Water, A Right Or Just Another Marketable Commodity?

      Continuing with the plunder of the public purse, Greece is pushing ahead with the privatisation of water and sewage. Is water a necessity of life, or just a marketable commodity. In 2010 the UN registered water as a human right. Of course that will not deter the financial Mafia in conjunction with the corporate greed machine from demanding that their puppet governments get on and privatise water where ever possible.  What the parasitic corporate bosses think of water is explained in this extract from an article by Augustine Zenakos:

------“The idea that water is a human right comes from ‘extremist’ NGOs. Water is a food like any other, and must have a market value,” said the president of Nestlé in 2005. This is perhaps the only man who found it in him to label the UN, which registered water as a human right in 2010 by 122 votes in favor and 41 abstentions, “extremist” – though it has to be said that, interestingly, one of the countries that abstained was Greece.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

The Continuing Plunder Of The Public Purse.

       The plunder of all public assets goes on unabated. Anything in the public domain must be transferred to the corporate world. The corporate mafia demand that their puppet governments hand over the people's assets at bargain basement prices. The public must be stripped bare and totally dependent on the corporate world for its very existence. The UK corporate puppets are in the final process of of hiving off the world's oldest postal service, The Royal Mail, to anyone who can throw some money into their hands, foreign postal services, hedge funds, City speculators, billionaire financiers, anybody as long as they are in the corporate clan. The Royal Mail makes money for the public purse, last year it delivered more than £600 million to the taxpayer, and that is probably its downfall. If it makes money, so it shouldn't belong to the public. There is also the the Osborne plan of getting some ready cash from flogging off the family silver, to give a few sweeties to the peasants before the next election.

      What you can be sure of is that the sell off is not for efficiency or better service to the public. It will result in poorer service and a more expensive service. Expect to be told to come and collect your mail as you live to far from the sorting office, or pay exhorbitant charges if you want it delivered. Nothing in the corporate world is there to serve you, it is there to make a bunch of bloated parasites richer. Nothing in the corporate world is about jobs, efficincy, service, or a better world, it is all about profit and control of the market and resources, that's its one and only function. Anything that we get from the corporate world is just some oil to keep the wheels turning. We are being plundered, raped and exploited, and we seem to accept anything with which we get hit.

ann arky's home.

Behind The Smoke And Mirrors.

     Any state will run ragged over the rights it professes to protect, and will shred whatever legislation it dreamed up, supposedly for our benefit, whenever it feels threatened. Since the Greek state is in the midst of chaos, we can expect it to be blind to is own brutal judicial system and to twist, break, and ignore that structure as it tries to eliminate any opposition. Its existence is more important than the people it proclaims to protect, the illusion is dropped, the gloves come off. Brutal repression and intimidation are the only methods it has at its disposal. Sadly there are still those ordinary people who believe the smoke and mirrors to be reality, and "do their bit" to help the authorities. Like anonymously handing in a piece of paper with a name, address and phone number, is deemed to be doing your duty and set in motion the beast of state repression. This was the "evidence" that brought about the following case.

 Photo from ContraInfo:

 

  ------Many might wonder why I specifically was indicted, and based on what evidence… The case file clearly proves, through witnesses’ statements, photographic material and videos from surveillance cameras that I had nothing to do with any attack, at any time, that day in the centre of Athens, as I have mentioned earlier through my writings. In their persistent desire to produce results, the State Security agents and judicial authorities focus on me through an exterior feature that I had in common with the alleged perpetrator, and most likely with thousands of other protesters that day. They also focus on the fact that I belong inside this political space—the anarchist-antiauthoritarian space. According to their paranoid reasoning, ‘if there’s a similarity in this feature, and he is antiauthoritarian, we regard him as suspect.’ Just like the empty beer bottles, which when possessed by antiauthoritarians are materials for manufacturing Molotov cocktails, as in the case of the eviction of Villa Amalias squat. Trying to wrap up their serious criminal case by whatever means possible, wanting to demonstrate their effectiveness in the security sector, they are now targeting anyone who participates in demonstrations and resists the state of emergency…

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

Workfare = Slave Labour.

