Answers!

 

       What is your answer to the astronomical energy price rises, rocketing food prices, increase taxes, increased interest rates, all of which will kick your standard of living back to the Victorian times? All managed by a group of very rich people, who in all events will not have too much to worry about regarding their standard of living. All off them pointing to the hardship and struggle the ordinary people are facing, but not one of them will suggest an end to the insane economic system that is responsible for all this misery being heaped on you and I. They are all obedient servants of the economic madness that blights the lives of millions, and is destroying the planet, capitalism.
         So what will you do, make placards, march in solemn lines appealing to our lords and master to do something to ease our plight? Will you queue longer and with patience at the nearest food bank? Will you try hard to tighten your belt and live on less, or perhaps, cut down on the kids food? Change your vote for the new Messiah? While we do this, energy companies make billions in profit to feed their over privileged shareholders. Will we stand by while large very rich corporations see their shareholders become millionaires/billionaires. Of course we know that all the above methods have been tried in the past with around about zero effect on our living standards. You may get a small concession here and a little sweetener there, mere paracetamol by the system to make you feel better, to quieten you down, but will not cure our ills, poverty, homelessness, fuel poverty, food insecurity, crumbling health service and broken education system.
        Perhaps this onslaught of hardship and poverty that is being flung our way, way be a kick to much, and we will try a different method to cure our ills. For example build up mutual aid centres in our communities, take control of our community assets and run them as we wish them to be run. Take control of our workplaces and produce for our needs, not for the profit of millionaires/billionaires. They need us, without us they are nothing, we don’t need them, we built everything, shipped everything and distributed everything. The problem is we have been doing it to the dictate of greedy self interested corporations all for their benefit while they laughed all the way to the bank at our servility.

 

 

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

Obvious.

         I have always maintained that those who believe we can "fix" capitalism, are idiots. They are trying to fix something that isn't broken, capitalism is working just fine, and doing what it was intended to do, make a few people very rich at the expense of the many. Once you grasp this truth, you realise that the only answer for justice and equality for all, is the total destruction of capitalism and all its attendant institutions. We are sold lies and illusions, and dwell in a land of smoke and mirrors. A world woven by the massive corporate advertising beast and its companion, state propaganda. Nowhere in the world of these two servants of capitalism is there a shred of reality, nothing related to the world we the ordinary people inhabit. 

      Nothing is as it is painted, "the economy" dressed as necessary and benevolent to all, reality, a label for the continuation of exploitation of the mass of people. Bearing in mind that the richest 1% have massively increased their wealth while the bottom 50% have become poorer.  "Prison", a place to put dangerous people, reality, a dustbin to dump those who would hinder the exploitation of the people. Bearing in mind that approximately 80% of those in prison suffer learning difficulties, substance addiction and/or mental health issues, and should be somewhere in the social care system and not prison. "Advertising" bringing the latest information to assist you to make choices to enhance your life, reality, devious and duplicitous manipulation of desires and reality to increase consumption and profit. Bearing in mind that the corporate world spends billions of pounds annually on advertising, so it must work. "Democracy", hailed as a way for you to be involved in the running of your country, reality, an illusion created to try to stop you from taking control of your own lives and communities. Bearing in mind that practically all those in government have connections and investments in the corporate world and they decide the shape of your world and how your tax money will be spent.

        So the answer seems to be straight forward, to live our lives in a world we recognise and relate to, we must screw the "economy", abolish "prisons", scrap "advertising", and get rid of their so called "democracy" and take control of our communities and workplaces in co-operation with all other communities scrapping the profit motive. Well, what are we waiting for?

 

 

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

Ashes Of Disaster.

        "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success". We are certainly facing a disaster on a gigantic scale.. We can see it as disaster and just try to get through it, or we can see it as an opportunity. Mutual aid groups are forming up all over the world, not just in UK. As the present economic system crumbles and creeks as it nears collapsing point, we can with mutual aid groups start to create an alternative to the exploitative capitalist system. Power can move to the communities, mutual aid groups can link up and grow, communities can start to sort out their needs and not wait for our lords and masters to create a dependency on their power institutions. The present economic system is practically on its knees, let's make sure it can never rise again and replicate the inequality, corruption and injustice of the past. By coming together in mutual aid groups, with a long term view, we can grow the roses of success from the ashes of this disaster.  

