Fight To The Finish.

       Remembrance Day, when the pomp of imperialism walks the streets in all its glittering finery, when the heads of state, the purveyors of war, bow their heads as if the cared, while planning their next battle field. When will we learn, that war is their tool, their weapon of dominance. Their corridors of power are steeped in the blood of the ordinary people, sacrificed for some grand plan that only benefits the power mongers. There is no war to end wars, war breed wars. 

    As our own Prime minister stands there solemn and head bowed, what thoughts of Syria are going through his head. How many can he risk to get his moment of glory, to play the imperial  game with the big boys.
     We have been sending our young men and women to die across the globe continuously since that war to end wars, 1914/18, the blood of ordinary people has flowed in its gallons, and it will continue to do so, until we destroy this system of power that creates wealth for the few by devastating  humanity.

Fight To The Finish.

The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,

And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street

To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying,

and hear the music of returning feet.

'Of all the thrills and adrours War has brought,

This moment is the finest,' (So they thought.)

Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,

Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel,

At last the boys had found a cushy job,

.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;

And with my trusty bomber turned and went

To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.

Siegfried Sassoon.

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

Dystopia From The Belly Of Western Imperialism.

      The authors of yesteryear or today, could not replicate the horrors of our present reality. While the Caesars of the imperial world pontificate in palatial halls, bloated bodies of men, women and children float on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea, small boats bob about, their holds filled with cargoes of dead families, decomposing bodies lie in lorries, sitting by the roadside, and still they come. An army of ordinary people fleeing death and destruction, but they have lost their label "people", they have a new label, "migrant", this is meant to dehumanise them, to somehow magically turn them in to, "the other", not one of us.

         The horror, death, mutilation, destruction and trauma from which they flee, is beyond our imagination. They flee a reality that is a modern dystopia spawned from the belly of Western imperialism. Before the Western imperialists' with their insatiable greed for the black liquid gold, unleashed their military might on those lands with that black liquid gold, the "migrants" were, school teachers, shop assistants, bus drivers, plumbers, students, school children, retired office workers, parents, lovers, children. Now thrown together in an inhumane and desperate bid for survival, their brothers and sisters across that beautiful Mediterranean turn their backs on them. They are to herded like cattle, labelled and bar-coded like merchandise, or worse still, to be sent back from whence they came. 

        The present economic system gave birth to this inhumane nightmare, and as the wealth from this dystopia flows ever upwards to the coffers of the corporate world of oil giants and the arms industry, its progress is oiled by the blood of the ordinary people.

        There is no such thing as "migrants", a term of derision and division, there are only people, travelling to seek safety, shelter and a better life, people just like you and I, they are indeed, one of us, they are not the problem, the problem is the corporate worlds insatiable greed, backed up by its military might. When we finally end that power that is wielded over us, and the people take control of their own lives, put an end to nation states, and wipe away borders, seeking shelter and safety will be met with open arms. We should start now.

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

"A Bundle Of Bloody Rags."

     War is state terrorism inflicted on people in another country, war is the expansion of imperialism, and the defence of the power of the imperialists. In this insane capitalist system, war is also a massive creator of profit for a conglomeration of corporate interests. War is never in the interests of the ordinary people.

"A Bundle of Bloody Rags"

But twenty summer suns had past since his first breath

was drawn,

An upright, clean, and manly boy, with hope and vigour

born

Afresh each day, and in whose eyes the light of

knowledge shone---

But now a torn and bleeding thing it was I looked

upon

As he in fearful torment lay beneath a ruined bridge,,

Where he had crawled on palsied knees that morn at

Vimy Ridge.

I saw him clutch the air and fall, I heard his awful shout,

A jagged piece of riven shell had torn his entrails out;

I knelt and whispered in his ear at that accursed place,

And painfully he turned his head and stared into my face;

His eyes were eyes of hunted brutes, his mouth had

gnawed the sand,

And at his ghastly wound in pain he clawed with frenzied

hand.

