This episode of It's the End of the World As We Know it and I Feel Fine was made possible by contributions from slaves like you. Spank you very much! I'm a capitalist. I'm simply following the law of free enterprise. What law is that? Survival of the fittest. Maybe some people don't see it that way. Maybe they don't see it as survival of the fittest. Maybe they see it as survival of the fattest! Oh Katie... why are you so hard on me? Because you're not nice. Since when do you have to be nice to be right? You're not right. You're what's happening. One day we'll smarten up and pass some laws and put you out of business. They can pass all the laws they want. All they can do is change the rules, they can never stop the game. I don't go away. I adapt. Goooooooooooood morning slaves and welcome to another sedition of It's the End of the World as we Know it and I Feel Fine... the show where head-shots are worth 10 points! EXCELLENT! I am your host the Stimulator, and there's a saying that in this world, nothing is certain except for death and taxes. And despite the round-the-clock efforts of some of the world's top biotech engineers, scientists, and medical professionals, it’s true that even the rich fucks who rule the world still can't buy their way out the inevitability of ultimately becoming worm food. Can I ask you a question? What? How can we all have died at the same time? The salmon mousse. Buuuuuuuuuut they sure as shit don't pay fucking taxes. Yachting and equestrian competitions aside billionaires have one concern in life. And that's how to hang onto what they've got, and turn it into even fucking more. Here.... one dollar. And so it's no surprise that the super rich motherfuckers who, through their political puppets, crafted the international banking system made sure that it included an intricate network of shady fucking tax havens set up in countries all around the world. This way, they can rest comfortably in their mansions, secure in the knowledge that their vast fortunes won't be wasted on trivial things like helping to fund roads, What are you doing to the street? We're fixing it! What the hell does it look like? clean drinking water, and public schools for all of us dirty proles. Four years ago, a report was published that estimated the total value of assets stashed away in off-shore tax havens at upwards of 32 TRILLION fucking dollars. You could write off the world's debt in a day... in an hour... in a minute. That's around 42% of the combined GDP of all the countries on mothafuckin earth. Three quarters of the world's cash is hidden away in places exactly like this. This incredible pool of idle fucking wealth is shielded from public scrutiny by an army of corporate lawyers through the accounting magic of shell corporations, which are fake fucking companies set up to manage assets, and to hide exactly who owns what. An entire alternative economy and the only entry qualification is the services of a good tax lawyer. Buuuuuuuuuuut on Saturday April 3rd us lowly proles got a sneak peak behind the gilded curtain when 11.5 million confidential documents were leaked from the corporate law firm of Mossack Fonseca. Welcome to Panama. Casablanca without heroes. The so-called Panama Papers exposed the directors and shareholders of 214,000 off-shore shell corporations - a list which directly implicated five current heads of state with forty more linked via family members and close associates. In Iceland, the country's Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson was the first casualty of the leak when he was ambushed by a Swedish journalist who questioned him about his ties to an off-shore shell corporation Wintris Inc, which had a direct financial interest in the Icelandish banks that failed during the 2008 financial crisis. What country you from? Uhh... what's... what's it called... the.. WHAT ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What? Uhh... if I recall correctly... Go on! Well... uhh... it's a... The day after the crisis broke peeps in Iceland took to the streets in the largest protests the tiny nation has ever seen. Over 10,000 peeps surrounded parliament in the country's capital Reykjavik, hurling eggs and fruit, and demanding that the Prime Minister resign. And, in fact, he tendered his resignation the next fucking day. You're fired! Protests have also taken place in Argentina, after it was revealed that the country's right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, who was elected on a platform of fighting corruption, had failed to disclose his connections to two off-shore companies named in the leak. He has too many off-shore companies, which shows his interest has always been money laundering. And in Europe, Britain's posh pig-fucking PM Why would you call me a pig fucker? Well.. let's see. First of all... you fuck pigs! Oh yeah! found himself also in the hot seat What country you from? I think it's the wrong premise of the question. after leaked documents revealed that his father, Ian Cameron, used a shell corporation in the British-administered Virgin Islands to avoid paying tax for more than 30 fucking years. In a hilarious display of tone-deaf arrogance, and solemn fucking indignation that only rich Brits are capable of pulling off, Cameron responded to the scandal One of the country's leading tax lawyers Graham Erinson QC, has stated, unequivocally, that this was, and I quote, a perfectly normal type of collective investment fund. Englishmen - you're all so fucking pompous On Saturday April 9th, thousands of members of Britain's lower classes held a protest outside 10 Downing Street to demand Cameron's resignation, which led to some minor clashes with the fuzz. EXCELLENT! Protestors have vowed to continue holding protests until the pig-fucker resigns... so it'll be interesting to see where this goes. The Panama Papers were just a tiny fucking peak into the greasy world of finance capitalism. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut the reality is that shell corporations and off-shore banking are a completely common fucking practice. And while it's fun to watch individual politicians squirm as their personal connections to this vast ponzi scheme are revealed, at the end of the day it's just a drop in the bucket. Capitalism doesn't produce bad apples... the whole fucking system is rotten to its core. I'm from a little place called Great Britain. But I don't know if I love or hate Britain. These words upon my page written the things that make or break Britain. You see I'm from a little place called Great Britain But I don't know if I love or hate Britain. These words upon my page written the things that make and break Britain. One inch... to the left to the left coulda been the difference between life and death Knife wound to the heart or the side of the chest. Could have been one statistic less. See sometimes Great Britain ain't that great. Kids get stabbed at an alarming rate. Press with a passion to exaggerate increasingly clueless heads of state. You see knife crime knife crime ain't about knives. It's about young Britain and ways of life. You don't solve knife crime by taking knives to hand. You solve it by instilling new hopes and plans. You've got positives though, I swear it's true. North, south, east, west and the middle too. Got diversity that shines right through. Who makes the best music in the world? We do! Two weeks ago, me and my subMedia slaves put out a brief report on the insurrectionary fever gripping France, where multiple flashpoints of resistance had just converged into a massive fucking general strike on March 31st. Buuuuuuuuuuuut, it turns out that shit was just getting started! After more than a million fucking people took to the streets of France on the 31st, a sizable crew from the Paris contingent decided to keep the party going, and launched an occupation of the Place de la République, dubbed Nuit Debout, which in English roughly translates into Rise up at Night. Similar to the M15 plaza occupations that swept across Spain in 2011 the Nuit Debout movement has transformed public squares into vibrant hubs of collective activity, where participants hold general assemblies, then spend the night debating politics, and hosting free skill-sharing workshops, film screenings and concerts. In a cute fucking nod to the French Revolution... Nuit Debout participants have even adopted a new revolutionary calendar, with the second day of the occupations, April 1st, rechristened as March 32nd... and April 2nd renamed March 33rd... and... uhhh.... you get the fucking idea. Math problems. Anyway, these occupations spread quickly across France, and have since hopped its fucking borders. The evening of mmmmm.... March 40th? saw Nuit Debout occupations in 33 cities across France, as well as cities in Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Spain. And while the occupation sites themselves have so-far remained relatively family friendly spaces of collective revelry and revolutionary joie de vivre, the streets surrounding them continue to be flashpoints of militant fucking resistance. Every...body... hates...the...police! All across the country, rowdy night demos have taken place, striking students have blockaded their schools, militants have choked railways, occupied train stations, smashed up banks and shops, redecorated the offices of the ruling Partie Socialiste, barricaded roads, and fought pitched street battles with the French fucking po-po. Masked street-fighters have made excellent use of projectiles, relentlessly pelting the pigs with bottles rocks, and flares, and have demonstrated an incredible proficiency for pyrotechnics. Check this shit out! Yup... France has been throwing down fucking hard for over a month now much to the delight of revolutionaries and riot porn junkies worldwide. And the situation of generalized unrest still shows shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Much to the dismay of France's mopey faced President, Francois Hollande, whose government has been scrambling to come up with the right mix of repression and political concessions to bring things back under control... to no fucking avail! While this movement first crystallized around shared opposition to the so-called Loi de Travail, it has since transformed into a generalized insurrection against capitalism, the police, and the entire political system that upholds the miserable status fucking quo. And through their shining example peeps in France have captured the imagination of millions of pissed off peeps around the world. Je suis Paris. Je suis Paris. Nous sommes unis. Ensemble... Je suis Paris. Nous sommes touts Paris. Soooo... to learn more about just what the fuck is going down, I recently caught up with the members of Désaphilliation, a crew of autonomous troublemakers currently occupying the Phillia building at Nanterre University west of Paris. Hey y'all.. how the fuck are you? We're fucking great! Since the general strike of March 31st, we've seen the spread of public occupation and general assemblies known as Nuits Debout, or Rise up at Night. What’s the composition of the peeps taking part in these occupations? And what types of discussions are taking place at these assemblies? Well... peeps from all places, social conditions and political opinions from far left to far right. The dynamics behind is very anticapitalist but not essentially anti-authoritarian. Mix of marxists and libertarians. There's discussions about everything but there's very little idea of developing autonomy. It's mostly about how to reform the State and our society in general to fix all our problems. Still, there's interesting connections being built with squatter communities and other militant collectives in general to organize daily lives on the camp - discussions, popular kitchens, etc... Many peeps have pointed to the Nuits Debout as France's version of the Spanish Indignatos, or North American Occupy movements. Both of these earlier movements were hampered by the widespread pacifism of many of their participants. That said, the occupations in France grew out of a pre-existing movement that has and continues to regularly engage in direct action and militant street tactics. How has this affected the dynamics of the occupations and assemblies themselves? Are there still lots of arguments taking place around violent vs nonviolent tactics? The question of so-called violent action fully divides these occupations. But this violence doesn't come from nowhere. For decades, police abuse has been growing and targeting specific communities... immigrants, women, people of colour... Young people destroy banks and police stations to protest the dictat of money and police. Many of the voices heard at #NuitDebout - commenting livestreams or talking at GAs - oppose these violent protestors, but they are just the talkative minority and most people really don't have a problem with burning banks and rental cars. Also the division around violent action is interesting in the case of oppressed minorities. In Lyon, for instance, a