Legacy.

          Sunny Florida, still in the grip of covid19 has now been hit with another emergency. It appears that a 77 acre reservoir holding millions of gallons of water containing phosphorous and nitrogen from an old phosphate plant is leaking into the surrounding neighbourhood, mainly agricultural land. A state of emergency has been declared, more than 300 homes have been evacuated and a highway closed.
         The Governor's statement saying that it was mainly salt water, mixed with "legacy process water and storm water run off", was I suppose meant to calm the residents. However, that is only part of the truth, The area where the leak was found is in a stack of phosphate-gypsum, a radioactive waste from the manufacture of fertiliser. That to me is not just salt water. Once again the mass corporate production leaves behind it a legacy of destruction, pollution and poison and little regard to the consequences of their profit seeking process.

The leak was discovered at the reservoir at Piney Point.  Reuters photo.                               
 

         This capitalist system seems to be excellent at coming up with processes that are supposed to enhance our lives but leave a trail of pollution and poisons that will destroy the life of the planet. Our world is awash with chemical dumps, arms dumps, nuclear dumps and other waste dumps, all growing by the day, and all in the name of profit. The corporate bodies reap the rewards, the public reap the whirlwind of ever occurring disasters. To clean up these "waiting in the wings" disasters, we need to clean up our economic system.
          We need to move away from the profit motive for everything, to a mode of production that is controlled by the people and for the needs of all the people in a sustainable manner. We need to remember that capitalism is just a man made economic system, that fails to meet the needs of all our people and can easily be replaced with another man made economic system that puts fairness and the needs of all our people as its aim, but based on the fact the planet is our only home and we must preserve and nurture it for our survival and that of the coming generations. 

 

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.
Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.
Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.
Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.
In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know its got to be good.
Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit’s what its all about.

 

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

Tomorrow's World.

        A new lockdown, dreary days without real social interaction, thoughts of trying to make sense of this world we have created. Holding on to sprigs of hope, doing our utmost to create a new and better world, we have the formula, anarchism, plain and simple. Now must be the time, when we take a look at where we are and the direction we are facing.

TOMORROW’S WORLD!!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
Chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know it’s got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit is what it’s all about. 

 

 

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

I Despair.

         When we look around we can all see, poverty and deprivation, we are all aware of the corporate plundering of our planet and the ensuing bloody and violent wars to gain and/or to protect that plunder. We all have seen the evidence that the present economic system is destroying the planet and all life on the planet. We are all witness to the gross inequality, with a privileged few wallowing in obscene opulence, while a teardrop away the many struggle for a decent life, millions die from hunger, across the world, while millions of others find sleep in some dark doorway or back alley. Yet the many still turn up for work, politely go about their business and patiently put up with the advancing Armageddon. Why are we so forgiving, polite and patient? 

 

 

        Why is there no outrage on the streets, why is there no explosion of anger, why do we allow this system to continue to function, knowing full well the ending is death to life on our only home, planet Earth? Is it because we don't care about the future, or what happens to the next generation, our kids and grand-kids? Or is it that most are comatosed by their daily struggle to survive, or hypnotised into a zombie state of acceptance, submissiveness, consumerism, celebrity worship and envy, by an extremely sophisticated culture of subliminal control where reality comes in the form flashy images and fast moving emotional stimulating advertising and government propaganda? Our politeness must be put in abeyance, our patience must end, and our forgiveness withdrawn, and be replaced by our pent up righteous anger and blood red rage, driving our action, it is the only way we can ever hope to stop this dystopian vision becoming our worst nightmare reality. 

 

PROPHET OR DREAMER?

Am I a dreamer?
Ever dazzled by unrisen dawns,
always hearing the song of liberty
though freedom’s flag is torn.
I walk towards a world
no borders, kings or slaves;
history claims the warrior’s hand
peace the crown of bays.
I see the hungry feasting
midst the brotherhood of man;
all the children singing
the fear of famine gone.
I find the common man
hold his brother dear
create a world of social justice,
Elysian fields their sphere.
Freedom’s flag is torn,
quiet is liberty’s song
unrisen suns still to dawn;
prophet,

 Or dreamer born?

 

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

Tomorrow!!

