ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING HATE…

My job is about to be partially automated, with the strong likelihood of a large proportion of the workforce being made literally redundant in the near future. The current crisis generated by greedy banker bastards, is in part due to the spread of new technology, in that over the past few decades it has, along with the exploitation of cheap labour abroad, produced a vast surplus of profit, none of which was re-invested in society, but which went into creating the huge credit bubble through property loans, bonds and complex credit arrangements, to make more money, from money. It strikes me that within my lifetime I have seen the steady increase of the use of new technology to reduce labour costs for the bosses: from manufacturing , ATMs, ticket machines and machine-barriers in the Underground, ticket machines for  buses,  self-service machines in supermarkets, post-office sorting, railway signalling, automated warehouses, street-sweeping, sewer cleaning, to baggage-handling…

New technology has also eliminated many jobs through the digitisation of clerical and administrative work- no more filing clerks, typists, accountants, draughtsmen or switchboard operators, with automated telephone enquiries, translation  and bill paying, mailing machines,  and a host of other jobs -no more car-park attendants, dishwashers, passport photographers or airport check-in clerks…

…all the way to mechanised mass farming and mining methods.  Pre-manufactured modular building techniques means quicker builds in the construction industry. Retail is also shrinking due to the growth of internet shopping- supermarkets employ one worker to supervise self-service machines doing the work of six shop assistants… Decades ago, young men were employed to pump fuel at petrol stations; these jobs all vanished as self-service fuelling became the norm. Now the future promises automated pharmacies and porters in hospitals, warehouses, probation officers and jobcentre services, driverless trucks and tube-trains, robotic surgeons and online education. Already the financial sector is increasingly dominated by automated, algorhythmic, ‘High Frequency’ stock market trading…

The next industrial revolution, according to many financial investors and economic analysts and pundits, is set to be a boom in automation and robotisation, (or more widely, ‘GNR’ Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics) and this is not mere speculation or idle science-fiction fantasy; it’s already happening. Technologies with even bigger impacts on workers are just around the corner. Two of the biggest dreams of the information age – robotics and artificial intelligence(AI) – appear close to a stage where mass deployment is no longer a fantasy. All these techs have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially just as computing does. For example, Sandia National Laboratories in the US has developed a new robot hand that is not only delicate enough to disarm a bomb, rather than detonating it, but is relatively inexpensive and can even mend itself and is therefore able to replace a worker whose manual dexterity was previously necessary for the manufacture of complex electronic goods, like those made by Foxconn in China. China’s manual labour force is rapidly declining as the population ages and more people go to school. That trend, (and as the cheap rural labour dries up), is pushing up wages. In order to remain competitive and profitable, Chinese industry is forced to automate.  However, that will leave many workers without the means to live- a job

Terry Gou, the head of Foxconn, who make all the consumer iShit for Apple and others, the largest contract manufacturer in the world, had this to say at a recent meeting with his senior managers:

” Foxconn has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache,”  – adding that he wants to learn from Chin Shih-chien, director of Taipei Zoo, regarding how animals should be managed…

FoxConn is now working to reduce labour costs by replacing a portion of their workforce with robots, with a goal of having one million robots in place in their factories within three years. Right now, the company only uses about 10,000 robots in its factories, but aims to have 300,000 on the factory floor next year. Foxconn has good reason to pursue a robotic path. Replacing labour with capital allows the company to overcome one of its biggest problems- the high cost of labour and the fact that in late March 2012, Apple and Foxconn, signed an agreement to improve working hours, pay, union representation and health and safety conditions for the 1.2m workers at the Chinese assembly plants that churn out iPhones, iPads and other products ( and not as some financial sources have it for the benevolent reason of ending  the exposure of workers to mind-numbingly repetitive work routines at a very high pace- which in the past has lead to a cluster of suicides, protests , and more recently, riots, which is, I grant you, commercially bad publicity).

