Propaganda.

                                                    Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

           Propaganda, that insidious material that is a constant flow form the various state organisations and reproduced as truth by the mainstream media outlets is like a cancer. It takes over your consciousness, distorts the way you see the world and it destroys your ability to asses what is really happening in the world around us. It is one of the twin tools of the state, the other is a subservient population, one reinforces the other. Our lords and masters preach that everything our state does is honourable, other states not in the same club are deemed to be evil and can do no good, while we can do no wrong. Common sense tells us the world is not like that, all the power blocks make that same claim. We have to dispel the avalanche of propaganda that surrounds us, seek the facts and act on those human instincts of truth, fairness, equality and justice for all. The alternative is to exist as pawns in the mist of illusions.  

 

                                                    Image courtesy of wikipedia.

 The following extract from an article by Cara MariAnna makes the point more clearly.

        All of us alive at the time, and old enough to understand its import, must certainly recall the 1983 speech in which Ronald Reagan, “The Great Communicator,” famously called the Soviet Union the “evil empire”—at the very same time, it must be noted, that he and his administration were turning Central America into a killing field and supporting a jihadist insurgency in Afghanistan to trap the Soviets in a Vietnam-like quagmire. Reagan’s crude formulation resonated with many Americans. The implications were as obvious as they were primitive: Anything the Soviet Union did was evil, while anything America did was good.

       Reagan’s simplistic conceit, a product of the overwrought mind of his chief speechwriter, Anthony Dolan, survives to this day. Indeed, it makes most Americans impervious to, if not completely unable to see, the wrongs committed by their own country, the lies told by their own government. Of course, it perfectly served Reagan’s foreign policy agendas, just as it now perfectly serves Joe Biden’s, especially in his proxy war against Russia.
      Glenn Greenwald considered this question in a recent segment of System Update. “Russia continues to be the all-purpose villain that Western elites now use whenever they get caught in any sort of scandal, any kind of failure,” he noted. “They immediately point to Russia. They say, ‘It’s not our fault, look over there at the Kremlin.’”
       The persistent dogma that Russia is the embodiment of evil—and this is more recently personalized to mean Vladimir Putin—enables Americans to live in a pretend world as they continue to believe, contrary to all evidence, that the war in Ukraine was unprovoked. It is a complete disconnect from reality. The dangerous consequence of this is that anti–Russian propaganda has now pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info     

Free Press??

 

          The following article is testament to the British state and its "support" for freedom of the press. The press being handed a script by the state officials of what to write about an incident rather than the reporters reporting what actually happened. To think that this couldn't happen today is rather naive in the extreme, though perhaps the need now is less since all the major media outlets are owned by strong supporters of the state and the established order. So will load their tales in accordance with their views and will not rock the boat too much. 

The Mitchell Library

          Forward was a socialist newspaper published in Scotland from 1906. The founding editor was Tom Johnston, who was one of two main shareholders, alongside Roland Muirhead. It was associated with the Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party and the temperance movement. It was committed to socialism and reported on these issues.
           In 1915, the paper was closed down for six weeks on the order of Chancellor David Lloyd George, for reporting a meeting where he had met a hostile crowd.
“When Lloyd George got up to talk, according to Forward, he ‘was received with loud and continued booing and hissing ... Two verses of “The Red Flag” were sung before the minister could utter a word.’ The meeting ‘broke up in disorder’ and reporting of it was restricted, with newspapers told to reproduce a press release stating that Lloyd George had been given a sympathetic hearing.
           Forward was shut down for six weeks, under DORA, after publishing its uncensored account of the meeting, though Johnston had been careful, as he thought, not to print anything that contravened it (William Beveridge, assistant secretary at the Ministry of Munitions, found it correspondingly difficult to make a case against him). Johnston wrote in his memoirs that Lloyd George ordered the police to remove copies from every newsagent in Scotland, and ‘had the police search the homes of known purchasers’.”
           Three men were arrested under the Defence of the Realm Act and charged with published material “calculated to cause mutiny, sedition or disaffection among the civilian population and to impede the progress and restrict the production of war material.’ Lloyd George’s actions were debated in the House of Commons on the 4th and 10th January 1916.
           Editorship of the Forward newspaper was passed to Emrys Hughes in 1931, George Thomson in 1948 and Francis Williams in 1957.
It ceased publication in 1959.
         Find out more about our newspaper collections in our "Breaking the News" exhibition in the Mitchell Library on the ground floor.

