Poetry.

    

           March 21st, International Poetry day, as usual I missed it by a day. Never the less I think I should still celebrate that day, better late than never.

Image courtesy of Lithub.

Tinsel Cities.

In the city of tinsel and bright lights
midst the playthings of the rich
just beyond the champagne bubble
out of earshot of the butterfly people
in the dark shadows where no one looks
there you’ll find poverty and destitution
dance a macabre dance of survival.
In Mammon’s city of grand illusions
where rivers of wealth feed frivolity
in its twisting dark and musty lanes
where the light of hope seldom shines
an army of the living dead sweat and toil
polishing the tinsel, changing light bulbs
refilling the champagne bottles
nothing must stop the flow of frivolity
or the butterfly people will die.

Image courtesy of LSE Blog.

The Invisible.        

We live there— yes— there
A little bit above the dead
But quite a bit below the living
Where poverty is a dream
Deprivation a reality
Our daily bread an illusion
We sigh--we weep—
As ruthless poverty
With its cold claws
Tears the heart from our children
We ask—WHY?
Surrounded by opulence
Invisible to arrogant greed
Anger simmers beneath the surface
We seek equality
We will have justice
If blood is the price
So be it.

 

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Double-Speak.

Image courtesy of Clean River Trust.

          Once again the UK state shows its true colours, it spouts green renewable policies but decides to open up another coal mine. All this while experts say that climate catastrophe could happen at much lower temperatures than first predicted. The usual mantra is repeated, "it will bring jobs and help the economy". Help the economy really means allow the millionaire/billionaire class to make heaps more money, as for the jobs, it will be dirty, dangerous, unhealthy and unnecessary jobs. We all know that wars bring jobs and helps the economy, the rich getting richer, but nobody in their right mind wants jobs at that price. The same logic should apply in the case of coal mining, pouring more CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the climate catastrophe that is heading our way.
          Why do we allow these money grabbing mobsters of parasites to dictate our future, to bind us to extinction via climate disaster, just so they can enhance their already extreme ill-gotten wealth. Surely we could do better without them and their leeching greed. We can build a fairer society based on mutual aid and co-operation between communities, a society that sees to the needs of all our people. Of course it will never happen as long as we leave this bunch of greed driven parasites holding the reins of power. As always, the choice is ours, knuckle down and grin and bear it, or stand up and take the fight to them, on the streets, in the workplaces and in our communities. The future is ours to grasp, it will never be given to us.

 Image courtesy of Manchester Evening News. 

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

Angry.

        As usual Spirit of Revolt tries to bring you a variety of interesting papers from our archive in the hope that it will stir an interest in our history. A history of struggle by the ordinary people, who in fact are extraordinary, against the repression and injustices of this society. For July Read of the Month  we have chosen a Class War paper, Angry, from our Bratach Dubh Collection, TSoR5-6-12. Read, enjoy, learn, be inspired, and delve deeper into our vast collection at https://spiritofrevolt.info.

Read on line:

 

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Biased Media.

 

           Day and daily we are exposed to the horrors of the ongoing disaster in Ukraine, our media show all the misery and horror being inflicted on the people of Ukraine, and it is horror and devastation on a massive scale. However it is the biased way in which these wars are reported, this is a Russian invasion so the media show it up for the horror that it is, but where were these same reporters when the Bush-Blair war mongering duo were inflicting their "Shock & Awe"  in 2003, on the innocent people of Iraq. During that U$A and the NATO's illegal destruction of Iraq, we saw no weeping women, no injured children, no scenes of schools and hospitals being blow to smithereens, no badly injured Iraqi soldiers. It was all about our "smart" bombs and our phony illusion that we were only doing it to save the Iraqi people from an evil dictator. Totally biased bullshit from the subservient media.
         Another brutal attack on innocent people by the peace loving U$A and its NATO war partner, was reported as saving people from violence, that the West has successfully erased for the public consciousness, is the devastation brought down on the people of Yugoslavia in 1999. Again a subservient media painted the picture that the war mongers wanted, as with Iraq, they took the handouts as truth and called it reporting.

