The New European Pension Credits!!!

       The horror of deprivation that exists in Greece since they were "saved" by the financial Mafia, (the Troika) doesn't get much coverage in that babbling Brook of bullshit, the media, but it is still there and likely to get worse. With the events over the last few weeks in Cyprus, where the Troika again stepped in to "save" them, we can expect the same pattern to emerge. You can take it that the "economy" in Cyprus has totally gone down the tubes. Who cares about the people, we saved the bank, or did we? Now the CEO of the third largest bank in Italy, thought to be the oldest bank in the world, has just announced that recently billions of Euro, have flown out of the banks vaults and he has no idea how much is left there. It is beginning to be come very obvious that the big money feels it can no longer trust the banksters, why should we? By the way, this bank has been bailed-out twice already, but that doesn't seem to have solved the problem.

      It is only a matter of time before the Greek standard of living becomes the norm across most of Europe, there can be no doubt that at the moment the ordinary people of Greece and Cyprus are in a race to the gutter, thanks to the help from the financial Mafia. Unless the people of Europe call a halt to this insanity of sacrificing people at the altar of finance, the cancer of poverty and deprivation will eat its way through Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland and with these countries mired in poverty, what chance for the rest of Europe to maintain its present miserable and precarious standard of living?

   Another very poignant photo from Teacher Dude's Grill & BBQ. Though taken in Greece, it could be coming to a city near you, soon, very soon.

Greek pensioner scavenging among rubbish on a Saturday afternoon, just before the city's central market closes for the weekend.

Some other Teacher Dude's photos of Greek pensioners survival methods.

ann arky's home.

An Anarchist At Heart.

 

     Kahil Gibran was not a proclaimed anarchist, but like all honest people, he was an anarchist at heart. His poetry speaks of a universality, a common bond between all people, as one of his favourite quotes makes clear, "I am not a politician, nor do I wish to become one" and "Spare me the political events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen". Where ever he stands on the political spectrum, enjoy his poetry.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931)

ann arky's home.

 

Glasgow Anti-bedroom Tax Demo and Photos.

     Glasgow's march and protest on Saturday, against the bedroom tax, was well attended and a very colourful and pleasant affair. The full spectrum of ages were represented, which is always a good sign, it means that the young are up for the struggle as well as the old die-hards. The pleasant atmosphere probably concealed the real anger felt by the majority of the people of this country against this continued assault against their living standards. It also concealed the disgust and in some cases downright hatred for the politicians and the financial mafia that rule this country. A cabal of millionaires who rule and shape this country to benefit their own wealthy class. They know it is class war, it is time we reacted in similar fashion.

      This kind of large turnout on a holiday weekend, before the brutal "austerity" cuts really start to kick in, is an indication of what has yet to come  when the real pain of this vicious policy of plundering the public purse gets into full swing.

      Sweeping changes to benefits will affect both workers and the unemployed as the Coalition’s ideology is brutally enforced. At present we have ATOS snatching disability allowance away from the sick and vulnerable. 

       From April 1st. the bedroom tax will be rolled out across the country.  The bedroom tax isn’t a tax in the real sense, but it hits you just as hard,  it’s a reduction in the amount of housing benefit that certain families will be able to claim. If you claim housing benefit and, for what ever reason, you have one or more spare bedrooms, you will be faced with a cut in the amount of benefit you receive.  A 14% cut for one spare room, and 25% cut if you have two spare rooms. It is estimated that well on the way to a million tenants will be adversely affected.

  

     Your idea of a spare room and that of our mansion living millionaire masters, will be somewhat different. Children under the age of 16 of the same gender, like it or not, are expected to share a room, while children under 10, irrespective of gender, are supposed to share the same room. What this translates as, is that we peasants, should not be expected to give our kids a room each, that sort of treatment is meant for the mansion class. For you and I, cuts in benefits, poorer living conditions, all because the bankers and bond merchants don't want to lose the money the gambled.

     As you go into this struggle, remember the rent strikes of 1915, and the poll tax of 1980/90's both resounding victories for the ordinary people of this country, both achieved by numbers and solidarity. The millionaire class can never win against the united will of the ordinary people.

ann arky's home.

Glasgow's Bedroom Tax, Day of Action.

     Time to show your anger at the millionaires booting the poor, the sick and the vulnerable.

