Tuesday, 7 February 2017

Religion, That Poisonous Snake.

       One of the many poisonous snakes in our society is religion. It slithers its way into all aspects of our life, seeking to control our thoughts and actions, based on weird and bizarre fairy tales from a bygone age. Because, through the generations, religion has been the handmaiden of established power, it is gifted a badge of special privileges, by that power, so it sees itself beyond criticism, and the guarantors of morality, despite its own litany of centuries of scandals, corruption and frauds. It will always attempt to capture our children and soak their forming minds with their man in the sky bullshit, distorting their value structure to suit the church's aims of control, and to stifle their ability to think for themselves.
       Recently, in Glasgow, there has been another case of the Catholic church surreptitiously feeding its anti-abortion dictate into the minds of young pupils.

“The really concerning thing is that the pupils in question weren't told the nature of the Mass - a ‘gathering’ to condemn the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act - until they were en route to the Mass.” St. Benedict's High School pupil.
Read the full article HERE:
(I call that lying and cheating)
        The purpose of education is to try to teach our kids to think for themselves and come to rational decisions based on evidence. No where in that is there any room for trammelled thinking based on magic, miracles and myths. There is no way that religion should be allowed to interfere with the forming minds of young children. If their invisible man in the sky, is so powerful and all seeing, why do his minions on earth need to indoctrinate the minds of children? Can't he sort it all out by himself? Or does he always need the assistance weak, confused mortal earthlings, who can't even agree among them selves what is really the true interpretation of their invisible leader in the sky's words.
        If you love kids, and you want to see them grow into happy and freethinking individuals, then you must fight to remove religion from contaminating their education.


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

Monday, 6 February 2017

Who Are They?

          There is an ever increasing number of people who knowingly and deliberately break the rules, ignore the dictates of political party leaders, occupy buildings, turn up at protests, and who at times, according to the establishment, create "mayhem". They go under different banners, but have one aim in mind. The babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, condemns them, and writes a false history regarding them. It paints them as hooligans, bomb throwing thugs, assassins, and worse. Who are they?



The Rebel

Rebel rebel break the rule,
What does it matter that a “wise” man sees a fool.
Not for you the herd’s dull beat
Making tomorrow, yesterday’s repeat,
Living out the life of a clone
Marching with the crowd but always alone.
Shaping your life from some dusty tome
Playing it safe, staying at home.
Rebel rebel break the rule
Swim in the sea, never the pool.
Live your emotions, feel the surge
Follow your dreams, chase the urge.
Make life though short, an exciting game
Not a mad march for fortune or fame.
Capture the moment, live it now
Being alive your only vow.
Rebel rebel break the rule
In the end, you’re humanity’s jewel.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sunday, 5 February 2017

Deaths In European Concentration Camps.