       An appeal from Newcastle SolFed, though there is nothing stopping you from picketing your local poundland, no need to run down to Newcastle, there's bound to be one of these sweatshops near you. Some photos from Glasgow SolFed HERE;

 

Friday July 12 at 15:30, Clayton Street Newcastle

      Despite being the focus of a court judgement, which ruled Workfare regulations unlawful, Poundland continue to use unpaid labour.
      Like many chain stores, Poundland, have been given a massive public subsidy, in the form of unemployed people working for nothing but their benefits on a Workfare Scheme. Poundland have 'Work Experience' placements across 71 of their stores. 80% do not even get offered any kind of job with Poundland. Poundland's profits rose by 27% in the last financial year. They can afford to pay and keep on all their staff.
       This Scheme is not only an attack on the unemployed - Poundland claim that their 'Work Experience' scheme is completely voluntary, but it involves Job Centre Plus, so those taking part can still have their benefits cut if they do not comply. The degree to which the scheme is genuinely voluntary is disputed as there are countless reports of lies and intimidation to get jobseekers to participate and after one week the scheme becomes mandatory. Dropping out of a 'Work Experience' placement can lead to being put on other schemes like Mandatory Work Activity. 'Work Experience' mostly involves stacking shelves for up to 30 hours a week for 8 weeks.
     It is also a direct attack on Poundland’s workers and other workers - replacing paid jobs, holiday pay & ending temporary posts for students and others who rely on this type of work. We have heard complaints from Poundland staff who have had their hours cut, because of Workfare.

ann arky's home.

Governments Are---.

      Some very useful and accurate information lifted from arrezafe blog.

ann arky's home.

I Am Israel.

Hi,

     just back from a few days away, spent a them in beautiful Perthshire and feeling great.

 

  Just to get started:

ann arky's home.

See You In A Couple Of Days.

          ann arky is off up north for a few days, so this wee blog will fall silent for those few days. So for those who still say what is an anarchist, I'll leave you with this.

See yi' soon.

ann arky's home.

The Protests, Then What?

     The peaceful protests that started in Gezi Park and Taksim Square in Istanbul approximately a month ago are winding down in the face of extreme police brutality. At the peak of the demonstrations well over 2.5 million people took to the streets in protest, and 79 of Turkeys 81 provinces were involved in demonstrations. Though the large protest are fading out, there has been a rise in passive resistance similar to the “standing man” protest in which individuals or small groups stand motionless at random locations staring at a portrait of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, or the Turkish flag.

      As the protests deminish in volume and number, the state moves in with its usual brutal reprisals against those who had the courage to demand change. Four people have been killed and well over 8,000 injured since May 28. Some of the injuries are severe, 11 have lost eyes and at least 60 are in a serious condition. The number detained by the police is proving difficult to assess as information is not readily released, but estimates put the figure at over 5,000. Also being targetted are journalist who reported on the protest or complained about the Turkey's babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media's lack of coverage, along with artists and writters who showed support for the protests.

     The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdgan, stated that what the police had done was heroic, a defence of democracy. How teargassing and bludgeoning more that 2.5 million of your citizens, and then detaining over 5,000, can be classed as a defence of democracy, defies logic. That, of course, is the logic of the state, the state apparatus comes before the people. 

ann arky's home.

Don't Dare Speak Out.

     The Land of the Free, tries to intimidate those who would speak out, but that is the least we should expect from the state, American or otherwise. Like the man said, "an informed public is a threat to the state".

This from Polizeros:

Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC
    One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
     On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
     For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
     In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
    I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden
Monday 1st July 2013

ann arky's home.

