Price Of Conscience.

 

 

     There were those who through WW1 and WW2 were reviled, insulted, beaten up, imprisoned, and treated to a whole host of other brutal and degrading treatments. There crime, they were conscientious objectors and refused to kill other human beings on the dictate of the state. The state takes a very strong dislike to those who will not kill on its orders. The state always demands obedience, submission and subservience, it must always have control over the population. it is estimated that there were approximately 60,000 men registered as conscientious objectors during the first world war.
     Conscientious objectors are humans with a conscience, something that will not be tolerated by the state in times of its wars of plunder and power grabbing, which takes in almost all wars.
     Anarchists feature strongly in that band of conscientious objectors, as did Quakers. These people were usually labelled cowards, though the courage they showed in the presence hatred and abuse demanded much more courage than to submit and become a subservient order taker.
     Some did take their place in the military, but usually only as medics and ambulance drivers. Which ever road the took, it required courage, determination and perseverance. Their history is seldom, if ever, written in that frame.

      A brief sample of their history can be found here and also found HERE:

     As one small glimpse of those labelled cowards who opted for non-combatant roles and went as medics etc. this extract gives a tiny insight into the falseness of that label. others of course faced brutality  in prisons up and down the country.  

The burial detail, which had come for the corpses in the pigpen, was surprised. The “dead” were getting up and speaking English. Qu’est-ce que c’est? Ah, they were an ambulance crew. British volunteers, in the trenches with the French Army on the Western Front. In the ruins and wreckage near the front lines, they’d found nowhere else to sleep.

The medical corpsmen were all pacifists, serving humanity even as they refused to serve in any military. Still, they lived like the troops. They bunked in rat-infested dugouts, on the floors of shelled buildings, in hay-filled barns. They dove for cover when incoming shells moaned and screamed, and struggled with their masks when the enemy fired gas canisters. At any moment, they could be called to go to the front lines, gather wounded men, and drive—lights off on roads cratered by shells, packed with trucks and troops, with every jostle making the blood-soaked soldiers in the back cry out in pain—to a hospital.

      Today it is more obvious than ever that all wars are fought to enhance the wealth and power of the privileged, to protect or increase the resources to be exploited for those same privileged, to increase their power over competitors. However they are never fought by those privileged, there aren't enough of them to protect their wealthy and privileged position, hence their demand that we the ordinary people do the fighting for them. We are tasked with killing ordinary people from over there, so that our pampered, privileged lords and masters can maintain their powerful and wealthy position.  Still so many still fall for this preposterous policy, the reality being that the only war that the ordinary people should fight is the class war.

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

Imperial History.

The British state, Fighters of fascism???

       I am somewhat shocked to hear voices from the “left” refer to WW2 as our fight to defeat fascism. Surely they have some grasp of the history of this country. We didn’t go to war with Germany to defeat fascism, we went to war with that country to stop it being a rival or a threat to the resources of the British Empire, as was WW1.
     WW1 had nothing to do with the shooting of a pompous Duke, it was all about the German Empire planning to build the Berlin to Baghdad railway. This would have give Germany tremendous influence in Iraq and other countries in that region, allowing it to move resources and troops in and out of that area much quicker than the British Empire, and Iraq was an oil rich country that the British claimed as theirs. So we super-doper imperialist would have to teach the nasty German Empire a lesson. Of course we all know it didn’t turn out quite like that, the conflict turned Europe into a bloody altar where the youth of nations soaked the soil of Europe in blood. The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War1, was around 40 million. There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians.

 
       This film is on Spirit of Revolt audio/video section.

     The German Empire was decimated and that suited the British Empire, allowing it to lord it over a vast section of the world, pillaging and plunder land after land. Fast forward and along comes a guy whose intention is rebuild the German Empire, this posed a threat to the arrogant imperialist that control the British Empire. So once again our lords and masters decided to teach that nasty Germany Empire a lesson, and as they say, the rest is history, or it should be, not a truth lost in an illusion of imperialists propaganda. World War 2 was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion).
     By now we should all know that the British state never goes to war to defeat fascism, it trades with them as long as it is beneficial to them, it goes to war to protect or enlarge its resources, power and wealth, and the people can go to hell in a hand cart.
      It’s the the weekend, have some music.