Although I knew his day of hope had changed to hopeless

night,

I said, "Cheer up, old comrade, we will patch you up

all-right. 

Come, let me get you out of this"--He looked with

frightened eye,

And murmered, "Jim, don't touch me. Christ! O,

Christ, why don't i die?

Jim, Jim---you've got a bayonet there----if you have pity

too,

Then send me west, old Jimmy, pal-----for God's sake,

Jimmy do"

Then a madness came upon him----it was madness that I 

knew----

For he cursed the one he loved the most, as madmen

always do,

I listened, for I loved him, though my body burned with 

shame,

When he with one despairing shriek pronounced his

mother's name;

I say with shame I listened, for I knew the boy of old,

And the love of kin was graven deep upon his heart of gold,

But now with hatred in his voice he screamed, "No dying

kiss

for you, you fiend in human form who shaped my soul 

for this;

Who fed my growing body in your lust-empoisoned 

womb,

And wove my mind with crooked lies upon a twisted

loom;

Who sent me here with honeyed words to slaughter or to

maim,

That you in empty pride might boast one hero in the 

game,

"Heroes! God! more like are we the spawn of hellish

hags,

"Heroes! Piles of broken bones and heaps of bloody

rags.

Your handiwork, your devil's deed, for this you gave me 

birth,

Your contributio to the flames of this foul hell called

Earth----

If you could see this---- this----

thing---once---once---held---by----you----in----pride---

If----you----could----Oh! my God!----the----pain!"----- with

one mad scream he died.

I heard the rattle in his throat, and saw the yellow froth

Of death creep o'er his pallid lips, and bubble as in 

wrath;

I wiped it off, and gentle closed each glazed wide-open

eye,

Then shook my fist in fierce revolt unto the callous sky,

And hurled damnation through the reek of the blood-

stricken sod

Unto the grinning ape that man has deignated God.

Oh! May I never live to watch another comrade die;

The bloody foam upon his mouth, the wild and staring

eye;

For never, if I live to be a hundred years or more,

Shall I forget that ghastly sight upon the field of war---

the gaping wound, the tortured look, and what to me 

was worse,

The hate demonical of that dying madman's curse.

-----------------------------------------------------------

I hear it still with horror,though indeed I allways knew

That he had cursed when most he loved, as madmen

always do.

John S. Clarke.  

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

   

Bombs Or Butter?

       Everybody knows that America is a very wealthy nation, a super imperialist power that dominates the world. According to the IMF, (International Mankind Fuckers), 2015 figures, by GDP America is the second richest country in the world, slightly behind China, UK is ninth.

      However that leader of the capitalist world, USA, up to its armpits in wealth, and like all capitalist countries doesn't spread that wealth around its people. In the citadel of capitalist wealth, 46.2 million of its citizens live in poverty, slightly more than 14%. The figures for 2013 state that 1.5 million children lived in shelter or emergency accommodation. The number of households, in 2014, living with "food insecurity" was a staggering 1 in 7. The numbers living in poverty are multiplied when you add those just managing to keep themselves above that magic line of poverty. Where does all that wealth go? Well according to recent figures, approximately 50% of the federal budget goes on killing and the necessary equipment for that activity.

     This recent article from Freedom Socialist, Voice of Revolutionary Feminism, throws up some interesting facts.

One F-35A fighter jet — $157 million*
Ten new elementary schools — $148 million.
*This does not include research and development; the total cost of the F-35 program so far is $1.5 trillion.
Sources: Defense Industry Daily; Reed Construction Data

        Though hardly front-page news, the proposed federal budget for 2016 boosts funding for the Department of Defense. Obama earmarked $534 billion to these U.S. warlords. Their base budget in 2000 was around $300 billion. His proposal keeps baseline “defense” spending at its typical 20 to 30 percent of the total budget.

       This $534 billion does not include the Department of Energy allocation to build nuclear bombs. Nor does it cover an additional $51 billion for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, etc. This money comes under the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) — authorized, unaccountable hush money which exempts the Pentagon from the spending restrictions of the 2011 Budget Control Act. Social services programs are barred from such exemptions.

