ConDems Show Vicious Neoliberal Principles In Attack On Welfare

Given they both agree cuts which will entail more unemployment they are then further victimising the people they make unemployed, a searingly middle and upper class attitude that is based in the ‘scrounger’ idea that is demonstrably dishonest, they know full well their ideology depends on and creates a pool of unemployed to maintain ‘flexibility’ of labour and to lower labour costs. Nevertheless they convey through corporate media allies to condition people to think those needing welfare are ripping off taxpayers and are unwilling to work, ensuring the astronomically higher corporate and tax fraud figures of their supporters and compadres are kept out of the discourse. One can reasonably define a characteristic of neoliberalism is the scapegoating, the othering, of victims of the ideology in order to misdirect opposition from the -already rich- benefactors of neoliberalism. I have not seen anyone else focus on this part of the deal which perhaps also demonstrates the effectiveness of the ideology in informing opinions on this subject. For some people to be rich under this system it requires many others to remain poor, apparently a taboo issue for the self absorbed upwardly mobile acquisitive consumer puppets of marketing whose souls are owned by Visa.

From Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition deal
The parties agree to end all existing welfare-to-work programmes and to create a single welfare-to-work programme to help all unemployed people get back into work.

We agree that jobseeker’s allowance claimants facing the most significant barriers to work should be referred to the aforementioned newly created welfare-to-work programme immediately, not after 12 months as is currently the case. We agree that jobseeker’s allowance claimants aged under 25 should be referred to the programme after a maximum of six months.

The parties agree to realign contracts with welfare-to-work service providers to reflect more closely the results they achieve in getting people back into work.

We agree that the funding mechanism used by government to finance welfare-to-work programmes should be reformed to reflect the fact that initial investment delivers later savings in lower benefit expenditure.

We agree that receipt of benefits for those able to work should be conditional on the willingness to work.

Cowering Before Capital

If this were debt cancellation and stimulus it would be interesting and the details are not out but I somehow doubt this will be much more than doing what the markets want, the level of debt created by financialisation and neoliberal policies is socially unsustainable unless police states become standard. Nowhere in the article are people mentioned, just banks & governments. The quote ‘inability of the Greek government to live within its means‘ is such a poisonous falsehood, as if financial institutions did not for years bribe key people into endless debt restructuring not because it helped them but because it made money for the banks. This is a merry game played by elites with the costs passed onto those not allowed to participate, yet the besuited oligarchs have the chutzpah to project their irresponsibility onto their victims. This is a rescue package within the rules of the game, better than what could have happened but ultimately it prolongs the scam. Neoliberalism, does not work, financialisation in place of actual productivity does not work (excuse the pun), capitalism unregulated and unconstrained does not work, Adam Smith was actually very clear on that despite what Randroids and laissez faire fundamentalists prefer to read into his works (by current standards he’d be labeled a socialist by corporate media). What we are seeing is a rolling breakdown of  systems of human activity because we are serving the economy not making the economy serve us.

Oh and some spurious wonky shit about elections, is it just me or are you sick of the (very masculine) obsession with numbers and deals and very little mention of the consequences to people of the cuts no one seems to want to think about (is this I suspect because they are all convinced of the neoliberal arguments and wouldn’t know a socialised market if they fell over one). Or am I just stupid for hoping just a tiny bit a coalition and public appetite for reform might stymie the cuts agenda of a lib/lab coalition because they can see the tories waiting to profit off the market fetishised ‘austerity’ measures (nice euphemism for class war and shock doctrine beloved by all those who fully expect not to suffer one iota because of them, until maybe that crime spike means it’s their home invaded and they get beaten the shit out of to give up all their valuables, no really I’m trying to feel sympathy for the self absorbed privileged twats).

What? You didn’t order a rant, well you got one anyway. Try the veal, I’ll be here all week… then I’ll be at http://www.tenpercent.org.uk/

Peace out motherfunkers.

This IS Shock Doctrine

“We now believe that the Spanish economy’s shift away from credit-fuelled economic growth is likely to result in a more protracted period of sluggish activity than we previously assumed,” Standard & Poor’scredit analyst Marko Mrsnik said.

