No1 Rule of Life (and Law Students)

Just wanted to say a few things about capitalism, based on Anro's blog http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/2011/12/stupid-american-capitalists.html

Many Americans seem worryingly brainwashed by their media, it's difficult to get a balanced picture there. The powerful right-wing own most of the media so of course they would peddle rampant capitalism because they are the ones that have benefited in the first place. The same goes for the all-powerful lobby groups, who buy and financially blackmail their way to government influence. Then because these same groups dominate the media, they propagate the madness of the capitalist system and everyone believes it.

No1 Rule of Life - check your sources people!! Journalists and news corporations are not the word of God!! They have agendas and opinions just like everyone else, what would most people do if they became powerful enough? Influence people to think their way of life is right, right? It's just common sense, how can the public still have faith in capitalism when it's proven to be disastrous to families all over the world?

And then politicians there want LESS regulation and smaller government?? So greedy and careless investments can take priority over THE PEOPLE yet again? This is insanity. I read an article that in a majority of a poll, the question posed was 'Should a sick 17-year-old die because they have no medical insurance?' The resounding answer was YES. What has the world come to when people would choose capitalism over the life of a child? The fact that the US is the only developed country to not provide universal healthcare is something they should be ashamed of, not revel in.

Aside from the media propaganda, other reasons that I can fathom as to why they hold capitalism so dear is that less government means less taxes, especially for healthcare. So private companies stepping in where government agencies would have been means more competition and therefore higher efficiency and less cost. Is this what happened with oil companies? Well the prices at your local filling station will tell you otherwise. The price of oil can just keep on going up as the oil barons please, where is the competitiveness and efficiency in that? The price of oil then affects everything, the price of food, the sick and disabled who need to use their car to get around, EVERYTHING. The US government contracts out their war machines to private contractors too, thus ensuring the safety of nations in the hands of people who profit from war. How can this kind of privatisation be right?

Just because Americans  lost many soldiers in fighting communism it doesn't mean the polar opposite; unfettered capitalism, is the solution!!!

FYI ever-worshipping free marketeers, I am not a socialist, I just do not believe in an ever increasing and destructive divide between rich and poor...

See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

My Strange Week...

Last Monday I went to my job seekers appointment, to collect what feels like the remnants of communism. The normally friendly guy was extremely short with me and told me had cut me off because I didn't turn up to a random check on my job search the week before.

1stly WHY THE HELL are you randomly checking me? I am a graduate, do you think I paid £9k plus for my education to sit on the dole for less than a tenner a day?

2ndly WHY THE HELL don't you 'randomly' check the people that cannot seem to get a job but can make it to the bookies at 9am every day?

3rdly I called your 0845 number that you make JOBLESS people call to tell you I could not make it as I had an interview, you know the thing that is meant to make me get off the dole??

4thly This is MY NATIONAL INSURANCE money that I'm begging for!

He had no sympathy and said I should have come after my interview and waited around the job centre until he had seen all of his appointments to check in with him. Just because you haven't got a job they think they can enslave you and demand you to be there at whatever time of day. When I returned and spoke to a different clerk he said the job centre is becoming like a 'concentration camp' and 'prison' with all the new government requirements. He also let me in on another 'secret'; that now they are ACTUALLY going to really help us get a job instead of just signing us off because there are too many people on job seekers allowance. Well blow me down! The job centre are actually going to start helping us get jobs?!

Later that week I met the TORY boy, being working class and living in London I don't usually meet, or possibly have never met someone like him. He asked me my view point on so many specific topics just so he could try and prove his narrow minded point of views. I told him I was at Occupy at St Pauls, he asked me how it was, to which I replied 'fun' & he said 'I knew it, it's just a party, I bet everyone was drinking and taking drugs etc'. Errr no, they have a strict policy of no drugs or alcohol, it was fun just because it was a good experience with loads of varied debates going on. The picture on the left was a guy from 'anonymous' and a random capitalist heckler who we ended up chatting to for about 2 hours. He repeatedly kept saying 'What are you doing here with these losers?' ie what are three 'normal' non-hippy, bathing, young women doing at this protest?