 

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden
Monday 1st July 2013
- See more at: http://polizeros.com/tag/edward-snowden/#sthash.yRNbsTAT.dpuf

Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC
One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden
Monday 1st July 2013
- See more at: http://polizeros.com/tag/edward-snowden/#sthash.yRNbsTAT.dpuf

 

Israeli Justice.

Israeli Justice, a cross between thuggery, racial hatred and ethnic cleansing.

ann arky's home.

A Tomorrow Of Deprivation!!

      You take it that the Greek government, (financial Mafia's puppets), have decimated the living standards of the people of Greece, destroyed the education system, turn the country's health system into a Third World health lottery and sent the unemployment rate through the roof, that their financial overlords would be pleased. However, the European financial Mafia, fronted by the Troika, (EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, and the IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) are not happy with with the pace of reforms taking place in Greece, and are threatening to withhold the next bag of blood money from their Greek puppets. They are dissatisfied with the slow rate of the reforms, especially in employment regulations, (deregulation), in the public sector, not enough people paid off, not enough privatised, there is also dissatisfaction with the lack of reforms in the health service, not enough cuts and lack of privatisation, this to a health service that has ceased to exist as a modern health service. What has been done to the people of Greece is a series of brutal criminal acts, all in the name of finance, but to the bunch of parasites, the Troika, it is not enough, the people have to be impoverished much more to satisfy the ideological lust of these financial leeches. The people's assets have to be sold off quicker and cheaper. To satisfy the blood sucking financial Mafia, the plunder of the people of Greece must be rapid and complete. The foundations of sweatshop Europe must be solid with a guarantee of permanency. Then they can move on to the other European countries with a vengeance. That corporate dream is in their sights, a sweatshop Europe that can compete with its Eastern adversaries.

      This is what the future holds for our children and grandchildren if we allow the preaent system to continue to exist. Its destruction is the only hope for any kind of future for those coming generations.

ann arky's home.

Pigs And Troughs Spring To Mind.

     It seems that our struggling MP's are due for a wee salary increase, probably somewhere in the region of another £11.000 on top of their miserly £66,000. They did think they were entitled to a 32% increase, you have to admire their humility. If they get their £11,000 increase, it probably won't enter their head that £11,000 is what some people have to live on, with no prospects of an increase in the near future. In a recent poll MP's gave varying amounts of how much they thought they should be paid, all thought that it should be more than £75,000, some giving a figure of £98,000.

       This is the type of conversations these parasites hold while administering benefit cuts to the most vulnerable in our society. While spouting wage freeze/cuts to you and I, slashing social services to the poorest and adding bedroom tax, they are deep in discussions about how best to milk the system to feather their own nests. Hypocrisy rules in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption.

     Why do we tolerate this blatant greed and self interest at our expense? They are a pampered bunch of useless parasites, who in actual fact don't give a shit about you and I, we are just here to pay their bills.

      Another little hint at they way they see themselves, it seems that two loos in the House of Lords are to be modernised at a cost of £100,000, that's £100,000 of your money to fancy up a couple shit-houses for our noble Lords. Who needs them? The Lords, I mean, not the loos.

ann arky's home.

A Soldierless War Is Still Brutal.

    The American state is determined to push the soldierless war as its tactic of choice in its attempt to hold on to its position as the world's bully. No American casualties, no traumatised American soldiers to create problems at home, no horror stories from the battlefront. As far as the American people are concerned it is an invisible and painless war. However to those at the receiving end, it is a brutal and terrifying endless ordeal of death and destruction. Old, young, men, women and children killed and maimed. Children psychologically damaged for the rest of their lives after witnessing the brutal deaths of their family. This is the truth of the soldierless war with its "clinical strikes". A new phase of state killing, all done by office workers, sitting with their cup of coffee on their desk, pressing a button and ending the life of a family, or maiming them making them incapable of supporting themselves or their family. No matter how they try to sanitise it, it is a brutal, vicious war, it is terrorism inflicted on a community and  where the victims in most cases are innocent people trying to survive in an extremely harsh environment. Only the state has the facilities to continuously wage such a cold-blooded and brutal war.

ann arky's home.