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

Memories.

     My wee rant will be stilled over the next couple of days. It's my daughter's birthday and she and her family have booked a wee cottage in Auchterader in Perthshire for the weekend and we are invited.

 Auchterarder main street, the longest main street in Scotland.

   It will be interesting to see what memories it will bring back. During the war, WW2, not WW1 as some people might think when looking at me, I like many other school kids from Glasgow were "evacuated" further north away from the risk of bombing in the cities. I and two of my sisters ended up living on a farm just outside Auchterarder. For a wee Glesca lad it was a wonderful and very pleasant experience. The farmer treated me like a son and I have fond memories of those days.

     Will I find the farm I lived in? Will I find the house that was the school? Who knows, what has changed and what has remained, fascinating.

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

Rise Of European Fascism,--Shades of the 30's?

        The rise of fascism across the world is a reality, the latest of their numbers to grasp power in a large country, being the dictator loving, military worshiping, homophobic, racist, Brazilian, Balsonaro, who openly states that he is in favour of torture as it works. We in Europe are far from exempt from this growing divisive menace of fascism. We ignore, or even delay our  forceful response to this brutal reality at our peril. In this rise there are shades of the thirty's rise of fascism, which eventually lead the the various imperialist power blocs spreading the blood of ordinary people across the surface of the earth, in WW2, as they sorted out which of them controlled what slice of the planet. The various states will not sort out this danger, as their institutions will be controlled by the fascist, as in Brazil and elsewhere. It is up to the people themselves, of all shades and ethnicity, to come together and destroy this menace to our liberty and quality of life.

        The following is an extract from an interesting article from The New Republic. Though I don't embrace everything in the article it does come up with relevant information that shows that this rise of fascism is no fantasy. 

 

       European societies are, Fekete writes, “increasingly divided between citizens, demi-citizens and non-citizens,” some of whom are no longer guaranteed certain fundamental rights, depending on their race, class, religion, immigration status, incarceration, and political beliefs. These people include immigrants, Muslims, and the poor—in fact, anyone outside of the dominant ethnicity or the reigning political ideology. In Hungary for instance, human rights groups with international funding must register as “foreign agents.” Similarly, in Poland, the right wing Law and Justice Party has targeted human rights groups, feminists, and pro-immigration activists through media censorship, new laws around the teaching of holocaust history, and frequent raids on the offices of groups that criticize the government. The fallout from the Syrian Civil War intensified these trends. As millions fled, many into Europe, the right attacked the principle of freedom of movement within the Schengen Area of European Union; some countries started to impose passport checks at their borders with EU countries and many more sent police onto trains to detain brown and black passengers.
       For the most part, the center-left has gone along with these tactics. After terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, for instance, France’s socialist party president François Hollande declared a state of emergency that has been extended multiple times with no sign of ending. Many on the Left subscribed to the 1990s hope that the EU would enable a softer form of globalization that concentrated on regional integration. However, it may also have hardened the distinctions between Europe and the rest of the world, giving credence to the notion of a “fortress Europe” in need of defensive parapets and a well-patrolled moat. A cross-continental network of right-wing political parties—from Fidesz in Hungary to the Danish People’s Party—now preaches border defense at all costs, national purity, and religious intolerance.
       While the new right-wing movements participate in electoral politics, many of them have unofficial links with vigilante groups that patrol their country’s borders, shake down immigrant businesses, and harass women in hijabs, and small armies of thugs that wait to pick fights at rallies. These groups do not live in fear of prosecution for hate crimes: They maintain Facebook pages and websites. Groups like the Cologne-based Hooligans Against Salafists make their racial claims on the streets of German cities, taking over public space as in an attempt to shock multiculturalism out of city life. In Greece, Golden Dawn members beat up immigrant vendors in street markets. In France, the National Front has sponsored “pork festivals” in cities its members see as being in danger of losing their French-ness, because of changing demographics.
       Some of the most visible manifestations of New Right muscle-flexing have emerged in post-socialist Europe. In Hungary and Bulgaria vigilante border guards target migrants fleeing North. In the former East German city of Dresden, Pegida (an acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) took over the streets in 2014 to protest immigration turning Germany into “Eurorabia.” In Serbia, nativism merges with a desire to protect “traditional values” resulted in the cancellation or violent persecution of gay pride marches in Belgrade. Unlike in the past, when the Soviet Union commemorated the Great Patriotic War against fascism across Eastern Europe, Nazism is no longer something to hide. The extremist Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda) talks openly about following in the footsteps of the Arrow Cross, Hungary’s wartime fascist party that murdered thousands of Jews.