Yet the people who insist on stereotyping are the people who conform to stereotypes themselves. The Tory boy is a pro-fox hunting, clay pigeon shooting, Guardian hating, anti-immigration, sticking up for colonialism, boarding school educated, racism denier. Among the least offensive things he said was that 'a foreign name does not inhibit you from getting a job'. This is 100% untrue and just shows you how naive some people are. I can think of 100 examples but off the top of my head; a lawyer family friend once left an interview in tears when the employer said she had all the credentials but wouldn't hire her because of her surname 'Mohammed'. Another friend had a disheartening short time as a recruitment consultant for professionals because her superiors would put CVs in the bin if the header name was foreign and would say 'this CV looks good' if their was name was 'Thomas' or 'James' etc. Even entrepreneur 'James Caan' changed his name as he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with a Pakistani name. (Also see http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/2011/11/disadvantage-of-being-ethinc.html). One of the more offensive things was a sarcastic fake phone call he made saying 'We colonised countries, especially in Africa, then we left, and now they want our charitable help?'

Need to dye some hair now, will be back... Peace

http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/

Two sure fire table conversation killers - religion and politics

I know these are the two topics that you MUST avoid at a dinner party for fear of the designated black sheep label but hey, these are the two most important topics in my lil ol heart and this ain't no freakin dinner party. It's strange that we all have a sense of spirituality and faith no matter how shallow some may seem on the surface, pondering questions like 'Why are we here?' Yet religion is SUCH a taboo subject especially in Britain. Even fiery me very rarely talks about religion and that's still only with people who I'd trust with my life, and even then it's only at a surface level. In a society which is so liberated and free you're made to feel so uncomfortable and even foolish when speaking on something which permeates your every fibre, your body and soul; what you believe in.

Atheists or people who just plainly hate religion may think that people have always needed a comfort to bring them to terms with the hardships of life so we made up this concept of God or a higher spiritual being. That the main three monotheist religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are following the words of a book that was written by a bunch of men who thought that they were something special. That religions were just formed from cultures and their practices. That religions were made to brainwash people.

The latter has been said in front of me with no respect to my beliefs, my family and my intelligence. I theoretically retorted (when actually I just left the place immediately) with the fact that, fair enough if you think that these words were written by man but you believe newspapers today like The Sun like they were the word of God. If you don't believe in a supposed divine message that has the same principles coming from different countries centuries apart then you should also not believe everything written by so-called journalists who work for dodgy billionaires. Even if faiths were created to brainwash or guide people, they all preach doing good deeds and living your life in a humble peaceful way so what's actually wrong with that?

Religion is the main cause of wars and killing people they would reply. I would say Hitler was an atheist and was responsible for exterminating how many millions of Jews? Not to mention how many millions have been imprisoned, tortured and killed in the name of Communism (Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Soviet Union, China etc), a rejection of religion and God for the sake of the community and state, which is really just some old dictator. In modern times, segments of the secular West have gone to war in countries thousands of miles away from them in an apparent attempt to 'liberate' them killing thousands in the process, quite any oxymoron but that's another rant altogether. Clearly, people of faith and people without faith both cause insurmountable pain and suffering. To conclude, shit happens. And the last time I checked religion hasn't been the common denominator.


The Sun, Daily Mail et al 21st century line of argument against religion is; 'Look at the child abusing priests' and 'Bin Laden and all the other Islamic extremists'. Clearly you cannot expect even two next-door neighbours to act in unison  so why would you expect that from millions or billions of people from the same religion. Plus, if we believers were so brainwashed wouldn't every single one of us act homogeneously? Aaaah the governments of the world would love that!

 I'll save politiking for the next time...

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/