      More and more our world is seen through a screen, now with virtual meetings and virtual reality the natural world is becoming a forgotten and alien world. Even the barbarity of war can be carried out from an office somewhere thousands of miles from the horror, destruction and death. The hands-on world is slowly becoming a distant memory. Is this the direction we wish to go, to a world that suits big business and the controlling state, where you become a studied, profiled predictable entity, devoid of the right to your own social structures and interactions, without being monitored? Where communities are in a monitored virtual world?

The following from Montreal Counter Information:

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

PDF to print (11 x 17)

Poster text:

Fire to the Cybernetic Prison

It’s never too late to resist

Artificial Intelligence
     AI labs, recipients of several $100M in government funding, are working to put “machine learning” algorithms in the service of a long list of industries. Under an “ethical” facade, some applications will simply allow well-placed capitalists to further enrich themselves. Others aim to reinforce repression, whether detecting shoplifters at the supermarket with automated video surveillance, developing facial recognition tools that work even on partly covered faces, or “predicting” crime or the probability of a prisoner re-offending.

5g Wireless Networking
     The unprecedented bandwidth of 5G technology enables the deployment of AI on the scale of a city in real time. Every movement becomes trackable thanks to thousands of cameras integrated into a centralized surveillance apparatus. This vision is already in practice in more than one European “smart city”. Countless sensors dotting public spaces, in businesses, cars and public transit, and worn on our bodies aim to make every action the object of calculation, prediction and control, all under an eco-friendly label. By its pervasiveness, a web of algorithms is made invisible and therefore impossible to resist.

Robotics and Automation
     Self-driving cars. Robotized warehouses. Cashierless stores. Delivery robots that call the cops when they are attacked. An infrastructure is being deployed that will change the world of work and our living environment permanently. We don’t mourn the disappearance of back-breaking and boring jobs. A dehumanizing pace is imposed on the remaining workers, who must keep up with the machines and productivity software or be shown the door. Meanwhile, what measures of social control and what exploitative schemes await the new excluded masses of an age of technological unemployment?

Life in Front of a Screen
     Possibilities for authentic relations between humans and with our surroundings are increasingly erased in service of a virtual hyper- connectivity. Understanding, discovery, and the search for meaning are reduced to production of data. Attention deficit, memory problems, loss of emotional skills and imagination, disrupted sleep, musculo-skeletal pain, anxiety, loneliness, depression: the symptoms of addiction to online technologies are worsening as the proportion of the population that has spent their entire lives immersed in touch screens grows.

For free and full lives, open to the unknown

Be the outage in their network!

And just a thought: 

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
Chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.
Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.
Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.
Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.
In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know its got to be good.
Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit’s what its all about.

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

The Revolving Mind.

       As a rule, I'm an optimistic guy, always confident that we will find a way, my glass is always half full. Of course now and again those dark pessimistic thoughts send their poisonous tentacles into the labyrinth of my mind, and a different set of thoughts come out. 

      Looking at the ecological disaster that stands before us and the blind greed of those at present, in control of the reins of power, my thoughts went back to a little piece I wrote about a couple of hundred years ago, well it seems like that.

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about.

      Of course I always try to kill those pessimistic poisonous tentacles, but they do warn us of what might lie ahead. So, without forgetting the warning those thoughts send us, I'll try to dispel those dark clouds and close with some thoughts I scribbled down in more recent times.

WALK WITH THE POETS.

My head has had enough of you,
you doomsday sooth-sayers, and
rationalists, that trap us in the world that is.
Go weave your tales of “can't be done”
to the dead, and those of no imagination.
I want to walk with the utopian,
the dreamer and the poet,
laugh with the child and sing with the wind.
Run with the deer, not with “the market trend”
Enough of, “this is the way it has to be”,
a world of poverty, wars and inequality.
Now, I'll create the world I want to see,
A world of sharing, peace and liberty.
I want the children to plan tomorrow,
the adult help them get there,
trees and flowers our treasured possessions,
with birds and animals their keepers.
Who wants a world that chains us to mortgages,
binds us to a labouring day, just to eat bread?
Who wants to spend their life, feeding fat-cats
while their own children go hungry?
No, this is not the world that has to be,
in our foolishness and misplaced trust,
this is a world that has slithered over us,
poisoning our mind, putrefying our spirit.
Let's call on the poet, let's welcome the dreamer,
let's take council with the utopian,
They'll help us create a better world for all. 

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

Spaceship Earth Has No Escape Capsule.