Bedroom tax day of Day of Action

Saturday, March, 30, 2013.

Glasgow Green, 11:30.

      Let's make this the ConDem's poll tax moment.

     It is worth repeating what it is about the Bedroom Tax that we are protesting against:

   “The under occupancy penalty, does exactly what it is supposed to, it penalises. The Bedroom Tax penalises 660,000 households, and a total of nearly 2 million men, women and children are affected. According to the government’s own figures, 63% of those penalised are disabled. Nearly one quarter of those penalised are lone parents. Neither of these groups of people deserves to be punished for the Global Financial Crash in 2008. Other people affected by the Bedroom Tax include married people fleeing abusive households.

ann arky's home.

 

Which is Safest, a Bank or a Box Under the Bed.

      I keep pumping out the message that what is happening in Greece, is on its way here via Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, and now we can add Cyprus. Remember that first directive from the financial Mafia, that savings in Cyprus would be cut by up to 10%. It was thrown out by all the local politicians, so they could go back to Brussels supposedly to "discuss" the matter again, giving them and there millionaire circle of parasites time to get there money out before they came back and accepted the second and same demand, by the financial Mafia. Only this time it was rumoured that it would be 40% of savings stolen. Now the figure is going to 80% snatched from your account. Everybody is saying that is a one and only savings plunder of this type by the financial Mafia. How wrong could you be, it seems that this type of theft has been discussed by all the players in the financial Mafia club, from the US, to UK and even sunny New Zealand. It will, I have no doubt, be rolled out across all those countries that are summoned to the altar of the Trioka and told to seek a bailout. Then perhaps it could be used to supplement the "austerity" measures to encourage those mythical "green shoots of recovery". All for our benefit of course!!

      In this type of "democracy" these big decisions that can shatter the lives of millions are made in secret, by faceless suits, in sumptuous rooms in marble halls, all done and dusted away from prying eyes. Make no mistake about it, the economy in Cyprus is finished, all small and medium business will go bust, poverty and deprivation will be the norm for the unfortunate ordinary people of the sunny Mediterranean island. It will be decades of poverty and suffering for all the ordinary people, of course they can take comfort in the fact that their misery and deprivation is saving the country. Can somebody explain to me what the "country" is, if it is not its people? In true and honest language, the ordinary people are being sacrificed to save the billionaires from taking a hit on their gambling losses. We are dealing with desperate conmen, gangsters, thugs.

    This from Seeking Alpha:

     Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone "troika" officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated Dec. 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.

New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed in my last article here, indicating that this isn't just an emergency measure for troubled eurozone countries. New Zealand's Voxy reported on March 19:

The National Government [is] pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand, which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts...
Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English's favored option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank's bailout.

Read the full article HERE:

      Well now you know what they discuss at those G20 parasite get-togethers.

ann arky's home.

Circled "A" Radio, Iain McKay, part 2.

        A few weeks ago I posted Circle A's radio broadcast  of an interview with Glasgow's own Iain McKay, here is part 2 of that interview. We all know the present system exploits many of us for the benefit of the few – but how else can humans organise society for mutual benefit in a sustainable and ethical manner? This show poses questions to the knowlegdable Iain McKay, contributor to countless radical publications and editor of “Anarchist FAQ”, who discusses possible methods for anarchist inspired societal and economic organisation while providing some pretty compelling reasons for doing so!

    Enjoy Circled "A" Radio, No75, Iain McKay part 2:

ann arky's home.

A Dying Beast Can Be Dangerous.

        Cyprus is the latest European casualty in the decline of capitalism, it will not be the last, sadly the capitalist beast will not die quietly, before its final death throes, it will create a lot more damage and misery, a dying beast can be very dangerous. The living standards of the ordinary people will continue to decline to even more deplorable levels, as capitalism tries to extract a blood transfusion from the public purse. The magic wizards of the economists club will continue to spout theories for growth and predictions of green shoots, meanwhile you and I go down the tubes, waiting for that pie-in-the-sky. How far we sink will depend not on a wonderful capitalist recovery, but on what action we take to speed the demise of this cruel, unjust, exploitative, insane, greed driven system. Forget the welfare state system administered by the puppets of the corporate world, which will always be at the the mercy of the vagaries and needs and greed of the capitalists that pull the financial strings. We have to create outside the system, along the lines of communities, mutual aid and co-operation. Workers control and self-management is the only road to a society free from exploitation. All the crap about being impoverished, being necessary and for our own benefit, is no more than propaganda to try to keep you quiet and subservient while you are being screwed. The last thing they want is for the people to take matters into their own hands and shape the society in which they want to live. It is a matter of take what you get, or create what you want. Communities, communes, workers control, direct democracy, a world freed from the greed driven madness and the suicide of capitalism.

