Who Controls The Greek Parliament???

       For some reason this video has been taken down from Real News and the embedding code has been removed from Youtube, so here is a link that will allow you to view the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nVIRG_sEf8

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

The Resurrection Of Freedom.

      I still feel strongly that the demise of the Freedom newspaper was a loss to the anarchist movement in the UK. 128 years of of a chequered history down the tubes with the statement, "Kropotkin might have started it, but we fucking finished it!" which to my mind seems an unfitting comment, which only adds insult to injury. It is good to know that there are those who are fighting hard to see the paper rise from this degrading epitaph, and once again become an important part of the UK anarchist movement. Hopefully, as they say, from the ashes of disaster, grow the roses of success.

This latest report from Northern Voices:

Who Killed FREEDOM? – update 4 – August 2015

       REGULAR readers will recall this series began as an analytical report on the destruction of FREEDOM, the world’s oldest radical newspaper. Further investigation revealed that the Board of Trustees (FFP) legally responsible for safeguarding the newspaper was as seriously dysfunctional as the FREEDOM collective.

        Our immediate fear was that having closed down the paper in 2014, the collective would sell off the FREEDOM PRESS building and walk away with a million pounds to use as they wished.  Unless we could quickly reactivate FFP there was nothing to stop them and they were already discussing the idea.

     UPDATE THREE briefly outlined the decline of Friends of Freedom Press (FFP) and reported our successful campaign to have it re-constituted.  As our ultimate aim was always to restore intellectual, ethical and political integrity to a re-launched FREEDOM newspaper we chose not to emphasise individual responsibility for the fiasco of FFP.  On 24th June 2015, the first meeting of the newly reconstituted FFP recognised that without the Northern Voices' campaign FFP would have languished.  However, Richard Parry, one of the individuals involved now rejects that view, claiming, 'If anyone was pushing to get FFP working it was me!'

      Parry challenges our account and accuses Northern Voices of inaccurate reporting so we will now analyse his response. (To minimise blame and antagonism we identify individuals only where essential and apologise in advance for necessarily tedious detail).

Read the full article HERE:

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

Just Like You And I.

      The migrants at Calais are getting a lot of publicity from our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, but never is that publicity the human face of ordinary people. We are exposed to pictures of primitive conditions in "the jungle", shadowy figures scurrying about in the dark, trying to get a free ride on a truck, or breaking through fences. No attempt is made to show them as ordinary people like you and I, they "swarm", according to Bullingdon boy Cameron, they are an inconvenience to our businesses, they cause delays to our travel. Never are they people fleeing deprivation, war and brutality, trying get a decent life for themselves and their families. Never are they ordinary people fleeing the cauldron of chaos and savagery spawned by the foreign policy of Western imperialism in their home region. Heaven forbid that they should ever be seen as desperate human beings in need of help.

This from Rabble:

     One more death last night (28/29 July) at the border. Another killed, a Sudanese man, run over by a truck. Now 11 lives taken since 1st June.
     The English press complains about these “accidents” causing traffic jams in Kent. Words fail. Below we repost two new articles from Calais Migrant Solidarity on the current situation at the border.
      But first, because even amidst so much death there is also life, here are links to some videos made in the last weeks of people playing music. One is from the Syrian camp in the town centre on 18 July, the other two of Sudanese musicians singing with the “SOAS Arabic Music Band” at a concert held in Le Channel, the main Calais music venue, on 30 May. That was a couple of days before the riot police evicted the Fort Galloo squat then mainly occupied by Sudanese people.     Thanks to the Syrian and Sudanese musicians, and the Calais-visiting musical and artistic people from SOAS.

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

Without Us.

Without Us.

You, yes you in your Armani suit and Gucci watch,

don't judge me by the label on my shirt.

I've no need for labels,

my worth is etched on my face,

emgraved on my hands.

I'm the power that tore roads through mountains

dragged logs across the earth.

Brick by brick

these hands built your "DESIRABLE RESIDENCE",

your "EXCLUSIVE RESTAURANT".

My sister made your fancy suit,

What we create we can destroy

and recreate for ourselves.

Don't you know,

without us,

you stand cold, hungry, naked?

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

Stop Them Digging Up Pollok Estate

       Once again our public spaces are under attack. Once again Pollok Estate is being targeted. There was the motorway, then "Go Ape" theme park, now it is to be dug up with replicas of WWI trenches. Why a beautiful public space such as Pollok Estate should even be suggested for this lottery funded love affair with war is incomprehensible. Are those involve blind, stupid or just bribed? Look around, if you want such a hideous theme as war trenches stick them in somebody's private land, not our beautiful country space in our city. This has to be stopped as we will see another public space place of beauty an tranquillity disappear to the glorification of war.