 

       States, councils and corporate bodies, talk the talk on climate change, but never walk the walk. Grand words, but actions that are mainly to protect the profits of the large corporations, who have billions wrapped up in fossil fuels. As the corporate juggernaut grinds its way through our planet, plundering for greed driven profit, our planet limps to a dubious future, where human life is doubtful. All unnecessary, all preventable, if we act now, but time is running out. We would do well to remember, spaceship Earth has no escape capsule. This is our only place for humanity, there is no other planet waiting for the Earth's population. Screw this one up and we are finished, no second chance. If this generation allows this greed driven suicide to continue, we condemn our grand children to an unimaginable, unlivable dystopia of our own making, surely they deserve better. 

        There are those who are fighting this murder by profit, our solidarity should be guaranteed and unstinting, more power to their efforts. This from Enough is Enough:

Climate protectors occupy coal-ship transfer port in Rotterdam
       Rotterdam: This morning (March 9) dozens of climate activists from ‘We Stop Coal’ occupied the coal-ship port of the EMO Rotterdam. The participants of the protest state that it is time to break the power of the fossil industry. They say they will not leave until this renewed contract of EMO is made public and destroyed. There has been a huge international outcry about the continuation of the biggest coal harbour of Europe.
       If the Netherlands wants to take their responsibility regarding limiting the warming of the planet by 1.5 C°, then the port of Rotterdam should stop facilitating fossil fuels as soon as possible. “The port of Rotterdam and counsellor Visser are guilty of climate destruction. By not acting on their responsibility regarding the lease contract of the EMO transfer company they are equally responsible for the destruction of our Earth. People in the Global South and our children will be the ones facing the costs of the decisions of EMO.” Albeit spokesperson Maria Rietberg. “This is a Code Red for the climate. Rotterdam is the biggest coal dealer in Europe. If the government does not take action, it is up to us.”
       The port of Rotterdam is a crucial cross-section of the global fossil fuel trade. “Fossil fuels belong to the past. If we do not intervene right now, our planet will slide into a situation where their inhabitants are unable to live any longer”. Says Rietberg. “Rising sea levels, melting icecaps, millions of people on the move because of hunger due to failed harvest: the cause of this is partly to be found in Rotterdam.”
In the city council of Rotterdam, the behaviour and (lack of) responsibility of D66 councillor Adriaan Visser have triggered antipathy and a feeling of disbelief. Many local political parties urged their followers to take part in the climate march for a coal-free Rotterdam. The march is organized by the Climate Initiative and will leave this afternoon from the City House towards the port company at 13:00 h.
        In the port of Rotterdam, 28 million tonnes of coal is transferred yearly. The burning of this coal equals 47% of the total Dutch CO2 emissions. The majority of this coal is exported by train and inland ships to Germany. In November, hundreds of Dutch citizens joined the protests during the climate summit in Bonn at the Ende Gelände coal mine actions. Four thousand citizens joined the demonstration against the RWE brown coal mine. These people forced RWE to stop their destructive work.
German outrage
       The passive display of the Rotterdam city board has caused international dismay, both in Germany and England. In an open letter, international environmental organizations called upon mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, port company director Allard Castelein and the city council to phase out the coal transfer. “The international willingness for action to come to the Rotterdam port for big scale actions has increased enormously” Albeit spokesperson Micha Vos. “International anti-coal coalitions state that the Netherlands is avoiding their responsibility. With this unacceptable decision, the City Council acts against the Paris climate agreement.
Just transition for the port workers
       ‘We Stop Coal’ aims for a just transition. The coal port workers whose families depend on their income can be part of the immediate transition to renewable energy. The action group supports the call of the FNV -the workers union, for a Coal Fund for the workers of the coal branch. “We think it is necessary that the shareholders give a compensation back to the workers; have they not profited for years from their labour?” states Vos. “Renewable energy provides many opportunities for a new future in the port. The continuation of the status quo through failing government policy has enormous consequences. That is why we now stand up for the climate and demand climate justice for everyone”, albeit Rietberg.
We put a Stop to Coal, March 9, 2018.

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about.

It doesn't have to be that way.

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

Workers Know Your History, No Gods, No Masters, 2 of 3.

      Following on from previous post of Daily Motion's part 1 of the history of anarchism, "No Gods, No Masters", here is part 2 of 3, 1922 1945. Enjoy, it's your history, it highlights our problems, and it points the way to the future.

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

Slaughterbots!!

