A Communiqué From 606
Been a bit too busy to write new stuff, but I've read lots of good stuff on the net of late:

A rant about the war and wars:

In fact, hearing W's smoke and mirrors act makes me strangely long for a day when a U.S. President would proclaim with no shame: 'Yes, that's right, we invaded Canada. We killed millions. We did it because we want their timber and their beaver pelts and we want to make slaves of all their nubile Canuck women.' I don't know about you, but I'd almost be relieved to hear Dick Cheney erupt into the full-on evil laugh you know he's been holding back for the last four years and tell us straight up that he's been planning the Iraq invasion since he was in diapers, he doesn't give a shit about the Iraqi people, and even while the blood of young dead Americans in the streets of Baghdad is still warm his goon friends are busy milking the country dry. At least then it would all be straightforward and clear. At least then we would know who the bad guys are and wouldn't have to endure this schlock about 'liberation'. At least then we would know once and for all that our leader is a deranged warmongering psychopath who needs to be ousted. And then, of course, we could set about planning the revolution accordingly.

Derrick Jensen (author of 'The Culture of Make Believe' and 'A Language Older than Words') gives a speech which is funny, passionate and brutal. His analysis is like a hot knife though the butter of a bloated and decaying culture. I cannot recommend this talk highly enough.

Have a good one.

Peace, out.

The Symmetry of Terror
Ever noticed the weird symmetry in the ideas and phrases used by the two so called sides in the so called clash of civilisation? Many in the neo-con movement see that God is on their side. Witness US Attorney General John Ashcroft on the rights of US, which he says are: "…not the grant of any government or document, but...our endowment from God". So God is backing the US in the war on terror. But, here Osama Bin Laden talking about Spetember 11th: "God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings." So is god playing both sides off against on another? Obviously they can’t both be right – unless god is moving in a mysterious way?

There is also other odd symmetries in their world view. Bush famously referred to his opponents as an; "..an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." Bin Laden used a similar phrase to define the US and its allies, calling them an; "..international alliance of evil.."

I guess the best view to take is that on the sticker put of by the Anarchist Federation; No God, No Masters, No War.

The Debt Swamp
I've just read a staggering piece of news, and like most really important news, it was buried in the financial pages of the paper – The Sunday Independent. The article is about the wealth of ordinary people (us!) and has some scary conclusions. I'll quote bits of the article and add comments....

"The average Briton is getting wealthier. But...he or she is short of cash and increasingly reliant on the value of his or her home to shore up creaking finances....These are the conclusions of an extensive study into the British consumer by computer giant IBM, published tomorrow. It paints a picture of a large group of people who are increasingly vulnerable to a property price crash. The IBM study, which was based on data from income tax returns collated by the Inland Revenue, concludes that the average Briton has a net wealth of £82,400."

My first question is why is it that a private corporation gets access to our tax returns, but I guess that another issue. So far it does not sound to bad as the average net wealth (that remaining after all deductions) looks pretty healthy. But reading on it starts to get scary....

"However, IBM discovered that the entire increase is down to higher house prices and that the average amount of 'liquid wealth', cash or investments, has actually fallen and only really represents a quarter of people's net worth."

So we're not actually getting wealthy as all of the £82,400 comes from the house price bubble, which even if it does not burst, is virtual wealth you can't unlock, unless you intend to step off the property ladder or use it to get more debt.

"The rise in house prices is showing no sign of abating. Figures released by the Halifax, the UK's largest mortgage lender, show that prices increased by 2.2 per cent during March, making an annual increase of 18.5 per cent and putting the average cost of a home in Britain at £151,467, the first time it has ever exceeded the £150,000 barrier."

In 2002 the average house price in Bristol was £105,000. A Halifax survey of 2003 put it at £175,996. Are these figures an indicator of a bubble ripe for collapse? The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics defines a financial bubble as; "...a sharp rise in the price of an asset or a range of assets in a continuous process, with the initial rise generating expectations of further rises..." This seems to fit my theory; prices are rising fast because there is an expectation/fear of further rises: i.e. Get on the ladder now, before you are left behind. This fear is justified according to this IBM research:

"...there is a large group of people who are being excluded from all this. It seems that Britons with a net worth of less than £50,000, which covers more than half of the population, many of whom do not own their own homes, are seeing their wealth grow much more slowly than the propertied classes. He sees these people getting increasingly into debt, and because this debt is largely unsecured, they have to pay higher rates."

So the poor are being taxed by capitalism because, well, they are poor. No wonder so many of us are so scared not to get a foot on the property ladder, it is natural for humans to look for stability. But what the report says is that even when on the ladder, you're not safe:

"The conclusions of the report show an asset-rich, cash-poor society that is increasingly having to work longer because people do not have the available income for retirement despite their apparent wealth."