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

WW3

       I'm no lover of the Russian state or the Chinese state, or any state for that matter, as my rants should indicate, but I do think that we in the "West" are on board an ancient rotting old ship in rough seas, being crewed by a bunch of blind, power crazy psychopaths, and it doesn't bode well for the world at large. We would do well to remember, a wounded dying beast can be very dangerous.
An interesting article from Consortium News:

     “There is a slow-motion Third World War underway between the US-centralized power alliance and the nations like China which have resisted being absorbed into it, and that war is being largely facilitated by propaganda. If one doesn’t wish to become a propagandist themselves, one ought to withhold belief from the stories they are told about the terrible, awful things the unabsorbed nations are doing which require extensive sanctions, subversion and interventionism in response.“ (Caitlin Johnstone)

      I have come independently to the same view as the writer Caitlin Johnstone. We are indeed now in the throes of a Third World War against China and its ally Russia. This war has been started by U.S. and the UK, supported by minor Five Eyes allies Canada and Australia. They have chosen their preferred strategic fighting terrain to be information and sanctions warfare, because they know that on conventional military war-fighting terrain they would be unable even to begin to prevail over Russia and China.
      So this is a war confined to hostile rhetoric, sanctions and subversion. It is fought with words by people like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his obedient American and British acolytes such as U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Labour leader Keir Starmer and a myriad of indoctrinated Western news editors.
     It features continued recycling of old discredited anti-Russian and anti-Chinese propaganda myths like the Skripals, Syria chemical weapons attacks, alleged Uighur genocide, and repression of human rights in Hong Kong.
     Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds have obediently joined in the anti-China push, and are now in Washington receiving face-to-face briefings and instructions from their imperial masters. And they seemed overjoyed to be on the big stage:
      The target audience in this Information War is not the Chinese or Russian people. Our new warriors have long given up trying to influence either nation with their obvious lies. No, the target is us.
     As George Orwell foretold in 1984 : in Oceania’s never-ending, un-winnable wars against Eurasia and Eastasia, the main theatre is propaganda aimed at we citizens of Oceania. We are the gullible recipients of false narratives. Remember the inflammatory newsreels, the five minute hate sessions as Orwell described them? We are there now, in much of our mainstream media produced by stenographers of the empire.
      We are being subjected to constant indoctrination at various levels of subtlety. It is unclear now who are the perpetrators, who are the enablers, and who are the gullible recipients: The white noise of false narratives surrounds us and it becomes harder and harder to disentangle as the volume increases. Dissident voices are efficiently marginalised.
      Russia and China are patiently avoiding being goaded by this new kind of world war started by the West into similar retaliatory actions on their part. They know they enjoy superior strategic deterrence, and are quietly sitting tight on their deterrence assets.
     Meanwhile, they are also sticking calmly to the facts, and choosing the terrain on which they wish to engage physically with Western provocations. As China humiliated India with stones and clubs in the Himalayas it will in its own time find appropriate ways to humiliate U.S. and allied navies’ provocations in the South China Sea.
      Iran humiliated America in its telegraphed non-lethal missile attack on the U.S. base in Iraq, after the U.S. had murdered Iranian General Soleimani in Iraq. Russia safely neutralised Ukraine’s foolish naval provocation at Kerch Bridge in Crimea, thereby sealing President Petro Poroshenko’s political demise a few months later. And so it will continue.
     Australia is backing the wrong horse. We should be standing back from this new Third World War. We need to rediscover the art of diplomacy. Present policies will not end well for the U.S. and its military allies.

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

And Here Is The News---HA-HA-HA!!

        I always refer to the mainstream media as the babbling brook of bullshit, the reason being, in the UK at least, it is no more than an outlet for state and corporate propaganda. However, what amazes me is that so many people still think they are keep up with the "news" when they indulge themselves in its outpourings. The BBC comes in for the most "respected" news broadcaster badge by lots of people. Of course it won that badge by smoke and mirrors reporting and clever self prompting propaganda.