The following from Roar Magazine:

       With the shutdown of businesses, schools and countless other institutions, millions of people are facing loss of income, housing and access to basic survival resources, including food. Confronted by popular pressure and the specter of civil unrest, states have begun to undertake a “disaster socialism” of uneven and often contradictory aid measures. Still, conditions of emergency are intensifying by the hour and the current biopolitical regime faces an existential crisis.

Under such circumstances, the need for self-organized infrastructures of mutual aid, care and resilience could not be clearer. In the coming weeks and months, rent strikes and other acts of collective refusal are on the horizon. How could these works of mutual aid flow into the construction of a dual power situation? As the system collapses, can physical bases of autonomy and solidarity transform our relationship to the state?

      At Woodbine, an autonomous space and organizing framework maintained in New York City since 2014, this is what we have been preparing for — to mobilize our networks, skills, knowledges and energy to coordinate and provide for each other, while simultaneously building the longer-term capacity to face an uncertain future.

Digital organizing

      Although the severity of COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in recent memory, many people in New York City seem primed for the moment, as if they have been waiting for a crisis of this magnitude to arrive.

       Last week, Sandy Nurse, a co-founder of the MayDay Space in Bushwick and a candidate for New York City Council tweeted: “Movement folks: we know how to mobilize quickly and effectively. Time to get in formation. Start the conversations now w/ local social networks & hubs on collaborating what safe direct support may need to look like, & what does scaling-up and cross-neighborhood collab[oration] look like.” We shared her post across our social media platforms and received immediate responses from friends and strangers alike reaching out to collaborate.

      Experienced community organizers and newly activated neighbors alike have joined a dizzying flood of online coordination, from social media posts to Google docs, Zoom meetings and Signal threads. Just yesterday, a Google doc titled “Mutual Aid NYC” migrated to its own website, where hundreds of individuals are making plans for autonomous mutual aid and disaster relief on a local, place-by-place basis. This avalanche of online discussion, from resource guides and social media “hot takes,” shows that there is much popular insight about how to to navigate the crisis. But questions remain as to who, how, when and where these calls for action will be taken up.

Legacies of mutual aid

        There is a long history of radical mutual aid that links service provisioning with the construction of dual power. In New York, this has been led by organizations like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, ACT-UP, and, in more recent years, Occupy Wall Street. Today, various decolonial and abolitionist formations have been established that involve mutual aid including Take Back the Bronx and NYC Shut It Down, which is already adjusting its Feed the People (FTP) program to the present crisis. These mutual aid projects exist alongside informal activities of interdependence, care and support that many communities already practice on a day-to-day basis. Now, New Yorkers are mobilizing these informal networks in more deliberate ways, aiming, for example, to connect vulnerable tenants with volunteers.

       The local experience of Hurricane Sandy provides an important example of both the possibilities and the limits of a crisis moment like the present. The self-organized “Occupy Sandy” was a city-wide infrastructure of spontaneous, self-organized disaster relief after the hurricane struck in 2012. Many leftist observers suggested that Occupy Sandy offered a prefigurative glimpse of “disaster communism,” an alternative, cooperative response to so-called “natural” disasters.

        However, in practice, Occupy Sandy functioned largely as a supplementary service provider within the void left by the state’s negligence. It never came close to becoming a sustained political formation, let alone one capable of forcing concessions from the ruling class. Most importantly, Occupy Sandy demonstrated a collective capacity to directly confront catastrophe. It served as a crucible for relationships, projects and spaces in the subsequent decade ⁠— including Woodbine itself.

        Understanding the legacies and continuities of mutual aid are crucial to acting in the current moment. However, none of us have faced the surreal condition of social distancing. What does organizing in real life mean now and what are our expectations of safety and responsibility?

The dilemma of “social distancing”

         As online attempts at mutual aid unfold, we must address the matter of real-life contact and physical space along with their ethical, medical and logistical dilemmas. While recognizing the urgency of “social distancing,” how can we prevent state-mandated isolation and quarantine measures from becoming tools of political demobilization? What does it mean to normalize quarantine as a necessary condition during an emergency? And what are our expectations when it comes to responses from the state?