Wow. This was not the way it was supposed to be. The rising tide of capital was supposes to make us float, not drown us. The headline for this article should have been: It's official – Capitalism Isn't Working. But it wasn't. This is serious stuff – our society is drowning in a sea of debt while global warming, accelerated by our debt-creating consumer lifestyles is literally drowning the world. Yet our politicians squabble over trivia and the population is pushed by a media who obsess over celebrity. This is not good.

Things could be done to help – at least in the short term – by the council. An example might be to build lots of affordable housing, so the pressure is taken out the price bubble – and yet here in Bristol the powers-that-be are still pushing for the building of more and more luxury flats that will only further push-up the prices and further exacerbate the problem.

The housing time bomb is still ticking – and we're letting them add more semtex to the pile.

The Empire Demands West Country Blood

"I'm quite excited about going and helping the Iraqi people get their country back.." Says a private to ThisIsExeter.co.uk. The private is one of 70 from the west country's Territorial Army units going to Iraq: "We are going there to stabilise the country such that the Iraqi people can take over. From what we have heard the people of Basra are quite welcoming."

The day before this interview, four of the 14 British soldiers injured in Basra during riots were flown to a hospital in Selly Oak, in the Midlands. This riot is an omen of what is to come for these west country lads. Basra is smoldering. The riot began as a peaceful demonstration about jobs, but dramatically changed tone when the news that Israel had assassinated Sheikh Yassin filtered through the city. The angry demonstrators turned on the nearest face of the US Empire to vent their fury - a group of British soldiers.

But this is not just about blood. It's also about money. In July the £3.8 billion Iraq war fund is going to run out, and yet we are still sending more bodies into the grinder. How friendly is Basra if we are still sending troops? Sending the 70 West Country privates and the rest of the troops to Iraq is costing us £125 million per month. To put this in perspective, in the time it will take me to research and write this article, the war will have cost a further £100,000. Coincidently, this is the same amount of money Bristol council is intending to reduce its daycare budget to (down from £800,000).

The anger in the Muslim world is rising. From Iran to Turkey, many Muslims are on the streets and are angry. In Baghdad follows of the Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr are shouting, "No, no to Israel. No, no to occupation." They see no difference between the British troops in Iraq and the occupation of Palestine. They see an empire. An empire they, and we, are paying for in blood, gold and oil.

The Fairford Five: It's the State that is on Trail
What is the point? It's not like you can change anything. These are the most common words you hear when talking about the state of the world and its many problems. People who are sympathetic to making the world better: who are interested in righting wrongs, protecting the environment and striving for equality – but faced with the seemingly impassable wall between us and the promised land, are resigned to apathy.

Well, in Bristol there is a lesson in 'making a difference' unfolding. A lesson that will soon become a mass-media storm. The five Bristolians who broke into the US airbase at Fairford to try to stop the bombing are due for trial soon. These five people did not stop the war. They didn't prevent the deaths of thousands by bombing. Thousands more will probably die from unexploded munitions and Depleted Uranium rounds of the next few year: so what is the point? It's not like they changed anything.

But they did. Not in isolation, but they have changed things. You see the system that has invaded Iraq for a variety of geopolitical, economic and oil based reasons wants us to move on. Forget about the war. In this they are backed by a powerful group of media and commercial interests (most notably by the Murdoch press) who want us to focus on debating how fast we want to privatize our social structures while they get on with building the US economic-military base in Iraq. But there is a problem: the war, by all accounts, seems to be illegal. So the plundering of Iraq's oil is...well..nothing more than state sponsored ram-raid. The actions of those five Bristolains have, along side Catherine Gunn and the army of anti-war activists worldwide – held a mirror up to this system.

Now imagine if it was not 5 but 500 or 5000 people who had broken into the airbase?

We are now putting the state on trial: They can't claim to have invaded Iraq for WMDs – because there don't seem to be any and it is looking increasingly apparent they knew this. They can't claim to have invaded Iraq to uphold the law, because it looks like they broke it themselves. They can't claim to have invaded Iraq out of concern for the Iraqi people, because many of the war advocates were the ones to helped Saddam stay in power in the 80s. They are running out of reasons. But they are only running out of reasons because the friction of resistance is wearing each paper-thin excuse away.

So now here is our chance to also do something: support the Fairford Five as they go to trial and beyond. Does it make a difference? Yes. A juror, interviewed after a trial in the US, talked about how people being there helped her to see what was really going on despite the state trying to paint the activist as an extremist: People took time out of their day -- they gave up their income, they were there every day. They were faithful, they were loyal. Who's got friends like that? I've got one or two, but I don't have a hundred and fifty. What does that say about this? That he doesn't have good spirit and good character, to have people such as that? That come every day?

Lets get active. Lets try to support them day after day.

Stay ahead of what is going on here: FairfordPeaceWatch and Bristol Indymedia!
Help support groups such as GWI and Bristol ABC.