I still hate Thatcher

dee9316: vegan-fortheanimals: theveganmockingbird: This...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:00:34 +0100

vegan-fortheanimals:

theveganmockingbird:

This so-called weaning nose ring is fitted into the nose of the calf and tightened against the septum in order to stop the calf from trying to drink milk and to stop the reflex of nursing. This is also used in organic farming.

disgusting people!

oh my god…oh my fucking god

Terrible

How Unions Are Getting Their Groove Back | American Prospect

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:40:35 +0100

How Unions Are Getting Their Groove Back | American Prospect:

socialismartnature:

Yesterday—April 24th—was a red-letter day in the annals of worker mobilization in post-collective-bargaining America. In Chicago, hundreds of fast-food and retail employees who work in the Loop and along the Magnificent Mile called a one-day strike and demonstrated for a raise to $15-an-hour and the right to form a union. At more than 150 Wal-Mart stores across the nation, workers and community activists called on the chain to regularize employees’ work schedules. And under pressure from an AFL-CIO-backed campaign of working-class voters who primarily aren’t union members, the county supervisors of New Mexico’s Bernalillo County voted to raise the local minimum wage.

The Chicago demonstration, which began in the dawn’s early light of 5:30 a.m., included workers at McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Subway, as well as Macy’s, Sears, and Victoria’s Secret, all of whom make the state minimum wage ($8.25) or just slightly more. Roughly one-third of the jobs in Chicago are low-wage, and more than half of the city’s low-wage workers are older than 30. The demonstration was organized by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, which formed to demand a living wage for the city’s retail and fast-food workers.

The “Workers Organizing Committee” is a name with a pedigree. Shortly after the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935 and a number of unions broke away from the AFL to organize the factory workers whom the AFL had refused to organize, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) formed to build union support among employees of U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, and the other major companies in the industry. Following the wave of sit-down strikes in auto factories that led to the recognition of the United Auto Workers, the major steel companies signed a contract with the SWOC. The committee later changed its name to the more familiar United Steelworkers.

Just as the steel workers piggy-backed on the auto workers, so Chicago’s low-wage workers are following a course laid out by their counterparts in New York, where hundreds of fast-food workers also staged a one-day strike earlier this month.

Though the Service Employees International Union aided in the New York and Chicago efforts, this is anything but a conventional union-organizing campaign. With collective bargaining in the private sector all but a dead letter—just 6.6 percent of private-sector employees are union members, and the legal obstacles to organizing new members grow steadily steeper—SEIU is one of several major unions shifting their focus to actions that publicize the economic and social costs of ever-growing low-wage employment.

With the backing of the United Food and Commercial Workers, thousands of Wal-Mart employees have formed an association—not a union seeking a contract—that works alongside community activists to pressure the company to make changes such as regularizing workers’ hours. The AFL-CIO is expanding its Working America program, which has successfully mobilized non-union working-class voters to back progressive candidates at election time, to all 50 states. The union is expanding the program’s reach beyond the ballot box too, experimenting with projects that would activate Working America members in workplace-related causes and wage-related legislation. Working America has 112,000 members in New Mexico, recruited, as is Working America’s custom, through a door-to-door canvass. It has lobbied successfully for minimum-wage hikes in both Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.

None of these undertakings, at least for now, would result in collective bargaining agreements—the deficient state of workers’ rights under current law make that a bridge too far. But, there are ways these efforts could yield improvements in pay and working conditions nonetheless.

socialismartnature: Boston Marathon hero says:

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:00:56 +0100

socialismartnature:

Boston Marathon hero says:

Racist thug held a knife to Muslim woman's throat and demanded she remove her hijab, walks free from court

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:07:29 +0100

Racist thug held a knife to Muslim woman's throat and demanded she remove her hijab, walks free from court:

socialismartnature:

Apparently, assaulting and terrorizing Muslim women is not a crime in England. Judge orders the racist assailant to serve exactly ZERO jail time.

===

A racist who held a knife to a Muslim woman’s throat and demanded she removed her hijab has walked free from court.

David Norris, 39, approached Farduja Jama as she walked with her eight-year-old son and said: ”Take the hijab off. This is England, you are not allowed. Take the hijab off before I stab you.”

The thug then pointed the six-inch kitchen knife at her throat before running away when a man in a car rumbled him and took a picture.

Later that day Norris approached a second woman, Iqbal Osman, who was watching her four-year-old play in a park.