        We know that there are experienced and trusted organizers all around us, and we also know there are dormant organizing frameworks and relations that will need to be revived and reactivated. We know that we will need to share skills and practices with groups throughout the country. There are many others out there — at home, online, wanting to help, to volunteer, to contribute — with skills, knowledge and resources beyond which any of us realize. There will be the need not only to provide for our friends, but also our neighbors and community members.

Continue reading HERE: 

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

Merchat City Fringe, Glasgow.

        Anti-establishment, anti-corporate, anti-mainstream, pro-people, pro-community, pro-a-good-time, without the frills and the prices, well mark your diaries, Glasgow's High Street is the place to go, come the beginning of August. Never mind the high prices, cocktails, "trendy" Merchant City Festival, head for the fringe. 

The Merchant City Fringe

4 – 7 August, 2016

High Street, Glasgow

        The Blue Chair & McChuills present, in association with Fail Better and STFU, The Merchant City Fringe -a gloriously noisy celebration of creativity and everything underground and awesome in Glasgow.

          The MERCHANT CITY FRINGE is a celebration of places deemed 'too far away' to be considered for the Merchant City Festival (even though we are talking a few yards away). Conspiracy theorists are claiming it's because High Street ain't hip enough and their beer is not dear enough so this year the Merchant City Fringe is BORN and piggybacking off the main festivals success with a host of events across THE BLUE CHAIR and MCCHUILLS...

       2 venues, 3 days, 1 parastic festival attaching itself to a corporate behomoth in the spirit of community and art and music and poetry and having a good craic.

       alt-folk! punk-punk! post-punk! hip-hop! spoken word! Chill-out DJs! Lip Sync battles! market stalls! Clowning! A poetry workshop for children! And loads of other tasty treats!

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

We Can Surely Fix This!!!

It is just around 3 weeks to the Great Big Crooks and Liars competition, the “general election” and the crazed competitors are running around the country kissing dogs' arses and shaking the back legs of frogs, all in an attempt to impress the general public. No deed is too bizarre, lofty millionaires will even touch the bairns of ordinary folk, and smile. I always feel that it is aptly named, “general election” , after all we are really electing generals to lead the slaves. What is it all about, what really happens after the “big event”? We should know, we have had lots of them in the past which we can examine. In each Crooks and Liars competition in the past we have had the various groupings, called parties, as they have lots of fun, produce their magic formula, called “a manifesto”. As you read each magic formula you come across lots of words all arranged differently from the other's magic formula, but all basically saying the same thing. For example, each one will say that they will end poverty, give everybody a decent home, create a good standard of living for everybody, and see that the population is taken care of, from the cradle to the grave. They will dress it up in various recognisable sound-bites, but it is still the same old crap.        In my 80+ years I have experienced a lot of these Crooks and Liars competitions, I have read lots of these magic formulae, and to this day I have not seen one fulfilled. I was born in poverty, son of a miner and a waitress/cleaner/shop-assistant/factory-worker, in one of Glasgow's many slums, Garngad. So the single-ends have gone, but the poverty remains, homelessness is on the increase, and the health service is deteriorating, and people are having to rely on food-banks to survive. So why do we keep repeating the same old failed process? We know what happens when the winners of the Crooks and Liars competition, don the robes of power, and take up residence in that edifice to imperialism and privilege, the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. They sit down and do the bidding of the financial Mafia, they work out the best way to implement the financial Mafia's grand plan of total privatisation. All public assets are to be sold off to the corporate world. Everything that can assist the corporate world will be done, depressing wages, restricting trade union activity, end social spending, reduce corporate taxation. The winners of the Crooks and Liars competition are the puppets of the financial/corporate Mafia.      If we the general public are hoping to create a better world for all our people, our children and grandchildren, Then we have to stop expecting a bunch of pampered privileged careerist to do it for us, they are part of the problem, in no way are they the answer. We have to take control of our lives, that means control of our communities, our work places, the means of production and distribution. We can run all these affairs without the aid of an overpaid fat-cat CEO, and a bunch of doing-nothing, greedy shareholders. We have toiled long and hard, we built every house, factory, ship, and lorry, we delivered every product, we grow every morsel of food. However, sadly we do it to the dictate of a bunch of greedy self interested pampered parasites, whose interest are contrary to ours. We can surely fix that.   Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

ACE In Edinburgh.

