ON one side is a millionaire land-grabber propped up by fellow rich landowners, councilors, a judge, planning officers, Freemasons and a recently retired police inspector… and on the other a group of gardeners of Yorkley Court Community Farm backed by much of the wider community. The siege is on now, which side will prevail?
This disregard for the sanctity of life of our fellow community members, of which last year 7000 grandmas, grandads,mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters were murdered, is for record high profit margins to serve the one percent.
Around 200 Occupy Democracy supporters were threatened with arrest and five arrests were subsequently made in which large numbers of police targeted and, sometimes violently, picked off peaceful protesters.
“The right of Revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression if they are strong enough, either by withdrawing from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.”
The CICM British Credit Awards, where tables cost from £3,000 to £4,000, are meant to celebrate the work of bailiffs, credit agencies and debt-collectors.
However, the black-tie event was interrupted by angry activists who blocked the doors, threw paint-bombs at tuxedo-wearing partygoers, and waved placards that read ‘social housing not social cleansing’.
While the crisis within ruling circles mounts – the New York Times asks “Is Democracy Dead?” – anger is mounting where it really counts, among the majority. People’s aspirations for a democracy that provides more than an occasional vote is growing into an irresistible force.
The Aylesbury Estate is where Tony Blair made his first speech as Prime Minister in 1997, making empty promises about social housing. Since then, for the past 18 years, Southwark Council and their developer friends have come up with one misguided scheme after another. All with the same result: to dispossess the residents, demolish their homes, and dispose of the land.
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.”
Paralyzing an eviction is an act of civil disobedience: we understand it against laws that we consider unjust, actively disobeying them is not only a right but also a duty of the population. This disobedience is not gratuitous: it is
rooted in a superior legality systematically violated by the Spanish state: that of human rights.
There is more truth about American journalism in the film “Kill the Messenger,” which chronicles the mainstream media’s discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie “All the President’s Men,” which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
Our country did not take a single minute to give a response to the international agencies requesting its support to combat the brutal epidemic outbreak in Western Africa. This is what our country has always done, without excluding anyone.
Gary Webb’s reports were that powerful that they made careerist journalists tremble and lash out and dutifully show that era’s media bosses that they had done their bidding. And then there were others who tried to be fairer to Webb but still feared the big media lords so much that they colored their defenses of the essential truth of the Dark Alliance series with sprinkled disclaimers that he had made errors or wasn’t a saint. You know, the false dichotomy of “telling both sides” of a story that does not have two sides that is formula for corporate media.