    The following is an extract from an article in the latest, The Commune:

     With an economics based upon a subjective notion of value – marginal utility – neither the Keynesians, nor the neo-liberal economists could see that value cannot be printed. With the dot.com bubble followed by a property bubble, debt ratios in the West reached record levels. The sub-prime mortgage market in the US kicked off the credit-crunch of 2007 & the outright panic of late 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers threatened the whole financial system. Banks got nationalised. Banks had their bad debts bought by the government. Governments bought back their debt from the banks, long-term as well as short-term debt, & so stopped credit money from collapsing. Taxpayers are now picking up the bill in the form of ‘austerity’: cuts to government spending & a new, more intense phase of ‘rolling back the frontiers of the state’. Because of the crisis of overproduction (too much produced relative to what the market can afford to buy sustainably) capitalism can no longer even pretend to offer humanity improved living standards. Across the globe workers are suffering. Final-pension salaries are no longer ‘affordable’. Graduates are unemployed, saddled with debt & with little prospect of having the same standard of living enjoyed by their parents. Others are ‘written-off’ whilst still at school as ‘no-hopers’ & are expected to become invisible, not to riot as many did in England in the summer of 2011. The politicians’ expenses scandal in Britain has damaged the façade of so-called ‘representative democracy’. They are increasingly hated along with the bankers. The capitalist media has also taken a knock with the phone-hacking scandal & the collusion of senior police officers at London’s Metropolitan police with Rupert Murdoch’s News International has been revealed. There is little trust left.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

Direct Action Gets The Goods.

       As it becomes more obvious by the day that we, the ordinary people, are going to have to fight if we want to even hold on to what standard of living we have, let alone try to improve it, the use of solidarity and direct action will be the most potent tool we have. In this we can learn from the past, it has all been done before, we have been in this struggle for centuries. Sometimes it might look like it is a done deal and we have lost, but as this short piece from the recent past shows, we can always win, if the determination, solidarity and the will to take direct action is carried through. We must learn the lessons of the past, this is going to be a long and bitter struggle.

      From Castlemilk, a housing scheme in Glasgow, from the past, a show of determined direct action wins the day, as told by one who was involved:

       I tell it all as if it was a day but it was actually maybe 6 months or a year of struggle.

      Campaign in Castlemilk, A group of tenants had been told that the Council are going to build a car park in their back greens. The back greens being the area in which they hung out their washing and where the kids played in safety. The people in the area were all against it and they had actually got a petition together, taken it up to the Labour club, and handed it into the Labour Club and low and behold the Labour Club lost the petition they said later, or they claimed they lost it. And therefore the peoples’ thing could not be taken any further. So by luck one of the tenants bumped into one of us and he told us about the situation.The work was about to begin in the back greens. They had knocked down a couple of the gable ends to allow bull dozers to get through into the backs. And they were going to start digging up the drying greens and the kids play areas to build this car park.

       And basically the people says to us ‘do you think there’s anything we can do about this. Nobody in the area wants this. Everybody is absolutely against the idea. We have petitioned the Labour Party through the Labour Club – they lost the petition that we handed in – and can it be stopped? ’.

      I gave the answer that I always give people that ask me that question and I answered ‘How determined are you?’ And they said they were absolutely determined about it so I asked them to get a couple of the families together, we went up and saw them, and we talked to them. We being a group of local community activists in Castlemilk, myself and a couple of the others were anarchists, some of the others had no political affiliation, there might have been one or two people in the Labour party, or some kinda left wing groups or whatever but generally I would describe the whole feeling of the thing as kinda anarchistic.

