tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19556898749632027072024-02-19T12:57:37.568+01:00Intercept TransmissionDispatches on world madness from a terraced flat in BarcelonaThe Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-18125707263805613602012-09-25T23:36:00.000+02:002012-09-26T06:53:23.238+02:00Surround, sister<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuesK-_jmmRiES3Me_rE5UntfnCNXdTCPKRY-QOn9cqGL7ApQjcLeqDqBBDi2GazykM1bqmktHtsYVOIK_QDGqXvCjU4UYwzCbtZFAUWOq9hP3Nj7YvXEKxeMDYbZToEz4uhdp3I3tPvuN/s1600/8024051533_4217a8aa56_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuesK-_jmmRiES3Me_rE5UntfnCNXdTCPKRY-QOn9cqGL7ApQjcLeqDqBBDi2GazykM1bqmktHtsYVOIK_QDGqXvCjU4UYwzCbtZFAUWOq9hP3Nj7YvXEKxeMDYbZToEz4uhdp3I3tPvuN/s400/8024051533_4217a8aa56_z.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yukino/">Yukino Miyazawa </a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wish I was in Madrid tonight.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When I arrived home from my pointless "guiri" job in Barcelona, one I should feel lucky to have, all things considered, I logged on to the RTVE website to have a look at their live feed of the 25S "Rodea El Congreso" protest in Madrid. The first thing I saw were the helmets and plexi-glass shields of the police. The armor protected them from reprisal as they swung their truncheons wildly at unarmed protesters.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An older man stepped in between the tens of thousands in the crowd and the police, his arms stretched out toward the protesters, urging calm and restraint. His palms were were open, pleading to the crowd not to give in to the rage, but he was walking slowly, back toward the police. When he got close enough, they clubbed him as well. I suppose you can't be too careful, especially with ageing, pony-tailed hippies in denim jackets attempting to pacify a potential riot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Moments later, the camera caught three or four riot police beating a young woman on the ground. She was pale, with dyed, bright red hair. She tried as best she could to protect herself from the flurry of blows. A young man with a shaved head hovered over her, attempting to protect her from further injury. He was clubbed across the skull for his trouble. This act of brutality in particular seemed to stir something in the crowd. Objects soon hurtled toward the thin black line of the riot squad. Individual protesters showed momentary swells of courage as they advanced on the police, whose faces were obscured by black helmets and plastic visors. There was the sense that, at any moment, the situation could turn dark. Ugly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was a sense of imminent madness, an aching fear in the gut that things would go horribly awry. That fear didn't come from the protesters. They tossed brightly coloured swathes of fabric in the air while others cheered; they raised their arms up, palms open to the sky as they sat cross legged in front of the shields and the visors and the bean bag rifles held at the ready. It came from the police. Their charges into the crowd came randomly, without warning. Their clubs struck out at young women and old men with little care over who was hit. It seemed not to matter that the weapons made contact at all. The act was automatic. Reflexive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When the sun set over the Spanish Congress building, where citizens from across the country gathered to demand that a government -- seemingly hell bent on testing the limits of its power over the masses -- step down, one of the estimated 1,300 police officers on hand to keep the gathering of angry, desperate people in line charged too far into the crowd. A few struck out at him, kicking at the heavy Kevlar vest covering his torso, and one gave him a quick boot to the rear end, but he was allowed to scamper off to safety; his survival was never in doubt. A mob hell bent on tearing it all down would have swallowed the trapped cop whole. This one let him go.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Watching the night unfold in Madrid, what becomes crystal clear is that a crowd of hundreds of thousands -- possibly a million -- remains peaceful because they choose to. The police, charged with protecting the members of Congress in Madrid tonight, should bear that in mind. The people's commitment to non-violence is a greater protection than padded armour and shields ever can be. The police, as they protect the same members of parliament that day by day turn the screws tighter, would do well to realize that one day the crowds won't turn and run at the sight of a truncheon bearing down overhead. Their desperation will consume their fear.</span><br />
<br />The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-86569231358221615802012-05-30T18:34:00.000+02:002012-05-30T18:34:10.807+02:00War Without Bombs<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There’s not much
point in beating around the bush: it’s a shit state of affairs in Greece right now. The poor are stuffing pittances into mattresses while the rich are
funneling vast sums out in to tax havens abroad. Two years of mercilessly
enforced austerity have left people rummaging through rubbish bins for a meal, young
people chasing after concepts like livelihood and prospects as they evaporate
out of the country, and older Greeks emasculated to the point where shooting
yourself in Syntagma Square becomes the last stand of the dignified. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Greece is
hemorrhaging money, blood and youth. The people are drowning under a pile of
unrelenting shit, pouring down on them from great rusted shovels wielded by the
European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank –<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15149626"><span style="color: #990000;">the Troika</span></a>. In Greece, the profits have been privatized, loaded into private
jets and flown out of a country desperately in need of funds. The losses have
been socialized and strapped onto the backs of the masses. Ordinary, working
Greeks have been told, in no uncertain terms, that the mess left behind by
bankers at home and abroad and a corrupt political leadership within parliament
is theirs to clean up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">Austerity hasn’t
brought salvation to Greece, it’s brought humiliation and death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sold as essential to
stopping up the leaking Greek ship and returning it to stability, the conditions
behind the funding from the Troika have plunged the country into a debt it
cannot repay if it isn’t willing to sacrifice a generation – possibly more than
one – to the market god. And Greece is not alone. Across the west pillars of
the financial world, and the Punch and Judy dolls they manipulate in office, built
a great house of cards, climbing each level as they finished it, collecting
bloated bonuses for doing little more than gambling. The house only needed to hold
until they reached the top with their dosh in hand; from there, it was
left to topple, leaving the rest of us crushed under the ruins. But rather than
pull ourselves from the wreckage, it is expected that we suffer the costs of
their rampant destruction. If we don’t, how will they possibly manage to repeat
the process in the future? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sorry thing is
they have every right to expect that. We’ve given them little reason to think
they won't get away with it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When American mega
banks set off the financial land mines they'd been planting for decades in
2007, they demanded to be saved by the people, and the people gave in. When the
contagion sailed across the Atlantic to Europe, the people gave in again – more
bailouts, no accountability, and the acceptance that we the people must face
hardship and piercing loss if what remained of the house of cards was to be
reconstructed. It was up to us to save the economic system. No one responsible
would face the justice system, or spend time in prison for the elaborate fraud
they perpetrated.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No one responsible
would suffer at all, as it turns out. Suffering is the unique arena of the
poor. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But Greece isn’t
being saved, it’s being destroyed. Third world financial trade off tactics, the monetary weapons of the IMF and the World Bank, are being applied for the
first time in a fully developed nation. These organizations that so spectacularly
and completely pillaged the impoverished in Africa and the South Pacific, needed
to find new avenues for their prof model. Countries in the developing world such
as Argentina, and the emerging powerhouses of Brazil, Russia, India and China
(BRIC) had worked out the sinister side of the IMF gambit, and had rightly<a href="http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120328/brics-summit-preview-brics-backed-bank-proposal-120328/"><span style="color: #990000;"> told them to fuck off</span></a> some time back. Enter the European sovereign debt crisis. In
the newly traumatized developed nations on Europe’s periphery, global money lenders
saw their chance to utilize financial weapons that had worked so well for them
in transferring the wealth of the world’s poorest nations into the hands of the
wealthiest.</span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In short order, loans
with bad conditions were agreed upon. The Troika made the offer, the Greek
politicians agreed. The Greek people, and their feelings on being sold into debt
slavery, were never asked what they wanted. When they tried to fight back
against the odious nature of the deals by demanding a referendum, their
President was forced from power, and a technocrat was installed to ensure no
such referendum would take place. This was no time for
government to consult the will of the people. This was no time for democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Greeks finally
got an opportunity to voice their desperation over what austerity is doing to
them on 6<sup>th</sup> May, 2012. The elections saw a radical shift in the makeup
of the Greek Parliament. While the pro austerity New Democracy party received
the largest percentage of the vote at 18.85%, it was the radical left SYRIZA
coalition that made the greatest gains, coming second in the vote with 16.78%
riding on a platform of anti austerity. All told, no one party was strong
enough to form a government, and several attempts to create a working coalition
failed. The Greek people will go to the polls again on 17<sup>th</sup> June.
For a while it looked certain that SYRIZA and its young leader, Alexis Tsipras,
would come out the clear winner, as Greek voters rallied around the party most
willing to fight for a reworking of the austerity deal that mires the country
in misery. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But then the fight back
came, bearing its fangs and spitting toxic bile. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Since the announcement of the next election in
June, political leaders and financial luminaries across Europe have done their
best to put the fear of God into the Greek electorate. British PM David Cameron
announced to the press that the June election in Greece was a clear choice
between staying in the Euro currency and leaving outright. German Finance
Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble plays the simultaneous role of good and bad cop,
telling the world that a Greek exit from the Euro is avoidable, while telling
the Greek people that, without </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">question, they must accept every condition
imposed upon them if Greece is to remain in the Euro. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But no voice can top
that of International Monetary Fund chief Christine La Garde for blunt
audacity. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">In an interview with
<span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/25/payback-time-lagarde-greeks?INTCMP=SRCH"><span style="color: #990000;">The Guardian</span></a> </span>on 25</span><sup style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"> May 2012, La Garde stated that she had little sympathy
for Greek parents who cannot afford to care for their children. She was quoted
saying </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ironically,
as boss of the IMF La Garde pays no income tax on her salary. This is one of the perks that comes with being employed by an international organisation. If only Greek parents unable to feed their children could be so
lucky. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The doom speak seems
to be having the desired effect of grinding down Greek resolve. <span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/17/us-greece-politics-poll-idUSBRE84G11420120517"><span style="color: #990000;">A recent series of polls</span></a> </span>indicate support for the SYRIZA coalition is eroding, and moving back
to the pro austerity parties, New Democracy and PASOK. If the polls are to be
believed, these orchestrated fear campaigns may succeed in keeping the Greek
people in line, and giving their consent to financial servitude. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What lies ahead is a test, and the Greeks will face it first.</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;"> Their choices are grim in either respect. Stay in the Euro and accept impossible
debt repayment plans that will leave them impoverished and see their social
frameworks destroyed, or vote against these measures, call the bluff of the
powerful, and risk being left alone to pick themselves back up. Each option
promises hardship and struggle, but only one allows citizens to take control
of their situation, and forge a way out on their own terms. Plainly speaking,
the powerful want to see if they can overrule democracy in Greece because if
they can, the rest of Europe will follow. They are looking to see just how
firmly under foot the people are. If they succeed, we will have taught them
that, without question, dire rhetoric can terrify the rank and file into
submission.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
constant accusation those with power and vast stores of wealth love to foist
upon the malcontents beneath them is that they itch for class war. In reality, that war started
decades ago, but it wasn’t the poor and the downtrodden that fired the first
shot. This is a war without bombs, and what frightens the aggressors
is that the other side might finally be opening their eyes to the
full scale of the assault they are under. </span></span></div>
</div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-35303297915911269162012-03-31T22:21:00.000+02:002012-03-31T22:21:35.709+02:00The 29M Strike in Barcelona: tear gas, rubber bullets & flaming garbage<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On Thursday I posted live updates on events that occurred in Barcelona during the 29M general strike as I encountered them throughout the day. It was a unique experience, attempting to capture what was happening as the day went by. Eventually posting live became more difficult, as technology and the quickening pace of the action conspired against me. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is the rest of the story.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just after 6pm I crossed Plaça de Catalunya and headed to nearby Cafe Zurich, where a few friends who had come to attend the demonstration were waiting. Out front of the cafe, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) anarcho-sydicalist union were preparing for the march. Unlike the larger Spanish labour unions, the CNT have no hierarchical structure. There is no one Union leader taking a large annual salary, and no elected representatives. Union decisions are made by committee using the tenets of direct democracy. The union and its supporters gathered here were a diverse collection of faces -- old and young, male and female, and more than a few young children getting their first taste of a labour uprising. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The CNT -- and its more modern incarnation the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) -- started to move just before 6:30 in the evening. But rather than head for the massive crowd buzzing about Passeig de Gràcia, they struck out in the opposite direction, moving up along Carrer de Pelai. The members walked slowly behind a white truck that had been outfitted with large speakers lying on the flat bed. The speakers played an old Spanish song for the workers; full of sombre guitar chords and haunting vocals. The workers marching behind the truck waved the flag of their anarchist union -- two triangles, one black, one a deep red. We were confused by the CNT/CGT decision to apparently launch their own demonstration, but we were familiar enough with the union to know they have a unique way of doing things. It occurred to me that they might be moving toward Carrer de Balmes to circle back, and merge with the larger group via the upper lanes of the Plaça. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We opted to rejoin the group in Plaça de Catalunya. Crossing the street, we moved toward a collection of protesters at the lower end of the square, across from the Olivia Plaza hotel and the Hard Rock Cafe. The tension in the group gathered at this end was palpable; they were all staring out toward Avinguda del Portal de l'Angel, straining on the tips of their toes for a better look at whatever was happening, or about to happen. Some had hopped up onto the stone railings that line the square, determined to get a better view.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is when we heard the first gun shots. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We could not see the weapons, but we didn't need to -- the sound was unmistakable. Rapid bursts of gun fire aimed at the people on the street a few metres away from us. Those straining for a better look on the steps of the square suddenly turned and ran toward us in a panic, frightened by the sight of rubber bullets being sprayed into the crowd, and looking to get out of harm's way. When the brief outbreak of panic subsided, we moved down the steps and onto the street for a closer look. The Mossos had blocked off the street on the other side of Passeig de Gràcia with a few of their armoured vans. One friend mentioned that the squad seemed to be there to defend El Corte Inglés; the up market, overpriced department store that looms over the public square. The protesters on the street, particularly those closest to the armed police, were standing their ground; holding their arms up in the air, hands open and palms turned out toward the Mossos, trying to signal that they were not a threat. It didn't matter. Another round of rubber bullets would ring out, and people would retreat back quickly. The police also used larger bean bag rifles. During brief glimpses I saw them working in two man teams. The shooter would dart out from behind a partner holding up a full body plexi-glass shield, fire the cylindrical bean bag rifle, and move back behind the cover of his partner. I</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">t was an efficient plan of attack. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn't fancy taking a stray rubber bullet -- or a rogue bean bag, for that matter -- in the face, so we decided to move back up into the confines of the main square. We walked quickly across to the northern end of the Pla</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ç</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a. Moving up toward the group offered a chance to take in all the different flags raised in the air above the bandanas, mullets, and Guy Fawkes masks. Some were familiar; the flags of the various trade unions were scattered across the crowd. The Catalan National flag was flying everywhere, joined by that of Greece in a show of solidarity with their embattled comrades in austerity. Someone had brought out the</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> defunct Soviet standard, crimson red with the iconic gold hammer and sickle.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> The flag of the second</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Spanish Republic, with its bottom stripe of purple rather than the red of the traditional Spanish flag, was also on hand. You could also see the variant used by the International Brigades that fought with the Republicans in the civil war, with a red, three pointed star replacing the coat of arms. Flags for Catalan independence were more than abundant, including a version I was told belonged to Terra Lliure (Free Land), a once militarised Catalan separatist group, similar to the ETA of the Basque country. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We waded into the centre of the crowd at the top of Plaça de Catalunya. Moving through the masses on the streets took patience and determination, and a willingness to take a few blows in the chest or the back. Collisions were impossible to avoid, but in typical Barcelona fashion, no one took it personally when struck by an errant shoulder, or the sting of a sharp elbow. A simple "perdona" or the wave of your hand sufficed. The people had not come to fight, at least not with each other. Once in the middle of the street, we had a chance to see how far the crowd stretched. As far up as you could see on the horizon, no grey concrete of the street was visible. The sea of people stretched straight up along the Passeig, filling the side walks on either side, obscuring the entrances to the endless number of shops that the street is famous for. Here we were reunited with the CNT contingent, who had indeed circled back, looking to eventually join with the main group on the Passeig. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They wouldn't get their chance to blend into the march, though. Trouble was brewing on the other side of the of the road. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A platoon of Mossos vans had come to barricade Ronda de Sant Pere to the right of Passeig de Gràcia. Without warning, the crowd was charged, either by shielded foot soldiers in heavy riot gear, or by the vans themselves -- it was impossible to see from where I stood. Once again the people screamed and turned toward us, dashing off for safety. We moved back with them, closer to the CNT idling behind us. These charges from the police repeated a few times, but there were no rubber bullets or bean bags being fired this time around, which I suppose could be seen as an improvement in the situation. The protesters at this end of the Pla</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ç</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a didn't see the brightside of not being shot at, though. Once we had been forced back </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">far enough </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">from the main group, I could see a thick pillar of black smoke rising up from the street; moments later I caught sight of orange flames flickering up in the distance, just beyond the heads of those standing in the middle of Passeig de Gràcia. Protesters had started a fire in one of the large garbage bins that can be found on many street corners across the city. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had encountered one of these garbage fires earlier, on Carrer de Rosselló, just after the Mossos had descended on the first gathering of the day, where the Passeig intersects with Diagonal. Garbage had been collected in a pile in the middle of the street, and set ablaze. Walking back toward the obelisk in the middle of the intersection, I noted the smashed windows of some of the shops on Rambla de Catalunya; but it was the Deutsche Bank building at the top of Passeig de Gràcia, to the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Northwest</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> of an obelisk set in the middle of the intersection, that had taken the brunt of the outrage. The glass on the main doors had been smashed, and various colours of paint had been splattered across the bank's </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">façade</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. I couldn't tell what had come first, the fire and the destruction, or the Mossos driving their vans into the crowd gathered in the street. I know that before the police arrived on the scene, people seemed quite happy just to be on the street with their pots and pans. I did not see any violence until the Mossos turned up, dressed in heavy armour and flailing their truncheons at whoever was unlucky enough to be in range.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The fire burning now, at the top of Plaça de Catalunya, had a greater fury to it. Sandra, one of the friends I had met with earlier, described it as a symbol. The elites -- the government, the corporate oligarchs, and controlling EU in Brussels -- see the masses as trash, but in reality the people are the fire, burning over what is being forced on them by those in control. Sandra disagreed with the act, feeling that the burning of the garbage -- full of cheap plastics sending toxins into the air -- was mindless, and counter productive. But she understood perfectly what the fire represented. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Behind us the CNT/CGT collective had turned their truck around and were beginning to move away from the main group again. They announced over a loud speaker their plans to head for Pla</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ç</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a Universitat. Realizing that the march was -- between the Mossos charges and the sheer number of people clogging the street -- stalled for the time being, we decided to stay with the CNT contingent, and walked with them toward Universitat. Reaching Carrer de Balmes we found another large trash fire on the street; this time the bags had been pulled out of the large containers, piled up, and ignited. The bins had been toppled over and pushed into the middle of the road in an attempt to block traffic. The fire produced a strong heat that you could feel even from fifteen or twenty feet away. In front of the bins a little boy, no more than 8 or 9, stood in the street, waving a CNT flag in one hand with the other raised above his head, two fingers arched to make a "V". The boy drew applause and attention as people passed by, stopping to snap photos of the little revolutionary. Walking past the boy I glanced up the street behind him; a block or two away another squad of police -- with their riot gear and armoured trucks -- waited patiently. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shortly after arriving at Pla</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ç</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a Universitat we lost site of the CNT strikers -- they seemed to disappear, having only minutes earlier collected in the centre of the Pla</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ç</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a. Looking back the main column on the Passeig seemed to be dispersing outright. We wondered if the march might be breaking up. A friend of Sandra's had called her a few minutes earlier, and was on his way to meet with us. He had told her that the protest stretched up past Diagonal, heading into Gràcia toward the mountains. He joined us a short while after; by that point it seemed the march really might be over. People were walking away from the main gathering in increasing numbers. We turned onto Gran Via and were greeted by more bodies moving away from the protest. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Making our way back to Passeig de Gràcia, though, made it quite clear that the protest was nowhere near ending. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The street was still jammed. People had collected on the thin circle of grass that surrounds the central fountain where Gran Via and the Passeig intersect. Others had climbed up onto the benches and light poles that dot either side of the street going north and south, hoping to get a better view of the stand off between the police and the protesters at the top of Plaça de Catalunya. We made our way into the middle of the street, straining to get a better view ourselves, w</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">hich proved futile. The street was completely swollen with crews of union members, Indignados, anarchists and "flautas" young and old, that the only way to judge that something in front of us was happening was when the crowds quickly ran back each time the police pushed forward. The crackling sound of rubber bullets firing, followed by screams and cries as people fled the danger. We found ourselves stuck in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by the masses on either side; there was nowhere to move to. The protest was being packed tightly onto Passeig de Gràcia, and we couldn't see what people were running from. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Then we caught our first glimpse of white smoke rising up through those in front of us -- tear gas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn't see the first cannisters that had clearly been lobbed into the group ahead of us, but we caught a glimpse of the next volley. Three silver cannisters rose up a dozen or so feet in the air before spiralling back down into the crowd, a thin trail of white smoke following behind as they fell. Upon landing the area became choked with gas, forcing people to cover their mouths and turn up toward our position above the fountain. While this offensive played out in front, to the right of us more people were running into the column from Gran Via. The Mossos had opened a second front on the protest, pushing in from Balmes. These were most likely the squads I'd noticed earlier, a few blocks behind the boy displaying his CNT colours. We were being kettled. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The scenario repeated a few more times. Tear gas cans would launch, people rushed for cover and the Mossos gained some ground, or at least held the line. The larger column was being cut off from the more militant group in front of El Corte Inglés, where the large trash fire had been set an hour before. But as swift as the incursions against the crowd had been, they ceased just as quickly. This was the tactic I had witnessed earlier in the day; whirlwind, disorienting shows of force before falling back for extended periods. The return of a bit of calm allowed the different groups around us to come back into focus. There were small drum circles with people dancing in the middle. An older couple played crude music by blowing on horns; the man with something that looked to be carved from the bones of a large animal, or an elephants' tusk, and the woman on a large conch from the sea. The mood up here remained festive and kinetic, despite the threat of tear gas and rubber bullets. There were news vans on either side of the road, their satellite dishes aimed upward, their cameras constantly filming. It seemed their presence kept the Mossos -- not eager to be filmed firing their non lethal weapons at the protesters -- from pushing further up through the march. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Eventually, exhaustion set in. My legs ached from the day's walking and I was parched from so much time out in the hot sun. I decided to head home, while the rest of my group opted to go for a drink. It was clear the stand off would continue well into the night. None of us would have been surprised to find the streets full of the outraged, and the Mossos, had we decided to return at one or two in the morning. I walked up Passeig de Gràcia, and turned right on the first street that wasn't stuffed with Mossos vans. The smouldering remnants of smaller garbage fires met me as I wandered through those first few blocks away from the demonstration. Further along I ran into the occasional police blockade, but by the time I had reached Passeig de Sant Joan, where it meets Diagonal, there were few traces of the strike at all. Children were playing in the little parkettes that line the pedestrian thoroughfare in the middle of Sant Joan while their parents looked on. Dogs chased after each other on the grass under the trees. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The only reminder that Barcelona had taken on the feel of a war zone today was the sound of the helicopters, still buzzing overhead. </span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-67507579217572387972012-03-29T11:44:00.027+02:002012-03-30T17:48:43.916+02:00Roaming the streets of Barcelona: The 29M general strike as it happens<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Waking up this morning it occurred to me that, rather than spend the day on the ground at various 29M actions across the city and writing about them (possibly days) later, it would be more interesting to take to the streets with netbook and wireless usb in hand -- documenting the strike day as it unfolds in Barcelona. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Consider this my own little version of Leopold Bloom's long day's wander through Dublin. I can't promise sirens, or a cyclops, but I can promise</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <a href="http://www.iaioflautas.org/2012/03/iaioflautas-por-una-huelga-del-99-el-29m/"><span style="color: #660000;">Iaioflautas</span></a> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and more than a few tense stand-</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">off's between</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> armour clad <a href="http://intercepttransmission.blogspot.com.es/2012/01/mossoflautas.html"><span style="color: #660000;">Mossos</span></a> and protesters, ideally remaining non-violent whenever they occur. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So check in throughout the day to find out what's going on as I wander about town, from strike action to strike action. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>10.34am:</b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Awake after more cans of Estrella than initially planned last night. A quick morning coffee on the terrace -- It's extremely quiet outside. Taking a glance across to the flats that surround my own and everyone seems to be home. There is a school a few streets above, further up into the hills, which appears to be open. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="color: #660000;">11.01am:</span> </b>The Guardian has a live blog providing brief updates from the strike across the country. No, I'm not going to link to it, because why would you want timely updates from a well respected, highly professional daily newspaper when you can get sporadic updates from some nutjob with a blog? On second thought, it does provide a wealth of information covering what's happening in the rest of the country, so <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/29/eurozone-crisis-spanish-general-strike" style="color: #660000;">have a look</a>. So far they are reporting 58 arrests </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">at various strike actions</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> across the country . Most have been peaceful, but there has been some violence. One particular photo of a man who's had his face bloodied, apparently by the police. It is worth noting that tomorrow, 30th March, Prime Minister Rajoy of the Partido Popular will announce a budget that's expected to bring the most severe cuts yet in austerity Europe. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;">1<b>2.25pm:</b></span> Finally ready to leave the flat and venture down into the action. Transport in the city is down to a skeleton crew to make sure the public can still get to where they need to be, but it will take longer than normal. I'll be walking down into the barrio of Gracia first, as it's nearest to where I live and there are several actions planned there this afternoon. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="color: #660000;"><strong>1.33pm:</strong></span> I left the flat and walked along Pi i Margall toward Gracia. At Carrer de Providencia I turned right, heading for Carrer Verdi. Most of the shops are shut, particularly the small, independently owned businesses. The major banks are open, and a few seem to be paying the price for it. At the corner of Providencia and Rabassa, a La Caixa outlet has "29M" and " Vaga General" spray painted in large black letters across its glass door and windows. Along the narrow streets of Gracia, the same slogans can be found sprayed on the asphalt, using a stencil template. There are posters and leaflets advertising the strike plastered on buildings all over the barrio. I arrived too late to Placa de Villas to see the assembly that had gathered there. A few stragglers remained, banging on pots and pans and blowing little whistles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><strong><span style="color: #660000;">1.41pm:</span></strong> A woman still mulling about the Placa informed me that a crowd was gathering at the top of Passeig de Gracia where it intersects with Avignuda Diagonal. This is where I am now, watching the crowd gathering around the obelisk that sits dead in the centre of the intersection. They have their pots and pans as well. Catalan flags are waving. And literally as I type this, 5 or 6 Mossos police vans have driven directly into the crowd on the street, breaking them up. Helicopters are hovering overhead. More later. As they say in Britain, it's all kicking off. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><strong><span style="color: #660000;">2.02pm:</span></strong> Chaos in the streets, and fire on Rossellon . I've mentioned before that the Mossos don't fuck about, and today is no exception. Twenty or so of their midnight blue vans are constantly swarming in and around the crowds on the streets. Small battalions of the vans will suddenly stop, open their doors, and armed police stream out, launching into the crowd and striking indiscriminately at the nearest body. The people run for safety when each door opens and the Mossos rush out. I am on Rambla de Catalunya now, close to Carrer de Rossellon where a fire has broken out. Dark smoke is billowing out of a building no one can get very close to, as the police have blocked off access. Five more Mossos vans have just driven past behind me, heading south on the Rambla. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><strong><span style="color: #660000;">2.28pm:</span></strong> The fire, it turns out, was caused by a pile of garbage that had been thrown into the middle of the street and set alight. From a distance it first seemed to be coming from a building. It seems to have gone quiet around here. The Mossos vans are still driving in an erratic manner around Passeig de Gracia and Rambla de Catalunya, but their sirens have been turned off, for now. Even with a sort of calm returning to the ground, the hum of the helicopters strafing by above the city streets is constant. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia;"><strong>4:23pm:</strong><span style="color: black;"> The city wide free wi-fi administered by the local government has gone down. I cannot say whether this has been done on purpose, with the intention of disrupting communication between activists on the streets, or if something unrelated is causing the problem. The last hour has been relatively quiet, but Passeig de Gracia now belongs to the people. Cars are being diverted from entering the famous street. People are walking freely up and down the lanes. A large statue has been placed on the lane that usually takes traffic north toward Av. Diagonal. The largest demonstration of the day begins at 6pm, when mass crowds are expected to gather at Placa de Catalunya, Barcelona's central square. To add to my own troubles, my netbook has died suddenly, and I am now forced to send updates via mobile phone. Expect typos.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="color: #660000;"><strong>5:24pm: </strong></span><span style="color: black;">At either end of El Corte Ingles department store the Mossos have barricaded the doors and are standing watch. A group of protesters have gathered at both doors, loudly chanting in disapproval as shoppers either enter or exit the store. The doors are flanked on either side by police vans, and steel railings keep the shoppers separated from the strikers. Occasionally a loud bang, either an explosive or something heavy toppling over, will ring out nearby. The crowds are swelling as 6pm approaches. Union members have started to arrive, making their labour association visible, they are wearing neon yellow vests.</span></span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;"><strong>6:06pm: </strong></span><span style="color: black;">Last update before the march, more than likely. Once it begins, judging by the growing crowd, texting updates will prove a little difficult. People are descending upon Placa de Catalunya in an endless stream. Flags, from the Catalan national to that of Greece, are waving high in the air. Horns are being sounded throughout the crowd. A thick column of protesters are preparing to move up along Passeig de Gracia. The numbers keep increasing. This has all the makings of an epic manifestation. </span></span><br />
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</span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-62550547544664332362012-03-18T21:24:00.000+01:002012-03-18T21:24:33.223+01:00Protests Just Don't Sell Newspapers Like They Used To<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3b55Xtn7vAvaINRIqxEbj7H3SFRUhb8zzmvsXKqY5hBci3rHJfeLR1od5D85PTlCdD6nPzY7bNUcqod5LPlKXrBiKiAXsE1-SmhsgnQc72dY3olHNmGPXBTAhpCag6o6JWa73bWIMFHx/s1600/6990592225_5dbc9e0683.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia3b55Xtn7vAvaINRIqxEbj7H3SFRUhb8zzmvsXKqY5hBci3rHJfeLR1od5D85PTlCdD6nPzY7bNUcqod5LPlKXrBiKiAXsE1-SmhsgnQc72dY3olHNmGPXBTAhpCag6o6JWa73bWIMFHx/s320/6990592225_5dbc9e0683.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/blahflowers/with/6990587539/"><span style="color: #660000;">Loz Flowers' via Flickr</span></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've been sitting here for most of the day watching streams of people commenting under the Twitter hashtag </span><a href="https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23SaveOurNHS" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">#SaveOurNHS</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> People from across The United Kingdom talking about rallies they attended yesterday; rallies that in many cases are continuing on today. Throughout the morning and afternoon there's been a fluid cascade of information from these protesters, desperate to save their National Health System from being carved up for the private sector by the UK's coalition government. They posted details about the marches in real time yesterday. On YouTube they posted footage of police pushing protesters to the ground, without any clear provocation. They tweeted updates on where the march had been, and where it was headed. Today they are tweeting about vigils being held, and one last final attempt to stop the legislation in its tracks this coming Monday. They have also published photographs that show police officers brandishing machine guns at these peaceful protests about healthcare reform. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's a good thing they did, because the established news outlets don't seem all that bothered.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No one really knows why, but over the last 24 hours, while those hoping to save the NHS from the clutches of privatisation -- "top down" restructuring that </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in 2010</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Cameron promised the people they would not see -- have been doing their best to make their voices count, the journalists, news cameras, and reporters from the UK's mainstream media have stayed away, outright ignoring the protest. The BBC, the nation's taxpayer funded news service, has nothing on the rallies. The same goes for The Independent and The Telegraph. Not having much use for Twitter, I only found out about the marches, and the media's curious lack of interest in them, while reading posts on The Guardian's "Comment is Free" forums in which users demanded to know why The Guardian was ignoring the protests. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The non-coverage has left many involved in the quest to save the NHS puzzled. The question of whether or not an undisclosed media blackout of the protest is in effect has been raised. This seems a far fetched notion. All the media outlets listed above have, through yesterday and today, run semi-related news stories about the NHS saga. The Independent broke the story that a collection of doctors and medical professionals are planning to run candidates in a direct challenge to MPs that support the legislation. The Telegraph ran a story on the NHS hiring doctors at various pay rates to combat staff shortages, which they blame on EU regulations. The Guardian ran an article detailing evidence of tax avoidance among many of the major healthcare corporations that stand to benefit from the proposed changes to the NHS, as well as an article claiming that Labour peer Lady Thornton is planning a last minute attempt to block the bill, accusing Ministers of lying to push the NHS reforms through. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The media is talking about the NHS, but leaving out the bit about people marching in the streets to try and save it. The question is, why? </span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8FS_SvtoqlGEYJhEtrYs9Fv8s0rEYvqqq_5zOoS4y9SJYnFOulRDdundIInVxgCVVpsyEwnqTYJzrRSyuf6pDof28E0FKXQEizdEAYeT7t9G0M7l4sHMygcEhUXofzWcgUZG7FJyd2x0S/s1600/5640807975_c3c094a1c1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8FS_SvtoqlGEYJhEtrYs9Fv8s0rEYvqqq_5zOoS4y9SJYnFOulRDdundIInVxgCVVpsyEwnqTYJzrRSyuf6pDof28E0FKXQEizdEAYeT7t9G0M7l4sHMygcEhUXofzWcgUZG7FJyd2x0S/s320/5640807975_c3c094a1c1.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/38degrees/"><span style="color: #660000;">38 Degrees' via Flickr</span></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps the major purveyors of news and information feel they have bigger fish to fry. No doubt the stories they ran throughout yesterday and today are important. But for many people the BBC, the Guardian, and the other giants of international media remain their primary source for learning what's happening around them. I'm sure there are still a substantial number of people left in Britain that don't yet know what a hashtag or a Twitter is. Protesters marching in the streets of London should never fail to make the news, particularly when they are out there trying to save a healthcare system that serves all 60 million residents of the United Kingdom. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or at least it does for now. </span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-35487926707085699032012-03-18T17:02:00.001+01:002012-03-18T17:06:58.191+01:00Intercepted Transmissions<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyC9ijTm_db4Y4AyGOaRrG5-ckFgowvFSN7L3kNhGZRGl6_29Kh1LzV2_KjijiNVb94hdIviLlFZDG_kF_OYPLpeD268JcyXk5Ofknqa4N8XEH2lqs4Xtkttb5N4QtofDubGnfDQ0sTNB7/s1600/ug_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyC9ijTm_db4Y4AyGOaRrG5-ckFgowvFSN7L3kNhGZRGl6_29Kh1LzV2_KjijiNVb94hdIviLlFZDG_kF_OYPLpeD268JcyXk5Ofknqa4N8XEH2lqs4Xtkttb5N4QtofDubGnfDQ0sTNB7/s200/ug_02.jpg" width="183" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This Wednesday, I published the first in a series of articles touching on Barcelona's history of civil disobedience, anarchy, and full on dissent against the forces of oppression that have helped to shape the political and cultural "mind" of the city. The series will be appearing at the ultra cool (and very new) ChilliPaprika.com, a new Politics, Art & Culture magazine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To learn more about ChilliPaprika, visit them <a href="http://chillipaprika.com/"><span style="color: #660000;">here</span></a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here's a little snippet from the article... </span><br />
