Wednesday was a nice day, though the wind was a wee bit on the cold side. So I took the opportunity to have my first run out on my dream machine since coming back from my holiday in the sun. It was invigorating to say the least, I had just passed that symbol of state oppression, Low Moss prison when I couldn't resist stopping to take a photo of two forms of eco-friendly transport side by side. One for road travel, and one for sedate cross-country.
With the Cameron cabal following in the footsteps of their imperial ancestors, and hoping to renew the bombing of Libya, in an attempt to set up a compliant, puppet government, in that part of the oil rich world, it is important that we raise, even louder, our voices against all military adventurism. In all these imperialist adventures of "bring democracy" to a country via the bomb and the bullet, it is the ordinary people who die in their thousands, while the corporate world that grows fat on the looted assets.
This from The Scottish Peace Network:
The next monthly vigil, sponsored by the Scottish Peace Network,
will take place on Wednesday, April 27, from, 5 to 6pm at Dewar's
statue on Buchanan Street. We will be protesting the bombing of Iraq
and Syria, also against the renewed threat of UK bombing Libya, and
weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and urging everyone to resist
militarism.
We have placards, a banner and
flyers. Feel free to bring your own placards. Please share through your circles and networks.
Tired of the ritual Glasgow May Day, a boring walk through the city, to sit in a hall listening to "our leaders", pontificating and spouting about how they will save the world. Well, a group of us are trying to bring May Day back to The Green and make it what it was meant to be, a family day, a fun day, a day to celebrate the solidarity of the working class.
Sunday, May 1st we are organising a family get-together/picnic in the Green, Based at Free Cycle North, with activities and bikes, in and around the green. With a little bit of the history of May Day. Bring what you expect to find, it is our day. It is early days yet, but we expect face painting, music, singing and performance poetry, among other events, and a picnic, with some eats. It should kick off on The Green around 1:00pm and end by 3:30pm app. on May 1st.
You can have your march around the city and come back to the Green to meet up with friends and comrades and have a friendly afternoon with all the family. May Day belongs to the people, and belongs on the Green, let's bring it back. Bring a picnic and food to share.
We will be doing some banner and sign making at the Electron Club this Saturday 23rd, from 2:00 come along and help. Electron, CCA 350 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3JD
PLEASE FORWARD AND GET INVOLVED.
If you can sing, dance, juggle, face-paint play an instrument, ride a mono-cycle, read a poem, or any other wee skill that might entertain the people, bring it along. If you feel you would like to take part, please do get in touch. The more the merrier, it is growing in momentum, Glasgow can make it better and bigger.
Overthrown, but not conquered, the Commune in our days is born again. It
is no longer a dream of the vanquished, caressing in imagination the
lovely mirage of hope. No! the ‘commune’ of today is becoming the
visible and definite aim of the revolution rumbling beneath our feet.” Kropotkin on the Paris Commune.
----------- Historically speaking, communal ways of organizing social life long
precede the development of the modern state, and humanity on the whole
has spent far more time living communally than it has under capitalism.
To an extent, historical experience therefore lends credence to the
proposition that, in the long run, the commune-form might secure a far
more stable social order than the state-form, whose contradictory unity
with crisis-prone finance capital renders it increasingly vulnerable to
social conflict and systemic chaos, not to mention ecological
catastrophe. On this point, indigenous communities and peasant communes
may hold some important clues for the identification of alternative
developmental pathways—which helps explain why theorists like Marx and
Kropotkin spent many years studying such pre-capitalist societies.
Nevertheless, there are clearly important differences between these
ancient communal forms and the type of revolutionary commune of which we
are speaking here, not least in terms of the latter’s emancipatory,
future-oriented and internationalist horizon. Crucially, the modern
commune fully embraces the expansiveness and universality of the
socialist ideal. To paraphrase Subcomandante Marcos, whose Zapatista
movement has formed its own indigenous communes in southern Mexico, the
revolutionary commune is “not a dream from the past [or] something that
came from our ancestors. It comes to us from the future; it is the next
step that we have to take.”-------
We count on the present generation to bring about the social revolution
within the commune, to put an end to the ignoble system of bourgeois
exploitation, to rid the people of the tutelage of the state, to
inaugurate a new era of liberty, equality, solidarity in the evolution
of the human race.”
The British winter has passed, but our climate still makes this country a vicious, brutal and death dealing place to sleep rough. Across the country in towns and cities, vulnerable people are having to spend their nights finding a doorway, a lane, a hole in the wall, or wherever, to bed down for the night. The capitalist system can produce 5 star hotels and luxury housing for some, but shit housing for the majority, and in many case no home at all. Our cities and towns are awash with empty premises, all locked up, yet we still have people dying on our streets, and the powers that be call this democracy. There is no way that we should accept, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, that anybody should have to sleep rough, this is surely an indictment against a system that is greed driven and built on exploitation and inequality. While some dine and sleep in unbelievable opulence, others seek shelter from the elements in tattered and worn clothes curled up in a doorway. This is the hallmark of a failed system that must be destroyed.
The Warmth Of A Dream.
He lay in a dark doorway, dreamed of home,
night frost locked his joints
morning rain chilled the marrow of his bone.
