Kids.

       
           I wonder what George Orwell would make of today's society, with its total surveillance, quarantine, curfews, lockdowns, travel bans, alienation from those around us and vaccination certificates. Would he rewrite 1984 and date it 2020-21. It is difficult to imagine just how far we have walked down the obedience path, the submissive population, waiting for our next set of instructions. All for our own good of course, in the meantime the rich have increased their wealth and power, millionaires have become billionaires. Meanwhile we the ordinary people have suffered a shackling of our freedoms and are now faced with having to pay for this corporate plundering of the public purse, which was all organised and assisted by the state. We will face closures to social facilities and services as it is pointed out the we have to get the debt mountain down, not those who benefited massively from this pandemic.
        I tend to moan a lot about not enough anarchist pamphlets, serials, magazines, journals etc. on our streets, so I always like to publicise any I come across. The following is an extract from the new issue of "The Local Kids" which is free to download and distribute:

          Population management is now supposedly the responsibility of everyone. Obedience to the state has been dressed up as solidarity. More surveillance is called freedom. All in the name of a return to normal life that appears as a mirage in the desert. Should we rehash for the umpteenth time a comparison to 1984? Its author might have thought that it takes a continuous and considerate effort to see what’s right in front of your nose; can we truly say that? Is it difficult to see what’s going on? Or is it that we speak different languages and will find no common understanding of life?
        We could jump into the fray, unveil their lies, battle for the real meaning of words, uphold a correct perception of reality. But then we would be entering the realm of politics where we can only fight with words without radically changing the narrative. A stubbornness that can have its value to demonstrate the absurdism of society. But only by refusing to do politics can we challenge the power of this system over our lives. That also means that we cannot pretend to have solutions at hand for the crises we’re passing through. The existence of capitalism is based in the progressive destruction of the living conditions of all living beings.
       The blackmail has always been the same; we should do as they say or our own survival is at stake. We’re held hostages in the name of the economy, the nation, and now public health. Our health is instrumentalised in their disgusting game of politics – the legitimisation for an expansive surveillance; tracing whom we met, where we have been, where we will go to. Expanding control to a level where it becomes normal that going to the movies necessitates carrying the right certificates and surrendering our data. Triggering the most basic of fears – the fear of death, of loss – they mobilize obedience to fulfil their dirty dreams of authority: lockdowns, curfews, border closures.
      Seeing this summer which is marked by extreme weather, wildfires and floods – products of the exploitation of the planet – this will be more and more the reality of this society. There are no pragmatic proposals to be made. The wager stays the same, to refuse their game (false choices between quick and superficial fixes to real crises), to be lucid and sabotage the vicious cycle of domination.

Summer 2021

Free download, PDF (A4)

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Open Prison.

      We should have learned by now that in this manipulative system the state doesn’t always need physical constraints, a conditioned mind is prison bars enough, to make the individual feel they are free and part of a free and normal society. To the conditioned mind the prison walls are invisible, the illusion of freedom appears so real it is accepted. To keep the illusion alive, the system has its prison warders in the shape of the education system, the media, corporate advertising and state propaganda, that is usually enough to keep the majority of the population reasonably content in their illusion of freedom, and to shape their needs and desires. For those who don't accept this illusion of freedom, then there is always the more brutal loaded judicial system and prison cages of repression.
     We have in most cases willingly assisted in our own enslavement by the embracing modern technology. Not that the technology itself is inherently enslaving, but our acceptance of the belief that the corporate world’s control and development of such technology is progress. Progress, an ambiguous word that can conceal an illusion. Technology has bound us to the owners and developers of that technology. One example, in the not too distant past, games were usually very simple and also very enjoyable. All they required was a ball, a couple of sticks, something to throw, a bat etc. nothing complicated, but enjoyed my millions across the planet. Today games are complicated apparatus that we could never make on our own, to enjoy the new “games” we have to put ourselves in the hands of the corporate bodies that own and control that technology, and with their dictate of progress they will be outdated and you will need to buy into the new and much more sophisticated model. You are on the technology gravy train, not as an enjoyer of the gravy, but as the producer of the gravy, for the few in control to lap up.
     As long as growth is seen as progress, increase in consumption will be necessary, and the powers that be will devise, through their usual conditioning endeavours, ways and means to put new and costly products as symbols of happiness, success and status. A quote from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, encapsulates that line of thought. When asked why are the works of William Shakespeare are banned, the controller replies, ‘Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here’. ‘Even when they’re beautiful?’. ‘Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones’”. I think Huxley has thrown us a warning there, as did Orwell, we ignore them at our peril.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