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<u style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Barcelona: the Revolutionary City</u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Part One - La Canadenca </span><br />
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<st1:city style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">’s El Poble-sec barrio sits in the shadow of Montjuic, a large coastal mountain that dominates the skyline when looking southeast toward the </span><st1:place style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mediterranean Sea</st1:place><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. The neighbourhood, whose name means “the dry village” in Catalan, was one of the first new areas developed during the city’s 19</span><sup style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> century expansion, predating the vast Eixample district, which now makes up </span><st1:city style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">’s central core. The barrio is divided from the neighbouring Sant Antoni area by the famous Avignuda del Paral-lel, a wide street that descends from Placa Espanya, separating the dry village from the city’s other barrios before bleeding out into the port areas at the foot of Las Ramblas... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://chillipaprika.com/barcelona-the-revolutionary-city-la-canadenca/"><span style="color: #660000;">[ Read More]</span></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You can also find me posting, not nearly as often as I would like, over at </span><a href="http://www.londonprogressivejournal.com/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;">London Progressive Journal</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, a non-partisan journal of the left. You can devour all sorts of interesting pieces from a wide spectrum of talented writers and, for some reason, me right there with them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now off you go and read.</span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-33648440200088842252012-03-11T20:29:00.004+01:002012-03-11T21:05:18.000+01:00US Soldier Kills More Than a Dozen Civilians in Afghanistan - Who Are the Good Guys, Again?<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Photo Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/afgmatters/"><span style="color: #990000;">AfghanistanMatters'</span></a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A few hours ago</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <a href="http://us%20soldiers%20pissing%20on%20dead%20afghan%20civilians%20in%20afghanistan/"><span style="color: #990000;">the news wire broke the story</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> that a United States soldier went on a night time shooting spree in an area in the Panjwai district of southern Kandahar province. As it goes these days, my news feed on Facebook quickly flooded with reports of the rampage. The Guardian, El Pais, Truth-Out, The New York Times, all reporting on the horror through the social network. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The soldier attacked two separate villages, Balandi and Alkozai. Eleven members of one family were slaughtered around 3 am, when the as yet unnamed soldier entered their compound and opened fire. Afghan president Hamid Karzai, in condemning the attacks as an assassination, stated that 9 children and three women were among the victims. The White House gave their formula statement, saying they were deeply concerned and would be monitoring the situation closely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The soldier in question has been arrested, and reports indicate he made no attempt to cover up the night time murder run. The area was at one time a Taliban "stronghold" and in the past had seen heavy fire fights between Taliban and coalition forces. But this wasn't a raid on </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Taliban</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> insurgents. This was a lone gunman entering the homes of two families in the dead of night and killing women and children. The actions of a sadist or a madman. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The news, as should be expected, has led to anger in the streets. Afghanistan residents were said to be demonstrating soon after hearing about the slaughter. Just a few weeks ago the region erupted in anger when US troops were caught burning copies of the Qur'an. The offensive actions against the Muslim holy book led to days of protest and violence, much of it deadly. It seems all too reasonable to assume these killings will give rise to similar outrage and bloodshed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In early January of 2012, a video was released showing four US soldiers huddled around the bodies of dead Afghanistans. They proceeded to piss on the corpses, mocking the dead men as they relieved themselves. Three actions now, barely 2 full months into 2012 that serve to remind us that the grim tortures meted out at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq aren't as far in the past as we might think. Photographs at that time revealed "insurgents" being tortured and emasculated by young men and women that, at least in the West, we're told to revere as heroes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Do heroes piss on the dead? Do heroes mock the strongly held beliefs of the people whose country they've invaded, and occupied for the last decade? Do heroes burst into villages alone under cover of darkness and open fire on women and children? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">News of this atrocity comes after a week in which <a href="http://www.invisiblechildren.com/"><span style="color: #990000;">Invisible Children launched Kony 2012</span></a> on YouTube, a campaign that seeks to make the world aware of Joseph Kony, a bastard who leads an army of child soldiers on rampages where women, children, entire families are slaughtered in a similar fashion to those who've just been murdered by a lone American soldier in Afghanistan. One of the goals of the Kony campaign is to bring western military intervention in to get Kony. Good guys like the men who piss on corpses. Heroes like the unknown soldier who just slaughtered a family. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is what western intervention looks like.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's an ugly reminder that in the wars we wage today, there are no fucking good guys, just a varying degree of villains. It doesn't matter if they're wearing the makeshift togs of the Lord's Resistance Army, or desert fatigues with the American flag stitched into the fabric. A child killer is a child killer. </span><br />
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</span></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-65129000123366040332012-03-06T23:35:00.000+01:002012-03-06T23:35:06.793+01:00Digital Gods and Monsters<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Our digital world seduced us, spied on us, and profited from us, turning itself into a "Ministry of Truth" in the process. </span><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They seemed like great ideas at the time. Search engines capable of providing a wealth of statistics, documents, articles, perspectives and opinions through the punching in of a few keywords. Vast collections of information waited to be discovered with the rapid fire hammering of a QWERTY keyboard and a left click here and there. Then the social network arrived, connecting us with friends and loved ones at home and abroad; relations and old friends once lost to time and distance travelled. Facebook plugged us in to a global central square; distance and time no longer mattered. Snapshots of our lives instantly shared with anyone we pleased; your next door neighbour, your best friend, or your third cousin, twice removed, that moved to <st1:state><st1:place>New South Wales</st1:place></st1:state> 20 years ago. The grand scale of the Earth had been conquered by plucky young visionaries working in trendy offices scattered across <st1:place>Silicon Valley</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our only limitations were access to a computer and an internet connection.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Enter the smartphone. The iPhone, Blackberry and Android have mobilised our need for information and interaction. Any moment of the day, whenever we want or need it, the internet is ours -- knowledge and community, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. We can Google the location of that great new restaurant we've been hearing so much about. We can upload our adventures and, within seconds, be rewarded with instant gratification as the likes, shares, and comments grow under the image. Hardware and digital media converging to offer us a world of instant knowledge and socializing through the swipe of a finger across a touch screen. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Google it" is now part of the global lexicon. "Tweeting" something might sound a bit cheeky, but loads of us do it every day, and it's all mostly innocent. We no longer ask "are you on Facebook?" we simply state "I'll add you on Facebook." Having an account is implicit now, and we're genuinely shocked when we meet someone who isn't interested in the digital Zeitgeist. These programs keep our fingers on the pulse of each other's experience. We post and check in. We stumble upon and retweet; we photostream, like, and spotify, everyday. We Google whenever we need and we watch whatever we like on YouTube. For all of it, we are charged nothing beyond the fees of our monthly service provider. The social network is free, there's no commodity involved. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Except for us. We are the commodity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Upload a photo of yourself, a loved one, even your pet hamster, onto Facebook and that piece of your life now belongs to them -- to be used as they see fit. <a href="http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/61760-twitter-sells-your-old-tweets-location-and-all"><span style="color: #990000;">Twitter sells your old, archived tweets to market research firms</span></a>. If there's something you've said in 140 characters or less that a company finds useful, Twitter will profit from your archived ramblings. Every experience you have, be they mundane or epic, is for sale. Your good times, your photographs, your status updates -- all fair game, and there's not much you can do to make them stop. You can "deactivate" your account, but you cannot delete it completely. Your data lingers indefinitely -- a digital ghost of you. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Google has been cataloguing and storing our searches for years, giving them a progressively clearer insight into who we are and what tickles our individual fancies. Our choices on YouTube are documented, allowing them to offer personalised suggestions the next time we pop in. It all sounds quite helpful, but there's more opportunism then altruism in their motivations. Optimising our search experience also optimises our commercial value. The ads we see are targeted; manipulated by what the data says we want to buy. Algorithms build a profile of who we are, and present us as product. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/01/google-privacy-policy-analysis?newsfeed=true"><span style="color: #660000;">Now, with changes to their privacy policy that kicked in this month</span></a>, Google will take the information they have collected from our searches, YouTube visits, even the private correspondence we send out via Gmail, and stitch it all together, like on-line Frankenstein's monsters.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is your life, data mined, streamlined, and offered up in pursuit of maximum profit. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is a trade off most of us were all too happy to make -- access to each other, and to limitless content and in return, we pay with ourselves. Chunks of our lives have become profitable assets; free tools in exchange for the use of our personalities. But now that we've been delighted by them, monitored by them, and then moulded into content -- marketed by one corporation to another -- something strange is happening. All that lovely, free information is becoming filtered to fit their idea of who we are. <a href="http://www.how20.ie/_blog/How_News/post/Facebook_NewsFeed/"><span style="color: #660000;">The activities of our Facebook friends</span></a> are being prioritized into a hierarchy. Lose touch with someone for a while and that person's presence fades from our news feed. Our Google searches, once informed by what we wanted, are slowly being tailored<a href="http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-google-filter-bubble-2011-06"><span style="color: #660000;"> based on what our profile suggests we want</span></a>. Incompatible information and unique perspectives are being pushed into the shadows. Intentional, or by accident, the social network is twisting into a Ministry of Truth. Our world view is in danger of being dictated by the digital gods.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Most of us, however, are too busy updating our status to notice. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-74139280684110170122012-02-29T18:59:00.001+01:002012-02-29T20:32:20.048+01:00Business as Usual While the City Sleeps<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Eviction in the dead of night. This has been the de facto strategy of authorities across the west when it comes time to strip an occupy commune apart. They move in under the cover of darkness, when most city dwellers are settled in for the night. Fast asleep and recovering from the previous day's onslaught, the general public are well hidden from what might go on when riot helmets come face to face with Guy Fawkes' masks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the small, quiet hours of the morning this past Tuesday, London police and bailiffs marched on the encampment outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, and served notice on Occupy London. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The occupiers were given 5 minutes to pack up and leave. Any failure to comply would be a violation of court orders. Neon vested bailiffs, hard hats on head, did most of the dismantling, with the riot cops hovering ominously in the background, waiting for the rabble to get violent. The rabble remained peaceful though, and if those dressed ready for trouble were at all disappointed, they didn't show it. When it was all over, 20 arrests were made, and only a few skirmishes broke out. Most of the remaining occupiers began to pack up the tents they've called home these past 4 months. Resigned to the finality at hand, they complied. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some, however, chose to build a fortress from what remained of their broke down lodgings. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While many packed up to go home, or go find a new home, a group of protesters quickly gathered up wooden pallets, ladders, mattresses, and what other random debris they could find to build up a barricade in an effort to waylay their eviction. Young men and women stood atop their ramshackle blockade in defiance while spotlights flooded the square around them and rubbish lorries sat idle, waiting to be fed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On the ground protesters and bailiffs engaged in a tug of war for control of the rubble, while at the top of the heap, a single bailiff climbed up on the unstable structure to force the occupiers down in to the waiting arms of their comrades in neon yellow and orange. When one occupier fell, another would climb up to take their place, and one clever long haired fellow managed to take the bailiff down with him as he dropped from the barricade wall. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Their efforts to remain were admirable, but the outcome was equally inevitable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">last gasp occurred on the cathedral steps. A small group had gathered and, believing the steps to be safe ground, huddled at the cathedral's gateway; some kneeling down to pray. One by one they were swept off the steps by riot police. The resisters, bent in prayer or otherwise, were moved either by fear, or force. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This final action, which saw armoured police force citizens off the steps of the church, could only have occurred with St. Paul's approval. A</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">s documented in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/28/occupy-london-accuse-st-pauls-betrayal"><span style="color: #660000;">The Guardian</span></a>, at around 2am protesters reported seeing police officers on the Cathedral balcony, giving support to the idea that the police had the full cooperation of the church to remove people from the steps. Shortly after, City of London police confirmed they had the blessing of the church, leaving many occupiers stung, and stunned, by the betrayal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By dawn, there was little left to remind the city that there had been a camp outside of the venerable cathedral at all. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The mess had been washed away before the morning's first mug of tea was brewed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But while the city and the church worked to sweep Occupy into the trash bins and out of sight, the banker's at Barclays were providing yet another reminder of why these voices, calling out the excesses and damaging schemes of profit chasers, remain so necessary. </span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://southofheaven.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451960269e20133f38235f2970b-320wi" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://southofheaven.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451960269e20133f38235f2970b-320wi" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was revealed on Tuesday morning that Barclays intended to implement two tax avoidance schemes that the bank was required by law to present to </span><a href="http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;">HM Revenue & Customs</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. The first scheme revolved around buying back their own debt, which had fallen in value during the financial crisis. The buy back of these debts at lower value would result in a rise in profits for the bank. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The second scheme is more convoluted, revolving around authorised investment funds. The bank's goal was to convert non-taxable income into an amount granting a repayable tax credit, thus guaranteeing a refund while no actual tax would be paid. Combined, the two schemes provided a loophole that would have helped Barclays avoid 500 million in tax. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In both cases the schemes ran afoul of a forthcoming new corporate tax dodging law to be introduced in Chancellor George Osborne'</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">s new budget next month. When faced with what were called two "very aggressive" tax avoidance schemes, the legislation was quickly backdated to take effect at the beginning of December 2011, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/feb/28/barclays-confirms-tax-avoidance-scheme-shut?intcmp=239"><span style="color: #660000;">an unusual act of retrospective legislating</span></a>. Initially, the government refused to call out the offending bank by name. Barclays later admitted to being the culprit, and assured shareholders that profits would not be affected by the schemes being shut down. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">These two events are at such perfectly opposing poles, it's difficult to believe there wasn't a bit of fate involved in the timing. While Barclays bank was caught out in the end, one has to question if it would have happened without the presence of those struggling to keep a light shining on the dark corners of unbound capitalism and its scramble for new, ever creative ways to turn civic responsibility inside out in the hopes of bonus profits spilling into their open hands. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With the ground troops of established rule driving the forces of dissent from the steps of St. Paul's, and the profiteers at Barclays attempting to game the system from the confines of the executive boardroom, on Tuesday night in London, it was back to business as usual while the city slept.</span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-20535381973279597932012-02-26T17:24:00.004+01:002012-03-09T22:10:50.376+01:00Eric Joyce, Drunken Master of Falkirk<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament/2713947202/sizes/s/in/set-72157606360378346/">Bombed House of Commons 1941</a></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">Colourful Scots' MP inadvertently casts a light on the hypocrisies of Cameron's plan for mandatory alcohol pricing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/23/eric-joyce-arrested-suspicion-asasult?INTCMP=SRCH" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;">the story</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> broke in the news earlier this week of a brawl in the British House of Commons Strangers' Bar, I was busy writing about </span><a href="http://intercepttransmission.blogspot.com/2012/02/light-that-cracks-darkness.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;">the return of the outraged here in Spain</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, so I'm a bit late to the carnage. My initial reaction was that "The Strangers' Bar" is far too fantastic a name for a pub where British policy makers and visiting dignitaries mingle over cheap, publicly subsidised alcohol. It sounds like the sort of haunt where you should find the likes of Camus and Sartre drunkenly hashing out the ultimate futility of existence, not Cameron and Osborne, tipsy and sniggering about draconian workfare schemes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My second reaction was of course one of kinship with Eric Joyce, Member of Parliament for Falkirk, which coincidentally is my ancestral home. My parents were born there, as were my older sister and brother. I was the first member of my family born outside of Falkirk, and outside of Scotland for that matter. When I was younger, during an extended family trip back, I attended Comely Park Primary School for a few weeks so as not to fall behind in my studies. During this time I discovered the strange, hitherto unknown realm of British crisp flavours, and marvelled at the elaborate </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Action Man</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> displays that decorated the ceiling at Young's Toys. I also fell in love for the first time with a young girl named Chelsea. Well, I fancied her a bit, at any rate. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.actionmanhq.co.uk/pictures/frogman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.actionmanhq.co.uk/pictures/frogman.