Help The Homeless, Go To Prison!!!

        Once again that part of the state apparatus known as the judicial system shows its inhumane face. A group of people decide to help the homeless, so the occupy an empty building, set up places for the homeless to sleep, organise a street kitchen to help feed, run an advice centre to help homeless people find their way through the maze of bureaucracy that can exclude them form what they are entitled to, and what does this system do? It evicts them and then imprisons those trying to help the homeless. They were obviously stopping somebody or other from making money from the homeless, so they had to be punished.

This from Streets Kitchen:

      Five Activists who had occupied Liverpool’s old Bank of England building to provide shelter and feed the city’s homeless people have been jailed for almost 3 months each.
       The Love Activists moved into the unoccupied building in the middle of April to set up a support centre for Liverpool’s homeless people, incorporating places to sleep, an advice centre and a street kitchen, from where they were evicted in the early hours of 12 May and the homeless activists arrested.

      The defendants were charged in relation to the occupation of the old bank building in Castle Street, Liverpool city centre, as part of a protest over lack of support for the homeless and government austerity.

      John Hall, 50; John Rice, 22; Chelsea Stafford, 19; James Jones, 20, and James Allanson, 20, all pleaded guilty to trespass while a possession order was in place.

        The court also heard a minimum of £91,573 was spent in policing the protest, while the operation to arrest the protesters cost around £27,000. Almost all this budget was used in paying overtime to officers so as to create a heavy oppressive police presence around the building where they used a dispersal order to clear supporters away from the building and, the activists said, were refusing to allow supplies to be taken into the building.

        The Love Activists’ occupation had growing support among residents and businesses of Liverpool. A poll on the Liverpool Echo website at that time gave a majority of those asked believing the group should stand firm against their eviction order.

Read the full article HERE:

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

You Are Many - They Are Few.

      As surveillance becomes ever more widespread and detailed, covering all aspects of our lives, it is more and more stupid to suggest that this is all for our own protection and safety. When whistle-blowers are imprisoned for exposing government excesses and duplicity, and governments pry into your ever email and phone call, it is obvious who they are protecting, it's their own power structures.

An excerpt from an interesting article in Anarchist News:

"Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep have fallen on you,
Ye are many - they are few"
- Percy Bysshe Shelly; The Mask of Anarchy

       Marie Mason was sentenced to decades in prison for property crimes in an ELF action. Check out "Attorney Claims USA Chills Rights of Environmentalists: @ supportmariemason.org. Recently, Daniel McGowan's parole was revoked as punishment for his political speech. Read "Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communications Management Units (CMU) For My Political Speech @huffingtonpost.com. Edward Snowden is in exile. Chelsea Manning is in lock-up. Jeremy Hammond faces decades for hacking the military industrial complex. Glenn Greenwald is under assault for reportage. Sara Harrison is in forced exile. Julian Assange cannot leave an embassy compound. Barrett Brown faces decades in prison for a non-crime and is now held under a gag order designed to keep the world from learning how federal courts have become a weapon for assaulting free speech. NATO 5's Mark Neiweem's "ideology" was used by prison authorities to justify extension of his sentence.
       In short, there is a war being waged right now, an undeclared Dirty War, by a fascist control state hell-bent on ideological cleansing. The police state targets militants, radicals, and critics. The prison complex, outsourced to corporate profiteers as the capitalist concentration camps, is the solution to prevent the next Occupy. What you are witnessing is the convergence of technologies, surveillance, and militarized "crime" control. Connect the dots and it becomes clear that we are staring down the barrel of the most un-free system ever devised.
    The power projection is a response to Occupy. The singular significance of Occupy has been lost in all the scribbled incoherence generated in the media. Its significance is this: In all prior rebellions, authorities were able to divide the movement by offering concessions to one group, separating them, neutralizing the "organizers" or "leaders" and causing the rebellion to collapse. In all other movements, everyone went back to their assigned seats, went back to dragging stones up the side of the pyramid.
This time, brute force simply bent the resistance into the shadows, seething and stewing, waiting for the next evolution. No one could be compromised. Welcome to the next evolution: Welcome to the ARMY OF THE 12 MONKEYS!!