     The following article is well worth reading in full, it pinpoints just a little of the slight of hand "reporting" that favours UK state wars and Western corporate interests that is spewed out as "news"

      The extracts are from Gorilla Radio Blogs:

          On January 22, BBC News at Ten carried a piece by 'defence' correspondent Jonathan Beale reporting a speech by General Sir Nick Carter, the British Army's Chief of General Staff.
Carter gave his speech, pleading for more resources in the face of the Russian 'threat', at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an establishment thinktank with close links to the military and corporate media. Beale began his BBC News piece with a prologue of raw propaganda, delivered in an urgent and impassioned tone:

'Russia's building an increasingly modern and aggressive military. Already tested in battle in Syria, using weapons Britain would struggle to match – like long-range missiles. In Ukraine, they've been using unconventional warfare, electronic cyber and misinformation. And they're even on manoeuvres on Europe's doorstep, with large-scale exercises near Nato's borders. Enough to worry the head of the British army who tonight gave this rare public warning.'

The essence of Carter's 'rare public warning' was that:

'Russia was building an increasingly aggressive expeditionary force and the potential military threats to the UK "are now on Europe's doorstep"... the Kremlin already boasted an "eye-watering quantity of capability" - a level the UK would struggle to match... Britain "must take notice of what is going on around us" or... the ability by the UK to take action will be "massively constrained".'

Carter continued:

'Rather like a chronic contagious disease, it will creep up on us, and our ability to act will be markedly constrained - and we'll be the losers of this competition.'

      The army chief's warning had been approved by the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
On News at Ten, Beale's reporting of the speech amplified the army chief's message – in other words, the Defence Secretary's stance - by deploying such key phrases as:

'Increasingly aggressive', 'tested in battle', 'Britain would struggle to match', 'manoeuvres on Europe's doorstep', 'near Nato's borders'.

     There was, of course, no mention of US/Nato encroachment towards Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union (contravening assurances given to Gorbachev), or the US bases and military exercises close to Russia's borders as well as globally, or the long history of US threats and major crimes around the world. Nor was there any reference to Ukraine which has routinely been reported as an example of Russian 'aggression'. John Pilger observes that the BBC along with others, including CNN, the New York Times and the Guardian:

'played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war.
'All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.'

      Beale's credulous reporting of the army chief's speech was an exemplar of 'public broadcast' media whipping up fear to promote state interests.

Read the full article HERE:
      Then go and get your news from local and international social media and independent sources, removed from the chains that link mainstream media to the state and corporate interest.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasow.me.uk

Our Violence Good, Their Violence Bad.

       Bahrain has been in open insurrection since 2011, with protests and molotov attacks on cops a daily occurrence. Many have been killed and hundreds of others have been injured, and thousands of people die in prison in the state where they are tortured, all supported and supplied by Western countries, while the state security forces are being trained by British cops, and backed by Saudi Arabian military.
       However, we don’t hear much about the bloody rebellion within the lands of our Saudi friends. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media doesn’t dwell too much on the savagery of the British manufactured royalty, that governs the rich oil fields of what has become known as Saudi Arabia. After all they are very good customers of our arms industry, and they allow our financial Mafia access to that lucrative oil. So what is there not to love about this public beheading, public flogging, religious extremist regime. Of course what the Saudis are doing to the Shia in their oil rich kingdom, is what states do to any group they see as a threat to the control of their privileges, wealth and power, crush them, or do their damnedest to achieve that end.

 City of Awamiya, in Eastern Saudi Arabia.

       What is going on in Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia is as brutal as what is going on in Syria, perhaps on a smaller area, but the savagery is just as fierce. The might of the Western armed Saudi regime is being unleashed on its own citizens, who respond with resilience and small arms fire. However, our babbling brook of bullshit will gloss over this, but give brutal details of the violence where they portray us as the good guys, putting our lives on the line to help the peoples of that area build “democracy”, a “democracy” where we keep control of the oil rich resources, allowing our financial Mafia to milk the region, to fatten Western parasites and their puppets. 

       Our babbling brook of bullshit, are experts at highlighting the violence of those our masters call the "bad guys", while turning a blind eye to the savagery and brutality of those they deem as our "allies". It is all part of their sworn duty of spewing out the usual brainwashing propaganda, in favour of this insanity we call capitalism.  

