In Democracy, Prisons Are An Anathema.

        Prisons are cages where the state locks away those who resist its power, where it tries to intimidate and silence those who would work at breaking its strangle hold over our freedom. Prisons are there to intimidate, repress and silence any real change to the power structure of this unjust and exploitative system. As long as one prison remains, we do not have a free society. For centuries, so often we have found the voice of freedom locked away in some dark and dismal hole for fear that it might light the touch paper of anger that simmers under the surface of so many. For fear that they could be the spark that releases that fire of burning desire for freedom we all carry in our hearts. While prisons stand freedom struggles.

Click image to read article.

This from Contra Info:

INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR A GLOBAL DAY OF SOLIDARITY ACTIONS BY RELATIVES AND FRIENDS OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
      We who experience the condition of our children, our spouses, our brothers and sisters, our friends being captive.
    We who have heard exterminating sentences to decades of imprisonment handed down by terror-courts of the State of exploiters.
     We who have stood firmly and with dignity by the side of our relatives and friends – captive freedom fighters.
      It’s time that we raised our own voice. It’s time that we proclaimed our own truth.
     We propose and call for a Global Solidarity Action Day joined by relatives and friends of political prisoners.
     From Greece, Italy, Spain to Chile and Mexico and throughout the Earth.
     Let us all together shout out loud:
POLITICAL PRISONERS – IMPRISONED FREEDOM FIGHTERS
ARE NOT ALONE.
     We stand by them and will continue to do so. In the face of the barbarity of terror laws of fascist and democratic governments of the empire of wealth, we will continue to resist.
       We propose December 31st as a day of global action undertaken by relatives of political prisoners.
      Through initiatives for manifestations & interventions at prisons, courts, ministries and every centre of Power.
        For human dignity and FREEDOM.
Until the demolition of the last prison left standing
We continue to resist.
Relatives & Friends of prisoners and prosecuted fighters | Greece
sygeneis-filoi[at]espiv.net
call-out in Greek

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ISIS, Turkey, Israel And Blood Stained Oil.

       So America can bomb and smash the Iraqi regime and bring it crashing down, it can step in with NATO and bring down the Libyan regime, but it can't stop the march of ISIS, strange. More than 15 months of bombing, over 8,000 bombing operations, and the oil still keeps on flowing through ISIS to fund their operations. The slaughter and the posturing politics of the imperialist states goes on, with nobody really sure what the hell is going on. The only thing we can be sure of, is that hundreds of thousands of ordinary people are being killed, maimed and traumatised. Hundreds of thousands are fleeing their homeland and and barely surviving in fields and inadequate camps, far from home. A humanitarian crisis across the Middle East and a humanitarian crisis unfolding here in Europe continues to be playing out before our eyes and all because of imperialist foreign policies. Money changes hands, bankers and brokers get rich, governments gobble up the blood stained oil, and the people suffer. This is the playing field of world capitalism.

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Condemning And Condoning Violence.

      Who are the enemies of civilisation, who are the murders of civilians, who gains most from the slaughter on a massive scale? Those who gain most from death and destruction are not bandits, rebels and suicide bombers, no, they are those in expensive clothes, they have yachts, private jets, several homes in different lands, they are the CEO and shareholders of the arms companies. They are lauded in high places by heads of states and governments, they get seats on think tanks, they shape government policy. Such companies as:

USA
AAI Corporation
Alliant Techsystems
Auto-Ordnance Company
BAE Systems Inc.
Boeing
Bushmaster Firearms International
Colt's Manufacturing Company
General Atomics
General Electric (primarily through GEAE)
General Dynamics
Honeywell
Lockheed-Martin
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Raytheon Corporation
Royal Aquarius Empire Corporation
Smith & Wesson
Springfield Armory, Inc.
THOR Global Defense Group
United Technologies (primarily through Pratt and Whitney, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation)
UK
BAE Systems
Cobham plc
MBDA
Rolls-Royce
Babcock
GKN
QinetiQ^[2]

     Of course every state on the planet has its, manufacturers of murder, one can't exist without the other. As long as we have states, we will be shackled to their murderous exploits, as they scheme to increase their power and influence to commandeer the planet's resources.

