Silvia Swinden

The crisis in the economic system has been well anticipated by those who noticed the complex and esoteric way in which modern Monetarism creates scarcity through taking money out of a hat to lend it, but not making enough to repay with interests. Speculation then concentrates it. Challenges to such bizarre and poverty creating system are not tolerated. Oct 15th Wake Up Day.

Every 2 years the Arms Fair comes to London, displaying the latest in technology for killing, maiming, repressing and changing regimes. This ensures that some private corporations in the UK remain at the vanguard of profiting from war and violence. Some of the most actively oppressive regimes are invited. The protesters are always there but the political will to stop it is not.

Documents found by Human Rights Watch in Tripoli contain evidence of collaboration by the British Government with the US rendition for torture program, in this case sending terror suspects to Libya for interrogation. “For several years, senior MI5 and MI6 officers have sought to deny that their agencies have been guilty even of complicity in rendition.

The Economic Crash in Iceland led the “Pots and Pans revolution” leading to some radical changes. Humanist Party members Julius Valdimarsson and Methusalem Thorisson have carried out an appraisal in terms of the sensibility of the people in general and on the political Scene wondering if such process can promote Human Rights based Real Democracy.

UK commuters face an 8 to13% increase in rail fares, well above the rate of inflation, whilst Stagecoach, one of the private rail companies, announces a return of £340m in profits to shareholders – including an £88m payment to two chief executives. Meanwhile the inevitable austerity driven “double dip recession” looms across major economies but the banks refuse to lend.

Whilst the blame game about the UK riots rages in the national and international Media and the State uses the opportunity to get more draconian, punitive and discriminatory, we must keep an eye on the structural changes that the neoliberal agenda is introducing, even as we speak about those changes being the root of the problem.

The area where the first spark of rioting started, following the fatal shooting by police of a local resident, today saw a large and peaceful demonstration calling for an end to the violence on all sides but also for changes in the recent austerity measures that most of those marching see as the root cause of the recent disturbances.

London and other UK cities are descending into an uneasy, massive police deployment induced calm. The post-mortem has began, even if the beast is not quiet dead yet. Everybody has an opinion as to who’s to blame. Nobody is asking the kids (“thugs”? or “victims of social exclusion”?), now going through the courts, some as young as 10.

Credit Rating Agencies are at it again. If the hole in the real economy, the one in which real people live, created by the virtual economy, where the speculators live, aka “rescuing the Banks during the subprime crisis”, were not big enough, Standard and Poor, has “downgraded” the US Credit Rating sending the world economy into a deeper hole. So who are they?

Death of a Tottenham resident in North London by Police shooting sparks three nights of rioting, looting, firebombing and attacks on Police by members of minority communities and youth gangs. Recent cuts to services in areas already deprived and marginalised seem to have created a toxic atmosphere that only needed a trigger, and sure enough, it happened.