 
         The horrifying plight of refugees trapped across Europe, in nothing short of cattle pens, is blatant racist state sponsored torture and murder. No where in Europe is this brutality more evident than in Greece, with its concentration camps dotted around the country. If you think concentration camps in Europe are a thing of the past, think again. There is no rational explanation for treating suffering and vulnerable people in this savage fashion, Europe is awash with wealth. It is deliberate state policy that is traumatising and killing these unfortunate humans that are fleeing death and destruction, planned and implemented by Western imperialism's greed driven foreign policy.  Obviously, free movement of people across Europe is an illusion, a fallacy, only for the chosen few.
        A barbarity against human existence itself is evolving in Greece. A serial crime, orderly by racist policies of the Greek Government. Refugee camps located throughout the country are structurally linked to the devaluation of human life. Deaths which have occurred within them are not coincidences or bad luck, they are the murderous effects of State racism. Every day that passes and concentration camps remain open finds refugees imprisoned in them, death gaining more and more space among the living — it becomes a banal daily routine. We must fight for the contrary: such death must not become normal.
Amid the hardest winter of recent years, thousands of people sleeping in summer tents, without access to clothing and medical care. Over the past ten days three refugees were killed in the camp of Moria bringing the total number of deaths in the camps in five. Among those who lost their lives was an infant, and there have been and another seven suicide attempts. The murderous nature of the camps is more than obvious.
        When the living conditions in the refugee camps cost human lives, official authorities remain publicly silent, and when forced to say something make qualifying statements, that they have “not yet identified the cause of death.” Their clumsy attempts to insinuate that the deaths are merely from natural causes and that there ultimately might not be a real issue simply confirms the size of the devaluation of human life taking place in the camps. Living in a condition where everyone can die and the reason never made known transforms prevention into a mere fiction.
      Despite the efforts of the government to convince us to the contrary, nothing can humanise the existence of the camps. Our struggle against them, worldwide, must be intransigent.
      The solidarity movement to refugees, the class forces in society, everyone who from the summer of 2015 until today has stood at the side of refugees and have turned solidarity in a public, open and social power, must join forces to create a major pole of social confrontation against the Euro-Turkish migration agreement, and eventually, to overthrow it. It is our duty towards human lives threatened by the racist policies being imposed. It’s the debt of life against death.
  • Stop the shameful agreement between Europe and Turkey.
  • Brook no more deaths in the hell of the refugee camps.
  • Offer accomodation of refugees within our cities, offer asylum and equal rights for health, education and work
  •  There must be free movement in Greece and the European Union
Anarcho-syndicalist Initiative Rocinante
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Seeds And Syllables.




        For those who don't read the comments on a post, these words of Gerry Loose were left as a comment by my comrade Loam, on the previous post about the Faslane protest. I found the words beautiful and inspiring and in my own small way thought I would try to scatter these, "seeds and syllables" a little bit further. Words are tools and can be used to fight our battles, help our ideas to grow, inspire others to action, comfort us in hard times, show others our dreams, link us in camaraderie.
      "Of course, I am a poet, not a fool. I do not think a poem will defeat a bullet; But it can affect the thinking of the man whose finger is on the trigger. I have read my work at the gates of Faslane, home to the British fleet of submarine nuclear weapons. There, among crowds, there are soldiers and policemen who stop and listen. Where could my words end up in their heads? When your loved ones approach, afraid of the darkness? I have toured the atomic weapons testing sites of the US deserts, leaving seeds and syllables - seeds of peace, and again, where those weapons were used in Japan. It is not because I am brave (I am not), but that I am human and like everyone I have met, I deplore war and do whatever is in my power, as a person of peace, as a poet, to speak against her and make people gather, to act in reconciliation".

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

The Longest Running Peace Camp In The World.