        Since May, 2017 an ongoing insurgency has been raging in the Shia heartland town of Awamiya in eastern Saudi Arabia and it’s only thanks to the BBC being allowed to enter the area and film the destruction that the world can see how the House of Saud’s war against the Shia population of Yemen has now expanded to include the Shia population of eastern Saudi Arabia.
       The BBC World report shown on Wednesday, August 16, seemed to have come from Syria, with al-Zara, the ancient Shia capital of the Persian province of Bahrain and the rest of the town of Awamiya showing a level of devastation resembling that in Syria or to the Kurdish cities destroyed recently by Erdogan Ottoman’s Janissarris.
       Block by block destruction of the Old City with no visible signs of the Shia people who once lived here for millenia with almost 500 buildings destroyed and over 20,000 driven from their homes by Saudi airstrikes, artillery and mortar fire. 

Read the full article HERE:

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

Drowning In A Sea Of Propaganda.

        As the UK theatre of lies, our so called "general election", trundles on, trying to get you to support one illusion or the other, we should take note that we swim in a sea of propaganda. The party machines and the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, weave the smoke and mirrors of fake news, lies, propaganda, speculation and supposition, with truth lying somewhere in the sludge well below the surface. We live in a world created and manipulated by propaganda, spewed out by powerful factions and big business with vested interests against the interests of the ordinary people. Any idea of democracy in  a society where the truth is absent is an illusion, those who produce the propaganda do so to keep that illusion alive. Question everything, accept that the interests of the corporate world and the power mongers, and that of the ordinary people are diametrically opposed, incompatible, propaganda is there to make you believe the opposite.

      My friend and comrade Bob at City Strolls, explains in more detail how the insidious fog of propaganda shapes our world.

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

The Fabrication Of Reality.

        Never, never, trust that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. It consists of a group of people who will sell, to their corporate bosses, information stolen from you, to enhance their salary, and reputation among the shitpot of other journalists. You are always fair game in their egotistical career of bosses arse-licking. They will use and abuse any information they can sneak, steal or fabricate, they are the monkeys of their corporate media barons, the front line in the defence of this established system of greed, inequality and injustice. Treat them with the contempt they deserve. They have no place in the world of those who struggle to create that better world of mutual aid, co-operation and social justice, that struggle that strives for an end to capitalism, they are well and truly embedded in the world sleaze, corruption and greed. The propaganda mouthpieces of the establishment.

This from Rabble:

         In the past year or so, the bottom feeders of the press managed to write many lurid stories about comrades in the UK and our networks, which have not only invaded people’s privacy but have put them at risk from the state and fash. These journalists infiltrated our protests and social events, took close range pictures, trawled social media and pieced together sensationalist and often wildly inaccurate pieces about individuals, and put footage on the internet that led to people being targeted by the cops.
           While I expect no better of the media, I do expect us to put up more of a fight. The tolerance of the broader London anarchist/anti-authoritarian scene for the presence of journalists on our demos, and sometimes in our spaces (at times even on invitation!), is exceptional and I’ve witnessed it in few other anarchist milieus. Why is this? Is it mere slackness, a fear of rocking the boat, or are people actually buying the liberal bullshit from the likes of the NUJ about “freedom of expression”? A combination of the above seems the likely contender.
        In many cases, the widespread use of “social” media means that information is simply given to hacks on a plate; they need only copy and paste a few Arsebook quotes, and download some photos that the user themselves has put on their profile to come up with a story, such is the quality of the mainstream media. Obviously, people need to wise up to this and close down their social media accounts, or at the very least clean them up.

Read the full article HERE:

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

        

Cop Or Soldier??

    Your friendly beat cop!!

         Militarism used to be a phrase that related to the state apparatus and how it enacted its foreign policy and how it waged war in some foreign land. However, today, militarism is a pervasive ideology that has crept into all aspects of our society, we are a military society. The militarising of the police force, the military style of dealing with civilian protests, with armed police patrolling our streets, check points and stop and search, the thin line between the military and the police has all but vanished. Now if you are anti-militarism, you must include the police in your critique.