   Stuff to keep you amused, busy and informed, to the end of the year, if you are around Edinburgh. ACE events, as usual well organised and interesting.

   INFO from the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, 17 West Montgomery Place EH7 5HA

ACE is open Sats 12-4pm, Tues 12-3pm, Thursday 6 - 8pm

Advice and solidarity on benefits, debt, housing etc on Tuesdays.

    Leith Wholefoods, the Info Shop, Scottish Radical Library and free broadband available all 3 days.

Open monthly meetings first Wednesday of the month, 7.30pm at ACE

0131 557 6242 ace@autonomous.org.uk www.autonomous.org.uk

UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES AT ACE and in Edinburgh

*ACE mid winter fair.*

This Sat 13th December 12-4pm at ACE

    Come share a vegan friendly Palestinian lunch of hand rolled, sun dried maftoul, roast tomatoes with za'atar and juicy organic dates. All welcome.

     Beat the winter bugs with legendary Four Thieves Vinegar available to try or buy while stocks last. Traditionally used to boost the immune system against plague. Last chance to bulk order before the holidays.

     Best prices for organic, fairtrade wholefoods and eco toiletaries. Wide range available or bulk order what you wish. The wholefood co op is a not for profit organisation run by volunteers.

    Plus Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity stall with amber jewellery, embroideries, handicrafts and t shirts, all from Zapatista co-ops.

     And view the new photo exhibition for the 20th Anniversary of the occupation of Edinburgh Unemployed Workers Centre. The accompanying pamphlet UP AGAINST THE STATE is available for 3 pounds.

*Sun 14th 6pm - 8pm ACE Cinema*

     Come down to ACE this Sunday for the last of this year's ACE Cinema screenings; the seminal 7:84 Touring Theatre Company's production of 'The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black, Oil'.

    John McGrath's excellent play was recorded for the BBC's 'Play for Today' series under the direction of John Mackenzie, and chronicles with great humour and vivacity Scotland's own particular story of what happens when profit is valued above people and the earth.

Running time: 90 mins

FACEBOOK EVENT https://www.facebook.com/events/1546064085633125/?fref=ts

IMDb entry: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395967/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

BFI Screen Online entry:

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/466025/index.html

Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cheviot,_the_Stag,_and_the_Black_Black_Oil

Tues 16th 5pm - 7pm

Scottish Radical Library meeting All welcome

Sat 27th at Ace

Left over food social. Bring food to share if you can or your appetite if you can't. All welcome.

Also FOOD SOLIDARITY collection of cans or dried donations of food on the 27th.

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

GLASGOW ANARCHISTS.

      

       Anarchism in Glasgow has a long tradition and can trace its roots back to the late 1800s. Since then Glasgow anarchists have been involved in all the major struggles of the Glasgow people. Whenever Glasgow’s citizens have been in conflict against exploitation, oppression, injustice the Glasgow anarchists have been at the forefront of that struggle. The support for anarchism, its ideas, its practice and theory have gone in waves, rising and falling as circumstances within society have changed. Today, in common with the rest of the world, Glasgow is seeing a revival of anarchist ideas.

       It is not difficult to understand why there is such a revival. More and more people are becoming completely disgusted at the blatant greed and deceit of the very politicians who are supposed to be their representatives. They are angry at a party political system that sees the power of the party and it’s “leaders” as more important than the people. A system that is in cahoots with and does the bidding of the corporate world whose greed is running rampant across the world destroying our communities and the environment in the name of profit.

     Anarchists have always pointed out the fact that the party political system will always fail the people, as it removes power from the people to an elite group. Changing the party or the leader will not interrupt the power of the corporate world as they fund the politicians.

      If you are aware of this corruption and deceit, of this plundering and rape of our planet, and you want a better world for all our children and our grandchildren then why not join us in trying to create an alternative, based on the will of the people. Based on free association, voluntary co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability

ann arky's home.