UK Slavery Is Alive And Well.

      The various workfare schemes slither their way through our society, and the government is hoping that this type of  unpaid labour will become the accepted pattern. You will leave school, try to get a job, find it almost impossible, sign on, and then be sent to some corporate greed monster, and work for six months for no wages, then back to signing on. The circle will be repeated ad infinitum. That way the corporate bosses have a large pool of unpaid labour, and that helps to keep wages down.

    The figure for unpaid slave labour in this country is approaching the 200,000. that's 200,000 people working all day and walking home without a wage. Who do you think gains? Failing to comply with this dictatorial slave labour plan results in your meagre unemployment benefit being stopped. This of course pushes you deeper into the cesspool of deprivation. Punishment for refusing to be a slave to some rich corporate greed machine.

From Boycott Workfare:    

⇓ There is a growing number of workfare schemes
⇓ Workfare is not voluntary
⇓ People on workfare placements are counted as "employed" in government statistics
⇓ Sanctions have dramatically increased
⇓ Workfare replaces jobs and undermines wages
⇓ The government is rolling out workfare on a massive scale
⇓ Workfare does not work
⇓ Workfare affects everyone

         There is a mass protest, 4th. - 12th. October, being organised against this humiliation of those people who can't find work, in a system that doesn't offer them any. It is time that we took this slave labour scheme by the throat and strangled it, before it strangles us.

 Again from Boycott Workfare:

     Forcing people to work for free through the threat of removing people’s benefits (sanctions) is unfair, unjust and wrong. In the week of action, tell the companies and charities who are profiting from this exploitative regime what you think of their involvement! Email, Tweet, use Facebook, phone them, protest, organise a flashmob: for a week of piling the pressure on workfare exploiters.

      We know these tactics work! Just look at how quickly Byteback IT had to pull out when you told them what you thought after George Osborne made the mistake of visiting them. This is just one of the latest in a whole list of businesses and charities that have also pulled out of workfare following our pressure.

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

Continuous Imperialist Intervention.

         The UK imperialist state's  new adventure in Iraq is added to a long catalogue of foreign interventions by both the US and the UK. Both nations talk of peace since the end of the second world war, but in fact it has been 69 years of continuous wars by both imperialist powers. Their military reach has touched a vast number of nations on the planet, killing countless thousands, probably millions. 

 UK imperialist troops in Kenya.

       They both wear the cloak of peace, while brandishing the imperial sword.

 US imperialist troops in the Philippines. 

      The US military has intervened in more than 70 nations, while the UK is not far behind. Together they have certainly invaded and intervened in more countries than any other nation on the planet. Yet they still masquerade as peaceful nations.

The US catalogue is as follows:

China, 1945-49:

Italy, 1947-48:

Greece, 1947-49:

Philippines, 1945-53:

South Korea, 1945-53:

Albania, 1949-53:

Germany, 1950s: .

Iran, 1953:

Guatemala, 1953-1990s:

Middle East, 1956-58:

Indonesia, 1957-58:

British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:

Vietnam, 1950-73:

Cambodia, 1955-73:

The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:

Brazil, 1961-64:

Dominican Republic, 1963-66:

Cuba, 1959 to present:

Indonesia, 1965:

Chile, 1964-73:

Greece, 1964-74:

East Timor, 1975 to present:

Nicaragua, 1978-89:

Grenada, 1979-84:

Libya, 1981-89:

Panama, 1989:

Iraq, 1990s:

Afghanistan, 1979-92:

El Salvador, 1980-92:

Haiti, 1987-94:

Yugoslavia, 1999: 

Gulf war 1991

Afghanistan War 2001

The Iraq war 2003

Libya 2011 

Iraq 2014

Syria 2014

More details of these US conflicts can be found at Third World Traveller.

