Wake Up.

 

  An extract from an article by Caitlin Johnstone.

          

              I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been sleeping since the ceasefire started; that’s why I haven’t been writing as much. I guess spending weeks staring at unbelievable horrors unfolding on your screen can be pretty hard on your system if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, so my body’s been resting up as much as it can while there’s an opportunity.
            And I’m just here watching this all unfold safely from my home in Melbourne. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be living in the midst of this horror for the last two months, trying to figure out the best way to survive while also grieving the family, friends and neighbors you’re losing along the way. These people have all been deeply traumatized in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, if they survive the violence, disease and deprivation that’s to come.
This thing is so astonishingly ugly, and it could get a whole lot uglier after the ceasefire ends. If there’s anything positive to be found in this living nightmare, it’s that it’s so earth-shakingly ugly that it just might shake the world awake.

                 But will it shake the world awake? I doubt it, it has already shaken vast swaths of the general public awake and they have taken to the streets, but as for the power/war mongers with the reins of power, that's a different story. These blind to suffering power/war mangers have a different agenda and will play the situation like a game of cards, seeking an outcome that is to their advantage, irrespective of the suffering and bloody genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. We have evolved into a system where suffering and death of ordinary people is acceptable  to meet the ends of the powers that be.

Image courtesy of Islamic Relief South Africa.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Genocide.

 

Image courtesy of The Independent.

           There can't be a sane human on this earth that doesn't see what is happening in Gaza and scream, genocide, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, on a savage, brutal, inhumane scale not seen for many a year. Anyone who doesn't shout out loud and clear, "The slaughter must stop" and stop immediately must be blind or a religious Zionist fanatic. Our streets across the world must heave with the weight and numbers of ordinary people, all with the same cry, "Freedom for Palestine" and "Ceasefire now".

The following film is from SubMedia.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Genocide.

     

         Surely the only subject matter that should be grabbing our attention today, is the genocide of the Palestinian people by the colonialist Zionist apartheid state of Israel. Over the centuries the human race has witness many brutal and savage events, but for the 21 century, what is happening to the Palestinian people must shock every fibre of humanity. A genocidal act of inhuman savagery, driven by a fanatical religious group hell bent on claiming Palestine as a Zionist state, cleared of Arabs. Since the creation of the phoney Zionist state of Israel, the Palestinian people have been displaced in their millions to refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere. The last remaining Palestinians in their own country are in refugee camps in the largest open air prison in the world, the occupied territory of Gaza and the West Bank, and the are at this very moment being crushed by one of the most powerful military states in the world. All humanity must stand up and demand an end to this savage genocide and justice and freedom for the Palestinian people. 

Image courtesy of Morning Star.

From SubMedia.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Bliar!

         Our so called constitutional Monarchy is a living edifice of British imperialism, steeped in pomp, wealthy and privileges. It scatters its tainted privileges far and wide conferring pompous honours on those who serve and preserve British imperialism. We are about to see this in action when Tony Blair, probably one of the worst war-mongering Prime Ministers the UK has ever had, well until reckless, arrogant duplicitous Boris arrive at No.10. Lying, bloody handed, Tony Blair, he of the illegal Iraq invasion, is about kneel in front of the monarchy, with his fancy hat on, and have bestowed on him one of the privileges with which our constitutional monarchy peppers on the imperialist faithful.
         Far from honouring this blood soaked lying war-monger, he should be facing trail for the bloody, brutal devastation he heaped on the innocent people of Iraq. The people of this country should in no way accept this theatre of pomp and privilege, bolstering UK imperialism, privilege and power.

 

11 Jun 2022 —
        The UK honours system is anything but honourable. On June 13th draped in robes, gold and plumed hat, Tony Blair will be given the red-carpet treatment and granted the highest honour the Queen can bestow, a Knighthood.
       That’s why we will be outside Windsor Castle to remind Blair he can never wash the blood off his hands.
         Join the public protest at the annual Garter Day procession in Windsor and let the world know there is only one court that Blair should be attending, and it’s not the royal one.
       We are assembling at 1pm at the Queen Victoria Statue on Castle Hill, Windsor, SL4 1PD to say 'Jail Blair! No knighthoods for war criminals'.
      For those traveling from London we will be meeting at Paddington Station at midday for the 12:20 train. Changing at Slough at 12:36.
     It will be a memorable day when we send a memorable message to the gathered media. Be a part of that message!

