Unhealthy Profit.

        We have come through the start of the industrial age and moved on to the hi-tec age, but every move into every industry comes with its on particular problems. Practically every industry is linked to an industrial disease. We have silicosis, lung disease prevalent among stone masons, potters grinders etc.. Then there is pneumoconiosis, mainly among coal miners, caused by breathing in fine coal dust and carbon dust. Arc-welders are at risk of manganism, manganese poisoning brought on by exposure to the toxic effects of the fumes from welding rods melting as the are used. Painters are at risk from neurological deficits from solvent‐exposure, which include impaired colour vision, cognitive defects, tremor and loss of vibration sensation. There are many more links with occupation and disease, but we are seldom told of these dangers when you apply for the job. Health and safety regulations go some way to protect workers from these dangers but usually these measures are re-active and only come after years of suffering and campaigning.
      As a young man starting my trade in the Clydeside shipyards in the 1950’s, I was ignorant of the dangers of asbestos, and as it was widely used, all of us were exposed to the horror of death from mesothelioma, an asbestos induced incurable cancer. It was not that the dangers of this substance wasn’t known, medical papers had been written about the danger from asbestos exposure as far back as the 30’s, but it continued to be used up to and including the 60’s. The employers didn’t abandon asbestos willingly, it took campaigning and legislation to finally attempt to get rid of this killer substance. That is the pattern in most of industries, its dangers are only restricted by campaigning and legislation. The profit motive drives industry, not the well being of the employee. Most industries can be made safe, but it usually requires investment in safety equipment and training and that costs money which in turn cuts into the profit. So safety in industries will always come lower down the ladder, and as times get harder, corners are cut in safety to prevent cuts in profit. The economic system we have at present does not lend itself to the welfare and well being of the workers, only when the workers control all the industries will their well being be at the fore front of production.

      I wrote that wee article away back in 2013, but think it is always well worth reposting. Though we have mainly moved away from the diseases of the "heavy industries" era, your occupation should still come with a health warning. You just have to think of couriers cycling through busy traffic and breathing their deadly fumes, as one example of modern occupational diseases. sedentary jobs, being immobile for hours, day after day, confined space and pressure and other forms of health hazards. The hi-tec era jobs are not necessarily healthy jobs, and never will be as long as profit is the driving motive for that industry.

More recent research from PubMed:

         There was executed the analysis of morbidity and disability rate in workers with occupational diseases (poisoning) of the Republic of Bashkortostan for the period from 2010 to 2014. There is reflected the sectoral distribution of the relative indices of the occupational morbidity. There are selected factors of labor and the labor process, promoting occupational diseases (OD). The leading place in the structure of primary morbidity is held by OD related to physical overload and functional overexertion of certain organs and systems; the second - by diseases associated with exposure to physical factors; the third - by diseases from exposure to workplace allergens. This is followed by illness (intoxications) caused by exposure to chemical factors, industrial aerosols. The share of OD from exposure to biological agents and professional tumors in total accounts for about 2.0% of all cases of OD revealed for the first time.

Also: 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22Occupational+Exposure%2Fadverse+effects%22%5BMAJR%5D

      Your health should never be sacrificed  for the benefit of the rich, but always will be, if we stick with the present economic system. 

WHEN THE TIME-BOMB GOES OFF.

The bike just sits there,
dust covering its lovely sheen,
puffing up the Fintry Hills
well, it’s no longer my scene.
Y’see, as a Clydeside apprentice
I proudly learnt the tradesman’s skill,
little did I know then
the price, asbestos lungs that kill.
Now I just sit here through the painful day
gasping each mouthful of air, wondering
how can I make the bastards pay.
They new it was a killer
a time-bomb in our lungs
but, because it was so quick and cheap
they firmly held their tongues.
So what, if it cost the workman’s life,
there’s always a couple of new workers
in the care of the worker’s wife.
Please try to understand my anger
as I and others bear their cost,
a slow death from asbestos lungs,
a vibrant life lost.
Anguish for family and friends,
all in the name of profit;
now that really does offend.
Our anger without direction
is a blind archer behind the bow,
we have to use our anger
to smash the status-quo.

