Cop-out26.

            There is a lot of excitement regarding the coming to Glasgow of the Cop 26 conference, our supposed time to remedy the failings of the past and put our planet's ecological balance to rights. However looking at the track record of these sort of things, I prefer to call it the Cop-out 26. There will lots of hot air, grandstanding speeches and photo opportunities for the good, the bad, and the ugly. I will also lay a bet that one of the world's largest polluters will not even get a mention, I refer of course to the Pentagon. This monstrous fossil fuel guzzling machine of mass destruction will sail on blissfully untarnished by any real criticism of its part in the climate emergency.

 

        The US military’s carbon bootprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks, and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change.
        Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work, including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal.
       In 2017, the US military bought about 269,230 barrels of oil a day and emitted more than 25,000 kilotons of carbon dioxide by burning those fuels. The US Air Force purchased $4.9 billion worth of fuel, and the Navy $2.8 billion, followed by the Army at $947 million and the Marines at $36 million.
       It’s no coincidence that US military emissions tend to be overlooked in climate change studies. It’s very difficult to get consistent data from the Pentagon and across US government departments. In fact, the United States insisted on an exemption for reporting military emissions in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This loophole was closed by the Paris Accord, but with the Trump administration due to withdraw from the accord in 2020, this gap will will return.

        Roll on Cop-out 26, let's see what formula you produce to stop the impending man made climate disaster, and let's see how the various states follow through. Capitalism will trump climate change, unless we destroy capitalism, it will continue to destroy the planet and our existence on that planet. Just remember, Planet Earth has no escape capsule. 

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 http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page 

Work.

 

           I wrote this little piece away back when I was first diagnosed with pleural plaques, the footprint of asbestos. As a young man in the shipyards, in later life I saw friends die from the horrible avoidable death of mesothelioma, lung cancer induced by asbestos. Asbestos might be banned but heading out to earn your crust of bread is still a dangerous activity. Accidents at work can and do cause death and serious injury and there is still a host of industrial diseases that plague the workers as they struggle for a decent living, this will not end until the workers control all of the means of production and distribution within the system we need to survive. Capitalism, in its necessity for profit will never eliminate these problems for the workers.

         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.

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.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Pamphlets.

 

          We at Spirit of revolt are still unable to access our room because of covid19 restriction, but we keep plugging away at what we can still do. “Read of the Month” is still something we can continue doing. So here is our August offering from our Spirit of Revolt Archive. It is issue 1 of a little known pamphlet called “Prisoners of War”. Enjoy and then take a wee browse through our catalogue and feast on the amazing collection of serials, pamphlets, leaflets, posters and other memorabilia, all linked to anarchist, libertarian socialist ideas and history.

 

Visit ann arky's home at: 

http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page

Keelie.

           Bang on time, out comes the August edition, issue 21, of the Glasgow Keelie. As usual, packed with info, snapshot of the past and lots of what is happening here and now plus some of the shenanigans of our city council, that bunch that we house in the Kremlin in George Square that are hell bent on closing libraries, community centres, swimming pools etc. Check it out on line and you may be able to pick up a hard copy on the street and at events, look out for the rickshaw.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info 

Vote???

          For centuries now we have had capitalist representative democracy as the model for the world, what we should note is that this is a very clever pseudonym to give it appeal, it is not representative, nor democracy, but it is capitalism. What it has produced is a world with vast swaths of the planet living in poverty and deprivation, endless wars, a ruling cabal of ruthless billionaires and a planet that is heading for ecological disaster. This only exists because of our submissive attitude to the ballot box, the vote is the establishments hand out of paracetamol to the public, it makes them feel better but does nothing to cure their ills. Isn't time to change the way we structure our lives? Isn't it time we brought an end to this human disaster. Let's fashion our world on the bases of equality, justice, sustainability and humanity, free from the capitalist profit motive.

The following from Enough is Enough:

       Text from the German territory, where elections will take place in September: Who ever you vote for, we will be ungovernable! Going to the polls always means choosing the lesser of two evils. We don’t want to choose evils! 

#UNGOVERNABLE.

Originally published by Indymedia DE.

