annarky's blog.: Shock and Awe

Showing posts with label Shock and Awe. Show all posts

Wednesday 9 August 2023

Iraq.

Image courtesy of Radio Free Europe.

If your are able to get down to the Nottingham area around the end of September then this would be the place to visit. The Iraq war was probably the most brutal act of subterfuge and downright lying by any state in history. The callous description of "Shock and Awe" translated into the savage destruction of a country and the killing of hundreds of thousands plus the displacement of millions of innocent people. We must never let this brutal crime be lost in history, it must be continually brought to the public to make them aware of what our lords and masters are capable of in their quest for power, privilege and wealth.

Image courtesy of The Independent

From the Sparrows Nest

          Although our initial dates in July could not go ahead, the power cutting gremlins could not stop us for long - the photo exhibition re local opposition to the 2003 Iraq Invasion is back on!

          Regime Change Begins at Home - Nottingham Opposition to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq

https://peopleshistreh.wordpress.com/2023/08/01/rescheduled-regime-change-begins-at-home-nottingham-opposition-to-the-2003-invasion-of-iraq-21-24-sep-2023/

An exhibition of photographs and local campaign materials at Broadway Cinema.

21st to 24th September 2023 – Free Event.

             This exhibition marks the twentieth anniversary of the disastrous invasion of Iraq and looks back at the movement which opposed it. The anniversary seems to have passed with surprisingly little mainstream comment – something we want to go some way to addressing. We will display images of protests in Nottingham taken by local photographer Alan Lodge (aka Tash), contextualised with leaflets, newsletters and other materials, mostly from the collections of the Sparrows’ Nest Library and Archive.

Exhibition Opening Times

Thu 21st Sep 7pm-9pm

        Opening event with Alan Simpson, ex Labour MP who opposed the war.

Fri 22nd Sep Midday to 5pm

Sat 23rd Sep Midday to 7pm

           All day: deposit documents and record your stories. Donate relevant materials for posterity and share your memories of the campaign when you drop in to see the exhibition.

Sun 24th Sep Midday to 7pm

       All day: deposit documents and record your stories.

         2pm: Guided history walk Agitating the Lawless Rabble, starting at the Left Lion (Council House), ending at the back of Broadway Cinema.

Featuring Photographs by Alan Lodge (aka Tash)

https://alanlodge.co.uk

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info

Tuesday 13 November 2018

History Should Teach Us Something??

I came across this little piece I penned at the start of the illegal invasion of Iraq, for the paper I produced, "The Anarchist Critic". Since then the imperialist slaughter has washed across Libya and Syria with Iran in the cross-hairs. At the time it was difficult to drink in the horror and terror inflicted on the ordinary people of Iraq by the Western imperialist's callous and brutal "Shock and Awe", a deliberate action of savagery unleashed on the innocent, children, elderly and infirm. All because one man and his team wouldn't play ball with the Western imperialists. Since then the faces of the figureheads of Western imperialism have changed, but the policy is still the same. We have seen the faces of Bush, Clinton, Blair and Cameron come and go, we now have the Trump and May duo, but that's all that has changed, the brutal imperialist bloodshed continues unabated.

When will it finally sink in, that voting to change the faces of these figureheads, these puppets of corporate imperialism, will change nothing. They say that doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result, is one of the first signs of insanity, is that where we are at now?

From 2003:

IF THEY WERE COMEDIANS WE COULD LAUGH AT THEM.

However, these two arrogant Christian fundamentalists nutters are for real. Their brutal Afghanistan and Iraq bloodbaths have turned the world into a nightmare, a breeding ground for other fundamentalist nutters to pursue their "God given" dogmatic beliefs. The number of innocent civilian deaths cannot be justifies on the banner of "A good cause". The impoverished country of Afghanistan has been returned to the stone age where 5% have access to fresh water, 25% of all children are dead by the age of five, 400 a month are blown up by land mines and civil war festers just below the surface. Conservative estimates put the civilian deaths in Iraq, since the illegal invasion at 15,000 and still rising. Coalition aggressors deaths nearing the 1,000 mark and an estimated 8,000 US soldiers injured. Economically the costs of this brutal, illegal Iraq adventure are put at $100 billion, (tax payers money of course) and most agree that this is a grossly under estimated figure. Iraq's infrastructure is in tatter and once again it is the innocent civilians and their children that have to try to survive in this Bush/Blair disaster.