 

         Technology can be a tremendous advantage to the human race, it has the potential to create a sustainable world of plenty, the rest is up to us how we use that technology. Sadly the powers that be, see technology as a tool to increase their control over us, they see it as a way to protect and enhance their power and wealth at the expense of sustainability, justice and equality. Power, greed and war are among the main drivers of today's technology, this in turn opens the door to a frightening world beyond the control of the people. 

       The following short video paints a nightmare picture of technology in the hands of the power mongers, I don't know how far down the road we are to this type of technology, but I have no doubt what so ever, if we are not there yet, there are those working hard to get there. Only the people can stop this becoming a reality.

        All the more urgent reason for us all to come together and bring down this system of insanity that is today's capitalist world. I don't think we have a lot of time on our hands, I'm sure the point of no return is very close indeed. Tomorrow is up to us, or it is their vision of total control.

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

Time For That Grand Plan.

       Today, because of the economic system that dominates our planet, we seem to stumble from one disaster to another, from one crisis to the next. Our lords and masters' only concern is maintaining their power, their corporate buddies only concern is the next end of year balance sheet, all else is pushed aside. The planet and all its life forms, including us, are sacrificed to these ends. With this sort of prevailing thought, where does that leave our kids and grand kids? Are we prepared to allow this to continue, knowing that we are on a road to total destruction, that could be avoided, how long will we sit and watch vandals destroy our home?

Our long term plan is like our short term plan, only longer.

As usual some food for thought from Not Buying Anything:

         Humanity should think about developing a plan longer than the next election cycle. We don't need 5 year plans, we need 5,000 year plans. Preferably two of them.
          A solid 10,000 year plan would go a long way toward figuring out where we want to go with this petri dish known as Earth. I love the idea of thinking ahead 7 generations, but how about extending that to 500? Supposedly we are the smartest creatures on Earth (and the known Universe according to some), so we should be able to get our big brains together and do this thing.
        In order to reduce the chance of repeating the thousands of years of blind bumbling that we have been experiencing so far, we should come up with an overall plan for humans (and everything else) on our shared petri-planet home. Surely, considering the importance of my proposal, we can get some consensus towards a set of common goals and outcomes.
       Like survival at first, looking at our increasingly grim short term prospects.
       Then we can proceed from there and start planning for things like ridding the environment of human-created radiation produced during our misguided experiment with nuclear energy. That alone is a project that will take thousands of years. We should have one of those already, shouldn't we?
       Next in The Big Plan we can look out over the next few hundred years. Where do we see ourselves as a species? What do we want to achieve in this time? I for one would like to see something more substantial than the planet's first trillionare.
       A lot can happen in one year, let alone a hundred or a thousand. We should have a plan to help direct where we are going. Many of us can imagine a better world, and if we can imagine it, we can achieve it. We can put it in the plan.
      As an ex-teacher I know the importance and the challenges of planning. It will take a different way of thinking to extend our imaginations past the next election, or our own brief existence. But we do care about our kids, don't we? And their kids? And theirs? And so on all the way up the line?
      We have already had many thousands of years to get this thing right, and it feels like we aren't quite there yet. Let's get The Big Plan started.
     How do you see humanity developing over 10,000 years? The glorious possibilities are endless.

      Of course if we are to embark on that 10,000 year plan, the first step must be to completely get rid of capitalism, in all its destructive and ugly forms.

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

Let's Walk With The Poets.

 

        I believe that today is National Literacy Day, that's as good an excuse as any for a poem.

WALK WITH THE POETS.

My head has had enough of you,

you doomsday sooth-sayers, and

rationalists, that trap us in the world that is.

Go weave your tales of “can't be done”

to the dead, and those of no imagination.

I want to walk with the utopian,

the dreamer and the poet,

laugh with the child and sing with the wind.

Run with the deer, not with “the market trend”

Enough of, “this is the way it has to be”,

a world of poverty, wars and inequality.

Now, I'll create the world I want to see,

A world of sharing, peace and liberty.

I want the children to plan tomorrow,

the adult help them get there,

trees and flowers our treasured possessions,

with birds and animals their keepers.

Who wants a world that chains us to mortgage,

binds us to a labouring day, just to eat bread?

Who wants to spend their life, feeding fat-cats

while their own children go hungry?

No, this is not the world that has to be,

in our foolishness and misplaced trust,

this is a world that has slithered over us,

poisoning our mind, putrefying our spirit.