We went up and seen the people. We suggested to them that they get another petition together – no because there any value in getting a petition - but jist to give us an opportunity to go back round everybody again , talk to them on their doorstep, and ask them if they were still prepared to do something about it. We did that the next day , it was only a quad , a really small area, everybody agreed that they were against it. So we went up to the Labour Club, we said that we had another petition, but we weren’t giving it them in or whatever, and we wanted something done about it. We asked to see somebody – they refused to let us see anybody, so we went back down the road and we made our plans for the next day.

       The next day the bulldozers came and we decided just to block the whole entrance to the back greens, refused to allow the bulldozers through. And I went up and I spoke to the guy that was driving the bulldozer and explained the situation to him and as usual when you speak to other working class people they generally see the point, I will have to phone my gaffer, well that’s exactly what we want you to do, and he phoned his gaffer and he phoned his gaffer and he phoned his gaffer and before too long we had all the relevant people down at the site and that ultimately they sent for the council. When the councillors arrived ( I don’t know if it was that day) but some point in the thing, the councillors arrived in a limo, and so it went from a situation where the councillors refused to see the people but because of the direct action that we took they had to eventually come to us to see us in person. And within a very short space of time they saw that we weren’t going to allow them to build a car park in the back green and they had to cancel the whole thing.

So it was an outright victory for the people.

S. R.; and these are publicity photos?

        This is a wee exhibition that the tenants done at the time. After the victory we done these sheets and people put in their comments and pictures, newspaper cuttings, explaining how we halted the car park and we actually used these in other struggles by putting these up and we explained to people that this is how you can take things on and win the situation.

List of the material

Sheets that you can put up on walls hand made posters.

A wee folder of all the newspaper coverage at the time

People writing poems about it

Pictures taken at the time by Charlie Fisher non resident photographer (who helped with the community newspaper Castlemilk Today)

Dept of housing official papers

Minutes of the council meetings

MP letters from Westminster Teddy Taylor

And letters from Glasgow District council

Copy of petition 2 not handed in because previous one lost.

      Initially the people went to the Labour Councillors which is the obvious way to deal with the situation. They went to them, handed in a petition to the Labour Club who basically ignored them and said they lost the petition so the Labour Councillors basically refused to take up their issue for them and they were quite happy to allow it to go ahead. And because they were able to come to us the people that lived there, we advised them on how to deal with the situation and we were there with them and we managed to stop it completely and the backs were all reinstated.

Impact

     Some of the people in the campaign for the most were delighted at the victory, it was something that they thought they could not achieve in view of the fact that they had already started the work so not only did they stop the thing but they actually retrieved the thing from the ashes so to speak. I think a lot of people felt a great sense of empowerment, and certainly some were involved in other campaigns after that.

   The list of materials described above, along with many others, can be found in the John Cooper Collection listed in the Spirit of Revolt site. We hope in the near future, to have them displayed in the collection as images, along with many others.

ann arky's home.

A Chemical Breakfast & An Antibiotic Lunch.

      The recent "horse meat in our food" scandal seems to have left the front pages of our babbling brook of bullshit, the media, without any prosecutions of course. My main concern was not the horse meat, it was the fact that apparently nobody new it was there and nobody new how it got there. That being the case, what else is in our food that they don't know about and don't know how it got there?
      Mixing meats and labeling it wrongly is one thing, but shoving in all sorts of inedible substances, is quite another.

      We are not informed what the manufacturing process adds to our food, they use vague terms and subterfuge to conceal the array of chemicals they pump in to lengthen its self life, or to make it look "nicer" or whatever. However it doesn't stop there, no matter what you eat, be it meat, chicken, fish or veg.. before it reaches the processing factory, it will have been, in the case of the meat, fish, mostly farmed, chicken products, they will have been turned into antibiotic drug addicts by the chemical cocktail that they are feed from birth to slaughter, to make them grow faster, bigger and less likely to catch anything and be more docile. As for fruit and veg, well they are plastered with an amazing array of fertilisers, and pesticides that keep the chemical industry very busy. 

      I have for years been proclaiming the the food industry is in no way associated with nature, it is just another arm of the chemical industry. Long gone are the days of down on the farm, was where we got our food. It is factory farming, fish farms, (factories), and chemically controlled fruit and veg. all with devastating effects on our bodies and the environment.

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TOMORROW’S WORLD!!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about. 

ann arky's home.

Muggers In Nice Suits.