         When the war-related share of the federal debt is added in, nearly 50 percent of the total federal budget goes to militarism!

            With social programs legally defenseless and the Pentagon now well-protected, the GOP announced its proposal to cut food stamps by 34 percent over the next decade. Obama’s budget would cut Medicare by $400 billion over the same period.

         This Republicrat frenzy for more guns and less butter is an assault on working people everywhere. An effective fightback requires that we understand where it’s coming from.

Read the full article HERE:

       The insanity of this system is there for all to see, a system where unbelievable wealth is created and vast amounts of it are spent on destruction, with the bulk of the rest of that wealth ending up in the off-shore accounts of a small greedy bunch of parasites. Do you have any ideas how better to distribute that wealth we create?

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

Churchill's Bloody Disaster, Gallipoli.

 

        Tomorrow April 25th. our imperialist state will bring out all its regalia, pomp and ceremony, in an attempt to turn one of its most brutal blunders into a show of glory, and claim another victory for democracy. The event that  they will "celebrate"  will be the centenary of the battle of Gallipoli, a stupid, needless, blood bath of young men, dreamed up by the racist, fascist, Winston Churchill. At the time it was such a blundering disaster that Churchill lost his position in the government. The pomp and parades will be an attempt to airbrush the disaster aspect of the blunder out of our consciousness, and have it photo-shopped as all glory and honour.

      Our imperialist state will always glorify war, it needs war to protect its power and privileges, and ever opportunity will be taken to show war with pride and glory. There is no glory in war, it is a tactic whereby states protect and enhance their power, at the expense of the ordinary people. 

From No Glory In War:

Anzac Day 25 April 2015: Gallipoli 100 years on
25 April 2015 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the British-led military invasion of Gallipoli on Turkey’s Dardanelle Peninsula, which resulted in over 200,000 dead and wounded in an eight-month period.

Gallipoli was a military disaster. Yet, a century on, politicians seeking to glorify the First World War, are calling the huge loss of life at Gallipoli "a price worth paying."

As the Australian government spends $300 million commemorating the WWI centenary, and using it to promote militarism and nationalist myths, veterans' groups have condemned the "nationalist circus" that Anzac Day has become.

The UK government, which is spending £60 million on its own nationalist circus commemorating WW1, has a number of Anzac Day events, including in London and Turkey. There will of course be little mention of Winston Churchill's role as prime mover of the Gallipoli catastrophe, which lead to his dismissal from the British government a hundred years ago.

Rather than celebrating the rewriting of history to promote new wars being waged on this 100th anniversary, it is important to remember what really happened at Gallipoli.

The No Glory website aims to capture the reality of what took place, with a dedicated page, Anzac Day 2015 - the Gallipoli disaster 100 years on, that has links to articles, videos, songs etc.

Among the features are two conflicting views of The Water Diviner, Russell Crowe's film about Gallipoli, which was Australia's highest grossing film in 2014. One reviewer says the film is anti-war, the other says the opposite.

And from that "revered" Western capitalist mouthpiece, The Wall Street Journal:

      The British government gave much consideration to the eventual division of the Ottoman lands once the straits were captured but very little to how the operation might ­actually be executed. The ­amateurish preparation and the resulting fiasco are ­recounted with sharp, taut precision in “Gallipoli: The End of the Myth,” Robin Prior’s near-definitive analysis of the campaign.
      The assumption that Britain would simply sweep to victory over second-rate Turkey was just the first of many errors of judgment. At each stumble, when a logical examination of the campaign would have had only one possible conclusion—withdrawal—Britain’s leaders doubled down, eventually committing a half-million troops to the Gallipoli ­Peninsula in a sequence of bloody landings and operations.

Read the full article HERE:

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The History Of Oil.

       Oil, the sea on which imperial bloody wars float, oil the weapon of imperial domination, Oil the ecological disaster. Not a new video, but informative and still relevant.