Let's call on the poet, let's welcome the dreamer,

let's take council with the utopian,

They'll help us create a better world for all.

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

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

May The 1% Prevail!!

          I have never been happy with the 99% - 1% cry of the occupy movement, I don't think it is that clean a break. The vast majority of the 99% don't really want the 99% to take control of everything, they just want a better say in the running of the stinking system in an attempt to make it "fairer", to guarantee a little cake on the table instead of the perpetual stale bread. Inside that 99% however, there is another 1%, perhaps a little more than that, who have higher hopes and dreams than a benevolent capitalism. They don't see taking over the institutions of a rotten system as any answer at all, to them society has to be refashioned, reshaped to fit the dreams of the just. They will have no truck with the pomp and ceremony of past power and will bury tradition that binds us to inequality. Their tomorrow has no grand plan, it is a continuous metamorphosis that perpetually shapes itself to all our needs. Ask them what their tomorrow will look like and they will reply, "I don't know, it all depends on who walks with me." The important thing is that it is all those involved in our society, that determine the shape of our society with justice and freedom at its heart.

Said in another way: 

"------We know what the real causes of the suffering we endure: the sect of power, the cult of money, but also the obedience that they demand and obtain. These causes are perpetuated in the daily lives of human beings by the actions, gestures, relationships that interweave within a society in which we feel that we are strangers everywhere. And these causes – that have to be refused, deserted, demolished – have found shelter in your movement. We have never felt at home in 99% of our modern life, spent lining up to beg for crumbs, and yet you insist on defending 99% of the problem. We will take our possibilities elsewhere. Through the hopes, dreams and actions that have earned your condemnation. You, you still continue you passage through the ocean of universal indignation. You raise your sails passing the ropes to bureaucrats and police. You share space and air with the scum who have made life on this planet so unlivable. You head straight towards a new tomorrow with the hold still full of yesterday’s shit. We won’t climb onto your ship, in case we would never get off of it. We will stay on our rafts which you so despise, because they are so small and light.
But watch out. A vessel that travels with our enemies on board is an opportunity to fine to miss. Do you laugh? Do you have no fear of us because we don’t have the strength board you? You’ve misunderstood us. We don’t want your gold, we don’t at all want to conquer you, We want to make you sink with all your death cargo. To succeed at this, there is no need for a majestic fleet, one fire-ship is enough. Small and light."

Read the full article from Tabula Rasa HERE:

ann arky's home.

WE ARE THE MAKERS OF HISTORY.

     Wouldn't it be wonderful if our children and grandchildren could read history like the following article? Well only this generation can make that possible, it is up to us to decide what history will look like to our following generations. Will it be a history of leaders and billionaires, of war and poverty shattering the lives of millions, of corporate greed still running rampant while raping and pillaging the planet for the gain of the parasitical few? Or will it be a history of peace, and an economic system that sees to the needs of all our people?  What we do in the coming year will shape our history, will we continue to allow the financial Mafia to pillage the public purse creating deprivation and death, or do we, with one united voice, cry out, enough is enough?

This from A World to Win:

When people decided that enough was enough.

New Year's message

society was being overwhelmed by a series of catastrophes to which there seemed no answers. Unemployment, poverty and inequality were rife as a global crisis took hold. The old capitalist economic system had run its course and was unsustainable.
The world was choked with products, many of them out of date as soon as they came off the production lines. Huge dumps and rubbish piles accumulated and overwhelmed parts of the planet. Waste, some of it lethal, became big business as it was shipped across the globe.
People became poorer as they lost jobs and services were cut by undemocratic governments in the pockets of the corporations. Increasing numbers depended on charity food banks just to survive. Obesity and diabetes epidemics affected the poor – due to the marketing of junk food by agribusiness and supermarkets.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD.

    For all those anarchists with an imagination and a vision of their utopian better world, you know, the one that we are all working so hard to achieve. Could you put it into words, what is the anarchist world you're struggling so hard to create, what would it look like? I have no doubt we will all come up with a different picture, but I have no doubt there will be some basics that will be universal, a deep respect for the other, co-operation and mutual aid, will be the basic building blocks.

A wee challenge from Combustion Books:

Introducing the Anarchist Imagination

     Everyone knows the world is a mess. There’s starvation and ecocide, racism and sexism. The rich get richer and the poor get dead, all while species go extinct and carbon warms up the air. It’s not surprising that so much of our fiction is as bleak as our future threatens to be.