Read the full article HERE:

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

We Have Found Our Vioce, We Have Power.

       The last few years has seen the financial Mafia squeeze the world's poor with their master plan of “austerity”, in an attempt to recoup their massive gambling loses. However, it has not all gone quietly for them, the people have been getting wise to this large con-system known as capitalism. Across the globe in cities, towns and villages, anger has been growing, and awareness that this is not the only way to shape society. What is more it is no longer isolated protests in particular places with the rest of the world being unaware of that struggle. Protests against the system are country wide and even world wide, and with support and solidarity coming from around the world. 

   

    Recent years has seen the world shaken to its core by mass protests. The Arab Spring swept across North Africa, The Occupy Movement sprang up in cities across the world, we had the Indignados and food riots. No matter what that babbling brook of bullshit, the main stream media would have you believe, there is a rising tide of anger, outrage and disillusionment with the present system. The last few years have seen some of the largest protests the world has ever experienced. 

    Here are some of the figures regarding world protests taken from a recent report by Initiative for Policy Dialogue:

        Our analysis of 843 protest events reflects a steady increase in the overall number of protests every year, from 2006 (59 protests) to mid-2013 (112 protests events in only half a year). Following the onset of the global financial and economic crisis began to unfold, there is a major increase in protests beginning 2010 with the adoption of austerity measures in all world regions. Protests are more prevalent in higher income countries (304 protests), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (141 protests), East Asia and the Pacific (83 protests) and Sub-Saharan Africa (78 protests). An analysis of the Middle East and North Africa region (77 protests) shows that protests were also prevalent prior to the Arab Spring. The majority of violent riots counted in the study occurred in low-income countries (48% of all riots), mostly caused by food-price and energy-price spikes in those countries. Interestingly, the period 2006-2013 reflects an increasing number of global protests (70 events), organised across regions.

        The people's anger is driven by similar factors across the planet, anti-austerity, a call for justice, poverty, poor living standards, lack of democracy and transparency, privatisation, accountability of the political class and a complete disillusionment in the political system. There is a common thread running through all the protests, a better world for all, an end to the inequality built into the present system and a true representation of all the people. 

        People are now aware that the political decisions are not made in their interests, whether it be an authoritarian regime or the so called representative democracies, the criticisms are the same, the system is not working for the benefit of the people, they now recognise that they are not represented at the decision making table. And that applies equally to governments of the right and left. It is becoming ever more obvious that the corporate and the political are a team working in their own interests. 

      The old mix of protesters drawn mainly from trade unionists and single issue activists has been transformed into a very wide spectrum of society. We now have pensioners and youth marching with middle class, unemployed, employed and disabled. All manner of social groups are linking up as they all share the same view, that they are not being represented, the political system has failed them. 

      Where do we go from here? It is difficult to see how the powers that be, can put the genie back in the bottle, people want change, they have found their voice, and they now know that they have power. How far they will take that desire for real change, will they take control of their own lives, will they boldly use their imagination and shape that better world to their true desires, will they create a world they can proudly hand to the next generation? 

 

Images from Google:

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

The Veneer Has Cracked.

      Across the internet there are lots of reports of what is happening in Turkey, some very graphic, others very emotional. I found this one to be graphic, ringing with both sincerity and feeling. I don't think we can give enough cover to what is happening in Turkey at the moment. It is the perfect example of what is on the face of things, a perfectly functioning capitalist consumer society, but just under the surface lies a plethora of discontent, a rumbling of resentment at inequality and daily injustice, now the veneer has cracked and truth is pouring out. Each country in Europe shines with the same illusion and harbours those same resentments just simmering under the surface. How long will their veneer hold?

 

 Photo taken from Occupy Gezi Facebook page. Also used by Reuters.

This from Insanlik Hali:

To my friends who live outside of Turkey:
      I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because at the time of my writing most of the media sources are shut down by the government and the word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.
     Last week of May 2013 a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and yoga students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.
    They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines. No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out. But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.

Continue reading HERE:

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---We are Coming to Take the World---.

Inspiring verse by Tassos Livaditis lifted from ROARMAG:

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
and we are coming to take the world.

~ Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

ann arky's home.