Thank you for your support.

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

State Crimes.

 

 

        The case of Julian Assange receives little or no cover in the mainstream media, why? It is a glaring example of state persecution to stifle and deter anyone from exposing the brutality and lies that form the foundations of their foreign policy for domination of the world's resources. Julian Assange exposed war crimes, savage brutality, the murder of thousands of innocent civilians, all acted out on a fabrication of deliberate lies by the very states that swan around the world pretending to be the defenders of peace and democracy. Where are the army of journalists that spout that they are seekers of the truth, the defenders of free speech, why the silence.

 

     The following is an extract from an article regarding the case of Julian Assange, though in this case I must emphasise that I'm no lover of the messenger in this case, but I whole heartedly agree with the message.

       - - -George Bush and Tony Blair Should be Behind Bars Not Julian Assange The absence of bitterness from John’s conversation with me is remarkable and testimony to his compassion and understanding of world affairs. His admiration for his son’s courage and strength is huge. Julian Assange committed no crimes. He is in a prison cell while real war criminals like George Bush and Tony Blair escape justice. They are the ones who lied and bullied and bribed and blackmailed the UN to try and get a second resolution justifying invading Iraq. They failed.
          The invasion and subsequent occupation were illegal and they should be held responsible for the one million civilian deaths which resulted. The fact Chelsea Manning spent seven years behind bars before her thirty-five-year sentence was commuted by Barack Obama is a disgrace. She was sentenced again last March because she refused to testify against Julian Assange. She spent a year in jail between March 2019 – March 2020. She is the epitome of courage and integrity. Refusing to turn on Assange revealed her inner strength and dignity.
Julian Assange is a Victim of Psychological Torture in UK Custody
        Julian Assange’s father drew attention to the numerous investigations of his son’s incarceration by the United Nations rapporteur on torture and arbitrary detention. Through visits and detailed assessments Professor Nils Melzer compiled damning evidence which showed Julian was indeed a victim of systematic psychological torture for which the UK bears a heavy responsibility:

“The case falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture. In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to death in the United States. And a case like that isn’t supposed to be part of my area of responsibility? Beyond that, the case is of symbolic importance and affects every citizen of a democratic country”

        Please read these words from Professor Nils Melzer over and over again and acquaint yourself with his various reports. Exactly ten years to the day after exposing heinous US war crimes, systematic torture and flagrant breaches of international law it is the man who exposed the crimes who is behind bars when it should be the organisers, facilitators and perpetrators of those crimes.
Plague of Malice
         During our interview, I reminded John Shipton of an incredibly apt phrase he used recently when interviewed during Julian’s trial in London. He said his son was subject to a “plague of malice”. I suggested it should be the title of a book detailing how Julian has not been criminally prosecuted - he has been politically persecuted. Persecuted by powerful nations in a vengeful act of revenge for being exposed by Julian as the practiced criminals, liars, and murderers they are. Should Julian Assange be handed over by a British Court to face a life sentence in America for publishing evidence of US government war crimes it is the death knell of investigative journalism and the most serious undermining of free speech and freedom of expression in hundreds of years. The world will be propelled back to the dark ages of medieval dynasties and the denial of democratic rights and freedoms should America be allowed to demand the release of a journalist into their custody for harsh punishment for doing no more than revealing war crimes. It was the celebrated author and forensic social commentator George Orwell who said that journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations. But he also advised us that:

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

       Please get involved in the various campaigns and online petitions and support groups demanding the release of Julian Assange. His state-sponsored political persecution has no association with justice and everything to do with spite, revenge, and stark warnings to the rest of us. Don’t you dare speak the truth or speak out or stand up against injustices and wicked crimes committed by your governments lest you face the same personal mauling and destruction of character meted out to Julian Assange.- - -

Read the full article HERE: 

 

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

Syria.

