Stashing the booty

It's The End Of The World As We Now It And I Feel Fine, 2016-04-18 sedition.

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,

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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!