We Have Found Our Vioce, We Have Power.

       The last few years has seen the financial Mafia squeeze the world's poor with their master plan of “austerity”, in an attempt to recoup their massive gambling loses. However, it has not all gone quietly for them, the people have been getting wise to this large con-system known as capitalism. Across the globe in cities, towns and villages, anger has been growing, and awareness that this is not the only way to shape society. What is more it is no longer isolated protests in particular places with the rest of the world being unaware of that struggle. Protests against the system are country wide and even world wide, and with support and solidarity coming from around the world. 

   

    Recent years has seen the world shaken to its core by mass protests. The Arab Spring swept across North Africa, The Occupy Movement sprang up in cities across the world, we had the Indignados and food riots. No matter what that babbling brook of bullshit, the main stream media would have you believe, there is a rising tide of anger, outrage and disillusionment with the present system. The last few years have seen some of the largest protests the world has ever experienced. 

    Here are some of the figures regarding world protests taken from a recent report by Initiative for Policy Dialogue:

        Our analysis of 843 protest events reflects a steady increase in the overall number of protests every year, from 2006 (59 protests) to mid-2013 (112 protests events in only half a year). Following the onset of the global financial and economic crisis began to unfold, there is a major increase in protests beginning 2010 with the adoption of austerity measures in all world regions. Protests are more prevalent in higher income countries (304 protests), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (141 protests), East Asia and the Pacific (83 protests) and Sub-Saharan Africa (78 protests). An analysis of the Middle East and North Africa region (77 protests) shows that protests were also prevalent prior to the Arab Spring. The majority of violent riots counted in the study occurred in low-income countries (48% of all riots), mostly caused by food-price and energy-price spikes in those countries. Interestingly, the period 2006-2013 reflects an increasing number of global protests (70 events), organised across regions.

        The people's anger is driven by similar factors across the planet, anti-austerity, a call for justice, poverty, poor living standards, lack of democracy and transparency, privatisation, accountability of the political class and a complete disillusionment in the political system. There is a common thread running through all the protests, a better world for all, an end to the inequality built into the present system and a true representation of all the people. 

        People are now aware that the political decisions are not made in their interests, whether it be an authoritarian regime or the so called representative democracies, the criticisms are the same, the system is not working for the benefit of the people, they now recognise that they are not represented at the decision making table. And that applies equally to governments of the right and left. It is becoming ever more obvious that the corporate and the political are a team working in their own interests. 

      The old mix of protesters drawn mainly from trade unionists and single issue activists has been transformed into a very wide spectrum of society. We now have pensioners and youth marching with middle class, unemployed, employed and disabled. All manner of social groups are linking up as they all share the same view, that they are not being represented, the political system has failed them. 

      Where do we go from here? It is difficult to see how the powers that be, can put the genie back in the bottle, people want change, they have found their voice, and they now know that they have power. How far they will take that desire for real change, will they take control of their own lives, will they boldly use their imagination and shape that better world to their true desires, will they create a world they can proudly hand to the next generation? 

 

Images from Google:

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It's The end Of The World And I Feel Fine.

       Yep, it's the end of the world and I feel fine. Another interesting video from the Stimulator.

Front End Loader Dreams from the stimulator on Vimeo.

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We Are Further On Than You Think.

     How much more will it take?

Re-posted from arrezafe

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The Spying, Prying, Society.

        It is unacceptable the way that this surveillance, “big Brother” society, has infiltrated all aspects of our life. The moment you leave through your outside door, the cameras are tracking your every move, where you shop, where you drink, who you meet and whatever else you get up to. If you live in Glasgow, until the recent police helicopter crash on top of the Clutha, you would also have been tracked from the sky. You then go home and think, well that's me free from prying eyes. Well not quite, did you know that Facebook keeps records of all you type, even if you DON'T post it. Yes, your unpublished irate drivel that you decide not to make public, is recorded by Facebook. Facebook of course makes all that available to the various state spying organisations. You have been warned, those unguarded crazy moments in private, are being logged for future reference. In this society, you have no right to privacy.