This is not the site for war trenches.

     Pollok Estate is not a commercial theme park, it is not a site for developing crazy war linked projects, it is a wonderful country space in the city owned by the people of Glasgow. This has to be stopped before the diggers move in and destroy another slice of our commons. We stopped GO Ape, surely we can stop this destructive, brainchild of the city council and academia.  

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

A Quiet Road And Two Wheels.

        Thursday 30th. June, what an unusual day, not a drop of rain. It wasn't as warm as I like, but never the less, I grabbed the bike and headed out, and it looked like lots of others had the same idea. Lots of friendly waves, nods and hi's as I trundled my way along. What more can you ask on a dry day, than a quiet road and two wheels. Ah, what a beautiful country.

Sleep Well, We Have Nukes.

       Going to Edinburgh for the festival fringe? Well mark your diary 6-20 August, Free exhibition at Gayfield Creative Spaces, 11 Gayfield Square, Edinburgh, EH1 3NT.
       Seventy years of film, music, art and literature come to life in this interactive exhibition of popular culture, exploring our love/hate relationship with the deadliest weapons on earth: nukes.

Admission is free and open from 10am -6pm.

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

Outta Control.

 

     We at Spirit of Revolt work hard at trying to keep alive working class history, we all realise the importance of that history. It is a record of our struggles against a very repressive system, and part of our heritage. If we don't record and make ourselves familiar with that history, we become a people without a history, without a heritage, and the present and future generations will have to go blind into those struggles.

       One of the features on our website is "Read of the Month", where we pick out something in our collection, which we think is of special interest and post it in the "Read of the Month". This month we have chosen a paper produced by the Belfast Anarchist Collective, Outta Control, issue No. 16.  We are sure you will enjoy it and hope that it will make you dig a bit deeper into our archive.

       Other copies of Outta Control are also available to read on line from our website, click HERE and scroll down to T-SOR 3-56-26.

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

Western Imperialists And Chaos.

       Who the hell knows what is going on in the Middle East? It is difficult to get accurate information from our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. Meanwhile, in our confusion thousands of ordinary innocent people die a brutal death, and thousands more are maimed and traumatised. However, you can rest assured that what is going on is no accident, no trick of fate, no streak of misfortune, but the direct result of planned actions by power hungry states and their psychopathic leaders, imperialist and religious nutters. As far as the Western imperialists are concerned, chaos in that region suits them, while the blood flows, creating divisions between the people, the area's resources are there for the plundering. Strong governments in that region doesn't suit the powerful Western imperialists, much easier to rape and plunder a land while it is in chaos. Perhaps the greatest misfortune to befall the people of that region is the fact that they are living on top of rich deposits of oil and gas, desirable commodities of the imperialist class. Turkey is playing the usual state power and politics game with the lives of the people, as it oscillates between supporting ISIS and bombing ISIS. Not through any change in its approach to humanity, but simply a desire for power.

 This from News Now:

       "Ankara's recent adoption of aggressive policies towards both the PKK and the ISIL has considerably raised the risk of terrorist attacks and sustained civil unrest inside the country," Wolfango Piccoli of risk research firm Teneo Intelligence said in a note.
      Yet on both fronts, Erdoğan looks to be hoping to seize opportunity out of crisis. He is reviving Turkey's international standing with the more robust stance on ISIL, but also undermining the pro-Kurdish opposition and bolstering nationalist support at home with the attacks on the PKK. Why now?
      Smarting from an election setback in June, when the AK Party he founded lost its majority and the pro-Kurdish opposition HDP secured enough votes to enter parliament for the first time, Erdoğan is keen to win back nationalist support.
       "The likely target here is instead the HDP. By striking hard at the PKK, the Turkish government is pressuring the HDP to pick a side," said Erik Meyersson, an assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, in an article on his website.
      "Either it denounces PKK to end violence, risking political blowback among its Kurdish base, or it adopts a more pro-Kurdish rhetoric, risking the ire of the Turkish public as well as the judiciary, which has a long history of banning Kurdish parties and politicians."
        A collapse of the Kurdish vote and fears over security could, in the event of an early election, revive the AKP vote and with it Erdoğan's ambition to change the constitution, investing his presidency with broad new powers.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Eighteen Hungry Children.

Eighteen Hungry Children.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day

eighteen of tomorrow’s people

cruelly thrown away.

When pandering to a fashion

gratifying our greed,

think, theirs is no desire

but a basic need.

Envisage a familiar face

a child that calls your name,

try to be the parent

try to place the blame.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day,

eighteen little faces

that never learnt to play.