In the dream there was a sister,
a pram in a garden, a crowd of youngsters
who called him "mister", a time of little pain.
Are these youngsters the same young men, who
now laugh at him, throw beer cans,
piss on him as he lies drunk in some dark lane?
When was that first step down this slippery slope,
More and more the system is struggling with "civil disobedience", which really translates into trying to cope with people's anger at being screwed. From Canada to Greece, from Spain to France, from Turkey to Germany, people are standing up and saying, "enough is enough".
Just back from a visit to Athens, on the surface, central Athens looks much like the Athens I used to know, the cafés, restaurants, tavernas, all looked busy with pretty pretty butterfly people. One change you do notice is the traffic, it is mainly yellow taxis and motorbikes. They say if you want to know anything about a city, ask a taxi driver, so we did. One driver told us that there are more than 1,700 taxis in Athens, and most are people who have been made redundant. The taxi allows them to work as long as they want, to try to get by, one drive said he worked 16 hours a day, every day and at the end of the month after taxes etc, he was left with €600 to get through the month. Work that out as an hourly rate and you are talking sweatshop money. Another said before the crash he wasn't rich but had €1,800 in the bank and lived reasonably well, now he has nothing and works as many hours a day as he can, every day, just to survive. Two gave conflicting answers to how many had left Greece since the “crash”, one stating almost 1 million, and the other probably 300,00 to 400,000, either amount is a drain on any country. One other we spoke to was leaving in a few weeks to live in Australia to give his kids a chance at a better life. All summed it up as Greece today is dreadful, a disaster.
We also went to Exarcheia and visited an occupied cinema, K-Vox, it is run by between 30-40 people, who label themselves as anarchist, communist and libertarian socialist, though the communists emphasising that they had nothing to do with the communist party. It has a café and a library, and they hold various events. All the money raised is used to support political prisoners, it also houses a free medical centre. A wonderful asset, and great to see all the strands of anarchism working together, strength in numbers, and a display of what can be done. If you want to support what they are doing you can contact them at katalipsivox@yahoo.gr
Enjoying the sun outside K-Vox.
Athens, like all Western city centres, has poverty well hidden, so as not to chase spending tourists away. Though we did see the signs, up side-streets, the bundles of rolled up blankets in doorways and on two occasions, a man lying on the pavement, as if asleep with a crumpled plastic cup in their hand, both were still there hours later when we passed. The temperature was 25 degrees.
Other facts about Greece, with a population of just over 11 million, it has a prison population of 12,693, 111 per 100,000 of the population, 2014 figures, but there is an anomaly, the prison population is 54.7% foreigners. Unemployment is running at just over 24%, with youth unemployment running at a staggering 51.9%.
All the misery, unemployment, families breaking up, poverty, deprivation and long working hours, suffered by the majority of ordinary people in Greece is simply the result of the financial Mafia's gambling spree, and it isn't going to get better any-time soon. The financial moguls of the Troika,( EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) are starting to squabble among themselves regarding the next bailout to Greece. The IMF saying Greece's debt is unsustainable, so don't want to pour their filthy lucre into the leaking bucket and say the will not participate in the bailout unless the debt is “restructured” The European part of the Troika will not accept that, but say they could not go ahead with the bailout if the IMF doesn't participate. Meanwhile, while the financial gambling sharks shuffle their chips, the people of Greece bleed. That's capitalism.
An other appeal for those interested in getting May Day back on the Green, get in touch, bring what you expect to find, come and do your thing, just let us know what you hope to do.
MAY DAY IN THE GREEN
Sunday
ist May from 1.30pm (to around 4pm) informal picnic with poets,
singers, musicians. The location will be at the other side of the
Peoples Palace in Glasgow Green, near the "washing lines" and canopy.
Part of a project to return Mayday to the people from the Bureaucrats of
the STUC & Politicians. This will be after the May day march from
George Square at 11.30 and complementary to street stalls at Buchanan
St. Planning meeting at 1pm Sunday 17th April in Electron Club. All
invited to help make this a success! An event supported by Spirit of
Revolt archive, Clydeside IWW and performers email annarky@radicalglasgow.me.uk
Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media is all in a flutter of the Panama leaks, which seems to suggest that some rich millionaires might be fiddling the books, surely not!!! From what they've printed, it seems to be all the bad guys that the west doesn't like, We have Putin linked, Gaddaffi, is mentioned, Mubarak, and Assad are mentioned, of we all know that no Western leaders would be implicated in such dirty dealings, we are democratic. Believe that and you'll believe any bullshit. There is a mention of PM Cameron's daddy being involved in what they call creative accounting. "Off shore" is a euphemism for very large pig trough.
It
would be more interesting to see who among the UK pampered parasites
are not involved. We expect the lot to have their greedy snouts firmly
tucked into the trough, while posing in photo ops as upstanding
individuals. They inhabit a stewpot of self interest,
greed and corruption. No doubt some will still manage to tut-tut at it
all. They are all underhand wheelers and dealers, that's what they do, It does get awful close to Lizzie's associates:(Elizabeth
Windsor's family bank Coutts & Co are implicated in the Panama
Papers scandal. They made 487 tax haven firm start-up requests to
Mossack Fonseca, making them one of the most prominent applicants to tax
haven schemes.) Time to clean the pig shed out.