Never Trust The State, Any State.

      A little known fact of British history is its 4 year war fought against the Greek people in 1945/49. The left-wing resistance fighters in Greece fought a bloody and brutal guerrilla war with the occupying Italians and Germans throughout the entire occupation period. However our “revered” wartime leader Winston Churchill, had no intentions of letting the more numerous and powerful left-wing guerrilla movements form a communist government in Greece, when the Nazis withdrew. So as the war neared its end in Greece, British aid was poured in to support the royalist, militarists and other smaller right-wing groups, some who had been Nazi collaborators. With the Nazis out of Greece in 1945, the British turned their guns on their once wartime allies, the Greek resistance fighters. The battle was brutal and thousands of Greek anti-fascists fighters died at the hands of the British forces. Not all resistance fighters were men, thousands were women, though most of the men were put to death, thousands of women and children were simply taken and from 1949 to 1953, imprisoned on the Greek island of Trikeri. The island became home, though a very unpleasant home, to more than 5,000 anti-fascist women and hundreds of children, their crime, fighting the Nazis and being left-wing.

      There is a play based on the stories and diaries of these women and children, “A Thousand Murdered Girls” written by Liverpool based poet and writer Darren Guy in collaboration with Greek writters and poets, Elani Fourtounia and Rita Boumi Pappas.

ann arky's home.

Democracy And Prison Without Trial.

       We are all aware that the state makes rules to defend itself, and punishes those who break those rules, but we also know that it has no problem with breaking those rules when ever it suits the state apparatus. On June 29 in Athens more that 6,000 people took to the streets in solidarity with Kostas Sakkas, who has been on hunger strike since June 4. Kostas is an anarchist who has been in prison for two and half years without trial, when the Greek state says that 18 months is the legal limit anyone can be held without trial. There has been demonstrations in solidarity with Kostas in cities across the world. In Lisbon on June 27 over 400 posters appeared and hundreds of fliers thrown around and pasted on walls in support of Kostas, during a demonstration in support of a call for a general strike in Portugal.

        Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainsteam media, will always trumpet such cases when they are taking place in some far away country that Western capitalism doesn't like, but are silent on this case which is right here in Europe. How can there be justice for the people when one party makes up the rules as it goes along, then breaks them at will.

       State repression manifests itself in many ways from locking people up without trial, to dictating your standard of living. It can "legally" destroy the quality of your education system and empoverish your health service, while protecting the wealth and power of the few, and call it democracy. If we the people want freedom, one thing that stands in our way is the state. It represses it own people and then marches them off to some war, where the ordinary people are meant to start killing ordinary people of some other country, with the spoils of war going to that pampered parasitical few who hold the levers of power in the "victorious" state.

        Across the world there are many Kostas Sakkas languishing in state prisons and their only crime is that they will not be repressed by the brutal state. So across the world, let us call for the release of all Kostas Sakkas's and an end to the state.

PATRIOTISM.

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,

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

held aloft by some foolish hand

inciting worker and peasant to kill

on some green and wooded hill,

peasant and worker from some other land.

Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag

that brings out fools to stand and brag

of brutal deeds painted grand,

deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still

killed by my brothers' misguided hand.

No allegiance have I for the Nation

this man made autocratic creation

that divides my brothers in a world so small,

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

bids us follow its drum, sing its song,

then sheds our blood in some border brawl.

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

have no ear for power oration,

though its iron heel is on my breast,

my back feels its leather thong,

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

ann arky's home.

European Success.

