More bad news

The depression has deepened and accelerated over, even, the last four weeks. Wall Street had its worse January on record (dramatic, if difficult to make sense of, but not good for the capdogs), the unrest in Greece is normalising, Eastern Europe is in open revolt, Iceland, Ireland French general strike and huge demonstration, strikes and occupation even in Britain.
One thing, the left won't have it its own way by any means. It would be tempting to think, just for a second, that economic collapse and political paralysis should automatically bring about revolution and socialism. It won't. One can be fatalist or determinist about our prospects, though. The fatalist says the bleeding man is "...going to die, let it happen, there's nothing you can do about it.", the determinist calls an ambulance and does the first aid. All life is work, so revolutions are no different. Agitate, infiltrate, organise...

The bad news is that, if reports can be believed, the US is getting close to reintroducing the draft. The new organisation is called the "Civilian Expeditionary Workforce". It's been set up to "be trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of military missions worldwide, according to department officials.
The intent of the program “is to maximize the use of the civilian workforce to allow military personnel to be fully utilized for operational requirements,” according to a Defense Department statement."
That means the government can call up the unemployed. Is such thinking very far behind in the UK? The strike against that would be a strike to support unambiguously.

British Jobs for British workers

The depression will throw up unpleasant scenes for everyone in their turn. For the left, the prospect of workers going on strike in protest against foreign workers getting employment is not good news. Especially when the bloody union rep says things like this, "Bobby Buirds, a regional officer for Unite in Scotland, said the workers at Grangemouth were striking to protect British jobs.
"The argument is not against foreign workers, it's against foreign companies discriminating against British labour," he said. "If the job of these mechanical contractors at INEOS finishes and they try and get jobs down south, the jobs are already occupied by foreign labour and their opportunities are decreasing. This is a fight for work. It is a fight for the right to work in our own country. It is not a racist argument at all."
The talk of nationalism and fighting sound all to familiar, and dangerous. This is a capitalist crisis and the left must never sanction talk that divides the working class internationally. The target must always be the bosses and not the foreign workers. This union rep should be sacked. The strikes, though, should be supported. The MSM would love to blend the two themes "Racist strikes!" but the strikes are about the same things as the strike yesterday in France. Economic woe.
The good thing about the British situation is that the strikes are outside the union passification zone. The thing about the French strike was precisely that. The goal is a combination of the two - a nationwide worker strike that cannot be controlled within established political mechanisms.

Demonstration

The demo in Angouleme was pretty big. Angouleme, you've never heard of it unless you're a history buff, is a fairly small city near Bordeaux in the South West of France. There were about five thousand of us, from 'all walks of life' all protesting against 'the way things are'. And why not? Demonstrating might not get instant results, but it is a warning to the government that says 'We still exist and we hate you.' After all, what has been the point of anything that the government has done, if you want to ask the naive but ever present question 'What's the point in demonstrating, in striking?' - all Sarkozy has done is take the people's money that they said wasn't there last Summer ("The funds are empty everyone sorry!") and given it all to the banks. After you write so many letters and emails that are ignored, what then? How long do you keep saying "What's the use in demonstrating/striking/acting?" If voting changes nothing, what's the use in that - what's the use in doing anything political at all....why don't you lie down and just accept the diminution of your living standards in quiet? That's the terminus of that line of talk. The passivity of the happy slave.
The demos today might not bring anything about in the short political term, but they are a marker. But today is turning out to be HUGE. And they do work - given impetus and stamina - look at the CPE climbdown in 2007 and....Iceland, and who knows where next.....

update - Wrong again. Guessing crowd numbers is really difficult. But I was way off. There were 30 000 people in the end, really big for a moderately sized city about the size of Bradford.

Hostage

The strikes in France have already prompted the same ideological tics. The teachers's strike starts media talk of the 'service minimal' and the transport strikes of 'the unions taking the people as hostage'. The latter is an incredibly irritating and lazy characterisation of the scene. A strike is unanalogable to a hostage taking situation. Then again, the government could start shooting and kill all the hostage takers and free the hostages. Only, then, who would drive the trains? The madness of analogy.

General strike

The unions are keen to bury the signs of discontent and anger over here in France, as they are elsewhere. But despite their efforts, there's going to be a pseudo-general strike tomorrow, for which the turn-out is expected to be high. I wonder if this MSM emphasis on the high turn-out is designed to damn the marchers whichever way the numbers turn out to be. If it is high, no big deal everyone was expecting it. If it's below a million or so - well the government feels more confident and the unions can breathe a sigh of relief. But "As no solution is readily at hand, does not this oppositional movement risk spreading, as the crisis deepens, to all of Europe?”, the lamentable Figaro frets.

We are not theists in anyway here at REL, but feel compelled to pray for the affirmative. Will try to put up so photos from tomorrow's effort.

To sheikyamama.com

"This is a terrible post again. It's well worth coming here - like looking under stones and stuff. And what things crawl from underneath. So Barrack talks in a clever way. People believe him therefore he is hypnotising them? Did Bush do the same? Probably - as probable as the Barrack claim. Did Blair, Did Putin - all of them did. In the end,though, no one was really fooled. Your emphasis on this conspircay theory is merely a sign of your depression over the fact that your racist theories have just been utterly stone dead refuted. Keep up the good work - it's a hoot"

Iceland

It is noticable that the Icelandic government capitulation has received an underwhelming amount of press emphasis. With Ireland next, serious commentators have even begun to question whether Britain will follow. And so on. If these are birth pangs of a new world order, then what are its death throes going to be like?