 
         A couple of days old, but well worth publicising as much as possible. For those who don't know, the Faslane Peace camp, on the shore of Gare Loch, outside the gates of the Faslane nuclear submarine base is the longest running peace camp in the world, 35 years on site protesting, organising and keeping alive the anti-nuclear battle in Scotland. More steam to your elbow.
From Contra Info:
 Faslane, Scotland: 
Lock-on blockade at UK nuke sub base in Scotland:
         On 2nd of February, starting 06.30 AM, five anti-nuclear activists blocked the pleasantly busy morning traffic at the south gate of Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde (yes, they’re still having this monarchy thing going on) in Faslane, Scotland. South Gate is one of the two main entrances to the base and open under a certain schedule: it doesn’t take all that much to clog up their routines. Base staff did its best to direct the traffic to the North Gate, but soon enough the tailback stretched from the North Gate to a distance of over two miles: we climbed on our caravan roofs and tried to cycle down the line to see the end of the traffic jam, but no chance.
         “I can’t believe we still have to protest this shit! It’s a cliché, but true! The struggle against nuke weapons should be as out of fashion as other 80’s monstrosities, but now with the likes of President Trump or Prime Minister Theresa May it seems we’re headed towards a new arms race”, says activist Molly Garfield. “May has stated ‘I think we should defend our country, I think we should play our role in NATO with an independent nuclear deterrent’, so there you go. Nationalism, militarism, WMD’s. Down with all that, I say.”
        The lock-on crew was accompanied by three legal supporters and a photographer. The Ministry of Defence police arrived to the scene in some 20 minutes. Around here, the legal supporters are supposed to have the right to snap photos, feed bananas to protestor’s and observe that the cops at least try to behave. This time MoD’s were having a rotten day. PC 470 (they just like to be identified, don’t they?) tried to bully the photographer off by threatening to “smash that camera if you don’t stop taking photos”, while other simply pushed two observers some 20 metres away, well behind a barrier of uniforms.
       Not that we would’ve minded much. We were busy being amused by their continuous mishaps. At 07:00 AM, the hobby level cutting team from the base arrived, asking for the suitable camera equipment: only to find out their colleagues couldn’t find any. Next thing you knew was that they’ve managed to get a bolt cutter stuck on somebody’s lock-on, unable to continue. Thus, the traffic jam kept building up and road was nowhere close to get cleared before they managed to bring in the actual cutting team. On their arrival, the photographer was also tossed from the scene and view to locked-on activists blocked with police vehicles.
        By 09.20 AM all five activists were arrested and transported to the nearest cop shop. The South Gate was closed for approximately two and a half hours. The action was conducted by hippies from the nearby Faslane Peace Camp: thanks for support, one struggle!
       “On times when taking a stand or expressing one’s opinions gets you ridiculed, labelled as a terrorist or lectured how protesting of any sort is futile, do the bloody opposite. Faslane Peace Camp is rolling on to its 35th year, but seemingly the world leaders and arm dealers are not allowing it to retire any time soon. You could imagine that a nuke sub base would a tricky or dangerous location, but this seems more like a sitting duck for anyone up for a little direct action”, Roxy Newton, another activist, emphasises.
         The action is the second protest to take place within a short time. Both sparked by the revelation of the Royal Navy misfiring of a Trident II D5 ballistic missile from the HMS Vengeance last June and questions surrounding the cover-up of the test results and general madness of nuke weapons. Activists were also keen to express their solidarity with the Put Down the Sword crew who’ve ably demonstrated that for all the hyperbole espoused by polemic, self-professed Christians, the “Thou Shalt Not Kill” ethos remains the central tenet.
       The Faslane Peace Camp is a permanent protest camp dedicated to campaigning and protesting against nuclear weapons and related madness since 1982. The camp, located next to the HMNB Clyde, is celebrating its 35th Anniversary this year, and it’s welcoming all interested individuals to participate the fun and games available. No racism, no homophobia, no sexism: just direct action.

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

Saturday, 4 February 2017

Workers Know Your History, Spanish Civil War.


 


         It is always important that our history is recorded for future reference and learning, and also made easily accessible to the public at large, so it is great news I have just received from Anarchist Studies Network, (ASN)

Dear comrades,

      The last newsletter of the International Institute of Social History that a significant part of the CNT-FAI Archive (1934-1939) will be digitised, thanks to a grant given by the Dutch organisation Metamorfoze. That means that the digitised part in due time will be open to everyone in the world interested in the CNT during the Civil War.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Rebirth Of Christian Fundamentalism.


