The Mediterranean Graveyard Is Overflowing.

         We claim that we humans are "civilised" and have brought advanced civilisation to the world. Of course in the developed world it can be easier to swallow that illusion, than in vast swaths of the planets surface. However in this "civilised" world we have created more than 65 million displaced individuals, that is approximately the entire population of the UK being moved out and told to move on. Most of these displaced persons are fleeing raging wars perpetrated by those "civilised" human beings. Of that 65+ million displaced persons, approximately 12 million of them are from just five areas: Syria, Afghanistan, the Lake Chad basin, South Sudan, and Somalia. 

      Of course "displaced person" is a very sanitised way of expressing what that means, it almost sounds like somebody being moved from their home to an apartment that they don't particularly like. The true picture is very different, it is one of desperation, savagery, brutality, misery, trauma, death and destruction. In the year 2016, more than 5,000 of those "displaced persons" trying to flee the raging wars, ended their lives in the water grave that is the Mediterranean. They were fleeing lives that were so horrifying that death seemed a reasonable option. The reason for such death and destruction fades into the fog of propaganda and misinformation. Can anybody really say why we are in Syria, tearing the country apart, destroying its infrastructure, killing its people? Or how we can justify the 4.9 million "displaced persons" that have fled that country? Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will record the various battles, heroically and fairly fought by "our" boys, and other battles fought with inhuman savagery by the "bad" guys, but why we are there, not much on that subject, probably we'll get some shit about a bad guy we are trying to get rid of, to save the Syrian people from misery. It is obvious, for the Syrian people, the cure is much worse than the illness.

       We can take it that practically all today's wars and the ensuing trauma, death and destruction, are about wealth, power and resources, and capitalism is the driving force, none of them are being waged for the benefit of the people. As long as we tolerate this system of capitalist greed, we will be mired in wars, death, destruction, fleeing refugees, "displaced persons" poverty and deprivation. Unity among all people's is the necessary prerequisite to ending this capitalist "civilisation", and creating a world free from borders, exploitation and wars, a world that sees to the needs of all our people, free from the profit motive.

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

Coffins From Derry.

       Sometimes the Glasgow dialect can be difficult to grasp, and the magic of words lost even though the passion may shine through. This may have been the case in the last post, so for comrade Loam and those others who might not have been able to grasp all the words, here is a transcript of Victoria McNulty's poem Coffins From Derry. Thanks Victoria.

Coffins from Derry

A thousand flood
Could have burst The Clyde
Each day of 1848
Had it not been for people.
The undead
Sailed in coffins from Derry.
Irish fever
Spilled from the Foyle, to
Boil the banks with Typhoid, the
Young scratched with fleas from starving rats
To be sacked -
Abandoned in Scotland's slums,
Feared and greeted by no one.
When my family crossed to Scotland,
They didn't flea famine,
But civil war.
The Gaeltacht already Black An Gorta Mhor,
Their names now warning signs on windows.
No work or trade gave way to
Forgotten faiths
And altered names; just tags of tarrier, terrorist and taig.
Coffins aren't made of mahogany today,
Just tarpolin and waves.
Not Killkenny's mass graves
But the beds of the Aegean Sea-
The road from Damascus stacked with similarities
Even Saul could see,
Floatsome children line beaches,
Their flesh all bloated and grey like typhus
Their parents, skeleton faces
Line security gates and fences -
Wire poked with frail famine hands-
Lips stitched and stomachs pitted
As Joe McDonnell, Bobby Sands....
And still we say they're not like us,
Don't belong like us.
I can never forget,
Scotland is cut from refugees,
And I am privileged.
My mothers made their journeys for me,
So now I watch from couch
And TV,
Miles from pipe bomb and peace walls.
Yet I will not fall silent,
I stand tall I stand proud
In welcome and unity
I stand in solidarity
With displaced people now residing in Scotland.

 

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