And on the same theme, from the Freedom Socialist:

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Blood For Wealth.

     I have always held that wars are an economic tool of capitalist governments. They can start them and prolong them, to suit their own economic ends. There is lots of money to be made in destruction and re-building, plus creating chaos in your rival's camp. Think of all the public money that flows into the arms industry during conflict. Every bullet, rocket, shell, missile, fired has to be replaced, every damaged piece of equipment has to be replaced, and it is all tax payers money pouring into the corporate bank accounts. Think how much easier it is to control the assets in a region if that region doesn't have a strong local government. Chaos allows the powerful to walk in and dictate what happens to that region's assets.
 

      WWI was a brutal imperialist scramble for power and resources, a blood bath for markets and territory. WWII was a clash of empires as the British empire felt threatened by the resurgence of the German empire. All the blood that has flowed in the Middle East since then, has been for the control of its oil, none of it has been for the welfare and benefit of the people of that area.
      In all these brutal capitalist tactics for power and wealth, other forces hedge their bets until they think they can see a winner, or feel their power and assets are threatened, then they throw in their hand with this side or that side. In this insane blood letting for power, your ally in this conflict could be your enemy in the next, loyalty depends on wealth and power.

      Having said all that, I have always been puzzled how a band of vicious religious nutters, in this case, ISIL, can march through country after country, taking on the state armies of Syria, Iraq and the Kurds and win massive swaths of land. Even now, with the “coalition” forces bombing the shit out of them they still manage to hold and take territory. Remember our "air-strikes" managed to bring down the well armed Libyan state. Of course our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will not shed any light on that, as all they do is pour out misinformation, illusions and propaganda, for their lords and masters.
      However, if the following report has and validity, which I see no reason why it shouldn't, it does help explain the long life and continued success of that rat-bag of religious nutters that go by the name of ISIL.

     This from Global Research:

Iraqi Army Downs Two British Planes Carrying Weapons for ISIL Terrorists
GR editor’s Note
      There are no reports in the Western mainstream media pertaining to this issue.
      This report is based on statements emanating from the Iraq parliament, with photographic evidence. We have not been in a position to corroborate this report by FARS News.
       Iraq’s army has shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province, a senior lawmaker disclosed on Monday.
       “The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” Head of the committee Hakem al-Zameli said, according to a Monday report of the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Read the full article HERE:

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First They Came For The Anarchists----!!!

       Proof, if ever it was needed, that Europe keeps lurching to the right. Spain has started dawn raids and dragging people from their homes because of their beliefs. No, it is not anti-religion, it is anti-free-thought, those having their doors knocked in are anarchists. Obviously the privileged, pampered establishment, see anarchism as the greatest threat to their plundering, repressive regime. First they give their repression an inoffensive name, the this case of the Spanish onslaught on freedom it is call “Operation Pandora”, rather than “let's kill the opposition”.
       As expected, the people of Spain didn't take this lying down, and there have been mass demonstrations in various parts of Spain, Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Seville, to mention a few. These early morning raids are seen in Spain for what they are, state kidnappings, as the state comes down hard on those who would dare to resist its repression.

    The Spanish state, Like the rest of Europe is attempting to crush any resistance to the ideology of the financial Mafia, namely “austerity”, a brutal treatment meant only for the ordinary people.
       The financial Mafia are determined to force wages and conditions in Europe down to sweatshop standards, so as to compete with the Eastern sweatshop economies. And as the resistance grows, so does the repression. You don't have to have committed any crime, just hold a particular point of view that sees the plundering of the ordinary people as wrong, and you could see yourself facing the full force of the “law”.
     Europe today is no different from the 30's, it is in turmoil, as resistance grows as the capitalists carry out what they call economic and labour relation adjustments, which translates into getting rid of organised labour, so as to reduce wages and decimate conditions, and increase profit. World War II saved their bacon then, as the imperialists set about redrawing their borders, under the banner of “democracy” and patriotism. What will they dream up to save them this time, and will we let them? 

