Nothing Is Forever!!

 

        Some thoughtful words from Not Buying Anything. Which one are you betting on, who'll take the bet, who will pay out?

           What will be our final dance, what will burst our illusion of invincibility? 

        It is a race now. A race to see what does us in first. To see what brings us chaos and completion.
       Will it be climate change that forces our hand? Or will inequality blow us apart first? Or will Monsanto kill us before that? Or war?
     Living simply, generously and compassionately could help, but it is not a very popular solution.
       I wonder - will I have the luxury of passing away peacefully in my sleep due to old age some day, or will some other human-caused gong show cause my early demise?
      Who knew the end times would be so exciting? I am sure there are people right now betting on the eventual outcome of this experiment we call life on planet earth. They might think they can enjoy their profits before the whole thing finishes off with a mighty fizzle.
       It is a race. A race to the end. It will not be televised. Many won't even know it is coming, even though for many others it will not be a surprise.

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

Politics.

Quote:

      “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht

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

War Means Climate Change.

    I get pissed off by those posh political parasitic bastards, who talk about reducing our carbon footprint, telling us to recycle more, just boil enough water for the cups of tea you need, turn your heating down, (though most of us do that because of the bills anyway). Pointing the finger at us, as problem about carbon emission, then in the next breath, talk of launching another war.

 

A really big carbon footprint.

     Apart from the human misery, the financial cost of war is staggering, it is estimated that the Iraq war cost the US approximately $1.5 trillion with a further $600 billion for after care of veterans. War also has a massive carbon footprint, all the way back to the research and development, production, storage, transportation and exports of the arms industry, to the utilisation in the war zone, all for what? One US M1 tank releases as much CO2 as 10 large Mercedes Benz cars. It was estimated that the detonation of 50 nuclear warheads of 15 kilo-tonnes each, would release  approximately 690 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. This compares with the estimated 250 to 600 million tons of CO2 released during the Iraq war. Modern wars create massive releases of CO2 into the atmosphere, add to this the CO2 emissions from the necessary reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure after the destruction. Any government pursuing a green agenda could not possibly contemplate war as an answer to any problem. If your are thinking green, then you have to get rid of states, and their continuous wars for power and resources. No matter how much I recycle, how shallow my bath is, how low my heating is, it is totally wiped by any one of our lords' and masters' brutal escapades in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, drone attacks in Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Israel's savage war games in Gaza. All of these inhumane and savage, massive carbon footprint, power enterprises, make lots of money for that select few, and that is the real climate problem, it is the system that has to be destroyed.

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

Shades Of 1914!!

       The Ukraine, two empires squabbling over territory, each wants it in their sphere of interest, each prepared to slaughter the people in their quest for control, shades of 1914!! If you are in or near London this week, a date for your diary.

This from Stop The War Coalition

6.30pm, Tuesday 15 April

· The Wesley Hotel, Euston Street, London NW1 2EZ

       The crisis in the Ukraine continues, with tensions between the big powers growing day by day. There are several factors militating against war in the immediate future, including Russia’s nuclear arsenal and trade links with EU countries. But as the establishment think-tank Stratfor has argued, it would be naive to rule out a conflagration.

• Join us for a discussion about the forces behind the Ukraine conflict
• Speakers include: Jonathan Steele, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Carol Turner and John Rees
• Share the event with your Facebook contacts

        Already NATO air drills are taking place over the Baltics, and the UK and US are sending extra jets to patrol the skies. Poland has requested 10,000 NATO troops to be stationed on its territory and MPs in Kiev have voted to hold joint military exercises with NATO. In the medium to long term, NATO is looking at establishing permanent military bases in Ukraine.

• Read Stop the War's statement on the crisis in Ukraine

And for today----

A NEW DAWN,

Today we live in a peace

midst a thousand pygmy wars;

a humanity bankrupt by its past

dragged wearily through darkness and despair

yearns for a day that's cast

long, warm and fair,

a dawn that sees humankind discard

its class, its nation and prepare

to grind outworn creeds to dust,

so mankind naked is revealed,

then moving with common cause,

share

what such a dawn may yield. 

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

February 28 - A Pointless Anniversary.

         Today 28 February 1856 the protagonists of the Crimean War, after three years of slaughter, came together in Paris and through hours of huffing and puffing, signed an armistice, which was to end on the 31 March 1856. However both sides continued the build up their defences, but they did managed to calm their blood lusts, and on March the 30 1856 the Treaty of Paris was signed, and the blood soaked land got a little respite.

      Since then right up to the present hour, the imperialists and nation states have continued to slaughter the lives of ordinary people. Treaties have come and treaties have gone but the power lust remains. Borders are crossed, borders are eliminated, power structures are destroyed and new power structures built in their place. None of this is for the benefit of those who stand in the front line, none of this carnage is for the benefit of the ordinary people. Through the years all that has changed is, why the slaughter. It used to be to further or defend the power of monarchs and imperial empires, today it is to further or defend corporate empires, resources and markets. But the pattern is still the same, we do the dying and the killing, they reap the rewards.