Please play this . Please!
Posted by Alex George on Thursday, 3 December 2015

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Avalanche.

 

Click on cover image to download Avalanche No.6.

Dear comrades

Avalanche n° 6 just came out in English and French. Copies of the issue can be requested by sending a mail to correspondance[at]riseup[dot]net or by downloading it on the website.

anarchist greetings

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

Palestinian Anarchists.

        If you look you can find information about anarchists from anywhere in the world, well almost. One place that doesn't spring to mind when thinking of anarchism is Palestine. Their battle has been against 60 odd years of occupation, land stealing and genocide, there battle has been one of survival against a brutal expanding occupying power. This tends to, though not necessarily so, lead to nationalism, a coming together under a different banner. I have no doubt that their battle will employ principles of anarchism, but that type of battle tends to emphasis a people against another people. However nationalism is not a healthy state of mind, it tends to have an "us" mindset and usually leads to differences, rather than similarities, divisions rather than co-operation.

This from The Hampton Institute:

       Importantly, Hassan extends her own understanding of anarchism beyond positions merely against state or colonial authoritarianism. She refers to Palestinian novelist and Arab nationalist Ghassan Kanafani, noting that although he challenged the occupation, "…he also challenged patriarchal relations and the bourgeois classes… This is why I think we Arabs - anarchists from Palestine, from Egypt, from Syria, from Bahrain - need to begin reformulating anarchism in a way that reflects our experiences of colonialism, our experiences as women in a patriarchal society, and so on."

      "Just being part of political opposition won't save you," warns Ramadan, who adds that for many women, "When you stand against the occupation, you also have to stand against the family." In fact, the over-emphasized portrayal of women at protests, she maintains, masks the fact that in reality many women have to fight just to be there. Even attending evening meetings requires young women to overcome social boundaries not faced by their male counterparts.

Well worth reading the full article HERE:

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A Thought From The Past!!!

      The following is a paragraph from a small article that I wrote some years ago. Amazing, I could quite easily have sat down today and penned the same article, as the powers that be, are working steadily at doing just what was proclaimed back then. 

–----- Some economists are proclaiming they have to to make it worse for the many. Insisting that governments must cut social spending to allow the real money makers to start creating greater wealth. While others state that the only formula is to cut social benefits and lower wages. Obviously the survival of the system is more important than the well-being of the people.

     Under these conditions, people have the right to defend themselves by what ever means possible, and that doesn't mean marching in an orderly fashion to some government office, and asking to be employed on a lousy job for a crap wage. We have a better imagination than that!!-----

      Ah well, I'll save it for another few years and use it again. Or are we really going to change things?

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I Think She Was A She---

      Poems come in many shapes and forms, say many things, some trivial, some profound, some deeply moving, some like an intravenous injection of emotion.

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The School Of Americas, A Blood Factory.

      For a while our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media has been giving some space, between celebrities, sex and sport, to the hundreds of thousands painfully grinding their way across Europe from the hell hole that is the Middle East. Not much cover to the fact that the reason for the brutal bloodshed taking place in that region, is the imperialists, past and present, greed and power driven desire to plunder the rich resources of the region.

     This is not a unique situation, it is the pattern of imperialism that goes on across the globe. At the other end of the world, that troubled continent, South America, has faced, and still does, the vicious brutality of empire, as the corporate greed behind the American imperialism, try to crush any opposition to their plunder of the resources of that region.

        South America is steeped in blood, the blood of ordinary people, savagely beaten, tortured, murdered and "disappeared". All at the behest of American corporate power, through the medium of the American military.

      Just as the European imperialists are seeing mass exodus from their killing fields to their "homeland", so the US imperialists are seeing a similar mass increase crossing their border by those fleeing the savagery of their military machine.

     The rivers of blood that have flowed, and are still flowing, to protect the profits of the corporate world, outdo the combined volume of the Nile, Yangtze and the Amazon. Truly, corporate profit can be measured in blood.
This is a video that everybody should see.