Getting rid of the Bush/Blair "God disciple duo" is not the answer, they are merely the selected strong-arm war lords of the corporate world, doing its bidding, (with a little help from God). They would be replaced with a different personality but the same brutal agenda would still be pursued. We have to crush the system that welds the state apparatus and corporate power into a brutal force that controls the worlds resources. We have to bring all the world's resources under the control of the ordinary people. The state and its repressive apparatus must be dismantled, multi-national corporations taken over by those who work in them and moulded to the benefit of all, a new society created, one that is based on free association, voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Tomorrow must belong to us the ordinary people or there is no tomorrow.
ann arky.

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

Monday 10 September 2018

Basra, Iraq's Spark Of Democracy?

March 21st. 2003, the American imperialist military machine, with the support of its puppet allies, started operation "Shock and Awe", which rained down an unprecedented destructive barrage of modern weaponry on the people of Baghdad. The citizens of that country were being introduce to "democracy" Western style.

Fifteen years of violence, corruption, exploitation, misery and death, and the country is still a quagmire of violence, death and battling power factions, some, of those factions that sing America's tune, backed by the West, others not.

However the people are beginning to organise against the violence, corruption and inequality that the West spawned in that country. The protests in Basra have been ongoing for a couple of months now, and what is shaping is a mass protest that has dropped the barriers of religion and ethnicity. How long before the propped up puppet government asks its American master to go in and destroy this mass popular uprising, is another question. It is well worth reading the article in full, but here are a couple of extracts.

This from Enough is Enough:

      “Out Iran out out, Basra lives free” this is one of the main chant thousands of the protesters were shouting. The strong protesters back to the streets in the afternoon of Tuesday, 10/09 when the Prime Minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi failed to deliver his promises to meet people’s demands of July.

       Since the beginning of the protests on Tuesday,10 protesters killed and over 100 injured. They cut off the road of Umm Qasr on Wednesday, 04/09. Umm Qasr Port is part of the city of Umm Qasr and one of the couple ports in Iraq for entering goods to Basra and the rest of Iraq.

        The protests are getting bigger. They are very angry because they are lack of every basic service including clean water electric power. In this very hot weather while the temperature still reaches 50 degree people has no enough power. The concerns of people in Basra mentioned in my initial report of July still have not been taken in to the consideration by the Iraqi government.------

And:

   ----There are also unconfirmed reports of entering the US forces into the city of Basra watching the situation closely. Other reports are talking about fleeing most of the MPs, the chiefs of the political parties, heads of the companies and the directors of main services in the city. There is other report talks about fleeing government’s agents while some of the protesters found their places where they work and live.
      While I am not justifying violence from the protesters but the true is the police, securities and the Militias of the political parties have been very violent from the beginning of the protests in the afternoon of 04/09. There is other reason for the people in Basra to get very angry. They are very desperate and frustrated while for the last 15 years whoever came to power locally and centrally failed them. The people in Basra on one hand see themselves have been deprived almost of everything; on the other hand they see a tiny minority of their people have been beneficiary from the situation and living highlife.
      The true and the right thing is people in Basra regardless of their differences have been united, fighting back the local and central government for their legitimate and natural demands. It did not last long for them to realize the religion and the nationalism do not worth a single bread, single tablet, free education, free treatment, freedom and the rest of basic rights.
      The protests and the demos have not been controlled by any political parties or any other side from the foreigners. They have so far rejected them because they have 15 years of experience with the regime. But they need to organize themselves in non-hierarchical independent groups in wherever possibly they can to coordinate their action against the state and its powers.

