What's
the
DIFFERENCE?
Borders
Last Friday (7th Aug) at about 11.30 I wandered along to Hastings Old Town on route to the cliffs. When I reached the harbour I noticed a straggle of people on the wall. Curious, I went across. They were watching a distant lifeboat slowly approach. Ten officials dressed entirely in black, their belts loaded with gadgets like cuff-links, tasers, etc., stood in two groups - some at the water's edge and several about 50-metres back. Of the former, a woman with 'Border Force' written in white on her back, held a pack of blue face-masks ready.
Out at sea the lifeboat - which turned out to be the Eastbourne vessel - was escorting a lifeboat-dinghy that was towing a smaller dinghy containing a group of people in life-jackets.
When the small dinghy reached the shore, three men, two women, a boy and a girl, both about 8 or 9 years old, stepped onto the pebbles and were handed masks.
Some onlookers took pictures with their mobile phones, while several seemed to regard the event with excitement the way they manoeuvred to different angles for photos. The guards further up the beach struggled to persuade a persistent guy with a camera to stay back from where the immigrants were to pass.
I began walking away, and watched behind me as the captives were escorted slowly past the lifeboat station to an awaiting police mini-bus.
The episode struck me as crazy - at first I was annoyed: why were these people having to use an unsafe dinghy when I could use a ferry? Then their situation struck me as sad - I recalled what Hermann Hesse had written on borders: ie, 'Farmhouse':
....The wandering man becomes a primitive man in so many ways, in the same way that the nomad is more primitive than the farmer. But the longing to get on the other side of everything already settled, this makes me, and everybody like me, a road sign to the future. If there were many other people who loathed the borders between countries as I do, then there would be no more wars or blockades. Nothing on Earth is more disgusting, more contemptible than borders...
Borders are created and sustained by Fascists. Borders allow elites, who are able to move or live anywhere freely, to control and exploit the weak, the downtrodden, the less astute. While the rest of Europe are working to extend human rights to more countries and demolish borders, UK Fascists with their Brexit and other underhand methods to increase their control are establishing new ones...
What's wrong with the rest of the EU, I wondered, that it's worth risking your life getting to this politically decrepit island of ignorance, gullibility and exploitation?
On radio I hear immigrants say their reasons are purely family connections and friends already in the UK...
What, to risk your life for?
Why doesn't the EU have a system to help these hapless victims fleeing countries the UK/US has invaded and keeps unstable so they can prop-up right-wing regimes to whom they continually offload arms that both impoverish the country and allow their corrupt leaders to attack neighbouring countries and perpetuate war?
"That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true..." - Thomas Paine
"Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible." - A. Philip Randolph
Why are the ruling elite so cruel? Why are billionaires so greedy? Why is BIG corp so blind...to prefer destruction of the planet rather than a small reduction in profit? Why does the right-wing everywhere regard immigrants as vermin... unless, like them, they're wealthy/ruthless 'entrepreneurs' (sharks) or potential slaves?
Above all, why can I travel where I like while those immigrants can't? What have I done that allows me that freedom, and what have they done that they should be denied it?
Rules are established by elites... what kind of deranged maniacs are they who make this world so absurd and difficult? Only psychopaths... only psychopaths rule.
Venezuela has been a target, and Iran... with their vast oil reserves... for more than a decade... where else? Even a few days ago the US seized a shipment between those 'disobedient' countries... why? Ans: pure arrogance, greed and power.... so millions struggle as a result.... and if the US invade, millions will die as in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria as they did in Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia etc., etc... see Bill Blum's list of victims of western imperialism (ruling elite psychopathy). Aug 16th 2020 tweet:
(Last time I was in Alicante they had one of these amazing galleons in the harbour open to tourists.)
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What's
the
DIFFERENCE?
HOW TO FIX AN ELECTION
In some countries they fix the election result by rigging the ballot....
OK. Very simple, but no-one accepts the result... BIG problems.
In the UK, to avoid problems, they take a different approach.
Instead of rigging the ballot they bombard over several years the most inept voters in the most crucial regions with layer-upon-layer of specious propaganda which is backed by the media. The outcome is the same... except now everyone accepts the result.
So you fix election results NOT by rigging the ballot, but by focussing on the poorest, most intellectually compromised... and demonising their obvious benefactors in favour of the most divisive BIG corp mob since before WW2.
After a decade of cruel and completely unnecessary austerity aimed at these poorest, most exploited and least educated - presumably to hammer their esteem and manoeuvre them to an even deeper level of subservience - the UK far-right recruit & hire from the US and Australia the same propagandists (including Cambridge Analytica) who successfully won power for far-right leaders in those countries... plus, as a kind of insurance, the Jewish pro-Israel establishment leaps on board... and Voilà!
So the GREAT fraud goes on.... Israel and the Saudis continue to get their weapons... Trident remains on track.... more of the NHS gets sold-off... etc., etc., etc.... and decline continues.... YAWN !
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DAYLIGHT ROBBERY
If you're a pick-pocket and snatch someon's purse or wallet, and are caught, you'll be charged with theft. The victim can be utterly negligent: a purse conspicuously laying in a basket, or a wallet protruding from someone's back pocket... but the thief will still be breaking the law for taking what doesn't belong to them.
Yet in the UK an energy retailer, for instance, will insist on over-payment so you remain in credit, then will increase their charge at the end of some arbitrarily set tarif period when, if you're not attentive, you'll begin paying £100s more than you need to.
But if you're attentive and look for better deals, which constantly change, and then switch... well then they'll 'fine' you for failing to remain a customer for their arbitrarily stipulated period.
What right does a retailer have to 'fine' anyone for ceasing to buy their product in favour of a better deal? Where else is this possible? Even if the account has been active for more than a year, they'll still 'pick-pocket' their 'fine' from the credit they've made you accummulate.
How is it illegal for an individual to take someone's wallet, yet legal for a retailer to increase a charge unseen, or steal a 'fine' from your savings?
What's the difference?
Or what about those people on holiday in Croatia being charged 8x the fare back to the UK because of increased demand? And if I buy a rail-ticket at the station, why does it cost significantly more than online or if I buy it several weeks in advance?
Why is there such a range of charges for precisely the same product or service... the same electricity/gas (from the same grid), the same rail/air journey (in the same seat and at the same time)?
There is no regulation.... it's still a jungle out there, everyone for themselves... the least attentive or least astute are legally fleeced, yet to steal is illegal.
The contradiction is in the method: how the thief operates is key - as an individual you're breaking the law to steal, as a registered company you can steal with impunity.... perhaps even enjoy support from the law?
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