The UK list:

Greek Civil War (1944-1947)

Palestine, 1945-1948

South East Asia, 1945-1946

Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960

Korean War, 1950-1953

Anglo-Egyptian War of 1951-1952 (1951-1952)

Mau Mau Insurgency, 1952-1956

Cyprus Emergency, 1955-1959

Suez/Sinai War (1956)

Muscat and Oman Intervention (1957-1959)

Jordan Intervention (1958)

Indonesia Conflicts, 1960-1966

Ugandan Army Mutiny (1964)

Aden Conflict, 1964-1967

The Conflict in Northern Ireland

The Falkland Islands War (1982)

Falkland Islands War Images and Pictures

Gulf War( 1991)

Former Yugoslavia Peacekeeping Operations

Afghanistan War (2001-Present)

Iraq War (2003-Present)

Operation Phillis, Cote d'Ivoire, 2004 (MoD)

Libyan War (2011)

        Iraq 2014
Details of these UK conflicts can be found at History Guy.
    With this brutal record of intervening militarily in the internal affairs of so many countries, how can they still hold onto the illusion of being peaceful nations?

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

The Power Of Positive Thinking!!!.

      Stop being so negative, just think positive!!!  Social control??

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

Those Dark Forces.

 

      It seems that some people don't like Contra Info and are doing their best to stop you useing the site. So if you have difficulty get the site to load it is those dark forces that don't like the free flow of information. Just keep trying.

From Contra Info:

Hello to everyone,

       Over the past 3 weeks one of our servers is experiencing a large-scale cyber attack (DDoS). Multiple infected hosts from different parts of the world are participating in the attack, so we can’t really know who’s behind it. No user data has been compromised; however, the attackers have caused network congestion. As a result, the blogs, websites and fora hosted on espiv are hardly accessible or entirely unavailable.

      Unfortunately there are very few things we can do to mitigate this type of attack. Nevertheless, we are considering possible alternatives to improve the accessibility of our services.

espiv.net administration collective

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

I Was No Scot---.

      Sitting sipping coffee in a café I came across the paper "The Glad Rag". It was an interesting read, I like poetry, and its pages were a rich kaleidoscope of prose and verse. One in particular, to me at any rate, blew away all that crap about colour, ethnicity, culture, race, nationality, and showed that common thread that links us all. 

YETHOLM DAY.

When I first fucked an England born

Her ethnicity

Was not the first thing that came to me

I loved her cos she was beautiful and she loved too

The warmth of desire

Lying so close to me

The Green dawn rush

On the Cheviots

We washed all things well

In the tranquillity of Bowmount Water

She was no Northumbrian

I was no Scot

We were gypsies, travellers, subjects of no high kings

Love is a free born thing

Her love was everything.

      (Yetholm in the Borders has been associated with Romani communities since the seventeenth century. The last "Gypsy King" was crowned in Yetholm in 1898)

 By, David Stakes. 

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

Those Never Ending Imperialist Adventures.

       Bearing in mind the mutterings from St. Tony Blair, about troops on the ground in Iraq, and Cameron's desire to honour his American masters, we need to redouble our efforts to stop the UK being involved in another Middle East imperialist adventure. Peace and justice can't be bombed into existence.

This from Stop The War Coalition:

Emergency protest: Don't bomb Iraq, Don't bomb Syria. Lobby your MP.

• Protest Downing Street. 5.30pm Thursday 25th September.
  
• Lobby your MP. Use our model letter to write to your MP. It takes 2 minutes.
  

       David Cameron is planning to recall parliament on Friday to push through a vote for the UK to join the US in bombing Isis in Iraq and possibly Syria.
       If this vote passes British forces will be back in action in Iraq just three years after the last troops were withdrawn from the catastrophic occupation of 2003-11. The development comes in the same week Tony Blair called for renewed bombing in the region and the possibility of boots on the ground.
       All the experience of the terrible wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya has shown that western military action only serves to kill innocents, destroy infrastructure and inflame violence.
      Isis is a reactionary force, but it is in part a product of the disastrous occupation of Iraq by Western powers. Isis is funded by some of our main allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. Escalating Western military intervention will do nothing to stop them but will create more suffering and further destabilise the region.
     Stop the War is calling on our supporters to protest this Thursday evening outside Downing Street from 5.30pm till 7.30pm. Nearest tubes: Westminster and Charing Cross.