This from Care2:

       At this point, it's a pretty safe bet that Facebook keeps track of the groups we "like" or the games we play on the site. But now, it turns out that the company has also been keeping track of the notes and comments we don't publish -- even if we never intended to share them with anyone.
       Who hasn't come home from a hard day at work or a frustrating conversation with a loved one, written a status on Facebook, and then decided at the last minute not to hit "post?" All this time, it may have seemed even safer than writing in a diary. But Facebook's policies enable to keep track of every single keystroke entered into the site -- meaning that the company can essentially peer into our private lives whenever it wants.
        To make matters worse, in the United States, Facebook has been recorded sharing data with the National Security Agency. That hasn't extended beyond American borders, but where is the line?
We have the right to censor ourselves without Facebook looking over our shoulder. Tell Facebook to stay out of our private and unpublished posts!

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

Under Repression, Creativity Still grows.

      Some moving and inspirational works of art by Palestinians, created from Israeli instruments of oppression.

More from Middle East Monitor: 

    Although Palestinians have lived under Israeli occupation and apartheid for over six decades, Western narratives usually paint them as hateful and violent, as if they were born with hatred rather than shaped by a life of displacement, discrimination, military rule, poverty and oppression.
    And to deepen the injustice of these narratives, despite being born into these harsh circumstances, the vast majority of Palestinians have still adopted nonviolent strategies of resistance in their continuing struggle for equal rights and justice. Today this nonviolent resistance movement includes: weekly protests against Israel's separation wall, mass mobilisations against Israeli policies of displacement, hunger strikes against Israel's inhumane treatment of prisoners and staging protest camps against Israel's appropriation of land and illegal settlements.

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Black Is White, And White Is Black.

        Every week or more, we hear of a death, maiming or injury, of one or more Palestinians, and that babbling brook of bullshit, the main stream media, always reports it as “retaliation” by Israel, but never do they refer to Palestinian, “retaliation”. This goes all the way back for decades, you would not be blamed for getting the impression that it is the Israeli lands that are being stolen, it is the Israeli people that were being driven from their homes, it is Israeli lands that are being occupied and developed by the Palestinians. Amazing how that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, can have you thinking black is white and white is black.

 

This from  Middle East Monitor:

 

        Once again we hear that Israel has bombed the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip "in retaliation" for something that they've done against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country will "respond". Many people would agree that a person in his position has a duty to protect his citizens. Certainly, those in the White House and Downing Street do, which is why Israel gets away with murder, quite literally. It's all down to legitimate self-defence; or so we are led to believe.

       What, though, is the reality? Why is that right of self-defence never extended to the people of Palestine? After all, it is their land which is under occupation; it is their land which is being stolen and colonised; it is their land from which they are being excluded in a decades-long act of ethnic cleansing that its proponents hope will never end.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Self-Organised Health Structure.

      In the district of Exarchia, in Athens, they have been building the future, in spite of the daily state violence and repressions. If we are to build that better world, it can't be done by patching up the holes left by the state's indifference to our conditions. It has to done by replacing the state's strangle hold on our lives. We can create that better world by being imaginative, daring and working outside the state's tentacles. Asking the state to be our benefactor is only tightening its grip on and control over our lives. This is an excellent example of what is possible, and where we should be aiming.

This is from Contra Info:

Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure (ADYE) —psychologist, pathologist/radiologist, special tutor–child psychologist, gynecologist, speech therapist

    The Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is an undertaking created through a general assembly of residents, social projects and collectives that live and act in the district of Exarchia.

It’s addressed to the local community of Exarchia, doctors, psychologists, nurses, pharmacists, but also to any other resident who would like to help.

     Basic activity of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure is to offer free primary healthcare, immediate help and psychological support as well as to promote the concept of health for all, without any discrimination for reasons of race, skin color, origin, sexual identity or religion.

     Main political conviction of its participants is being able to provide solidarity reciprocally, rather than egoistically or philanthropically, given the fact that we are all potential migrants, homeless, unemployed, precarious workers without access to healthcare services.

     We believe that self-organized health structures are not solely a response to problems in provision of medical care, filling the gap left by the State. Therefore, what we apply in practice is the way we would like to see health in the society we are envisioning, a society of true solidarity and humanity.

     We perceive the project of the Exarchia Self-organized Health Structure as a living cell of social resistance and emancipation against contemporary barbarity, thus we collaborate with people’s assemblies and base unions.

     During the operation hours of the pathology treatment room (Wednesdays and Thursdays, 18–20pm), you are welcome to bring medications that you no longer need.

56, Arachovis Street, VOX, Exarchia Square

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Merry Christmas From Athens, And Now Mexico City.