Cop or soldier?

This from Bordered By Silence:

       “In recent years, ethnic, tribal, social, and political problematics have re-emerged and contributed to tensions and conflicts in many regions of the world. […]
“The logic of insurgency and counter-insurgency have become essentially urban questions […]
“Guerillas, insurgents, and other non-state actors have taken advantage of the benefits of operating in this environment and will doubtless continue to do so.”
NATO – Operations in urban areas 2020
2.3.2 The Nature of the Enemy – April 2003 [1]
the NATO Research and Technology organization in Neuilly-sur-seine [2]
         “The militarization of the state progresses at a hectic pace. More and more often and for many different reasons, military-style solutions are chosen that disturb or threaten to disturb the fragile social equilibrium”
Anarchist Prisoners of Korydallos
Letter on the assassination of Marian Kola – August 2013 [3]        In times of war. If it weren’t for the avalanche of alienation dispensed by the fourth estate, the media, and its commentaries that fade into declarations by decision-makers — ministers, presidents, religious leaders, and kings — we wouldn’t need to spell this all out. But the change in how uprisings happen and how they are repressed is clear, which means a debate about them is obviously necessary.
          Going forward, for the powerful, there are no clear front lines to hold: all conflicts have become asymmetrical. There are no longer regular armies to force into submission by diplomacy or strategy, treaty or ceasefire. Now, their enemies are everywhere and all wars will be total. The only victory is unconditional: by annihilating the adversary (by murder, enslavement, or imprisonment) or by full control over their subsistence and environment. This is done by means of magnetic cards (credit or ID), NGOs, military and police checkpoints [4], and by generalizing technological advances (like biometrics, surveillance, and virtual social networks).
        Here, we want to highlight that this avalanche of disinformation — the TV news steeped in a warrior tone, where even the reporting is set to imposing music — strategically misleads us, like the propaganda during the Second World War that tried to conceal terrible events in order to morally defeat the enemy civilian population.
Here, we want to highlight that the ongoing militarization of repression is aimed at Us: Those who are in conflict with the existent, its structures, its defenders, and its false critics.
       Of course, scenes of cops in action, armed to the teeth, and the moving declarations by military commanders and soldiers, as well as police and gendarmes, are demonstrations of the means used by the state to defend itself. Immediately, the testimony of terrified citizens and the families of victims ring out from the machines of the fourth estate, justifying the “emergency” measures “put in place”.
      But again, we need to clearly distinguish the propagandistic practices from the real ones and the fictional reasons from the true motivations. We need to distinguish the Logic of the State from Insurrectionary Motivation. Not that of some priest, imam, or ideologue, but those of the exploited, the deserters and the rebels. .
       We need to see the reality of the current conflict clearly:

Continue reading:

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

The Fog Of Propaganda.

        I posted this earlier, but thought it was worth mentioning again as the film is showing shortly at the Kinning Park Centre Glasgow.

The Media Monopoly Series
The Occupation of the American Mind

 

 

       ”It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century."
 John Carey

The education of persuasion
         Maybe we need to ask why our education system trains us in the merits of Public Relations (propaganda), in, being first, winning a place, getting to the top, fighting the competition. While there is little or nothing in teaching students how to protect themselves from the adverse effects of corporate propaganda?
        The scope of this film is much wider than this particular subject matter, it has lessons that can be applied to a wide variety of propagandised social and political issues.
          Are we being educated by media propaganda? Watch!
         "Harrowing and incendiary! A vital and unmissable film" Dave Zirin The Nation
          Israel's Public Relations War in the United States Narrated by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters
       “Once you know how something is put in place you can start to take it apart”

The Occupation of the American Mind 

Kinning Park Complex Glasgow

Sunday 2nd Oct
2 till 4:00

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

That Babbling Brook Of Bullshit.

         By now you will all know, our should know, my opinion of the “mainstream Media, or that babbling brook of bullshit as I usually address it. A variety of outlets, all spouting a monologue, all propagating the same illusion, false information, manufactured reality. A monochrome world of false and useless information. Well useless to us, but very important to the powers that be. It helps keep us reading from the same song sheet seeing the world as they would have us see it, and all to their advantage. I believe it is very important that we realise that the babbling brook of bullshit, is there deliberately, and for a very important purpose, and it is not to  inform. The development of this monochrome song sheet, is not an accident, and its formation is illuminating to our understanding of the type of society we live under.