• Share the event with your Facebook contacts
  

We are also asking supporters to immediately lobby their MPs to vote against bombing.

 

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

 

Cheap Coal = Climate Change.

Hi John

I'm on top of a coal train right now with 49 ordinary people, who believe so passionately that we need to stop climate change, we've stopped a train reaching Cottam power station in Nottinghamshire. We flagged it down at 2.30pm and right now, we’re shovelling coal off the train.

It’s pretty dirty work but I’m here with good friends, and we know it’s the right thing to do.

At this same exact moment, thousands of miles away in New York, global leaders are coming together for a hugely important meeting about the climate.

But while world leaders like David Cameron talk, there’s a plan to give energy companies in the UK millions of pounds of tax-payers' money to keep old coal power plants burning.

See what's happening on top of the train:
https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/people-vs-coal

I'm blocking this coal train today to show our leaders that it’s time for action. David Cameron is at the global leaders meeting. When he gets home, he needs to scrap the plan to give tax-payers' money to keep coal power plants going.

And Ed Miliband needs to set out his plan to get us off coal. That could be enough to persuade energy companies to shut down coal plants instead of patching them up.

Click to see photos and video, and read stories:
https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/people-vs-coal

There are 50 of us on this train in Nottinghamshire, but Greenpeace is millions of people around the world. Together we’re working for a green, peaceful future powered by renewable energy. We want a protected Arctic, and a world of oceans and forests teeming with life.

Back on the train, we’ll hold on for as long as we can – but to truly get our message out we need thousands more to support our call:
https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/people-vs-coal

Thanks for all that you do,

Fran, from a coal train in Nottinghamshire

PS: You can see video clips rushed by bike from the stopped train, read the stories of the people on board, and sign the petition to end dirty coal here: https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/people-vs-coal

 

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

A Black Man Is Killed Every 28 Hours By A White Cop!!!

      The Land of the free, the good ol' US of A, where a black man is killed every 28 hours by a white cop, hard to believe? The real question is why is this tolerated, why doesn't America explode?

Ferguson: Chronicle of an Insurrection from the stimulator on Vimeo.

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

The Miners Strike In Glasgow.

      Wednesday evening Dave Douglas will be in Glasgow talking about the 1984/85 miners strike, a monumental class struggle that showed just how far the state will go to crush any working class resistance. It was the Thatcher era, the cull on the working class.

      Come along to the Fred Paton Centre, 19 Carrington St., G4 9AJ at 7pm and hear first hand experience of this legendary struggle, from a miner who was there and felt the wrath of the Thatcher state, come along and add your stories, ask questions, learn about your history. There will also be stalls and displays. an interesting and informative evening is guaranteed, and it is free.

     Carrington Street is between Great Western Road and West Princes Street, near St George's Cross, Glasgow.

      Dave talks in a Channel 4 special about what Thatcher meant to him: stoking a fire of donated old shoes just to keep his family warm through the winter.

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

Tony Blair, Holy Man Of War.

      He's at it again, Britain's own fundamentalist holy man, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, is spouting, we need to put troops on the ground in Iraq. Well Tony, get your gun and go, leave the rest of us to resist this eagerness to enter another bloodbath in Iraq, and else where. We have shed innocent blood in Iraq before, in the 1920's and again in 2003. This Christian fundamentalists  seems to have some sort of psychological fixation with sending young members of the British working class to kill and be killed in some vision of a mythical moral high ground.

      This devout Christian holy man has done very well out of his, "Labour politics", and war crimes, and now flies around in a £30 million hired private jet. His fortune is stated to be in excess of £75 million and growing, but is considered by many, very many, to be a war criminal. This is the type of individual that the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, continue to interview and quote, as if their words were profound and rational, it's celebrity politics.