    In shades of Athens 2008, citizens of Mexico City torched a Coca-Cola sponsored Christmas tree in the centre of the city. In lots of cities the lavish city centre Christmas tree is seen as a glaring contrast to the poverty that surrounds it, and it is even more despicable when it is sponsored by a greedy, exploiting multinational corporation. The retail trade refers to the Christmas as the golden quarter, it is all geared up to consumption. From that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, we are bombarded with an array of lavish coloured boxes, all, so we are told, guaranteed to bring happiness and love. Parents feel pressurised into getting their kids the latest very expensive, coloured box, which the manufacturers will make sure, is out dated by the beginning of next year. We are all encouraged to pile on the debt to keep the shops busy, to fatten the bank accounts of the shareholders. In this society, Christmas is all about consumption. At least burning a large Christmas tree in the city centre gives people a free heat.

Photo Athens 2008.
This from Anarchist News:

Protesters Burn Coca-Cola Christmas Tree in Mexico City

       A group of anarchist protesters used a Molotov cocktail to burn a Coca-Cola sponsored Christmas tree along Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma on Friday.

      The Mexico City Metro raised their ticket price from 3 to 5 pesos on Friday, effectively making it the most expensive in the world. Thousands jumped metro turnstiles in a protest called #PosMeSalto, with many taking it to the streets, as well.

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

Solidarity Is Our Weapon For Victory.

       As usual as the people struggle for dignity, freedom and a decent standard of living, that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, turns the other way and interviews an over paid celebrity. Their silence is meant to make you believe that there is no struggle and everything is fine. While the state apparatus tries to intimidate and repress all those who dare to struggle and resist, the mainstream media reports a drug user here, and a paedophile there, and how we have to make a stand against the mythical flood of bad, bad nasty immigrants.

       We have to be our own media, we have to spread the word ourselves, we must show solidarity.

 This appeal from Labour Start: 

 

   In the last couple of days, our worst fears about the railway strike in South Korea have come true. Severe repression has kicked in as police stormed the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) -- for the first time since the union became legal back in 1999. Smashing down glass doors, spraying pepper gas, the police arrested well over 100 union activists -- but didn't find the leaders of the striking railway workers they'd come to arrest.
The KCTU has decided to call a general strike for December 28th.
     These Korean workers, fighting against privatization and for the basic human right to strike, are now on the very front lines of the battle against neo-liberalism and for human dignity.
I know that many of you will not see this message until after the Christmas holiday. I also know that 90% of the people receiving this message have not yet sent off their messages of protest and solidarity. If you're part of that 90%, please take a moment right now to send off your message demanding that the Korean government allow the railway workers to peacefully strike:

http://bit.ly/1aUdMGq

    If have already send off your message, please try to recruit just one more person who's not done so.  If everyone who supported this campaign recruited just one more person, it would be the largest online campaign LabourStart has ever waged. In addition, I'm going to ask you to do one more thing.
    The mainstream media, incredibly, is completely ignoring this important struggle.  LabourStart has tons of links to news stories, but these are largely from Korean media.
    If you visit the websites of the BBC, CNN, and Sky News, you won't see a single word about the strike, the repression, and so on.
     I've just written to all of them asking them why they're not covering the Korean strike.  I think it would help if you added your voices to mine.
Here's how to do it:

• BBC - go here and fill in the form at the very bottom of the page
• CNN - go here
• Sky News - email them at news@sky.com
  Thanks very much -- and a very festive holiday season to all of you.
  
  Eric Lee

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

  

Who Is Big Brother Protecting??

      Here in the UK we have more cameras per head of the population than any other country in Europe, if not the world. A recent visitor to Glasgow from Italy, that I spoke to, was shattered at the volume of cameras watching her every move. She said she felt intimidated and found it difficult to relax when out and about in town. She wanted to know was this array of cameras because Glasgow was a more criminal city than anywhere else. Of course the answer to that is most definitely, NO. Glasgow as well as being plastered with CCTV cameras on every street corner, lamp post, and lots at bus stops, (six at the bus stop at my home) we also have them on buses, in pubs, cafés, restaurants, underground stations, bus and train stations. On top of this, until the recent tragic crash at the Clutha pub, we had a police surveillance helicopter, fitted with an array of sophisticated surveillance equipment, flying low over the city. All of this, we are told, is for our own protection. Are we really that untrustworthy, violent, vicious a bunch of people, that we have to be watched at every move, our every trip to the shops, pub, church, train station, monitored? Would the city descend into mayhem and self destruction, if our lords and masters did not watch our every movement? 