       Poem written many, many years ago when I was diagnosed with pleural plaques, known as the asbestos footprint. Thankfully I'm still cycling, my problems with my cycling are more age related than pleural plaques.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Keelie 9.

        The rebellious little rag the Glasgow Keelie has now put out its issue No. 9 for you to peruse. Topical, critical, informative and FREE. Well it used to be freely distributed around Glasgow's pubs, cafes etc, but covid19 means for the time being, it is available to read online.

        Go on, have a read and let us know what you think.

http://glasgowkeelie.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/keelie-9-REVISED.pdf

The Glasgow Keelie Home:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

People Power,

        Civid19 has woven a strange new world, the worst of it has yet to unfold. Unemployment, poverty, slashing of social services, cutting back on working conditions, increase in zero hours contracts and part-time jobs. All siting on the near horizon. Sorry if I depress you, but I don't see an alternative, unless we smash the existing system and think again but building one fit for purpose, of seeing to the needs of all our people, with fairness and justice. As long as we tolerate pampered privilege based on wealth and hereditary status, having all the power, we are going to repeat the viciousness of this economic system inequality and injustice.

We Have The Power.

Empty streets,with empty shops,
queues forming at the job centre,
doorway beds and hungry children,
watched over by mean eyed cops,
Food-banks growing by the hour.

City razzle-dazzle just rusty remnants,
shopping malls now empty caverns,
home to starlings, pigeons, magpies,
zero hours, part-time workers, live in
homes where ambition fails to flower.
Shiny politicians peddling illusions,
grin and bear it, there’s pie in the sky,
follow the Messiah, he’ll get you there,
quietly swallow their empty promises,
so they can live in their ivory towers.
This world exists by our acceptance,
blindly following their biased rule-book,
failing to realise that we the people,
builders of the world by sweat and pain,
are the ones who really hold the power.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Concessions Or!

 

        The "Black lives Matter" movement is not unique to this era, it has been part and parcel by black Afro-Americans for generations, under different names, as they struggled for justice and equality. This time round it is probably the largest of those movements, as it has spread across borders, not just of states, but of countries. Despite the apparent resistance from the establishment, like in the past, there will be concessions granted to take the insurrectionist element out of the movement. On the streets to lots of people white power matters, but to the established corporate body that rules America and else where, what really matters is that power remains with that corporate body and the present economic system survives. Black white halfway in between, makes little difference to the massive corporations, what matters is power, control and the survival of their sacred system of economic exploitation of all humanity.
       The past "Black lives Matter" movements have brought about changes, black Mayors, black officers in the military, and even black millionaires, but the real power still lies with the corporate oligarchs and the economic system that they live by, who see groups of people as a source for exploitation and will gladly play up one against the other.
        This time round, will the "Black lives Matter" settle for more steps towards equality with their exploited whites, or, and it looks more encouraging, will it, linked to all shades of human colour, evolve into a real movement for change by bringing down the corporate monster that lives by this economic system of exploitation.

       The following is an extract from an interesting article from It's Going Down:

       A third reason that Black Awakening is important, and the one I’m most concerned with here, is that it includes an invaluable discussion of ruling-class responses in the face of mass upheaval. In the broadest terms, Allen argued that

“In the United States today a program of domestic neocolonialism is rapidly advancing. It was designed to counter the potentially revolutionary thrust of the recent black rebellions in major cities across the country. This program was formulated by America’s corporate elite—the major owners, managers, and directors of the giant corporations, banks, and foundations which increasingly dominate the economy and society as a whole—because they believe that the urban revolts pose a serious threat to economic and political stability. Led by such organizations as the Ford Foundation, the Urban Coalition, and National Alliance of Businessmen, the corporatists are attempting with considerable success to co-opt the black power movement” (17).

Allen saw this program as emerging in the context of “several interlocked responses” to the rebellions from different sectors of the white power structure:

On the one hand there was the orthodox liberal who prescribed more New Deal welfarism as an antidote to the riots… [Another was] the shrill voices emanating from the embattled metropolises–voices demanding more policemen, more troops, more weapons, heavier armor, and tougher laws…. But between these two camps, there has arisen a third force: the corporate capitalist, the American businessman. He is interested in maintaining law and order, but he knows that there is little or nothing to gain and a great deal to lose in committing genocide against the blacks. His deeper interest is in reorganizing the ghetto ‘infrastructure,’ in creating a ghetto buffer class clearly committed to the dominant American institutions and values on the one hand, and on the other, in rejuvenating the black working class and integrating it into the American economy. Both are necessary if the city is to be salvaged and capitalism preserved” (194).

