Merrick
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NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 22, 2010, 13:50
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As the government rolls out the Labour plans for welfare-to-work, we are witnessing the growth of slave labour in the UK. 'Growth', not 'advent', because it's been happening in prisons for 15 years.
New feature up in U-Know:
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/uknow/features/?id=105
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Squid Tempest
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Edited Dec 22, 2010, 14:01
Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 22, 2010, 14:01
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Good article, thanks Merrick.
One major problem with these "schemes" is that those involved are in no position to fight against them. It will probably appear as though there is no opposition, so the government will yet again get away with it. Where the bloody hell is the Labour opposition to things like this? Whatever happened to socialism?
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Toni Torino
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Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 22, 2010, 15:08
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I remember this from a while back. http://www.prisonlabour.org.uk/
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Merrick
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Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 22, 2010, 17:06
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Wow, excellent link, thanks a lot. It's been added top the end of the Feature article.
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Loopy Lumbago
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Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 22, 2010, 17:20
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The rich will work better by becoming richer and the poor will work better by staying poor.
The logic of capitalism!
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grufty jim
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Edited Dec 22, 2010, 23:46
Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 22, 2010, 23:44
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What I find weirdest about all this, is that the government in the UK (and this started under Labour, though the Tories are certainly accelerating the process) appear to be working hard to create all of the conditions for civil unrest.
This suggests one of three possibilities...
1. They are unaware of this fact because the arrogance of power has blinded them to the obvious.
2. They believe that a generation of consumerism has made the populace completely docile and incapable of direct action (though the evidence of the student protests would seem to contradict this).
3. They believe civil unrest would be advantageous to them for some reason.
I suspect the answer is "1" though the paranoid part of my brain occasionally worries that it might be "3".
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ron
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Edited Dec 23, 2010, 02:03
Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 23, 2010, 01:55
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Or... as in the U$A
4. The Government see everyone as an enemy. Right Wing... Left Wing... er... basically anyone...
and what I find most discomforting and have for quite sometime is the overwhelming 'Nationalistic' sentiment... at every athletic event, NFL to NASCAR, the pre-events are purely a pep rally for World War III and to shout 'god bless America'....
...in the local bbq restaurant we frequent the amount of military inspired decor I've always found is a bit much; however, after watching Valkyrie, (purely for the historical context I assure you...), I found myself in said BBQ establishment (agian), and thot if you simply substituted the Marine stuff for Wehrmacht stuff... uhmmm... scary...
alone me...
r
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The Sea Cat
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Edited Dec 23, 2010, 08:58
Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 23, 2010, 08:34
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I wholeheartedly believe that you are absolutley spot on with 1 & 2 Jim, and my galloping sensitivity tends to make me sometimes think that 3 could be a deliberate attempt to provoke a showdown that could lead to an unprecedented attack on civil liberties re. the right to protest in general.
When the Head of The Met is itching to get his hands on Water Canon, wants to ask the Home Office to ban future Student Protests if there any more 'incidents' due to militant anarchist schoolgirl provocateurs, and Cameron and Johnson amongst others are seriously considering changing the law re. highering the ballot percentage before Industrial Action can legallly take place, it does make you wonder. Governments these days just change what doesn't suit them without compulsion, under the guise of legal process which they subvert and pervert, lessons well learned from that master of political legerdermain, Tony Blair.
edited
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mingtp
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Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 25, 2010, 12:16
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Good article Merrick, spot on.
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IanB
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Edited Dec 31, 2010, 19:09
Re: NEW FEATURE: Creating an Army of Slaves
Dec 31, 2010, 18:46
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Squid Tempest wrote: Whatever happened to socialism?
After 70 years or so people figured out that, while wonderful in theory, in practice it led to entire populations being treated as armies of slaves to be mobilised, deployed and disposed of by order of the state. So for many people in the third world and eastern bloc in particular this has been a classic case of "meet the new boss".
Totalitarianism is the logical destination of any political system which, by design, ensures that the government will sooner or later come to fear the very population it is supposed to serve. Neither left nor right seem to be able to trust people full stop. Real people end up being percevied as the problem, the root of the failure to successfully roll out theoretical solutions to social issues. So people have to be herded, observed, coralled, re-educated and militarised as punishment for their elemental warts-n-all humanity.
I have met very few highly motiviated, politically active individuals from either left or right who do not view the populations of nations to be pawns in some grotesque version of Simple Simon Says.
And I say that as an instinctive Mutualist and firm believer in worker cooperatives and the involvement of the individual in their own governance on a local level. That to me is the greatest antedote to state tyranny.
The greatest enemies of liberty today are are the 35% who didn't vote, will probably never vote, play no role in their community and yet expect their governments (local and national) to operate as a benign protectorate which provides all basic needs (where they are absent) and moderates the desires of the most powerful institutions without the individual having to actually do anything to contribute to this finely tuned utopia other than continue breathing. It's as if people expect to live their entire lives as under-graduates from the mid 1970s.
If people want to avoid enslavement they need to turn up more often for the routine matches week in week out and not just for the "glamour ties" at the big venues like Parliament Square.
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