A factory filled with robots can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, so long as the raw materials keep flowing into the factory. Robots don’t go on strike or riot, don’t take breaks, don’t make mistakes or grumble, don’t call in sick, don’t take vacations, don’t require expensive health insurance or pensions, and they don’t get paid. Robots move far faster than the people they replace. A fully automated robotic manufacturing facility might require only 100 workers, while a traditional assembly line facility might utilize 3,000 workers. For years, low wages meant automation was simply not worth the expense. A company didn’t need to buy a packaging machine when it was cheaper to hire a room full of workers to do the same thing. But steady cost rises are tilting the balance in favour of machines. 128 robot arms at a Philips Electronics factory in Drachten, The Netherlands, can do the same work as hundreds of workers in China assembling electric shavers.

A new wave of robots, facilitated by the increase in computing speeds, the power of Artificial Intelligence and further miniaturisation, with improved vision and touch technologies,  are far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, and are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution.

Not only are the new robots being designed for industry, but also for domestic and security use – the South Korean government aims to put a robot in every household by 2020, and are already planning to have a fully armed autonomous robot police force in their cities, having already introduced robotic prison guards, and installed machine gun-toting border robots.

Manufacturing itself is set to change dramatically with the new technologies like 3-D printing, Graphene fabrication and nanotechnology. Low-cost production techniques could soon become so advanced and so cheap that even the tiniest salaries in Africa will not make it worthwhile to employ human beings at all. In one example, a robotic manufacturing system initially cost $250,000 and replaced two machine operators, each earning $50,000 a year. Over the 15-year life of the system, the machines yielded $3.5 million in labour and productivity savings.

China, as workshop of the world, is now pushing ahead with a massive growth of industrial automation, and is leading the world in modernizing its factories, and there is talk of the US bringing their previously out-sourced manufacturing ‘back home’-the manufacturing, but not the actual jobs, since they too would seek to automate to compete with China, this is because automation would eliminate the expense of transportation on top of virtually wage-free operating costs. The US government meanwhile, is pushing to robotise its military in a very big way, with UAV drones being just the beginning, to remotely  project US ‘hard power’ across the world to protect its economic interests, including countering China’s growing influence, and to make war more politically acceptable to the US public.

Since America’s economic and military-industrial policies complement one another, to the point of being indistinguishable (as was seen in the aftermath of the Iraqi occupation) it seems likely that the development of a military robotics industry will create spin-off technologies for civilian commercial use. For instance the Pentagon has given $1.2 million to a Georgia Tech spinoff company to manufacture robot sewing machines that can beat Chinese costs of cheap labour.

This technology cannot be stopped, and neither can the drive to cut costs by cutting what can be cut, labour. What all this calls into question is the entire debt-based-consumerist model of “growth” and employment.  Widespread automation will drive structural unemployment, leading to lower disposable incomes and weaker consumption, and the illusion of a boom created by employing people to build robots would soon be dispelled by the inexorable logic of profit and technology.  Ultimately we are looking at a world dominated by a machine-to-machine economy, where most things are done by intelligent technology, leaving only highly skilled people with the lion’s share of the limited jobs. This would lead to further inequality.Low-paid workers would stand to lose out the most in this case, initially in developing countries and then across the western world.

The trend towards automation is sky-rocketing, particularly in China and Netherlands, where companies such as Philips and Foxconn are planning to utilize the new wave of robots in its factories.Why hire workers, when you can use skilled robots that are more efficient and productive?  It may appear to be a capitalist utopia- a world without workers, but if human labour gives way to a ‘robot army’ workforce across the world, then what will people do?  Who will have the money to buy the factories’ products?  How will the bosses make a profit? Who will production ultimately benefit anymore?

Ever since the introduction of the factory system and mass production and the advent of the modern industrial manufacturing era, the question of whether technology will liberate or enslave humanity has been asked- even before that,  the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) speculated on whether ‘every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it…then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master worker or of slaves for the lords’- and it just so happens that the word robot is derived from the Czech word, ‘robota’, or slave…

The fear of technology has been expressed since the dawn of the first industrial revolution,  with Ned Ludd’s smashing of weaving looms in the 1800s, all the way up to Henry Ford’s Taylorist’ assembly lines in the 1920s- when  films such as Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ and Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ articulated people’s ambivalence towards ‘The Machine’, where the technology of automation has been seen as containing both  positive or negative possibilities; Either enslaving workers as servants of the machines, or freeing them from degrading, exhausting and alienating work.