         While the new face of the establishment in America spews out bile about fundamental Islam, that other disease that destroys thinking, Christian fundamentalism, is being cemented in that country by Emperor Trump. The power base of those dangerous, blinkered deluded people, who talk to their friend in the sky, god, are being handed the levers of power, and though an atheist, because of this, I am now beginning to conjure up visions of hell. This US victory by the god people has emboldened their equally dangerous, deluded feeble minded members over here. They now crawl out of the cracks in the altars of the established church, to spread their own brand of trammelled thinking. Because established power has, for centuries, used religion to bolster its control over the people, religion is handed special protections, powers and privileges by the establishment. We must not let this prevent us from taking, head on, the battle for freedom of thought, and the right to make our own decisions, without threat, coercion or consultations to some mythological story book. The moment someone comes to you and says that they were called by god to some action or other, you should remove them for any form of decision making, and gently guide them to a psychiatrist. 
        Here in Scotland this Christian fundamentalism psychological problem, is now planning a concerted attack on the right of a woman to make her own decision over her own body. They have found a messiah on earth, Emperor Trump, and they are on another crusade to banish all alternative thinking. They are extremely dangerous and they must be stopped, before the become dizzy and even more crazy with the power of their new found banner carrier, Emperor Trump and his Christian fundamentalist entourage. Scotland has had enough of the misery and bloodshed caused by the various Christian religious factions, that have done nothing but divide or cities for generations, don't let another form of this poison spread through our country.  
       The images here might be accurate but humorous, but there is nothing humorous about religion, it is enslaving, dangerous, and has a history of brutality and savagery.  
        CONTRAVERSIAL US-style anti-abortion protests will be staged at four of Scotland’s busiest hospitals in an escalation of the pickets first staged last year in Glasgow.
        Pro-life group Forty Days For Life will target the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Aberdeen Maternity Hospital and Ninewells Hospital, Dundee across three months as part of a worldwide campaign running during the Christian season of Lent.
         The group, founded in Texas in 2004, launched its first Scottish campaign last year, insists it will be conducting prayer vigils and would not harass women seeking abortions but has sparked allegations of intimidation being compared with practices outside many US clinics.
Read the full article HERE:
 
 Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Friday, 3 February 2017

Avalanche 10.

 
       Avalanche puts out an appeal for all your tales, stories, adventures, activities, actions, planned and past. It helps to unite and strength us, and sets out a learning process from other's experiences. It also alerts the public at large that we are not asleep as the world goes crashing along on its destructive corporate capitalist course.
Dear comrades,
       We make this call out for contributions for the next issue of the anarchist correspondence paper Avalanche.
Texts concerning anarchist interventions, ongoing struggles, past
experiences, critical evaluations, broader reflections on the anarchist struggle, can be send until the 1st of march 2017 to the following email:
correspondance@riseup.net
        Thanks for telling us as fast as possible if you think on sending a contribution.

Queridos companeros,
Hacemos esto llamamiento a contribuciones por el proximo numero de la revista de correspondencia anarquista Avalancha.
Se puede mandar textos sobre intervenciones anarquistas, conflictos en curso, experiencias del pasado, balances criticas, reflexiones mas amplias sobre la lucha anarquista, antes del 1 de marzo 2017 en este correo:
correspondance@riseup.net
       Gracias de decirnos lo mas antes possible si pensais en mandar una contribucion.

Chers compagnons,
On lance cet appel aux contributions pour le prochain numéro du journal de correspondance anarchiste Avalanche.
Les textes concernant d’interventions anarchistes, des conflits en cours, des expériences du passé, des évaluations critiques ou des réflexions plus amples sur la lutte anarchiste peuvent être envoyé avant le 1 mars 2017 à l’adresse suivante:
correspondance@riseup.net.
Merci de nous prévenir si vous pensiez envoyer une contribution.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Has America Moved From The Path Of Righteousness???