         Going to the polls always means choosing the lesser of two evils. We don’t want to choose evils!
         For centuries or even millennia, we have stood up for the equality of all living things, for the freedom not to harm ourselves and others, for fraternity worldwide!
         Freedom cannot be chosen, freedom has always been the freedom of those who take it. No matter which government plays its power games, we do not let ourselves be governed!
        We don’t let ourselves be banned from saving people on the high seas any more than we let ourselves be banned from creating places where people can get access and care, regardless of their purchasing power.
         We fight for a good climate of tomorrow, so that all those who come after us have a chance to live on a planet that we are willing to protect.
        We do not ask about origin, who you are is important, where you were born is not. The nation is against us, the nationality is only a game of the rulers to divide and disempower us.
        We empower ourselves, against any authority!
        We are paramedics, authors, lawyers, musicians, workers, anarchists, educators, artists, freelancers and many more!
        The ruling conditions are against you. If you are not useful to them, you will also be sorted out hard.
        We do not vote for the tyrants and their systems, for capitalism and its destructive power, for the authoritarian state and its oppression. We vote all this out and fight for a world society without domination of people over people!
         For a world in which it is worth to live. For a future full of meaning and valuable experiences.
        No government can ever bring us freedom, we can never be absorbed in their prefabricated identity structures. Only under.
        Who ever you Vote for, we will be #ungovernable! No matter who we vote for, we will remain ungovernable!
        Join the campaign and post your actions, events and practices from the world of tomorrow under the hashtag #ungovernable

 

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

Green???

 

           The world faces a crisis in CO2 emissions and the people are crying out for an end to fossil fuels among other methods of cutting those emissions, and hopefully in doing so save the planet and humanity. However, as we approach COP-OUT26, to be held in Glasgow later this year, the UK's response to this impending doom is to build a third runway at Heathrow to increase air traffic, have you ever seen a green jumbo jet? Another plan by the UK government that will be a slap in the face of those trying to cut emissions and end the of burning fossil fuels, is that they plan to drill more oil wells in the North Sea. At the same time they spout about being the greenest government on the planet, all hog wash and bullshit. These plans of insanity go ahead because a few millionaires could become billionaires and a spin off to their greedy leeches and hangers on. They are blind to the fact that they are driving at speed to suicide, which would be well and good, but sadly they will take us all with them, but we will not share in their looting of the planet. Not that it will make much difference, after the demise of humanity.
            The capitalist world will never work at saving the planet, there is too much profit to be made from plundering the earth's resources for personal gain. The profit grabbing enterprises of the capitalist economic system offers the corporate plunderers far too much wealth, power and privileges, at the expense of everybody and everything else for them to stop, they are junkies on a trip of power and wealth, fed by the sweat of you and I. We have to be the ones to stop this madness before it destroys us all and all life on the planet. This is not a painting of doom, this is a statement of facts.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info      

They Laugh.

They are laughing at us.

           So the pandemic seems to be in retreat here in the UK, during this pandemic the government poured billions of pounds into the coffers of big business, to keep their corporate friends form loosing too much of their ill-gotten gains. The debt just piled up, now it’s pay back time, that’s where you and I come in to foot the bill. Austerity the word that dare not speak its name, but is there in the guise of efficiency savings. To you and I that means closure of libraries, community centres, swimming pools, workers paid off, social services slashed and of course for many there will be a wage freeze (cuts in reality) as prices steadily move in an upward direction. Just announced is a £139 rise in energy prices for 11 million of us consumers as the price cap has been raised. The mountain of debt will have to be paid back as the financial Mafia set out their terms of repayment and demand their pound of flesh and it is you and I that will bleed, not the billionaire class who gained so much during this pandemic.
        During the pandemic while you and I struggled as best we could, the one class that saw their wealth balloon was the billionaire class. Just a couple of headlines make this very clear: Billionaires' wealth rises to $10.2 trillion amid Covid crisis and The billionaire boom: how the super-rich soaked up Covid cash and COVID-19 has made the super-rich richer. It’s time for a billionaire wealth tax and Billionaires got 54% richer during pandemic, sparking calls for "wealth tax" of course you and I know, there will be no wealth tax, and if there is it will be some small change they have in their pocket. That suggestion is just a paracetamol for the public, it makes them feel better but does nothing for their problem.
         If nothing else, this pandemic showed up the glaring inequalities inherent in this economic system. While you and I struggled to survive this pandemic the billionaire class and their government cronies, were laughing at us. It is long past the time when we should stand up and wipe that smile of their smug faces. The efficiency savings and our struggle for a decent life will continue and that struggle will become more difficult, unless we take on this billionaire driven system of greed, inequality and exploitation. It is a man made economic system, not the words from above written in tablets of stone. Let’s organise to bring it crashing down once and for all, we can create that better world for all.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

War.

Photo accreditation:

      A poem by a poet I know nothing of, Corbin Owens, but would like to know more, any info would be much appreciated.

