Living Abroad on next to nothing: A 12 step programme Want to experience living abroad? Too busy or too poor to afford to go? No problem, just follow our twelve easy steps, to try what half of humanity experiences every day. First: take out the furniture: leave Seventh: cancel all the newspapers a few old blankets, a kitchen table, and magazines. Throw out the books. maybe a wooden chair. You’ve never You won’t miss them - you are had a bed, remember? illiterate. One radio is now left for the whole shantytown. Second: throw out your clothes. Each person in the family may keep the Eighth: no more postman, government, oldest suit or dress, a shirt or fireman, services. The two - blouse. The head of the family has classroom school is 3 miles away, but the only pair of shoes. only 2 of your 7 children attend anyway, and they walk. Coca Cola has reached more Third: all kitchen appliances have vanished. Keep a box of matches, a Ninth: no hospital, no doctor. The villages in the Third World small bag of flour, some sugar and nearest clinic is now 10 miles away than has safe drinking water salt, a handful of onions, a dish of with a midwife in charge. You get dried beans. Rescue those mouldy there by bus or bicycle, if you’re or oral rehydration formula. potatoes from the rubbish bin: those lucky enough to have one. are tonight’s meal. Tenth: throw out your cheque books, “Not Pepsi, but Water!” - Fourth: dismantle the bathroom, shut stock certificates, pension plans, Slogan of the National Alliance off the running water, take out the insurance policies. You now have a wiring and the lights and everything cash hoard of £3. of People’s Movements, India that runs by electricity. Eleventh: get out and start Fifth: take away the house and move cultivating your three acres. Try the family into the toolshed. hard to raise £150 in cash crops because your landlord wants one-third Sixth: by now all the other houses in and your moneylender 10 percent. the neighbourhood have disappeared; instead there are shanties - for the Twelfth: find some way for your fortunate ones. children to bring in a little extra money so you have something to eat most days. But it won’t be enough to keep bodies healthy - so lop off 25 to 30 years of life. Workers and how to deal with them Without the workers no copper would be collectively then there is a possibility they’ll scroungers - keep them apart from each other Another of our great weapons is the mass mined, no oil refined, no computer systems r e bel. Treat such outbreaks extremely and the truth. They are geographically media. They are always trying to work out designed, no coffee grown and there would seriously - contain them, isolate them and isolated - reduce their price (mainly how their world works, desperate to make no b ody to clear up afterwards. They are the crush them ruthlessly. determined by their resistance) by playing off sense of it all. Present them with an illusion greatest and most valuable commodity in the A certain surplus of workers is essential one area against another. If wages or health that seems coherent. Give them ‘facts’, offer world financial system. Let us have a look at since it lowers their resistance and their and safety conditions are too great in them experiences that fit into our fra m e w o r k how they work. price. Keep them employable (through Manchester transfer production to and our world view. They are self maintaining and self schemes such as New Deal) and the law of Ma n c h u r i a . We can use mass media, make them bel i e v e re p r o ducing - some of them even seem to supply and demand will apply. Greater Give them ways to fight back - all futile. an ything. They’ll even come to see media enjoy it. They can be programmed from an surpluses are a problem since they start Ha ve them vote for different representatives consumption as a leisure activity- by early age - to get accustomed to an 8 hour organising independently. It is imperative to force them to do what we want. Let them consuming more adverts, more caricatures of working day, to obey orders, to push the right this never happens. While other surpluses can fight for ‘their rights’ - it keeps them busy. ev e r yday life then they will be happier. Create button at the right time. Most impor tantly to be burnt in the field or buried in the ground Let them form unions to fight for a bigger slice false desires and false needs, sell more and believe that their life belongs to us not them. it is not necessarily advisable to deal with of the crumb. If things get really bad give pacify more. In the end they will see Their creativity can be harnessed. Buy it up workers this way- you don’t want to make concessions such as Wel f are Benefits or the themselves as mere spectators of the world as soon as possible - it is a dangerous thing if them angry. If it comes to it, tell them that NHS - they’ll let you privatise them again around them and not active parti c i p a n t s . left free. Without their ability to get the job there is no other option and do it from 1500 la t e r . These methods act as a safety valve to Un fo r tunately there will never be a world done despite our interference we would not be fee t . stop real change. without workers - at least not one in which where we are toda y . We can then sell their Ho w e v e r , there are many other ways to The lottery is a valuable myth we must we can make profits. They have kept us for pr o duce back to them at a profit - that’s how control them and stop them reaching their continually push. Convince them that they hundreds of years - if we act wisely they will the system works. tr u e pot e n t i a l : to o can become a ‘success’ - they could start by co n t i n u e to do so. It is a matter of confidence, Un fo r tunately they sometimes want to Divide them - black/white, male/fem a l e , serving burgers in McDonalds and end up a and stamping on theirs. Create an illusion so live for themselves rather than us. However, employed/unemployed. Make use of any successful international executive. Do not let co n vincing they will never believe anyt h i n g individually they do not pose a problem - buy division to stop them acting collectively. For them know that they have a greater chance of else is possible. Remember never let them them off or lock them up. If they realise their example when cutting welfare benefits blame dying of CJD. They are often optimistic - let know that we are powerless if they act individual aspirations can be achieved it on immigrants, on single parents, work-shy them carry that optimism to a paupers grave . co l l e c t i v e l y . We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom. 19 Wh o’s waiting in the wings From the cockpit of an F-16 flying at 5,000 metres, refugees (which has now reached more than one 4) The World Bank is already providing some post- you can’t see, nor smell, nor be sprayed with the million) and rapes, it is now clear that NATO and war reconstruction scenarios, and stocks in blood of “collateral damage.” The sensory reality its political leaders knew that this would have European construction companies have been buoyant of war has been cleaned away from the “productive” been the case before the bombing started. So what since the beginning of hostilities. activity of the warrior, as it has from the is the rationale behind NATO’s inhuman agenda? 5) The war in Yugoslavia, with its heavy demand on language of NATO’s reports on the alleged the military budget of the NATO countries, may also “mistakes.” Here we cannot fail to notice the The inhuman agenda of NATO (and WTO, and IMF, and serve more immediate domestic goals, by helping to institutional, racist cynicism of NATO, which OECD, and G8...) justify (in the name of war spending and investment weighs the lives of Serbian children and other To understand this war, we must see it in the in the reconstruction) the dismantling of the civilians and finds them less important, and less context of economic globalisation and the deepening European and US welfare systems. politically sensitive, than those of Western of the capitalist crisis (reflected in the collapse 6) It also gives US and European capital control soldiers. This, however, is trading the human of the Asian economies, the profit stagnation in over a region that is rich in mineral resources rights of some - in this case mostly innocent Europe, and the increasing social opposition to and is strategically located at the cross-roads civilians - at the expense of the human rights of further liberalisation and austerity) and the between Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the others with NATO as self-appointed judge of their longer term strategy of bringing Eastern Europe Middle East, thus dominating some of Europe’s most relative value.