Prisons Are Big Business.

      It is a cruel and strange world where large corporations make money from locking people up in cages.The prison "service" is big business especially in the US, where large corporations invest billions on building and running prisons. Like all large corporations, the have to keep cutting costs and increasing profits to keep their greedy shareholders happy. This can only mean deteriorating conditions for those unfortunate to get caught up in the web of greed. What sort of conditions would make 30,000 prisoners go on hunger strike, it is difficult to imagine those sort of conditions, and what is more distressing is that they are administered by ordinary people doing the dirty work for the corporations.

30,000 prisoners start hunger strike in California

     Around 30,000 prisoners in California have begun an indefinite hunger strike and work stoppage. They say:

     “We are grateful for your support of our peaceful protest against the state-sanctioned torture that happens not only here at Pelican Bay but in prisons everywhere. We have taken up this hunger strike and work stoppage, which has included 30,000 prisoners in California so far, not only to improve our own conditions but also an act of solidarity with all prisoners and oppressed people around the world.” 

 

       Nearly 12,000 prisoners in California are being held in extreme isolation, in cells with no windows, and no access to fresh air or sunlight. In 2011 Juan Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, recommended a ban on subjecting prisoners to solitary confinement for more than 15 days. But people in state prisons in California have been held in solitary confinement for 10-40 years.

 

More information and action you can take to support the hunger-strikers:
http://www.stopisolation.org/blog/prisoners-hunger-strike-california/

The Price Of Resistance.

    Most of us take belonging to a trade union as a safe activity, but there are parts of this corporate world where you could pay with your life if you are an active trade union member. The state and the corporate world don't like organised people, and overt and covert dirty tricks will be undertaken to discourage the ordinary people from coming together to improve the living conditions.

     This is an appeal from Labour Start on behalf of one of the many trade unionists who have paid with their lives for attempting to be organised.

    Antonio "Dodong" Petalcorin, the leader of a transport workers union in the Philippines, was shot dead on 2 July 2013 right in front of his home.

      The gunman was caught on a CCTV camera calmly escaping in a motorcycle. Dodong was the fifth transport workers union leader killed during the current presidency. We are calling on the Philippines' president, Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III, to ensure that Dodong's killers are caught and brought to justice.

Please help - it will take you just 30 seconds to send off your message of protest:

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1879&src=lsmm

     And please share this message with friends, family and fellow trade union members.

Thank you.



Eric Lee

ann arky's home.

Landscapes Of Emergency

         I wish the people of Europe would wake up to the seriousness of the situation in Greece, it is a glimpse of our future. We are witnessing a so-called "democratic" country, in Europe, being turned into a militarized zone. A European state turning into a country of brutal repression, to fulfill the ideological dream of the European financial mafia. We delude ourselves if we believe that it can't happen here. As the corporate world and the financial Mafia drive their plans for a pan-European sweatshop economy, resistance will grow, and the militarized police will brutally attempt to keep control of the streets. No matter what the financial "experts" tell you, Italy is bust and is likely to follow Greece, Portugal is on the brink, and those states who are a circling a little further away from the plughole, will get very nervous indeed and will take measures to clamp down hard on any dissent or resistance to their financial master's plan. The European states are all moving in the same direction, the only difference is pace. In the UK they are eating the money in your pocket simply by freezing/cutting wages, cutting social benefits and keeping inflation running at near 3%. Your wages today are worth 10% less now than they were in 2008 when the "crisis" started, Where will they be as the "austerity" continues to beyond 1018? The low wage economy is going to hit you between the eyes, unless we wake up and change the system dramatically.

ann arky's home.

Glasgow's Walk-of-Shame.

       Some photos from Glasgow's "Walk-of-Shame" Thursday 11 July. A group set off down Sauchiehall Street armed with banners and leaflets, stopping outside those shops that milk the governments free slave labour scheme, workfare. They engaged the public and handed out a considerable number of leaflets at the entrance of the shops involved, which were well received by the public. The more the public are made aware of this free slave labour scheme and what it actually means, the more resistance will grow. Here's to more and larger "Walks-of-Shame", until this slave labour scheme bites the dust.

ann arky's home.

The State's Slimy Side.

        In the last two years, details of undercover police pretending to be activists have slowly emerged. A new book by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk , provides the latest information about police sleeping with activist women while pretending to be someone else. Since it is obvious that the women would never have consented if they had known there were police officers, does this constitute rape? Also officers using the names of dead children. The case that has outraged the public and led to promises of political action has been the revelation that police spied on the Stephen Lawrence campaign.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/23/stephen-lawrence-undercover-police-smears Donnacha from Circled "A" Radio, talks to veteran activist Ellenor Hutson, who knew some of the police spies in their activist cover, about what's happened and what should happen next.

Listen HERE

ann arky's home.

Bare-Knuckle Capitalism.

     Though we can all claim that democracy in Europe is an illusion, a screen of smoke and mirrors, in Greece the illusion has evaporated, the smoke has cleared and the mirrors are shattered. Greece is at the sharp end of the Troika's (EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) creation of an all European sweatshop. As the people's resistance grows, so does the state's brutal defence of its power and privileges No where else in Europe is the state so openly brutal and the police given a completely free hand to intimidate and savagely repress the public.

     What was a peaceful march in solidarity with a prisoner on hunger strike became a brutal assault by the fascist Greek state's storm-troopers.

Details of the case of Kostas Sakkas HERE:

ann arky's home.

Take Me To Your Leader???

       It is nice to see the rationale behind "government" explained, the explanation of "government" should make the concept redundant to all intelligent people.

ann arky's home.

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.