Subject: FW: THE RETURN OF ROBIN HOOD

With compliments and regards,

Joe

THE RETURN OF ROBIN HOOD

“Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.“
Peter Drucker

Robbing the rich and giving to the poor! Well, nothing wrong in that, I suppose. Didn’t the rich get rich by robbing the poor, after all? Why shouldn’t expropriators have their wealth expropriated? So, dear Robin, the quicker you’re here, even just symbolically, the better! Evidently, he’s not far off!
Beyond the immediate indicators of social distress—to which many more could be added—the ILO (International Labour Organisation) report points to an unprecedented state of global class relations. “Conditions are building up for a social explosion on a world scale”, it warned.

Right across the world, the Own Wall Street movement (OWS), which saw its birthplace in New York City, is gaining momentum. People are beginning to wake up to the fact that a handful of people in the world have grabbed most of the wealth while the bulk of us have been cheated and defrauded over and over again, even paying for the financial failures of those who are millionaires and billionaires. From the Arab Spring to the European ‘indignados’, revolution (or at least resistance) is in the air, and we are having a rare political opening for mass social change unlike anything else in a generation. In Western countries where the media usually uses the term “class warfare” to criticize people who merely recognize that income inequality exists, the Occupy movement has successfully – and rightly – framed our ongoing economic and political crisis as the fault of the capitalist system and the ruling 1%. Taking over public squares and confronting the private interests that control our lives, the protesters have captured the public’s recognition and repudiation of corporate capitalism.

”Our future shouldn’t be determined by a few rich people” likewise shouted the students at the London demonstrations. “We are the 99%!” It’s one of the best things the movement has achieved so far, a sense of unity and recognition that whatever our respective race, income, and geography, we are all getting fleeced by the super-rich and their political puppets. It has caught on because it’s true, and also because it invites everyone (well, 99% of everyone) to get in on the party. It’s a broad-based movement trying to change some very broad-based problems.

The ruling greedy 1% never recognized that, to avoid revolution, workers’ rights needed to be protected and improved and that any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a credit of legitimacy. Now they have it on their doorstep, knocking!

The only monument civil society ever gets is itself, and the satisfaction of continuing to do the work that matters, the work that has no bosses and no pay-cheques, the work of connecting, caring, understanding, exploring, and transforming. As Ronald Reagan once fatefully said: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” While taxes for the rich are being slashed, as are outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income, one thing is glaringly obvious, ‘the rich are going to get richer’, while the poor are getting poorer.

The greatest hoax in the history of money remains the giving to the biggest banks of billions in bailout euros and trying to keep it secret. Bailout defenders always say their reverse Robin Hood policies were necessary to save the economy, and they deny these policies were about saving the big banks. No bank – and especially not the vampire squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. In bailing out failing banks and companies, they are confiscating money from productive members of the economy and giving it to failing ones.

The people are 100% correct to be angry about these banks, that received scores of billions of euros in bailouts of taxpayers’ money after doing the opposite of what banks are supposed to do (losing money instead of keeping it safe), and then paying themselves bonuses for doing such a good job. Wasn’t it Al Capone who said that one accountant with a pen can steal more than 100 thugs with guns? Many across the political spectrum remain angry at what they perceive as protection given to banks and corporate executives while ordinary people lose their jobs, homes and savings. They are suffering from some of the predicted negatives of joining the Euro collective.

The decaying corporate regimes, with their hired baton-wielding cops, can destroy but cannot build, they can steal but cannot share, and they can only clean up on the excuse of personal hygiene and public safety.

They complain about the parks being dirty. That is the narrative mind-control that they want you to continue repeating to justify all this jack-booted fascism and wealth theft. Here they are worrying about dirty parks when people are starving to death, where people are freezing, where people are sleeping in the open or in shelters, and they’re concerned about a dirty park. That’s obnoxious, it’s arrogant, it’s ignorant and it’s disgusting.