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Apart from the obvious connection to Falkirk, I empathised with the bruiser who pummelled a few MP's, not to mention felling one with his own skull, because like many of you, I have at one time or another felt a nearly uncontrollable need to hand a politician or two a sound thrashing. I am also not afraid to admit that a few pints of cider most likely amplified such past urges. It's a good thing select Canadian political figures were never inclined to hang out at my local pub in Toronto's Parkdale borough when the Blackthorn was flowing. Noses might have been bloodied, and I might have found myself in prison. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On the surface, this tussle in the commons sounds like little more than a sauce'd Scots' leftie having a go at his Tory enemy after a few drams of scotch, with some of his labour chums taking a bit of friendly fire. This sort of thing will happen in a pub from time to time, nearly anywhere in the world. However, a little delving into the Falkirk MP's recent behaviour reveals the reality of a troubled man battling demons. I'm not going to get bogged down in Eric Joyce's personal life. For those interested, fellow blogger's </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Representing the Mambo</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> touched on a few of the issues quite respectfully</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <a href="http://representingthemambo.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/2746/"><span style="color: #660000;">here</span></a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What makes this incident quite pertinent is that, in losing control in the Commons bar while under the influence of too much of the creature, Eric Joyce has turned the mirror around on British Prime Minister David Cameron's </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/15/david-cameron-minimum-price-alcohol?INTCMP=SRCH" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #660000;">campaign to legislate minimum alcohol prices</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> as a way to curb alcohol abuse and ease the health costs associated with Britain's drink culture. The proposal would see the cheapest brands of various alcohols rise in cost to a set minimum price, the rationale being that the more it costs, the less people will consume it haphazardly and to excess. It hasn't taken long for the proposal to tumble into the realm of class warfare. The poorest will have to pay more for the privilege of a few drinks after a hard day's work, or as a means to escape the grim realities of austerity for a few hours each day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The more you look at the plan, it becomes difficult not to see it as gauze bandaging wrapped over a festering wound before it's been treated. The unsightly sore is hidden away from view, but that does nothing to kill the infection. If the availability of cheap liquor were the root cause of alcoholsim and the culture of brawling, the streets of Barcelona would be soaked with vomit and blood every night. In reality, you have to try very hard here to get into so much as a glaring match with a fellow punter, much less a fist fight. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What it certainly will do is make it harder for people without a drink problem to partake in the simple pleasure of an evening's cocktail to dull the edges. Already miserable and desperate people struggling to get by from day to day, denied a bit of liquid comfort. Because they can't be trusted to moderate their consumption, the government will have to do it for them. Meanwhile, the honourable members of parliament will continue to drink on the cheap; <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9100823/House-of-Commons-bar-brawls-When-drinks-are-half-price-its-easy-for-MPs-to-get-half-cut.html"><span style="color: #660000;">draining down pints of bitter and glasses of merlot</span> </a>while passing a nice portion of the bill onto the same taxpayer</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">s they want to rescue from the gin soaked gutter by denying them discount booze at the corner shop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While I doubt Eric Joyce had any intention of doing so, in giving a fellow MP or two a few clouts about the ear on a booze fueled rampage, he has introduced a fairly inconvenient quandary within the palace of Westminster. If David Cameron truly believes that the cheap cost of alcohol leads to problem drinking, surely it's time to stop subsidising the temptation of Britain's political classes, no? </span><br />
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</span></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-22581632996099077632012-02-23T00:10:00.005+01:002012-02-25T20:24:11.702+01:00The Light That Cracks The Darkness<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Twenty five thousand marched in <st1:city><st1:place>Granada</st1:place></st1:city>. In <st1:city><st1:place>Seville</st1:place></st1:city> they numbered fifty thousand. In <st1:place>Zaragoza</st1:place> seventy thousand took to the streets, while eighty thousand gathered in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Valencia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city>, four hundred and fifty thousand <i><span lang="CA">Indignats </span></i>flooded the streets of <span lang="CA">Catalunya’s</span> capital city. In <st1:state><st1:place>Madrid</st1:place></st1:state> five hundred thousand <i>Indignados</i> swarmed through the city, before converging once again on their beloved <i>Puerta Del Sol</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By day’s end, more than a million people, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, marched in cities across the country, coming together to tear at the darkness that looms over them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is what democracy looks like.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On Sunday the outraged returned to the streets of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. They returned to remind us all what the defiant energy of the downtrodden feels like; what the unwavering voice of dissent sounds like. This army of street kids and grandmothers, of workers and students, of anarchists and activists, returned to make it known that </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">they are still here, they have not forgotten, and they are definitely</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> not finished. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If it was ever a question of whether or not they had given up, it’s been answered. If notions lingered in the minds of the politicians these past few weeks that the people -- turned backwards and forwards by Spain’s short but strange winter, a schizophrenic mix of unseasonable warmth and chill -- might have fallen into lethargy or a tired acceptance of the hard times plotted out for them, those notions were erased on Sunday. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Newly elected Prime Minister Rajoy and his Partido Popular might have thought they had escaped without wounds on 20</span><sup style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> November, the default victors of a pantomime vote that offered the people a twisted play on democratic choice. In reality they were asked if they preferred to drown or to suffocate. This sham election was rejected by 10 million voters. They chose neither. They rejected the illusion. These new public officials might have mistaken the unwillingness of so many to legitimise their own suffering as a mandate to replenish the coffers of high finance; to force the people to bow down, as they do, in worship of the markets.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If such a mistake was made, this return of outrage on the streets corrected it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What the <i>Indignados</i> did afford their fledgling government, was time. A few months to plot out a new course, to offer up a hopeful alternative, to lay new cards on the table and present ideas not designed to break the backs of the under classes. What their new leaders came to them with was an admission that they have nothing new to offer, and never intended to. In their eyes it’s business as usual; more of the same.<span style="color: #990000;"> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/spanish-protest-spending-cuts-labour"><span style="color: #990000;">"Reforma Laboral"</span></a></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> that takes rights and wages away from the people; that affords corporations convenient new tools to rid themselves of older, poorly paid employees in order to replace them with desperate new blood that will work for even less; a fire-to-hire scheme as an answer to mass national unemployment, that amounts to little more than rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. </span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On Sunday, the people kindly rejected their proposal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Spanish refuse to sit by and watch as the same measures that have left <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16472310"><span style="color: #990000;">mothers giving up children they can’t feed in Greece</span></a>, that have more and more signing on for the dole in the United Kingdom, and that have already put more than half of their own youth out of work, are forced upon them while executive pay is capped at 600,000 euros annually. They will not be locked into financial slavery and routinely humiliated. They have seen what these failed ideas have done to </span><st1:country-region style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><st1:place>Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. They will not have the same done to them. Not without a push back. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sun is shining in </span><st1:country-region style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> again, and the air gets warmer from one day to the next. The ruling classes don’t have to change this course of protecting profits at all costs; of recouping their losses by scavenging from those with the least, but if they don't they should expect resistance. Summer is coming, and with nearly a quarter of the population out of work and angry, there’s ample opportunity for mass action. There is no hiding from it. Expect the acampadas to return -- sooner rather than later.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The return of 15M and <i>Los Indignados</i> should be well observed by the Occupy movement also. The manifestations that grew from a few hundred in <i>Puerta Del Sol</i> to hundreds of thousands taking the streets and squares across Spain in 2011 laid out the blueprint and inspiration for the occupations that exploded across the western world. Now, as Occupy struggles with irrelevancy in cities like <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state>, <st1:city><st1:place>Toronto</st1:place></st1:city> and <st1:city><st1:place>London,</st1:place></st1:city> it is time to rediscover your focus, to draw inspiration from the outraged here in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, as you did before. March side by side with union members rather than be co-opted by their leadership. Resist the plans of special interests, and of the democratic wing on the bird to manipulate you into a mass lobby group; a tea party to call their own. Reject the subtle <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9036889/George-Soros-predicts-class-war-and-riots.html"><span style="color: #990000;">manipulations of billionaires </span></a>looking to turn you into a violent mob, and ultimately, the engine powering an agenda that will only lead to deeper control for the elites and their puppets in office. To find your voice and your resolve again, look to <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. </span><span style="background-color: white;">M<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="hps">ira</span> <span class="hps">a España</span></span> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is what revolution looks like. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
</div></div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-84989314659663356332012-02-19T17:34:00.001+01:002012-02-19T17:35:29.166+01:00The Mad Words of Raging Tories<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"Either stand with us or with the child pornographers." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It takes a certain sort of mind to craft such a ridiculous statement, and to do it with any semblance of sincerity. This is the sort of wild, dangerous muck racking one might expect from a Rush Limbaugh, a Glenn Beck, or an Ezra Levant, all members of the hard right media juggernaut in North America, playing on the murky fears of soccer moms and hard working dads. They terrify their audiences daily with emotional diatribes, littered with language that manipulates the ill informed fears of people who, when all is said and done, just want to live a safe life, raise a family, and pursue the American dream. Even in Canada. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This statement was made by none of the above. No red faced Rush on his radio show, no weeping tea party enthusiast on Fox News, and no tabloid hack from the Toronto Sun, though I'm sure they all approved the use of such an emotionally charged, ludicrous bit of scare bait. No, this statement came straight from the mouth of Canada's Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The remark came during a heated debate Monday in Canada's House of Commons, as they discussed the Conservative government's proposed Bill C-30, an internet surveillance bill that would force internet service providers to turn over personal user information to authorities without a warrant. Toews fired the remark at Liberal Public safety critic Francis Scarpeggia when he dared to question the intrusive powers being proposed. The bill opens the doors for the powers that be to spy on the citizenry, all in the name of public safety. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To keep you safe, governmental authorities need to know what you are doing on-line, whenever they deem it necessary. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The bill is sinister enough based on this alone, but it goes further. Section 17 provides for "exceptional circumstances" under which any police officer can request access to customer information from a telecommunications provider. This section of the bill and its implications came as a shock to Toews himself, who claimed not to know that this provision was couched in the bill. The suggestion that one of the most vocal and aggressive advocates for this legislation doesn't know what it entails leaves much to be desired. If he doesn't know what he's voting for, what hope does the average Canadian have of comprehending what it means? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have a sneaking suspicion that lack of comprehension is what they were banking on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The bill's short title, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Protecting Children from Internet Predators,</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> lends weight to the idea that the Harper regime intended to use the completely understandable fear of child abuse as a cloak to force through far more pervasive measures of public surveillance. The rhetoric then kicks in that only someone with something to hide would possibly argue against an act designed to protect children from sexual predators. If you oppose the act, you either are one of these predators, or as Toews blatantly argued in the House of Commons, you support them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is the stifling of dissent through guilt by association. It's a deceptive trick of language as a weapon that conservatives have become masters at. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the past it was communists and pinkos. Then hippies and black panthers. In more recent years, islamic fundamentalists. Now, if you don't support the government's need to spy on the populace at will, you might as well be leaving your child's bedroom door open for </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">paedophiles</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to come and go freely in the dead of night. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you question this bill, and its potential for gross invasions of privacy at the discretion of government power and police authority, you are endangering children. No one wants to be lumped in with the lowest form of human devilry</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, unless they have skeletons in their inbox of a similarly dark and twisted nature. This rationale attempts to force our support of legislation like Bill C-30. The fear of being seen as a pariah by association, complicit in the evil crimes of the worst among us -- or worse -- being suspected of those crimes ourselves. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On this occasion, the tactic appears to have failed, at least for now. Toews edged away from his comments during a CBC Radio interview aired on Saturday, claiming them as the result of a heated battle on the Commons floor. The backlash from most public media outlets in Canada, and from the public in the greater on-line forums, shut down the Tories' mad, manipulative rhetoric. The legislation will still go through of course, thanks to Harper's majority in Parliament. It is a bitter sweet victory, and we still end up losing in the end. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But in the least, perhaps it has given them cause to question how effective this old tactic can be in the future. It isn't difficult to understand why governments are attacking the internet, and our ability to use it freely. The web provides us all twenty four hour access to perspectives that in the near past would have just been out of reach. Within moments of such an absurd statement like this being made, thousands of keyboard warriors can flood the super highway with detailed </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">synopses of the real meaning behind the fiery rhetoric, and point out all the devils hiding in the details, covered in the trappings of righteous, moral responsibility. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">These days, even soccer moms have friends like me. </span><br />
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</span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-82654454839648206212012-02-12T20:32:00.001+01:002012-02-12T20:33:20.138+01:00Panic on the Metro<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">An inconvenient game of "chicken" is brewing amidst the metro lines and bus routes of Barcelona. Who will flinch first? And will there be an app to follow the drama on?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The 2012 Mobile World Congress is set to descend upon Barcelona the weekend of 27th February. Some 60,000 attendees will flood the Fira - Montjuic area of the city, eager to test out the newest trinkets and gadgets on display from the giants of the mobile technology world. New smartphones from the likes of HTC, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson will be unveiled. A potentially company saving, game changing operating system from RIM will be previewed as Blackberry attempts to stave off irrelevancy in the face of the Android and the iPhone. Sleek new tablets will be plentiful. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Except for the iPad. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Apple is staying at home this year. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The keynote speakers for the conference include major power brokers from across the digital playing field. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, and Facebook CTO Brett Taylor plan to address the corporate hordes in attendance, and those are only the companies with the most "cool" factor. </span><a href="http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/keynote-speakers" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">The list of CEO's, CFO's, Presidents, and Chairmen speaking is long, and relatively unattractive</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. I can't confidently say why the CEO of Citigroup is coming to address the crowd, but I can confidently say that his mere presence may cause many banks in Barcelona to declare insolvency and demand a bailout to be forked over by the taxpayer. To my local friends, I suggest emptying your accounts and hiding the money in your mattress until he leaves town. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The conference has called Barcelona home for a few years now, and on 22nd July 2011 confirmed it would remain in the city through 2018. The event is a grand feather in the cap of the local government. It ushers in wealthy big wigs willing to spend lavishly on hotels, high class restaurants, and the finest cava they can find. I am mildly curious to find out if the working girls in <i>Raval</i> see a spike in revenues over the weekend, but getting official numbers from them might prove difficult. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The conference directly employs roughly 1,500 people for each day that it runs. Millions in revenue is expected to flow into the city as the rich and innovative discuss new apps and the future of various technologies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This year, though, attendees may find themselves walking a bit more than usual. Bring good trainers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The CGT (</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Confederación General del Trabajo) anarcho-syndicalist trade union and employees for the TMB (Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona) have voted in favour of striking during the congress, as a result of TMB management attempting to deny them wage increases agreed to by both parties in their last collective agreement. The bold decision to effectively bring public transit to a grinding halt during such an important event for the city has set off a fierce panic among all affected parties. The MWC organisers are scrambling to find alternate methods for transporting attendees about, the city's hoteliers are in a rage over the possibility of lost revenue from the union's proposed action, and city mayor Xavier Trias has called on the workers to "apply common sense" and hold their strike action on a more convenient date so as not to tarnish the city's image. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In other words, do as we say, not as we do. Apparently the bosses don't enjoy the taste of their own medicine. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There's no denying it's an aggressive move by the union and the transit employees represented within. They are pushing back at TMB management and the municipal government by </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">threatening a hugely profitable event for the city, essentially</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;"> playing the one trump card they have. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">Opinion on the strike is sharply divided amongst the public as well. Many support the workers and are quick to point out that they are asking for only what was promised to them. On the other side of the divide, many are questioning how they will get to their own jobs without access to public transit. Those in direct opposition to the strike, management and the city, are stoking the fires; playing worker against worker, accusing the transit employees of holding the city to ransom, in an attempt to divide and conquer. TMB Management contends they cannot afford to give what has been rightly earned. The company line is an echo of similar austerity measures stifling the poor working classes, and the squeezed middle classes, throughout the rest of Spain. We have made mistakes, you must pay for them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">Workers have started fighting back, and this conference represents an ideal opportunity to show the power they hold as the engine in the societal machine that makes a city run. </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">Those in control should hardly be surprised. You can only beat someone down for so long, before they come back at you in a similarly brutal fashion. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">While the order of the day in Spain continues to be great sacrifice by the masses in order to right the wrongs brought about by the controlling elite, e</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">xpect the people to answer hard line tactics in kind.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;"> Expect a bite increasingly more ferocious than the bark. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">For the CEO's, presidents, and chairmen still anxious to make the trip, I offer words of calm. I walk everywhere here in Barcelona, it's a fantastic city to experience on foot. However, if you </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">powerful </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;">heads of the techno-empires aren't so keen on that idea, might I suggest picking up a<span style="color: #990000;"> </span></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;"><a href="https://www.bicing.cat/"><span style="color: #990000;">Bicing</span></a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 19px;"> card for the weekend? </span><br />