 

This from Tarcorteca counterinfo:

         Still, in spite of all that, it proved impossible to control the narrative, and the public support for the various US and NATO wars collapsed under the pressure of inconvenient news coming even from mainstream media which clearly maintained a degree of independence. But if you fast-forward a decade, to the current wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Ukraine, and others, it is clear that something has changed. There is one dominant narrative that is being pushed by literally every mainstream media source, irrespective of their ostensible ideological bent. No matter where you turn, you read or hear about Assad’s “barrel bombs”, Gaddafi’s “massacres”, or “Russian aggression.”
       These reports invariably represent a point of view that is not only completely one-sided, but also factually wrong, even on the most basic of issues. How did US and NATO manage to achieve such an amazing discipline within the supposedly free and independent Western media?

       There are essentially three parts to the answer:
state oversight of the media;
co-opting individual reporters;
disseminating propaganda through covert means.

         The first two are obvious enough and have long been practiced. Media corporations are just that–corporations, subject to variety of laws and regulations whose enforcement can be used to steer individual outlets toward adopting a desired point of view. Individual reporter’s coin of the realm is “access” to privileged information, which may be granted or withheld depending on their effectiveness as government propagandist. The third, the covert dissemination of propaganda, is new, and that factor likely explains the lack of variation from one media outlet to the next. The media are no longer merely encouraged to toe the official line–they have the stories planted for them to pick up through social media and other unofficial channels.

Read the full article HERE:

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

The Workers Pledge In Time Of War.

      The blood curdling howl of the dogs of war reverberate through the airwaves, the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, blasts out the bugle call to arms. Meanwhile, in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, the Honourable Members, those who will never be called upon to wear a uniform, or lift a gun, call for others to shed blood in the name of some illusion. From their cloistered, pampered, privileged cocoons, they scream their frenzied insanity, calling on workers of this land, to kill workers in another land.

      Have no illusions, our super smart bombs are not really smart, they are blunt instruments of death. They will tear through the flesh of a child just as accurately and as brutally, as that of a "terrorist". The bombs will fall on villages, towns and cities, and will reap carnage on shopkeepers, nurses, invalids, gardeners, and fruit growers, the elderly will meet the same fate as the gunman. Villages, towns and cities will disappear from the map, their people will scatter to the four corners of our world, fleeing hell on earth, families will be dispersed, and hatred will grow like weeds and its seeds will spread in the wind of memory and folklore. 

Patriotism

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,

if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag

held aloft by some foolish hand

inciting worker and peasant to kill

on some green and wooded hill,

peasant and worker from some other land.

Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag

that brings out fools to stand and brag

of brutal deeds painted grand,

deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still

killed by my brothers' misguided hand.

No allegiance have I for the Nation

this man made autocratic creation

that divides my brothers in a world so small,

binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,

bids us follow its drum, sing its song,

then sheds our blood in some border brawl.

No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,

have no ear for power oration,

though its iron heel is on my breast,

my back feels its leather thong,

at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

        We cannot allow the insanity of our wealthy "lords and masters" wrapped in the cloak of patriotism and "national security" to drag us into another nightmare of carnage. We cannot see another generation born into a world of hatred and revenge. We the ordinary people of the world, have bled through endless wars, our families have mourned our dead for generations, we know the suffering of carnage, it has solved nothing. Don't be fooled by the frenzied screaming of the friends of wealth and power, the voice of imperialism. We have been bombing the Middle East continuously since 2001, remember Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria? Is the world now a safer place, a more peaceful place? Only a blind fool or a lying imperialist stooge would answer yes.

         Let us go back to the words of one of Glasgow's well known anarchists, and conscientious objector, Guy Aldred, and take some words from his 1929 pamphlet, "At Grips With War"

The Workers Pledge In Time Of War.  

   I refuse to kill any child's father.

   I refuse to slay any mother's son.

   I refuse to plunge the bayonet into the breast of any

                   woman's brother, lover our mate.

   I refuse to murder and deem the slaughter glory.