Yugoslavia 1999.

                                                Image courtesy of TeleSur.

 The following is taken from Arrezaf.

       

10 jun 2022 - People’s Daily: Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the end of NATO’s bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After an international legal team filed lawsuits against NATO on behalf of 3,000 victims over the horrific consequences of up to 15 tons of depleted uranium bombs NATO dropped in 1999, NATO responded by saying it has immunity from prosecution. Do you have any comment?
        Zhao Lijian: Twenty-three years ago, US-led NATO blatantly bombarded the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for 78 days without the approval of the UN Security Council. In total, NATO dropped nearly 420,000 bombs weighing 22,000 tons, including 15 tons of depleted uranium bombs. Over 2,500 people including 79 children were killed and more than one million people became refugees as a direct result of the bombings. 
      What is more heart-wrenching is that death and agony brought by the war lingered for generations till this day. As noted by experts, exposure to radiation emitted by depleted uranium bombs can show no symptom for years and depleted uranium bombs have long-term impact on the environment and human food-chain. In the 10 years after the bombing, about 30,000 people in Serbia developed cancer, among whom 10,000 died. According to the Institute of Public Health of Belgrade, by the end of 2019, the number of registered cancer patients in Serbia was as high as 97,000. A study of the Serbian emergency center shows that among children born in Serbia after 1999, many aged between one and five suffered from ectodermal tumors, many aged between five and nine contracted hematological malignancies, and there is a clear uptick in the morbidity rate of brain cancer among those aged between nine and 18. Besides, by May 2019, 366 Italian military personnel who participated in the NATO military operations have died of cancer, and 7,500 have fallen sick. 
        However, till this day, the US -- the country that sent military aircraft to drop depleted uranium bombs over Serbia and the inventor of this type of bombs as well as the only country that has ever used them -- continues to deny that depleted uranium bombs can directly cause Gulf War syndrome and Kosovo syndrome. During the Gulf War, the US dropped far more depleted uranium bombs over Iraq. NATO is also trying to get away with it by claiming immunity from prosecution. Such moves by the US-led NATO are shocking. Neither the Serbian people, nor people elsewhere in the world seeking justice, will ever agree to this. The US-led NATO should earnestly reflect on its war crimes, and provide a reasonable explanation and compensations to the victims of depleted uranium bombs as soon as possible. NATO must also seriously learn the lesson and stop creating new turmoil and division across the world. 

Visit ann arky's home at http://strugglepedia.co.uk    

No War.

          According to the various indexes, the world economy is not doing to well. Most reports are downgrading the economic growth of most countries from previous expectations. This doesn't please the big boys in the financial Mafia, and it seems obvious that they will reach for the big money option, the war button. Press that and you force governments to spend billions in the arms industry feeding into all those in the supply chain of the war machines across the globe. Corporations start to reap the benefits in profit and we the people pay for it in national debt and blood. No matter the desire from the financial Mafia, (IMF, World Bank, ECB, and the World Economic Forum,) we must pull together to demand that there is no war with Russia or any other large economic power block. all sold under the false flag of protecting democracy and freedom. The only freedom that the financial Mafia are interested in is their freedom to make as much profit as possible, no matter the consequences to the public at large.
         We can not stand idle by while they plot to get workers from one patch of the planet to kill workers from another part, under some phoney illusion that is all for our benefit and is a just and lawful war. When in fact it is all to do with economic growth, profit and power-bases, while filling the coffers of that small band of parasites that shape the world in which we live. Modern warfare stretches it vile fangs across cities and towns and their civilian population and does not confine itself to the so called battlefield. Our demands for "No War" must be loud, robust, persistent, on the streets and obvious, tied together with solidarity across all borders. Your sons and daughters blood may be that which is shed to jump start the world's economic growth. Don't sacrifice our youth for profit to the financial Mafia.

 

 

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

Clean?