He asked her why she was wearing too many clothes and accused Muslims of “taking over” his country, before waving the knife around and leaving.

Norris admitted two counts of religiously aggravated harassment and two counts of possession of a bladed article at Bristol Crown Court.

Recorder Nicholas Rowland sentenced him to a two-year community order with two years supervision and a six month alcohol treatment requirement.

vegansmustbestopped: soycrates: Endangered Twinkies. The...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:03:36 +0100

vegansmustbestopped:

soycrates:

Endangered Twinkies.

The sign of a truly healthy, evolved, and intelligent society that can see past its own nose.

trilliansthoughts: This miniature ecosystem has been thriving...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 03:42:40 +0100

trilliansthoughts:

This miniature ecosystem has been thriving in an almost completely isolated state for more than forty years. It has been watered just once in that time.

The original single spiderwort plant has grown and multiplied, putting out seedlings. As it has access to light, it continues to photosynthesize. The water builds up on the inside of the bottle and then rains back down on the plants in a miniature version of the water cycle.

As leaves die, they fall off and rot at the bottom producing the carbon dioxide and nutrients required for more plants to grow.

sleepinnude:

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:05:26 +0100

sleepinnude:

Encourage your kids to aspire to beat the living shit out of a...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:39:30 +0100

Encourage your kids to aspire to beat the living shit out of a mine worker. Or perhaps send a pedestrian flying then face no consequences for his death that followed.

sfrishberg: Abolitionist Approach adoption poster. Beautiful...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:25:41 +0100

sfrishberg:

Abolitionist Approach adoption poster. Beautiful <3

Liberal criticisms of the Bolsheviks: stupid and wrong

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:07:36 +0100

If you’re going to masturbate over Stalin’s bodycount, here’s some facts that need to be rubbed in your face until they get into your thick skull.

When the Bolsheviks did what liberalism couldn’t and overthrew the vestiges of feudalism, scrapped homophobic & anti-Semitic laws, emancipated women and ended World War I, the UK’s Liberal-led government under Lloyd George decided that not enough working class men had died in trenches - and too few people had died of Influenza - and waged an unprovoked war of regime change.

Despite having over a dozen industrialised countries joining in the attempt to install a proto-fascist government, they were beaten back by a starving economy with two industrialised cities.

Sadly, the Bolshevik victory was a Pyrrhic one, and with the international siege that followed the conditions were ripe for Stalin’s bureaucracy to take over.

It’s my perspective, based on the fraction of the world’s books I’ve read, that every one of Stalin’s crimes happened because of Liberals. You interfered, you indirectly helped him become the new Czar, and now you hold him as a stick with which to beat the very people whose ideological comrades’ revolution you drowned in blood?

I don’t expect you to acknowledge the logic of this argument, simply put though it is. You’re a liberal, few of you are susceptible to reason. But at least acknowledge that ‘RUSSIA LAWL’ is a pathetic non-argument that won’t convince anyone that your ‘capitulate to capitalism but imagine we can sustainably persuade it to be less unethical’ approach is less than horseshit. It will get nodding heads from your fellow liberals, and whichever Tories and Tories who pretend to be Social Democrats you’re chumming up with in a groupthinking circle-jerk, and that’s all.

Photo

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:25:26 +0100

The animal is not 'already dead', it is dead because you demanded it.

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:19:01 +0100

indiedrone:

Economics 101

nomiers: heyfunniest: This makes me so happy. What the...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:47:42 +0100

nomiers:

heyfunniest:

This makes me so happy.

What the fudge.

veganpizzafuckyeah: Daiya cheese pizza at New York Pizza...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:44:38 +0100

veganpizzafuckyeah:

Daiya cheese pizza at New York Pizza Suprema!

CC image via flickr user nicksherman.

NO MORE EXCUSES.

veganmovement2012: I can choose my fights

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:42:19 +0100

veganmovement2012:

I can choose my fights

veganism-begins-at-home: In Brunswick, Melbourne

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:39:51 +0100

veganism-begins-at-home:

In Brunswick, Melbourne

animalcruelty-notok: Killing is not okay. Killing for fun is...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:34:33 +0100

animalcruelty-notok:

Killing is not okay. Killing for fun is not okay. Teaching your kids to kill is not okay.

Yet another majestic, sentient being shot dead for fun.

And right-wingers tell LGBT people they’re not fit to be parents.

thatvegancosplayer: Flesh is for zombies. Stop eating...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:35:04 +0000

thatvegancosplayer:

Flesh is for zombies.