     With the pandemic taking up all the media's attention, the horror that is Syria is no longer news. However, the suffering of the Syrian people goes on and is deepening, thanks to America's vicious "no bullets war" of inhumane sanctions. Nine years of a devastating war has reduced Syria to a battle torn remnant of a country, Now the brutal savagery of a modern war has more or less subsided, Syria is unable to rebuild its infra structure  due to the inhumane raft of sanctions inflicted by the US.

    Sanctions against a country are a war crime, as what they do is kill the civilian population, and it is intentional, as the enforcer of these sanctions is well aware of their result. The people of Syria having come through, what was nothing short of a world war, involving most of the world's major powers fought on their soil, are now seeing their civilian population slowly dying from hunger. They are unable to rebuild their schools, hospitals, homes and workplaces, all due to that one deliberate action of the US, sanctions. 

     Economic sanctions are a vicious tool of the powerful capitalist countries to try to enforce their will on other nations, and in most cases for control of resources. They are a war against a civilian population, in the full knowledge that young, old and infirm, as well as the health, will slowly suffer and large numbers will, in all probability, not make it. 

    Just another example of the ruthlessness of the economic capitalist system that controls our lives and devastates the planet, for no other reason than to enrich a pampered, privileged bunch of parasites, what do we, the ordinary people, gain from the suffering of the Syrian people? How much longer will we tolerate this vicious injustice, how much longer will we struggle for a half decent life while watching our fellow humans suffer, all for a pot of gold for the greedy billionaire class. Our silence makes us complicit in the suffering and death of every Syrian child.

    The following extract is from an article in Mideast Discourse by Steven Sahiounie

        The US sanctions have been unsuccessful in their goal of ‘regime change’ in Damascus, but have been hugely successful in making the Syrian people suffer, even though they have survived 9 years of terrorist attacks, occupations, deaths, injuries, and destruction they continue to suffer from economic-warfare.
       A school teacher in Latakia, said, “We thought if we resisted the terrorists, and defeated them, we would rebuild the lost homes, schools, hospitals and farms and start a new post-war-life. Now, the war is over, and we can’t rebuild anything and our life is even worse now that we are in peace-time. Where is our victory over terrorism? Why is America punishing us for defeating the terrorists?”
     The latest US sanctions are designed to prevent any reconstruction of infrastructure damaged in the war, which includes homes, shops, businesses, factories, and infrastructures such as schools and hospitals.
     US sanctions have exemptions for ‘humanitarian aid’, which include food, supplies, and bank transfers for humanitarian purposes. However, those exemptions are in theory only and have never been applied, as the paperwork and time to secure a waiver from the US government makes the exemption useless.
     The Trump administration, US Congress, and many Syrian-American groups have praised the new extreme sanctions against Syria. While the people living today in Syria suffer under the sanctions, those Syrians living inside the US and Europe are prospering and unaffected by the sanctions.
     Azhdar Kurtov, of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, explained in an interview with RT, “Syria has become an unpleasant ‘splinter’ in American politics in the Middle East. Moreover, this is not only a local defeat; it is evidence of the collapse of, above all, the global ambitions of the United States. 

Read the full article HERE:

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

Crime And Punishment.

     It may seem an odd question, "Should criminals be allowed to punish those who expose their crimes?", but in this crazy corporate/state world we live in, that is the question that is being debated. Another excellent article from Caitlin Johnstone, certainly well worth the time spent reading it in full.

      We’re Asking One Question In Assange’s Case: Should Journalists Be Punished For Exposing War Crimes?

By Caitlin Johnstone 

       This is a speech I gave yesterday at a demonstration for Assange with the Socialist Equality Party Australia.