A brief history of Three Mile Island nuclear disaster.  

         Nuclear power can never be green and can never be safe, apart from each one being a ticking time-bomb, remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Cleaning up the site where a nuclear power station was can take years and in some cases the ground can't be used for hundreds of years. It is estimate that the ground where Dunreay nuclear research facility stood will be out of use for at least 300 years. Then there is the problem of getting rid of the waste from these radioactive monsters, the only thing they can think of is to ship it to some other part of the planet and bury it, leaving it to leak into the water table to be dealt with by future generations.

                                                              Chernobyl.

    Burying it is what is being planned in France, transporting it across country to an area where the people have no desire what so ever, to have this radio active dump on the doorstep.

                                                 Fukushima.

This from Act For Feedom Now.

         In Bure (France), the State wants to build a center for burrying nuclear waste. In September 2021, the public hearing to determine the public utility (DUP) of the CIGÉO project will begin. A pseudo-participatory show that will open the way for the next works and expropriations. Our “public participation” means resistance and sabotage – exiting nuclear power requires manual work.

 

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

Plundering.

 

          Look at the numbers under this system and you see the glaring inequality, you realise the magnitude of the plundering by the few of the riches produced by the multitude. Numbers paint a picture, in this case a picture of blatant robbery of the fruits of the labour of the many, the inhumane exploitation of the many. Under no stretch of the imagination can any of this take place in a democracy. This world has yet to experience democracy, and if we persist with the present system of capitalism and its unavoidable greed driven excesses, we never will see democracy, just ever growing inequality and endless wars to increase and defend the power and privileges of the plunderers.  

 

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

Uncle Willie.

My Uncle Willie.

         To those who know me there will be no doubt in their minds about my hatred of the economic system we bleed under. In my eighties now, I have seen this system destroy individuals, tear families apart, and in its voracious greed for profit and power, it has murdered and maimed countless millions in its endless wars. Each individual destroyed, each family torn apart, each war grave, and each veterans hospital are all indictments against a system where people are sacrificed to keep the system functioning for the benefit of a small cabal of over privileged parasites. You would think that our humanity would demand that the system should be altered, modified and shaped to meet the needs of the the people, not the other way round.
        As we look at this society we can see all around us, those unfortunate individuals whose lives are deeply scarred by a system that uses people to perpetuate its greed driven machinations. It is so easy to encapsulate the ruthless viciousness of the system in one person's life, to me my uncle Willie is such a person. To the system, a nobody, a human being of no significance, but to those around him, a father, a son, a brother, a husband and an uncle.
        My uncle Willie was my mother's younger brother, naturally I didn't know him in his early years, but I heard the stories. Willie, like the rest of my family, lived in Garngad, a Glasgow slum in the north of the city. A young man in his 20’s, he was married and had three kids, and like so many of that era, unemployed. It seems that Willie was a family man and loved his kids, he could be seen most days walking with them along the waste ground off Charles Street at the back of Glenconner Park, usually two kids running in front and the youngest on his shoulders. It seems he was an excellent snooker/billiards player, and that is where he supplemented his income, by playing round the many snooker halls in Glasgow. However to the system, he was superfluous to requirements, so could scrape a living in the slums of Glasgow as best he could. 

 

       Then, suddenly, he is a valuable asset to the system, 1939, WWII starts, and Willie is scooped up and shipped out to Egypt. We no nothing of his experiences there, but after three years there and later his demob, he returned home with malaria, this is when I got to know him, just a little. His shaking hands, the troubled look in his eyes. His return to civilian life didn't get off to a good start, on returning home to his family, of wife and three kids, he discovered that he now had five kids. This was the end of his marriage, the family broke up, and Willie moved from job to job, and his drinking got worse and he eventually couldn't hold a job, he was now an alcoholic and homeless. Moving from homeless hostel to homeless hostel, occasionally staying with family, but his alcoholism made that an ever decreasing possibility.
       I remember my mother, a church goer and anti-drink woman, on many an occasion, looking out the window and saying, “Oh here's Willie coming”, then a pause, then, “he doesn't look too drunk”. He would sit and chat to his big sister and myself, my mother would make him something to eat and give a cup of tea. Though it was never a full cup of tea, his hands were shaking so bad it would have been all over him, she only quarter filled the cup and kept topping it up, it was his troubled eyes that have stuck with me all these years, as he was leaving, my mother would slip a 10 shilling note into his hand. 