A mixture Of Alice In Wonderland And George Orwell.

       The mainstream media is the biggest manufacturer of lies we have ever witnessed. It fills the role of the state's mouthpiece and through misinformation, lies and distortions, creates the reality the state wants you to believe. It is a fog creating machine to blind the public from the reality in which they live. In this fabricated reality, truth is a far away island that has yet to be discovered. I formed this point of view many many years ago, and since then have seen nothing except evidence that reinforces that view.

      The following is a little piece I wrote approximately ten years ago, in those passing ten years the mainstream media has sank further into the mire of the world of putrid lies, misinformation and distortions, it has become the proud prostitute of the state.

Picture by John Hartfield. 

 

Some everyday headlines, WE ARE SPREADING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ. AFGHANISTAN IS A WESTERN SUCCESS. THE FREE MARKET SPREADS PROSPERITY. THIS YEAR WE WILL TACKLE AFRICA'S POVERTY.        

         Who so ever reads the bourgeois press will become blind. Slowly the fog rises, lies build on lies, lies spawn lies, lies shape your vision and reality is lost in a false consciousness. Trivia and mediocrity fill the mind, seek reality outside the putrid puss and you are deemed to be mad, a raving lunatic, possessed. The media teaches us all we need know of scandal and sport, crime and sex, who slept with who and where, depicting life as a smutty peepshow. Through the bourgeois press you’re fed your daily dose of loathsome lies, banal boring bromide, cliched crap, trivia and petty pulp. Our leaders are portrayed as heroes, supermen, and so the lies breed lies, and lies stretch back into the distant past, lies distort history until it is lost in a bizarre deformed fabrication. We then repeat the disasters of yesterday because the lies are everywhere blinding us. We can’t relate to reality, reality always takes us by surprise because we have no grip of reality, only the lies.

From ''Mein Kampf''
        "All this was inspired by the principle that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the (public) more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."   Adolf Hitler.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Trust And False Narratives.

        Where is the truth, how do we find it in the smoke and mirrors of the state propaganda mouthpiece, the mainstream media? How many of us live the false narrative of the state, seeing "our people" as special, better, different, while those "others" over there are in some way inferior, to be treated with suspicion and to be feared. The appalling treatment of migrants is one living proof of the result of this poisonous narrative. Wars are built on false narratives, otherwise would the bus driver want to go overseas to kill the shop assistant, or the gardener want to kill the plumber from over there? States can't exist without a false narrative, how else would they keep their wealth, power and privileges, while the rest of us struggle from week to week? How else would they get their citizens to send their sons and daughters across the sea to kill some other parents' sons and daughters? Our system is built on false narratives. One way to see through the false narratives is to abolish borders, see all humanity as our brothers and sisters, see our differences and admire at the variety, live with a system of mutual aid, sustainability, co-operation and seeing to all our people's needs, free from the profit motive. Put an end to wealth accumulation, privileges, and power over another. A difficult job, but do you see an alternative?

              An interesting extract from from Tony Kevin, (retired Australian diplomat.) 