Continue reading HERE:

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

 

Charlie Doran.

      To all you knowledgeable comrades out there who remember names from the past, I'm seeking information regarding a Charlie Doran, 1894-1974. He was involved in the anti-parliamentary groups of the 1920-30s, during WW2 he was involved with Willie MacDougal, (well know Glasgow anarchist of that era, oddly enough, born the same year as Doran), and served in the Spanish Civil War. Since I know nothing of this person, it would great if we could build some sort of picture of his life. 

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

Workers Know Your History, The Bevin Boys.

      “The Bevin Boys” are a little known group of young men who were conscripted during the second world war, but didn't wear a uniform.
           At the start of WW2, the government were keen to get as many young men into the forces as possible, so conscription was enforced. They did realise that certain industries were essential to the “war effort” and so those working in those industries were exempt from conscription. However they were so dim they didn't list coal mining as one of those industries, they failed to realise that without coal the other industries would grind to a halt. So they scooped up all the young miners into the forces, then it dawned on them that the coal output was falling. By 1943, the country was running out of coal to keep the factories in full production, the mining work force was sadly depleted and those miners left in the pits miners were old school, strike prone and ageing.
         In December 1943, Ernest Bevin, the minister for labour, devised a ballot scheme, known as the Bevin Ballot Scheme, whereby men aged between 18 and 25, when they registered for National service, could be picked by lottery to work in the mines, they were known as "Bevin Boys". 48,000 young men found themselves working down the coal mines, irrespective of their ambitions, training or experience.

        This of course this meant that the young men were usually billeted in camps, of Nissen huts near the mines, freezing in winter and stifling hot in summer. When Bevin was asked whether young recruits could have a psychological examination to see if they were temperamentally suited to coal mining, his reply was a simple one word reply, “No”.
        Bevin Boys throughout the war, were unfairly seen by many of the public as conscription dodgers, deserters or conscientious objectors. They were labelled cowards and had white feathers given to them or stuck on their clothing. As they were billeted within mining communities, many of whose sons were in the services, they were also seen as likely to stay on and steal their sons jobs. If a Bevin Boy was killed in a mining accident his family received no compensation and those invalided out had no pension. Some were not demobilised until 1948 because the country was still short of coal. Their treatment on most occasions was deplorable. But that is how the state works when it finds the need, in this system, people serve the state, it is never the state serving the people.

From The Telegraph:

     The alternative was prison. "Some Bevin Boys did choose prison," he said. "It was a complete change of life. We worked in the depth of the earth in cramped, damp conditions. Travelling on leave, we were not even allowed a cup of tea on the train because we had no uniform. Some Bevin Boys were much abused because it was thought we had run away from the Services."
     Some of the men were psychologically scarred by their experiences. Maurice Sheppard, of Durham, recalled: "In 11 months in the mines I lost three stone in weight. I was sent home to see a specialist and diagnosed with 'inward claustrophobia'."
      He was given a special boot allowance because his boots rotted away so quickly in the wet pit, and his digs were so damp that his clothes acquired a green mould.

Read the full article HERE:

        The scheme also affected apprentices, who could be conscripted during their apprenticeship or having completed their apprenticeship at their chosen trade, could find themselves down a coal mine, with no guarantee that they could return to their trade. This sparked the 1943/44 apprentices strike.

From Marxist.com

The reaction of the young apprentices quite astonished everybody. Everyone was completely taken by surprise when they found that, in fact, these young apprentices, who may have been young in years, were quite old in their experience of the class struggle. Because it was their fathers and relatives who worked down the mines and they were fully aware in fact of the kind of work that was done there. A surprising figure, which was actually revealed by the industrial reporter of the Daily Express, was that during the first year of working down the mines, approximately one third of young workers were actually maimed or killed and it was pointed out that it was more dangerous and you were more likely to be actually injured or killed during your time in the mines then it was if you were in the armed forces.