THEY GATHER IN THE GLOBAL SQUARE.

       In a global square, in a global village, people are gathering, they want to sort out their village for once and for all. They have had enough of wild beasts stealing their chickens, of watching their crops being trampled by war lords. This time they will do it right.

     A verse from The Global Square: an ode to world revolution.

Why do you come back
Why do you exist like never before
Like why did you never before exist
Are we witness to a unique idea
Are we witness to an idea that will never take form
Are we those visionary witnesses that
Nostradamus never mentioned in his
Nine hundred and forty-two verses
Are we being overshadowed by the big money
Of the devouring wolves and the peckish pigs
No we are not
Because we are the global square

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THE DYING ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY.

       Next month sees the culmination of the carnival of rich liars, otherwise known as the American Presidential elections. Millions will turn up and make their mark in favour of tweedle-dee or teedle-dum and things will roll on as usual. The rich will bask in the sun, in a lush cherry orchard surrounded by a fine wine lake, while the rest of the public will grind out a living as best they can as the pampered parsites continue to plunder the public purse. It is a process that has gone on for hundreds of years and rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but still the system is accepted by those same poor. Though I do believe that this latest world wide savage attack on the living standards of the ordinary people, is causing more and more to wake up to the fact that they are being conned. More and more people are looking for an alternative way of structuring our society, away from the parasite millionaire elitism that dominates and bleeds us dry. 

THERE WILL COME A TIME.

There will come a time when the hordes remember,

who bound our grand-parents to the yoke of oppression,

who sentenced our parents to deprivation,

who bid poverty sink its teeth into our heart,

who teach our children, greed is a noble art.

Who sent our sons through the gates of hell

to a litany of cambist brawls,

crammed coffers with blood-stained gold

while laughing in Ares' halls.

"Who does these terrible things to us?" they will ask,

and when they remember,

they'll bring an energy that is endless

to drive a fist that is fearless.

Then this merciless market-driven world will crumble

under an insurrection of integrity,

the poor will emerge from the dark husk of capitalism

to live in the light of social justice.

There will come a time when the hordes remember.

       The following is from America but equally applies to any country, as the stench of putrid capitalism chokes the lungs of freedom across the planet. Let's hope that this time they take their occupation to the next step and occupy everything and taking control of their communities and their lives.

This from Anarchist News: 

WHEN: Starts at 5 PM Saturday, October 13th (the first anniversary of Occupy Chapel Hill) WHERE: Peace and Justice Plaza, Chapel Hill, NC WHO: Anyone who wants to change their world directly, instead of through the narrow choices and occasional elections of democracy Anyone who doesn't trust another batch of politicians to fix the mess that the last batch of politicians started Anyone let down by Obama's false hope Anyone sick of choosing a "lesser" evil Anyone who knows politicians just serve the rich

WHY:
        The November election is coming. It doesn't matter. The amount of issues Obama and Romney differ on is nothing compared to what they agree on: unparalleled military domination; a growing prison system, the largest in the world, whose racist policies maintain the white supremacy this country was founded on; earth destroying resource extraction; a capitalist economy that rewards ruthless competition without concern for human cost. Under Bush, the nascent Obama generation could imagine that a new personality in the White House could change the problems the last politician piloted us into. And a new politician realized the shifting calculus, promising us false hope and false change. But after the failure of that experiment, we can be sure that the problem isn't personal, it is systemic. No matter who comes along, voting will never get us out from under our rulers.
      This country is obsessed with voting to an unhealthy degree. Most people don't even vote, but it seems to be the only way anyone can think of changing their world. But voting is not an expression of our power; it only demonstrates our powerlessness: it is an admission that we can only approach the resources and capabilities of our own society through the mediation of an elite, ruling class. When we let candidates prefabricate options for us, we relinquish control of our world and abdicate our agency in shaping it. Real power can never be delegated, nor lived through anyone else. Real power means individual and collective self-determination--our ability to decide for ourselves how we're going to live every day of our lives--not settling between two unsatisfying and irrelevant choices every four years.
    On the one year anniversary of Occupy Chapel Hill, come demonstrate that people power will always be in conflict with with the interests of the ruling class, be they elected or not.

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