slackbastard

Readers,

“Eagainst.com – Autonomy against Barbarism is a non-profit independent multilingual blog which covers a wide area of subjects. Its world-view is familiarized mainly with the idea of autonomy and promotes the values of self-organization, collectivity, social justice and humanitarianism.”

have i plugged prole.info before? What about Rob Ray’s blog? Also: Italy Calling.

assembly for dignity is another new (to me) blog what is focused on analysing, understanding and resisting the tightening of the skrews in the welfare sector. The fools think the poors are entitled to some weird thing called ‘dignity’.

Funnily enough, a few months ago a policy wonk noted that maybe unemployment benefits should be increased — perhaps even as far as the poverty line, who knows? But this shockingly radical proposal — the implementation of which would surely imperil The Economy, if not Western Civilization — is not something that anybody takes seriously, or ever will. For obvious reasons, and not necessarily because the ALP is intellectually and morally bankrupt as Paul Norton argued at the time. (On the ALP’s travails, see also The Hollowmen, Mark Aarons, The Monthly, August 2010 | Australian Labor Party in its death throes, Richard Phillips, wsws.org, March 2, 2011 | Qld union boss booted from ALP, The Sydney Morning Herald/AAP, March 1, 2011 | Union and Community Summer School 2010, December 12, 2010.)

…for the majority of adolescents academic routine is time-wasting, unreal, dispiriting, desexualizing and destructive of initiative; and it is resisted by the usual devices of sabotage, by “sub-culture” and—on the part of the highly intelligent—by “underachievement,” for they do not want to “achieve” in this way.

Lucy Parsons was not an educated woman. Lucy Parsons was an African, Native and Mexican-American revolutionary anarchist labor activist from the late nineteenth and 20th century America. She also had a habit of smashing nails on the head:

Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy and let it be a war of extermination without pity.

Hey, makes a change from it being the other way ’round at least (also, Holloway smokes crack).

Hey Ladies!

Ladies and gentlemen had their one day of the year the other day. Kim writes:

It’s the hundredth anniversary, and from where I sit, it’s a bit of a pity that most of the public debate has been dominated by people like Gail Kelly and Quentin Bryce talking about the urgent need for more women to sit on corporate boards. We could be talking about things like the fact that many women earn far less over the life course than men and…

…so on and so forth. Of course, one of the reasons “many women earn far less over the life course than men” is because many women are employed in relatively low-paid sectors of The Economy. In response to this fact, the Labor-controlled ASU — which represents many women employed in these sectors — is engaged in a campaign titled ‘Equal Pay’. The problems with the campaign are of a similar nature to those associated with the (non-existent) campaign to increase the incomes of the unemployed. That said, the following is germane:

Pay rise for staff pocketed
Ben Schneiders
The Age
February 21, 2011

ONE of Australia’s biggest charities pocketed nearly $500,000 in public money that was meant to fund large pay rises for community workers.

A top executive at Mission Australia, which had $289 million in revenue last financial year, admitted in a Fair Work Australia hearing it received the money from the Queensland government after the 2009 equal pay decision, but only paid community workers at the same rate as in other states…

Suckers.

(On Mission Australia, see also : Charity is Big Business : Toby Hall and responsibilities that need to be taken seriously, September 23, 2010.)

Oh. And IWD was formally launched when the Second International held an international women’s conference at Folkets Hus–later Ungdomshuset–in Copenhagen. The Ungdomshuset was itself forcibly evicted by social democrats in 2007, following the site’s sale to a Xtian fundamentalist kvlt.

There’s a moral in there somewhere, I’m sure.

On a not unrelated note from the Department of Cats are Nice! comes:

Eric Drooker’s naughty kitty is scheduled to make an appearance in Wisconsin, as things are moving towards some kinda ‘general strike’… or something… I dunno.

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, knows everything.

Beck, inter alia, has apparently discussed “The Blaze exclusive video of anarchists, socialists, and communists who have infiltrated the protests in Wisconsin. In the video, it shows a group of them – not everyday teachers and the average union workers – engaged in a party where they smelled of pot and alcohol.”

Gosh!

Certainly, Wisconsin authorities are shitting their pants, and police doing their usual tricksy business, in response to the threat of workers acting with dignity. Otherwise, I think this clip is illuminating.

Workers in Egypt are paying attention at least…