According to the theories of the communist philosopher Karl Marx, when factory mechanization and automation is increased, workers are in less demand and therefore get lower wages. This leads to society being polarised –with the capitalists who own the factories with the machines, and the proletarians, who own nothing, becoming poorer and poorer. Eventually the proletarians become so poor that they have nothing to lose by inciting a revolution, and so the system breaks down.  Stating what is now the obvious. Marx described the automatic factory, as production “in its most perfect form”. He believed that:-

“The hypothetical final result … of capitalism would be full automation of the production process, in which case labour-costs would be near-zero. This is argued to herald the end of capitalism’s functioning as both a profit generating economic system for capitalists, and as a social system, among other things because the capitalist system does not contain a means for distributing incomes other than that based on labour-effort…”

Since unemployment is now rampant across the world, with entire communities of working class people consigned to poverty, whether in Cairo, Detroit, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Athens or Madrid, it would seem that Marx’s predictions are indeed coming true. Almost 40% of the world’s population are now living as impoverished urban slum-dwellers, a truly global proletariat that has indeed been totally abandoned by the capitalist class.  Increasing numbers of workers are set to be made completely obsolete by emerging technologies, pushed into marginal or illegal economic roles -In Sao Paulo, Brazil, 50,000 people are killed every year by poverty fuelled violence, and in Soweto, SA, the murder rate is one of the highest in the world- life is cheap, close to worthless.  The unemployment across the world now is not only due to the ongoing slump, but has a lot to with jobs being permanently eliminated by technology over the last 30yrs. The ranks of the unemployed will continue to swell along with increasing social resistance as impoverishment becomes the fate of more and more of us. The rich will ask why they pay what little tax they do to the state, to support a fundamentally ‘purposeless’ mass of unwaged workers, who neither work nor consume…

The option to automate and robotise all manufacturing is certainly more attractive to the boss class than the old human methods of factory production, which have since been out-sourced by the west to developing nations, taking all their inherent class-conflict with them; where workers are concentrated, unified, organised by the very same production methods and whose militancy grows out of a directly shared experience of mass exploitation.  The industrial militancy emerging in China, Bangladesh, and South Korea mirror the industrial unrest in factories across Europe and the USA- Throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties, international auto-manufacturers such as GM, Ford, Fiat and Renault experienced radical revolts against the oppressive assembly line and a growing critique of capitalist production itself.

In a world with a growing population of ‘unproductive labour units’ which capitalism has nothing to offer, the rich can only seek to use yet more technology to suppress revolt, through the widespread use by the new ‘securitocracy’ of sophisticated, automated, GPS enabled, surveillance of social networks and digital communications, new supposedly ‘non-lethal’ weapons and other technologies –

– Within the next three years, in the US the police are to use unmanned surveillance drones to circle working class neighbourhoods for up to 24hrs a day. They are also being trialled in the UK.

– The Intellistreets system, talking surveillance cameras that bark orders at passers-by and can also record conversations, are now being installed in major U.S. cities (Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh). The high tech street lights with “homeland security applications” can be equipped with a variety of cameras and sensors to ensure real-time 24/7-security coverage.

-The Active Denial System (ADS) a direct-energy, microwave weapon, LRAD or ‘heat ray’ developed by the US Army, is increasingly being used by police around the world to control crowds.

Capitalism is left with the dilemma of creating a world virtually without workers or consumers- where the production processes are capable of turning out an endless stream of products (resources permitting) but risking being left with the problems of mass unemployment, over-production and under-consumption, workers are rendered redundant or have their potential power in the work process reduced to an absolute minimum.