      The European Union today is a corporate entity brought about to bolster the European capitalist camp, allowing it to compete with the other power blocks around the world. It is however finding it rather difficult, so it has set itself on a road to improve its chances of competing in the big boys league. First it has to get taxes down for the corporate world, this entails getting rid of social services, so that governments wont need to raise so much in taxes. Then it has to get wages down, which they have been quite successful at since 2008 as wages in the UK have shrunk by 10% since then, but have further to go. The third piece of their strategy is to shred employment regulations, allowing them to offer zero hour contracts, give the employee four hours today and six two days later and so on. and be able to hire and fire at will.

      If you are in the under 25 age group, Europe is not a nice place to live. Across Europe, in this age group there are more than 26 million unemployed. In Greece the under 25 unemployment rate is 62% and in Spain it is 57%. These figures in what is one of the richest areas in the world is undeniable proof  that the system doesn't work in the interests of the ordinary people. Every under 25 belongs to a family, a family that is seeing its living standards pulverised. It is 26 million young people being denied their right to develop to their full potential. All in the interests of big capital, corporate greed.

     After a recent meeting of the leading financial Mafia's European puppets, where they discussed this under 25 unemployment problem, (crime), they trumpeted there very generous solution. They would allocate £6 million pounds to help alleviate the situation. £6 million divided between 26 million young people, works out at about 24 pence each. This overwhelming generosity will do  fuck-all for the under 25's, it will all be gobbled up in the bureaucracy, giving some extra bureaucrats a fat salary to hold more meetings.

      We are being developed into the biggest sweatshop in the world, and we seem to be going along with the plan in a quite and willing manner. Enter into their economic debates and we have lost, we don't want to manage the cuts, austerity, tough decisions, better, that is just more of the same with a different time span. We want to change the system, scrap this greed driven, everything must have a profit, parasite lead, insane, unjust system of exploitation. We can create a community based world of co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability, a system that sees to the needs of all our people. A world that will release the full creative energy of that 26 million young unemployed, allowing them to enrich all our lives. We have the resources, the imagination, the ability and the dream, all it now requires is the will. 

ann arky's home.

Circled A Radio And Undercover Police.

The latest from Circled A Radio:

       Mr G discusses the recent undercover police scandal, Mandela, protests in Turkey and a tale of King Arthur.

Listen HERE:

ann arky's home.

Pepsi Stinks.

An appeal from Labour Start.

     Four months ago, PepsiCo workers in the company's West Bengal warehouses formed a trade union. The company's reaction was to threaten the workers with dismissal. They then hired some local union-busting thugs who assaulted the workers. Fifty workers were sacked. The workers reacted with a one-day strike and complained to the police about the attacks. The police did nothing. 

      Then, PepsiCo fired another 112 union members. So far, 162 out of 170 union members have lost their jobs, replaced by scabs. The International Union of Food workers has launched a major global campaign to put pressure on the company to stop this vicious attack and to recognize the workers' right to join trade unions.

Please take a moment to show your support:

http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/campaigns/show_campaign.cgi?c=750

And then please share this email message with other members of your union.

Thank you!



Eric Lee

ann arky's home.

Do You Want To Go Done The Plughole?

      Experts come up with what we already know, living standards are falling fast. According to the Joseph Rowantree Foundation, real inflation since 2008 has risen by 25%, and we know that wages have fallen by at least 10% in the same period. The Foundation, also states that in the last 12 months the worst hit are pensioners and those living alone, pensioners seeing a 4.2% increase in living costs, while people living alone have seen an increase of 2.4%. George Gideon Osborne's attack on benefits such as freezing child benefit, tax credits "uprated" by 1% and the increase in the cost of essentials, meant a working couple with two children will be £230 worse off a year, a working lone parent £223 and a single person worse off by £49 per year. On top of this another bunch of experts gave us more information that we the ordinary people already know. The Office of the Children's Commissioner for England states. due to the governments spending cuts along with tax and benefit changes, an additional 500,000 children will be pushed into poverty by 2015.

       We living in this financial Mafia ideological attack don't need experts to tell us that we the ordinary people are being hit hard and being impoverished, and we don't accept experts to telling us that it is necessary. Our poverty is only necessary to save the financial mafia from losing some of their gamled plunderer, plunder that they stole from us the ordinary people.      