The credit ratings corporations are attacking a country for ideological reasons, Spain (and note a left wing-ish government) wants to run its economy in ways that interfere with the financier’s business, thus they pretend in some scientific objective empirical fashion the nation is downgraded, it is smoke and mirrors. This is a political campaign by global corporate capital to reorder our failing democracies into helpless profit centres for their predation.

What a disaster for the people of Greece.
And what a triumph for Standards and Poors.

Because let’s be clear – Greece will carry on. Its people will survive. With support from Europe democracy will prevail in a country that has seen dictatorship far too recently.

And this then is a crisis created, in the main, by bankers – who put in place too many of the strictures inherent in the Euro; by libertarians who promote the hatred of the states and the poor regard for regulation that has denied the Greek government so much of the tax revenue it is owned and by financial institutions who (as Goldman Sachs seem to demonstrate, time and again) just love just situations to make short term profit at cost to ordinary people.

The UK will likewise be managed, the IFS cuts campaign began yesterday, again posing as some objective scientific empirical truth, it is nothing of the sort-

there’s no such thing as independence. The IFS is financed to promote conventional economic thinking on the UK economy. That’s a particular, and extremely normative view of our reality appropriately called neoliberal economics that prescribes certain outcomes irrespective of circumstance. So, for example, neoliberal economics assumes government is bad and the private sector is good, so it prescribes cuts. And neoliberal economics assumes tax is harmful to private income maximisation – which is a very narrow definition of well being – and as a result automatically rules out the use of tax increases as a mechanism for rebalancing the government’s finances.

Why Argentina Is Better Than The US & UK

They tried and sentenced former leader Reynaldo Bignone for crimes against humanity,

Reynaldo Bignone, 82, was convicted along with five other former military officers for 56 cases involving torture, illegal detentions and other crimes in one of Argentina’s largest torture centres, the Campo de Mayo military base.

He was appointed president by the military junta in the waning years of the dictatorship and it fell to him to protect the military as Argentina returned to democracy. He granted amnesty to human rights violators and ordered the destruction of documents related to torture and disappearances of political opponents before agreeing to transfer power to the democratically elected Raul Alfonsin.

Argentina’s courts and congress eventually overturned the amnesty, and President Cristina Fernandez has made a priority of prosecuting leaders of the dictatorship.

At present there is ample evidence to justify a criminal investigation of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld & associates; Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell & associates. Even without such an investigation there is a great deal of evidence of a torture program and an international conspiracy  in order to enable them to perpetrate the supreme crime of a war of aggression that all of them were party to. Subsequent behaviour by the Obama government strongly suggests he and associates are also engaged in criminal activities -torture, summary execution, destruction of evidence/covering up of previous administrations’ crimes.

Now admittedly it took Argentina 27 years to nail their former leader so I’m willing to be a little patient… a little. Also see Otto @ IKN, Uruguay also shows some impressive moves-

Uruguay has just slapped down one of its dictator-era scum today. Ex Chancellor in the dictator era Juan Carlos Blanco was this morning sentenced to 20 years behind bars. The guilty verdict was for his involvement in the disappearance of schoolteacher Elena Quinteros in 1976 and was determined to be a “very specially aggravated murder”.

There is still a way to go, about 30,000 people were ‘disappeared’ in Argentina’s dirty war there are many culprits, political and military figures who used the state apparatus to perpetrate the worst crimes imaginable.

murder, rape, torture, extortion, looting and other serious crimes went unpunished, as long as they were carried out within the framework of the political and ideological persecution

That ideological and political framework was in large part Neoliberal Shock Treatment, a political movement that now retains its h0ld on all the major parties of the US & UK making elections a mockery of actual democracy. Predictably the USA supported and cooperated with the regimes, a slight cooling off during Carter’s term was overturned by St. Ronnie who loved some Latin American blood on his hands, an aspect completely censored from the mainstream hagiographic necrophilia the Empire has for the late senile bad actor & bigot “I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

The Anglosphere & North really thinks it is the bees knees, I think the rest of the world is disabusing us of that delusion, and not a moment too soon. Lead, follow or get out of the way; well our leadership is clearly a load of shit, so take note-

Prensa Latina April 20, 2010 — Cochabamba, Bolivia — Bolivia’s President Evo Morales Ayma condemned the capitalist system in the opening session of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth today.

