Showing posts with label anti-military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-military. Show all posts

Wednesday 15 June 2022

Polluters.

 


Image courtesy of earth.org.
  
       I have probably spouted this before, in fact, I'm sure I have, but find it difficult not to repeat. We the ordinary people are being asked to change our lifestyle to save the planet. Take a shallower bath, a shorter shower, turn your thermostat down a degree or two, recycle your plastic, food and paper waste. All I'm sure will make some difference to our carbon footprint. However it will not save the human species from extinction, it is just a drop in the ocean. We will only see a real drop in the human carbon footprint when the millionaire/billionaire/CEO class abandon their super-luxury fuel guzzling yachts, their private jets, their caravans of gas guzzling limousines. When they abandon their 20 roomed mansions with its army of servants, when the monarchy abandons its catalogue of opulent palaces and its entourage of hangers-on. Even then it will still be in the balance, the one thing that would make the biggest reduction in our carbon footprint would be dismantling the festering relationship between the military industrial complex and the state, and bring an end to wars. Something the state and its various mouthpieces never mention is that the military and wars are by far the biggest polluters on the planet.
       So forget about that shallow bath or shorter shower and demand the end to the real polluters of the planet, the rich and powerful and the state and its military adventures.                               


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

Wednesday 8 August 2018

The Storm Troops Of Imperialism.

       When ever members of the military come out and openly voice the truth about what the military is all about. When they lay bare the fact that the military, in any state, are the storm troops of imperialism, an antithesis of freedom and democracy. We should spread their words far and wide. Thanks Loam for the link.

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In this debut episode of Eyes Left, hosts Spenser Rapone and Mike Prysner discuss the vision and goal of the podcast, how their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan led them to become socialists, and why US troops should resist U.S. foreign policy.
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Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Tuesday 15 November 2016

War Is Not a Game.

        Any observer of our society would be well aware that we are a warring society. Through the onslaught from the babbling brook of bullshit, that is our mainstream media, with its war movies, stories of "great" battles, and war heroes, their justification for every war in which we have ever been involved. Then there is the "games" fed to our kids, super-human heroes, winning fierce battles over the bad guys, games of war, killing sprees where the player enjoys killing and never feels the pain of hot shrapnel tearing through their flesh, and knows that at the end of this violent indulgence, they can walk away unscathed, a million miles from the real killing sprees into which the state throws our kids. 
Of course we should not forget those callous military recruiting teams that infiltrate our schools, targeting the poorest areas.
 This is war.
      All the state has to do is reap this harvest and dispatch them to fight the imperialist wars that it indulges in at the behest of the corporate giants, who are ever hungry for more resources and markets, all gained from the blood of our youth.
 This is war.
     The armed forces make around 11,000 visits to secondary schools and colleges schools in the UK each year, and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) spends around £26 million each year on school Combined Cadet
Force (CCF) units, both of which have a strong recruitment agenda behind them, contrary to the repeated denials of this in recent years by the MoD
      Marlborough science academy is one of thousands of UK schools to invite in the military. Today, as part of an Insight Into Industry event, the army and other organisations – including the fire and rescue service, Marks & Spencer, and Hertfordshire University – are giving students an insider’s view of their work. Next to the assault course is a display showing salary scales for all military ranks, and male and female soldiers from different units are on hand to answer questions.
         We recommend that the Welsh Government considers whether further research is needed into the reasons for the apparently disproportionate number of visits to schools in areas of relatively high deprivation.
  Concerns over how many visits army officers make to schools in deprived areas will be debated by assembly members on Wednesday.
 The British Regular Army visits schools as a major part of its recruitment programme and a third of new soldier recruits are aged under 18. These recruits may face serious personal risk and challenging moral dilemmas, yet their terms of service can prevent them from leaving the army for up to six years. Given that minors are less able than adults to make free, informed and responsible decisions about enlisting, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the House of Commons/Lords Joint Committee on Human Rights have recommended raising the minimum age of recruitment to 18. Both Committees also recommend that the UK ensure that disadvantaged communities are not targeted for recruitment.
 This is war.
      If we wish peace to be the main picture of our society, then we have to stop the military from the callous recruiting of kids, which happens mainly in poor and deprived areas, all with the blessing of the state. We have to ban all military recruiting teams from anywhere near a school. Schools are supposed to be a safe and welcoming environment for the enlightenment and development of our kids, allowing them to make balanced and informed decisions as adults, they are not to be a conveyor belt of cannon fodder for the interests of a profit greedy corporate world.
This is war.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 23 May 2016

A Soldier.