Stop eating animals.

deepfriedsex: So creepy

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:37:27 +0000

deepfriedsex:

So creepy

Waaaay tl;dr about history and politics

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 02:40:00 +0000

Fucking hell.

Republican Party types, and especially Tea Party frothers: I realise that you’re really stupid, really ignorant, and really irrational. You don’t have to highlight your fuckwittery with such gusto.

All it takes to start these imbeciles screaming absolute nonsense is for the topic of Marxism to come up.

After generations of inbreeding and being dropped as children and relying on warmongering governments to tell them what to think, these people have been left incapable of distinguishing between:

“Hang on, there doesn’t seem to be a way to make a global market-based economy work without having mass unemployment, crippling inflation or wars. It’s that whole ‘technology gets better, need for labour reduces, owners of technology have got a full warehouse and non-owners have no money to buy stuff’ problem. It would appear that the only way to iron out this issue is to have the factories owned by the communities that work in them and live around them, and divvy out the work that needs to be done in a reasonably equal manner.”

and:

“Everyone should work to serve me as an unelected god-king and anyone who objects should be put in a death camp.”

Their feeble right-wing brains are so atrophied they genuinely cannot tell the difference between the two paragraphs above. It seems strange to try to imagine such a messed-up cognition, but that’s how it is. Some people can’t balance. Some people can’t play music. Some people can’t attain a reading comprehension above that of a toddler. The latter become Republicans.

They are stupid.

They are wrong.

What’s prompted this post? Well, in answer to the (fair) question of can I name a Marxist government that’s got its shit together and administering a free, happy society, I responded by asking if someone can name a Marxist government that’s been allowed to try to do that without being willfully destabilised.

And someone - who I’ve not doubt genuinely believe he’s sincerely convinced he’s said something profound, with a proud look on his face like a tot that’s finally figured out how to do a poo on the potty without falling off - replied:

“USSR”

There is someone so utterly cretinous that he believes that between 1917 and 1991, the Western world subjected Russia - and every country closely aligned to her - to zero outside interference.

Now.

I know that this kind of willful ignorance is so horrendously entrenched and devoid of all reason that you can never reason someone out of it. It’s difficult to accept, but there are unteachable people incapable of learning.

But here we go. I’m going to explain to you, the internet, why of everybody amongst you, this guy is the stupidest one of the lot.

It’s 1917. The Kerensky government is oppressing Jews and homosexuals. It’s denying women the right to vote. It’s prolonging World War I, contrary to the will of the people. In short, they’re arseholes.

Despite Kerensky bending over backwards to accommodate him, the psychotic proto-fascist general, Kornilov, decides that this government isn’t sufficiently cuntish. He decides a coup is in order. The government is so incompetent that it loses sovereignty; the only thing it can do to stop its mad dog from taking over is to hand guns over to the Petrograd Soviet - a (big!) democratic council of workers.

The coup is denied. And instead of handing the guns back to the capitalist state so it can carry on oppressing women, gays and Jews, the Bolshevik-led Societ keep hold of them and ultimately leads the revolutionary overthrow of the last vestiges of feudalism with far, far, FAR less blood spilled than when the bourgeoisie rallied under the flags of Cromwell, Bonaparte, or even Washington.

No five-figure bodycount here, capitalism. That’s your MO.

BUT LINDSAY WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

What did happen next?

The pro-capitalist governments of over a dozen industrialised countries, weary from years of war and a horrific influenza pandemic, declare war. They launch unprovoked invasions; wars of aggression with an objective of installing a proto-fascist government - regime change. They intend to fight to the last drop of other people’s blood to make sure that Jews, women and gays thousands of miles away get back to being second-class citizens.

Regardless of whether you’re an opponent of the Bolsheviks or you think women, gays and Jews should be treated equally by the state (there are no other positions in this instance) (actually, that’s a bad ultimatum, because let’s face it you’ve got to be a really misogynistic, homophobic shit to be a Republican these days - and we’ve all seen the racist slogans that cropped up at the primaries), this is the point where the literate, lucid, sane ones amongst you note that the notion that Russia was never subjected to an ounce of outside interference is an egregious lie that can only be said by an extremely dishonest person or one who has made great effort to avoid learning about history..