      Tomorrow in the UK a judge will start the process of answering a very important question. It’s a question that many of us knew was the heart of this debate back in 2010, ten years ago, when this all started. It’s a question that they have been obfuscating, bloviating, huffily denying, smearing, gaslighting, and distracting from–basically doing anything they can to hide it from view. It’s a question that they don’t want the public to know that we are answering. A question that goes to the heart of democracy, and to the heart of the role of the fourth estate, journalism. And that question is this:
      Should journalists and publishers be punished for exposing US war crimes? And, ancillary to that question: should we allow them to be punished by the very people who committed those war crimes? Is that something that we want for our world, ongoing? Because our answer to this question is going to shape our society, our civilization, for generations to come. There is no coming back from this for a very long time should the answer be, “Yes! Yes, it’s fine, war criminals should go ahead and punish journalists for publishing true facts about their war crimes.”
      If we allow the answer to be yes, then we’re stuck with the endless stupid wars that everyone wants done with, from Melbourne to Kabul, from Sydney to Syria–right across the world people are done with these stupid wars for profit. Even the people like us who are very insulated from the effects of war want them over with, let alone the children of Pakistan who fear a sunny day because drones only fly in a blue sky, or the children of Syria whose country is being terrorized by “moderate rebels” armed and funded by the US war machine, or the starving children of Yemen who are being bombed constantly by munitions made in the good ol’ U S of A.
      No one wants war except those who make big bucks from it. It’s the most evil thing that humans are capable of. It is murder. It is theft. It is rape. It targets and traumatizes and displaces our planet’s most vulnerable populations. It destroys the environment. It leaves behind cancer-causing waste. It’s like as if the worst serial killer is going on the worst killing spree while dumping planet-killing chemicals behind him, but instead of running from the cops, he’s been given a trillion-dollar budget and immunity from prosecution. This is already happening. This is the world we have currently. The question that is being posed in Assange’s case is, should we be allowed to question this? Should we be allowed to expose it? Should we be allowed to stop it?
       Julian Assange’s case is a nexus point of where to next.
      I was thinking on the way over here what I would most like to say to Julian if I had the chance. If I could tell him anything right now it would be, “Rest now, mate. You’ve done all you can. We’ve got you. Let us take it from here.” Assange acted as a kind of lightning rod for all this bullshit for all those years, and through what they did to him, we saw their true face. We saw their true evil. We know what they are now, and we know how they do it, we’ve seen enough to know how they operate. And in the end it’s never about one man, it’s always about the movement. It’s our job now to stand up now and say as one “We do not consent”, and carry him out of there ourselves if we have to. This is where we’re at. We need to decide, do we evolve, or devolve? Do we pivot towards utopia, or dystopia?
      The persecution of Assange is so blatantly, obviously wrong that the only thing stopping people from seeing it is empire propaganda. You don’t have to be well-read. You don’t even have to be smart. You just have to have to have eyes that are unfiltered by narrative manipulation. Anyone with common sense and a beating heart in their chest can see this is wrong. Should journalists be tortured and imprisoned for life when they expose war crimes? The answer is not complicated. It’s obvious to anyone who hasn’t been propagandized out of their own clarity.
      Assange’s plight only looks complicated when you add on layers of narrative and verbiage. “Ah but Sweden stinky, stink man, hacker not a journalist! Mueller sexist Trump poop on the walls, Nazi Putin!” Without all the spin it’s very obvious he’s being torturously, unjustly persecuted. It really is an “emperor has no clothes” thing. The court propagandists fill our ears with fancy words about what a bad man Assange is, and why he must be dealt with, they’re trying to tell you that the emperor’s clothes are invisible to those aren’t educated. But the unpropagandized just yell “Hey! Why is the emperor ass-dick naked? Dude, I can see him! I can see his willy! ”
     This is why there are no counter protests here today. There are no regular, every day citizens taking to the streets with signs saying “Jail all the journalists! Endless war for all!” Some people still have strong feelings about Assange, but they’re just feelings, and you’ll find that it’s usually about only one or two of the smears, and if they turn and try to find evidence for the particular smears that have snagged them, they find nothing. That’s why Nils Melzer, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, is such a courageous figure to me. When people first approached him to look in to Assange’s case, he was reluctant because he too had been affected by the smears. When he turned to the evidence though, he found no substance there.
       Because of his honorability, though, he felt through the embarrassment of being duped, and being wrong, he swallowed his pride and he changed course. And he very quickly became one of our most powerful allies in the fight to expose war crimes, expose propaganda, expose the modern-day mobbing and torture tactics used against Assange, and expose the precedent that Assange’s prosecution will set for journalists and publishers world wide. And you know what? I think the power behind his testimony comes from the fact that he realized that he had been duped, and if he, a very intelligent, well read, worldly, informed and educated person could be duped, then anyone can be.
      No one is immune. Human minds are hackable. We’re all very busy with our lives. We’re all kept busy by capitalism, and very few of us have the time to do what he did and sit down and take a look at the facts and assess them. And even if they did that, even fewer of them have had the courage of their convictions to put up with the social consequences of changing course. Being manipulated isn’t immoral, being a manipulator is. People feel ashamed when they’ve been conned, but it’s not their fault; it’s always the fault of the con man. That’s why fraud is the crime, and being defrauded is being a victim of that crime.
       In order for people to see this question that we’re asking ourselves–the question of whether journalists should be punished for exposing war crimes–clearly they have to admit that they have been victims of propaganda. It’s not their fault, but they will be embarrassed to admit it. This shame underpins a lot of reluctance to join us here today, so I think it’s important to outline. So when you’re talking to your friends and family, keep in mind that they’re hurting. They’re afraid of feeling the shame of having been duped, because in our crazy, ass-backwards culture, being duped is considered shameful while duping people just makes you a productive member of society.
     Be gentle with them. Reassure them that it’s not going to be the end of the world if they change their mind. In fact, it may be the end of the world if they don’t. That’s why I find Nils Melzer’s testimony to be so powerful: because it exposes the abusive nature of propaganda, and he modeled how to act when we find ourselves on the wrong side of the debate. His very existence gives me hope because it means that there are others like him waking up all over the world. Actually, I’ve seen it already myself. There’s a huge movement in Germany gaining traction supporting Assange. It was the prisoners of Belmarsh who organized three separate petitions and got Julian out of solitary (how’s that for grassroots activism?). Just on Friday Alan Jones posted a poll on Facebook that posed the question “should the Australian government do more to help Julian Assange and bring him home?”. Thousands of people answered and there was a 75 percent “Yes! Yes we should bring him home.” Underneath the poll there were hundreds of comments in support of Assange.
      So the tide is changing. Is it enough? I reckon it might be. But we have to keep pushing on it like our lives depend on it, because they do.