 

       Willie spent the rest of his years moving around hostels for the homeless, eventually dying in one down in Ardrossan in his fifties. To me, my uncle Willie epitomises this stinking system, you're a worthless entity, left to rot unless the system needs you, either to make its profits, or to fight its imperialist wars, and your reward for either of these activities, if anything at all, is never anything grand, usually nothing or suffering.

 

The Warmth of a Dream.

 

He lay in a dark doorway, dreamed of home,

night frost locked his joints

morning rain chilled the marrow of his bones.

In the dream there was a sister, 

a pram in a garden, a crowd of youngsters

who called him "mister", a time of little pain.

Are these youngsters the same young men, who

now laugh at him, throw beer cans, 

piss on him as he lies drunk in some dark lane?

When was that first step to no forgiveness.

No will to rise to beg for food,

numbness kills the pain.

The dream brings a warmth that feels good,

dark fog shades out consciousness,

an ambulance carries off a body washed in rain.

 

 

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

Water Is Life.

      Imperialists are thieving bullies, who stride across their subservient dominions plundering and pillaging, taking what they wish. Anything that will enrich its coffers or increase its power, will simply or brutally be taken. Today the biggest of those thieving bullies is the U$A. One of the most precious resources of to day is fresh water, and in arid lands it is even more precious as it is necessary to farm the land and make it livable for the indigenous population. So the anger of a people who see that water supply being redirected to their rich and powerful imperial master is understandable and is therefore righteous anger, and deserves our full support and solidarity.
      To deprive a people of water is to slowly kill them, it is death by state contract, it is murder authorised by state legislation. These are all aspects of the present day state system bound up in capitalist economics and brutal imperialism. There is a better way.

The following article is from It's Going Down:

        English translation of a report from Difusión Comunista Anárquica about the recent uprising in defense of water in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
      Since Wednesday July 29, self-organized protests by campesinos and community members have kicked off in the municipality of Rosales in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. These coordinated actions have been directed against government buildings and other representations of the Mexican state, like CONAGUA (Mexico’s National Water Commission).
       They are an expression of the refusal by the local population to be denied water from the “Las Virgenes” dam so that the Mexican state can cover a debt it has with the United States. This dam is one of the principle sources of water for the local population, who use it mostly for agricultural activities and consumption. It should be noted that this area, like much of the northern states that border the United States, is characterized by dry and desert-like conditions. The absence or scarcity of water implies a vulnerability to productive activities that bring sustenance and life to the communities in the region.

      In addition, the Mexican state has used both the military and national guard, and has threatened the deployment of more state forces, beneath the pretext of supposedly combating “aguchicoleos,” a term being used to refer to the illicit or clandestine stealing of water from a non-authorized source. However, the only theft and deprivation that exists in the region is that which the state carries out against the people, in order to pay off its debt with the United States.
      This was part of the agreements reached a few weeks ago during AMLO’s visit with Donald Trump. The threats have escalated, along with demonstrations of resistance. There is now the possibility of the massive deployment of the national guard and police to the region. The head of CONAGUA, Blanca Jimenez, has requested the massive deployment of state forces to intimidate and stop the direct action of the people against representations of the Mexican State.
       The theft of water is one of the many practices carried out by international capital. These actions take place in open and shameless collaboration with left sectors and progressives who are no different than the scum of these governmental administrations (PRI, PAN, MORENA, PRD, etc.). Protected by the rule of law and the democratic order of civilization, they try to keep us submissive and quiet, spitting on each one of us as if we decide to get out and take the streets without previous notice, responding when our compañerxs in struggle are arrested and sent to the dungeons of capital.

