 2012 bid in 2005. This will be led by Lord Sebastien Coe, who has been dodging the question about removing Dow Chemicals from the Olympic Sponsor list following their involvement in the Bhopal disaster 27 years ago, in the build up to the games this year. I for one tried to email him regarding this only to find his email was bouncing back the thousands of people bombarding him on behalf of Amnesty International. 

Tomorrow however is still several hours away and the social conditioning box cannot let us go too long without being distracted in case we start to work out how badly the system has thrown us overboard. 

So it was to my shock and horror that on the radio this afternoon on the way home I heard the first football result of the season; the final scores of the Community Shield. This must also mean that X-factor cannot be far away with yet another insipid Christmas number one that has no heart, soul or meaning and more young girls will be flaunting flesh or advocating being beaten by their boyfriends. 

The power of the social conditioning box should not be underestimated; it is hopes and dreams that they sell to us through the television, that we will all one day be movie gods or rock stars, but we won't.

If you are right, you have the right to fight

Language: under and over estimated in equal proportions, the use of it everyday to define, refine and confine sections of the community depending on the users capability or understanding. Two words used a considerable amount at the minute are militant and protester, usually in the same sentence.

From the free online dictionary:

Militant: to be vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause: militant reformers.
Protester: an expression or declaration of an objection, disapproval, or dissent, often in opposition to something a person is powerless to prevent or avoid: a protest against increased taxation.

Or from the Oxford dictionary;

Militant: favouring confrontational or violent methods in support of a political or social cause.
Protester: a person who publicly demonstrates opposition to something; a demonstrator.

These are the words that management and the media use everyday to describe working class people who are fighting for their basic rights to a livable wage and safe working conditions. Words that are unfair in their use that serve only to alienate and separate those standing up and speaking out from the rest of the working class who may well have resigned themselves to their own fate and scare any potential fence sitters away from joining a picket line, march or rally.

To stand up for what is right does not make you militant, it makes you passionate. To be passionate about a cause is not wrong.

To know you are right gives you the right to fight and this is exactly what people such as the Essex Fire Brigades Union members are doing, the cuts being faced by Essex fire crews affect the safety of every man, woman and child living in Essex. The cuts being pushed through in Essex are not for savings, they are of an ideological nature, this in itself is a very dangerous ethos for any fire authority to operate by because, ultimately, cuts costs lives. The budget for Essex Fire Service has increased from £70m to £77m, with reserves that went up from £4m to £12m, yet the management continue to plunder the service with devastating and needless cuts. In the 36 months since the initial dispute started there have been 160 firefighters lost.

The people of Essex that are standing up rightfully against these sweeping and savage cuts are also having the very essence of their human rights eroded by a totalitarian dictatorship who have imposed restrictions on their right to freedom of expression. It is a psychological war of oppression that would not be out of place in 1930's Germany. This is a problem shared in the wider community, something I feel becoming ever more present across all our daily lives with the creep of fascism spreading through society.

It is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about, the George Orwell state is upon us.

Outside Essex County Council - No more cuts

Essex to their credit have stood together in the face of some vociferous adversity from senior management. From body cameras being employed to spy on firefighters to CCTV being installed on community owned fire stations at the tax payers expense! Even police escort off stations on strike dates and fear of discipline and reprisal for daring to use words on a fire station that you can use in everyday life outside those very walls. The strike in Essex is a local dispute but it has national importance for us all, not just in the fire service but across all workers in the UK suffering in these times of austerity. Unions need to up their game by supporting each other both visibly at rallies and picket lines to financially aiding those people taking the decisions to withdraw their labour. This is not a decision made lightly. The show of unity and strength in Essex is something we should use to launch our own fight backs and we too must support them however we can.

Never have truer words been spoken

Whilst it is sad that workers across the country have felt that in order to be heard and have a chance of defending their working conditions they must take the challenging steps of strike action, let us not forget that this all comes against the back drop of billions of pounds of our money being spent on buying machines that deliver nothing but death, destruction and misery to countless souls around the globe. News just this week that the new stealth bomber being delivered to the UK is to be at a cool £100m for each jet, we can afford to wage illegal wars but not ensure we can retire in comfort after a life of service.

The march and rally in Essex was a resounding success but more can be and must be done if we are to continue this fight against ill judged idealism.

The people united will never be divided

The boiling frog theory: throw a frog into a pan of hot water and he will jump out, put him into a pan of cold water and gradually turn up the heat and he will not sense the danger, he will sit there and perish.

This is the scenario today facing the public sector across the country.