         I find it encouraging that millions of people across the globe are taking to the streets to vent their anger at the agenda being driven by the new American emperor. However, my fear is that this rise in anger displayed against Emperor Trump, is tending to give the impression, that this new emperor has in one fell swoop, taken America from the path of righteousness. All that went before, was peace, justice and the rights of people, seems to be the illusion that is being created by this sudden up-swelling of mass anger. Let's not forget, America has been an imperialist nation since its invasion of the Philippines in 1899. Since then it has continued to overthrow elected governments, plan and implement subversion in other sovereign states, supported dictators, despots, replaced elected leaders with puppet dictators and supported military juntas, all this with a brutal savagery unparalleled in the history of the world. 
       It has done all this and more with impunity and the support of other Western nations. The now deposed emperor Obama is being held up with a glow of nostalgia, as how good things used to be, how he was the Prince of Peace, The Pope of Hope. But like other American emperors before him, he was brutal in pursuing the policy of American world dominance. 
      Before we look at Emperor Obama's foreign legacy, a quick glance at his home results:
This from Politicus:
      So during his reign, he has decimated the conditions of the American people, but the shear savage ferociousness of his foreign policy stands as testament to his unstinting support for American corporatism.
        While Emperor Obama reduced the number of US troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, he increased dramatically the air wars and use of special operations forces around the world. 2016, saw US special operators in 70% of the world’s countries, 138 sovereign statesa staggering jump of 130% since Emperor Bush retired.
          During 2016, Emperor Obama was responsible for dropping at least 26,171 bombs, most in Iraq and Syria, but also in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. His drone policy is the stuff of nightmares, raining down death and destruction at an alarming rate of at least ten times that of Emperor Bush.  This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day. That is what we are supposed to look back at with weeping eyes of nostalgia of the "good old days" 
           So let's get it straight, the new Emperor Trump has not moved America in a different direction, he is just more blatantly open about what he intends to do. Our anger should not be directed at the new emperor, but at the system that he and previous emperors have been inflicting on the world for generations. So yes, let's take to the streets to protest the brutality of this system, let's display our anger, let's move to bring down this system, no matter who sits on the throne. 
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Careful Who You Call Comrade!!

 
          We all know, or should know, the depth of depravity, the repugnant subterfuge that any state will accept as right and proper, in its attempt to intimidate and silence any opposition to its control of the people. Undercover paid scum, who live by lying and the deception of those who offer them trust. Other times the state apparatus will, by threat and inducement, use desperate and vulnerable people as their tool for fabricating phony evidence. Sadly, we know that under the present system of corporate capitalism, you will find this type of state behavioured in any country on the planet you care to name. In this instance, it happens to be Spain, but we in this country have recently, had this stench of state deception poison our nostrils. This is what you vote for, the continuation of this corrupt, greed driven system of exploitation, held together by coercion, threat, illusion and brute force. 
 Careful who you call comrade!
          Tuesday, 24 January, on the outskirts of Vigo (Mos), a deployment of about 60 armed men between the Guardia Civil and secret agents, searched (and almost destroyed) the house where Gabriel Pombo da Silva had lived for a few months with his partner Elisa Bernardo. At dawn the two were violently awakened, handcuffed and separated … aim: to find firearms and explosives! The search lasted about eight hours and in spite of the means employed (dogs and high technology radar tools), gave no results … among the things seized there is the usual “interesting” anarchist material, cameras, maps of various cities, some cable and old malfunctioning cell phones.
While Elisa, despite the repeated threat of being placed under arrest unless she revealed the much desired hiding place, remained free, Gabriel was arrested on charges of “illegal possession and trafficking of weapons and explosives and armed group”. During the 24 hours’ detention (the release of the comrade happened, in fact, the next day) the facts were bitterly reconstructed.
          About three months ago the couple got to know a self-proclaimed anarchist comrade who, during the few opportunities to meet, “confesses” her problems with drugs and a conditional sentence she is doing because of an arrest suffered in 2013 on charges of being the author of an attack with Molotov cocktails on an institution in Vigo. Heart in hand, Gabriel and Elisa, respond to the request for help from the “comrade”, accepting her for a week (at the beginning of the year) in the aforementioned house to accompany her in the worst phase of a path of detoxification. After this brief period, the girl returns to her own home … reappearing as informer (of false information) the day prior to the present named “Operación Buyo”.
If we had not received certain news that during her previous arrest she had defamed other people, we would have limited ourselves to considering her a “victim of the system”, but that is not so. Maria, this is her name, is currently in jail on the same charges as Gabriel, probably hoping that being the daughter of a military leader can help her to avoid the worst since an arsenal of firearms was found at her home. In 2013, in fact, despite the charges of terrorism, one saw the sentence being reduced significantly (from 11 to 2 years !!!), then converted to parole, with her remaining imprisoned not more than a few months. With all the hatred toward the repressive system, prison and the judicial system, it is inevitable to wonder since when do those who claim themselves as anarchists receive such treatment. Each to their own conclusions.
               Gabriel, for now on bail and under investigation … comments on this latest repressive operation thus:
Read the full article HERE:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

Wednesday, 1 February 2017

Policies Written In Blood.