Immediate freedom for the prisoners of the revolt in Chihuahua!

In defense of water and life, for the proletarian struggle!

For communism and anarchy!

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

Deaths From Criminal Gambling Casinos.

 

        "Austerity", a word that the West has come to live with for almost a decade now. Those in the gilded cage of privilege and power weave an illusion round the word, slipping it in as, "balancing the books", "living within your means" or "getting the economy back on its feet", all of which is hogwash and cod-swill. It is actually the public banded about word that replaces the use of the truth, that it is an ideological plank for the rich and powerful to recoup their gambling loses, by plundering the ordinary people of this world. 

       The system by which the quality of our lives depend is one large gambling casino, where the rich and powerful shuffle trillions of dollars around the various gambling tables within the casino. These are called stock markets, hedge funds, and financial investment funds, and other such fanciful names. Of course they don't sit up all night bleary eyed personally shuffling their ill-gotten gains, they have financial institutions that do all that for them. From this casino, unlike the ones that the more pleb like individuals frequent, they make vast amounts of money from this casino. Periodically the system goes wrong and the lose big time. That's when "austerity" comes in, they have got to get their money back, unlike you when you leave  gambling casino with empty pockets. Since their system is bust, the only place left to rip-off is the public purse.

        So what "austerity" really means slashing money from public services. We are brain washed into accepting that there is no money, so all social service have to be cut, savings have to be made, efficiency cuts have to be administered, but we always have enough money for wars. What the word "austerity" translates into is poverty and deprivation for the many, death to many others and endless wars.  "Austerity" is a crime, it is not a victimless crime, people die from the direct results of "austerity". Recent studies by Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the University of London, have revealed the staggering cost in human life by the obnoxious word "austerity".

This from World Socialist Web Site, thanks for the link Loam: 

       A joint report by Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the University of London (UCL) finds that savage cuts to the UK National Health Service (NHS) and Social Care provision could result in nearly 200,000 “excess” deaths by the end of 2020 in England.

“The effects of health and social care spending constraints on mortality in England: a time trend analysis,” published in the British Medical Journal, BMJOpen, estimates 45,000 extra deaths have occurred between 2009 and 2014 and predicts a further 152,141 deaths from 2015 to 2020—a staggering 100 a day.

The research links increasing mortality rates to the cuts to health and social care spending, first begun under a Labour government, then continued by successive Conservative governments to pay for the £1 trillion bailout of the banks after the 2008 global financial collapse.

“From 2001 to 2010,” it states, “the absolute number of deaths in England decreased by an average of 0.77% per year. From 2011 to 2014, the number of deaths increased by an average of 0.87% per year.”

       "Austerity" is a crime carried out deliberately, by people, fully aware of the consequences on other people, it is not the result of some natural law, though the rich and powerful would like you think it was. Those imposing, administering, and enforcing the policies necessary for their "austerity" recouping plan are criminals in every sense of the word. However, it is only the people that can bring them to justice by bring down the the whole festering cancer that is the gambling casino, and that can only be down if we bring down capitalism the greed driven system that feeds the casino.

       For more damning figures that flow from the criminal act of "austerity" read the full article HERE:

 

Anarchism Across Europe.

    Another episode from A-Radio-Berlin as part of their journey across Europe.

      As part of a journey through Eastern Europe a member of the Anarchist Radio Berlin (aradio.blogsport.de) had the opportunity of talking to a comrade of Syrena. Syrena is a squat in the inner city of Warsaw and has its origins in the tenants movement. In this interview we talk about the huge amount of activities like anti-racist work, social work and anarchist activities that are getting started out of Syrena. Further we talk about the connection to the Przychodnia Squat which is located directly behind Syrena as well as about the comrade's personal opinion of the controversial selling of the Od:zysk Squat in Poznan, which is quite an current issue in the Polish movement.

Listen HERE:

Please send feedback and questions to: aradio-berlin/at/riseup(.)net

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