One of the architects of the neocolonialism program, who receives special attention in Allen’s study, was McGeorge Bundy. Child of an elite Boston family, Bundy spent five years as national security advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, then left in 1966 to become president of the Ford Foundation. With this job change, Bundy shifted from a leading role in designing U.S. political-military operations in Vietnam to a leading role in designing establishment responses to the Black Liberation Movement.

Bundy quickly set a new tone as Ford Foundation president. In August 1966 he told the National Urban League’s annual banquet, “We believe that full equality for all American Negroes is now the most urgent domestic concern of this country. We believe that the Ford Foundation must play its full part in this field because it is dedicated by its charter to human welfare.” With Bundy as its head, the foundation broadened its grant-giving from relatively tame civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and Urban League to the more militant Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Allen explains that CORE appealed to the Ford Foundation because it talked about revolution but offered an “ambiguous and reformist definition of black power as simply black control of black communities,” fortified by increases in government and private aid. “From the Foundation’s point of view, old-style moderate leaders no longer exercised any real control [in the ghettos], while genuine black radicals were too dangerous” (146-47). In Cleveland, Ford financed a CORE-led voter registration and voter education campaign, which in November 1967 helped Carl Stokes win election as the first Black mayor of a major U.S. city.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

State Control.

       Recently all the focus of street protests have been on police brutality and rightly so. The recent police killing in Glasgow of an asylum seeker, has shifted some of that focus to how abysmal is the life of asylum seekers here in the UK. However what we should be aware of is that police brutality and the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and migrants are not two separate issues, they are both organised aspects of the state apparatus. The police are recruited, funded, trained and protected from any real accountability to the public, by the state and its mouthpiece the media. Likewise, asylum seekers are the product of the state policy of, we are different, the British way of life, the spirit of "we brits" therefore better than those others over there. The states create borders and to help protect them the breed patriotism, the barrier to unity, and will expect you, or coerce you, into laying down your life to protect those imaginary lines drawn in the Earth. The fact that people leave their homes, family and loved ones, usual to get away from deprivation, persecution and death, make an extremely hazardous journey half way across the world and when they arrive here, they are deemed to be different, lesser, so need to be herded up, stored in inhumane conditions, robbed of their basic human rights, while their "betters" scrutinize their suitability to stay, is just another aspect of the state's injustice and inhumanity. Police brutality, asylum seekers and migrant, camps, detention centres, call them what you will, but barbaric prisons would be a better title, are necessary functions of the state in its never ending desire for control over a submissive population. 

Photo courtesy of RawStory.

     Somehow we are supposed to believe that teachers, bar staff, office workers, labourers, bus drivers, students from places like war torn Syria are different and inferior than teachers, bar staff, office workers, labourers, bus drivers, students, who happen though an accident of birth, live here in this collection of islands called the United Kingdom.

      You wish to end police brutality, and the abhorrent treatment of migrants, then you can highlight these injustices, but to remedy these problems you will have to get rid of the root cause, the state system and its economic master the capitalist system. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

System Fail 1.

        Submedia has just released its first episode of their new format "System Fail"  and it covers the first part of the present uprising against police brutality in America.

The following from Submedia:

System Fail #1: RIOTS ACROSS AMERICA
Website:https://sub.media/video/system-fail-01-riots-across-america/
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/433088212/
Youtube: https://youtu.be/qj-0asLNRc4/

          (Note: The video has already been blocked in the US on YouTube... we'll work on getting this addressed.)

        The pilot episode of subMedia's brand new show, System Fail, looks at the incendiary riots that have swept across the United States in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and the state's desperate attempts to bring things back under control.

Featuring an interview with Oluchi Omeoga, co-founder and core organizer of the Black Visions Collective and Reclaim the Block.
          Thanks to everyone who has kicked some cash our way during this economic crisis.  If you're in a position to do so and want to support our work, please consider making a one-time donation or signing up to be a monthly sustainer at https://sub.media/donate.