      But we can imagine other worlds. We can imagine better ways to organize ourselves, better ways to treat one another, better ways to treat the earth. And specifically, we can imagine worlds without the authoritarianism of the state and capitalism. The question, then, is: what would those worlds look like?

     Combustion Books, a worker-run publisher of genre fiction, is looking to publish a new line of books: The Anarchist Imagination. We are looking for novella-length (15,000-40,000 words) anarchist utopias.

       Our intention is not, of course, to put down blueprints that must be followed line by line. We offer no prescription for future society. Instead, the utopia is a form we can use to explore our revolutionary desires, to showcase ideas we might put into practice, to give us glimpses of what we fight for.

     The utopia is a peculiar form of fiction to write, to be sure, and we’re looking for stories that balance the exposition of society with compelling narrative and character. The stories can be set in our own world–past, present, or future–or in fantasy. The politics can be anything anti-state, the economics anything that isn’t capitalism. As this series goes on, we hope to showcase just how wide this terrain can be.

Submissions can be sent to submissions@combustionbooks.org.
You can also view our regular submission guidelines.

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PRIVATE OR PUBLIC -- WHOSE WORLD WILL IT BE?

        The latest move by the Greek government to appease the financial Mafia makes it obvious that this whole austerity thing is nothing really to do with debt reduction. The Greek government has a very profitable 34% stake in one of Europe's largest gambling companies OPAP, so one would imagine that it should hold on to that and use the profits to help fund its services. But no, to try to impress their masters in Brussels, they have decided to sell most of its money making share to the corporate greed mongers and allow them to reap the profits instead of the public. More and more of the public assets will be handed over to the corporate greed machine, and this is not just in Greece. It is the grand plan of the financial Mafia, not just in Europe, but across the world, to get its hands on all public assets to swell its coffers, and put an end for once and for all to anything being publicly owned or managed. 

         In this country the privatisation goes on unabated, with Gove breaking up the education system and Lansley being fired for not moving fast enough in the privatisation of the National Health Service. We are rapidly moving into a society where there will be no public assets and no public space, It will be a corporate world, everything will be under the control of those shiny suits in far away places, and their only criteria will be profit. The world as we know it will have gone and we will be mere products to be used or discarded as the various Chief Executives decide the best policies for their shareholders. They'll continue to shuffle their money around the globe in an attempt to keep down wage costs and fatten the bank accounts of the little army of parasitic shareholders.

        Of course there is another world, a world where we share the resources and see to the needs of all our people. a world where we work in co-operation with one and other, creating a rich and sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. A world based on mutual aid where all those involved in that world shape that world, a world free from the profit motive and the greed of those corporate parasites that infest our world at present, a world free from capitalism.

TOMORROW’S WORLD!!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about. 

ann arky's home.

TOMORROW'S WORLD.

      What a lousy summer, but we did have a few good laughs, now winter is on the horizon, it's time to think.

TOMORROW’S WORLD!!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about.

ann arky's home.

THE REBEL.

THE REBEL

Rebel rebel break the rule,

What does it matter that a “wise” man sees a fool.

Not for you the herd’s dull beat

Making tomorrow, yesterday’s repeat,

Living out the life of a clone

Marching with the crowd but always alone.

Shaping your life from some dusty tome

Playing it safe, staying at home.

Rebel rebel break the rule

Swim in the sea, never the pool.

Live your emotions, feel the surge

Follow your dreams, chase the urge.

Make life though short, an exciting game

Not a mad march for fortune or fame.

Capture the moment, live it now

Being alive your only vow.

Rebel rebel break the rule

In the end, you’re humanity’s jewel.

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TEAPOT COLLECTIVE INTRODUCTION TO ANARCHY, PAGE 13. 

         Time for the next exciting page from the Teapot Collective Introduction to Anarchy, we continue with page 13. Page 12 can be read HERE.

         "--Find examples of what life could be, put our ideas into practise in everyday life.

          Creating anarchy is helping your neighbours, stealing from your workplace, growing your own food, throwing a brick at a riot cop, organising a stamp-collectors club, babysitting for your friend, talking back, phoning in sick, not being what is expected of you. Anarchy is mutual aid, co-operation and not leaving your life to others to organise it.

      We don't see the mythical revolution as something that will just happen suddenly one day after we've polished some ideology. Revolution is a

process of individuals and collectives gradually reclaiming what's been taken from us.

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