 

Tanks shipped into Glasgow after "Bloody Friday" 1919.
          I get pissed off by all those who spout, "support our boys", of course referring to that band of unfortunates who have surrendered their right to the faculty of thinking for themselves. They have taken on the duty of defending the wealthy and privileged cabal that rule over us, and they will do it with whatever ferociousness and brutality that they are ordered to administer. They will turn their weapons on their own people, if so ordered, yet we are still urged to "support our boys". The soldier, he/she is portrayed as something brave and noble, when in fact they are the unthinking, obedient brutal tools of the state, there to crush any challenge to its unbridled authority.
 Troops on the streets of Liverpool during the 1911 transport strike, in which two strikers were shot while on a demonstration.
      The following is a wonderful article written with beautiful moments of irony, by Aristide Jobert, (Aristide Jobert (1869-1942) emphasised direct action, appeals to the people, a general strike and insurrection. He wrote for La Guerre Sociale. Although anti-militarist, insurrectionist, anti-parliamentarian, and syndicalist - Jobert became a member of parliament, elected to the chamber in 1914. The article was written as an obituary for Marquis of Gallifet, who died July 1910), it was later translated for The Socialist, (SLP)

“A Soldier! Funeral Oration of General de Gallifet-
Monsieur, the Marquis of Gallifet, General of the French Army and ex-Minister of the no less French Republic, has rendered up his beautiful soul to God. The astonishing thing is that he has died in his bed; a beautiful death, if I may say so. It is truly astonishing that he never found himself face to face with a relation or friend of one of the numerous victims whom he caused to be assassinated during the re­pression of the Commune. He himself must have been astonished at his own immunity, and he who was the friend of Gambetta must have lost faith in that “Justice which is immanent in things” spoken of by his friend. The noble soldier decided before his death that he did not desire to have military honours rendered to him. It is a pity. No one merited them better than he.
He was a Soldier in every sense of the word. He possessed all the military virtues in the highest degree. To be a soldier is to be ready to do for pay, for a salary, any deed, however odious, however criminal, however contemptible it may be. Gallifet was a soldier, and he showed himself worthy of his calling. Is courage necessary for that? During the repression of the Commune Gallifet accomplished his task with a refine­ment of cruelty that is truly rare. It is well known that when conducting a column of prisoners he made the youngest and the oldest step out of the ranks and had them summarily shot without further form of procedure. His reasons (he has given them) were remarkable for their generosity: the first, the young men, were the “flower of the revolutionaries”; the others, “those with white hair,’1 were old offenders, “they had seen ’48.” Monsieur le Marquis tried to be funny.
Note that it was unnecessary to give any reasons at all, since a soldier exists to kill his kind without scruple and without reasons, since true courage—military courage—con­sists in furiously attacking those who are weak, disarmed, and without defence. Gallifet was a brave soldier, and since he had not been prominent during the foreign war he re-installed himself at the expense of his countrymen at home. It was less dangerous. As we see, he was worthy to wear the gold lace of a general, and he was no less worthy to become a minister of the bour­geois Republic. He was in that position along with Millerand,—a Socialist, if you please,—and with the assent of a good many Socialists whose comrades or predecessors had been assassinated by Gallifet. Gallifet possessed all the military virtues.
His mother—since in spite of all it was a woman who gave birth to this soldier—was disowned by him, and was forced to appeal to law to obtain a pension from her son. His wife—since even the beasts go in pairs—was repudiated by him, and he separated from her. His son—since even tigers procreate— was driven out by him, and died, it is said, without ever receiving a sign of forgiveness from his father.
We see that Gallifet was a perfect type ; without a heart—I do not say without en­trails, as the legend runs that he carried them in his military cap—he had no attach­ments, he was not bound by any of those moral or physical ties which hold ordinary mortals. He was a soldier. Assassin, plunderer, cynic, bad husband, unnatural father, unworthy son, that is what a true soldier ought to be—without natural or human sentiments. That the arm of a soldier may trike sure no human feeling or sentiment of pity must hinder it. It is thus that a man must be made to be worthy of the noble calling of arms. Now Gallifet was truly worthy; he had all the military virtues; not one was wanting. He even pushed to an extreme his soldierly frankness ; he paraded his virtues before the world. The man was a type.
Yes, it is really a pity that he refused military honours. He fully deserved them. How imposing would have been the funeral procession of this decorated carrion, winding along the streets of that Paris which he had drenched in blood, accom­panied by all those soldiers, decked out in gold lace, of whom he was a true example. Accompanied also by those ministers, by all the governmental clique, republican, monarchist, and imperial, whose supporter he had been. The people, the working people, those whom Gallifet had crushed, insulted, and shot down, would have come to swell the procession.
The sons, the grandsons, the friends, the survivors, of those who were massacred in the Commune, would have made for him a guard of honour. The sons, the brothers, the fathers, and the mothers of those whom military disci­pline confines in barracks or at Biribi, could have come also to do homage to the gilded corpse of this soldier. In spite of all, I hope that one day the full and unveiled history of this hero will be written, and that it will be put into the hands of children, so that they may learn from its details what military virtues are. That would certainly be the best way to inspire disgust, contempt, repulsion, and hatred towards that being of which Gallifet was the most perfect type, that abnormal, immoral, and unnatural being called a Soldier.
A. Jobert.