 

This from Contra Info:

      On December 16, Operation Pandora was unleashed. The State’s security forces burst into different houses and squats in Barcelona and Madrid, and eleven anarchist comrades were kidnapped.
    This kidnapping—and it couldn’t have been done any other way—was coordinated with the media, who helped justify and legitimate it with heart and soul, spreading the news that the police had carried out an operation against international anarchist terrorism. This kidnapping of eleven comrades set off a multitude of rallies and demonstrations that same day in different cities—Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Zaragoza, for example—thousands of people coming out in solidarity with the kidnapped comrades and showing rage and hatred towards the State’s new repressive operation against the libertarian movement.

Read the full article HERE:

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A War Painted In Pastel Shades Of Lies.

 

       The babbling brook of bullshit, mainstream media, backs the establishment in painting WW1 in glorious pastel shades of lies, here is an extract from an excellent article stating some of the truths of WW1 From Stop The War:

     Dominic Alexander debunks ten myths being used by politicians and historians to rebrand World War I in the centenary of its outbreak.

---

1. The war was fought in defence of democracy
         This is contradicted by the basic facts. Germany had universal manhood suffrage while in Britain, including Ireland, some 40% of men still did not qualify for the vote. In Germany also, there were attempts to justify the war on the grounds that it was being fought to defend civilised values against a repressive, militaristic state, in the form of Russian autocracy.
2. Britain went to war due to a treaty obligation to defend the neutrality of Belgium
        There was no clear and accepted obligation on Britain to do this, and, in fact, before the Belgian issue appeared, the war party in the cabinet was already pushing for British intervention on the entirely different ground that there were naval obligations to France. These obligations had been developed in secret arrangements between the military of both countries, and were never subject to any kind of democratic accountability. The Germans even offered guarantees over Belgian integrity, which the British government refused to consider at all.
3. German aggression was the driving force for war
        However aggressive the German leadership may have been in 1914, the British establishment was at least as determined to

Read the full article HERE:

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There Is Another Way.

        There is another way, but the road will not be easy, the imperialists will try to crush the dream by any means available, propaganda, subterfuge, oppression or outright bloody war, they have done so in the past, and are doing so at this moment in time, wherever freedom raises its flag. As long as the people allow themselves to be governed by a small group with vested interests, they will never taste justice, nor feel freedom.

     In the year after the Gezi uprising, protests continue against the government’s urban redevelopment plans, against police repression, in response to repression of the Kurdish and Alevi populations, and in honor of the martyrs that lost their lives in the uprising. Most recently, angry protests and riots have spread across the country in solidarity with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units fighting against the Islamic State in Kobanê, Rojava. This film chronicles a year of uprisings, resistance and repression since the Gezi uprising in Turkey.

After Gezi: Erdoğan And Political Struggle In Turkey from brandon jourdan on Vimeo.

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We Are At War.

      Our war mongering, imperialist lords and masters, seem to think that it is not war if you go in and bomb a country, they keep mouthing "No boots on the ground" and that makes everything just fine. However in actual fact there will be "special forces" on the ground. We are not at war, we are just bombing different countries, and of course with our "smart bombs", we only kill the bad guys. The West is always morally justified in killing in foreign countries, after all, we're the good guys, it is other countries that make up "The Axis of Evil" , "The Evil Empire", etc..

        The world pours blood from such psychopathic illusions. War is states' means of retaining power, it is not a bring of democracy, it is not an envoy of peace, it is the imperialists tool for survival.

This from Freedom Socialist Party, The Voice of Revolutionary Feminism:

    President Obama reassured the nation in his special press conference on Sept. 10 that no U.S. “boots on the ground” would be used to “degrade and destroy” ISIS — just bombers. So therefore, this country is not at war. What a pack of lies.