         Here we are in 2013 and they are still legitimising the destruction, while they make arrangements to take their killing machine out of Afghanistan, they are entering a new adventure in Mali, with warring glances at Iran. In all the recent carnage and misery, who have been the beneficiaries? An honest assessment would probably say, the arms industries and the oil and gas industry of the Western corporate empire. 

 

       The madness and killing will continue as long as we keep this greed driven system of capitalism, a system the seeks to build and defend the personal fortunes for the few. Of course there are alternatives, we could, as ordinary people, take control of our own lives and build structures that see to the needs of all our people, the type of society that we want, based on co-operation, justice, mutual aid and freedom. That means of course that capitalism must be destroyed.

ann arky's home.

WAR IS BUSINESS.

        In times of "austerity" our "democratic" governments still spend a whopping slice of your money and my money in killing people across the globe. We in the UK are the world's fourth largest spender on military budget, following behind America, China and Russia, all very large countries. We in this small island account for over 3.6% of the world's military expenditure, coming in this year at £57.5 billion, slightly down on last year because of our partial withdrawal form Afghanistan. Our defence budget accounts for just over 7% of our national budget, but when you add 5% for "state protection" not sure what that means, you can slice a total of more than 12%  off our national budget. Though we as a small island spend a disproportionate amount proportionally of our wealth on war and killing, I know some call it "defence", this is dwarfed by that land of peace, that pinnacle of capitalism, the good ol' U. S. of A.. This large country of peace insanely spends an unbelievable 60% of its national budget on war, sorry "defence". Its figures are mind boggling, 41% of the world's military expenditure is by the peace loving nation of America, it comes in at approximately $711 billion.  

        In times of "austerity", think of all that wealth and resource put to the benefit of the people, how would that alleviate the suffering of the many?  However, that is not what this system is about, it is about bring lots of wealth and its attendant power, to the few, and military spending and war does and will continue to, make those few parasites that control the arms industry extremely wealthy and powerful. The hope of changing things by asking those who gain from all this insanity, to give up on their wealth and power and see to the needs of the people, is insanity itself. We, have to change the system by ourselves, by organising against the system, creating small pockets of alternative systems, co-operating with each other and continually point out the insanity and injustice of the present system while emphasising that there are alternatives.

ann arky's home.

THE ENEMY IS HERE, AT HOME.

     You and I may know this, but how many people don't? He may be talking about Iraq, but the same applies to Afghanistan as it did in Vietnam and thousands of other unfortunate countries across the globe. Though I do believe that more and more people are beginning to realise the our real enemy is right here in our own country, and most of them wear expensive suits.

ann arky's home.

HOUSING BENEFIT.

       

        Read this on Guardian on line and thought it said what we all know and feel but put it rather eloquently.

Why do the young need housing benefit? Let their parents keep them.

DrPorkbeast 25 June 2012 2:20PM

The Big Fat Lie.

          It was not the banks and their casino business practices paid for by borrowing other people’s pensions. It is not the idle undeserving rich who own 90% of the wealth despite only paying a fraction in taxes if any at all. Its not all our politicians who were bought by big business years ago and championed the gambling addiction of the banks.

     No the Big Fat Lie is that it was your fault people. You are lazy, addicted to welfare, demotivated to take up the hundreds of thousands of full-time high paying jobs that employers have to offer. Its often the immigrants fault because they are easy to spot on the whole and even easier to scapegoat as 20th century history warns us. Also you voted for - insert party you hate here – and they have destroyed our economy with their –insert your very own cretinus world view here. Also its is Europe that has beggared us as if the French were personally responsible for Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns. What about foreign aid, or the disabled’s unreasonable demands to have access to a job like at Remploy. Yes little people it as your fault and now you must pay with your pensions, services and freedoms.

      No we need to funnel even more money from the bottom to pay bankrupt Zombie banks billions in UNSECURED loans. To achieve this we need to stop the poor from going to university or receiving training (EMA). We need to make the disabled compete on “a level playing field” in the job market, scrap funding for libraries and council run crèches. Stop the unemployed from living in social housing, push them into the landlord’s greedy hands. If they need to move to work they can always sleep under a bridge. Whats more our military industrial complex needs your taxes to invade foreigners and bomb them back into the Neolithic past. We have been at war forever it seems. War on communists, war on drugs, war on Argentineans over a rock and some Penguins, war with Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan (again), war on terrorists, war on wedding parties for some reason and more to come. Welfare is expensive but death from above is not cheap either.

     Why do they lie? Because they are a class of rich expensively educated out of touch toffs who hate ordinary people. Don't be old, don't be ill, don't be unemployed under the Conservatives. All they have to offer is lies, lies, self serving lies.