      No doubt the other war mongering millionaires in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, will be delighted at his latest Christian mutterings of "send in the troops".

      We can expect nothing but foreign wars and more young innocent blood to flow, as long as we tolerate the Blair, Cameron, Osborne, etc. dangerous puppets of the financial Mafia to control our lives. Our "friendly" interference in Iraq and elsewhere has left millions living in squalor, deprivation and fear, and according to the imperialists, all for their own good. When will we end this charade.

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

The White Knight Of British Imperialism.

      Our British imperial state is gearing up for another military outing. This time on the myth of our high morality and ridding the Middle East of its bad men. There is no doubt what so ever that ISIS is a very brutal, fundamentalist religious group, but they are not alone, nor are they unique. The myth that helps to put the British imperial state, on the high moral ground is the one that, as the biggest empire the world has known, we willing helped put our colonies on a democratic footing when they were ready to look after themselves. 

      The truth of course is that we could show the ISIS mob a thing or two about brutality. As the people of our colonies fought to rid themselves of the exploiting, brutal British empire, we turned really nasty. The colonies emerging into the world, free from the British empire, paid dearly for their desire to be free. 

 Something to smile about.

         Aden, in what is now Yemen, an important port to the British empire, in 1960 it became known as the Aden emergency, as the locals were determined to rid them selves of their brutal imperial overlords, the British, they organised strikes demonstrations and protests and resulting riots. To sort this out the British set up torture centres. In these centres prisoners were held in refrigerated cells, bring about frostbite, and pneumonia, among other problems. It was not uncommon for prisoners to have their genitals crushed by guards hands, cigarette buts to be stubbed out on their naked flesh, to mention just some of the brutality inflicted on people seeking independence from the British state. Amnesty International in 1966, issued a report on this barbaric treatment, creating international outrage. The British imperial state had been rumbled. In the face of international condemnation, it apologised, but continued useing the torture centres for another year. 

        Amritsar, India, 1919. The people of that area, men, women and children, on April 13, 1919, pissed off by the brutish rule of the British imperialists, decided to march in a peaceful protest to the walled Jallianwala Gardens, there they hoped to make their voices heard. Late afternoon the troops blocked the exits of the gardens, and then opened fire on the protesters, they kept firing until they ran out of ammunition. The total deaths from ten minutes of relentless rifle fire varies from 379, to 1,000, with more than 1,000 injured. More than 100 women and children sought safety in a well, and drowned. Back here in Britain, the man responsible, Brigadier Reginald Dyer, was labelled, "the man who saved India". 

 

       The catalogue of British brutal imperialism is endless. We could go on and on. In the 1920's, the crushing of Iraq. The Boer war, where 10% of the entire Boer population died in British imperialist concentration camps, among them 22,000 children.

A Reminder.

       And now we are supposed to swallow the British state, painting its armour white and riding out on its white charger, with its white knight companion America, as the saviours of the Arab world. You and I know, the British state doesn't give a shit about the people of the Arab world, they have other motives.

     For more on the British imperialists morality, you could visit, 10 Evil Crimes Of The British Empire.

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

Dave Douglass And The Miners Strike.

    I doubt if there is anyone, with even a passing interest in UK politics, who hasn't heard or read about the 1984/85 miner's strike. An event that lasted approximately a year, during which time the British state threw its full force of repression against the striking miners. It tried every tactic in its arsenal, short of tanks in the mining villages and towns, to crush the resistance of the miners. This epic working class struggle should not be forgotten, to this end several groups are organising and co-sponsoring a talk and discussion by Dave Douglass, a miner who was there.

     There will be an event to mark this struggle, organised by the Clydeside General Members Branch of the International Workers of the World and co-sponsored by Glasgow Anarchist Collective, Glasgow Anarchist Federation, Radical Independent Bookfair, and Spirit of Revolt. It will be held on Wednesday, September 24th. 7pm to 9pm, in the Fred Paton Centre, 19 Carrington Street Glasgow, and is a free event. Carrington Street is between Great Western Road and West Princes Street, not far from St George's Cross. There will also be stalls and displays, an event not to be missed

       Come along, hear about your history, and add your stories and opinions.