When civil society sleeps, we’re just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds, squares, streets or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence and for hypocrisy. Two months ago, the latest protests against that system began. The response only confirms our vision of how it all works. They are fighting fire with gasoline. Perhaps being frightened makes them foolish. After all, once civil society rouses itself from slumber, it can be all but unstoppable. (If they were smart they’d try to soothe it back to sleep.) “Arrest one of us; two more appear. You can’t arrest an idea!” said a prominent sign. You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring. I’m sure of one thing: there are a lot more flowers coming.

The police presence on the protest marchers is bullying. They don’t want this. They don’t want the people voicing their opinion because there are so many people out there. They would love to brush them under the carpet but that is not going to happen. The thieves are worried and terrified that the people are stealing from them.

Governments and the rich alike are fearful of this movement because they don’t know where it might lead. They are frightened of losing control over the masses so they send in the riot police who, heavily armoured and well armed, inflict as much injury as they can on those protesting, regardless of their gender or age. The idea is to cause pain so that the faint-hearted might think twice about joining another protest. Their police brutality knows no limits! Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I think that if things get too hot for our Lords and Masters, they will turn up the heat in a homicidal way. Those fools really believe that they can do something so despicable and then live the good life after

Any power that can not be justified is IMMORAL. Have we arrived at and entered the revolutionary stage where the power elite have recognised their unsuccessful attempts to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression and may be reverting to harsher and stricter measures? In such case, it’s no wonder that our resistance turns to revolution!

Throughout the European Union countries, neither the people nor the politicians have a say in what is going to happen in their country because the European Union and the International Monetary Fund are just telling them what to do. It’s a vicious circle. What they are doing will be devastating for most countries. The harsh austerity programmes imposed on bailed-out or indebted countries amount to the obliteration of hard-fought gains earned by workers in the postwar period through bitter struggles.
Learning to think outside one’s indoctrinated political bubble was for me the first step. Change has to come from the bottom up and maintain a basic set of ethics within every human on earth, an agreed convenience that what ever we do it must do no harm, definitely not to the ninety-nine percent. Political systems are only secondary and not where the real power is, if only the people could all get that, we are on a winner. We let them have that power and collectively we can take that power away.

Meanwhile, most European so-called socialist political parties have lost and are still losing power in almost all traditional areas in an expected and inevitable swing, as they failed to deliver their basic tenet……socialism for the people. Understandably, this was the result of the EU impositions on the countries. The cry for a real socialist leader for the people is louder than ever.

On the other hand, unions should drive home the importance of public ownership of essential assets. Did our government have any mandate to sell off our public assets? Any sell-off is a huge betrayal of public confidence.

It is very unfortunate that no significant encouragement or contribution towards these people’s movements have been forthcoming from the church or from the mainstream media. Are they still thinking whether we need them or they need us? Is the church still examining how its belief system justifies the fight on the side of the poor and unequal? How long is the church continuing to be employed as a political tool by the religious-right? Or are they still undecided and lack compassion and understanding or are they already bought over by the power elite? Everybody knows that religion, along with the media and every other organization in every country, should have done much more, much sooner. If so, there would be no need for Occupy movements, would there? The Occupy movement offers us an opportunity to think about ourselves, our society, our political system and our economic system. Either way, now is the time to be honest with ourselves and each other!

Undoubtedly and luckily, the shadow of Robin Hood is not lurking in the shadows but is out there encouraging and fighting with the protesters!

We don’t know what’s coming next, and that’s the good news. My advice is just of the most general sort: Dream big. Occupy your hopes. Talk to strangers. Live in public. Don’t stop. Act now. Educate and organise, as this is only the beginning. It’s the beginning of the end of the power puppet regimes.

Either we fight or we succumb to corporate capitalist dictatorship. The choice is ours! It will require courage but, if we don’t prevail, we will lose our freedoms and the predators that run our world will turn us into slaves!

