A North Carolina man with no health care robbed a bank for $1 in order to go to jail and get his ailments seen to. He is hoping to be convicted of a felony, so he can get the benefits he lost after he was laid off from his 17-year Coca-Cola delivery job. He has carpal tunnel, a bad back, and "a protrusion on his chest." He is in chronic pain. He has promised to reoffend if he isn’t convicted and treated.

(Source: Boing Boing)

THIS is what this government wants for all of us. It wants to destroy the socialist NHS and replace it with capitalist health care like the US “enjoys.” Because the free market is so efficient, great and all that.

Unless we get on the streets and protest on June 30th and make enough noise, this will be your future for health care for you and your family.

I wanted instead to write books that were fire and ice, wind sweeping the earth. I wanted to write books that, once experienced, could not be forgotten, books that would be cherished as we cherish the most exquisite light we have ever seen. I had contempt for anything less than this perfect book that I could imagine. This book that lived in my imagination was small and perfect and I wanted it to live in person after person, forever. Even in the darkest of human times, it would live. Even in the life of one person who would sustain it and be sustained by it, it would live. I wanted to write a book that would be read even by one person, but always. For the rest of human time some one person would always know that book, and think it beautiful and fine and true, and then it would be like any tree that grows, or any grain of sand. It would be, and once it was it would never not be.

In my secret longings there was another desire as well, not opposite but different, not the same but as strong. There would be a new social order in which people could live in a new way. There would be this new way of living which I could, on the edges of my mind and in the core of my being, imagine and taste. People would be free, and they would live decent lives, and those lives would not be without pain, but they would be without certain kinds of pain. They would be lives untouched by prisons and killings and hunger and bombs. I imagined that there could be a world without institutionalized murder and systematic cruelty.

I imagined that I could write a book that would make such a world possible.

via Andrea Dworkin Memorial.

(Source: New America Foundation and Time via Wikipedia)

Today, the US issued this statement:

The Obama administration has condemned what it says are “renewed atrocities” by Libyan forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

“Snipers have targeted civilians seeking medical assistance,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
(Source: BBC News)

This post is not defending the despot and undoubted mass-murderer Gaddafi. But it is questioning how the USA continues to set itself up as moral authority for the “free world” when simultaneously murdering innocent people in its drone attacks against Pakistan. Look at the stats above: over 2,200 Pakistanis murdered by the USA’s missiles.

Today, Pakistan issued this statement:

Pakistan has sharply criticised the United States for a missile attack on Wednesday in which six people were reported killed near the Afghan border.

“Drone attacks have become a core irritant in the counter-terror campaign,” the foreign office said.

It was the first such raid in a month and came after Pakistan’s spy chief met his US counterpart to discuss a deep rift over CIA activities in Pakistan.

There was huge anger after a drone raid killed dozens of civilians on 17 March.

Although several militants were reported killed, the vast majority of the dead were civilians attending a tribal meeting.
(Source: BBC News)

Remember, these “militants” were still innocent, they weren’t arrested or detained or charged in any way. The US military simply killed them, along with a load of other Pakistanis even its huge mendacity couldn’t cover up.

The Pakistani government is, of course, in cahoots with the US. There are probably some very nice backroom deals going on there. They’ve only spoken out today because of the mass protests against US atrocities have forced them to pretend to care.

Like the US government, like the UK government, like all governments, they don’t care about their citizens, they only care about their own power and security.

You will hear the US moral indignation on your radios and televisions today. You won’t hear the Pakistani condemnation of the US, even though it comes from the government of a sovereign nation. Our mass media simply won’t repeat criticism of the US.

So, most people will only hear one side and therefore continue to live in the fantasy world where the USA is the good guy, selflessly fighting evil around the world.

The consumer products giants Unilever and Procter & Gamble (P&G) have been fined 315m euros (£280m, $456m) for fixing washing powder prices in eight European countries.

It follows a three-year investigation by the European Commission following a tip-off by the German company, Henkel.
(Source: BBC News)

The “free market” is just another term for organised crime. When will we throw the capitalist criminals off our backs?

Last Saturday, I walked alongside at least 250,000 (and maybe as many as 500,000) other Britons to protest the cuts planned in the name of balancing the un-balanceable chequebook of capitalism. Apparently, we’re in terrible debt. O RLY?

Here’s the lie. We are in a debt crisis. Our national debt is dangerously and historically high. We are being threatened by the international bond markets. The way out is to eradicate our deficit rapidly. Only that will restore “confidence”, and therefore economic growth. Every step of this program is false, and endangers you.

Let’s start with a fact that should be on billboards across the land. As a proportion of GDP, Britain’s national debt has been higher than it is now for 200 of the past 250 years. Read that sentence again. Check it on any graph by any historian. Since 1750, there have only been two brief 30-year periods when our debt has been lower than it is now. So we can afford to run a deficit, if that has a positive effect – which we’ll get to in a minute. If we are “bust” today, as George Osborne has claimed, then we have almost always been bust. We were bust when we pioneered the Industrial Revolution. We were bust when we ruled a quarter of the world. We were bust when we beat the Nazis. We were bust when we built the NHS. Or is it George Osborne’s economics that are bust?
(Source: Johann Hari)

I could tell from the start that the demo was massive. At points, we were shuffling along, there were so many of us. This reminded me of the Feb 15th 2003 antiwar protest, the largest protest in British political history. So far.

The spirit was friendly, positive and peaceful. Look at the pic above – do those protestors look ready to barbecue babies? Because that’s how the protest was reported: the media fabricated stories of widespread violence when, in fact, most of the actions of UK Uncut were peaceful occupations, like that of Fortnum and Masons. :

This was not the first time that the police have gone too far in their actions at UK Uncut protests. In January we witnessed an officer use CS spray to unjustifiably devastate a group of protesters outside of tax-dodgers Boots.

On Saturday, their choice to make so many arrests of peaceful protesters, and to subsequently bundle us up with others who were arrested for ‘violence’, are clear examples of political policing: before we left the senior policewoman inside the store said our actions were “nonviolent” and “sensible”. The excellent Green and Black Cross legal team got this all on film. We were shocked to be arrested following these comments, following statements that we had been kept inside the store for our own safety, following assurances that we would not be detained upon leaving the store.
(Source: UK Uncut)

We marched, we sang, we tried to get passers-by and even coppers to join us. Don’t believe what you saw on the telly, it’s utter, utter bullshit. To focus on the actions of maybe 100 people in a march of 500,000 shows you how the media want to portray anti-government sentiment.

After a knackering day, I got home and relaxed by going on Facebook. Woah – wave after wave of status updates from people complaining about violent protestors ruining the day / country. What the fuck?

That’s is what I posted when I got too fed up:

“1. Why post a status update about a tiny minority action when 250,000 (-450,000, depending who you believe) of us marched peacefully? You didn’t congratulate us, the huge majority at any point, you condemned the minority. Classic Daily Mail-ism. I question your focus.

2. Why post a status update about how criminal and horrible 100 anarchists breaking some windows are when the huge crime of what this government is doing, destroying this country’s infrastructure, you say *nothing* about? Property can be fixed, a generation of ruined lives cannot. I question your priorities.

3. You’re implying “genuine protesters” can only be non-violent. Are you aware of how women won the vote in this country? Or how we got rid of the Poll Tax and then Thatcher? Or how the ANC defeated apartheid? Are the Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi not “genuine protesters” because they’ve got guns? I hear they’ve broken quite a few windows.

In short, you’re regurgitating the perspectives of Sky News, the Daily Mail, the Tory Party and the ruling class. Nothing wrong with that, free country etc., but it doesn’t mean I’m going to let it pass un-challenged.”

Last Saturday was a tremendous day for British democracy. We protested like hundreds of thousands of others are doing in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, New York and Madison.

And we will march again!

We are being told that we have to make sacrifices. Even as bankers pay themselves four thousand million pounds in bonuses and, obviously, there’s always money for war.

The rest of us, the plebs, we need to shut up and accept our country’s infrastructure being vandalised by the hoodlums in government.

No. We won’t do that.

That’s why I’m marching tomorrow, along with hundred of thousand of Britons who will not lie down quietly.

It Cuts Both Ways…The Alternatives from Oonagh Cousins on Vimeo.

Make your voice heard tomorrow! MARCH FOR THE ALTERNATIVE!

Google Map of drone strikes, click here for an up-to-date version.

At least three suspected militants have been killed in a drone strike in the troubled Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, officials say.

The US does not routinely confirm that it has launched drone operations, but analysts say only American forces have the capacity to deploy such aircraft in the region.
(Source: BBC News)

Another day, another terrorist attack by the USA on innocent Pakistanis. Or, right, sorry – “suspected militants.” That’s alright, then. As long as they were “suspected,” it’s fine to launch missiles at them. The USA is at war with Pakistan, after all. Oh, hold on.

They’re not.

This is another brutal murder of innocents by the USA. You won’t see it on your TV news. You’ll probably get some footage of Obama saying how nasty North Korea / China / insert-nation-here are. But look at what the US has been doing since 2004:

(Source: New America Foundation and Time via Wikipedia)

The USA has murdered somewhere between 1,400 and 2,200 Pakistanis in the last seven years. How many foreign nationals has NK or China killed in that period?

If you’re looking for the number-one rogue state, the top sponsor of international terrorism, you have to give that accolade to the USA.

The United States government has called on China to stop what it calls the “extralegal” abductions and detentions of lawyers and human rights activists.

The US state department called on Beijing to uphold its internationally recognised human rights obligations.
(Source: BBC News)

See that picture at the top? That’s what happens to people who disagree with the American Empire. They get kidnapped and imprisoned without trial.

You should probably read this post about Guantanamo if you haven’t already.

Yep, the USA is currently the biggest rogue state in the world. It’s killing innocent Pakistanis every week with its illegal drone attacks, it invaded a non-agressor country, killing over 1.2 million people in the process and it still maintains its torture camp at Guantanamo. Filled with innocent people its kidnapped internationally via its CIA black ops and network of complicit states, no charges, no trial. Kidnapped internationally, mind – the Chinese are beginners, they’re only kidnapping and torturing their own citizens.

Obama – all that hot air, all that feel-good bullshit and the man is simply carrying out the same cold-blooded murders, kidnapping and torture that his predecessor did. Hell, he even promotes the torturers and approves of life imprisonment of innocent people!

Tom Parker, Amnesty International policy director for (counter) terrorism and human rights, issued the following statement regarding President Barack Obama’s executive order issued today outlining new policies for detainee cases at the U.S.-controlled detention center in Guantanamo Bay:

“With the stroke of a pen, President Obama extinguished any lingering hope that his administration would return the United States to the rule of law by referring detainee cases from Guantanamo Bay to federal courts rather than the widely discredited military commissions.
(Source: Amnesty International)

So, when the USA starts bleating about the Chinese violating human rights, this is the definition of crocodile tears.

At least three militants have been killed in a US drone strike in north-west Pakistan, say local officials.

Four missiles struck a compound in Haiderkhel village, 5km (3 miles) east of Mir Ali town in North Waziristan district on the Afghan border.

More than 100 raids were reported in the region last year.

This is the third drone attack in Pakistani tribal areas this year.
(Source: BBC News)

Another day, another US terror attack.

I haven’t been lazy with the picture, the BBC have used exactly the same picture and subtitle, presumably because they too are overwhelmed by the number of attacks.

Watch your TV news this evening to not see this being reported.

Four people have been killed in a US drone strike in north-west Pakistan, say local officials.

The plane reportedly fired missiles at a vehicle near the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan, an Afghan border haven for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

US drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region have escalated since US President Barack Obama took office.

There were more than 100 such raids in the tribal region last year.

The US does not routinely confirm that it has launched drone operations, but analysts say only American forces have deployed such aircraft in the region.
(Source: BBC News)

The US launched terror attacks by drone on the 31st Dec, the 1st Jan and now this latest mass-murder.

Looks like they plan to keep murdering innocent Pakistanis in 2011 while mewling about how evil Iran / North Korea / China are.

USA – number one for hypocrisy!

I can’t keep up with the rate the USA are murdering innocents in Pakistan. That’s why this post has rounded up three separate attacks. Apart from the time it takes, it really wears me down – the fact that these hundreds of terrorist attacks are never mentioned on the TV or radio, that the mass-media ignores them.

So most people don’t know they’re going on.

They just don’t exist, like the lives of the people they take.