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

Tomorrow's World Is Yours.

      So in spite of the YES camp's abundance of hard work, hope, belief and enthusiasm, the polls were mostly right in their predictions. So the bubble burst, but to all those thousands of activists how worked their socks off for a better world, all I can say is don't sink back into the swamp of anonymity. You raised you voice from a whisper to a roar, and you rocked the establishment, you have already changed this country, you can continue to change this country. Don't withdraw and leave it to the parasitic political class that inhabit that imperialist edifice, the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. Stay alive, keep the networks going, stay on the streets, in the schemes, in the villages and towns, stay in the melting pot of ideas, always putting in you own personal contribution. You caught the attention of the world because you were creating cracks in one of the world's leading imperialist powers, that is a victory. Don't withdraw from the struggle and allow the establishment to patch up, and cover over those cracks. Think of that feeling of solidarity and companionship you felt as you made new friends, savoured new experiences, and wove greater dreams. You have lit a fire, help it spread, tomorrow is your world, you must shape it now.

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

Dump The Bosse Off Our Backs.

       Election day in the Scottish independence referendum, if it is a yes vote, let's hope that it is just the first step, for the next step, Utah Phillips pointed the way.

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

We Are Governed By Devoius And Dangerous People.

        Western continuous wars are for power and resources, but they can also be used in a cynical manner to bolster a failing Western leader and his party cohorts. A bit a flag waving patriotism seems to push the ratings up for the power mongers. We are governed by devious people, who do devious things, which are also extremely dangerous. As has been stated before, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

This interesting article by William Boardman from Reader Supported News:

       The president’s plan to fight ISIS is stupid stuff in another way: it’s hardly adequate to the over-stated task. But that’s a smart thing about the stupid stuff. The hyper-rhetoric revives what’s left of patriotic flag-rallying around a White House whose party faces an election potentially more devastating than any proposed attack on ISIS. So the ISIS-fever, to the extent the president and his surrogates can generate it, seems likely to help Democratic candidates, at least to the extent that “fighting terror” drives other issues out of the news. Since those Muslims are going to be killing each other anyway, why shouldn’t they die to preserve a Democratic majority in the Senate?

Read the full article HERE:

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

The president’s plan to fight ISIS is stupid stuff in another way: it’s hardly adequate to the over-stated task. But that’s a smart thing about the stupid stuff. The hyper-rhetoric revives what’s left of patriotic flag-rallying around a White House whose party faces an election potentially more devastating than any proposed attack on ISIS. So the ISIS-fever, to the extent the president and his surrogates can generate it, seems likely to help Democratic candidates, at least to the extent that “fighting terror” drives other issues out of the news. Since those Muslims are going to be killing each other anyway, why shouldn’t they die to preserve a Democratic majority in the Senate?
- See more at: http://polizeros.com/2014/09/15/washingtons-isis-war-drums-do-stupid-stuff-do-it-now/#sthash.1Neh9h7E.dpuf

The president’s plan to fight ISIS is stupid stuff in another way: it’s hardly adequate to the over-stated task. But that’s a smart thing about the stupid stuff. The hyper-rhetoric revives what’s left of patriotic flag-rallying around a White House whose party faces an election potentially more devastating than any proposed attack on ISIS. So the ISIS-fever, to the extent the president and his surrogates can generate it, seems likely to help Democratic candidates, at least to the extent that “fighting terror” drives other issues out of the news. Since those Muslims are going to be killing each other anyway, why shouldn’t they die to preserve a Democratic majority in the Senate?
- See more at: http://polizeros.com/2014/09/15/washingtons-isis-war-drums-do-stupid-stuff-do-it-now/#sthash.1Neh9h7E.dpuf