“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.”
Ambrose Bierce

Joseph M. Cachia December, 2011

Email: jmcachia@maltanet.net

31, St. Lawrence Street

Vittoriosa MALTA

ID: 698736 (M)

Tel: 21807566 – 99866151

With compliments and regards,

Joe

THE RETURN OF ROBIN HOOD

“Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.“
Peter Drucker

Robbing the rich and giving to the poor! Well, nothing wrong in that, I suppose. Didn’t the rich get rich by robbing the poor, after all? Why shouldn’t expropriators have their wealth expropriated? So, dear Robin, the quicker you’re here, even just symbolically, the better! Evidently, he’s not far off!
Beyond the immediate indicators of social distress—to which many more could be added—the ILO (International Labour Organisation) report points to an unprecedented state of global class relations. “Conditions are building up for a social explosion on a world scale”, it warned.

Right across the world, the Own Wall Street movement (OWS), which saw its birthplace in New York City, is gaining momentum. People are beginning to wake up to the fact that a handful of people in the world have grabbed most of the wealth while the bulk of us have been cheated and defrauded over and over again, even paying for the financial failures of those who are millionaires and billionaires. From the Arab Spring to the European ‘indignados’, revolution (or at least resistance) is in the air, and we are having a rare political opening for mass social change unlike anything else in a generation. In Western countries where the media usually uses the term “class warfare” to criticize people who merely recognize that income inequality exists, the Occupy movement has successfully – and rightly – framed our ongoing economic and political crisis as the fault of the capitalist system and the ruling 1%. Taking over public squares and confronting the private interests that control our lives, the protesters have captured the public’s recognition and repudiation of corporate capitalism.

”Our future shouldn’t be determined by a few rich people” likewise shouted the students at the London demonstrations. “We are the 99%!” It’s one of the best things the movement has achieved so far, a sense of unity and recognition that whatever our respective race, income, and geography, we are all getting fleeced by the super-rich and their political puppets. It has caught on because it’s true, and also because it invites everyone (well, 99% of everyone) to get in on the party. It’s a broad-based movement trying to change some very broad-based problems.

The ruling greedy 1% never recognized that, to avoid revolution, workers’ rights needed to be protected and improved and that any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a credit of legitimacy. Now they have it on their doorstep, knocking!

The only monument civil society ever gets is itself, and the satisfaction of continuing to do the work that matters, the work that has no bosses and no pay-cheques, the work of connecting, caring, understanding, exploring, and transforming. As Ronald Reagan once fatefully said: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” While taxes for the rich are being slashed, as are outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income, one thing is glaringly obvious, ‘the rich are going to get richer’, while the poor are getting poorer.

The greatest hoax in the history of money remains the giving to the biggest banks of billions in bailout euros and trying to keep it secret. Bailout defenders always say their reverse Robin Hood policies were necessary to save the economy, and they deny these policies were about saving the big banks. No bank – and especially not the vampire squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. In bailing out failing banks and companies, they are confiscating money from productive members of the economy and giving it to failing ones.

The people are 100% correct to be angry about these banks, that received scores of billions of euros in bailouts of taxpayers’ money after doing the opposite of what banks are supposed to do (losing money instead of keeping it safe), and then paying themselves bonuses for doing such a good job. Wasn’t it Al Capone who said that one accountant with a pen can steal more than 100 thugs with guns? Many across the political spectrum remain angry at what they perceive as protection given to banks and corporate executives while ordinary people lose their jobs, homes and savings. They are suffering from some of the predicted negatives of joining the Euro collective.

The decaying corporate regimes, with their hired baton-wielding cops, can destroy but cannot build, they can steal but cannot share, and they can only clean up on the excuse of personal hygiene and public safety.

They complain about the parks being dirty. That is the narrative mind-control that they want you to continue repeating to justify all this jack-booted fascism and wealth theft. Here they are worrying about dirty parks when people are starving to death, where people are freezing, where people are sleeping in the open or in shelters, and they’re concerned about a dirty park. That’s obnoxious, it’s arrogant, it’s ignorant and it’s disgusting.

