Haiti: How Capitalists Profit from Tragedy

Britain Today: A Look At The Recent Factory Occupations in London

April 2009

Hundreds of workers occupy three Visteon car manufacturing factories in Britain after the management closed them down, laying off the entire workforce with no notice, violating their contracts. This is reminiscent of the factory occupations of the 1970s.

Read full article here:
http://www.socialist.net/visteon-work…

The above is a lesson in the importance of organisation in the workplace and worker solidarity. See Organising at Work: How Activists can build a Union from scratch

MPs’ Expenses – Kick Them All Out. A Look At True Democracy.

As the Commons’ standing falls to a historic low, with news of MPs claiming expenses for everything from piles of manure to tennis court maintenance, from cleaning moats to pruning  wisterias, there are now legitimate calls from all sections of the public for drastic action and change. Is it time to dissolve parliament, kick out all the MPs and for the public to brick by brick to build a new democracy? Let us look at democracy and what it really means:

Democracy: The Idea

Deriving from the Greek, Demos Kratos – People Power – Literally, direct self government and decision making by the people.

Today this idea is widely interpretated as indirect or representative democracy, where voters elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf.

Democracy implies varying degrees of people power, participation, representation, responsible government and consent. Democratic participation may take many forms, from voting and standing for political office to meetings, marches, demonstrations, peaceful lawbreaking and violent political opposition. Even riots and terrorist attacks have democratic claims, since they are ‘people power’ in the literal sense – although all states and governments will deny those democratic claims when such activities are directed against them.

Democracy: The Reality

How To Watch Free Live Footy On The Internet

Step 1. Cancel your SKY subscription. 700 channels of absolute crap. You know as well as I do that you never watch the films or much else for that matter. 9 times out of ten you end up watching the terrestrial channels anyway. Time to revert to freeview and think about the money you are saving. See how to cancel your SKY contract

Step 2. Make sure you have a good internet connection and a pc at home. Anything less than broadband will make it very difficult for you to enjoy watching the live streams of the games that are available. If you dont have an internet connection at home dont worry, you can get online broadband for as little as £4 a month now days. For best deals see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

Step 3. Here we go! Time to get all your favourite footie games for free live on your pc. Using the following links on match days you should be able to get the footie games you are looking for, all for the price of your internet connection with your internet service provider.  Basically peanuts!

Think about the money you will save and the joy that you will get from watching Saturday afternoon matches live  and for FREE!

Recommended Free Footie Links:

1. http://www.iraqgoals.net/
2. http://livefooty.doctor-serv.com/
3. http://www.justin.tv/directory?category=sports
4. http://www.ustream.tv/discovery/live/sports-football
5. http://www.ilemi.com/
6. http://www.liveonlinefooty.com/

These are not the only websites out there that are providing free streams of the football matches but are a few that can be used to enjoy access on match days. If anyone out there has any other good links that they could recommend please post below under comments. All links provided will help to make this a valuable source for footie fans looking for their favourite match ups on the weekend.

Not only that but these websites can also help you to bypass the ridiculously priced box office pay per view sky promotions where they basically take advantage again of the punters at home. You can also access PPV boxing, tennis and all other sports if you know where to look.

Happy surfing and remember to leave feedback and new sites for others to enjoy in comments. Beat the system and boycott Murdoch’s media monopoly.

Best wishes

Tio

How to Fix the Wall Street Mess

Demonstration on Wall Street

The richest 400 Americans — that’s right, just four hundred people — own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. 400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion — the same amount that they are now demanding we give to them for the “bailout.” Why don’t they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They’d still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!

Of course, they are not going to do that — at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not his, he did what the rich prefer to do — spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt. Why on earth would we even think of giving these robber barons any more of our money?

A System Out Of Control

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers–with more financial institutions to follow, no one knows how quickly–is the product of greed and deregulation embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike.

A Wall Street trader watches as the stock market crashes in reaction to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (Zuma)

THE LATEST chaos on Wall Street–the worst financial upheaval in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930s–highlights not just the scale of the world financial crisis, but the needless destruction caused by the blind competition at the core of capitalism.

The Wall Street crisis will almost certainly make the current economic slump worse. A shadow banking system beyond the reach of regulators in the U.S. or any other country is crashing down, destabilizing the world financial system. Even before the latest crisis, Bill Gross of Pimco, a big money-management firm, warned that an uncontrolled liquidation of debt by financial institutions “can turn a campfire into a forest fire, a mild asset bear market into a destructive financial tsunami.”

The risk of such a catastrophe is growing. As hundreds of billions of dollars in financial assets vaporize, banks will be forced to raise interest rates to increase the amount of money they have in their reserves. This, in turn, will cut off credit to business and consumers alike, further choking an anemic economy.

What Is Exploitation?

The term “exploitation” typically conjures up images of horrendous working conditions, perhaps sweatshops in China or India, or the child labour used by Western clothes manufacturers. We think of people working long hours for little pay in terrible conditions ruthlessly bullied by unscrupulous bosses or gangmasters.

Such “exploitation” is presented to us as exceptional – and contrasted with the “normality” of working life for most people, particularly in countries such as Britain.

Karl Marx had a different understanding of exploitation. Rather than seeing it as exceptional, he argued that exploitation is fundamental to capitalism.

For Marx, exploitation was not just about the level of wages received, or working conditions, but was the very process whereby capitalism creates profit out of the work we do.

In order to understand what Marx meant by exploitation we need to start with his explanation of where profits ultimately come from – the “labour theory of value”.