Read the full article HERE:

       The strike did eventually break up but what did come out of it was that no apprentice would be conscripted during their apprenticeship. 

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

   

A Blood Stained Peace.

       All the self centred, pompous heads of state who shuffled for their moment on the podium, attempting to glorify the imperial blood bath of 1914/18, keep referring to how war brought peace to Europe and how we all live in harmony now. The so called peace that followed that dreadful avoidable slaughter, lasted a mere 21 years, before they were at it again, spreading the blood of youth  across the globe. They wax lyrically about how Europe has known peace since their last blood letting of 1939/45. That of course is a lie. There may have been peace in most countries in Europe, but we were busy doing our blood thing across the globe. The list of wars, battles, interventions, and attempts to thwart independence movements across the empire, is a long unending catalogue of bloodshed.

       This is by no means a complete and definitive list, but it does give some idea of what they mean by peace.

After the 1914/18 blight on humanity, we have had:
1918/20, Intervention in Russia civil war.
1919/23, Turkish war of independence.
1919/19, Third Anglo-Afghan war.   
1919/21, Irish war of independence.
1920/20, Somalialand campaign.
1920/20, Great Iraqi revolution.
1936/39, Great Arab revolt in Palestine.
1938/48, British Zionist conflict.
1939/45, Second World War.
1945/49, Indonesian National revolution.
1945/46, Vietnam, Operation Masterdom.
1946/47, Greek civil war.
1948/60, Malayan emergency.
1950/53, Korean war.
1951/54, Suez Canal zone emergency.
1952/60, Mau Mau uprising.
1955/60, Cyprus.
1956/57, Suez Crisis.
1962/66, Indonesia - Malaysia.
1962/75, Dhofar rebellion.
1963/67, Aden emergency.
1982/82, Falklands war.
1982/84, Lebanon.
1991/91, Gulf War.
1992/96, Bosnia.
1998/98, Desert Fox Iraq.
1998/99, Kosovo.
2000/02, Siera Leone civil war.
2001/----, Afghanistan, 4th Anglo-Afghan war.
2003/09, Iraq war.
2011/11, Libyan Intervention.

     Most of these conflicts were against people trying to free themselves from the British Imperialists. While we were merrily sending our youth to foreign shores to repress and kill, we were proudly proclaiming how we were living in peaceful Europe. As we done our imperial killing across the globe, other European countries were doing likewise, but our efforts were dwarfed by the new mighty imperial nation, US of A.

     This is the pattern of capitalist peace, slaughter for wealth and power, death for resources and profit. Nothing will change until we change the system, and consign this exploitative system of capitalism to the dustbin of history.

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

Horse Meat and Chemicals in Food.

        With the latest bit of greed driven fraud, the “horse meat” scandal, filling that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, we are all supposed to be shocked. Why should we be shocked at the continual corruption of big business as it merrily goes on driving up profits by whatever means possible. Over the years we have had cows ears, lips and eyes in burgers and labelled as “beef”. Well at least it came from a cow. The food industry has always shied away from plain and simple labelling on any of its products. They simply don't want you to know what really is in what you eat. When all the “meat” is taken off and sold, what they are left with, from cows lips and ears to chicken necks and feet to cows knee bones are all processed and mixed up with an array of chemicals and sold as “meat” products. They'll add chemicals to make it look good, chemicals to make it last longer, chemicals to make it cook quicker and of course chemicals to make it taste better. They will then spend more than the “food” in fancy packaging to make it more appealing and then there will be the very confusing ingredients labelling. Horse meat in our food is probably one of the lesser of the evils that find there way into our “food” Today, anyone who thinks that the food industry is somehow linked to agriculture, is living in a long gone era. For years now the food industry has been part of the chemical industry. We swallow chemicals by the dozens daily, more if you buy processed food. Even if you walk to the local home grown food store you are swallowing chemicals. The amount of antibiotics and other chemicals that are fed to animals and fish in fish farms, to make them grow faster and bigger and leaner would turn your beer blue. As for the vegetable and fruit side, it is much the same with fertilisers, pesticides and growth supplements thrown by the ton at the soil and the plants, to maximise the profit from every acre of land. There is no such thing as agriculture, there is factory food production as a branch of the chemical industry.