All for now,
subMedia

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Mutual Aid.

         It is encouraging to see that across the planet people are on the street protesting against the brutality of the state apparatus, through its front line of defence, the police. Black Lives Matter, has been the spearhead, but these protests have encompassed many more grievances that have brought global anger at the entire system to the surface. Before this outburst of justified anger there was a lot of action on, and talk of, the many mutual aid projects that had mushroomed across the world since the start of the covid19 pandemic. While the protests might be getting all the attention, we should never forget that it is with the mutual aid groups in our communities that we can change the way we live our lives and help to bring down this festering unjust and brutal system.

       Mutual aid groups take many shapes and forms and we must learn from each other, what is the best way to circumvent and undermine the economic system that has us tied to its yoke. It is a new world for many, many who have never before thought of mutual aid, but now see it as the way forward. Let's discuss it, exchange ideas, and link up from community to community, and encourage more to get involved. The street is where the battles may take place, but we need the back up of those mutual aid groups to cement any progress we make. 

       The following is an interesting article on Mutual aid from Crimethinc:

 

 

Finding the Thread that Binds Us

Three Mutual Aid Networks in New York City
Current Events
        Fundamental social change involves two intertwined processes. On the one hand, it means shutting down the mechanisms that impose disparities in power and access to resources; on the other hand, it involves creating infrastructures that distribute resources and power according to a different logic, weaving a new social fabric. While the movement for police abolition that burst into the public consciousness a month ago in Minneapolis has set new precedents for resistance, the mutual aid networks that have expanded around the world since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic point the way to a new model for social relations. The following report profiles three groups that coordinate mutual aid efforts in New York City—Woodbine, Take Back the Bronx, and Milk Crate Gardens—exploring their motivations and aspirations as well as the resources and forms of care they circulate.

        This is the first installment in a series exploring mutual aid projects across the globe.
       Food distribution at Woodbine, a social center in New York City.
      With politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for the people to engage in mutual aid in order to survive the COVID-19 crisis, those not previously familiar with the term might never guess it was coined by an anarchist scientist who advocated against central government. As economies collapse and the institutions of state and capitalism fail to protect people’s health and livelihoods, communities have been left no choice but to rely on each other. This has led to a proliferation of spontaneous mutual aid networks in communities where none previously existed, often cohering around Facebook groups and Google documents.
      Many communities, particularly those of poor and working class people, have long understood that we cannot rely on governments to meet our needs and have been providing for each other through autonomous grassroots collectives since well before anyone heard of the coronavirus. Now, the question is how to use the momentum of mutual aid’s recent popularity to transform the status quo and make these principles the basis for a new way of living together. An important first step will be to establish a clear distinction in the public consciousness between real mutual aid projects, which are founded on the principles of autonomy, horizontality, and solidarity, and initiatives that promote mutual aid in name only—those based more on a charity model, which serve to supplement and stabilize, rather than disrupt, state and capital.

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Stateless World.

       Is there any aspects of this economic system that we live under, we can say benefits the ordinary people's freedoms and desires, or that sees to the basic needs of all our people? Obviously not when its foundations are built on privilege linked to wealth and inheritance, power welded to wealth, structures based on patriarchy, and wealth created by the exploitation of those ordinary people, all held together by the state's repressive machine in conjunction with its loaded judicial system. To such a system, anger and rebellion should be the natural response flowing from the ordinary people, but it needs to be built on organisation and solidarity followed through with direct action. Dialogue with such a system has long since been proved to be futile. The streets and workplaces are where we will create that better world for all. 