       The EU has never been about democracy, it has always been about the corporate and financial Mafia. However, it is becoming ever more obvious that they openly threaten any attempt at democracy, first with the appointment of “technocrats” to run countries over the head of the elected governments. Now, in Cyprus, they have gone into a full frontal attack on what shreds of democracy we thought were left. Now they are just going in and taking the savers money and handing it to the banks to help them sort out their self inflicted problems, also the IMF is insisting that the “deal” is not subject to a parliamentary vote. Even if it was, they would simply demand another vote until they got what they wanted. By no stretch of the imagination can responsibility for a banks problems be pinned on those who handed the bank their savings to look after for them. I believe this was an attempt to get their hands on the Russian billions in the Cyprus banks. Of course most of that will already have gone. The Cyprus banks have branches in London, and they were working normally during this little plundering exercise. So I have no doubt that the "oligarchs" will have been on the phone making the necessary arrangements to shift the loot to some other safe haven.

      It is difficult to see the difference between a saver withdrawing their money, walking outside and getting mugged, and leaving their money in the bank and having it snatched by the financial Mafia. While this mugging is going on, I hope there is nobody out there who believes that what the people say will make one iota of a difference. Now that we know that the EU is destroying what illusions of democracy that we had in Europe, will those who take up arms to defend European democracy, be labelled “freedom fighters” or “terorists”?

      It is obvious that the financial sector is one large, rich man's gamling casino, and those who lend to habitual gamblers, the bond market, must be expected to take the consequences when their favourite gambler loses, To insist that others outside the casino should be held responsible for those losses, must be labelled some sort of protection racket. The financial Mafia of the EU is a law unto itself, it takes no heed of elected governments, no heed of the consequences on the people who are driven to deprivation by their financial plundering. Cyprus is joining Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal are just a little behind, but catching up.

    Any individuals in the UK who are under an illusion that it can't happen here are in for a rude awakening. It already is, on top of all the cuts to social spending, slave labour through workfare, there is Quantitative Easing, making and circulating Mickey Mouse money, which is currency debasing, lowering its value, and the government has started looking at letting inflation, (prices) rise. All this adds up to the money in your pocket will buy less next month than it did this month, wages are stagnant, benefits are cut, this is poverty by increments. It is a downward spirral for the ordinary people ,while the millionaires/billionaires stuff the coffers with our wealth. They call it representative capitalist democracy, it is indeed no more than one big CON.

ann arky's home.

Bitter Sweeties!!

 

An appeal from IUF:

 

    IUF 

 

Urgent Action

 

 

      For all the latest news, make sure to visit the IUF website - www.iuf.org
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

         If you already responded, we thank you for your support. If not, please send a message to Mondelez!

Click here to send a message to Mondelez

      Ahmad Abdulghani Awad Abdulghani, 26 years old, worked at Cadbury Egypt, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mondelez, from 2008 to December 2011. He never had a permanent job, but was part of the army of precarious workers making chewing gum at the Alexandria factory. He lost half his thumb while operating a machine which should normally be run by three persons. Then he lost his job.

This is the same factory management that sacked 5 union leaders in June 2012 following a spontaneous protest over the company's refusal to pay a government-mandated private-sector pay rise.

      This is the same company whose management in Tunisia has dismissed and suspended union leaders and denies responsibility for these abuses.
     This is the company whose corporate management refuses to respond to communications to the IUF, the international union that represents these workers.

     The IUF has therefore filed a formal complaint for violations of international human rights standards with the relevant US government agency - and has launched a GLOBAL CAMPAIGN in defense of its members at Mondelez in Egypt and Tunisia.

     To learn about the campaign go to http://www.screamdelez.org – there you can learn more and download campaign materials for distribution to union members at Mondelez.

Click here to send a message to Mondelez - tell them to make time to rectify human rights abuses and to meet with the IUF NOW!

ann arky's home.

Industrial Diseases.

Previously posted on my sister blog ANNARKY1.