A short man from Texas
A man of the wild
Thrown into combat
Where bodies lie piled
Hides his emotions
His blood is running cold
Just like his victories
His story unfolds
Bright, a white light
If there'd be
Any glory in war
Let it rest
On men like him
Dead men will never come back
Crosses grow on Anzio
Where no soldier sleeps
And where hell is six feet deep
That death does wait
There's no debate
So charge and attack
Going to hell and back
A man of the 15th
A man of can do
Friends fall around him
And yet he came through
Let them fall face down
If they must die
Making it easier
To say goodbye
Bright, a white light
If there'd be
Any glory in war
Let it rest
On men like him
Who went to hell and came back
Crosses grow on Anzio
Where no soldier sleeps
And where hell is six feet deep
That death does wait
There's no debate
So charge and attack
Going to hell and back
Oh gather 'round me
And listen while I speak
Of a war where hell is six feet deep
And all along the shore
Where cannons still roar
They're haunting my dreams
They're still there when I sleep
He saw crosses grow on Anzio
Where no soldier sleeps
And where hell is six feet deep
That death does wait
There's no debate
He charged and attacked
He went to hell and back

Corbin Owens

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 http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page 

Blind Eye.

 

       Lots of people are aware of the genocide being carried out by the Israeli state on the people of Palestine, obviously not enough people seem to have grasped the magnitude and horror of this 21st century genocide and land grab by a Zionist tribe that control the apartheid state of Israel. I would say that practically every state on the planet is aware, but most turn a blind eye as "business is business" as the say.  It is a ongoing daily slaughter, daily terrorising of a people enclosed in the world's largest open prison. Most of the media don't find it newsworthy, so large swaths of the world's population are unaware of this savagery being administered by what is called a legitimate government of a country. The people of Palestine are long over due the right to justice, the right to exist, on their own lands with their own culture and customs, just like you and I, when will we make that happen?

The Media Yawns at the Israeli Army's Death Squads

By Gideon Levy

         "Haaretz" Israeli terror is at it again. The Israel Defense Forces’ death squads chalked up another successful week: four bodies of innocent Palestinians piled up between the two Fridays. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between the four incidents in which four sons were killed, but the link cannot be broken.
      In all these cases, soldiers chose shooting to kill as the preferred option. In all four cases another way could have been chosen: Arrest them, aim for the legs, don’t do anything or simply don’t be there at all. But the soldiers chose to kill. It’s probably easier for them that way.
      They come from different branches of the army with different backgrounds, but they share the incredible ease with which they kill, whether they have to or not.
       They kill because they can. They kill because they’re convinced that this is how they’re expected to act. They kill because they know that nothing is cheaper than the life of a Palestinian. They kill because they know that the Israeli media will yawn and not report a thing. They kill because they know that no harm will come to them, so why not? Why not kill a Palestinian when possible?
      They killed a 12-year-old boy and a 41-year-old plumber. They killed a 17-year-old youth and a 20-year-old young man attending a funeral, all in one week. An Israeli slogan during the 1948 war went “To arms, every good man,” leading later to the concept of the IDF’s “purity of arms.” Four in one week, for no reason, with no hesitation, with no terrorist facing them. Four executions of young men with dreams, families, plans and loves.
      None of the four endangered the soldiers, certainly not in a way that justified lethal fire. Thirteen bullets at a car driving by innocently, carrying a father and his three small children. Shooting a plumber holding a wrench and claiming that he was “moving rapidly toward the soldiers.” Three bullets at the stomach of a 17-year-old who was on his way to take his brother home.
      All this can be called terror; there is no other definition. All this can be called the actions of death squads; there is no other description. It sounds horrible, but it really is horrific.
        It could be less horrific if the Israeli media bothered to report on it, possibly shocking Israelis. It could be much less horrific if IDF commanders took the necessary steps given their army’s murderous recklessness. But most of the media believed that the killing of a child interests no one or is unimportant, or both, so this shocking incident wasn’t reported on.
        If the soldiers had shot a dog – also a shocking act, of course – it would have attracted more attention. But a dead Palestinian child? What happened? Why should it interest anyone, why is it important?
       “Are you working for the Arabs?” journalist Yinon Magal maliciously tweeted, addressing Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf, virtually the only journalist who covered the boy’s funeral. This is the new journalistic ethos: Reporting the truth is tantamount to working for the Arabs.
       Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist and author. Levy writes opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focus on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Levy has won prizes for his articles on human rights in the Israeli-occupied territories.

 

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

A Jury?

 An interesting post from Craig Murray:

 