         The following video is of West's powerful butchers, the power mongers of NATO, the brutal protectors of the West's corporate imperialists. Having wined and dined on our money, they display their arrogance by proclaiming their belief, "We are the world", their joyous and flamboyant display disguises their savagery, their blood socked past, and their brutal destructive vision. When will we rise up and rid ourselves of this militarised savagery and corporate greed. Their policies are written in the blood of ordinary people, and it is all about plundering of resources, corporate greed and state power.
Thanks Loam for the link:



       At the Istanbul meeting on 13 May 2015, NATO leaders finished a well-watered meal. They mock the cretins who believe in them by singing "We are the world". This video is of Jens Stoltenberg, General Philip Breedlove, Federica Mogherini and many of the West's Defence Ministers.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Legalised Plunder And Murder.


        The Greek situation has fallen of the agenda of that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, their short concentration span has moved on to “the refugee crisis” to terrorism in Europe then on to that dangerous nut-case Trump. That doesn’t mean that things in Greece are fine and dandy, far from it. The people of Greece are still suffering poverty and deprivation at the hands of the financial Mafia. Some of the figures are staggering. Take the population of Greece, since the financial Mafia took dictatorial control of Greece, the population has gone from 11.1 million in 2011 to 11.0 million in 2015, for a small country, that’s a remarkable drop. Unemployment shows an equally devastating trend in the opposite direction going from 17.9% in 2011 to 25% in 
2015. Looking at the volume of money the Troika, ( EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) have poured into Greece, you would imagine that its problems should be sorted. Of course we all know that the money shuffling is an illusion, though they say they are giving it to Greece, it doesn’t actually stay there. Around approximately 80% goes back to the financial Mafia in interest payments, so the problem of Greece’s debt remains. In fact the amount of public debt, (state debt) has risen from 172% of GDP in 2011 to 177% of GDP in 2015.
         To show how little concern the Troika have for the people of Greece you just have to look at their response to the Greek government’s meagre Christmas handout to to pensioners earning less than €800 a month. They have said that Greece has broken the conditions of its loans and they will have to look at what to do.
          To grasp the reality of the situation of the people of Greece, all you need do is focus on the fact that the poorest 20% of Greece’s 11 million people have suffered a 42% drop in disposable income since 2009, and during the “Greek crisis” the country has lost over 25% of its GDP – the biggest downturn to be experienced by an advanced western economy in peacetime. All this because the European banks, mainly German, threw too much money into the gambling casino that was Greece’s “economic bubble”. It was all done to make lots of money for the financial Mafia, and when the bubble burst, the gamblers started to cry, and wanted their money back. In steps the Troika, and under the banner of austerity, it starts to stripe all the wealth out of Greece, plunging the people of that unfortunate country into poverty, deprivation, unemployment, stress and trauma, with the resultant effects such as massive increase in suicides, substances abuse, homelessness, mental and physical health problems, confounded by the collapse of social services, including health and education. This year will see more cuts to salaries and pensions in real terms, as far as the people of Greece are concerned, the storm is gathering pace. All of this is a human tragedy happening here in super rich Europe, but to our babbling brook of bullshit, it is old news and not worthy of reporting.
         To compound the situation of the people of Greece, while the financial Mafia is mercilessly plundering all assets from that unfortunate country, we should remember that Greece is the main landing point of those hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the imperialists’ blood curling adventures in the Middle East. Greece is now home to thousands of refugees who are herd up like cattle and detained in concentration camps. Greece, a country because of the financial Mafia’s brutal policy of austerity and plunder, is probably the least able of the EU countries to cope with this traumatising, and avoidable human tragedy. The agony of the people in Greece is nothing short of legalised plunder and murder.
         Nine months after the EU-Turkey refugee agreement and the official closing of the Balkan route towards north Europe, thousands of refugees and migrants are being forced to live indefinitely in concentration camps across Greece, in horrendous conditions, with no hope for tomorrow, being exposed to below zero temperatures, in inadequate and unacceptable dwellings or even tents.
         The tragic images of refugees living in tents covered with snow and barefoot toddlers in the muddy water of the camps, waiting in long queues for a plate of food under unbearable temperatures, are still fresh. Despite government claims that the measures for the protection of refugees from the adverse weather conditions have been successfully completed, the preparation for protecting migrants and refugees who are trapped in the Greek islands has failed, despite the millions of euros that have been given to prepare for the winter, which recently has been harsh even for Greek weather standards. And it’s no wonder, since the Greek government, local municipalities and NGO’s see refugees as a business opportunity.
        And for these reasons for many months since the initial wave of refugees coming to Greece in 2015 the government and the police -through media propaganda and arrests- managed to demonize and barred all the hundreds of volunteers that in a self organized manner were helping the thousands of refugees arriving to Greece. Then they imprisoned the refugees into camps guarded by the police, from which they are allowed out of them for few hours a day, (which is pointless in most cases since they are situated far away from villages or cities, so that contact with people and necessary services is avoided or prevented), forbidden outsiders to visit the camps, even reporters or photojournalists without supervised permission and directed all the money to NGO’s to run the camps (many of them were set up just a bit after the first refugee waves sensing the flow of money to the European entry point of Greece). There have even been situations were local authorities used the money they got to hire people to help the refugees indeed to hire employees but use them for completely different duties serving the local authorities, based on the excuse that greece is under financial crisis, thus we see these appealing conditions in camps were already to refugees have died in January.