Truth, Trust and False Narratives

          Let me now turn to some theory about political reality and perception, and how national communities are persuaded to accept false narratives. Let me acknowledge my debt to the fearless and brilliant Australian independent online journalist, Caitlin Johnstone.
          Behavioural scientists have worked in the field of what used to be called propaganda since WW1. England has always excelled in this field. Modern wars are won or lost not just on the battlefield, but in people’s minds. Propaganda, or as we now call it information warfare, is as much about influencing people’s beliefs within your own national communityas it is about trying to demoralise and subvert the enemy population.
       The IT revolution of the past few years has exponentially magnified the effectiveness of information warfare. Already in the 1940s, George Orwell understood how easily governments are able to control and shape public perceptions of reality and to suppress dissent. His brilliant books 1984 and Animal Farm are still instruction manuals in principles of information warfare. Their plots tell of the creation by the state of false narratives, with which to control their gullible populations.
         The disillusioned Orwell wrote from his experience of real politics. As a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War, he saw how both Spanish sides used false news and propaganda narratives to demonise the enemy. He also saw how the Nazi and Stalinist systems in Germany and Russia used propaganda to support show trials and purges, the concentration camps and the Gulag, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, German master race and Stalinist class enemy ideologies; and hows dissident thought was suppressed in these controlled societies. Orwell tried to warn his readers: all this could happen here too, in our familiar old England. But because the good guys won the war against fascism, his warnings were ignored.
          We are now in Britain, U.S. and Australia actually living in an information warfare world that has disturbing echoes of the world that Orwell wrote about. The essence of information control is the effective state management of two elements, trust and fear, to generate and uphold a particular view of truth. Truth, trust and fear: these are the three key elements, now as 100 years ago in WWI Britain.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Democracy, The World's Most Misused Word.

       Very often an arrest in this society is not just the loss of freedom for one person, it is a deliberate attack on the free flow of information. Especially information regarding the dealings of "our" representatives, a lot of which takes place behind closed doors. Decisions are made that dramatically affect all our lives, but we are not privy to those decision making processes. The government and the people are two entirely different entities, the government assumes the right to know everything about you, but you are not allowed to know all about the government. This arrangement is safeguarded by a vast array of secret service agencies, which work away diligently protecting the institution of the state, and the power and privileges of those who are in control. We, the ordinary people, will be fed misinformation, lies, trivia, propaganda, and overdoses of the culture of the celebrity, all bubble gum and candy floss to keep us happy and our thoughts away from what controls our lives, and in a lot of cases, our death. 

     Democracy is probably the most misused and most misunderstood word on our planet, our representatives will spout it as what we have, and what the state is trying to protect. However, democracy, if it ever has lived, is most certainly an alien land to the society we inhabit today, an anathema to the state.

      Those individuals who dare expose this subterfuge and duplicity, and to pass on to the public these inner dark dealings of the state are vilified, persecuted and in most case silenced. Lies and subterfuge are the daily tools of the secret agencies, and with the sophisticated surveillance techniques of the modern world, all of us are suspect, and can and are, monitored in our every day actions. The world of trivia and fantasy that swamps our lives is the state's propaganda wing issuing us with paracetamol to take away the pain, in an attempt to keep us happy and our thoughts away from the world we actually inhabit.

      Sorry George Orwell, we ignored you.

The following is an extract from an article by Chris Hedges:

         We have watched over the last decade as freedom of the press and legal protection for those who expose government abuses and lies have been obliterated by wholesale government surveillance and the criminalizing of the leaking and, with Julian’s persecution, publication of these secrets. The press has been largely emasculated in the United States. The repeated use of the Espionage Act, especially under the Obama administration, to charge and sentence whistleblowers has shut down our ability to shine a light into the inner workings of power and empire. Governmental officials with a conscience, knowing all of their communications are monitored, captured and stored by intelligence agencies, are too frightened to reach out to reporters. The last line of defense lies with those with the skills that allow them to burrow into the records of the security and surveillance state and with the courage to make them public, such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond, now serving a 10-year prison term in the United States for hacking into the Texas-based private security firm Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The price of resistance is high not only for them, but for those such as Julian willing to publish this information. As Sarah Harrison has pointed out: “This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.”
       Even if Julian were odious, which he is not, even if he carried out a sexual offense, which he did not, even if he was a poor houseguest—a bizarre term for a man trapped in a small room for nearly seven years under house arrest—which he was not, it would make no difference. Julian is not being persecuted for his vices. He is being persecuted for his virtues.
        His arrest eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities carried by the Ecuadorian, British and U.S. governments in the seizure of Julian two months ago from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London are ominous. They presage a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes, especially war crimes, carried out by the global ruling elite will be masked from the public. They presage a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power, no matter what their nationality, will be hunted down around the globe and seized, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms. They presage an Orwellian dystopia where journalism is outlawed and replaced with propaganda, trivia, entertainment and indoctrination to make us hate those demonized by the state as our enemies.
     The arrest of Julian marks the official beginning of the corporate totalitarianism and constant state surveillance, now far advanced in China, that will soon define our lives. The destruction of all protection of the rule of law, which is what we are witnessing, is essential to establishing an authoritarian or totalitarian state.
       The BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell was locked out of WeChat in China a few days ago after posting photos of the candlelight vigil in Hong Kong marking 30 years since student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were gunned down by Chinese soldiers in June 1989.
“Chinese friends started asking on WeChat what the event was?” he wrote. “Why were people gathering? Where was it? That such questions were coming from young professionals here shows the extent to which knowledge of Tiananmen 1989 has been made to disappear in China. I answered a few of them, rather cryptically, then suddenly I was locked out of WeChat.”
In order to get back on WeChat he had to agree that he was responsible for spreading “malicious rumors” and provide what is called a faceprint.
“I was instructed to hold my phone up—to ‘face front camera straight on’—looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to ‘Read numbers aloud in Mandarin Chinese.’ My voice was captured by the App at the same time it scanned my face.”
        Governmental abuse of WeChat, he wrote, “could deliver to the Communist Party a life map of pretty much everybody in this country, citizens and foreigners alike. Capturing the face and voice image of everyone who was suspended for mentioning the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary in recent days would be considered very useful for those who want to monitor anyone who might potentially cause problems.”
This is almost certainly our future, and it is a future that Julian has fought courageously to prevent.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

The Omnipresent Surveillance State.

        I, like many others have scribbled away, in anger, at the ever growing threat from the  onslaught of surveillance that is relentlessly entwining every fibre of our existence. It is spreading like a plague, it is insidiously multiplying in the background, growing in sophistication and increasing the state's power over us all. Worse still, it now works with and for the corporate juggernaut. It trolls your personal habits, likes and dislikes and targets you with consumer crap. What the corporate world knows about you will be shared with the state's policing agents. This will be building up a very detailed picture of you, you will be monitored, profiled and assessments made of your loyalty to the state's aims. You are all guilty until proven innocent, and even then, you will continue to be monitored and profiled until the day you die. 

     We have sleep walked into George Orwell's 1984, and we still haven't rubbed our eyes to wake up to this reality, time is running out.

     The following is an extract from a very detail article on the surveillance subject by John W. Whitehead. Though it refers to America, we would be naive in the extreme to harbour the thought that some how we are different in this country, we are not. The spider's web of surveillance, is at this moment monitoring and profiling you and yours. I recommend you read the full article.

The Omnipresent Surveillance State:

--------Here’s what a lot of people fail to understand, however: it’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted. We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter.

Say hello to the new Thought Police.
     Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State, as omnipresent as God, is used by the government to predict and, more importantly, control the populace, and it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA is now designing an artificial intelligence system that is designed to anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA will feed vast amounts of the information it collects to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer can then use to detect patterns and predict behavior.

No information is sacred or spared.
       Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared freely with its agents in crime: the CIA, FBI and DHS. One NSA researcher actually quit the Aquaint program, “citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.”
       Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).

Clearly, the age of privacy in America is at an end.

      “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”—Orwell

So where does that leave us?          We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.
        It won’t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.
       To be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government’s roaming eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.
      Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw.

So how do you survive in the American surveillance state?

We’re running out of options.
       As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’ll soon have to choose between self-indulgence (the bread-and-circus distractions offered up by the news media, politicians, sports conglomerates, entertainment industry, etc.) and self-preservation in the form of renewed vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance.
      Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in Brave New World Revisited: “Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.”