Death to the State – Death to the Patriarchy

      On the morning of June 12, 2020, the ROS [Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale / Special Operations Group] staged yet another anti-anarchist repressive operation, this time signed by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office. Two comrades end up under house arrest and five others are imprisoned on Italian, French and Spanish territory.
       Among the accusations, as is now the practice, that of subversive association for the purposes of terrorism and incitement to commit criminal acts. Once again, the aim is to attack those who claim solidarity as an offensive practice and actively support their anarchist comrades facing the repression. As in Bologna last month, with Operation Ritrovo, the methods are repeated: cops in balaclavas, in some cases with guns, doors broken open, telephones requisitioned, searches and seizures of computers and printed material.
         The state through these muscular demonstrations tries to frighten us and make us feel isolated, in line with this patriarchal society that would have us docile, locked in our predefined gender roles. It does not surprise us when, as in this case, the media emphasize the presence of women in the investigations, showing astonishment in not finding ourselves relegated to the second row. We reject this logic that is imbued with paternalism, we do not seek protection but complicity in attacking. Attempts to avoid the use of violence as a response to what oppresses us have always been and always will be rebelled against.
        We do not want to have a place in this patriarchal society, which maintains and also reproduces itself through the distribution of power, in the gender socialized as feminine, we only want to dance on its rubble.
       We are not interested in legal technicalities and dichotomous concepts of guilt and innocence. As feminists and anarchists we can only claim solidarity with those who attack the patriarchal system and all the ways it expresses itself.
        We turn fear into anger and anger into strength. And this makes us dangerous.

Death to the state
Death to the patriarchy
For Anarchy
Complicity and solidarity with the arrested from Operation Bialystok
FREEDOM FOR ALL

Some feminist anarchists

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Non-Humans.

 

       The case below should horrify any human with a grain of humanity, and we should be able to say, this is a unique case. Sadly it is not unique, it is a daily occurrence in prisons across the globe. When I read them I get sick in my stomach and anger in my heart, and an awareness that we will never stop this type of treatment by dialogue alone. It will take the forceful destruction of the entire state system and its many institutions of repression. The state is aware of all these inhuman exploits, if not, then that means that the prison system is out of control, they can't have it both ways.

      What I find even more depressing is that those who enact these vicious inhumane assaults are mixing in our society as if they were normal. They are among the lowest of the low and have long since given up the right to be called human. They are psychopathic misfits prostituting themselves to the underbelly of the state's savage repression system.

The following from Support Eric King:

Eric assaulted by guard at FCI Englewood June 24, 2020

       On June 18th Eric was taken into the showers while shackled and attacked. The guard took the metal detection wand and swung at his each of his ankles and then then he would life his leg this officer would swing at the other. The guard then picked Eric up and dropped him on his head onto the concrete in the shower. He woke up after loosing consciousness for 10 seconds thinking they were pouring water on his face. But it was his own blood.
      Eric was transported to Swedish Medical Center and was give 6 stitches and was diagnosed with a moderate to severe concussion. The hospital would not give him the results of the scan or release it to his family or lawyer because they told him “he is government property”.
       The reality is folks have been fighting for over a month to be able to get an expert in to assess Eric. We believe he is suffering from a traumatic brain injury after officers at FCI Florence kicked him in the head for 5 minutes in August of 2018. We were so hopeful that we were going to be able to get help for him and see where he is at with the mixture of trauma and brain injury he has been struggling with. His memory has been affected as well as many other aspects of his life. Officers at FCI Englewood know this. They knew that we were trying to get a medical expert in because of a head injury concern… and then they dropped him on a concrete fucking floor on his head in the bathroom while Shackled up.
       This all follows a situation where evidence that his case manager out of FCI Englewood in attempted to make a deal with a person with a WP prisoner (did not cooperate) to get Eric attacked. This information was turned over to the court before they denied his transfer to another facility. What the prosecutor chose to do with this evidence, evidence that a crime was committed at FCI Englewood was to run and tell the prison. Within a week both of them had assault shots. Both for water both in separate areas of the prison.
     The guard who attacked him was the same guard who claimed Eric assaulted him with a drop of water. They attempted to refer the case to the FBI for prosecution but less than a month ago the FBI released the case back the prison. The guards attempt to have him charged criminally fell flat.
       The reality at this point is Eric is not safe in BOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons) custody. Over the past two years at 5 different prisons the BOP has a pattern of placed white supremacists in cells, in fenced in areas, close to him on his tier, in an attempt to have Eric attacked.
      When he returned from the hospital he discovered his entire tier was attacked and pepper sprayed after Eric was left. He was denied the ability to contact his attorney and family. It was only on his weekly allotted 20 minute legal call that we were given this news. They also denied him last week the ability to consult his counsel when he had an appellate deadline. The pattern of BOP intervention in his ability to fight his case continues.
     The US Marshalls need to move Eric to non BOP Facility.
     The North Central Regional Office NEEDS to open an investigation into this officer, as well as the ones that may have been standing by watching. When Eric asked for one to be opened he was denied.
      The prosecutor needs to drop this fucking case.
      We are very hesitant to ask for folks to call in and advocate for Eric because the last time this happened. A year and a half ago, his phone privileges were taken away. But at this point Eric needs folks help.
       J Sheehan is the Director of prisoner operations for the US Marshalls. The ONLY entity that can choose to move Eric out of FCI Florence right now. Their phone number is 703-740-8400
     The BOP North Central Regional Office is the officer who gets to decide if the BOP will invsitgate this *criminal* attack. Their phone number is (913) 621-3939