When civil society sleeps, we’re just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds, squares, streets or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence and for hypocrisy. Two months ago, the latest protests against that system began. The response only confirms our vision of how it all works. They are fighting fire with gasoline. Perhaps being frightened makes them foolish. After all, once civil society rouses itself from slumber, it can be all but unstoppable. (If they were smart they’d try to soothe it back to sleep.) “Arrest one of us; two more appear. You can’t arrest an idea!” said a prominent sign. You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring. I’m sure of one thing: there are a lot more flowers coming.

The police presence on the protest marchers is bullying. They don’t want this. They don’t want the people voicing their opinion because there are so many people out there. They would love to brush them under the carpet but that is not going to happen. The thieves are worried and terrified that the people are stealing from them.

Governments and the rich alike are fearful of this movement because they don’t know where it might lead. They are frightened of losing control over the masses so they send in the riot police who, heavily armoured and well armed, inflict as much injury as they can on those protesting, regardless of their gender or age. The idea is to cause pain so that the faint-hearted might think twice about joining another protest. Their police brutality knows no limits! Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I think that if things get too hot for our Lords and Masters, they will turn up the heat in a homicidal way. Those fools really believe that they can do something so despicable and then live the good life after

Any power that can not be justified is IMMORAL. Have we arrived at and entered the revolutionary stage where the power elite have recognised their unsuccessful attempts to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression and may be reverting to harsher and stricter measures? In such case, it’s no wonder that our resistance turns to revolution!

Throughout the European Union countries, neither the people nor the politicians have a say in what is going to happen in their country because the European Union and the International Monetary Fund are just telling them what to do. It’s a vicious circle. What they are doing will be devastating for most countries. The harsh austerity programmes imposed on bailed-out or indebted countries amount to the obliteration of hard-fought gains earned by workers in the postwar period through bitter struggles.
Learning to think outside one’s indoctrinated political bubble was for me the first step. Change has to come from the bottom up and maintain a basic set of ethics within every human on earth, an agreed convenience that what ever we do it must do no harm, definitely not to the ninety-nine percent. Political systems are only secondary and not where the real power is, if only the people could all get that, we are on a winner. We let them have that power and collectively we can take that power away.

Meanwhile, most European so-called socialist political parties have lost and are still losing power in almost all traditional areas in an expected and inevitable swing, as they failed to deliver their basic tenet……socialism for the people. Understandably, this was the result of the EU impositions on the countries. The cry for a real socialist leader for the people is louder than ever.

On the other hand, unions should drive home the importance of public ownership of essential assets. Did our government have any mandate to sell off our public assets? Any sell-off is a huge betrayal of public confidence.

It is very unfortunate that no significant encouragement or contribution towards these people’s movements have been forthcoming from the church or from the mainstream media. Are they still thinking whether we need them or they need us? Is the church still examining how its belief system justifies the fight on the side of the poor and unequal? How long is the church continuing to be employed as a political tool by the religious-right? Or are they still undecided and lack compassion and understanding or are they already bought over by the power elite? Everybody knows that religion, along with the media and every other organization in every country, should have done much more, much sooner. If so, there would be no need for Occupy movements, would there? The Occupy movement offers us an opportunity to think about ourselves, our society, our political system and our economic system. Either way, now is the time to be honest with ourselves and each other!

Undoubtedly and luckily, the shadow of Robin Hood is not lurking in the shadows but is out there encouraging and fighting with the protesters!

We don’t know what’s coming next, and that’s the good news. My advice is just of the most general sort: Dream big. Occupy your hopes. Talk to strangers. Live in public. Don’t stop. Act now. Educate and organise, as this is only the beginning. It’s the beginning of the end of the power puppet regimes.

Either we fight or we succumb to corporate capitalist dictatorship. The choice is ours! It will require courage but, if we don’t prevail, we will lose our freedoms and the predators that run our world will turn us into slaves!

“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.”
Ambrose Bierce

Joseph M. Cachia December, 2011

Email: jmcachia@maltanet.net

31, St. Lawrence Street

Vittoriosa

ID: 698736 (M)

Tel: 21807566 – 99866151