In the face of an economic depression brought about by a credit bubble based on economies which are largely service-based, inaugurating a ‘brave new world’ of technology will be politically problematic but ultimately necessary in order to compete in the global market.  Capital is incapable of radically restructuring to allow the fruits of technology to liberate workers from the tyranny of time, the empty rhythm of work and the working week- we could have shorter hours, multiple job-sharing and increased wages, which would mean spreading the work around (especially important, since we are all inconveniently ‘living longer’ in the west) but that would negate the economic function of unemployment- to ensure a passive workforce threatened with joblessness. Of-course, it may take a war to lift production, like the First and Second World Wars, to then create a technological revolution, it will be a war which will re-balance the problem of the supply and demand of labour and products for the bosses,  but  one which will substantially reduce the ranks of our class through organised mass-murder.  In a world where production processes are dominated by complex large-scale production, an international division of labour and piecework, what happens to the ‘Holy grail’ of revolution, workers self-management? As you sit there reading this, you are doubtless surrounded by objects in your home, all of which have been manufactured by hundreds of thousands of people and machines from around the world, inter-connected, yet profoundly separated…  When the modes of production become ever-more automated how will proletarians gain control of the ‘means of production’ and initiate real communism, as they are pushed further from it than ever before?

Perhaps, in the age of real-time communication, automated translation and the potentialities of social networks, these obstacles can be overcome- What we have seen ,is that in history, almost anything is possible-the abolition of feudalism, the end of trans-Atlantic slavery, the destruction of the divine right of Kings and the breaking of the church’s hold on the state, the struggle for the women’s equality, the end of child labour, the advent of democracy , the massive reductions of the working hours  and the creation of free at the point of delivery healthcare.  All of these historical examples point the way to the possibility that ‘human nature’ is indeed subject to self -willed change- and that in future, either humanity will overcome technology rather than be rendered obsolete by it, and by Capitalism’s false utopia based on an increasingly ‘inhuman science’…

“To the extent that automation and cybernetics foreshadow the massive replacement of workers by mechanical slaves, forced labour is revealed as belonging purely to the barbaric practices needed to maintain order. Thus power manufactures the dose of fatigue necessary for the passive assimilation of its televised diktats. What carrot is worth working for, after this? The game is up; there is nothing to lose anymore, not even an illusion. The organization of work and the organization of leisure are the blades of the castrating shears whose job is to improve the race of fawning dogs. One day, will we see strikers, demanding automation and a ten-hour week, choosing, instead of picketing, to make love in the factories, the offices and the culture centres? Only the planners, the managers, the union bosses and the sociologists would be surprised and worried. Not without reason; after all, their skin is at stake. “

Vaneigem- ‘The Revolution of Everyday Life’.

Luddite revival here…

‘Communist Robot’- a Capitalist website warning of the threat of robotisation to capitalists…

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE.

ON THE LOYALTY OF ELITES-

Paul Kenny GMB union leader, has warned the Labour Party it is “unrepresentative” of working people and dominated by a “political elite”, ahead of its annual shitfest this weekend. Despite this, the GMB funds the Labour Party to the tune of £2m of their members money a year…

In France, millionaires are threatening to leave the country because of the 75% wealth tax imposed on them by the new Social Democratic government of Francois Hollande. The same sort of scum that would happily send workers to war under the banner of patriotism…

The rich, the middle classes and the wealthy bourgeois know no loyalty other than that which they have for themselves and their own class.

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE.

MADRID AGAIN, SATURDAY.

Mirroring the revolt in Argentina in 01-02, this banner reads ‘all of them must go’

Protests are due to continue on Satrday outside the Spanish Parliament as the conservative government there imposes yet more austerity measures, as called for by the European Troika- Let’s hope people decide to give up on the ‘hands-in-the-air, kneel-on-the-floor’ strategy, since it is a universally recognised gesture of SURRENDER, which is hardly sends  a message of resistance…Since Spain is the fifth largest economy in Europe and the twelth largest in the world, the resistance of the Spanish people is crucial to the rejection of Capital’s desired solution to their crisis- to turn the clock back one hundred years- to impoverish our class and destroy any social, democratic or economic rights we had won in the past…

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE!

US BANKS HAVE MADE ‘LIVING WILLS’ IN ADVANCE OF COLLAPSE.

They have made their plans, here: U.S. banks told to make plans for preventing collapse

If we don’t reverse the current trend in food prices, we’ve got until August 2013 before social unrest sweeps the planet, say complexity theorists

Have you made yours?

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE.