Eric’s prisoner number is 27090045

Eric can not receive letters

Eric can not receive books

Eric can not receive magazines

Eric can not call his family
        Eric is completely isolated at the whim of the Trump DOJ right now and need folks to help keep him safe.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Central Control.

     I have always said that this pandemic was too much of an opportunity for the establishment to miss, the Neo-Liberal mob with their cohorts, the World Bank, IMF and others of that ilk would grasp it with relish to further their aim of world control. That has always been their aim, useing economics as the driving force, but couldn't push to hard for fear of  public unrest. along comes the pandemic and they can push for population control  with the acceptance of the populace. They can accelerate their drive for world central control on the grounds of health of the people. Perhaps you think I might be a conspiracy theorist, but the evidence is there and has been for a considerable number of years.

The following extract is from an article in Acorn, Winter Oak:  

       The sole reference, it can truly be said, as prophetic as it is disturbing, is one I found in an article by Jacques Attali, former boss of EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development], written for L’Express during the epidemic of 2009: (2)
      If the epidemic becomes a little more serious, which is possible, since it is transmittable by humans, it will have truly planetary consequences, both economic (the models suggest a loss of three trillion dollars, that is a 5% drop in global GDP) and political (due to risks of contagion). It would therefore be necessary to establish a global police force, a global stockpile, and therefore a global fiscal policy. We would then—much sooner than economic reasons alone would have allowed—come to establish the basis for an actual global government.

     The pandemic was thus already envisioned: how many simulations were run by the major insurance companies! And by the protective services of the states. Just few days ago former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown again returned to the need for global government: “Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.” (3)

 Read the full article HERE:

        They are working hard at their plans for the world centralised control, they have the resources, the wealth and the organisation, how hard are we working to get local community control on a horizontal operational method? They are working hard at cementing control in the hands of the rich and powerful, how hard are we working at getting control in the hands of the people?  It will happen their way, unless we organise to stop it from happening, and that will take mass protests, mass organisation, mass solidarity and mass direct action. At the moment, they have the advantage, they have their plan, they have the resources and organisations, we have to catch up, or we enter Orwell's world. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Fueling Hatred.

       What makes you hate a system? I suppose we all come at it in our own way. I took to anarchism at the age of 17 as a apprentice in the shipyards, these views were reinforced after I left the yards and became a door to door salesman. Below I will relate very briefly some of the experiences that hardened that hatred of the system and done much to strengthen my love of anarchism. They are not in any chronological order, just as they come to mind. Nor are they limited to Glasgow, these scenes were repeated in other districts where I knocked on doors for a living, Coatbridge, Airdrie, Port Glasgow, Greenock, and so the dreadful scenes kept repeating themselves.

      1. Entering the "single end", I found myself in a square room with no furniture except for a wooden kitchen chair, where the woman sat tearing up waxcloth to throw on the fire to try and heat the place. I then became aware of a bundle of coats lying on the floor in the corner and noticed to little heads sleeping huddled beneath the coats.

     2. As I entered the house a voice said, "watch your feet" and I noticed that there were hardly any floorboards in the hallway, and a young boy was in the kitchen chopping them up to burn to keep warm. In the living room with a couple of chairs, there was a wire coming in the window from the house above. The electricity had been cut off and they paid the woman above a few shillings every week  so that they could have some light and the radio.