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

Thursday 24 March 2016

The West, Masters Of Terrorism.

Up until now I have refrained from saying anything about the Brussels atrocities, such actions leave me numb, the killing and maiming of innocent people, going about their business, is about as low as humans can sink. However there is also anger, anger at our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, who try to play each emotion, the panic, the fear, like some unknown spectacle. They fail to even mention, that this is now a daily occurrence in those lands that the West blasted into the stone age. Our hurt and pain is obviously greater than the suffering of the ordinary people of Iraq, who felt the apocalyptic horror of our "shock and awe", that totally destroyed their country. As we watched our TV's as those buildings disintegrate into dust and rubble, we slaughtered a multitude of teachers, bus drivers, shop assistants, plumbers, doctors, children and elderly, going about their business, all because the West didn't like their leader. Their deaths were justifiable, as their leader was a monster. This statement presupposes that we in the West don't have monsters, just morally impeccable individuals who are capable of killing countless thousands of ordinary people, going about their business. The only difference is scale, the West is the master of destruction and killing of innocents.

The 13th. anniversary of our indescribable onslaught on the people of Iraq is this month, and they still suffer from the consequences of our brutality, car bombings, constant battles and bloodshed, this is their normality, as they try to, go about their business. However, our babbling brook of bullshit, pass these events by as not worthy of reporting. We have repeated our callous destruction of countries by weapons of incredible power, that no terrorist could hope to have, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Behind all this moral doing-good hypocrisy, lies a mountain of dead ordinary people, from the very young to the very old, all going about their business, when suddenly, from the sky blood and thunder rained down on their innocent lives. All this because our lords and masters didn't like their leaders, their deaths are acceptable "collateral damage".

2001 we set about destroying Afghanistan, which entailed the killing of thousands of ordinary people, going about their business. Since then the West has swept through the Middle East, creating a quagmire of blood and destruction, a mountain of innocent deaths, an army of maimed and traumatised, innocent people, going about their business. We are still there, doing our damnedest through killing and maiming, to prop up corrupt factions that might be able to form a government that is compliant to the desires of Western imperialism.

Yes, Brussels was a dreadful nightmare for all those involved and fills any decent human with anger, horror and compassion for the victims, but let's not forget the bigger picture, let's start to ask WHY, don't you think that perhaps, just perhaps, we have stoked up a mountain of hate, and perhaps, just perhaps, some want to kick back? That does not in any way condone these actions, but perhaps, just perhaps, we reap what we sow.

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

Monday 5 October 2015

Bring Freedom Through Death.

Like I always say, our mainstream media is simply a babbling brook of bullshit. It spews out misinformation, distortions and down right lies. It is no more than a propaganda machine for the imperialists, and a money maker for its owners. Truth, real information and honest discussion, are alien to its basic structure.

Bringing freedom to the people of Baghdad.

Below is an extract from a report made at the beginning of this year, The report is the result of studies by respected and highly qualified people in their field, it trashes the frequently circulated figures of deaths by the US/UK war on terror in the Middle East, vomited out by that babbling brook of bullshit, yet up until now they have ignored it.

Shock and awe, democracy Western style.

This from Middle East Eye:

A Muslim holocaust.

       Last month, the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PRS) released a landmark study concluding that the death toll from 10 years of the "War on Terror" since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as 2 million.
      The 97-page report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning doctors' group is the first to tally up the total number of civilian casualties from US-led counter-terrorism interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
        The PSR report is authored by an interdisciplinary team of leading public health experts, including Dr. Robert Gould, director of health professional outreach and education at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and Professor Tim Takaro of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.
        Yet it has been almost completely blacked out by the English-language media, despite being the first effort by a world-leading public health organisation to produce a scientifically robust calculation of the number of people killed by the US-UK-led "war on terror".

Read the full article HERE

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

Thursday 21 March 2013

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.