few days ago for their first #NuitDebout, women and non-binary peeps tried to organize a safer place outside of patriarchal domination, but they faced a shitstorm of angry men - but not only - who felt like they were trying to divide the movement and create new top-down systems, when they were just trying to organize against a system of domination that we still find in anticapitalist movements. France has been living under a state of emergency since last November's terrorist attacks. What effect has this had on peeps' day-to-day lives? The state of emergency barely brings anything new. It's about generalizing and normalizing of practices that were already present - mass surveillance, searching and patting people on the streets, controls based on the colour of their skin, or their clothes. Demonstrations are still illegal, unless you declare people responsible for them, but the repression of spontaneous demos has been accentuated. It's not very common for peaceful protests just hanging around to face teargas and sticks, and to be rounded up and all taken to the police station for identity verification. French youth have played a strong role in the current movement with tens of thousands of high school students taking part. What is driving teenagers in France to take to the streets in such numbers... and how has their participation affected the tone and the orientation of the broader movement? It's a very French thing for young people to be mobilized in social struggles. This is reinforced by the French scholar system, in which high school is the last school with true social mix. High schoolers are usually more aware of the misery, chaos and repression happening in France than the average French workers. The mobilized high-schoolers do not really fight for a specific political and social project, but they are always among the first mobilized to fight and tear down the existing oppressive structures. Regarding work law reform in particular high schoolers usually see Work as an oppressive institution and not a tool for emancipation. They have parents, or friends' parents who suffer daily from their working conditions, and they don't want such situations to be generalized and accepted by everyone. I think it's very interesting to see that the vast majority of them are not organized or affiliated to any political organization in particular. There's small groups of very organized young people making GAs and protests happen, but when the police come to beat everyone up, a lot of high-schoolers just find it very normal to throw stones and bottles at the police, without even masking their faces. It's a very dangerous practice for them, but it reveals something deeper in French society. Violence from the police is so deeply entrenched in our daily lives that fighting the cops doesn't require any preparation or extraordinary circumstances. They just do it. What roles have French trade and student unions played in the current wave of unrest? Unions supposedly organize the struggle, at least legally and mediatically. But they barely do anything out of their own little interest as the elite of the workers and students movements. They develop arguments against labour law reform but refuse to see further, as they fear their goal of massifying the movement will be contradicted by a coherent and complete list of revendications: abolition of wage slavery, autonomy and cooperation. Their only goal is to defend their own political interests, to just be part of the show as long as they can. In the end they're all about bureaucracy and reform. How has the recent situation in the Calais jungle, and the migrant crisis in general affected the current unrest? The migrant crisis has been a revelation to those wanting to see the true nature of the Socialist regime and its police state that's just as terrible as what we had with Sarkozy - similar to the Obama administration in the US. For years now, migrants have been targeted by low-intensity counterinsurrectionary measures. They were not systematically physically abused - although it is not uncommon for migrants to be assaulted and mugged by representatives of the State - but every time they try to organize and build camps to gather solidarity, their tents and stuff are taken, until they're all sleeping on the streets without blankets again. This is something we can particularly see with the House of Refugees, a squat where hundreds of migrants were living in Paris. There had been negotiations with city officials under the supervision of the Human Rights League. The officials had promised to provide housing to everyone regardless of their administrative situation - refugees... undocumented... and that the eviction would be a voluntary evacuation without any intervention by the police. Two days before the legal date set by the Judge during the trial, hundreds of armed police officers, riot police, civilian police and anti-terrorist units, closed off the whole square and rushed the building, destroying much equipment and making sure all the migrants boarded buses without knowing their destination. The presence of the army in Calais, the formation of special units of the riot police to handle the migrant crisis, and the fact that European and Turkish military regularly attack migrant boats on the sea to let them drown is just symptomatic of the police state emerging throughout European democracies and of the way we treat people falling out of the mold of the French white man working and paying bills. Thanks y'all. And that about does it for this sedition of It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. In case you didn’t know, I post a playlist of all the music I played on the show on our fuckin website: From there you can also leave me a love poem, subscribe to my podcast and guacamail newsletter or drop me a few bucks to help keep the tacos rolling like the following wage slaves who broke me off some in the last couple of weeks. So big ups to.... Steven, Andrew, Jay, Karlis, Steve, Nicodemus, Jonathan, Janne, Jan, John, Jaime, SpikeonWater, Per, Kevin, Bear, Flyn, Michael, Bruno, Sacha, William, Sebastian, Gabriel, Nicolas, Liam, Carly, Bunker Films, Juliano, Stephen, Sebastien, Samantha, Coby, Dino, Brian, Mathieu, Andrew, Lauren, Evan, Dylan, Harry, James, Joseph, Marisol, Michael, Harrison, and Kirk. Mezcal! The following slaves are the newest members of the Taconspiracy: Juliano, IDC and Dylan Pulque! With that said, give em hell, don’t stop believing and burn it all down! Hasta la pasta mutherfuckers!