       There are those who may say that we need that sort of “agriculture” to feed us, it simply isn't true. There is an interesting fact that we perhaps should look at with a view of changing the way we get our food. During the second world war Britain had a food shortage, so a campaign called “dig for victory” was born. People were encouraged to grow food in allotments and gardens. The result was that by 1942 10% of Britain's total food production came from this campaign. Should we be looking at a return to that campaign with a slightly altered aim, in a “Dig for Freedom from Chemicals” campaign.

ann arky's home.

WE BEAR THE BRUNT.

     An article I was reading today from one of the newspapers that populate that babbling brook of bullshit called the mainstream media, stated that, "it is the ordinary people that are bearing the brunt of the war in Syria." I have no doubt the writer thought he/she was making a profound statement, an illuminating point, highlighting some peculiar aspect of this particular war. However as far as I am concerned it was about the dumbest, most stupid statement, made about this particular war, or any other conflict.

        Anybody that looks at history can see that in war that is always the case, it has never been other than, the ordinary people bear the brunt of the conflict. Look at the First World War, cast your eyes over the list of lives lost, and ask yourself, where are the corporate bosses, the dukes and princes, the prime ministers etc? Move on to WW2, as it ravaged across Europe and Asia, who bore the brunt, was it the CEO, kings, presidents, land owners or the aristocracy? A resounding NO, it was as in all state wars, the ordinary people that bore the brunt. However, it is the landed gentry, corporate bosses, presidents, prime minsters, the rich and powerful that reap what ever benefits ever arise from these state struggles for power, resources or markets. We the ordinary people supply the the lives to be sacrificed at the state's altar of power. We gain nothing from these state organised actions of mass terrorism.

ann arky's home,

       THE IMF, PREDATOR!!

        Recently the Cameron/ Clegg cabal of millionaires were waiting for the IMF to pass judgement on the Osborne hatchet job being perpetrated on the British public. Of course there were loud cheers from the millionaire public school thugs when the IMF gave its vote of approval. Only an idiot would have expected any other verdict. If we consider what the IMF is, we get the general picture. It was created back in 1944 when the it became obvious who the winners were going to be in the final stages of WW2. The new masters of the world came together to form an organisation that would create a world financial system that would guarantee the world's wealth and resources would flow rapidly and only towards them, they wanted total control, the birth of the IMF. According to an examination by ActionAid, of the Malawi famine of 2002/3 its conclusions were that the IMF policies, “bears responsibility for the disaster.” IMF restructuring has devastated countries across Africa and South America. It is an organisation that works towards complete privatisation and low wages. After the 2008 collapse, the IMF congratulated Hungary for continuing to pursue its deficit reduction arrangements by slashing public services. The Hungarian people however had other ideas and got rid of that government, electing a government that promised to make the banks pay for their errors and greed. It introduced a levy on the banks and the IMF blasted the Hungarian government and its people with all the threats it could muster stating that the banks would flee the country and in an act of intimidation, it shut down its entire Hungarian program. Hungary didn't collapse, its people benefited.

 

         IMF policies have nothing to offer the people of any country, its only purpose is to keep syphoning the wealth up to the elite, to create an ever more powerful corporate world that controls all the planet's resources. Its policies have created famine, deprivation, abject poverty and death to thousands, if not millions across the globe. So why should it do anything else except applaud millionaire Osborne and his millionaire public school thugs when they devastate the public services, destroy the social fabric of our society, slash wages and pensions, and privatise everything in sight. All to make sure that “our” deficit is cleared, which in other terms means that we make sure that the bankers and the bond markets don't lose any of their unearned money that they greedily gambled and lost. It is two different worlds, it is their world of every lower wages and no social services controlled by a bunch of parasites, or it is our world of a decent society with all the social services necessary to keep it a decent society, a society based on needs, mutual aid and sustainability.

ann arky's home.