 

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Greece's Resurgent Anarchist Movement.

      Anarchist and anarchist groups should always change and adapt to the shifting conditions of the capitalist morass. The aim may be the same, but the route has to be devised as we move forward. In Greece where the capitalist system is an open fight of raw brutality, capitalism with the gloves off, so, Greece's anarchist movement is going through change, and a resurgence. 

This by Tommy Trenchard at Al Jazeera: 
GREECE'S RESURGENT ANARCHIST MOVEMENT.

A makeover

     Anarchy is not new to Greece. Though opinions differ on the details, anarchists say the movement started in the port city of Patras, and was brought across the Ionian sea by dockhands from Italy some time in the mid-19th century. Since then it has ebbed and flowed over the years, taking credit for helping to topple Greece's military dictatorship in the early 1970s and fighting educational reform throughout the 1990s.
     But since the beginning of the country's economic crisis in 2008, the movement has been resurgent as disaffected young Greeks look for alternatives to a political and economic system many see as discredited.
    On one Wednesday earlier in the year, I watched as masked anarchists in hoodies and black T-shirts hurled bottles and petrol bombs at riot police in front of the parliament building. Such exchanges have become routine.
      These are, perhaps, the images that most commonly come to mind when people think of anarchists. But after decades of being seen largely as a protest movement of ideologues and dreamers, Greece's anarchists are having a makeover.
      As frustration with conventional politics deepens, the movement is attempting to rebrand itself as a realistic alternative for disillusioned young Greeks by showing that it offers more than violence and vague ideas of freedom. The concert in Kesariani was a part of this initiative.

 

      "The revolution will not come with flowers," he said. "They need to see that we have the power to create but also to destroy. Again and again."
     Back in K-Vox, however, V is confident that their many pockets of support across the capital can capitalise on the current state of turmoil in the country. "The movement is maturing. All over Athens we have these assemblies now; everywhere small fires are burning. We hope they will join up until they take over the city."

Read the full article HERE:

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Lest We Forget, Alexandros Grigoropoulos December 6th. 2008.

       Today, December 6th. this evening to be precise, is the seventh anniversary of the murder of a 15 year old youth in Athens Greece. That Saturday night, just after 9pm, some youths are chatting in a café in Exarcheia, just as they do most Saturday evenings, two police arrive, there are some words, the police leave, then return shortly afterwards, two shots ring out and 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos falls to the ground and dies in the arms of his young companion. This cold blooded murder by the police, sparked some of the worst riots in Greece. For weeks the righteous anger of the people of Greece spilled onto the streets. This callous murder lit the touch paper of the powder keg of anger that had been rippling just below the surface, an anger that to this day is still there, fuelled by the continued plundering of the people of Greece, by the financial Mafia and their cohorts in government.

      This is a very fitting video to the memory of young Alexandros, showing that the people do not forget their own. It is also a display of the desire for freedom that is locked in all our hearts. An awakening in the people's consciousness to the fact that, there is a better way, we do not need to be tied to the debilitating yoke of capitalism.

This from Anarchist News: 

      Outside Greece, solidarity demonstrations, riots and clashes with local police also take place in more than 70 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, the Hague, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Cologne, Seville, Sao Paulo, as well as Nicosia in Cyprus, and Paphos proving for the first time before the “Arab Spring” that people could spread the news and react through protests for the same matter around the globe, from San Francisco to Wellington and Buenos Aires to Siberia.

      While the unrest was triggered by the Alexis Grigoropoulos murder by police, the reactions lasted for so long simply because they were rooted in deeper causes, like the coming economic crisis a year later, which was already being felt by poorer classes and younger generations through rising unemployment rate and a feeling of general inefficiency and corruption of the authorities, institutions and right wing politicians of the Greek state (mainly New Democracy and PASOK political parties).

Read the full article HERE:

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Quran V Bible.

      It is weird how the accepted religion is good, but other people's religion is backward, out of step with human nature, and in cases downright cruel. However I personally put all of them in the one rat-bag that has plagued humanity for countless centuries. The religious cherry pick their religion, quoting the parts from their holy-of-holy books they like, but ignoring the parts that are unpalatable. I just loved this little experiment carried by a couple of individuals. A video well worth the watch.

