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"Which is the greater crime, to rob a bank or to own one?''
- Bertolt Brecht
Back by popular demand!
After a short absence, our "quote of the week" feature returns with this gem from Bertolt Brecht's satire of decaying & rotting capitalism, The Three-Penny Opera, sent to us by one Mrs EH Jones of Treharris Street, Roath.
As our many readers and correspondents know our site aims to be the 'voice of the streets'.
If you have a favourite quote why not send it to our Big Red Postbag at: respect_yourself_cardiff@hotmail.co.uk
We receive a high volume of emails and correspondence, but will endeavor to reply to all enquiries, comments as soon as humanly possible.
"When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist”
Dom Helder Camara (1909 - 1999)
In the 60s and 70s many Latin American catholics became radicalised. Dom Helder Camara was part of this wave, in his seminal 1971 text, The Spiral of Violence, he observed how violence built up at three levels in a society: Primary violence is the everyday effect of structurally ingrained social injustice. This generates secondary violence - the revolt of the oppressed. And that in turn provokes tertiary violence - repression by the powerful to secure their privileged position. And so the spiral of violence tightens
"While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Eugene Debs, American Socialist, 1918 at his trial for sedition for agitating against the first world war.
On Wednesday, Binyam Mohammed turned 30. He's the last British citizen to be detained in the US concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay and was tortured with the support of the UK government in Morrocco and Afghanistan. We will continue to campaign for Binyam's release, the closure of Guantanemo Bay, an end to the attacks on our civil liberties, and the defeat of our rulers 'war on terror'.
"That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through.
But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were."
The Nationalist parties have indicated that in the event of a hanged parliament after the next election they would be prepared to prop up the Tories. This follows them coming within a whisker of forming a coalition in the Assembly in 2007 that would have seen the Tories brought into power in Wales, such scabbing cannot be tolerated and is alien to the best traditions of working class struggle in Wales.
"Which is the greater crime, to rob a bank or to own one?''