Morales, speaking at the April 20 conference inauguration, started his speech with a slogan, “Planet or death, we shall overcome”. He said that harmony with nature could not exist while 1 per cent of the world’s population concentrates more than 50 per cent of the world’s riches. Capitalism is the main enemy of the Earth, only looking for profits, to the detriment of nature, and capitalism is a bridge for social  inequality.

More than 15,000 representatives from five continents were present at the Esteban Ramirez Ecological Stadium in Tuquipaya when Morales read a letter to future generations to alert of the danger the planet faces.

The letter, written by Morales, said the Earth is giving signals by means of earthquakes, seaquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts and typhoons, so there is a great need to protect the planet.

In his letter, Morales called the attention to climate migrants, 50 million people going from one place to another, a number that could increase to up to 200 million in 2050, because of negative environmental impacts.

Bolivia’s president called on the peoples of the world to join together to face those who kill people and purchase weapons. If capitalism is not changed or eliminated, measures adopted to defend Mother Earth will be precarious and temporary.

Morales criticised the 15th UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, as a place where the voices of entire peoples and social organisations were not heard. “It is necessary that the UN member countries listen and respect the will of the peoples of the world”, he said.

He confirmed the creation of an alternative organisation of the peoples of the world in defence of nature.

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth will conclude on April 22 with the celebration of International Day for the Mother Earth at the Felix Capriles Stadium in Cochabamba, Bolivia. This is a Bolivian proposal approved by the UN General Assembly in 2009.

According to the Bolivarian Information Agency, taking part in the summit are the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez; Ecuador, Rafael Correa; Paraguay, Fernando Lugo; Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; and Bolivia, Evo Morales. Also present are two Nobel laureates: Argentinean Adolfo Perez Esquivel and Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchu, among other personalities.

More than 50 scientists, social movement leaders, researchers, academics and artists have agreed to speak on 14 panels, including NASA scientist Jim Hansen; Bill McKibben, environmental journalist and leader of 350.org; Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva; best-selling author Naomi Klein; Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano; Miguel D’Escoto, former president of the UN General Assembly; Lumumba Di-Aping, former lead negotiator for the G77; along with leaders from leading environmental organisations and communities at the frontline of climate change.

On The Bright Side Neither Brown, Cameron & Clegg Presided Over The Murder Of 2,000 Citizens

The comparison doesn’t mean much, as is their wont, each country has its own specific conditions, for example the UK prefers to kill defenceless civilians on foreign fields, that way you get to travel to somewhere warmer and serve the establishment’s blood lust. Although must be said New Labour have been big fans of the death squads. But spare a thought for Colombians, the front runner in their presidential election Juan Manuel Santos a ‘centrist‘ conservative and Uribe & US approved former defence minister presided over a military that killed a couple of thousand civilians, made it look like they were guerrillas and the US Plan Colombia dollars kept rolling in. Although in better news, the Green candidate Antanas Mockus (ht2 Otto), is in second place!

(IPS) – The front-runner in the polls for Colombia’s presidential elections, Juan Manuel Santos, has come under fire from his rivals for his role in the scandal over young civilians killed by the army and passed off as guerrilla casualties, which broke out while he was defence minister.

“All you have to do is look at the statistics: the period when the highest number of non-combat killings was…when Santos was minister,” the opposition Liberal Party’s presidential candidate Rafael Pardo said in early March.

Santos, who was defence minister from July 2006 to May 2009, is the candidate backed by right-wing President Álvaro Uribe, in office since 2002.

The scandal, which broke out in September 2008, led to the removal of three generals and 24 other officers and noncommissioned officers, as well as the November 2008 resignation of then army chief Gen. Mario Montoya, regarded as one of the promoters of the so-called “body count” system, which used incentives like weekend passes, cash bonuses, promotions and trips abroad to reward soldiers and officers for “results” in the counterinsurgency effort.