        We have come through the start of the industrial age and moved on to the hi-tec age, but every move into every industry comes with its on particular problems. Practically every industry is linked to an industrial disease. We have silicosis, lung disease prevalent among stone masons, potters grinders etc.. Then there is pneumoconiosis, mainly among coal miners, caused by breathing in fine coal dust and carbon dust. Arc-welders are at risk of manganism, manganese poisoning brought on by exposure to the toxic effects of the fumes from welding rods melting as they are used. Painters are at risk from neurological deficits from solvent‐exposure, which include impaired colour vision, cognitive defects, tremor and loss of vibration sensation. There are many more links with occupation and disease, but we are seldom told of these dangers when you apply for the job. Health and safety regulations go some way to protect workers from these dangers but usually these measures are re-active and only come after years of suffering and campaigning.
        As a young man starting my trade in the Clydeside shipyards in the 1950′s, I was ignorant of the dangers of asbestos, and as it was widely used, all of us were exposed to the horror of death from mesothelioma, an asbestos induced incurable cancer. It was not that the dangers of this substance wasn’t known, medical papers had been written about the danger from asbestos exposure as far back as the 30′s, but it continued to be used up to and including the 60′s. The employers didn’t abandon asbestos willingly, it took campaigning and legislation to finally attempt to get rid of this killer substance. That is the pattern in most of industries, its dangers are only restricted by campaigning and legislation. The profit motive drives industry, not the well being of the employee. Most industries can be made safe, but it usually requires investment in safety equipment and training and that costs money which in turn cuts into the profit. So safety in industries will always come lower down the ladder, and as times get harder, corners are cut in safety to prevent cuts in profit. The economic system we have at present does not lend itself to the welfare and well being of the workers, only when the workers control all the industries will their well being be at the fore front of production.

 

WHEN  THE TIME-BOMB GOES OFF.

The bike just sits there,

dust covering its lovely sheen,

puffing up the Fintry Hills

well, it’s no longer my scene.

Y’see, as a Clydeside apprentice

I proudly learnt the tradesman’s skill,

little did I know then

the price, asbestos lungs that kill.

Now I just sit here through the painful day

gasping each mouthful of air, wondering

how can I make the bastards pay.

They new it was a killer

a time-bomb in our lungs

but, because it was so quick and cheap

they firmly held their tongues.

So what, if it cost the workman’s life,

there’s always a couple of new workers

in the care of the worker’s wife.

Please try to understand my anger

as I and others bear their cost,

a slow death from asbestos lungs,

a vibrant life lost.

Anguish for family and friends,

all in the name of profit;

now that really does offend.

Our anger without direction

is a blind archer behind the bow,

we have to use our anger

to smash the status-quo.

ann arky's home.

Defend The Right To Peaceful Protest.

     Under the state apparatus the right to freedom of speech is always liable to attack, the state would rather we were subservient and obedient. When people start to object to how they are being treated, that's when the state takes off the gloves and it becomes bare-knuckle capitalism with repression and intimidation the tools to get you back in line and obedient. One of Glasgow's past fights to defend the right to freedom of public assemble, was the fight for freedom of speech on Glasgow Green, a fight that lasted from 1922 to 1932, and here we are now in 2013 having once again to fight for the right to public assemble, to voice our concerns on the way our society is heading. It is by continual vigilance and struggle that we hold onto what little freedoms we have, under the present system, they are continually under threat, once gone, the fight to get them back is a much harder struggle than defending them.

Defend The Right To Peaceful Protest.

An open letter from Glasgow against Atos to all Political groups / parties

And Trade Unionists.

DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PEACEFUL PROTEST.

      If you are someone who has been involved in a protest or demonstration in the past few years you may have noticed an increase in the use of certain tactics by the Police.

The brutal tactic of “Kettling”, - the enforced containment of groups of people, is used by Police routinely despite widespread public and legal condemnation of the dangers of this tactic. The Police often use riot shields and employ mounted officers in these situations in which people are corralled and crushed together sometimes for hours on end.

     Forward Intelligence Teams collect information and photograph people attending demonstrations or protests. These photographs are compiled on “Spotter Cards” which are then used to identify individuals.

      At every protest you can be sure to see at least one mobile CCTV unit monitoring the crowd and possibly a helicopter hovering overhead.

      These are not tactics that are reserved for dealing with groups which promote racial hatred such as the Scottish Defence League, but tactics that the police are using increasingly against any group of ordinary people who are voicing their concerns about issues which matter to them and their families.

Ordinary citizens such as environmental campaigners, disabled rights groups, families affected by cuts in public services must have the right to articulate their grievances without interference from the Police. They must be allowed the right of free speech and peaceful protest without attempts by the police to criminalise these basic democratic rights.