Viva Assange!      Thank you.

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

Making A Quick Exit.

       So David Cameron makes a hasty retreat out the door of the commons shortly after saying he would stay and contribute as a back bencher. We are used to politicians saying one thing, and then doing another, but such an about face, after such a public statement to the contrary, does make you think.

         Could he be taking to his heels just ahead of the an MP’s report which openly lays the blame for the Libyan disaster at his feet. His quick exit out the door was just one day before an MP’s select committee produced its findings on Libya. A damning report which states that Cameron’s 2011 military adventure as, “lacking both “accurate intelligence” and a coherent strategy for the aftermath of removing the dictator.” It lays the blame of the bloody collapse of Libya, the following refugee crisis, the rise of ISIS, squarely on “David Cameron’s blunders when he intervened to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi.”
They go on to say, “They saw “no evidence that the UK Government carried out a proper analysis of the nature of the rebellion in Libya”. and, “There was no “defined strategic objective” – which meant a limited intervention to protect civilians “drifted into a policy of regime change by military means”
       Does this not make him guilty of crimes against humanity, a war criminal? Will he now follow that other recent British war criminal Blair, and trot off on a very lucrative career spouting his verbal crap for fat fees.
       I don’t give David Cameron any credit for being different, he is just like the rest of that cabal of two-faced careerists that frequent that edifice to British imperialism, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. We should know by now that they are all self-serving members of that cosy and profitable little club. However, it is a powerful and dangerous little club, and the sooner we abolish it the better for all of us.