Of course, a planned economy is loads better than a market-based system. Without a doubt. Two dozen industrialised countries versus a country left starving by capitalism’s incompetence, with two industrialised cities. Who wins? Not the invaders, that’s for fuckin’ sure. They can’t even get their ships loaded properly (thanks, in no small part, to dock workers striking when told to load ships with weapons and equipment to be used to kill foreign workers because the British government doesn’t agree with their choices in self-determination). The Soviet planned economy, bereft of a capitalist class stuffing their pockets with war profits, kicks their asses. It’s like Mike Tyson, Prince Nassem and The Rock threw rocks at a ten year old, and the kid whooped the lot of ‘em because they were too busy constantly writing cheques for Don King to be able to throw a single effective punch.

So, after capitalism’s miserable failure in dogpiling the Soviet government to death so it would have a nice predictable tyrant that’ll every now and then join in for a lovely big war to burn off some overproduced hardware and unemployed workers, everyone leaves Russia alone and lets the Bolshevik-led government get on with trying to stop a situation of bugger all food and an illiterate population from descending into the sort of authoritarian bureaucracy that tends to develop when food queues have to be heavily enforced and most of the population can’t read?

Nope.

Despite scoring a Pyhhric victory against the White Army and its invading allies, the Bolsheviks didn’t have much left to work with. Capitalism joyfully did everything it could to starve the revolution into defaulting into the authoritarian bureaucracy that naturally emerges whenever food riots can only be prevented by an administrator/enforcer caste. A caste which quickly gets comfortable with prolonging conditions that enable it to sustain itself and avoid the kind of democratic, egalitarian socio-economic order that anyone who’s spent five minutes bothering to read Marx knows that Marx advocated.

If you’re going to smugly state that if Marxism was so good the Bolsheviks could have built an autarkic economy and waved a magic wand to stop a Stalin from emerging, fuck off. You’re a stupid fucking cunt and you don’t understand basic economics. Anarcho-capitalists in that situation would have either become a Stalin or else been out-maneuvered by one.

If you’re going to masturbate over bodycounts from the Black Book Of Communism, fuck off. The point of this post - which will never, ever sink through your thick skull into your tiny brain - is that the regime that emerged around Stalin (and every regime, such as those under Pol Pot, Mao et al that consciously and deliberately cloned Stalin’s system) was created by outside interference and capitalism’s preference to see millions die rather than let them self-determine and put ideas into the heads of other workers being conscripted to die in trenches.

“Bububut the USSR was Marxist” - Shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid fucking cunt. Go back and re-read everything I’ve said until it sinks into your defective fucking brain.

And even if we accept the stupid and wrong assertion that every politician in Russia from 1917-1991 was a Marxist, the notion that the USA’s policy was ‘leave them to it’ is breathtaking ignorant. What about when Hitler fucking invaded? Did you forget that little bit of history?

Hang on, that’s a bad example; Republicans are so fucking stupid, they think Hitler, a man who banned trade unions and had socialists and communists massacred whilst his batshit race war was bankrolled by bug business, was a socialist. (I somewhat doubt they really think this. Nobody could be THAT fucking dumb, no matter how closely related their every generation of parents since the 1600s might have been. I suspect it’s a deliberate smokecreen to distract everyone from the fact that it’s only socialists and communists who organised to fight him, whilst Republicans - like Prescott Bush - did business with him. And that it was only socialists, communists and anarchists who went to Spain as volunteers - not conscripts or even enlists, but actual VOLUNTEERS - to fight Franco.)

Okay, then. What about when the CIA was giving Bin Laden a million dollars a day to suicide-bomb Afghan women back into the kitchen instead of just letting Moscow pay for them to go to college?

An appropriate point to end on, given that this latest slew of squawking imbeciles to spout nonsense at me arose from comments I made with regard to lunatic, violent fantasist and former Republican Executive Todd Kincannon’s public tweets about wishing that a veteran who came out of the war an anti-war socialist had been shot dead by Iraqi insurgents.

All Republicans are filth.

…wait.

Hold on.

Just bringing up the guy who said ‘USSR’. He’s not a Republican.

He’s Charles Crawford, former Ambassador for Great Britain with three decades’ experience.

What the FUCKING FUCK?

How the FUCK do you get to be an ambassador to former Soviet countries for three fucking decades and never once pick up a book and go ‘oh gosh, we invaded? And the Yanks funded this and that? Heavens. Better be aware of that.’

How the FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING FUCK do you work in international relations for most of your adult life and never once hear of the battle of Stalingrad?

Un be-fucking-lievable.

What is believable is that this dumbass gets paid to write for the Spectator. Now, that is DEFINITELY making sense.