Walk past your local school

listen to the shrill,

stand and count to sixty

imagine hunger start to kill.

Fingers must be pointed

at decisions made on high,

questions must be asked

loudly asked by you and I.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day,

eighteen precious lives

the claws of hunger slay.

WHY?

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

Where Are The Pitchforks?

         Well our “Lords and masters” are beginning to show their true colours. What a load of two-faced, corrupt, self-gratifying weasels, sitting there in their ermine, pontificating on standards, and legislating how we should behave. Then scurrying off to spend the money we pour over them, in all manner of under the table activities. 

 This isn't a painting of before the French Revolution, this today in austerity UK!!

      Lord Sewel, Lord Janner, Sir Peter Hugh Morrison, Sir Peter Hayman, Sir William Van Staubenzee, Leon Brittan, just a few of the parasites who have been exposed. The whole establishment embedded in that edifice to power and privilege, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption is riddled with unearned privilege, financial fiddling, perks, winks and nods, and back handers. 

You and I pay for each one of them to be there.

     The only vision that goes through my head when I think of this cesspool and its putrid inhabitants, is people and pitchforks, but then, that's just my vision. 

 

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

 

It's Ours, We Want It Back.

      There is a lot going on in Greece that the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will not report on. What they spew out is information supplied by the financial Mafia, the shuffling back and forth of "leaders" and the effect on the "markets". All in an attempt to convince us that this is the only way to see the world.

     However, like I said, there is a lot more going on in Greece that proves that not all the people see it that way.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

To overcome fear. TAKE OUR LIVES IN OUR HANDS

      In recent years, we have seen each day increasingly dominated by extreme poverty and exploitation. Through our inability to meet our needs, it becomes an obvious conclusion: that our life is not determined by us but by others on the basis of market conditions and profit for the bosses, local and foreign. In recent years, we have seen that the system has unleashed an all-out assault to protect its interests. The police have become the military occupation of cities. Fear and terror, the main media propaganda. Under a regime of permanent threat, the bosses invite us to compromise and apathy or manufactured decisions or more insidious methods that give the illusion of choice, such as the referendum.

      Beyond the dilemmas of power, to overcome inertia and fear.
To not delegate the solution of our problems to those who created them. The oppressed must take our lives in our hands.
    Faced with the dilemma: Memorandum of lenders or Memorandum of SYRIZA respond with self-organization and rupture, from both foreign and local bosses and their armies.
     Against the legality of the exploiters that keeps us slaves, to respond with direct action of the oppressed and collective self-organization of life and struggle.
     Refusal of obedience to the dictates of the bosses. Refusal of payments (tickets, accounts, bank debt, taxes)
       Creation of collective structures to cover our needs (squats, collective kitchens)  Solidarity between the oppressed building communities
       Get back from the bosses everything we produced with sweat and blood. Expropriation of accumulated wealth
      Reinforcement of our communities to organize self-defense and attack our oppressors

Saturday 11/7 comrades proceeded to the expropriation of the “VENUS” supermarket in the March area, on the eastern side of Thessaloniki. Products were expropriated especially basic necessities (oil, pasta, legumes, etc.) and shared out at an adjacent street market with the positive response of the people taking the products and welcoming the move.

Solitude.

Solitude.

Sometimes,

the hours take my hand,

lead me by the sweetest route

to where anguish vanishes,

shadows are soft, the moment sighs,

times quarters fuse to mist.

In this world where silence reigns

I find a safe retreat,

guard all portals against your intrusion; this is mine,

its tranquil air you cannot share,

enter,

and it's an illusion.

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

We Swim In The Vomit Of Corruption.

 

      We should all know by now that we live under the vomit of a stinking corrupt system controlled by the financial Mafia. Greece immediately comes to mind, a country where they brought to bear the full venom of their power, to overthrow the government and destroy the social fabric of the country. After five years of "austerity", which translates as poverty and deprivation for the people and the plundering of the country's assets, they have now being shackled to a perpetual regime of higher taxes, lower pensions, more unemployment, a worsening of working conditions and greater plundering of the country's assets. All this in an attempt to protect the financial Mafia's phoney house of cards balance sheets. 

The financial Mafia and national governments usually work hand in hand, to the benefit of the banksters, as they always hold the upper hand. When a government doesn't play to their rules, it, and its people are destroyed, Greece for example. 

      There is never a time, now or in the past, when these banksters, working for the financial Mafia, have got involved in a country to the benefit of the people. Everything they touch, create or modify, is to the detriment of the people and riddled with greed and corruption. From Africa, to South America, Europe to Asia, their poison has ravaged through the lives of the ordinary people, creating poverty, deprivation and wars. Just a thought, If the banks are too big to fail, they should be owned and organised as a public utility.