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Two Bells With A Different Ring.

        Working class history is all too often lost, forgotten or deliberately hidden, but it is there, a rich history of struggle, a culture of community that stretches back as far as we wish to look. However the establishment has no desire to allow that history to take its rightful place, as the true history of the people. Much better for them, that we admire barons of industry, kings, queens and other forms of parasitical power. Our cities are festooned with statues of exploiting millionaires, military figures with the blood of ordinary people on their hands, and at the top of the tree of parasites, royals. I believe it was George Orwell that said, "The surest way to destroy a people, is to destroy their history", I paraphrase. In Glasgow we have Spirit of Revolt and Strugglepedia, two sites where we do our best to record, preserve and publicise that history, making it easily accessible to the general public, Have a wee look, perhaps you can get involved and add to that true picture of our history.

        Scotland has been fortunate in the fact it has had a long line of working class radical activists, stretching back as far as exploitation has used its venomous tentacles. Some have carried on their fight against the system in the full glare of publicity, others have battled away in seclusion and in the background, but never the less determined to change this world for the better for all. All must be remembered

      We have had, just to mention a few, Thomas Muir, Ethel MacDonald, Willie McDougal, Guy Aldred, John MacLean, Rita Milton, George (Ballard) Barrett, Tom Anderson, and in more recent times, Les Foster, Charlie and Molly Baird,  Bobby Lynn, I could go on. We have also had the strange occurrence of two Tom Bells. One, Tom Bell, red Clydesider, who mixed with the anti-parliamentarians, until a visit to Moscow seen him come back with the strange idea that the only way to get emancipation for the people was through the ballot box, and with some others formed the British Communist Party. 

       The other Tom Bell, Thomas Hastie Bell, was a different kettle of fish. A life long vociferous anarchist, always eager to get people involved, always busy with propaganda and action. He travelled the world, learnt to speak several languages, and eventually settled in America, still pushing his ideas and anarchist philosophy, he died in America in 1942.

        Here is a short biography of that Thomas Hastie Bell, this article first appeared in Organise! magazine #66. Also published by Libcom.

        A short biography of leading Scottish anarchist Tom Bell, a marine engineer and propagandist who travelled the world, finally settling in the US.
        Thomas Hastie Bell was born in Edinburgh in 1867. He should not be confused with another Tom Bell, fellow Scot , Red Clydesider and one of the founders of the Communist Party. He acquired fluency in French, Italian, Spanish and German thanks to his job as a ship’s engineer, visiting all the Mediterranean countries, South Africa, the United States and South America.
        As a young man he joined the Scottish Land and Labour League and in the 1880s became an anarchist through his association with the Socialist League. He was active in the Freedom group in London. In 1892 he returned to Edinburgh and carried on intense anarchist propaganda with J. Blair Smith and McCabe. He established a friendship there with Patrick Geddes, the biologist and town planner and persuaded him to bring over Elisée Reclus, the anarchist and geographer, to lecture at Edinburgh University. Emma Goldman mentions Bell “of whose propagandistic zeal and daring we had heard much in America”.
        Staying in Paris he had urged French anarchists to have open-air meetings, but they were reluctant. He went to the Place de la Republique, one of the most central and busiest squares, after having distributed handbills about meeting there the following Sunday afternoon. There was a big crowd there, also plenty of policemen. He climbed up a lamp-post padlocked to a crosspiece and started speaking. The police called for a file, but he continued speaking till his voice gave out and then nonchalantly produced the key. Police then threatened him with prosecution for “insults to the Army and the law” but all Paris laughed and the authorities decided not to prosecute. After 2 weeks in jail he was expelled as “too dangerous a man to be allowed loose in France”. He married the anarchist John Turner’s sister Lizzie.
         On the visit of Tsar Nicholas II to Britain, Bell went with McCabe to Leith where he was landing. Separated and although surrounded by Highlanders, territorials and infantry, Bell and McCabe got through to the Tsar’s carriage and shouted in his face “Down with the Russian tyrant! To hell with all the empires!”. Again the authorities were not inclined to prosecute, because a Scottish jury would probably throw out any charges.
        In 1898, Bell, who suffered from asthma all his life, went back to London and got a job as the (long-suffering) secretary to the man of letters Frank Harris, famous for his friendship with Oscar Wilde and his womanising, as revealed in his Life and Loves. Harris is suspected of stealing Bell’s experiences as a cowboy near the Mexican border for his own fake cowboy memories.
         Through Harris, Bell got to know Edward Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, George Bernard Shaw and others. Bell wrote a book about Wilde in his Oscar Wilde Without Whitewash in memory of those times, unfortunately never published. After 7 years in that position, he had a disagreement with Harris over the latter’s biography, which he thought was unjust to Wilde.
         He went to New York in 1905, and in 1911 finally settled in the United States for good, becoming a farmer in Phoenix, Arizona. He spent the last 20 years of his life in Los Angeles. Both Bell’s wife Lizzie Turner and his sister Jessie Bell Westwater emigrated with him to the USA and were involved in the movement. Throughout his life he remained active in the movement, maintaining lifelong friendships with Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Rudolf Rocker.
        Rocker said, “I saw him again in Los Angeles, when he was an old man. He was ill. His mop of red hair and his bushy beard were now white. His giant frame (he was well over six foot) was bent. But his mind was active; he was still working and speaking for the movement”.
        In a letter to the Yiddish anarchist paper Die Fraye Arbeter Shtime in 1940, Bell declared, “We become in our old age crabby, blind, deaf, lame or asthmatic. And our movement is now completely overwhelmed in a gigantic world-wide wave of reaction. But, ah, when I look back to the glorious days and the glorious comrades of our young movement, I am stirred to the depths by affection and pride”.
Tom Bell died in 1942 at the age of 75.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Surveillance Society.