Bit by bit public services are being eroded, department by department, until they are gone, privatised to be run for a profit by people that may not have our best interests at heart. These are classic divide and conquer tactics for the government and their pay masters who rely on the knowledge that (generally speaking) we will not stand up and speak out if something does not directly affect us. hey know a power grab will result in a violent kick back by the people but by picking us off one by one we will not see the bigger picture and react only when it is too late.

The result will be services that are nothing but a shell of their former selves.

The Independent today featured an article called 'how the coalition carved up the NHS' and was well worth reading. Key points it highlighted were the fact that the Tories viewed "choice, competition and a greater willingness to make use of the private sector" as the best way to improve the performance of the NHS; it goes on to say "the existing NHS executive was to be abolished and in its place a new economic regulator charged with proofing competition across the service, any willing provider as to be allowed to supply NHS care at NHS prices".

This is all well and good but as with all services that are privatised you get neither choice nor competition, prices increase steadily and then exponentially. Think train fares that happened to go up by 6% on average this year followed by the usual comments about how the increased fares will go to improving services, I guess we can live in hope.

What is more likely to happen with the NHS is that the vultures will circle and descend upon trusts across the country and fees will remain steady, for a while, but then costs will gradually increase with a number of excuses being reeled out for why and it will have happened steadily, over a period of time and the people will forget to ask what has changed?

Privatisation is a disease spreading through all public services, from vital services being outsourced such as training centres and workshops in the fire and rescue service, to entire police forces looking to privatise in some parts of the country. 

These profiteering pirates will serve only to line their pockets, not serve the people in their time of need.

The cuts agendas, the pensions lies and privatisation are all part of a bigger plan to chip away and fragment the public sector. The NHS, though the largest, is but one part of the public sector being  attacked that provide vital services to us all, with bi-weekly bin collections becoming a more regular occurrence, fewer street cleaners, fewer teachers to help shape our future generations bright minds, fewer firefighters and fewer police to arrest the banking terrorists mainly responsible for the economic crisis engulfing the world.

The need to stand up and speak out for each other is not a new concept but it is one that has become less obvious in recent times, our strength is our unity and by showing unity amongst all people within the public sector and to the very people they serve, the fight becomes a stronger one. This fight is not between each other but against the government, their paymasters and the banking terrorists. 

I shall finish with this play on words of a famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

"First they came for the Socialist,

but I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionist,

but I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Muslims,

but I did not speak out because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me"

12 years and still roaming free

The British Grand Prix, scene of many a late night camp fire sing alongs at Camp Gallagher.

Since the ripe old age of 14 I have attended all but one of the Silverstone Formula 1 Grand Prix, with 12 of these coming by way of 4 days and 3 nights camping. In this time I have yet to put my hand in my pocket for overzealous teenage gate keepers looking to pocket a few quid and hand the rest to farmers, who I imagine have a similar tax arrangement as Jimmy Carr.

Now at the age of 29 (and old man time creeping up on me) the novelty of walking for miles on end around the area, looking for holes in fences, gates to climb or ditches to scurry through or leap over has worn as thin as Alan Shearers hair line. This year was even more off putting as carrying an injured shoulder left me with neither the gumption, nor the ability, to climb anything I could not swing my leg over.

After much deliberation (and an hour of walking in the only sun I thought I was going to see for the weekend) we stopped for a couple of pints at the village pub whilst everyone else had long given up and paid their camping fee and were now setting up. As the sun beat down my friend and I decided to bite the bullet and pay the £50 for a bit of grass, 5 toilets and 2 shower cubicles. On our slow walk to the main gate we were still debating whether we should offer the teenage gate keepers £20 quid in their pockets in exchange for letting two out of shape and out of ideas old boys in to the camp site.

Luck it seems was on our side.

As we made our way up the long drive way to the entrance a convoy of 4x4's toeing caravans sped past us and joined the back of what was an already long line of eager petrol heads, so we strolled up to and through the gate without stopping.

Success was ours and all it took was a little patience...except we were in the wrong field and separated from Camp Gallagher by some impenetrable fencing.

With defeat snatched from the jaws of victory we turned on a dime and back out of the entrance and headed towards the correct gate. I could only put our mistake down to heat exhaustion, exasperated by the Corona consumption on the village pub wall.

Our excuses were set, in through the gate we went but it must have been a change of shift. An actor on his phone was all that stood between us and the mud bath awaiting us. He did not even give us a second look, such was the importance of his call. We were in and it was almost time for dinner. In the 2 hours it took us to get in the boys had already set up.

Every cloud has a silver lining.