Actually, “targeted military airstrikes” is exactly how imperialists make war in today’s world. And the majority of casualties are civilians. In Syria, for example, Assad’s air superiority has murdered, wounded and displaced millions of non-combatants in three years. Israeli air attacks killed more than 2,100 Palestinians in just a month. Ukraine’s air strikes on eastern Ukraine killed 3,000 mostly civilians, and produced a million refugees in two months. And, as Iraq war vets point out, Iraqis still face radioactivity and infrastructure devastation from the eight-year U.S. military occupation.

As have many before him, the president declared that U.S. militarism is good and just. Nonsense! Empire America created the likes of ISIS and the Taliban to bolster U.S. control over the region and stamp out authentic revolution against gross poverty and repression.

Massive, unconditional humanitarian aid is the only thing the U.S. can offer that will help. No bombs! No drones! No troops! No mercenaries!

Those Never Ending Imperialist Adventures.

       Bearing in mind the mutterings from St. Tony Blair, about troops on the ground in Iraq, and Cameron's desire to honour his American masters, we need to redouble our efforts to stop the UK being involved in another Middle East imperialist adventure. Peace and justice can't be bombed into existence.

This from Stop The War Coalition:

Emergency protest: Don't bomb Iraq, Don't bomb Syria. Lobby your MP.

• Protest Downing Street. 5.30pm Thursday 25th September.
  
• Lobby your MP. Use our model letter to write to your MP. It takes 2 minutes.
  

       David Cameron is planning to recall parliament on Friday to push through a vote for the UK to join the US in bombing Isis in Iraq and possibly Syria.
       If this vote passes British forces will be back in action in Iraq just three years after the last troops were withdrawn from the catastrophic occupation of 2003-11. The development comes in the same week Tony Blair called for renewed bombing in the region and the possibility of boots on the ground.
       All the experience of the terrible wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya has shown that western military action only serves to kill innocents, destroy infrastructure and inflame violence.
      Isis is a reactionary force, but it is in part a product of the disastrous occupation of Iraq by Western powers. Isis is funded by some of our main allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. Escalating Western military intervention will do nothing to stop them but will create more suffering and further destabilise the region.
     Stop the War is calling on our supporters to protest this Thursday evening outside Downing Street from 5.30pm till 7.30pm. Nearest tubes: Westminster and Charing Cross.

• Share the event with your Facebook contacts
  

We are also asking supporters to immediately lobby their MPs to vote against bombing.

 

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Tomorrow's World Is Yours.

      So in spite of the YES camp's abundance of hard work, hope, belief and enthusiasm, the polls were mostly right in their predictions. So the bubble burst, but to all those thousands of activists how worked their socks off for a better world, all I can say is don't sink back into the swamp of anonymity. You raised you voice from a whisper to a roar, and you rocked the establishment, you have already changed this country, you can continue to change this country. Don't withdraw and leave it to the parasitic political class that inhabit that imperialist edifice, the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. Stay alive, keep the networks going, stay on the streets, in the schemes, in the villages and towns, stay in the melting pot of ideas, always putting in you own personal contribution. You caught the attention of the world because you were creating cracks in one of the world's leading imperialist powers, that is a victory. Don't withdraw from the struggle and allow the establishment to patch up, and cover over those cracks. Think of that feeling of solidarity and companionship you felt as you made new friends, savoured new experiences, and wove greater dreams. You have lit a fire, help it spread, tomorrow is your world, you must shape it now.

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

Workers Know Your History.

        Despite all the pomp and ceremony marking the start of the blood letting of the imperialist land grab, that goes by the name of WW1, and the lies that they pump out, we should keep repeating, "It was the working class that stopped the slaughter", not the stupid, arrogant generals, not the so called "military strategists", it was the ordinary people in countries across the globe. It was their revulsion at the slaughter, and their desire for peace across borders, that silenced the guns, and saw the blood stop flowing. All contrary to the aims of the ruling classes and the capitalist system. 

       The struggles that brought the imperialist bloodshed to an end, are not over, the workers may have lost the first real battle, but we will win the final one, and eventually over throw this system of capitalism, which is a blot on the history of humanity.

       As I keep repeating, "Workers Know Your history."

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