 

        We all know the state spies on its citizens, we all know that the state passes legislation that it doesn't want it citizens to know about, we all know, or should know, it does all this with one aim , control over our lives. To hold onto its power it needs to know where you are, what you're up to, and be able to intervene and stifle any form of dissent. "Big Brother" is not a story of fiction, in today's society, it is a reality. We are surrounded by profiling, face recognition, CCTV, spied on, monitored, infiltrated by undercover agents, and there is a constant drive by the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, to manufacture our opinions, to mould our perception of reality to their liking.     

       All of these things are not exceptions, they are the norm of our modern way of life, who are they protecting?

       As far as the state is concerned, nothing is personal in this surveillance society, the state claims the right to be privy to ever aspect of your personal life. Your right to privacy is something the state doesn't recognise and will continually attempt to find ways to circumvent that right. All of this is to protect the established power, and protect its wealth and privileges. No matter where we are in this "Big Brother" society, the state will always try to take us further along that route. We must fight to put a stop to this whole malignant, repressive state apparatus, it is in the interest of us all to do so.

This from Open Media:

       Leaked docs reveal the UK Home Office’s secret plan to gain real-time access to our text messages and online communications AND force companies like WhatsApp to break the security on its own software. This reckless government plan will make all of us more vulnerable to attacks like yesterday's ransomware assault against the NHS.

Act now

        A shocking leak scooped by our friends at Open Rights Group has made this information public.¹ Home Secretary Amber Rudd has made it very clear that she thinks no one should get to use safe and secure messaging apps.² Now she has set on the path to make her wish come true.

       Yesterday a massive ransomware attack hit the NHS, blocking off access to patient data and endangering lives. This horrific story tells us why companies need to be able to develop security software without any backdoors that can be exploited this way.³

     Can you speak up right now and send Amber Rudd a powerful message to defend our privacy and online security?

      The Government’s proposals will force tech companies and Internet providers to allow “near real time” access to all your private online communications.⁴ Clearly, the only information Amber Rudd believes should stay hidden is the Government’s own powers! We need to make it clear that secretive laws that break our tech and strip away our privacy have no place in a democracy.