     Forget “our protection” and think “control”. With this volume of detailed surveillance, we are living in a large prison, our minders are watching our every move, and ready to control you should you not be where the deem you should be, if they assess that you are not doing what they think you should be doing. Your patterns of behaviour are being analysed, you are being profiled. Who is big brother protecting? You are in prison.

     Though other cities in other countries, don't suffer the same intrusion of privacy that we do, there is still an anger and indignation at the volume of surveillance they do suffer, where is our anger and indignation?

       The following is a translation from Catalan and appeared in Anarchist News: 

"We refuse to live in a prison" (translated from Catalan)

Today, the society in which we are obliged to live appears ever more like a prison. Our movements are registered and our conversations listened to and controlled systematically via our cellphones. Our emails are analysed and maps of our social networks are created using, for example, Facebook and Twitter.

The national press gets indignant about the tracking of [European] politicians by the NSA but what's certain is that for a long time they have been not only complicit, but directly promoting the sharing of data on a large part of the population between European agencies and the NSA. And on the other hand, we have not seen the same indignation for the dozens of cases of spying on activists carried out by CESICAT [an extralegal or private security apparatus formed by the government of Catalunya, as part of its bid for independence].

An element of devastating quotidianity in this web of social control are the surveillance cameras. They seek to train us to accept "for our own safety" being filmed from the moment we leave our houses in the morning until the moment when we come home at night. Some cities are already installing systems of integrated surveillance with all the cameras in a region linked up to facial and other recognition software.

None of this surprises us, since the very nature of the State is to want to exercise absolute power over life. Freedom is not possible under a power that aims to control and surveille our lives in their entirety. Any attempt to transform this world in accordance with our needs or to recover control over our own lives will be surveilled and punished by the State as an act of criminality. For this reason the struggle for freedom must take the path of illegality.

We refuse to live in a prison. We refuse to be listened to and followed. We refuse to have our movements recorded. We refuse to allow anyone to be obliged to grow up in a world in which they will be recorded, filmed, Twittered, and localised 24 hours a day.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Fascist Infiltrators.

        A threat protest groups must always be alive to is that they can be infiltrated by the far-right, and this seems to be the case in the Italian “Pitchfork Protests”. There are reports that groups sympathetic to Greece's fascist party, Golden Dawn, have become involved in the “Pitchfork Protests”.

 This from Channel 4 News: 

   Last week students demonstrated in Turin, Italy's main unions rallied outside parliament, and protesters marched in Venice and Ancona. An Italian neo-fascist fringe group also scaled the front of the European Commission's Rome headquarters and tore down the EU flag.
    Ten people including the deputy president of Casapound, far-right activists who aid the poor and venerate former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, were arrested and charged with theft, resisting authority and unauthorised protest, police said.

Read the full report HERE:

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

Quality Of Life = Length Of Life.

       If life expectancy is an indicator of quality of life, and it is, then we in Scotland can be worried. Scotland has the lowest life expectancy levels in the EU. Men in Scotland have a life expectancy of 76 and women 80, but in the most deprived 15% of areas in Scotland, (2007/08) it is 57.5 for males and 61.9 for females. Whereas the European average is 79.7 for men and 84.8 for women.

In that very low average for Scotland, Glasgow languishes at the bottom as the lowest in Scotland, with 71 for men and 78 for women.

 Cartoon by Frank Boyle:

         Of course across Glasgow that average rises and falls as you move from the more affluent areas to the more deprived. The area with the lowest life expectancy is the Calton district of Glasgow, with a life expectancy of 54 for males. While not many miles away just on the outskirts of Glasgow we have Lenzie with a male life expectancy of 82. If we move south of the Scottish border to the London district of Kensington and Chelsea, we have the highest life expectancy in the UK with a figure of 89 for males.

        These vast fluctuations are an indictment of a system that not only tolerates such wide variations in quality of life, but fosters and perpetuates a grossly unequal society. Why should one person expect to die younger than another born just a handful of miles away? These variations in life expectancy also show the callousness and injustice of the raising of the pension age to 70. What does that mean for those living in the 15% most deprived areas in Scotland whose life expectancy is in the 50's?

        There is no democracy, there is no justice in the midst of such disparity in quality of life, and we can't expect a band of millionaire parasites to put matters right. It would be against their own personal interests. We will have to do that ourselves.

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