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

Celebration Of A Mass Killing.

      It always amazes me how each state will turn what other states could classify as a war crime, into a great victory celebration, and honour it with pomp and ceremony. Today, May 17, is the anniversary of the "Dam-busters" raid by Britain in the Ruhr Valley. I have no doubt that it was an ingenious piece of engineering, but then most war instruments of mass slaughter are, when it comes to killing our fellow man, our ingenuity knows no bounds.

      On this particular occasion, there was no doubt that the Ruhr valley would be filled with ordinary people going about their daily affairs. Never the less, 19 Lancaster bombers were dispatched to destroy three dams in that area. They succeeded, but only 11 bombers return and 53 airmen were killed. However, their "success" meant that a 30 foot wave of water went rushing down the Valley, killing, at a conservative estimate, 1,600 people. It also left in its wake an area of totally destroyed infrastructure, schools, shops, homes, railways, all collateral damage to the aim of destroying the factories. Of course our celebrations doesn't mention these facts, it is all about the bravery of the air crews, which nobody doubts, and the ingenuity of our engineers, again, nobody doubts.

      There is also no doubt that those who calculated and planned this event, called "operation chastise", were well aware of the effect of sending a 30 foot wave of water through a densely populated area, to them, the deaths of so many men, women and children, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, was a price worth paying, and would be ignored. The German state responded with heavy bombing raids on London, and so the spiral continued.

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

Henry Kissinger, Citizens Arrest.

     There are some brave people in this world, and among them we should include those women in America who go by the name of Code Pink. They are persistent and well organised in there anti-militarism campaign, among other injustices they see.

     On the 29th January, in the American Senate, during an Armed Services Committee hearing, they attempted a citizens arrest of that arch organiser of state bloodshed, Henry Kissinger. Of course the Chairman of the hearing, Senator John McCain, berated them, calling they low life scum, if there is anyone who could recognise that life form it would be him, as he is part of that genre.

From Code Pink:

Alli and Anna Kaminski read the arrest warrant! 

     Did you hear? CODEPINK took the Senate by storm yesterday by attempting a citizens' arrest of Henry Kissinger while he was testifying in the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing! Chairman of the hearing, Senator John McCain, responded by referring to us as “despicable," "disgraceful," and "low life scum” –– and we couldn’t be prouder.

 

Alli McCracken dangles plastic handcuffs at Kissinger  

     For over a decade, CODEPINK has been holding war criminals accountable for their actions. We’ve exposed the lies in the halls of power in Washington DC and across the country, starting with the Bush administration and continuing into the Obama years, but never forgetting the grave offenses committed by people before them, like Henry Kissinger. Check out more pictures from the arrest on our Facebook page!    But our work isn’t possible without you. Please consider supporting our work by making a donation today.

For justice and accountability,
Alli, Anna, Janet, Jodie, Katie, Kristin, Medea, Nalini, Nancy, Nathan, Sergei, Sophia and Tighe

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

  

War Is The Crime.

     Yesterday, August 6th. marked the 69th anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, killing at least 80,000 people instantly, with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, dying of various forms of radiation illnesses the following years, 90% of the city was obliterated. A few days later, August 9th. the US dropped a second bomb, a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, instantly killing more than 40,000, and again leaving a legacy of radiation diseases for generations. We should add that the estimates of the immediate deaths vary as it is impossible to state accurately, these figures are at the bottom end of the estimates. 

        Targeting civilians is recognised internationally as a war crime, can anyone claim that obliteration an entire city in one fell swoop, is not targeting civilians? After WW2 we hung quite a few for war crimes, unsurprisingly, they were all on the other side.

      The victors write the history, and our history always tells us that what ever we do in war is honourable, and what ever our enemies do is barbaric. The fact that Nagasaki was a mainly civilian city, and ironically, a city with the highest Christian population in Japan, doesn't change that. Just like Israel today, we claimed that we were justified, no matter the cost, it was the honourable road to go.