       What's even more worrying is that the Home Office is not expecting to hear from the public. They planned to keep this entire process secret — including a “consultation” they didn’t publicly announce, even to tech businesses!⁵

           Because of this secrecy, we now have fewer than 10 days to get our voices on the record — we don’t have a moment to lose!

Tell Home Secretary Amber Rudd: Encryption keeps us safe. Do not weaken everyone’s security by creating backdoors that hackers and malicious actors can exploit.

       The UK Home Office already has some of the most aggressive surveillance powers in the world. This is nothing more than a power grab for even more invasive powers — but if enough of us speak up we can stop this. They won’t be expecting a big reaction in so little time — can you speak up now?

Thank you for helping us fight back!

Ruth

       P.S. Strong encryption saves lives⁶ — Vulnerable groups will have their safety compromised if services like WhatsApp and Signal are forced to build backdoors. Lawyers will lose client confidentiality, victims of police misconduct will be spied on, journalists will be unable to protect sources, and domestic abusers could be gifted further ways to exploit tech vulnerabilities to spy on their partners.⁷ Can you add your voice to save the tools and technologies that keep us safe?

Footnotes

[1] LEAKED Draft Statutory Powers, Source: Open Rights Group

[2] Investigatory Powers: 'Real-time surveillance' in draft update, Source: BBC

[3] NHS cyber-attack: GPs and hospitals hit by ransomware. Source: BBC

[4] Winning the debate on encryption — a 101 guide for politicians. Source: Privacy International

[5] Plans for extensive Government spying powers revealed in leaked report. Source: Telegraph

[6] Encryption saves lives. Source: Jon Camfield

[7] This Software Company May Be Helping People Illegally Spy On Their Spouses. Source: Forbes

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1984, The Miners Strike And George Orwell.

      Face recognition, car number plate reading, TV's that recognise your face and can remember your favourite programs, it's all there, and don't think it is not being used extensible. 

This from Teacher Dude:

      George Orwell's 1984 is sponsored by LG: "The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it,", a photo by Teacher Dude's BBQ Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ.

     "Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

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We Are Further On Than You Think.

     How much more will it take?

Re-posted from arrezafe

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The Cost Of An Uncivilised Society.

      As George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the George was added by himself at the age of 13, continues his slashing at social spending and spouting about financial prudence, it seems these prudence factors only apply to us lesser mortals. When it comes to war, it is acceptable just to throw money away. As the British troops prepare to pull out of Afghanistan, it would appear that the MOD has some 11,000 20ft containers jam-packed with equipment, including vehicles, lying around Afghanistan, but intends to bring back just over half of them. The rest will just simple be abandoned, who knows how many millions/billions of your tax money will end up being shuffled between local Afghanistan wheelers and dealers in black market equipment.

     Then again in another sign of financial prudence, a communications system developed for use in Afghanistan has been delayed to such an extent, that it won't be ready until after British troops are set to withdraw from the country in 2014. Let's not forget that other macho toy of the state, the F-35 jet fighter, estimated cost around the £250 billion, estimated running costs over 30 years will be in the region of £625 billion. Assuming they don't crash or get blown out of the sky, that would of course increase the cost considerably as I assume they would be replaced.

     Meanwhile the Gideon gang are closing day centres, cutting disability allowance, slapping a bedroom tax on the ordinary people and forcing people to work without wages, for multinationals. All because, they claim, we can't afford all the decencies of a civilised society. We can certainly afford all the obscenities of an uncivilised society. One super-duper 1,300mph jet fighter, £61.1 million, would translate into how much affordable social housing? One rather noisy destruction emitting tank, £4.1 million, how many existing homes could be properly insulated? Of course we should remember that the UK is now a drone nation, one drone, £2.9 million, how many free school meals? One thing we should always remember, war kills ordinary people but corporations get richer.

     We would do well to remember George Orwell's 1984, in which the government impoverishes the people with its endless military campaigns against those faceless enemies. 

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The Ministry Of Love Needs You.

     This appealed to me as it seems very relevant to today's corporate capitalism. They have all the money they could ever desire, but still they want to grow. Control, domination, is what it is all about. Lifted direct from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ:

Ministry of Love Needs You, a photo by Teacher Dude's BBQ on Flickr. 