   3. A house I entered and stood in the hall while the man, trousers down below his navel, and a t-shirt well above it, displaying a blackened stomach where you could see the cleaner lines where the sweat had created little rivers. As he looked for some documentation, which was never forthcoming, my attention was drawn to a kitchen cabinet in the hall, the type with glass doors and a drop-down front. The glass had long gone, and the front was open, while looking at the bits and pieces of food lying there I also noticed maggots crawling among the scraps. Then a little white face appear looking in a puzzled manner at me, it wore nothing but a very short vest, was filthy and pale white, obviously had never seen the outside.

     My memory is filled with such visions of abject poverty and deprivation I witnessed on a daily basis. This while Glasgow was a bustling industrial city, with wealth pouring into the coffers of our lords and masters. Our politicians preaching about eliminating child poverty, all those years ago, and here we are in the 21st. century with approximately 25% of our child population living below the poverty line. Talk about hypocrisy and empty promises. When will we ever learn.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Endless Babble.

      One thing this pandemic has done is blow a large hole in the illusion that we live in a democracy. The hypocrisy is laid bare, the phony lies become obvious, the callous blundering ineptitude is clear for all to see, government by dictate is the rule. The following extract is about France, from Freedom For Farida, but does it not sound familiar, the ruse of shifting the focus from the depleted and impoverished health service to all in unison, clapping the health workers as heroes.

     On Thursday, June 16, 2020, after months on the front line fighting to save lives threatened by the COVID-19 virus, hospital workers in France took the streets. They wanted to defend their rights and denounce the lack of funds and staff that have plagued French public hospitals for decades.
     Whenever a new government comes to power in France, they repeat the same old song: there’s no money for public hospitals. As a result of these policies, health care workers continue to work tremendous amounts of overtime hours with less and less means to offer patients proper treatment.
    The COVID-19 pandemic compounded their problems—yet at the same time, the French government was glorifying hospital workers as heroes on the front lines of the war against the virus, making promises to improve their conditions and proclaiming that the government would do everything possible to help hospitals. The authorities even asked people to stand at their windows every night at 8 pm and clap their hands to express solidarity with healthcare workers. Many hospital workers understood that this new rhetoric was just political theater aimed at manipulating the public. In fact, the government had no real plan to improve their conditions. Rather than words, healthcare workers wanted action, concrete changes that would improve the situation of healthcare workers.

Read the fullarticle HERE:

   

     One advantage of growing old is the fact that you are living long enough to see the empty rhetoric and hypocrisy being repeated election after election, with nothing changing. The same shiny faces in nice suits pouring out lies and phrases they think the public want to hear. Sadly over the years most of the public have swallowed these lies and empty promises and ran to the ballot box to elect the new Messiah. Remember the euphoria as "things can only get better" smiling Blair rose to the throne in the house of lies, now a hated war criminal. Then the crazy scenes as the pope of hope, the prince of peace, Obama walked six feet above the earth, who went on to continue the killing in the name of the corporate greed machine.

      How long will it take for the people to realise that to be governed by wealthy privileged self seeking greed merchants, spells doom and misery for the ordinary people. Perhaps these recent uprisings against police brutality, will help them grasp the fact that the police are not the real problem. It is the established bureaucratic institution of the state, that is the real problem. It needs the police they are there to protect the pampered privileged wealthy power mongers and will be legislated to do what is necessary to subdue and keep control over the population. Exploitation, inequality and injustice would not be tolerated by the mass of people if there was not the threat of the state's loaded judicial system to come down hard on the dissenters.  

Endless Babble

The questions arise, Why the hunger?

Why does poverty continue to linger?

Why such need in a world of wealth? 

Why put a price on a child's health?

Confused and angry the public stand

gazing in disbelief at this pathetic band.

Those shiny politicians designed by spin

their street credibility paper thin,

the great persuaders looking the mood

struggling so hard just for our good!

Masters of the art of wheeling and dealing

exceptional experts at legal stealing.

Enter the media, drowning us all in trivial text

everything you need know

of scandal and sport, crime and sex.

Together they create a world of confusion

all fashion and style, a vicious illusion.

So no matter how often we point at need,

we always drown in a sea of greed,

no debate entered into, no answers found,

 the waffle and babble goes round and round. 