The magnitude of the phenomenon was such that more than 60 prosecutors have been assigned to the nearly 1,300 cases involving the murders of over 2,000 civilians – including 59 minors and 122 women – who were presented as battlefield casualties.

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PS. Though as Commenter Mike points out–

No, not 2,000:

This research coincides with the Office for National Statistics announcement today that there were 22‚400 excess winter deaths of older people last year.

From:
http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/worry-warm-winter-271108.asp
Old figures admittedly, but politicians still kill thousands each year in this country with their genocide by omission policies.

Kissinger Shits In The Woods

Otto is rightly not surprised by-

As secretary of state, Henry Kissinger canceled a U.S. warning against carrying out international political assassinations that was to have gone to Chile and two neighboring nations just days before a former ambassador was killed by Chilean agents on Washington’s Embassy Row in 1976, a newly released State Department cable shows.

A Tiny Revolution has the pictorial, Jeff Kaye has background if you need it, but Python’s got the song-

Yeah, But They Really Needed That Billion

In 2009, the worst economic year for working people since the Great Depression, the top 25 hedge fund managers walked off with an average of $1 billion each. With the money those 25 people “earned,” we could have hired 658,000 entry level teachers. (They make about $38,000 a year, including benefits.) Those educators could have brought along over 13 million young people, assuming a class size of 20.

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Vote Shock Doctrine

The Neoliberal consensus lack of democratic choice is in, all parties are rejecting social democracy and embracing an agenda of Neoliberal cuts, not really news but today they all made it clear, so that no voter can say oops, I really didn’t realise this was going to happen. So with no alternative -it is merely whose style of managerialism do you prefer- the election is a non event democratically speaking and for those facing unemployment or the assault on welfare the issue is one simple thing- Survival. The wags on twitter who have coined Labservative should know that is a misnomer, the correct term is Neoliberalism, because it is not a lack of change they face, there is great change, there is just no choice, it will be cuts, privatisation, deregulation and rising inequality. That is radical change, an apolitical ‘government is bad’ ‘there is no change’ reaction is in fact precisely what is wanted from you, as corporations will be handed greater unaccountable power to run our lives as apathy gives them the room for this slip into the authoritarian end stage. A radical lack of choice, an anti democratic movement is upon this country, a movement began by Thatcher in 1979 and continued by New Labour. Not recognising your enemy is a fatal mistake that leaves you open to the attacks to come. Rather than waste a minute watching television election coverage start your survival preparations with reading The Shock Doctrine, you’ll be surprised (or perhaps not) to find it predicts precisely what is now happening. And for your viewing pleasure I would throw in Adam Curtis’ trilogy- Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and The Trap, a dash of Manufacturing Consent would be good, as it is, as all of these are- A Primer In Intellectual Self-Defense.  The 10’s (will we call then that?) are going to be about self-defence to survive and perchance to make something better. At the moment we needed eco-socialism, social democracy and liberty our elites -of course- screwed us in their rush to serve themselves.

Courts Use Tory Law, Under New Labour Government To Fight Class War

As with BA corporations now turn to the courts to delegitimise strike action using the anti-union Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1992 brought in by the Conservatives and left on the books by New Labour, 30 years of neoliberal rule-

A high court judge today granted Network Rail a temporary injunction to block next week’s planned four-day rail strike by signal workers. Mrs Justice Sharp made the temporary order after being told that the planned walkout, called by the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, was unlawful because of the way a strike ballot was conducted. Network Rail argued that there were scores of inaccuracies and discrepancies in the vote by signal workers, who backed a walkout with a majority of 54%. It does not affect a separate dispute involving maintenance workers, who still plan to go ahead with strikes next week, although this is expected to cause only minor disruption. The strike was due start on Tuesday, the day Gordon Brown is expected to call a general election.

The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: “It’s becoming increasingly easy for employers, unhappy at the prospect of a dispute, to rely on the courts to intervene and nullify a democratic ballot for industrial action on a mere technicality. Disputes between employers and unions should be settled by negotiation. Today’s decision in the court will simply drag the dispute out and make it more difficult to solve.”