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

Sunday 24 January 2016

Kick The Military Out Of Our Schools.


Does the kid know that if he joins, he'll be facing the other end of the gun?
MSPs are being urged to hold an inquiry into the presence of the armed forces in Scotland’s schools after an outcry over plans to set up cadet units aimed at the poorest pupils.
 
        Why the outcry for an inquiry? It is really quite simply, there should be an outright ban on the military having any presence in our schools. Whither they call it team building or physical training, or whatever, there can be no connection between the military and education. We all know that children are impressionable, it takes years to come to informed opinions about the world in which we live. Let education, families and communities help our children do so, without the interference of the pompous parasitical imperialist masters. To a child, the military might look all very grand as they parade up and down in their fancy regalia, but they are the state's killing machine. Its only purpose is to defend the wealth and power of our imperialist establishment.
         It is up to all of us in our communities to get the military kicked out of our education system, we have to make it quite clear by determined action, that we will not have our children brainwashed into being canon fodder, to be sacrificed on the bloody altar of imperialism. The military is an anathema to education, education is about helping people act of their own free will after an informed look at the evidence, the military is about doing exactly what your are told, no matter what you think. One, education, should take you down the road to free will, the other, the military, turns you into a robot, waiting for instructions from above, a slave to authority, a unit whose live can be sacrificed at the command of a “higher authority”.
        This is a campaign that epitomises the class structure of our society, these “cadet units” are to be placed in the schools in the most deprived areas. Areas where our callous authoritarian imperial masters, know that the kids have less opportunities, and the military will be sold to them as a wonderful life of travel and training, there will be no mention of the death, trauma, injury, suicide, bullying, brutality and abandoning your own will, to the will of the state's killing machine, in the defence of other's wealth and power, wealth and power that they themselves will never share.

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

Thursday 12 February 2015

Awards For Scum-bags.





      What type of society honours those who evict people from their homes, hands out awards to people who pressurise individuals shackled by debt, and to poor to pay? What type of scum-bag would want to turn up to be honoured in such a way, at the same time paying £4,000 for a seat at a table surrounded by this form of low life?
     In this system of festering economic corruption, we have the perverse Oxbridge millionaire henchmen of the financial Mafia, extolling family values and fairness, while pushing through legislation that drives ordinary people deep into the mire of poverty and deprivation, creating homelessness. low wages and unemployment, and then turning their enforcers into heroes, hence the “Credit Awards” for putrid scum-bags.
    Those lauded in this type of society are the greed infested banksters, corporate bosses, who abuse people with zero hours contracts, and slave labour workfare, the blood drenched military, with their tales of conquest, which translates into the killing of ordinary innocent people in foreign lands. Those exploited, abused and vilified, are the ordinary people, the ones who create everything around us, from the spoon at the £4,000 dinner table, the railway, carrying goods and people, to the boiler that heats the house, and the shoes on our feet. Without us the ordinary people, these parasite squids would be naked, why do we tolerate this situation?

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

Friday 30 January 2015

Henry Kissinger, Citizens Arrest.


     There are some brave people in this world, and among them we should include those women in America who go by the name of Code Pink. They are persistent and well organised in there anti-militarism campaign, among other injustices they see.
     On the 29th January, in the American Senate, during an Armed Services Committee hearing, they attempted a citizens arrest of that arch organiser of state bloodshed, Henry Kissinger. Of course the Chairman of the hearing, Senator John McCain, berated them, calling they low life scum, if there is anyone who could recognise that life form it would be him, as he is part of that genre.
Alli and Anna Kaminski read the arrest warrant! 
     Did you hear? CODEPINK took the Senate by storm yesterday by attempting a citizens' arrest of Henry Kissinger while he was testifying in the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing! Chairman of the hearing, Senator John McCain, responded by referring to us as “despicable," "disgraceful," and "low life scum” –– and we couldn’t be prouder.
 
Alli McCracken dangles plastic handcuffs at Kissinger  
     For over a decade, CODEPINK has been holding war criminals accountable for their actions. We’ve exposed the lies in the halls of power in Washington DC and across the country, starting with the Bush administration and continuing into the Obama years, but never forgetting the grave offenses committed by people before them, like Henry Kissinger. Check out more pictures from the arrest on our Facebook page!    But our work isn’t possible without you. Please consider supporting our work by making a donation today.
For justice and accountability,
Alli, Anna, Janet, Jodie, Katie, Kristin, Medea, Nalini, Nancy, Nathan, Sergei, Sophia and Tighe

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

Friday 12 November 2010

NO WAY TO PUT AN END TO WAR.


Something to think about as rmemberance Sunday  approaches. Listen to Buffy HERE.

Universal Soldier
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.
Buffy Sainte-Marie 1964.

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