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</span></span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-61567999559674057782012-02-06T13:28:00.009+01:002012-02-25T15:17:19.799+01:00Guiri Like Me<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am not, nor shall I likely ever be, an obvious tourist. When I arrive in a new city for the first time, I don't come well prepared with an arsenal of maps, water bottles, velcroed utility pouches, wallet chains or multi-zippered back packs. There's never been a pair of overly pocketed shorts in my travel bag. In reality I come horrifically under prepared, usually with only the names of a few areas of town that sound enticing banging about in my head, and an excessive amount of curiosity. Getting lost in a new city can prove dangerous, but it's also usually how you wind up with a true feel for the place.</span><br />
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</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not having to frequently dive into the confines of a stuffed to bursting bag to fetch out a ridiculously large map in the middle of an area like <i>Las Ramblas</i> in Barcelona leaves you looking, and feeling, a bit like you belong. It also increases the odds of avoiding the attention of pickpockets and muggers, but then so does not stumbling about in the faintly lit narrow streets of <i>Raval</i> in a drunken stupor while singing away in a cockney accent. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This adherence to getting about <i>incognito</i> means I've yet to be the victim of petty theft after ten months in my new home, which is something even the most entrenched expat usually experiences at least once; a sort of right of passage. However, it's not completely problem free. Presenting the façade of being a local in a city with two common languages, neither of which you're any bloody good at speaking, can leave you looking like a fool when a true local falls for the ruse and speaks to you in rapid fire Catalan, or Castellano, exposing you for the <i>guiri </i>you are. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Guiri is a local word to describe a tourist, primarily of British or German origin, though now it could be applied to myriad other European or North American sun seekers across Spain, not to mention the growing throngs of Japanese visitors as well. You won't find it in a standard dictionary. I hadn't heard the word until eight months in, and when I finally did it came from the mouth of another guiri, discussing the sort of jobs expats usually fall into in Spain; our guiri jobs. The word became common as a way for locals to poke a bit of fun at tourists without them knowing. As more and more expats became permanent residents in the city, they caught on to what it meant, and now use it themselves, often accompanied with a wry little grin. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For the most part, the long term guiris are in on the joke. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The jobs we take, the guiri jobs, tend to fall into the mind numbing, soul crushing realm of customer service. We make calls or take calls for companies taking advantage of the low cost of doing business in Barcelona. They range in degrees of horror, but they are all generally awful jobs. We are the punching bags for multi-nationals. We work them because most of us arrive without really knowing much Spanish, beyond the crucial "una cerveza, por favor." These jobs afford us the chance to work and live in a city we quickly fall in love with, and to do so in our native tongue, be it English, German, Dutch or Italian. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This sort of work, though, is a bit like making a deal with the devil. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We make the deal as it's the easiest way to stay, and start living in the city like a local, rather than sampling it as a tourist, but it also makes the process of learning Spanish more difficult, particularly for native English speakers. It becomes an ordeal to put off after speaking solely in your native tongue for eight hours a day, to go home and diligently work on improving your fluency in Spanish, or Catalan. You can suddenly find yourself not really learning at all, stuck in a rut, repeating the same words in the same situations. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You stall out, or you remove the need to learn altogether. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Barcelona truly is a cosmopolitan city. People from all over the world now call it home. There is a thriving British expat community here. English and Irish pubs are littered throughout Barcelona's many barrios. The temptation to immerse yourself in this familiar, comfortable world, with a language you already understand, and customs that you've trafficked in for years, is palpable. The more exotic, authentic world, the real Barcelona, falls back into the distance, and many expats don't notice because they're still having a damned fantastic time. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So far, I've avoided that particular trap. Early on I managed to meet a group of true locals, great people who happily invited me into their world. They keep me immersed in the language, the culture, the life. When I arrived in Barcelona I had planned to learn Catalan first; it was this group of new friends, all Catalans, who suggested tackling Spanish beforehand. For my part, I do what I can to help them improve their English, though most of them have a lengthy head start. I have taught them quite a lot of creative slang, though.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Attempting to learn a new language through immersion in the country, the culture and the community is a longer road to take. The rewards are less immediate, the frustrations constant. The truth is, you have to accept the reality that you will feel like an idiot more often than you won't, at least initially. After a series of mild embarrassments, the occasional breakthrough will occur; a moment of triumph. This tougher journey still seems the best for a full on adult with so much bad wiring in the skull, so much junk information clogging up the memory.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is the difference between learning to speak, and learning to communicate.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Still, I can't help but think that all this could have been avoided; that it could be easier for the guiri's who want to make a life in Spain, or elsewhere. When I was in school, Spanish, along with German, finally popped up as an option for study midway through secondary school. French, the second official language in Canada, is mandatory when students are eight years old, but becomes a course one can drop by the time they are fifteen; many kids in English Canada do just that. The chance to learn other languages comes too late. As toddlers, when our minds are like sponges, hungry for knowledge, we will devour another language as eagerly as we would a slice of chocolate cake. For good or ill, we live in a world far smaller than it was just 30 years ago, yet we haven't really caught on to the idea that we should be learning to communicate with strangers half a world away at the same time as we do strangers around the corner.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the months have passed here, I've become friends with quite a few guiri's as well. Most have made some attempt to learn Spanish, and some have added Catalan. Their knowledge of these languages vary; some have been here a few years and are nearly fluent, some have been here for a decade and are just getting by. The ease with which they adapt to the language is random, though English natives generally have a rougher time of it than their French, Italian, and German counterparts. Still, I have met more than a spattering of expats who've fallen into the trap of not bothering, or giving up.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In mid May, I was out with my wife and two friends visiting from London for the weekend to catch a Barça match at <i>Camp Nou</i>. We found ourselves in a little expat bar on Sant Joan just below Carrer Aragó, near where we were living at the time. A fairly intoxicated local fellow chose to strike up a very friendly conversation with me using a rapid fire mixture of Castellano and his native Catalan. At the time I understood very little of either, so the conversation amounted to me repeatedly saying "Lo siento, hablo poco español." A younger couple from Ireland were sitting near enough to catch the mildly absurd conversation. It gave them a good chuckle. Later into the night when the bar closed, I had the chance to speak with them while we all had a last cigarette before moving on. The man was younger than myself, but had been here for over ten years. He freely admitted that he understood the affable drunk less than I did, revealing that even after such a long time here, he didn't know much more than a few basics, and at this point, probably never would.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The other side of the coin is that, whatever struggles these lifer guiri's have in their attempts to learn the language, their children reap the benefits. A couple I know, the husband from England, the wife from France, have a young son who has spent his short life living in Barcelona. At barely six years old, he already speaks fluent English, French, Catalan and Spanish, and he is learning Mandarin, basically because he can. His father joked to me that, whatever happens, he knows his son will always be able to find work at the airport. As far as I'm concerned, the kid is a genius, and is likely to take over the world. I'm just glad I've made friends with our future potential leader.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps he'll give me a job as the cleaner someday.</span><br />
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</div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-50045965452491015232012-01-29T15:51:00.001+01:002012-02-11T18:09:57.225+01:00Musings on a Cold, Blue Morning in Catalonia...<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><u>On Transformation Into a Local</u></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm not one to complain about the weather... much. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As a Canadian transplant here in Barcelona, where snow is so completely rare that a freak flurry will <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/7401422/Barcelona-hit-with-heaviest-snowfall-in-25-years.html"><span style="color: #990000;">shut down the entire city</span></a>, I've wandered about through this winter with a sort of smug toughness when met with complaints about the cold. I've mocked other expat friends from the UK</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">when they shiver over coffee and bikinis, moaning loudly about the chill in their bones while we still lounge on street side terraces. In such instances I laud my thick Canadian blood and urge them to "man up." I believe the term "Nancy" has been thrown about a few times, as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sadly though, I can feel that Canadian weather resistance abandoning me. It's four degrees here today -- and lovely, sunny blue sky notwithstanding -- it feels bloody brutal. My feet are like ice blocks, I shiver on the terrace, and I'm moaning about the "cold" at an alarmingly increased rate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm becoming the damned Nancy. </span><br />
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<u style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On Irony and Tardy Prophecies</span></u><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the old city, exploring the </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gótic </span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">barrio's intricate labyrinth of narrow, ancient streets</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">will eventually lead you to <i>Plaça de George Orwell</i>. This little square with a fairly lofty name acts as a central hub in and around which drunken revellers -- locals, expats, and tourists alike -- swarm like locusts through the barrio's vast network of bars and nightclubs. It is named for the legendary author not so much due to his </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">herculean</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> literary stature, as for his escapades during the Spanish Civil War. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Orwell fought for the Republicans during the war against Franco's nationalists as a member of the International Brigades, which also included nearly two thousand Canadians breaking their own nation's laws in doing so; something not taught in schools back home, sadly. The author chronicled his time, and his perspective on the anarcho-</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">syndicalist's</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> brief </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">liberation of Barcelona in the memoir <i>Homage to Catalonia</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Named for him in 1996, the square is a great spot to meet and mingle; to people watch over a few </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://blogs.ihes.com/spanish/?p=74"><span style="color: #990000;">mediana's</span></a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> before either abandoning the barrio to the hordes descending upon it to drink, dance, and hopefully find a warm body for the night, or joining them yourself in search of similar amusements. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Like much of the old city, the square has seen its share of seedier elements over the years. This is part of the neighbourhood's charm, but for a tourist lacking in common sense, or suffering from a high blood alcohol content, this can sometimes lead to a stolen wallet or mobile phone. Pickpockets are an issue here in Barcelona, primarily if you make yourself an easy mark for them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With this in mind, in 2002 the Ajuntament de Barcelona leapt into the annuls of achievements in obvious irony when they made the area a "zona vigilada" and installed a security camera that now keeps watch over a square named after the author of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1984, </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in which we are given a chilling glimpse into a world where everyone is monitored as a possible dissenter; where each citizen is considered a suspect. You almost have to admire the twisted sense of humour of the Ajuntament employee that suggested the square as a prime spot for constant surveillance, though I may be giving them too much credit. The sad reality is that the choice most likely went straight over their heads. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJL3Eg7zW0RYbzqMX7bVdj7tEet8OaARSkjhdafkGj04u200iBgP8YOto3X8g_zxj2zOBCA4J8OO_YQIBeOCsx_1ffJ7T0jUIRSr7Hr-T_DiJsnd-mkTdHtaiUr_W5xGD1sHGKXek98cO/s1600/pl-george-orwell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJL3Eg7zW0RYbzqMX7bVdj7tEet8OaARSkjhdafkGj04u200iBgP8YOto3X8g_zxj2zOBCA4J8OO_YQIBeOCsx_1ffJ7T0jUIRSr7Hr-T_DiJsnd-mkTdHtaiUr_W5xGD1sHGKXek98cO/s320/pl-george-orwell.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I saw the above photo, it reminded me that, while he was a bit off on the date, in writing </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">1984</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, Orwell has become more prophet than doom-saying novelist. Our cities are so rife with video surveillance, watching and recording everything we do outside of our own homes, that we no longer give the constant monitoring a second thought, even as the likes of Google, Facebook, and smartphone providers make the prospect of our private lives being documented increasingly likely. We have bought into the ludicrous notion that if we aren't doing anything wrong, we have nothing to fear from such invasions of privacy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This strange trust that surveillance of the public will only be used in the service of catching criminals allows acts like the 2012 NDAA to come into law with only a half hearted resistance. We don't seem to realise these measures make us all suspects. We are all possible terrorists, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">potential dissidents, and likely criminals.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The camera in Orwell's square is an ugly little reminder that, to those in control, we are the enemy. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">Photo Via <a href="http://poumista.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/orwell-turning-in-his-grave/"><span style="color: #990000;">Poumista</span></a></span><br />
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</span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-33469304063280901182012-01-18T00:10:00.011+01:002012-02-11T18:10:18.989+01:00Mossoflautas!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When the police can't afford to beat you, they join you</span> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This past Friday some 50 members of the Catalan “Mossos d’Esquadra” regional police force marched into <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city>’s largest police station at <span lang="CA">Pla</span><span lang="CA">ç</span><span lang="CA">a</span> de <span lang="CA">Espanya</span> to stage a sit in. Over the last eighteen months the Mossos have felt the pinch of a 5 percent cut in their wages, as the Generalitat de Catalunya marches along the austerity path in lock step with the rest of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>. They entered with placards, and blew tiny plastic “flautas” in unison. One Mosso was quoted warning that <a href="http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Catalan/police/protest/cutbacks/elpepueng/20120113elpeng_9/Ten"><span style="color: #666666;">“If they won’t negotiate, we’ll fight”.</span></a> Still, by all reports it was a generally peaceful affair.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The problem is, the last time I saw 50 Mossos in the same place, they were beating peaceful 15M protestors bloody with truncheons:<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Geg_6Xoy04s" width="560"></iframe></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That was 27<sup>th</sup> May 2011, when under the guise of cleaning the grounds before the weekend's Champions League celebrations, the <span lang="CA">Mossos</span> escorted city cleaning crews into the 15M encampment at <span lang="CA">Pla</span><span lang="CA">ç</span><span lang="CA">a</span> de <span lang="CA">Catalunya</span>, Barcelona’s central square. While they told the 200 or so <i><span lang="CA">Indignats</span></i> camping there that they would be allowed back in, the cleaning crews began tearing down and removing the tents and other makeshift areas the protestors had constructed. Thousands of supporters descended on the square in a show of solidarity. It wasn’t long before the skull cracking began. </span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Plainly speaking, when it comes to stifling dissent, the <span lang="CA">Mossos</span><span lang="CA"> </span>don’t fuck about. </span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On <st1:date day="15" month="6" year="2011">15<sup>th</sup> June 2011</st1:date>, the Mossos fired rubber bullets on crowds seeking to block politicians from entering the Catalan Parliament situated in <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city>’s <span lang="CA">Parc</span> de la <span lang="CA">Ciutadella. Reports surfaced after the event that the Mossos employed the use of "Agent Provocateurs" during the march; a theatrical, subversive tactic used by police across the globe to turn peaceful protests into chaotic riots, effectively contaminating the public's view of a movement in an effort to turn the dissenter into a common enemy -- a shady villain to be feared and loathed rather than listened to. <span lang="CA"> </span></span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="CA"><span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Mossos cast an imposing shadow at these protests. Clad from head to toe in black riot fatigues, thick kevlar covering their torsos, their faces obscured not only by the visors on their helmets, but by police issue balaclavas. This is the strange paradox of the riot police and the protestor; only one side ever comes prepared for a fight, and the public is made to believe those in heavy armour are the brave ones. You start to wonder who needs protecting from who? </span></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="CA">On 19th June 2011, when the Indignats had once again converged on the Catalan Parliament buildings, I took a place along the barricade that separated the Mossos from the Indignats, standing across from one officer for about 30 minutes; his mouth and nose hidden under the black cloth of his Mossos mask. I could only see his eyes, permanently fixed on me. </span>He stood completely at the ready, waiting for me to jump over the barricade. I half wondered if he was hoping I would.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet now, after months spent introducing their truncheons to the skulls of those calling out unfettered greed, and the strangle of austerity measures forced on the many to pay for damage wrought by the few, the opressors have become the protestors. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="CA">There is a rich irony in the Mossos being made victims of the same measures imposed by the elites they are made to serve, often toward violent and repressive ends, and embracing the spirit of dissent as a result. Feeling the sting of these same sharp cuts to their livelihoods that the <i>Indignats </i>have laboured under for years should be a lesson to them</span>, and moreover, to police officers everywhere.