     This is the picture of a country where the ordinary people are spiraling down the deprivation plughole. No where in any government report or statement does it say that we will get back to even near the standard of living of 2008. That era is history, the new vision is of sweatshop Europe, with employment regulations shredded, wages at rock bottom and benefits evaporated. Then corporate Europe can compete with the Eastern sweatshop empire. Ah the wonders of capitalism.

ann arky's home.

Scotland Against Fascism.

Edinburgh UAF Public meeting:
After the Woolwich murder...
Tuesday 2nd July,
7pm Edinburgh Central Mosque,
Potterrow EH8


       The racist Scottish Defence League and the Nazi British National Party are seeking to exploit the horrific murder of Lee Rigby to whip up hatred and division, which has already seen violent attacks against the Muslim community including a series of arson attacks on mosques in England.
      The racist SDL have organised demonstrations against mosques in Dundee and  Dumfries, as have the Nazi National Front in Aberdeen. All of these have been against the wishes of the local community.
    UAF has worked with local communities to organise counter-demos, to oppose and unite the community against the hate mongering and racism peddled by the SDL. The racist SDL have been repeatedly outnumbered and shown clearly that they are not welcome.
     The attacks in England after the horrendous Woolwich murder has been much worse. We invite you to come together to discuss how we can beat the racists as a united community.
Edinburgh Against The Racist SDL
email UafEdinburgh@riseup.net

ann arky's home.

Glasgow ATOS, Anniversary Picket.

 

Glasgow Against ATOS, 1st Anniversary Picket.

Friday 28 June, 12:30 - 14:30

Corunna House,

Cadogan Street,

Glasgow.

       Another article by Glasgow Activist J. C. highlighting the vicious attack by this government on the ordinary people, in particular the brutal assault on the disabled and vulnerable in our society.

ATOS: Government approved Contract Killers!

    ATOS is a French multi-national company who have been employed by the Department of Works and Pensions to assess claimant’s fitness for work. In Glasgow their work capability assessment centre is based at Corunna House in Cadogan Street in the City centre.

       ATOS use a points based computer system to assess people. The majority of people who go through the ATOS process end up with no points or very few points; even severely disabled people or people with chronic illnesses or serious mental health problems have been declared fit for work by ATOS. We call the ATOS assessment centre at Corunna House “Lourdes” - because of its miraculous ability to cure people.

      Doctors who work for ATOS receive only eight days training in disability, and have found patients with severe M.S. and terminal cancer to be fit for work!

      ATOS’s brutal and insensitive treatment of the disabled has attracted widespread criticism from many sources. The General Medical Council are investigating allegations of improper conduct against twelve ATOS doctors, and two ATOS employees are under investigation after referring to patients as “parasites” and “down and outs”.

     The British Medical Association has condemned the ATOS assessment procedure as being not fit for purpose. Many M.P.’s have criticised ATOS’s brutally insensitive treatment of the disabled. Michael Meacher M.P. led a commons debate on this matter on the 17^th of January this year and criticised almost every aspect of its operations including the thousands of people who have died after ATOS have decided they were fit for work. You can see his speech on YouTube.

      A lady called Joyce Drummond recently quit her job at ATOS. Joyce worked as a nurse there but had to leave when she could no longer carry out what she was supposed to do. Joyce has gone on record and given many newspaper interviews about how ATOS assessments really work. She has explained that these are not genuine assessments but just an excuse to deprive people of their entitled benefit.

     The assessment starts well before you reach the assessment room. In fact, patient’s behaviour and abilities are observed from the moment you enter the building. When people go from the waiting room to the assessment room it is noted whether or not they are well presented, are they tidy, have they done their hair and make-up? And so on.