      The journalist George Monbiot reported on the misuse of police power during the Kingsnorth Climate camp Campaign. Two female protestors were attacked, arrested and remanded in prison for four days. As George Monbiot commented; “Anyone who seeks political change is treated as if they were an enemy of the public interest”, and, “that the police are turning activism into a crime”. (Guardian 22^nd June 2009).

     The human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield Q.C. remarked that; “Legitimate and peaceful mass demonstrations is being policed off the streets. Increasingly heavy –handed tactics are being employed along with the potentially dangerous practice of kettling or corralling. It is part of a general policy by successive authoritarian governments. They brook no opposition and contrive a compliant society upon which they can wreak havoc with their elitist economic policies”. (Guardian 10^th March 2013).

      During a recent trade visit to Delhi, David Cameron said of the massacre of hundreds of Indians who were protesting against oppressive laws and were shot by British troops in 1919, “We must ensure that the United Kingdom stands up for the right to peaceful protest anywhere in the world”, (The Telegraph 20 February 2013).

      When David Cameron said anywhere in the world – he meant of course anywhere except here! He doesn’t mind democracy and free speech as long as it’s somewhere else. And the politicians are quite happy to give the police a free hand to maintain their position of power and privilege.

We must stop this misuse of police power. It is a scandal that ordinary citizens are being deprived of their democratic right to protest against injustice.

We cannot stand by and watch this happen.

We are not posing a threat to democracy - the police are!

We are not breaking the law - the police are!

To this end we call on all individuals with a concern for free speech and who value the democratic right to protest, all political groups and parties, all trade unionists, all of our fellow citizens suffering repression to join us in condemnation of police harassment and intimidation.

      Although there are many divisions in society at the moment, this is something that affects all of us. We have to be united on this, - do not fall for the police’s divide and rule tactics.

The right to free speech and peaceful protest is the mark of a free society.

As Martin Luther King so eloquently said; “Freedom is never given voluntarily by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”.

      Let us remember this, and unite against those who oppose free speech!

     “Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”
― Simone Weil

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The "Shock and Awe" System.

     France and the UK, we know have special forces in Syria helping the "Free Syrian Army", the same two countries are puffing themselves up to start shipping arms into the cauldron of slaughter that is Syria today. This would be shipping Western aid to AL-Qaeda, as anybody with half an eye knows that is who the real fighting force is that is taking on the Assad regime. Assad, like all state rulers, is no democrat, but he did tolerate other religions in the country. It is  said that come Easter in the Syrian city Aleppo the streets of the city are alive to the clatter of wooden crosses being dragged across the cobbles as the Christian community openly celebrate that particular festival. With France and the UK's help that tradition will in all probability be wiped out, if the "Free Syrian Army" win this slaughter, and the Syrian Christians, like the Iraqi Christians of the last decade, will have to flee across some other border.

      Western hypocrisy is no shrinking violet, it is blatant, callous and brutal, from aiding and training the Taliban in Afghanistan, to fighting and killing the Taliban in Afghanistan, from fighting Al-qaeda, to supporting and arming Al-qaeda.  All this to further the power of the Western (dollar) Empire. Sadly it is the ordinary people that are killed in their millions to further that power. Ordinary people from the West sent to slaughter innocent people who are just like them, drivers, teachers, engineers, office workers, factory workers, etc.. Nowhere in the ranks sent to do the dirty work of killing will you fund the real beneficiaries of all this slaughter, the corporate millionaires.

    Listening to Tony Blair talking about removing Saddam from Iraq and watching the video of Baghdad, a large modern city, at the receiving end of "Shock and Awe", watching a city being pulverised and then a country's infrastructure being totally destroyed, on the pretext of removing a dictator, leaves you with a sick feeling in your stomach. Looking at Iraq today it is obvious that the medicine was worse than the disease.

      Western capitalism is totally and completely ruthless, countries can be bombed and blasted back to the stone age, as we do in the Middle East, or they can be destroyed by the financial Mafia wing of the same system, as in Greece, with others to follow. There is no golden horizon in capitalism for the ordinary people of this world, they will always be the foot soldiers of the millionaire class as it continues its quest for ever greater power and wealth. In their book, death and destruction is a price worth paying, if it protects and furthers their hold on the world's resources.

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