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="CA">While the uniform, the badge, and the billy club may provide the illusion of power, ultimately the police remain members of the same under-classes they are frequently ordered to pummel into submission. To the elites they are a private army to be used for their protection, but ultimately, like the rest of us, they are expected to foot the bill for their folly. <o:p></o:p></span>There is no justification for meeting peaceful protest with violent thuggery. “Just following orders” does not cut it.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For these 50 or so Mossos, and inevitably for police in every city where the people are rising up against the austerity disease, the question is simple. The next time you are ordered to crack the skull of a <i><a href="http://blog.infinitylimited.net/2010/09/21/spanish-word-of-the-day-perroflauta"><span style="color: #666666;">Perroflauta</span></a></i> refusing to forfeit their right to be outraged, or to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4"><span style="color: #666666;">pepper spray</span></a> a row of kneeling students at a university, will you remember that these same people whose orders you are “just following” can, and probably will, turn on you at any time?</span></div></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div></div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-15268850058468242182012-01-05T17:18:00.006+01:002012-02-11T18:10:37.041+01:002012: The Beginning of the End?<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another year, another doomsday prophecy. They pop up so often now we might as well print them alongside holidays in the calendar. However, as fun and terror inducing as they can be, apocalyptic prophecies tend to vary wildly in severity and believability. Harold Camping banged his end of days gong more than once throughout 2011, managing to bilk a few sad, faithful dopes out of their life savings in the process, convinced that the rapture was upon us and eager to buy their spot in the blessed afterlife. The majority of us saw Camping's doomsday prophecy for what it was: a source of amusing Facebook status updates for most, and a con job for a faithful and utterly stupid few. 2012, though, sees the arrival of a doomsday prophecy we can sink our teeth into. There hasn't been one like this since Y2K, when we all partied like it was 1999, waiting to see if a niggling technical glitch would render life as we know it an irradiated memory, leaving us in a wasteland of spontaneously downed jet-liners cluttering up the scorched earth and sentient, rage-filled toasters hungry for our flesh. This time around, the annual prediction of doom isn't fucking about.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Welcome to 2012. According to the Mayan long count calendar, or at least according to a group of dubious "experts" on the Mayan long count calendar, the jig is up; the show is over, it's lights out for the earth. We've all got just shy of twelve months to get out there and live life to the fullest. Take all the drugs you've previously been afraid of. Have copious amounts of increasingly bizarre and unapologetically unprotected sex because all bets are off! Come 21st December, you are a dead human walking. A nebulous, opaque, poorly defined yet unstoppable threat is barrelling toward us from the cosmos. Do you really want to meet your ultimate demise never knowing the joys of a Caligulaesque orgy while tripping on a ridiculous cocktail of hallucinogens and heroin?</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of course, most of these predictions of imminent doom swirling around the Mayan long count calendar come from the sort of websites whose owners seem to think the progress of web design stopped sometime in 1997. In all reality the long count calendar was, much like our own yearly method of time keeping, intended to reset at the end of it's 5000 or so year lifespan -- a tracking of an entire age, rather than a single year. The only great cosmic event coming our way this year, in all likelihood, is the sun's alignment with the centre of the Milky Way, a galactic event that occurs every 26,000 years. So maybe bring a full box of condoms to all those super orgies you plan on attending, and leave the crystal meth at home.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Chances are we will wake up on 22nd December as we do every single day -- still existing. No rogue asteroid from the depths of space will have side swiped the planet. No blast of cosmic gamma rays will wash over us, turning us into withered mutants or super evolved telepaths, depending on whose take on the prophecy you're inclined to believe. Chances are we will wake up to the same sun in the sky with the same lives we led the day before, and we'll continue on.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Unless the powers that be right here on earth have something to say about it.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It didn't take long for the world's power brokers and manipulators to harsh our collective new year's eve buzz. While we were out drinking and cavorting, Barack Obama was in Hawaii pissing all over the Bill of Rights. In these first few days of 2012, Iran and the west have continued their game of metaphorical chicken, with the Mid East oil exporter threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, making veiled threats at US naval vessels in the area, all while the US, the UK, and the EU continue to make overtures of military action over Iran's nuclear weapons programmes, which western leaders assure us are very real, leaving me with an annoying sense of deja vu.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I feel like I've seen this movie before.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This latest round of international dick swinging by the likes of Barack Obama, David Cameron, Mahmoud Ahmedinajad and Angela Merkel has caught the attention of China and Russia, two nations with a vested interest in Iran and the free flow of its oil, and two nations with more than enough might to stand up to any military aggression coming from the west toward their supplier. With each raised voice, each veiled threat, each rattled sabre, the possibility of World War Three breaking out becomes less and less unthinkable, and more a matter of predicting when it starts, rather than if. We can hope that our world leaders are sane enough not to let things get to the point of no return, but a quick glance back at the past year or so quickly tells us they can, have, and more than likely will again. These are strange days. Once again it seems we live in a time of monsters. The best we can hope for is that none of them just want to watch the world burn.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On second thought, maybe instantaneous and unavoidable death from space is the better option.</span></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-52537519530841795962011-12-31T18:51:00.003+01:002012-02-11T18:10:59.835+01:002011: The End of the Beginning<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While the final days and hours of 2011 have been ticking down, I've been a bit too distracted to do much writing. Living in <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> will do that to you. I've enjoyed some interesting Christmas nights in my time, but none before this left me wandering home at five in the morning blissfully drunk on a steady stream of cider, wine, jaegermeister, whisky and rum, consumed in that order. The fact that I woke the next day not disgustingly sick from all the drink might have constituted a Christmas miracle, were I not a godless heathen. As it stands I’ll credit the miracle of a hangover free Boxing Day to the Philharmonic Pub’s incredible steak pie, and the lovely “pica pica” spread put out by the friends who invited two lonely expats to spend the holiday with them. This was a very different Christmas, but a fantastic one all the same.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So my apologies to the few but faithful for being less than prolific over the last few weeks, but I’m not going to lie to you. Being a lazy, shiftless bum for days on end was just what the doctor ordered. Still, to the loyal readers back home in the New World, the locals here in Spain, and that lone reader in Germany who checks in diligently every week or so, I promise to up the output in 2012, and to end delays like this recent one. However this is a promise I will more than likely break on multiple occasions, so in advance, <i>lo siento</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One year ago tonight, I was at The Rhino in <st1:city><st1:place>Toronto</st1:place></st1:city>, my local pub of ten years. My wife and I gathered with our friends, standing at the bar drinking, carousing, singing “Auld Lang Syne” as the clock struck <st1:time hour="0" minute="0">midnight</st1:time>. Kisses all around, followed by the Scots tradition of calling your mum, which these days means infuriating and numerous failed attempts to get a signal and successfully place a call while millions of people in town are trying to do the same. It was a familiar and lovely way to put one year in its grave and witness the first sparks of life in a new one. This particular year the sparks never stopped, they just grew hotter, before igniting a full on blaze across the planet.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This final year of the 21<sup>st</sup> Century’s first decade had the feel of a video recap of the last ten years as spliced together by someone on a dangerous amount of psychotropic drugs. This has been a decade of perpetual war, terrorism either organic or manufactured, economic disasters, revolutions calling for democracy in the east while the very idea itself was hijacked by the bloated, sausage fingered corporate elites in the west. Change we could believe in dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick, only to find the new boss was really no different from the old boss. We’ve spent the better part of ten years under the threat of imminent doom lurking around every corner, and 2011 served as the inevitable result of this constant feeling that we were all teetering on the edge of a cliff, desperate just to hang on and not fall to a bloody, bone shattering death. Who could blame us for wallowing in disillusion and apathy after being repeatedly battered with bombs, buzzwords, and boogie men? <o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The great thing about 2011 is that we stopped wallowing. We woke up. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It took a while, but here at the end of the beginning a grand chunk of people on this pale blue dot -- including yours truly -- finally opened their eyes to the reality those in control have been forcing on us for far too long. It took crossing an ocean and watching the birth of a revolution here in my new home to rouse me from the comatose state in which I spent most of this century. I hope this new found sense of actually giving a fuck or two sticks around for a while, in all of us.</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In 2011 we lifted the veil, and got a good look at the man behind the curtain. He’s an ugly, twisted fucker, not pleased to be exposed to the public, but he’s hardly waving the white flag either. The people in <st1:street><st1:address>Tahrir Square</st1:address></st1:street> are still being beaten and assaulted by SCAF; Austerity is still the order of the day across <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>. The line between terrorist and protestor has all but been obliterated. It is going to get worse before there’s a chance of it getting any better. Tonight though, on New Year’s Eve, forget it all for a few hours. Go out, get pissed, and say goodbye to a bizarre, fantastic year.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tonight I’ll be saying goodbye to 2011 in a <st1:city><st1:place>new city</st1:place></st1:city>, in my new local pub, The Philharmonic. My wife and I will raise a glass with new friends here; Catalans, Spaniards, and expats all among them. We’ll think of our friends and family back home, and across the globe, and no doubt share a fair amount of kisses while singing Auld Lang Syne. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It will be a familiar and completely new experience, all at once. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Happy New Year. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-41887845639791787672011-12-14T07:37:00.005+01:002012-02-11T18:11:20.109+01:00False Evidence Appearing Real<div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On the night of <st1:date day="11" month="9" year="2001">September 11<sup>th</sup>, 2001</st1:date>, after an exhausting day watching the birth of the 21<sup>st</sup> century live in my dank, cigarette-smoke filled living room, I was sat in my favourite local pub with a few friends. We were all getting drunk. At the table next to us, and the table next to them, sat people all in the same boat. They were also getting drunk. Every table and every stool at the bar contained a snapshot – an identical image repeated over and over again: bewildered, sometimes angry faces pouring a bit of liquid comfort down their throats, each talking about the same awful bloody tragedy, trying and failing to make some sense of it. From person to person the arguments varied wildly, the emotional responses swerved from hysteria to hatred. We didn’t agree on much, but we didn’t really have to right then and there. We needed to talk, to get drunk, and be together because we didn’t want to be alone</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn’t want to be alone because we were terrified. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">People in homes and bars and cafes all over the world were drowning in this same sense of fear and dread. Whether you were feeling it in <st1:city><st1:place>Boston</st1:place></st1:city> or <st1:city><st1:place>Baghdad</st1:place></st1:city>, or if you were watching Fox News or Al Jazeera, you felt it. You might have feared that your city was the next target. You might have feared that you would be crushed by the full might of the inevitable response. Whatever the individual cause for panic, it was cripplingly real and near impossible to overcome. We had all just watched several thousand people die in a heap of concrete, twisted metal, and a choking cloud of ash and dust. We witnessed people trapped on the top floors of two mammoth skyscrapers leap to their deaths; many of us watched it repeated over and over again in a grotesque loop broadcast across all channels. As much as we wanted to, we couldn’t look away. These horrible visions were burning into our retinas to a soundtrack of screaming New Yorkers running through the streets and news anchors repeatedly uttering names like Bid Laden, Hussein, and Al Qaeda. It was an unrelenting assault on the senses, with any hope of escape completely futile. Logic and reason were high tailing it out the door. The fear had taken hold, and it wasn’t about to let go anytime soon. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What followed after that day was a calculated pageant of fear and loathing, designed to convince the people of the west to keep quiet while the military industrial complex set about inventing wars as a means to epic profit and a tightening of their grip on individual rights. This is an old trick, though – one that fools us every time. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The fear of communism directed the actions of the west for nearly fifty years. The scaremongering rhetoric that arose about the horrors of a red state was so masterfully orchestrated that to this day there is a certain sort of person still checking under his bed at night to make sure a “commie” isn’t lying in wait to steal his freedom and force him to wait in line for a roll of toilet paper. War is great business, and for decades the mere possibility of an impending fight for ideological survival led to fortunes being made through the manufacturing and sale of ever more terrifying weapons. The theory proves true over and over again. We are easily scared into submission.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For thousands of years fear has been used by Pharaohs and Presidents, Imams and Popes, CEOs and marketing gurus alike, as a means to control, to persuade, to make you do as you’re told. Many never stand a chance against its ability to cajole us so perfectly because from a very early age we are taught that failure to obey a higher authority will have damning consequences.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before we have a say in the matter, most of us are taught that if you do not do as your god wants you face a never ending torrent of punishment and torture. Fearsome old men in grand costumes preach to us that these are the commands of our supreme father, a vague and faceless figure we cannot see or communicate with but through his human emissary. They assure us that he is everywhere and he wants you to follow his rules. The penance that awaits you for not living your life by the wishes of whichever creator you believe in are nightmarish and eternal -- and bloody frightening. The lesson starts early: Do as we say, or horrible consequences await you.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We move into adulthood carrying this deeply entrenched control switch with us, and the fears pile on, one on top of the other. Insecurities about your social standing become a constant presence as you are guided by a new minister: the marketer. Soon you come to believe that your status defines you, and your status is calculated by the things you own. You need a house bigger than the next guy's, a new car more expensive than the next guy's. Designer brand name clothing that immediately tells everyone how well you’re doing. The newest iPhone the nanosecond it becomes available. The biggest HD, 3D, LCD, flatscreen, plasma television monstrosity you can find, regardless of whether you can afford it. These things define you. They tell everyone else how much you have, and how important you are. Whether you need them or not is irrelevant. Enslave yourself in a sea of debt because if you don’t have these things, you have failed the game of life. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is a dark and devilish business. Fear makes us consume.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There is profit to be made in keeping the public fearful. Few industries understand this idea – or have realized it so perfectly – as the war industry. This was the industry that kicked the use of fear as control into overdrive after 9/11. Hours of television reports told us that terrorists were everywhere, lurking in the shadows of every city and every town in the free world. Leaders took to podiums in <st1:state><st1:place>Washington</st1:place></st1:state> and <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city> and scared the living daylights out of us. Strange and foreign invaders armed with dirty bombs, box cutters, anthrax and hatred were plotting against us. Thousands of terrorist cells were operating in hundreds of cities across the world, all with one common goal: To kill you and everyone you love. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Who wouldn’t be afraid of that?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This was the politics of fear firing on all cylinders, convincing us to make war in the <st1:place>Middle East</st1:place> against enemies old and new. The war against terror in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region> led to the war on hazy nuclear threats in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Once again they sold the people fear, with murky photos of weapons facilities and suspect rumours about Nigerian uranium, and the people devoured it. In the end, completely disoriented by the constant doom surrounding us, we barely noticed as our rights were thoroughly trimmed down in the name of security. Peace through war. Love through hate. It was more than big brother could have asked for. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today, in a year of revolution and ongoing civil disobedience, those who want to keep us afraid are telling us there is a new terror lying in wait: the dissenter. The radical is what you need to fear next. The occupier and the indignado are asking questions the elite don’t have answers for, and now they are back to the tried and true method of marginalization through fear. In <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>, the authorities have named the occupy movement a terrorist organization. Apparently filthy hippies sitting in public squares with no clear message are as dangerous to your way of life as Al Qaeda. In the mainstream media, the persistent message of the occupy movement is that of shiftless bums and violent drug addicts demanding handouts from the rich and successful. The camps are rife with the worst elements of society, people living on the dark fringes. Even the old red menace has reared its paranoid head. <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The truth is occupy camps contain these elements of society, as does each community the world over. Drug addicts overdosing at occupy camps would have overdosed alone in some other dark part of the city. In many cases, being at the camps saved them from death. Those who live on the edge of the knife aren’t drug addicts, or mentally ill because they are at camps offering them hot food and some semblance of shelter for the night, they are at the camps providing these things because they are drug addicts, or suffering mental illness –- or both. Mainstream society left them behind a long time ago.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we think it over for a moment, when logic and reason don’t high tail it out the door, when we don’t choose to fall for it, the fear mongering can be seen for what it is: dishonest manipulation.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The question is will we fall for it again, or not? <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-14615665987193168612011-12-01T18:07:00.005+01:002012-02-11T18:11:46.514+01:00D'Hondt Let Me Down<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ever get the feeling you’re being followed?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I do, at this very moment. I have come to believe that the right wing is stalking me, hunting me down as if I were the last Javan Rhinoceros, eager to mount my head on its wall. It’s either that, or I’m a curse for progressive thinkers and revolutionaries. You’ll forgive me if I prefer to think I’m being chased. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I left <city><place>Toronto</place></city> times were grim. The city was a few months in to what's best described as the end result of former Provincial Premier Mike Harris’ final “fuck you” to the city he so loathed. The Harris “<place><placename>Mega</placename> <placetype>City</placetype></place>” amalgamation of <city><place>Toronto</place></city> proper with its surrounding suburbs delivered the city into the hands of a mayor who hates cities, progressives, art, culture, even bicycles. Mayor Rob Ford was the Harris regime's inevitable parting gift to the downtown core. If you listened closely, you could almost hear Harris crying out “from hells heart, I stab at thee!” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Similarly, though no less baffling, shortly after I left the country the federal Tories led by Stephen Harper, finally fooled enough Canadians, or lulled enough to sleep, to win the majority government they had craved for so long. No longer confined by the restraints of a minority parliament, and with no need to pay lip service to the idea of bipartisan co-operation, Harper and his cabal could drive through any legislation it liked. These were dark days for my city, my country, and my home. While these weren’t the reasons I left, they certainly worked to reaffirm the decision to go off and explore the world around me. Now, just seven months later, that same black cloud, the darkness on the edge of town, has tracked me down in <country-region><place>Spain</place></country-region>. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The national elections on the 20<sup>th</sup> of November delivered <country-region><place>Spain</place></country-region> into the hands of the Partido Popular, a party formed in the burning embers of the old Franco regime when it fell in the mid seventies. For some here in <city><place>Barcelona</place></city>, it brings back sinister memories. A Catalan friend of mine, angry over the results and no doubt fearful of what’s to come, sent a message stating “<span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN">La oscuridad se cierne sobre nuestro pueblo.” </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The darkness looms over our people. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The results, while disappointing for many, come as no surprise. Sit down for a chat in a café, or a bar with nearly anyone you meet here to discuss the nation’s political parties and you will learn one thing very quickly: They are two sides of the same coin, ultimately controlled by Santander, the largest bank in the Eurozone. In essence, there is no choice at all.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The outgoing and thoroughly embarrassed PSOE had long ago shown that they were progressive and socialist only so long as it was convenient to be. When the pressure was applied from “Merkozy”, Zapatero quickly played the obedient dog. What is coming from New Prime Minister Rajoy and his party is simply more of the same crippling austerity measures applied by Zapatero in order to appease the creditors, to appease Chancellor Merkel, and to appease President Sarkozy. The people of Spain have been living under and fighting these efforts to sell them into financial slavery for some time now. Swapping out one set of thieves and opressors for another doesn’t mean much to them. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Far from a victory for conservative ideals, these election results stand as a punishment of the former bosses for abandoning their own ideals and turning their backs on the people in the face of relentless pressure from Chancellor Merkel. There were more nullified votes, blanked votes, and outright abstentions than there were actual votes cast for Rajoy and the Partido Popular. More people in this country feel that there is no one they can trust to represent them. They no longer place faith in the democratic process because it no longer belongs to them. It has been taken over by the financiers, the corporatists, and the neutered politicians who serve them. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When asked to choose between the person who wants to punch you in the stomach and the person who wants to kick you in the face, the vast majority of us would opt for neither. The people of Spain were being asked to vote for austerity, or more austerity. Many made the only choice they could. They said no. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was a strange day here in Barcelona -- election day. The streets were quiet. The tourists were there of course, they always are. They walked up and down Passeig de Gracia as they do every single day of the year. No sense of what was at stake. To them this was not a day of any particular importance, just another lovely day in sunny Spain. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The locals though, the vibrant and rare lifeblood of this city, the ones that make it hum, were taking sides in a conflict of ideologies. Those who believe in the system, the ones that feel it’s working just fine, went to the polls and cast their ballot for more austerity, more crippling service cuts –- more of the same. On the other side of the field stood those who see themselves as prisoners, and the election as nothing more than a changing of the guards. The jailers faces and the names on their placards may have changed, but their plans and schemes all come from the same cold and sinister warden. </span></span><br />
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<span class="messagebody"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Those who refused to vote made a hard choice. They will not give consent to forced financial servitude. They have opted to show those in charge that if you abandon your ideals, and your promise to the public, forcing the people to pay the price for your corruption and that of the money men who hold the purse strings, the people will take you to task, any way they can. This was the harsh lesson the inevitable losers learned on election day, and it is the lesson the default winners should take to heart. Sooner rather than later.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On Sunday, 20th November 2011, millions of Spanish citizens made it clear that they will not be complicit in the methodical dismantling of their democracy. If the politicians don't have the courage, or the conviction to stand up for the people, they are more than capable of making their time on the throne extremely uncomfortable -- and very brief. </span><br />
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</div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-82795755039115128672011-11-19T12:24:00.007+01:002012-02-11T18:12:03.995+01:00The Words of the Prophets are Written on the Subway Walls<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was a time, not so long ago, when the world of journalism created epic figures and instilled them in the public consciousness: Hemingway and Gellhorn documenting the fight against fascism in Spain; Edward R. Murrow taking to the airwaves to speak out against McCarthyism and the communist witch hunt as it spread across the United States during the 1950s; Woodward and Bernstein blowing the roof off “Watergate”, taking down a president in the process; Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo tours of American culture and the campaign trail seen through a haze of uppers, downers, screamers and laughers. Rather than just reporting the events of the day, these larger than life icons of the medium helped us to understand them, and when necessary, to question the truth behind the headline. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">These men and women weren't simply the chroniclers of their times, they were avatars for those at home. This was journalism as protest, journalism as a weapon against tyranny, journalism as a light to shine on corruption, and in Thompson’s case, journalism as psychedelic experience. Above all, it was journalism as a means of conversation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sadly things are very different now. Those voices are ghosts of the past, replaced with shrill, dishonest mouthpieces. Mainstream media in the west has abandoned the conversation in favor of the slogan. While it is true that corporations have long owned the news media, there was a time when they did not so deeply and blatantly control how the story gets told. It should come as no surprise, then, that in the Occupy movement’s fight against the same corporate overmind that controls the old media, these propagandists are not “on side” with the cause. You might as well expect a dog to bite the hand that feeds it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the aftermath of 9/11, Edward R. Murrow’s warning that we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty came to a morbid fruition. To ask questions about why the attacks happened, or to question who or what was the ultimate root cause became an act of betrayal. To even suggest that decades of imperialist policies, passed from Britain and France to The United States, may have had some part to play in the horror was likely to get you a swift kick in the balls, or worse. As the west marched to war, moving from the hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan to the hunt for WMDs in Iraq, we had no Murrow questioning the motivations and the methods of the Bush Presidency. What few voices there were in the media asking the questions were ridiculed, admonished, or snuffed out entirely, shouted down by the parrots and the patriots. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Like many a big lie, the truth eventually came to light. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or anything more than a paper thin justification for invasion. The war on terror, like Oceania’s “perpetual war” in George Orwell’s <em>1984</em> was never intended to be won, merely to be fought. The truth came too late. The dissenters, their questions silenced with talk of treason and support for dictators, were unable to halt the slogan from killing the conversation. Ironically enough, this stifling of dissent pushed those who wanted to have the conversation, who dared to ask the questions, toward the same tool that now drives perhaps the largest conversation to ever take place. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The internet is where the great barking dog of corporate owned, ideologically aligned media banished those who wanted to have a true dialogue, to ask the important questions. Once they all got there, it was only a matter of time before they started talking to each other, and realized many felt the same way: that something was very wrong with just about everything. These conversations spread from the message boards, the twitter feeds, the facebook walls and the blogosphere to the streets of Tunisia and Egypt, to the squares of Spain and Greece, to the student unions of Chile. When the old media locked the people out of the discourse, choosing to present the news as something to be processed, packaged and consumed for profit rather than absorbed for knowledge, they helped to create a new media with new journalists and a renewed sense that the questions must be asked. Always. Now, this new media is quickly making them irrelevant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The contradictory, near schizophrenic way these dinosaur news outlets have reacted to what has quickly turned into a year of revolution, uprising, and occupation belies just how deep their ties to the corporate brand go. Revolts against regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya have been lauded and praised, stuffed to bursting with the buzzwords of capitalism. American media trumpeted “Freedom” and “Democracy” and “Western Values” when uprisings target clear enemies abroad, be they actual figureheads or simply unsavory ideas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However when the people began rising up in America, taking to the streets in New York, Chicago, Oakland and countless other cities to rage against the methodical, amoral hijacking of their democratic process, the rhetoric changed. The cheers turned to jeers. The bluster and the bravado shown for brave revolutionaries abroad changed to bile and venom spewed for lazy, unemployed drug users, hippies, and communists here at home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The North American movements, in particular, are most often faced with a corporate media whose sole interest is to marginalize them to the point where no one will take them seriously. The questions have been asked without their approval. This mass awakening of the underclasses had gone viral while Beck and O’Reilly were trying to work out what exactly that smiley-faced mask was all about. The old media works so hard to mock and discredit the occupiers because they question the golden calf the old media worships under, and what’s worse, this new media the activists have created has revealed that many arms of the old guard have sold their profession down the river. They took what was once a calling and turned it into a racket, and now they are being forced to look at themselves in the mirror. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Occupiers across the globe must come to the realization that it is pointless to hope and beg for sympathy and a fair shake from these bought and sold news outlets or the corporate mascots they put on the air day in and day out. They will always try to belittle, discredit, and spit on you from a great height. They will do whatever is necessary to warp the perception of their audience. They will take the words or the actions of one mad man in your open societies and prescribe them to all of you, because that is what they are paid to do. You are calling to rights their corporate feeding trough. Having tossed their ethics and integrity aside over the last ten or so years, all they can do is fight, brutal and dirty, to keep the corporate mother’s milk flowing. They hate you for having integrity. They hate you for having ethics. They hate you for daring to question the system that they allowed to devour them. They hate you for resurrecting the conversation in the face of their sloganeering. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The truth is you don’t need them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not their approval, or their respect, or their airtime. The old media scoffed at your ideas and ignored you, and as a result you created a new one, and its circulation is unparalleled. The new writers, and the seasoned journalists pushed to the fringes for refusing to give up their voice, now speak to millions with each click of a mouse. The social networks, the blogs, the twitter feeds and the YouTube videos are your medium. These are the tools that brought a million people on to the streets all across the world on October 15th, and each day thousands of new users find your articles and editorials. Some will agree with you, and some will not, but all will be allowed to join the discussion. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Simon & Garfunkel’s classic <em>The Sound of Silence</em> tells us “<em>The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls</em>”. The walls have been digitized, and the virtual halls are filled with millions of tenants, eager for knowledge, for perspective and most importantly, for the conversation to continue.</span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-85691955368001677922011-10-21T18:47:00.008+02:002012-02-11T18:12:23.193+01:00"Te quiero, Barcelona..."<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On the ground at 15-O Barcelona<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><strong>Photos by Wendy Taylor</strong></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhocM-zuIYiRba8_592Gn0bMLaJZ2SIgzQxIg2XDi5rDQGC7oRmTZdz-vfsgj8_xbzS6GtT9qlonn02FNnXZHHZwD1YW0fYZ_fAwr6AQbrTiye8wwHFjEUYq9M3wgbFibYDT0pRet3YOcp6/s1600/DSC_0336b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="372" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhocM-zuIYiRba8_592Gn0bMLaJZ2SIgzQxIg2XDi5rDQGC7oRmTZdz-vfsgj8_xbzS6GtT9qlonn02FNnXZHHZwD1YW0fYZ_fAwr6AQbrTiye8wwHFjEUYq9M3wgbFibYDT0pRet3YOcp6/s640/DSC_0336b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When my wife and I first decided to cross <st1:city><st1:place></st1:place></st1:city>the <st1:place>Atlantic and start living a new sort of life, Barcelona was the only real choice</st1:place><st1:city><st1:place></st1:place></st1:city>. In our small apartment on Toronto's Queen Street West we would dream of sitting at street side cafes, sipping con <span lang="ES">leches</span> and <span lang="ES">Americanos</span>, smoking cigarettes, listening to Spanish guitar, and most importantly, working to live as opposed to living to work. Six months on, we have that new life we'd hoped for. What was unexpected, was to land in our new home just as a revolution was being born here in Spain, one that has now spread to the new world we left, and effortlessly destroyed the cynicism that had grown in me over the first 12 or so years of my adult life.</span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd-aXxLzAp8uZwdVaaLOiVd0CQm3Mhy3JmrTVhmlUZkQEwWycKG7lujXs7m2mJaCB0Tq0GMD9SX9ZS-QkiH1nwdHvOUQ4iSxwpqWaHeQMp433_qu-iN0n-AOX7qgLnUTBmn2qM3bWBO4pS/s1600/DSC_0412b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd-aXxLzAp8uZwdVaaLOiVd0CQm3Mhy3JmrTVhmlUZkQEwWycKG7lujXs7m2mJaCB0Tq0GMD9SX9ZS-QkiH1nwdHvOUQ4iSxwpqWaHeQMp433_qu-iN0n-AOX7qgLnUTBmn2qM3bWBO4pS/s1600/DSC_0412b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd-aXxLzAp8uZwdVaaLOiVd0CQm3Mhy3JmrTVhmlUZkQEwWycKG7lujXs7m2mJaCB0Tq0GMD9SX9ZS-QkiH1nwdHvOUQ4iSxwpqWaHeQMp433_qu-iN0n-AOX7qgLnUTBmn2qM3bWBO4pS/s320/DSC_0412b.jpg" width="249" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just a month into our new lives here, it all boiled over. Citizens across Spain began taking to the streets, occupying the vast squares and public spaces in their city centres. They came to give manifestation to their outrage over what was being forced upon them by the controllers of global finance, by the money men who own the politicians that are elected to represent the people, but have long since lost interest in doing so. In Barcelona I watched as the Catalan <em><span lang="CA">Els</span><span lang="CA"> </span><span lang="CA">Indignats</span></em> joined with the Castellan <em>Los </em><span lang="ES"><em>Indignados</em></span> across Spain, setting up camp in Barcelona’s <span lang="CA">Pla<span style="font-size: small;">ç</span>a</span> de <span lang="CA">Catalunya</span>, the grand square in the Catalonian capital city that connects the old barrios of <span lang="CA">Raval</span> and <span lang="CA">Gotic</span> with the 19<sup>th</sup> century modern expansion known as <span lang="CA">Eixample. Here, amongst the constant flow of tourists and the bold as brass pigeons, they joined their countrymen in Madrid’s Puerta Del Sol, and countless other Indignados in cities all over Spain, to be the bright star, the big bang of what we are now calling the “Occupy” movement. </span></span><br />
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<span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before AdBusters and Anonymous successfully forced the eyes of the world to turn to Wall Street, the world’s symbolic heart of elite finance and the capitalist dream, the Indignant ones here in Spain were drawing up the blueprint for them. Here in these little DIY barrios they crafted the unique ideas behind this growing shift in perspective. In Plaça Catalunya they built ramshackle kitchens, dormitories, a library, and a media centre to keep the world aware of what was happening. International media giants weren’t interested, but the people were. They followed the movement on Facebook, on Twitter, on Youtube. They voiced their support for Spain’s outraged, and only a few months later, took the cause to a stage that could not be ignored.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="CA">On October 15th hundreds of thousands of people, in a thousand cities across the world came out into their streets to occupy their cities, to support those in New York who took over Zucotti Park in mid September, and to take the next step in a global push for change that is not going away, despite the best efforts of our corporate media giants to ignore and mock them. Here in Barcelona, we went back to where it all began: Pla<span style="font-size: small;">ç</span>a Catalunya.</span> </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just before 5pm we arrived at the edge of the square, crossing the famous Passeig de Gracia, and wandering into the gathering crowd. Already a few thousand had arrived, so we decided to stroll through and take a look at the different faces coming together.</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="CA">Mixed in among the “Perro Flautas”, youth who live with their dogs on the street and play music for a few euros here and there, that the authorities often blame for these uprisings, were old Senors and Senoras who had lived through the dark days of Franco. There were young families crippled by the crisis with their children in tow, and of course, many a Guy Fawkes mask grinning out at us. This is not some collection of disaffected youth that can be easily brushed aside as a rabble of lazy unemployed misfits, more intent on drinking Estrella’s and asking for handouts than doing an honest day's work. Standing alongside the young and the outraged are their grandmothers and grandfathers, their older brothers and sisters, </span><span lang="CA">new mothers and fathers struggling to feed their children. A friend who had joined us shortly after we arrived pointed out a sign, held up by an older woman which read “No tengo un perro, no tengo una flauta!” I have no dog, I have no flute!</span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span lang="CA"><span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Right on time at 5pm, several massive columns of people converged on the square from three or four different directions. Within moments, what was a group of a few thousand swelled out of the square and onto the roads surrounding the Pla<span style="font-size: small;">ç</span>a . People began to move through the central square to join with the larger groups on the streets. Men and women carried long banners overhead, young girls with pierced lips and shaved heads walked side by side with white haired grandfathers. Tattooed, mohawked, and sometimes mulleted tough looking punks walked side by side with old matrons in their weekend best and mothers with little kids in their arms and on their shoulders. These were people of different generations, and of different walks of life, coming together in a fight to take their democracy back. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="CA"><span lang="CA"><o:p>We watched as the crowd swelled all around us and soon, looking out in any direction, we saw only the indignant. The collection of faces, with cheers and raised hands, moved out onto Passeig de Gracia to begin their march, and then the music started.</o:p></span></span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p>Dotted throughout the <span lang="CA">crowd were small groups of musicians wielding an assortment of drums and various other percussion instruments. As they began to play, people cheered, and took to dancing all around them. My wife and one of our friends joined in the dancing from our spot on the raised grass hill in front of one of the square’s two large fountains. This crowd was the very picture of peace and joy, with no interest in destruction or violence. They didn't need that. They were here together, and they were happy. </span></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We all moved up along Passeig de Gracia, a great collection of faces and voices moving through our city. Songs of unity from the old days of dictatorship rang out in time with new slogans of indignation. It became clear once we had taken to walking that the drummers and dancers were there not only to entertain the crowd, they were there to keep things open and calm. The drum bands would stop and perform brilliant and elaborate pieces of music for the crowd around them, allowing the marchers to flow easily along the street. Two or three women would come out of the throng of protestors and dance frantically to the beat of the drums; One curious little blonde haired boy with an edgy looking mullet joined in as well, quickly becoming the star of the little show. Behind him his young mother, with an edgy looking mullet of her own, flashed a beautiful smile as she watched her son upstage the musicians for a moment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span lang="CA" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the last light of the evening sun faded behind <em>Sagrat</em> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cor</i> church in the mountains, we passed under the watchful eye of Gaudi, Catalunya’s visionary architect, as we walked by his scaly roofed “Casa Battlo” and turned right onto Carrer d’Arag<span style="font-size: small;">ó</span>. Here, on this one way street, the indignant descended upon the institutions that had failed them. There was no violence, but the banks and corporate strongholds that can be found on every corner of Arag<span style="font-size: small;">ó</span> were plastered with anti-corporate posters, and the walls covered with clever slogans in Catalan and Castellano alike. It was here that I read a short slogan that gave perfect voice to the perspective shared by those across this country:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> "If you have a gun you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone..." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The message is concise, and it is clear. We are the victims of a grand theft, but these bankers, investors, speculators and corporate elites have stolen much more than just our money, they have stolen our democracy. They have hijacked our representation to make disgusting levels of profit. They have crafted a sick joke to play on all of us, and for far too long, we let them. They got so good at telling the joke that they believed it impossible for us to ever get the punch line. They do not want to believe that we can ever be anything other than blind. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, our eyes are opening. We are beginning to understand the joke that’s been played on us, by those that we are told to admire, revere, and fear. The rich, the powerful, the politicians with lined pockets. We are all starting to learn though, that they should be afraid of us, not us of them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the happy revolutionaries turned off Arag<span style="font-size: small;">ó</span> and on to Passeig de Sant Joan to make their way to the Arc de Triomphe, my friends and I left the march to have a drink and to talk. Underneath a clear, star filled black sky we sat and discussed what we had been a part of, and what this movement was turning into. As we did, one thing became clear to me: While New York and Occupy Wall Street has become the important face of this movement, Spain and <em>Los</em> <em>Indignados</em> remain it’s strong heart, pumping fresh blood through the veins of this new revolution, growing all across the world. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;">To see more of Wendy's work, visit: <a href="http://wendytaylorphotography.blogspot.com/">http://wendytaylorphotography.blogspot.com/</a></span><br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"></div><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"></span>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-57243574711834900722011-10-12T18:41:00.004+02:002012-02-11T18:12:45.491+01:00You say you want a Revolution?<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The great unwashed have reached their limit. In different nations, different cities, and for different reasons, people are coming to the same conclusion, at roughly the same time: This system is broken.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> In <st1:country-region><st1:place>Greece</st1:place></st1:country-region> citizens have marched, been assaulted, and died in an effort to stop crippling austerity measures being forced upon them by their leaders, the same people who allowed the banking system that holds their leashes to hurl the nation into a black void of debt. In <st1:country-region><st1:place>Tunisia</st1:place></st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region><st1:place>Egypt</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the people have risen up in search of a voice, full stop. They demanded freedom of speech, an end to police and military brutality, and the right to vote. In both cases, they fought and they won. In <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, from the sprawling city streets of <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> and <st1:state><st1:place>Madrid</st1:place></st1:state>, to the quaint and picturesque towns of Figueres and Soria, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">15 de Mao </i>movement, with its Castellan “Los Indignados” and Catalan “Els Indignats”, fought a happy revolution, occupying the grand squares of their ancient cities in a non violent, extended sit in. They erected make shift barrios, complete with libraries, canteens, daycare facilities, and media centres that allowed them to keep the message online and global twenty four hours a day. In <st1:city><st1:place>Barcelona</st1:place></st1:city> I saw first hand how pacifist and joyous these revolutionaries were. When the police came to move them, they did not raise a hand. When they were forced from the square, they returned immediately. They weren’t there to fight, but they refused to be chased away. Before long, it moved across the pond, where protestors in <st1:place><st1:city>Santiago</st1:city>, <st1:country-region>Chile</st1:country-region></st1:place> turned student protests over the state of education in the country into a full scale revolt against the country’s political system. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, it’s come to <st1:country-region><st1:place>America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p>By now you know the details. It started small, with the vast majority of the American mainstream media doing it’s best to ignore the gathering in <st1:place><st1:placename>Liberty</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Plaza</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype>Park</st1:placetype></st1:place>. Then, hemmed in protestors were needlessly pepper sprayed by the NYPD. Before long, no media outlet could ignore what was happening, not even FOX News. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p>Now 23 days in, the movement grows in <st1:state><st1:place>New York</st1:place></st1:state> daily, and like <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region> before, it’s spreading. As of October 7<sup>th</sup>, similar movements have cropped up from Washington DC to <st1:city><st1:place>San Francisco</st1:place></st1:city>. They are taking to the streets in the windy city of <st1:city><st1:place>Chicago</st1:place></st1:city> and in the mile high city of <st1:city><st1:place>Denver</st1:place></st1:city>. From the swamps of New Jersey to the desert in Albuquerque, Americans are rising up and joining the rest of the world to tell the governments, and more importantly, the corporations, the banks, and the disgustingly rich who run the show behind the curtain: Enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p>Three years ago we all watched as corporate greed broke the back of our neo liberal system. We watched as the world’s largest banks, all complicit in driving us into the greatest economic collapse since the great depression, had hundreds of billions turned over to them because they were “too big to fail”. For our efforts, we watched them use the cash to pay out millions in bonuses to the same high level bankers and investors that brought the economy to its knees. All that mattered to them, all which ever mattered to them, was getting rich, no matter the cost to the rest of us. If it was ever really in doubt that the rich, the powerful, and the fortunate have crafted a world where they thrive off the toil and struggle of those underneath them, there can be no such illusion left. The only thing they didn’t count on, unsurprisingly, is that this time they have pushed us to our limit. At least we should all hope they have. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p>If this revolution is to succeed, there can be no let up from the will of the people. One day, one week, one month is not going to be enough. 100,000 protestors, while impressive, will not get them to listen. This truly has to be a revolt of the 99%, on a global scale. Every one who has been foreclosed upon, or had their young lives crippled right from the start by insurmountable debt, must take to the streets. We cannot just be Tunisians and Egyptians or Greeks. We cannot just be Castellan and Catalan. We cannot just be Chileans and New Yorkers. This is not a case of “your” revolution or “mine”. It belongs to all of us, and must be embraced by all of us. If you cannot take to the streets to be heard, take your voice online. If you cannot march against consumerism and the greed that it fosters, stop buying useless shit you don’t need. If you want a true change of the system, it starts with breaking free from the system. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p> </o:p>On October 15<sup>th</sup>, people across the world will come out from their homes and into their streets to raise their voices in support of the occupation of Wall Street, in support of the student protestors in <st1:country-region><st1:place>Chile</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in a reflection of the happy revolutionaries of <st1:country-region><st1:place>Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and above all else in support of each other. Whether you are there for an hour, a day, or a year, make your self heard. You are not just one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You are the 99 percent. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-44006931416719808702011-09-09T07:54:00.009+02:002012-02-11T18:13:07.010+01:00"No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At one point or another in life, we all day dream about living in the James Bond universe, and it's not hard to figure out who everyone pictures themselves as when they do. Everyone wants to be Bond, usually of the Sean Connery variety, though I’m sure there are a few sick bastards out there that day dream about being Roger Moore. One thing is certain though: with his unsightly eye scar, bland Maoesque suit and a fluffy white cat he’s probably having sex with, seeing as there’s never any women around him, no one ever fantasizes about being Blofeld. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">No one, that is, except Peter Thiel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div align="justify" class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuTzizgia3UDjxeVbqOU1Lc41Th4aSM9I0H1evJtAJ5u70Y916ZDXq0zRfAQ_AcTm0jyqUOjHX98lukYxqfWV0moPxVQtNS-g4DqAM1iqnlh3zn_LJv4WKvQZ2qXHGg9eSTlIGHz90zi7/s1600/Blofeldpleasance67.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijuTzizgia3UDjxeVbqOU1Lc41Th4aSM9I0H1evJtAJ5u70Y916ZDXq0zRfAQ_AcTm0jyqUOjHX98lukYxqfWV0moPxVQtNS-g4DqAM1iqnlh3zn_LJv4WKvQZ2qXHGg9eSTlIGHz90zi7/s320/Blofeldpleasance67.jpg" width="236" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">File Photo: Peter Thiel (Citation Needed)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thiel is the billionaire co-founder of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PayPal</i>, The first investor in something called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Facebook</i>, an avowed Libertarian, and a quixotically gay conservative. More recently, he has donated 1.25 million to a project that plans on building sovereign aqua nations in international waters under the guise of exploring new frontiers in the “governance industry”, as explained in a recent interview with <a href="http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/201109/peter-thiel-billionaire-paypal-facebook-internet-success?currentPage=1"><span style="color: #666666;">Details Magazine</span></a>. This latest venture isn't even his first into the world of "bondian" villainy. On his journey to the darkside Thiel has invested in Palantir, a software firm that was caught out recently for its role in planned attacks on Wikileaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald. His original darling venture, <em>PayPal</em>, <a href="http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/201109/peter-thiel-billionaire-paypal-facebook-internet-success?currentPage=3"><span style="color: #666666;">was envisioned as a subversive tool to create a new world currency</span></a>, which as discussed in the previous article, is the sort of bold stroke the west will depose you over. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With quotes like this one <a href="http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/201109/peter-thiel-billionaire-paypal-facebook-internet-success?currentPage=4"><span style="color: #666666;">found at the end of the article</span></a>, there can be little doubt that Thiel fancies himself a super genius.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This idea, known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seasteading</i>, is the brain child of fellow Libertarian and aspiring supervillain in his own right, Patri Friedman. The idea is to found these water worlds around specific ideologies: by which they mean “rich guys who don’t want to pay taxes or a fair living wage to poor saps” ideologies. When describing the idea, the examples Friedman gives are “no welfare”, “no minimum wage”, “looser building codes” and “less restrictive gun laws”. </span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtSXNyngHAp8A-SsIaNBvopRrV5d08x_qjn80N_OOjl8HzPMcPaXWbhfi-Fr1qBt4k0h7_LgGj4B0YOuepAyu1FF8lBasAITsLAwdYvw5oRgOLlHUbq850kutMwfDLc37Yj3KUoQbRppgo/s1600/terrordrome_raised_front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtSXNyngHAp8A-SsIaNBvopRrV5d08x_qjn80N_OOjl8HzPMcPaXWbhfi-Fr1qBt4k0h7_LgGj4B0YOuepAyu1FF8lBasAITsLAwdYvw5oRgOLlHUbq850kutMwfDLc37Yj3KUoQbRppgo/s320/terrordrome_raised_front.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: xx-small;">Artist's rendering of first Seastead Nation (Citation Needed)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think this is a brilliant idea.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sure, while couched in some high minded talk of evolutionary government and freeing technology and science from the bounds of bureaucratic interference, what this really amounts to is a floating pleasure plank where the rich can create their own rules and escape all these annoying ideas like “ethics” and “equality” to focus on the important things like world domination, and slave labour. At its least damaging, it’s a bunch of trust fund babies trying to puzzle out who on earth would possibly come and work for whatever they feel like paying them when there are plenty of other nations that provide guarantees of a basic living wage, minus the constant threat of tsunamis, pirates and the corrosive properties of salt. At its most depraved, it’s “Hostel” on an oil platform.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However those of us naturally inclined toward fair wages, the distribution of wealth, the pursuit of happiness, now have a viable way to remove one of the great obstacles the poor and downtrodden face in life: Rich bastards. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fine conservo-libertarian fashion, no doubt the building of these floating Studio 54's will be contracted out to the lowest bidder, who will no doubt use cheap materials, in the middle of the open ocean, to come in on budget. All we need to do is help get as many of the world's powerful and elite on them as quickly as possible, and watch as the inevitable occurs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For that matter, if the dangerous combination of crushing waves and cheaply constructed supports doesn't finish them off, they may just do it themselves. If there's one thing we know about the rich, it's that they really love their cocaine. Imagine what would happen on "less restrictive gun laws" aqua nation when you mix a yacht load of cocaine and a large stockpile of AK-47's. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or perhaps I'm underestimating their ability to find people willing to work for nothing to remove their trash and clean their toilets. There are arguably hundreds of thousands of people out there on the globe's poorest nations, desperate for a chance to earn something, anything to keep themselves alive. Perhaps these poor wretches will embrace the opportunity to plunge the chemical toilets of the rich and completely out of touch. At least at first.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before long, Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman, and the rest of the self-proclaimed elite would find that there is a reason uprisings over class disparities and austerity measures are cropping up all across Europe, South America and soon enough, North America. Eventually, the new citizens of "AynRandia" might wonder if they could have planned better when their slaves have risen up, broken their salt rusted chains of oppression, and cast the mighty into the rough seas to die a slow and agonizing death as hypothermia sets in, or if you like, a fast and horrifying one as sharks circle in for an easy meal. Perhaps in this final moment, they might come to the stunning realization that those with nothing will only take it in the arse from those with everything for so long, before turning on the buggers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">See? Fantastic idea!</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span></div></div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1955689874963202707.post-44706624229233007192011-08-29T11:19:00.008+02:002012-02-11T18:13:25.865+01:00Meet the new boss…<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Well, not just yet. But he is coming. Riding in on a great, big fuck-off NATO stallion through Tripoli alongside thousands of rebels hungry for regime change and the sort of freedom they could previously only dream about. This is the dawn of a new democracy, filled with hope, the thirst for self determination, and the judicial use of NATO missiles.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is the sort of story it’s easy to gather around and celebrate, a heart warmer for those in the west watching the long oppressed break the bonds of oppression and join the rest of us in the proverbial land of milk and honey. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For anyone who grew up in the eighties or earlier, the toppling of “Wacky Gaddafi” is an event in and of itself. The grand old man of mid-east despots, Gaddafi was the blue print for those that followed. Before Saddam, before <span lang="EN">Ahmadinejad, there was Gaddafi. Seeing him go down, something forty years in the making, makes it all worth while for many. Surely, the new boss to come will be a shining light in Libya in contrast to Gaddafi’s black hole. </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However, over the last 72 hours, the negative on the other side of the snapshot is slowly coming into focus, and it’s telling a darker story. While UN, NTC, and imperial voices from the old and new world alike preach the same sermon, that this will not turn into another quagmire in the desert, many warning signs suggest the intervention record is about to start skipping again.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The NTC, UN, and various other governments and humanitarian organizations are scrambling to reverse the humanitarian crisis in <st1:city><st1:place>Tripoli</st1:place></st1:city> that arrived in the wake of the fight for control of the city. Currently, this city of two million people is largely without running water and electricity. There is no gas for cooking, and food is scarce. With no water comes an issue of sanitation, which could lead to further public heath issues. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Worse still, it could turn into a bloodbath.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">An article from <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/rebels-settle-scores-in-libyan-capital-2344671.html">The Independent</a> on Saturday indicates a growing trend of revenge killings being perpetrated by Rebel soldiers on Sub Saharan Africans within <st1:country-region><st1:place>Libya</st1:place></st1:country-region>. While the official line from the Rebels is that these are hired mercenaries lured by money from Gaddafi, the truth seems a bit murkier. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Migrant workers have been found among the executed, and in some cases the men killed had been lynched. The rebels claim they are being killed in gunfights. This begs the question, why do so many dead men need to have their hands bound behind their backs?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In their rush to get the old boss out, did <st1:country-region><st1:place>Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region><st1:place>France</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the <st1:country-region><st1:place>United States</st1:place></st1:country-region> jump with both feet into a situation they didn’t fully understand? It’s not as if they don’t have a history of doing exactly that. After all, even <span id="goog_145200104"></span>Hamid Karzai <span id="goog_145200105"></span><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/03/10/f-vp-stewart.html">seemed like a good idea at the time.</a> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Alternatively, did they just not care?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN">There is little altruism in anything the power brokers of the world do these days, if ever there was.</span> There is money to be made here, and resources to be had. <span lang="EN">NTC head Mustafa Abdel Jalil has already said the new government would favour foreign countries that had supported the rebellion when discussing contracts for Libya’s oil, which should come as a surprise to exactly no one. </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oil, though the favoured boogeyman of conspiracy theorists everywhere, doesn’t tell the entire story. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Britain, France and the United States extended the hand of friendship to Gaddafi and brought him “in from the cold”. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gaddafi and the western powers had been making nice for quite some time since the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There was no reason for western oil interests to foment revolt for his removal as a push to get their share of Libyan oil. Their hands were already covered in it. What he may have been doing though, was working to turn the entire global economic hierarchy inside out. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Reports have surfaced suggesting Gaddafi was working toward a standard African Gold Dinar to trade in, drastically altering the value of global currencies. Gaddafi was pushing African and Arab nations to adopt this single gold dinar as a strong rival to the U.S. dollar and the euro. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A country’s wealth would no longer rely on the value of it’s currency, but on how much gold it had. Such a plan would cause havoc for the corporate elite who control the central banks of the world. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before. In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraqi oil would be traded in Euros, not US dollars moving forward. Within a few years, Iraq had been invaded and Hussein deposed, again under the guise of liberating a nation from an oppressive dictator.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gaddafi may have been looking to make the monetary system carefully constructed by the executives, lawmakers, and economists of the west nearly irrelevant. That certainly sounds like a good reason to foment rebellion and get shut of the guy trying to blow your financial house down.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span lang="EN">The new man in charge will no doubt play ball with the west, in every way they want him to. At least that’s the rationale. But in a nation of angry rebels, potentially dangerous remnants of the old regime, and tribal warlords looking after their own interests, is the reality that simple? Will the west create another frankenstein’s monster in another middle eastern nation they will eventually have to take care of some twenty or thirty years down the road? </span><span lang="EN">This is the strange duality of the “Arab Spring”. People long oppressed are rising up and fighting for change, for a new way of living. The problem is the men behind the curtain, and what the outcome of their long game will be. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Who’s going to be the new boss? And will he end up being the same as the old boss? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</div>The Transmissionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06065152073467320075noreply@blogger.com