      The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.
     All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
     We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?’

1984 George Orwell

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DON'T MISS THE BUS!!

         I say it at bus stops, in shops, in the pub, I say it to friends, to acquaintances, to strangers, I say it in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening, I say it on the bus, on the train, so I'll say it here again. This is not a national problem, we are living under corporate fascism, this is an international problem. The policies being implemented across the developed world are the policies of a group that have never been elected, have no mandate from the people they are affecting and are working simply in the best interests of their own little group of parasites. Across the developed world the Heinz 57 varieties of political governments from so called socialists, labour, social democrats, to conservative, republican and far right parties are all carrying out the same polices, namely “austerity”. They are merely the managers of the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) polices, policies that are bringing deprivation to millions and dividends and bonuses to the parasites. Who elected the IMF?

From ANONARCHIST NEWS;

            It was George Orwell, author of 1984, who said that, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

        What is the situation now? Is peaceful dissent accepted? Or is it frowned upon and discriminated against? What are our world ‘leaders’ up to? Are they helping us, the masses of working people? Or are they actually perpetuating the existence of an outdated economic system, no matter what the cost?

        What if there was another option. An alternative to all this. What if we didn’t have to live like this? If human beings on a large scale could cooperate with each other for the common good of themselves and their community – does that really sound crazy? Or is it even crazier to believe that they expect us to remain docile and apathetic as they destroy our Earth.

        Is it impossible to have individuals acting selflessly if they understand that this is the better option, or would one rather live under a system where war is good for the economy. Where poverty is rampant on a world-scale and police-state measures are accepted without question.

        It seems to me like the choice is yours. For if we do not act now – it’ll be too late late.

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SPANISH CIVIL WAR, 75 YEARS AGO THIS YEAR.

PRESS RELEASE:      Files reveal full extent of British involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

        More volunteers may have left Britain with the aim of joining the International Brigades in Spain than previously thought according to documents discovered at The National Archives.

      This year marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936. Despite the British government’s official policy of non-intervention, thousands of men and women from Britain and Ireland were inspired by their political beliefs to fight in defence of the Spanish Second Republic. They were among the first of a generation defined by the fight against Fascism.

        The British Security Service, sometimes known as MI5, was interested in which British volunteers were defying the ban to fight in Spain as many were also suspected members of the Communist Party. 

      James Cronan, Diplomatic and Colonial Records Specialist at The National Archives, said: “The records show that the Security Service tracked the movements of around 4,000 people it believed were trying to travel to Spain to fight with the International Brigades, many more than previously thought. It’s not clear how many made it to Spain although we know that hundreds never returned. “The International Brigades brought volunteers together from all over the world in defence of democracy but few if any records exist of their service. That’s why uncovering a document like this is so exciting.”

      The list has now been digitised and is available to view online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/spanish-civil-war. It provides researchers and historians with a valuable new resource and is a good starting point for anyone wishing to find out whether a relative fought in Spain. The annotated list includes entries for the poet John Cornford, union leader Jack Jones and Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, whose famous book Homage to Catalonia detailed his experiences with the International Brigades.

CAPA; Refugees on the beach.

      The newly-digitised material contains more than 200 pages of names and dates detailing the movements of the men and women who left British ports on their way to the frontline in Spain and a roll of honour of those killed in action. A selection of index cards have also been digitised and put online for notable brigade volunteers including the classicist Bernard Knox, Irish Brigade leader Frank Ryan and George Orwell as well as recently deceased veterans such as Sam Lesser, Bob Doyle, Jack Edwards and Paddy Cochrane.

     A ceremony will be held on 2 July 2011 at the International Brigades Memorial in Jubilee Gardens, London to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of the conflict with two of the five surviving British veterans. Further commemorations are planned later this year.

Contact secretary@international-brigades.org.uk for details.

For media enquiries please contact Thomas Norton on 0208 392 5277 or e-mail press@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk

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