Makes Fools Of Us All

An April Fool’s really needs a veneer of possibility, of plausibility. Who is going to believe that a violent act caught on video tape and seen by multiple witnesses, many of them police officers, that led to a man’s death and that the perpetrator is known… Who is going to believe that an entire year after that killing absolutely no charges whatsoever have been brought before a court of law. I mean really what kind of immature prank minded joker is going to bother to create an April Fool’s when reality trumps any such malarkey hands down, even a day earlier a trial without a jury found another police officer not guilty of assault, the message being sent is loud and clear- Just when you though video cameras might constrain state violence we are telling you NO, perpetrators shall go free you unwashed serfs. The Establishment and its agents shall not be constrained by the laws we inflict on those beneath us (again with the photography), after all when the cuts come (and they will, one party or another or another) we shall need every weapon available to subdue the population and defend our privilege. Welcome to the Authoritarian End Stage of Neoliberalism you credulous chumps!

Actually one great prank has been perpetrated upon us, Democracy, enjoy that election ‘consensus‘ fans.

Just Remind Me How The Tories Will be Worse?

Later, a healthcare professional working for the private healthcare company which carries out these assessments, wrote in indicating that there was a target that the inspection team were expected to meet. Under the username rightthewrong, he wrote:

“I probably am going to get fired tommorrow for coming on this forum, but I don’t care. I have been doing these “assessments” for some time now. It’ s rubbish, draconian to say the least and it is designed to get people off the sick benefit. It is designed so that 75% of the people who apply for ESA, come hell or high water, ‘fail’ it.”

200,000 Dead, But Haiti Is A Business Opportunity

Haiti’s misery: good news for big business
Raul Connolly
There has been much ink spilled in the corporate press about the number of dollars and soldiers being committed to Haiti by “the international community”, but as a January 20 US ABC News headline bluntly put it: “In rebuilding Haiti, opportunity knocks and companies profit.”

More than 200,000 Haitians may already be dead as a consequence of the January earthquake, but that hasn’t stopped corporate hyenas looking for a profit — both in rebuilding Haiti’s infrastructure and the long-term exploitation of the country.

‘Reforms’

In a January 16 New York Times op-ed, James Dobbins, a former special envoy to Haiti under President Bill Clinton, spied an “opportunity to accelerate oft-delayed reforms”. Examples of reforms, Dobbins wrote, include linking money for repairing the country’s telecommunications system “to breaking up or at least reorganizing the government-controlled telephone monopoly”.

“The same goes with the Education Ministry, the electric company, the Health Ministry and the courts. Repair or replace the buildings, by all means, but also insist on fundamental reforms in their management.”

The purpose of these steps is laid bare in Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security, a report prepared for the UN by Oxford University economist Paul Collier: “From the important perspective of market access Haiti is now the world’s safest production location for garments.

Go: Cards Profit Off The Poor

This is a slick marketing operation to make money off the poorest people, disgusting. Given how much the govt. bailed out the banks and in fact own one they could have put into place regulations that mean people on benefits get free banking, of course they didn’t which tells its own story (even as neoliberalism is being proven not to work).(ht2 The Socialist Way)

People in some of the poorest parts of the country are having benefits paid onto pre-paid cards, but many are not aware of the costs involved. An internal e-mail from the Department for Work and Pensions expresses concern at the lack of customer awareness. One benefit office has received requests to pay benefits for almost 100 people directly onto these pre-paid cards, which incur charges.

The card providers say the cards promote financial inclusion. However when staff at the Clyde and Fife Benefits Delivery Centre contacted customers before processing the requests, they found that the majority of customers were not aware of the charges.

One of the companies mentioned in the e-mail sent 46 applications to the benefit office requesting benefits to be paid on to a GO: Card. The forms were accompanied by a letter from Go Money Solutions sales director, Steve Tobin. In the letter Mr Tobin says the forms were obtained “through face to face marketing” in the local area.