LIVE COVERAGE OF GREEK GENERAL STRIKE-

September 26, General Strike in Greece: live ticker

http://blog.occupiedlondon.org/2012/09/25/september-26-general-strike-in-greece-live-ticker/

WordPress won’t allow me to set up a link for this, so just copy and paste it to your address bar- Unfortunately I have to work today, so I won’t be able to watch (much)…you lucky people!

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE!

OCCUPY CONGRESS-SPAIN TONIGHT

Manifesto #25s surround the Congress (Madrid, Spain)  

‘We, ordinary people are fed up to live with the consequences of a system conditioned by and forced to adapt itself to the markets, which is in every respect insupportable, and has led us to be victims of a large scale scam which has caused this crisis. We unify in order to edit this manifesto. We invite every citizen to unify themselves with the claims we are making in this manifesto. We perceive that the current situation has exceed all tolerable limits and that we are victims of an attack without former precedents from the side of economical powers, who are using the crisis as an excuse. This is ruining our lives and those to blame are them who present themselves as an untouchable oligarchy. This with the complicity of all political forces represented in the parliament, who are manipulating the powers of the State by maintaining their privileges and excessive and illegitimate enrichment. There is no way to hide that we live in a gigantic social fraud, with governments systematically betraying us by doing exactly the opposite as promised in their electoral statements, just as there isn’t any justice in the tribunals against bankers, politicians and business men who are guilty of the current situation. We just have to look in order to see how this structure of vicious and immoral power creates policies that end our rights and destroy our lives, and in order to see how we are victims of an unfair repression when demanding a change of the situation. We believe that the problem is of such a big seize and the roots such profound that any solution will not be founded in reforms based in the actual political system. Therefore we demand:  – The dismissal of the entire government, as well as the dismissal of the Court and the Leadership of the State, because of betraying the country and the whole community of citizens. This was done in premeditation and is leading us to the disaster. – The beginning of a constitutional process in a transparent and democratic way, with the goal of composing a new Constitution. We want to do this with the participation of the whole community of citizens, in such a way that the result will be their own, because we don’t recognize any democratic character in the actual constitution and laws. On the contrary these are drawn by a selected group behind the people’s back and confirm the domination of the heirs of the Franquismo era (the period during dictator Franco ruled) and those agreeing with them. It has to be the people who determine the model of social organization in whom they desire to live – not the opposite way. – The audit and control of the public debt of Spain, with moratorium (delay) of debt’s payment until there is a clear demarcation of the parts which not have to be paid by the nation, because they have been served private interests using the country for their own goals, instead the well being of the whole Spanish community. Equally we demand the prosecution of all this persons who show and present themselves as suspicious of such moves, and we demand that they guarantee and pay with their own goods in the case they appear to be guilty. – The reform of the electoral law, with the design of a new electoral process, in order to really represent the people’s will before any election which will be necessary to supply the development of a constitutional process of democracy. – The immediate abolition of all cuts and all reforms taken against the well fare state with the excuse of the crisis, which set up limits to the population’s rights and freedoms, not only because they mean a disaster for the country, but also because they have been consisting out of taxes betraying the will of the people. – A profound tax reform, which is making to pay more by those gaining more benefits of society. We equally demand the abolition of the fiscal amnesty ordered by the government, since these injustice is a real mockery for those who pay honestly. – The abolition of all the privileges of those holding a political or public position, and the introduction of efficient mechanisms controlling the performance of those positions. – The immediate paralysis of all forced evictions (forced leaving of homes), and to put at the population’s disposal those houses belonging to the banks and companies who have been helped by public funds. – The creation of new jobs, which first premise will be the sustainability, and whose goal will be the development of humanity, as well as a form of management appropriate and adapted to the disposable jobs such that populations can work in order to live – instead of being forced to live in order to work. It is a tremendous hoax when over and over saying we have to work more, a fallacy supported by the greed of the big interests but contrary to the interests of the ordinary people. For all this above explained we make a call to the population on the 25 of September 2012 to manifest in an undefined form at the gates of the Congress in order to obtain the dismissal of the Government and to make the beginning of a Constitutional Process, by making this call of unification of all the fights, strives and wrestling for a more fair Society. We are the overwhelming majority, we are the people, we are right, we will not tolerate this and we will not be walked all over.’