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Syria, The Compassionate Face Of Imperialism!!!

       It can be taken as a truth, that all those involved in the bombing of Syria, do not have at heart, the well-being of the Syrian people. So many nations from across the globe, running in to help the Syrian people?? In this capitalist, imperialist world, it beggars belief. What the motives are for each of those nations involved is extremely difficult to get a handle on, one thing is sure, at the baseline, it is self interest. Who stands to gain what if this happens, who stands to lose what if that happens, is all very complicated if we don't have all the facts. As in all wars, truth and facts are casualties. There is no point looking to that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media for clarity, they pedal illusion, wishful thinking and propaganda.

 Imperialist building blocks of democracy.

     Counter-Punch, has an interesting article that helps to supply informative parts of the jigsaw, that is the Middle East, Syria in particular.

------As for Washington’s “strategy”, it now boils down to the CIA need of a new rat line. That could imply sitting on the – weaponized – sidelines watching Turkmen and Kurds slug it out, thus creating an opening for the Turkish Army to intervene, and the Russian Air Force to prevent it, with all hell guaranteed to break loose. ------

Read the full article HERE:

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

William McIlvanney.

         Just heard, William McIlvanney died aged 79, they announced his death as "crime author dies", I never read any of his novels, though I'm sure they were brilliantly crafted, but loved his poetry. He seemed to be able to get into the heads of so many characters, his poetry could distil what it is to be human. I find it difficult to pick out one that stands out from the others, they, to me, are all up there on the high altar of wonderful poetry.

     My small tribute to William McIlvanney is this verse V, from "Initiation" in his book, "In Through The Head". 

My father's personal Midian was The Strike,
Say 'nineteen twenty-six' and watch his eyes
Bruise still with images of boot and pick.
Beyond the room's bright warmth he heard the cries
Of children starving and the feet of men
Subduing anguish to a measured walk,
You didn't interrupt his anger when
He brought up gouts of blood in his talk.

'Sam Harris hanged himself',''Ah've see a wean
Whose staple diet was a dummy tit.'
'The batoned bastards beat up unarmed men.'
Not an economist's view, He didn't find
The key that locks pain safely in a law.
Raw facts still looted comfort from his mind,
Broke into his indifference. He saw
Only the cold, blind heaving ranks who crushed
Into the closing justice of their time
Only to be rejected. Pictures strung
Out of his mind unbroken, newsreel rushed
Straight from the scene of an historic crime;
The pit-cage talk before fierce hopes were hung
On a slender thread of unity; the bands
That grouped lean jowls round any bone of news
To sharpen hope's teeth on it; big quiet men
Who rotted with their pockets round their hands;
The shame of looking at your children's shoes;
Soup-kitchens; five fags shared among ten;
At countless corners the spontaneous wake
Held by silk-mufflered men for self-respect.
Hearing him talk you came to realize
That history is what time leaves in men's eyes,
The shape their thinking takes. His was a fate
Coined in the twenties, already out of date
By the time the thirties ended or before,
Survivor of an unofficial war,
The scars he carried made him not quite fit
To enjoy the subsequent peace or understand
That this was all the gain their fight had brought.
He did not recognise the promised land.
You might, of course, have cited this bright room,
Full bellies, clothes, as what their guts had won.
But that was an impertinence to him,
Whose dream had seemed as certain as the sun.
Were bingo, the telly, hire purchase cars
As a measure of their sacrifice enough?
Later, in casual talk or busy bars,
You seem to hear a distant ideal sough,
Cry of a Dodo haunting the pleasant day,
Recalling the need to care, a debt to pay.

Thanks William, for your window onto humanity.

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Spanish Democracy.

     Europe, a continent of democratic countries!!! Or so the propaganda narrative goes. Such horrors of imprisonment without trail only happens in those nasty dictator countries, not here in democratic Europe. However any person that opens their eyes, will know that the state apparatus in any country in Europe, as elsewhere, can make the rules up as they go along. Being imprisoned for two years without trial blows a hole in the veneer of European democracy, it shatters the illusion of democracy spouted by the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. If two years seem extremely excessive, how about four years?