I would amend the last bit to read:
        "Don't be old, don't be ill, don't be unemployed under CAPITALISM. All 
They have to offer is lies, lies, self serving lies."

 ann arky's home.

TAX MONEY, SOCIAL SOCIETY OR WAR??

       In the US 65% of all the governments available spending is on the military. At present America is fighting in seven countries across the world, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and its latest war machine adventure, Uganda. If we add the “war-on-terror” that is eight brutal ventures through which the military industrial complex is reaping tax payers money and feeding it to their shareholders bank accounts to the tune of more than a trillion dollars over the last ten years. In the UK, a much smaller country, this year alone we have spent £9 billion on two wars, Afghanistan and Libya plus maintaining that illegal missile system Trident.

      Apart from the death, destruction and misery these wars cause to ordinary people, every penny spent is tax payers money and it goes straight to the corporate world's shareholders. What kind of transformation would have taken place in America if that trillion dollars had been spent back into the service of the people who had donated it in the first place through their tax? What changes could we have made in the last year here in the UK, if that £9 billion of our money had been re-invested in our civil society, after all, it is our money, why should we want it to be used to kill and maim and in the process enrich the arms industry.

 

      How can we proclaim to be civilised when we spend such large proportions of our resources on death and destruction in other peoples home lands. It is not as if the world has not got problems of poverty and deprivation to be sorted out. The poverty and deprivation across the world is expected to rely on charity, while wars get the full backing of governments and all the resources they can muster. Ah, that's capitalism for you.

ann arky's home.

THE POPE OF HOPE, THE PRINCE OF PEACE!!!

     

      The President of America, once the Pope of Hope, the man of change, is visiting the UK next week. He will be visiting the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he sure knows where the power lies in this country. Far from bringing an end to George. W. Bush's marauding wars, the man of change has lived up to his promise and changed in to a higher gear when it comes to wars and killing. Drone attacks in Pakistan have dramatically increased during his term, with the resultant massive increase in innocent deaths from these attacks. He has presided over attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya and continues to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. Remember all the euphoria when this man was elected? At last, an end to the macho war stance of George W. Bush, enter the Prince of Peace, St. Obama. Well this man of peace is spending more on military operations than any other president of America.

      His latest waft of wind to come from his mouth, the rhetoric about reaching out to the Muslim world and finding a path to peace for the Palestinians, while at the same time involved in bombing and occupying three Muslim countries. This reaching out, also involves supporting and propping up ruthless dictators across that same Muslim world, while supporting Israel in its land grabbing and genocide of the Palestinian people and supporting Israel financially and military as they flaunt countless international laws. The violence inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel is never criticised let alone condemned by this reaching out, path way to peace, president of America.

    I always refer to Libya as Cameron's war, every prime minister and president seems to want their own war, but he couldn't have got his way without the wink and nod from the Prince of Peace, St. Obama. We in the West belong to an empire of violence, the West will bomb and occupy any country that has resources that we want if that is the best way to get those resources. We live in a world of corporate fascism. For our corporate beasts to grow they must have all those cheap resources and the states put their stamp of legitimacy on the brutal conflicts to grab what the corporate world demand.

      There is an alternative, a world free from the grip of corporate greed, a world of co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability based on the needs of all our people. A world free from the profit motive that belongs to the people, a world that we would be proud to hand to the next generation, our kids and our grand kids. A world free from the fear of exploitation and deprivation. First we have to stop looking to leaders, Popes of Hope, Princes of Peace and take control of our own lives, control our own communities and in federation with other communities take control and shape our own world. It is their world, or it is our world, there is no compromise.

ann arky's home.

WAR

The death of Harry Patch, the last survivor from the 1914/18 trenches has given the state another opportunity to glorify war and call for blind patriotism. By state propaganda via its institutions and the media the “Great” war has become the Great lie, an illusion of the “Glorious Dead”. Anything associated with it becomes a grandiose spectacle of empty pomp, another attempt to legitimise the brutality of war.
As long as we attach words like honour and glory to what is no more than state instigated cold-blooded organised brutality on a mammoth scale, then it will never end. Modern war is a place where your actions kill the elderly, the innocent, women and children, all in the name of the corporate world and state power, war is never glorious. To talk in terms of glory regards war only encourages another generation of youth to step forward and carry on that carnage, to the benefit of the power mongers with no gain to the ordinary people of either side. Perhaps we should listen to the words of someone who was there, Harry Patch, when he says, “War is organised murder and nothing else.”
If we wish an end to war we must first “tell it like it is”, in all its pointless savage, indiscriminate, brutal slaughter, lay bare all the anguish and misery heaped on the ordinary people of both sides. Then we must attack the root cause, state power and corporate greed, creating a society based on mutual aid, voluntary co-operation and free association. A society that sees to the needs of all our people on principles of sustainability, free ourselves from the grip of those parasites the shareholders and their lapdogs, the “political parties” with their state institutions.