 

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Anarchy.

     Without much effort I can see hunger, poverty, deprivation, midst warehouses filled with food and necessities of life. At a glance I can see police brutality, state repression and I can smell the decaying flesh of wars.
      What words can we use to end the inequality, injustice and pointless misery of wars.

  Words.

Perhaps words are just forgotten trinkets
locked in some old box
lying in a dark attic
waiting for the poets to find the key.

      Behind every glossy facade this society of illusions throws up, they walk, unseen, the forgotten, the disenfranchised, the hungry, the homeless and the lonely, lost and unwanted somewhere under a sea of opulence.

Between Dignity and Poverty

In this metropolis of wealth with its fountains of opulence
We are the excluded army that walks that tightrope
Between dignity and poverty.
The excluded, the marginalised, the forgotten,
Regulated by mercenaries, some with guns, others with pens.
They know not, we are their brothers and sisters.
Nor do they know,
Our strength is forged in the humiliation of the bread line
Our daily question, will there be food,
Or will the pangs of hunger stay.
We exist in a system of numbers and balance sheets,
Our lives, dehumanised statistics,
Catalogued and filed by a blind accountant.
When asked to count our dead, do we count the living dead?
Will this tightrope be the inheritance to our children
Or shall our tortured journey lead us from anxiety to revolt
Will the anguish of our children feed our righteous anger
Causing us to tear asunder this fabricated web of injustice 

 

      A depressing view of our world, but one that is there for all to see, should they care to look. Our question should be, how do we right these wrongs, how do we wipe the injustice and inequality from the face of the earth. how do we create that world of respect for all human life, and end power pomp and privilege that is based on wealth.

Why Not?

I see hungry children crying beside warehouses of food
I see the elderly cold hungry alone in an ocean of plenty
I feel anger when caskets draped in that coloured rag
carried home with military pomp weeping families
another causality of greed privilege power
Day and daily I see greed praised as success
rich as celebrities, poor as failures
I swim in a sea of fabricated illusions where privilege is progress
where truth dies a lonely death somewhere in a corner of our heart
Yet within my heart I have millions of seeds of love
I know I must plant and let grow
So why shouldn’t I be an anarchists?

Visit ann anarky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Inch By Inch.

     This little video should have gone with the previous article. It is a little demonstration how the slowly, slowly, principle works, and why we should always pay attention to those little changes in the way the state tries to govern us. Vigilance, critical thought and resistance, are the safeguards of freedoms, the few that we have, also the way to advance those freedoms. Thanks Loam for the link.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Slowly, Slowly.

 

       If you observe the way our society is drifting it is difficult not to mention the word fascism. We would do well to remember Hitler and fascism in Germany didn't arrive with two guns blazing. It was little increments at a time, slowly, slowly, that people didn't pay too much attention to all those little changes. Only with hindsight can we see the monumental change that took place over time in Germany.

     In Haffner’s telling, the collapse of freedom and the rule of law occurred in increments, some of which seemed to be relatively small and insignificant. In 1933, when Nazi officers stood menacingly outside Jewish shops, Jews were merely “offended. Not worried or anxious. Just offended.” But Haffner insists that Hitler’s brutality and the ongoing politicization of everyday life were clear from the outset. In the early days of the regime, a self-styled republican advised him to avoid skeptical comments, which would be of no use: “I think I know the fascists better than you. We republicans must howl with the wolves.”

       Whatever the reason, lately we have seen some dramatic changes in the way we are legislated to live. As time goes by, lots of these changes will be absorbed into the "new" way of living, and there will be controls in place to see that you adhere to these "new" rules. Your freedoms and choices will become more limited than they are at present. The direction is always the same, more legislation, more rules to be obeyed, less freedom of choice. How far down that road will we go willingly, and how far before we rebel and reverse that ever tightening control. Shall we wait until that fascism is so blatantly obvious and its vicious grip too tight? 

        Under such circumstances as we are living with its ever increasing lurch towards more control over our lives, the only real answer is to turn our direction the other way, to be a rebel, to be aware of the link by link that is being created to tie you down and refuse to accept the drift to an ever tighter state controlled environment.  

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 https://radicalglasgow.me.uk