Happy International Womens Day!

Sorry its a bit late (it should still be women's day for those of you to the West of me) I was celebrating Shrove Tuesday (pancake day) with my relatives to mark the annual fast where not really religious though they are Catholic Irish so a lot of the customs rubbed off, this year I am giving up lager.

Anyway heres a quick post to celebrate the centenary of international womens day. To clarify in case the video confuses, I agree with the sentiment and it is a good thing that we have at least one day where the issue and discrimination affecting women past and present is guaranteed attention and discussion, I just don't see why it should stop at 00:00 the next morning. I mean I think its good that Daniel Craig is prepared to risk even more ridicule from fringe arseholes by coming out in support of women's rights, but is 007 in drag really the best way to get across a reminder that despite the hard work of Feminists and Socialists ( Keir Hardie and The Labour party was the first British political party to back universal suffrage rather then the Sexist and classist policies of their Liberal and Conservative counterparts including a number of women's suffrage groups tied to them) women even in the "civilised" liberal west still face a lot of abuse both personal and systematic?

Anyway hope everyone had a good womens/pancake day and that Daniel Craig was at least able to raise a bit of awareness whilst giving the internet loonies a bit of a chuckle.

Shame on You

Just a quick post to break in the new month. Captain SKA the group behind the excellent Liar Liar have released another musical rebuttal to the ConDems dishonest preaching of fiscal responsibility. For me the song isn't as good musically as Liar Liar but then my musical tastes are extremely random as clicking on the Music tag below will show. As such I'm not the best judge of musical quality, however I will say this I can listen to it from start to finish it isn't bad and it clearly gets its points across, and that is after all the most important thing a political oriented musician(s) can hope to achieve, and on that front Shame on you is a big success, I hope it and many other songs like it do well.

West up to its old tricks in Haiti

Well its been over a year since that terrible Earthquake wrecked the most vulnerable nation in the Caribbean and sadly it appears that despite shaking the foundations of the nations houses the countries just as rotten political house seems to have been untouched and is set to receive a fresh coat of paint in the form of a sham election. Now the North American members of the organisation of American States (plus France for some reason) interfering in the internal politics of Haiti is not surprising to those who've studied its almost non stop history of abuse at the hands of the dominant colonial/imperial powers at the given time. What makes this latest development so galling is that its happening at a time when much more attention is being directed at the nation, before shady business deals and exploitation could be carried out with impunity as few were paying attention and the Caribbean nations were to poor to get there plight across to the world community effectively.

Ultimately though it does not matter who wins the elections in Haiti, ever since Aristide was kicked out and his party Fanmi Lavalas was banned the electoral process in Haiti has become a sham. Fanmi Lavalas is the largest party in Haiti and its deposed President(who might be coming back) the only one with genuine popular support of a kind different from the lesser evil, or better the devil you know school of thought.
Banning the largest political party from standing for election is in effect an affront to the democratic ideal which lets remind ourselves is the power of the people to decide there fates, and an blatant admittance of systematic fraud.

Walker gets caught short

This is amazing, Governor Walker the man at the forefront of the attacks on the working class in America was caught out actually admitting that his bill to take away certain Unions collective bargaining was not ideological in nature, but that it is very much the first in a series of attacks on organised labour lined up by a number of Republicans across the states. He was having a phone conversation with what he thought was the older Koch brother a pair of billionaire's (inherited naturally) whom have spent decades funding right wing pro business groups in America including the Tea Party and one Governor Scott Walkers election campaign. Maybe now people will finally realise that capital is not a friend of freedom or progress, it is a friend of well just capital.

People power from the plains of Wisconsin to the shores of Tripoli

This post is an addendum to the two recent stories about the crumbling of the regime in Libya and the ongoing assault on workers rights in America.





Opposition to Governor Walkers bill to take away workers rights to collectively bargain continues to grow with the state's Unions showing good workers solidarity. Particularly the Fire Brigade which was exempt from the ban in a shameless attempt to divide and conquer the working men and women of the dairy state and have gone on to be a driving force in the protests.

Meanwhile in Libya theres good news and bad news, the good news is the revolt has taken the East and has spread to the West, the bad news is that the Colonel is still in charge and has cracked down even harder. He has also made a quite violent speech putting the rumours that he's fled to Venezuela (as if, keep wishing US state department). Things are still very much hanging in the balance but it does look like his regime has disintegrated beyond the point of repair, hell even the interior minister has defected and he's usually in charge of the detention centre's spies and secret police.Unfortunately if he realises that he might decide to go out in even more bloodshed if only to secure his name in the history of his nation.

Reports on the situation in Libya are understandably sporadic but a group of Libyan dissidents have banded together to create a youtube channel (Save Libya) dedicated to publishing as much video footage of the chaotic scene as possible, including the most complete broadcasts from state TV and Gaddafi's increasingly unhinged demagoguery, particularly strange is this short speech below where he says he wished to sleep with the young protesters but decided not to because it was raining.



Good luck to the people of Wisconsin and Libya and to all people who are fighting against aggression and tyranny no matter is colour or cloak.

Workers rights to be revoked

Well it looks like we've finally come full circle. Newly elected Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker has announced a new budget for the Dairy state thats guaranteed to solve his states deficit* take state workers benefits away... And heres the kicker since the state employee's obviously don't see why they should pay for a economic hangover caused by private banks and financiers he's also going to take away there rights of collective bargaining or to campaign for wage increases above the consumer price index.

Once again we have a wealthy right wing gov demanding sacrifice from those below them who sacrifice every working day of there lives, heaven forbid the extremely wealthy should contribute a fraction, after all if they'd paid up it they would only be mega rich as opposed to Mega rich. Given that the bill effectively takes away workers rights to collectively organise I doubt this will be the last part of the enforced Austerity measures to be inflected upon the "middle"* class of Wisconsin. After all why bother de-fang a tiger if your not going to kick it a bit?

And don't think for a second it'll end there, Obama's unpopularity and weak handling of the corporations particularly Goldman Sachs lead to a surge in support for the Republicans in the midterm elections for the Federal legislature, they now control the House of Representatives and sliced the Democrats majority in the Senate. They also took a few state legislatures and governorships just like Wisconsin. The problem with this clear voicing of the people's discontent? most of the republicans elected are even chummier with private capital then the dems they kicked out.If Walker's attacks on organised labour are successful then it will spread to the "Red states" and once established across the nation it will act as a beacon to the right wing all over the globe. The Tories constant pushing for piecemeal privatisation of healthcare is justified ideologically on the American example, they obviously can't go on telly and say "I hate paying tax to keep the poor alive" or "I believe private health care is the way forward because I've got a cushy position on an insurance directors-board when I leave parliament" its thats what they have in America and America is great, never mind that the state of US health care and the many unscrupulous business practices of the insurers has been a running joke since the 1990's, to quote Homer "I'll be fine Marge, American Health care is the best in the world.... well except for Canada, Japan, England and most of Europe, but you can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Mexico".

Another disturbing trend displayed on the comments of the video above is that a lot of right wing "libertarians" mostly called "Tea party" or Teabaggers now a days who rail against the government for its tyrannical tendencies have absolutely no problem when that same state Tyrant takes rights away from the people to help big business move on in. Now the right wing being guilty of hypocrisy is of course nothing new and right wing cheer squads for industrialist profit margins pretending to care about liberties and people and to be patriotic is a very old tradition. But it is worrying to see the numbers of working class people this new movement has managed to ensnare.

* Actually these initial cuts at best will remove $300 million from the budget and thats assuming that the social policies attached to it don't increase unemployment and decrease tax revenue.
* In America the working class for some reason is called the middle class, with poor or the rare working label applied to the completely destitute.

The forests are safe for rambler and squirrel alike

You know I've just realised a new year is upon us and I haven't really said much about 38 degrees. Allow me to remedy that right now. Even better I have good 38 degrees related news.

Checking my in box today I found out that the campaign to prevent to private selling off of are lovely woodlands has worked. For the last week the plans had been temporarily withdrawn following pressure, The ConDems where no doubt hoping the campaign would start to fizzle or one of there highly "skilled" PR drones could come up with a snappy sales pitch to con-fuddle the masses.

Well done to everyone who took part in the campaign in anyway however small. Of course this doesn't mean this attempt to corrupt nature and turn it into a commodity is gone for good an early campaign of theres to stop increased internet censorship by Mandelson kept cropping up (near the bottom) but it does mean that the population are now awake and aware of the dirty tricks that Nick and Dave are capable of.

The campaign of course was bigger then 38degrees 500,000+ petition, it involved community groups springing up across the country and had broad support from the rural community (except for the Countryside Alliance whose members and leaders stood to profit from the deal). But that to me is the most important factor, that internet groups can go beyond emails and petitions and actually help facilitate greater coordination of people in the real world this will really help it and other pressure groups like it make an impact in the closed world of UK politics.