To me this isn't news, it is the way they do things, though it is satisfying to see the dirty washing being hung out to dry. Who needs them.
Staying with poetry, I received this from comrade Loam, a beautiful poem, born of the brutality of the Franco regime in 1938.
José Agustín Goytisolo. Born in Barcelona on 13 April 1928, his family
was brutally shaken by the death of his mother (Julia Gay) in an aerial
bombardment by Franco regime, in 1938. José Agustín was specially affected, and
named his daughter after his lost mother. 'Words for Julia' is one of
his best-known poems (sung by Paco Ibáñez -anarchist)
Here's the poem translated into English.
José Agustín Goytisolo Words for Julia
You cannot turn back because life's pushing you like a never-ending howl.
My daughter, it's better to live with the happiness of mankind, than to cry before the blind wall.
You will feel cornered, you will feel lost or lonely, maybe you'll wish you hadn't been born.
I know very well they will tell you that there is no object to life, that it is an unfortunate affair.
Then always remember what I wrote one day thinking of you as I am now thinking.
A man alone, a woman, taken like that, one by one, are like dust, are nothing.
But when I talk to you, when I write these words for you, I also think of other people.
Your destiny is in others, your future is your own life, your dignity is that of everybody.
Others expect you to resist, your happiness to help them, your song among their songs.
Then always remember what I wrote one day thinking of you as I am now thinking.
Never give up or halt by the road, never say I can't take it any more and here I stop.
Life is beautiful, you will see how in spite of the sorrows you'll have love, you'll have friends.
For the rest there is no choice and this world as it is will be all your patrimony.
Forgive me, I do not know what more to say, but you understand that I am still on my way.
And always, always, remember what I wrote one day thinking of you like I am now thinking.
Although this video came from our friends just up the road, I just came across it yesterday on arrezafe. Great work comrades, keep up those Libertarian Socialist Rants.
Published on Mar 22, 2016
Far
from being a far-fetched pipe dream that human beings could never live
under, pockets of anarchistic self-activity are what keep us sane in a
profoundly insane world. This video mainly deals with how the capitalist
system exerts massive amounts of pressure on individuals and gives the
average person a million different things to worry about. I mainly talk
about anxiety and depression here, although I fully acknowledge that
there's so much more to cover than just that, both in terms of mental
illness and in terms of societal analysis.
Anarchist radio goes world wide on Sunday, April, 3rd. 2016, 14:00-18:00 (European Central Time) Four hours when the world can tune in and listen to our ideas. Now, that must be worth shouting about. On Sunday, the 3rd of April 2016, the 17 projects of the International Gathering of Anarchist and Anti-authoritarian Radios that is taking place in Berlin, Germany, will do a 4 hour live radio broadcast that can be listen to through an online stream (links below!). The programme will cover wide range of topics from the perspective of anarchist and anti-authoritarian movements. Presentations of local and international projects, groups/networks and activities/struggles; discussions on current issues such as migration; announcements of the upcoming protests/conferences/meetings/bookfairs and much more!
Broadcasts:
Radio Študent 89,3 MHz (Slovenia): 89,3 fm
MORE INFORMATIONS SOON!
Help us spread the information about the online radio broadcast that will be done this Sunday. Please share this informations with your comrades and all those interested through your channels of communication!
SHARE THIS FB EVENT AND INVITE FRIENDS!
There will be radio projects (radio stations, radio shows and podcasts) from different parts of the globe participating, so interesting program is inevitable:
As you walk through the centre of Glasgow you will come across an unusual site on George Square, a small encampment of tents. They are not there as tourists, it is very cold and wet here. What they are doing is trying to draw attention to the homeless problem in Glasgow. These are homeless people, which in a city with innumerable empty properties, this is an indictment against "our city fathers". Humanity demands that nobody should have to sleep out in conditions like this, every individual in our cities, towns and villages must have a place of safe, warm, shelter. You cannot be a civilised human being and turn your back on those how for a multitude of reasons, find themselves homeless. It is not because there is no where to house them, it is the value structure of this society that says, empty property is worth more than human life.
All those in that fine building, The Kremlin in George Square, will pontificate, do research and write papers on the homeless, then go home to a warm, safe home, to comfort and food, leaving those that they are writing their papers on to spend the night facing the elements of a cruel climate. Is it too far to stretch their fixed inhuman heads to come up with several empty premises and open them to those in need of shelter and warmth. This is the twenty first century in one of the richest countries in the world, why should people be homeless?
The city fathers answer to the problem is to evict them from George Square, and in their tiny minds, problem solved, but the people are still homeless. Just pushed out of site, swept under the carpet, driven up dark lanes. Faced with such injustice who can blame homeless people from taking matters into their own hands, rather than face another night seeking somewhere safe and warm to lay their head.
We have a right and a duty to see that everybody is adequately provided for, food, safe shelter and warmth, it is called civilisation, however, by their actions, our politicians are proving themselves to be far from civilised.