     The latest piece of corruption and greed to come out of this cesspool, is connected to UBS bank. This from Politics in the Zeros: 

$72 billion in now-toxic Puerto Rico bonds are stashed away in supposedly conservative bond funds and retirement accounts. Moody’s says the probability of default is now 100%. Some of the bonds have no legal protection and their recovery rate might be 33 cents on a dollar. Bonds with better protection will still get clobbered. Recovery on those will be 65-85%.
That’s not the worst of it. UBS (and probably lots of other banks too) underwrote some of the bonds and put them in their own closed-end funds. These funds are not traded. UBS sets the price. Some investors bought these bond funds with money borrowed from UBS and may have used them as collateral for more “investing.” However, UBS just decreed the collateral value on their very own Puerto Rico closed-end funds is now zero. That’s right zero. UBS is saying their own bonds are worthless. Expect a festive number of lawsuits.

Clients were warned that they can no longer use these funds as collateral for loans, even those loans they used to buy these funds with in the first place.

Thus, they will have to come up with new collateral very quickly or UBS may sell the bonds and come after them for the balance. Let’s be clear. Some of them are retirement accounts. All of them will take big hits.
Of course, banks made lots of money by underwriting slop everyone knew was risky then foisting it off on customers and clients. It’s all just terribly tragic. There will be investigations. UBS will promise to sin no more. The government will levy a stiff fine (or is this a protection racket.) No one will go to prison. Lots of people’s retirement accounts will drop in value. None of the banks care what happens to Puerto Rico.

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

Kobane.

 An Appeal:

This is why we stand with Kobane

Please watch/share this video and donate if possible to the below Firefund to help restore the heroic city of Kobanê. Those recently massacred by TURK-ISIS in Suruç were on their way to assist the city, and this is a great way to honor their sacrifice. I know and can vouch for those working on the project, and it was developed by the official Kobanê Reconstruction Board.

[Link to Give] --> http://www.firefund.net/

* I was also personal witness to the battle of Kobanê last year, and I learned more about humanity by watching the Kurds defiantly resist and repel ISIS there, than all of my years up to that point.

This is why we stand with Kobane Please watch/share this video and donate if possible to the below Firefund to help restore the heroic city of Kobanê. Those recently massacred by TURK-ISIS in Suruç were on their way to assist the city, and this is a great way to honor their sacrifice. I know and can vouch for those working on the project, and it was developed by the official Kobanê Reconstruction Board.[Link to Give] --> http://www.firefund.net* I was also personal witness to the battle of Kobanê last year, and I learned more about humanity by watching the Kurds defiantly resist and repel ISIS there, than all of my years up to that point.
Posted by International Brigades of Rojava on Thursday, 23 July 2015

Collateral Damage.

       I wrote this way back in 2001 at the start of the Afghan illegal invasion, it could equally apply to those other countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria and the rest of the world where imperialism has demanded that war is the only game in town.

FOREIGN POLICY.

Listless eyes, lifeless face

motionless body with hanging limbs

carried by a mother fleeing

foreign policy’s vicious whims.

No toys, no laughter

no playing in the sun,

a short pitiful life;

an Afghan child, 2001.

No plans, no choices

no hope by any name,

collateral damage

in the big players game.

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

Take Your Bottled Water And Get Out.

      We have on our side a vast army of brave, intelligent and compassionate people, we must surely win if we all come together. No group or groups should have to fight in isolation, solidarity is our weapon of success.

Chevron kicked out of Unist'ot'en from subMedia.tv on Vimeo.

     Yesterday Chevron, the company behind the Pacific Trails fracking pipeline, attempted to enter our unceded territories. They have no consent from our chiefs and our hereditary governance system, who are standing strong in their stance against all pipelines. Next to the Wedzin Kwah river, which is pure enough to drink from, Chevron presented us with an offering of bottled water and industrial tobacco.

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

Companions.

COMPANIONS.

Glowing embers in a fading light

Thoughts of absent friends

Memories paint the picture

Creating companions through the night.

Glimpses of that childhood mate

Running wild through youth

Spending days with indecent haste

Then finding age, became sedate.

The first love who lit a fire

That burnt with fervent flame

Causing reason to flee, before

Starting to splutter and then expire.

A youth with a boundless dream

Shaping a thousand tomorrows

A mad dance soon to become

With age, a meandering stream.

Friendships forged in pain

Companions merged by trust

Families spliced in love

Creating a priceless chain.

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