A GO: Card costs £10 to buy and a £7.50 annual management fee is charged after the first month. It costs a minimum of £1.25 and a maximum of £2.50 to have each benefit loaded on to the card and the same charges apply for each cash withdrawal.

Chile: Rightwing Government Cometh

Chile: Activists Fear Setbacks Under Rightwing Government By Pamela Sepúlveda (IPS) – Trade unions and non-governmental organisations in Chile are worried that rightwing billionaire Sebastián Piñera’s election as president will mean setbacks in terms of social policy and respect for labour and social rights.

Statements by the conservative president-elect, who triumphed in the Jan. 17 runoff vote, with regard to overhauling state-owned enterprises to boost efficiency and adopting policies aimed at increasing economic growth, sparked concern among the labour movement, environmentalists, indigenous peoples’ associations and other social organisations.

His campaign pledges also worried the centre-left “Concertación” or Coalition for Democracy, which lost its hold on power for the first time in 20 years.

To judge by the Harvard-educated airline magnate’s pro-business campaign platform, strikes, protests and social tension will increase over the next five years, Álvaro Ramis, president of the Chilean Association of NGOs (ACCION), told IPS.

Especially given the fact that part of the Chilean right still identifies with the 1973-1990 de facto regime of late dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006. Some 3,000 people were killed or forcibly disappeared and nearly 30,000 were tortured under the dictatorship.

“I believe there is an emotional aspect (in the NGOs’ concerns), awakened, for example, by seeing ‘Pinochetistas’ in Piñera’s rallies justifying and legitimising human rights abuses,” said Ramis.

There are fears that such influences and the president-elect’s neoliberal positions will lead to a major conservative shift in policy direction in areas like education, health, labour, the environment and women’s and indigenous rights, which in Ramis’s view would bring increased social unrest.

Activists say one of the most vulnerable areas is labour. Trade unionists are concerned that the future administration will not only turn a deaf ear towards workers’ demands, but could even roll back acquired rights.

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Globalised Torture Inc.

The intelligence factory:
How America makes its enemies disappear By Petra Bartosiewicz:-

The continued political appetite for a global war on terror has led to a commodification of “actionable intelligence,” which is a product, chiefly, of human prisoners like Aafia Siddiqui. Because this war, by definition, has no physical or temporal boundaries, the demand for such intelligence has no limit. But the world contains a relatively small number of terrorists and an even smaller number of terrorist plots. Our demand for intelligence far outstrips the supply of prisoners. Where the United States itself has been unable to meet that demand, therefore, it has embraced a solution that is the essence of globalization. We outsource the work to countries, like Pakistan, whose political circumstances allow them to produce prisoners with far greater efficiency.

What the CIA and the FBI understand as an acquisition solution, however, others see as a human-rights debacle. Just as thousands of political dissidents, suspected criminals, and enemies of the state were “disappeared” from Latin America over the course of several decades of CIA-funded dirty wars, so too have hundreds of “persons of interest” around the world begun to disappear as a consequence of the global war on terror, which in many ways has become a globalized version of those earlier, regional failures of democracy.

One of the chief conveniences of outsourcing is that certain costs are externalized. Pollution, for instance, is expensive. Manufacturers that pollute in the United States are required to bear its cost by paying a fine. If they outsource to a country where the cost of the pollution is borne directly by the people, they make more money. Such a transfer is obviously desirable from the point of view of the manufacturer, but it often generates political unrest in the host country, for reasons that are equally obvious. This phenomenon applies as well when the external cost of manufacturing intelligence is paid in freedom. The governments that did the outsourced work of U.S. intelligence agencies in previous dirty wars—in Argentina and Chile, Guatemala and Uruguay—eventually were toppled by popular protest, in large part because the people became aware that their leaders had profited from their suffering. Pakistanis today appear no less aware that this type of transaction is occurring in their country. Indeed, a recent poll found that the only nation they find more threatening than India, whose nuclear missiles point directly at them, is the United States. And they have begun to hold their leaders accountable for the association.

More on Siddiqui, follow her farcical fake trial here (ht2 Earwicga) and keep asking, where are her two children? Where was she for five years? And…for every one prisoner we know about, what of the disappeared we never hear of?