   I refuse to butcher with hands that were intended to

                   to serve and caress.

   I refuse to soak the earth with blood and blind my reason

                   with obedience.

   I refuse to assassinate another man and then hide my

                   stained fists in the folds of a bloodstained flag.

   I refuse to be flattered, cajoled, or driven into hell's

                   nightmare by a class of well-fed snobs, crooks

                   and cowards who despise my class socially, rob

                   my class economically, and betray and oppress it

                   politically. Let militarism do its worst, I refuse

                   to serve, I decline to kill.

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

Retired,----You Scrounger!!!

         Cameron recently spewed out a load of sickly syrup about how the Tories will take care of pensioners. Triple lock protection, and all that crap, but what is in the pipeline doesn't look quite as comforting to that army of elderly who retire and want to enjoy their life as they live longer. Already the murmurings from the back room Tory planners is all about “encouraging” elderly to work longer. They see a group that is receiving money and not working, and they could be another regiment of free workfare for their corporate buddies. Of course it will all be done with the smoke and mirrors of the illusion that pensioners really want to work until they drop dead. The state propaganda machine will see that, slowly, slowly, the tide will be turned, and those pensioners that want to enjoy their retirement in doing things they like doing, will be cast in the role of scrounger, taking tax payers money and not contributing to society. 

       I worked all my life and when I retired it was probably the richest period of my life. At last I had some control over my life, I could come and go as I pleased. Though not much money I could get on with lots of ideas I had put on the “back-burner” for years. If somebody had come along and suggested that I should get into some sort of training for a new job, I would probably have strangled them. I hope the present and future pensioners will think similarly. Retired people don't want to work until the drop, they just want a decent pension, which they have paid for, by helping create the wealth of this country, and then left to get on with their lives as they see fit. 

This from Johnny Void:

       It is important to point out that Altmann talks about encouraging people to work longer or take up an apprenticeship, not forcing them.  They are not yet that confident. But this is exactly the kind of smiley faced rhetoric that was eventually used to justify workfare and benefit cuts for sick and disabled people.  Altmann even proposes an Age Confident campaign, modelled on the DWP’s current Disability Confident initiative, the shoddy PR programme introduced to provide soft cover for cutting disabled people’s benefits.
     Workfare for your pension may be some way off but that is no reason to be complacent.  Reports like this are how it begins.  Encouraging people to work longer is presented as helping them, or ending age discrimination.  Liberals will cheer, the Labour Party will applaud.  Charities for older people will start thinking about all those juicy contracts to train pensioners in how to write a CV that might be on the way.  Middle-class professionals, who earn more in an hour than some do in a day, will think it’s just common sense to do a few hours work after you retire – as long as the money’s right of course.  And slowly those who choose to retire at 65 will be start to be criticised for not taking up all the exciting opportunites now available to work for the  minimum wage until the day you die.

Read the full article HERE:

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

 

That Babbling Brook Of Bullshit.

      I tend to refer to the mainstream media as, "that babbling brook of bullshit", and have refused interviews with journalists on several occasions. I see the mainstream media as an essential part of the establishment apparatus. A propaganda tool of the corporate world, and at all times, against the type of change to society that is necessary to break out of this vicious circle of capitalist exploitation. When anarchists talk to the media, they are putting their ideas and beliefs in a mincer, and having them served up in distorted misshapen unrecognisable minuscule portions. I fail to see how we can expect a social revolution to come via the mainstream media, they are firmly on the other side of the desire for a change, to a system of fairness and justice, built on the needs of the people. 

       We have to be our own media, we have to communicate via our communities and workplaces, report on, and be constructively critical of the real world we live in. We must ignore the filtered version of distorted sound-bites that is spewed out from that vast international corporate mouthpiece, whose only aim is to create a false reality, in which none of us actually live. It attempts to make the gross inequalities and injustices of the capitalist system acceptable, to make the public more amenable to the voracity of the parasites who hold the levers of power in this corrupt system. It will glorify war, honour the corporate plunder of the earth, and shine the spotlight of adoration on wealth and greed. Why should we even contemplate any form of association with something that is so hostile to our aims and desires? To see the world we live in, we must create a mainstream media blackout, in our lives, and talk to each other.

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