This from Contra Info: 

Spanish prisons: Contact address of anarchist prisoners
Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar
      On October 28th 2015, the Spanish justice decided to extend the period of pretrial detention for anarchists Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar for two more years. They were arrested on November 13th 2013, accused of participation in a terrorist organisation, of havoc and conspiracy. Though the Spanish penal code sets a limit of two years of incarceration without a trial, the State can in fact impose an extra remand period of two years on the ground of “special reasons”.
The comrades have been transferred to the prisons in Asturias:
Mónica Caballero Sepúlveda
Francisco Solar Domínguez
C.P Villabona-Asturias
Finca Tabladiello s/n
33422 Villabona-Llanera
(Asturias) España/Spain
Strength to Mónica and Francisco!

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Winter.

 

         With more than 8,000 air-strikes on Iraq and Syria in the last fifteen months, and now Britain joining the carnage, it is difficult to grasp the horror of the daily life of those left in that region. In spite of the unbelievable bombardment of that area and its people, Cameron tells us that it will take a long time to complete their task. What will be left of the region when the imperialists consider their job done? All in all the situation fills me with dread and anguish, my heart weeps for the people who daily are at the receiving end of this destruction of everything they have built over the centuries. We are creating a wasteland filled with dead, maimed, traumatised people, a generation of children growing up knowing nothing but violence and carnage, how will they find love in their hearts.

Winter

Dark malefic clouds crowd the sky

winds carry the stench of carrion to every nostril,

the crazy ape has followed the faculty of hawks.

All around stand crows, magpies, jackdaws, vultures,

edacious eyes anticipating their putrid feast.

A weary Cassandra laments;

doves, hearts weeping for a better yesterday

forsake their olive branches.

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Capitalism, Born Of Greed, Survives By Greed.

       Looking at this insane world of capitalism, you become accustomed to its many contradictions. For example, if you live in a rich country you would imagine that you would be better treated financially than if you lived in a poorer country. Well not so if you happen to be a pensioner.

      If we take the 10 largest economies in the world, US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and look at how they treat their pensioners we get some strange results. If we take pensions as a percentage of the average wage, we find that all the richest economies with the exception of Canada, are at the bottom end of that table, with the poorer countries paying their pensioners a higher percentage of average wages. The two largest economies find themselves at the very bottom of the league, with the US paying its pensioners a miserable 17.3% of the average wage, while its main competitor China, paying a paltry 2.0%. The UK, fifth in the league of large economies, finds itself in the bottom half of the pension league, with a derisory 21.6% of average wage, almost half that of the poorer New Zealand, whose pensioners receive 40.1%. of the average wage. 

       Of course it is not just in pensions that we find this inequality and injustice, the system of capitalist economics is built on such inequality, it's how the system functions. Wealth is created by the vast majority of the people, but the wealth then flows up towards a small cabal of parasites, who surround themselves with opulence beyond our imagination. To maintain that life in the cocoon of unearned wealth, the parasites have to continually plunder the wealth produced by us the ordinary people. Hence the cuts in our standard of living, education, health care, and all social services. The differences in our conditions at the bottom of this insane system is brought about by the majority having to fight individual battles to gain some of the inadequate crumbs left by the parasites, creating different strata of poor and poorer. The system is not based on logic, rationalism or compassion, but on the control of all the means of production and distribution, and that, for the moment, is firmly in the hands of the parasites. So it will continue until we decide that we have had enough of this plundering of the produce of our labour, and we take control of those means of production and distribution. 

Pensions as % of average wage.

New Zealand 40.1%
Denmark 36.3%
Ireland 33.0%
Canada 32.2%
Netherlands 27.1%
Australia 27.1%
France 25.6%
Sweden 23.2%
UK 21.6%
Japan 20.1%
Spain 19.6%
Italy 19.1%
Germany 19.0%
US 17.3%
Turkey 6.0%
China 2.0%

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