      Seemingly innocent questions are asked by the assessors:

• Do you have any pets – this can be linked with ability to bend to feed and walk.
• Do you look after someone else – parent or carer- if you do this will be taken as evidence of functioning
• Any training, voluntary work, socialising will be used as evidence of functioning.
• Can you use phone, computer, or washing machine?
• Can you manage bills?

     A whole range of dirty tricks is used against patients, because the ATOS assessments have nothing to do with fairness or compassion, or reorganising the benefits system, - it is all about taking money from the poorest and neediest in society.

     Joyce Drummond says that in her opinion the money given to Atos and spent on tribunals should be given to NHS GPs. They are best placed to make assessments regarding patients work capability. They have access to all medical reports, past history, specialist input and know their patients.

        How do ATOS decisions affect individuals and families?

Well, everyday there are stories in the papers describing the devastating effects of the decisions reached by ATOS.

       There are stories of people who are unable to work being left without any means of financial support.

       There are stories of people dying while awaiting results of their appeals after an ATOS assessment.

     There are stories of people committing suicide after appearing before ATOS.

      Nick Barker a farm labourer who had a brain haemorrhage which paralysed him down his left side and left him struggling to walk killed himself just before he was due to go up on his appeal. The coroner said the benefits assessment was the key to the tragedy.

      A lady called Linda Wootton, who had a heart and lung transplant was declared fit for work by Atos; her husband received the letter as she was dying in Hospital.

      I don’t intend to go through case after case, or pile on statistics and facts and figures; you can check all these things out online.

      Instead let me tell you what we are doing about ATOS.

      Glasgow against ATOS is committed to getting rid of ATOS and having them replaced by a compassionate and humane assessment procedure. In order to do this we campaign in every way we can.

We believe one of the most effective ways to campaign is through direct action. It is our experience that you can talk to politicians and officials till you are blue in the face and they will ignore you, but if you occupy their offices and invade their space they might actually have to do something.

       Over the past year, Glasgow against ATOS in conjunction with Citizens United and disability rights campaign group Black Triangle have carried out occupations of the Commonwealth Games office (who are sponsored by ATOS), and various banks and building societies who have dodged paying income tax,- If big business paid their taxes there would be no need for cuts of any kind. We have also confronted politicians face to face and at their offices and homes.

     On the last Friday of every month we have a picket outside ATOS at Corunna House starting around 12.00 a.m. Some of us stay there and leaflet and talk to people coming and going to their assessments, while the rest go on what we call a rolling picket. We go through the city centre with banners and a megaphone and hand out leaflets and bring the scandal of ATOS to public attention. Recently two of our group were arrested during one of our pickets for using the megaphone and will appear in court in June and July. We hope that activists and groups will support our demonstrations outside the court on these days.

We produce tons of leaflets, posters, banners and stuff like t-shirts to help raise public awareness of the immoral activities of ATOS and the plight of ATOS victims.

      We raise funds to pay for all of this; - we recently had a fantastic fundraising night which raised almost a thousand pounds. In addition to this we have had discussions with the trade unions at ATOS although we think that they are a bit unhappy with us after we occupied their offices at Corunna House a couple of weeks ago.

     Our fight ties in with the bedroom tax campaign because the majority of families affected by the bedroom tax will have a disabled member who has probably suffered at the hands of ATOS at some point.

What is really going on?

      There is a war going on in society, a war between the people at the top - the ruling elite and big business, and the people at the bottom. A war between rich and poor, a war between the needy and the greedy!

This is a Class War!

     This is no exaggeration, working class people are the victims of this war and thousands of working class people die every year as a result of the war on the sick, disabled and unemployed.

What can we do? - Join the Fightback!

      How do we do it? - Get together, come up with ideas, produce leaflets, talk to each other and involve others, Take an interest – become involved in Glasgow Against ATOS or other campaigning groups.

Don’t Moan, - Organise! Don’t get Angry – Get Even!

Visit us on Facebook at Glasgow Against ATOS.

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