Trouble has already kicked off in Madrid tonight, with vicious riotcop attacks on the largely peaceful protest, as thousands aim to surround the Spanish Parliament, calling for new elections and the for the rejection of austerity, they are facing more than 1300 police and armored vehicles parked bumper-to-bumper.

With youth unemployment above 50% and home repossessions and evictions at an all time high, the Spanish government is dithering over whether to accept an EU bail-out for its national banking system in order to keep the economy from collapsing.  Catalonian Nationalists are pushing for secession from the Spanish state since Madrid refused to loan any more money to the semi-autonomous region, and military sources have indicated they will act to prevent Catalonian independence…This all has something of a Deja Vu feeling about it, and this is 2012 not 1936…All the same, with the development of mass class/state confrontations and the attempt by a section of the middle class to use nationalism to save itself, it is looking increasingly likely that Spain is heading for the sort of crisis that precipitated the civil war and revolution in the 30s- Tomorrow, there is a General Strike in Greece, where similar scenes are expected, as more and more proletarians realise that the poverty they have been pushed into by the international banking cartels is not a temporary situation, and one they are not willing to endure silently…

See this-

‘Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal’

THE RICH ARE ALL OUR MISFORTUNE!

Update, 7.20pm:- The mass of people have broken through police lines and have’surrounded the policia, they are chanting “If there is no solution, there will be revolution”

Update, 8.27pm:- Incredible scenes in Madrid as masses of proletarians outnumber the brutal police, who are attempting to clear them from the area around the parliament- Lots of protesters still seem to be under the illusion that the police are swayed by the morality of non-violence- though many are resisting valiantly…this is a social explosion in embryo.

UKs BBC and SKY News networks fail to cover major disorder in a European capital…Badgers and flooding apparently more newsworthy…Oxbridge bastards who run the media are terrified of contagious international pleb revolt.

ANATOMY OF A RICH BASTARD

With the outburst by Tory Minister for Social Inequality Andrew Mitchell directed at a guard-cop at Downing Street,  we have to wonder what sort of psychology the millionaire boss class labours under- on the one hand, they certainly must revel in the material and sensual pleasures they derive from their wealth, all the luxury items they can afford, the high performance cars, the Rolex’s, the multiple homes and holiday residences, the solid gold bogroll-holders, the expensive clothes and furniture and then there are the mistresses, the high-end escorts, the rentboys, and the Dominatixes they can hire to satisfy their jaded desires, on the other, there must be a great deal of a rather pathetic and primitive ego-satisfaction from having so much power and wealth…

It strikes me that the need to belittle the very people who create the wealth is born of a contempt verging on the sociopathic, where any liberal paternalistic feelings are negated by a very real hatred of ‘ordinary’, poor or working class people. In part I should imagine their contempt comes from the sad fact that all too many proletarians swallow the shit of politicians, bankers and businessmen and women whole, and internalise the lies that are spewed daily, whether it be economic improvement, ‘green’ policies, promises of reform or the ideology of ‘self-improvement’ and ‘opportunity’.  Quite simply the scumbags laugh at us and take us for dupes…But then there is something else too- it’s their fear of being rumbled, like the MPs expenses scandal, the Libor rate fixing, the News of the World hacking revelations and any number of banking scandals of the last five years. The rich seriously shit their Aquascutum knickers when they think we’re onto them- and in order to keep that fear at bay, they must hate us, out of necessity, so much so that no weakness must be shown in front of ‘the natives’, lest we manifest our collective power and destroy them and their twisted system.  In short, they hate us for our potential power as a class, for the spectre of communism, for the possiblity that one fine day we’ll turn round and evict them from their mansions and strip them of their pathetic baubles and toys, that one day they too will be ‘plebs’ like the rest of us…

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE.

MUTINY ON THE FERRIES

 

French ferry workers have gone on wildcat strike over their pay and conditions being cut and degraded, and have occupied at least two or more of the eight ship fleet ( La Grande Bretagne and Cap Finestre), leaving the rest of the fleet unable to dock and halting all business…The crew of Cap Finistere have rechristened their ship the Black Pearl,( after the fictional pirate ship).  It seems some of the ships are being denied water and electricity by the bosses, but they are staying in touch through social media, spread out as they are across French , British and Spanish ports…Solidarity!