      The entire history of capitalism, is one of deadly conflicts, with civilian casualties, seen merely as collateral damage. More and more it is the civilian population that suffers in war. Gone are the days when two vast armies faced each other across some waste land, and slaughtered each other until one could claim victory. In modern warfare the casualty rate is normally higher among the civilian population than in the military. Remember "Shock and Awe" visited on the Iraqi people, drones in Pakistan, and Somalia, and now Gaza. 

       This being the case, and targeting civilians being a war crime then it should follow that war itself, by its modern nature is one large war crime, and any state that enters into war is automatically guilty of a war crime.

Photo from Dresden after the Allies bombed the city, creating a fire storm, 1945.

         Wars are states way of cementing their power and wealth, what happens to the people is of little concern, and it will remain so, until we take control of our own lives. Until we decide that we the people should shape the world we want to live in, and base our societies on communities grounded in the fundamentals of mutual aid, co-operation, and seeing to the needs of all our people, we will be at the mercy of the power hungry, war mongering, profit seeking, greed driven capitalist system.  

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

      

Stop The Israeli Genocide.

      A call for all those who, in and around Glasgow, who want a better world, come and show your anger at the vicious Israeli aggression in Gaza, and show your solidarity with the people of that brutal Zionist open air prison, that is Gaza. Public opposition and protest broke the Apartheid regime in South Africa, it can stop the genocide of the Palestinian people.

An appeal from SACC:
Sat 12 July - Stop Attacking Gaza (Glasgow Demo)

1pm corner of Gordon Street, Buchanan Street, Glasgow

     Palestinians blockaded inside Gaza (the largest open air prison in the world) have been facing a massive onslaught from the Israeli Occupation Force, one of the most powerful militaries in the world.
Stop the Attack on Gaza! End the Siege. End Israeli Apartheid. End the Occupation. Free Palestine!
    Demo called by various activists, not by any particular organisation. Everyone welcome

https://www.facebook.com/events/660035234091215/

    The protest called last week at very short notice was well-attended, lively, determined and welcoming. Let's make this one even better.

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

When The Insane Hold Power!!

        I never thought that I would find myself nodding approvingly at comments made by that arrogant, privileged, old Etonian, ex-Bullingdon Club member the dangerous buffoon, Boris (he who ordered 3 water cannons for the people of London) Johnson. However in his latest mutterings I feel he has got it right, he refers to that madman, the most holy, St.Tony Blair as unhinged.

      In his Daily Telegraph column, he makes such remarks as, "I have come to the conclusion that Tony Blair has finally gone mad.” He goes on with truths that anybody with any reasoning ability are fully aware, such as, "In discussing the disaster of modern Iraq he made assertions that are so jaw-droppingly and breathtakingly at variance with reality that he surely needs professional psychiatric help." Well said Boris, but we have been saying it for years. Even before he steeped himself in other people's blood in Iraq. Boris continues his truths on St. Tony Blair with further comments such as, "There are more than 100,000 dead Iraqis who would be alive today if we had not gone in and created the conditions for such a conflict, to say nothing of the troops from America, Britain and other countries who have lost their lives in the shambles----.” "That is the truth, and it is time Tony Blair accepted it.” and, "We utterly blitzed the power centres of Iraq with no credible plan for the next stage - and frankly, yes, I do blame Bush and Blair for their unbelievable arrogance in thinking it would work."

       I have to hand it to Buffoon Boris when he says, Blair instinctively understood how war helps to magnify a politician. His remark, "War gives leaders a grandeur they might not otherwise possess. If you hanker after Churchillian or Thatcherian charisma, there is nothing like a victorious war." tells us a lot about our privileged political class and how they think. Boris more or less accuses St. Tony of having sent British forces into the bloody conflict in part to gain personal "grandeur".

       Well said Boris, now why not go the whole way and speak to your privileged, Oxbridge millionaire friends and get their weight behind having him charged with crimes against humanity and then committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.

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