           I want to make one or two points for you to ponder while I am in jail. This is the last post until about Christmas; we are not legally able to post anything while I am imprisoned. But the Justice for Craig Murray Campaign website is now up and running and will start to have more content shortly. Fora and comments here are planned to stay open.
         I hope that one possible good effect of my imprisonment might be to coalesce opposition to the imminent abolition of jury trials in sexual assault cases by the Scottish Government, a plan for which Lady Dorrian – who wears far too many hats in all this – is front and centre. We will then have a situation where, as established by my imprisonment, no information at all on the defence case may be published in case it contributes to “jigsaw identification”, and where conviction will rest purely on the view of the judge.
        That is plainly not “open justice”, it is not justice at all. And it is even worse than that, because the openly stated aim of abolishing juries is to increase conviction rates. So people will have their lives decided not by a jury of their peers, but by a judge who is acting under specific instruction to increase conviction rates.
          It is often noted that conviction rates in rape trials are too low, and that is true. But have you ever heard this side of the argument? In Uzbekistan under the Karimov dictatorship, when I served there, conviction rates in rape trials were 100%. In fact very high conviction rates are a standard feature of all highly authoritarian regimes worldwide, because if the state prosecutes you then the state gets what it wants. The wishes of the state in such systems vastly outweigh the liberty of the individual.
         My point is simply this. You cannot judge the validity of a system simply by high conviction rates. What we want is a system where the innocent are innocent and the guilty found guilty; not where an arbitrary conviction target is met.
         The answer to the low conviction rates in sexual assault trials is not simple. Really serious increases in resources for timely collection of evidence, for police training and specialist units, for medical services, for victim support, all have a part to play. But that needs a lot of money and thought. Just abolishing juries and telling judges you want them to convict is of course free, or even a saving.
         The right to have the facts judged in serious crime allegations by a jury of our peers is a glory of our civilisation. It is the product of millennia, not lightly to be thrown away and replaced by a huge increase in arbitrary state power. That movement is of course fueled by current fashionable political dogma which is that the victim must always be believed. That claim has morphed from an initial meaning that police and first responders must take accusations seriously, to a dogma that accusation is proof and it is wrong to even question the evidence, which is of course to deny the very possibility of false accusation.

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Pegasus.

       Big Brother just gets cleverer and smarter and more devious. The latest invasion of your privacy comes from the home of an Israeli company NSO with its latest spyware Pegasus. It is capable of spying on and stealing data from any phone on its list without the owner having the slightest idea of what is going on. Each day reveals an ever growing list of journalists, activists, politicians, etc. names popping up as more is revealed of this underhand grab by anybody who can afford to purchase the spyware. There may be an outcry against this insidious infringement of our privacy, but big money is lining up to try and buy the company, as the financial Mafia know very well that there is big bucks to be made in snooping into other people's lives. That is the shape of the society we tolerate, it stinks, it is rotten to the core. For decency and justice, for personal lives free from prying eyes of corporate or state power mongers, we have to destroy it, root and branch.

The following from KNOWLEDIA:

 

       NSO's Pegasus spyware, a cyberweapon enabling state-sponsored terrorism against civil society, has outraged the world. In Israel, there's complicity – or complete indifference. NSO's Pegasus spyware, a cyberweapon that hacks cellphones and enables state-sponsored terrorism against civil society, has outraged the world. In Israel, there's complicity – or complete indifference.
       "The violation of Israeli settlers' right to ice cream": The Ben & Jerry's "outrage" is what most of Israel's media, government and the Israeli public have been obsessing over for the last 24 hours, while in the rest of the world, newspapers headlines have been publicizing Israeli surveillance company NSO's complicity in the political persecution of journalists, lawyers, politicians and human rights activists.
         Since 2017, when NSO's involvement in political persecution in Mexico was exposed, there has been a steady flow of investigations around the world into its other human rights violations, and every few months more findings have been published. And in Israel, there was, and is, general indifference, both in the public square and in the political sphere. Was Israel Aware of NSO Clients' Surveillance Targets? || NSO's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week Is Just the Start
          A charitable explanation of that indifference in Israel would be based as stemming from the (mistaken) belief that these were isolated, exceptional cases, or that the publications that exposed the misdoings were inherently "anti-Israel."
         But even now, when the trickle of information about NSO has become a tsunami, in particular its Pegasus spyware (believed to have been acquired by numerous authoritarian governments as a spyware weapon to target political opponents, journalists and human rights activists), Ben & Jerry's decision to stop selling its products in the occupied territories is still the most discussed issue in Israel – and the trigger for the loudest outrage.
         Activists and journalists protest outside Mexico's Attorney General's Office after a criminal complaint following a report their smartphones had been infected with spying software made by Israel's NSO Carlos Jasso/…

 

Further info on Pegasus: 

 Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

More Anger.

        The Protest on the Glasgow Green on Saturday, July 31st. against the avalanche of closures and sell-offs of our public assets, was, I hope, the start of some really angry voices from the citizens of Glasgow. This unprecedented number of closures and sell-offs of our public assets will affect the very fibre of our city, to the detriment of all its citizens and its future citizens. We cannot simple stand by and watch our culture and services being plundered to the benefit of the private corporate world. It's our city, or it's the private owners city, we have to decide, and the decision has to be made now, not sometime in the future when we will be denuded of all our public assets. Fighting to get them back will be a lot more difficult that fighting to hold on to them.

Some more photos from the event.

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