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE.

2000 FOXCONN-APPLE GULAG WORKERS RIOT

Sunday night, 2000 workers at the Taiyuan Foxconn factory rioted against the brutality of private security guards after the goons beat up a fellow worker-. The Foxconn plant, in the city of Taiyuan, in central China, employs about 79,000 workers, one of many giant factories in China producing Apple gadgets for the world market, and renowned for the punishingly tedious production-line work, low pay and regimented, totalitarian management methods. The media in the west are portraying the riot as a ‘brawl’ between workers, presumably to blame ‘unruly’ workers for the violence and so as not to damage Apple’s brand…This is good news, since only a few years ago there was a wave of suicides of workers who despaired their lives and working conditions and chose to destroy themselves rather than the architects of their exploitation and immiseration…

A wave of industrial and urban unrest is sweeping China as the tensions and contradictions of industrial capitalism are made manifest- hence the recent state-sponsored ‘spontaneous’ outburst of anti-Japanese nationalist war-fever over the disputed Diayou/ Senkaku islands in the South China Sea. A ‘four-minute hate’ extended to four days…

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE!

‘Project X Haren’- THE BIGGEST FACEBOOK RIOT EVER?

Oops!- a 16 year old in Holland posted a party invite on Facebook, but forgot to put the setting on ‘private’-Thousands of people then turned up in her small hometown of Haren and then enjoyed running circles around the outnumbered police and generally having a good time…The town’s Mayor said an initial analysis showed a core group of rioters “were very violent and well-prepared and deliberately sought confrontation” with hundreds of police who had been drafted in to the town amid fears unlicenced pleasure breaking out. The Dutch proletariat sure know how to throw a party in these dark economic times-Happy daze…!

 

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE.

‘dealing with incendiary boss’

-another search term used to find this blog…My best advice is to find the bastard’s weak spots and sabotage the cunt, make him look as bad as possible in the eyes of his superiors (that’s if you don’t have union representation, but to be honest they can be quite fucking useless), do your job flawlessly, be impeccable, untouchable, and pick your moments, when you have trusted witnesses who are prepared to back you up, to trip him up if he harasses you, verbally, or in any other way. Record everything and always think two or three steps ahead  so as not to be caught out- don’t do anything illegal if you can help it, and always cover your tracks. Be seen as totally reasonable in the eyes of his superiors, be rational, crystal clear and don’t back down. It worked for me, over-ordering stock, ‘losing’ vital paperwork down the back of the safe and making him look like a complete and utter incompetent, bullying twat…he ended up weeping at his desk after getting the sack, or, rather, being ‘asked to resign’. Job done, shithead fucked-up and binned. Sorted.

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE!

MILITANT, AUTONOMOUS WORKERS BLOC PLANNED FOR OCTOBER 20th PROTEST.

A spokeswoman for the Committee for the Militant Autonomous Workers Bloc* has announced it will be organising to form a highly visible, large, rowdy, loud and solid contingent of anarchists, left-communists, libertarians and non-aligned militant workers for the TUC’s October 20th protest in London.  Anarchist and other organisations  are expected to work together to produce relevent, irreverent, and humourous hard-hitting propaganda for the day, with a scathing critique of the TUC’s role in the capitalist economy in crisis and an explanation to other workers of any direct proletarian action against commercial property that may be occur. Periodically, self-organised teams of leafleters and free-paper distributors will range up and down the march to ensure this propaganda has maximum reach and effect before re-joining the main bloc.

A warm solidarity and friendliness towards other workers in Trades Unions and leftist groups is being encouraged by the committee, as is resistance to state and union steward provocations during the march. Proletarians marching with the  MAWB are also advised to ‘melt away’ should the bloc be threatened with police kettling, and to do likewise towards the end of the march, so as to avoid being lectured by overpaid union blimps and to exercise their right to psychogeographically roam across the city as night falls…

THE RICH ARE OUR MISFORTUNE!

*(Which does not exist-Yet. How’s this for an exercise in wishful thinking?)

EDITED TO ADD, AS IF BY MAGIC-

radical-workers-bloc-london-october-2oth-2012