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

Monday, 30 January 2017

This Is Not a Dialogue.


          I have always maintained that this society will always encourage you to debate anything, but punish you if you try to change things. As long as we fail to see this society as a class war with two diametrically opposed sides, and one side holds all the power levers, we are doomed to enter into an endless and pointless conversation that goes under the label of dialogue. If you are bound by the rules of your opponent, then you are not in a fair and equal dialogue. If the ground rules are shaped by your opponent, and backed up by threat, you are not in a equal dialogue. You cannot discuss capitalism into a fair and just system, that’s not how the system works. Under capitalism, the reality is that the majority will always have to struggle to get a reasonable standard of living, while the corporate bosses and their henchmen, will live in unimaginable opulence, that’s how the system functions. We can’t enter into a dialogue under such conditions, it is an illusion created by our opponents to weave passivity over society, a trick for continuity of the system. What we want is to frame the argument in our value structure, equality, justice, freedom and sustainability, realise that we can’t have those conditions under capitalism, forget the illusionary, action sapping dialogue, and organise to destroy the existing system. 
         This is not a dialogue. How could you be so naïve? A dialogue—from which some of the participants can be deported at any time? A dialogue—in which one side keeps shooting and incarcerating the other side? A dialogue—in which a few people own all the networks and radio stations and printing presses, while the rest have to make do with markers and cardboard signs? A dialogue, really?
          You’re not in a dialogue. You’re in a power struggle. All that matters is how much force you can bring to bear on your adversaries to defend yourself from them. You can bet that if you succeed, they will accuse you of breaking off the dialogue, of violating their free speech. They will try to lure you back into conversation, playing for time until they need no more stratagems to keep you passive while they put the pieces in place for tyranny.
          This isn’t a dialogue—it’s a war. They’re gambling that you won’t realize this until it’s too late. If freedom is important to you, if you care about all the people marked for death and deportation, start taking action.
Read the full article HERE:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk