Do The Peple Of Scotland Deserve This??

 

        The UK as a whole has the highest prison population per head of population in the whole of Western Europe. However Scotland takes pride of place as the leader in incarcerating its population with the highest per head of population. We're a wee country but we're very good at locking our people up in cages.

      This from Scottish Legal News:

      Scotland has the highest prison population rate per head in Western Europe, with 150 people held in prison for every 100,000 of the population, according to a new report.
       Meanwhile, in England and Wales there were more than 140,000 admissions into prison in 2017—the highest number in western Europe, according to report Prison: the facts, which reveals that, despite the number falling in recent years, England and Wales still have over 40,000 more admissions to prison than Germany, the second-highest—which has a significantly larger national population.
     The comparative figures are taken from the latest available Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics.
       The rate of prison admissions, which accounts for the effects of differences in national populations, shows that England and Wales have a rate approximately three times that of Italy and Spain, and almost twice as high as Germany, with 238 prison admissions for every 100,000 people.
       The UK as a whole continues to be an outlier in western Europe in its use of custody, with significantly higher prison populations than other countries. Scotland’s prison population rate per head, 150 per 100,000 of the population, is closely followed by England and Wales, with 139 per 100,000. Northern Ireland by contrast imprisons 76 per 100,000.
      Scotland also has the highest proportion of probationers under supervision for “offences against persons” in all of Europe.

     While the UK and Scottish government continue to believe that we are somehow, a more criminal population than the rest of Western Europe and proceed with this ancient and barbaric practice of caging people, they refuse to consider the conditions in which they are incarcerated.  

From The Guardian: 

    Europe’s anti-torture watchdog has described conditions in Scotland’s overcrowded prisons as an emergency situation, in a damning report that highlights a rise in drug-related violence, the overuse of segregation, and inmates confined to their cells for lengthy periods of time, sometimes in less than 3m2 of living space.
    Julia Kozma, who led the delegation of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) when they visited five Scottish prisons last October, described witnessing an influx of new arrivals at HMP Grampian. She said it was “like an emergency situation” as staff searched frantically for spare mattresses.
     “We don’t see the numbers going down so the emergency is becoming more and more the norm,” she added.

CCTV shows moment prison officers laugh as they drag prison inmate down a prison corridor.

 

     The blame for this inhumane and barbaric situation lies squarely at the feet of the state and its loaded judicial system. The state oversees a system of intolerable inequalities and continues to pass legislation that ensures that this system of exploitation and inequality persists. Though its priority is to unsure that the wealth and power of the predatory class is preserved, by caging those who dare to transgress its loaded legalities that are legislated to protect that class, they in no way provide for the humane treatment of those so accused and caged.

         The report reserves its greatest criticisms for the treatment of inmates at the Cornton Vale women’s prison, where the delegation found “women who clearly were in need of urgent care and treatment in a psychiatric facility, and [who] should not have been in a prison environment”. They included one woman who had bitten through the skin and muscle of her arm down to the bone and another who set fire to her hair in her cell. Since the delegation’s visit it is understood these women have been transferred to a medium secure psychiatric facility.

     There is no democracy or justice in a society that cages humans and then heaps humiliation, degrading and often violent conditions on them. If we want a better society then we have to treat all our people as human beings. Our present economic system does not allow for that.

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

Workers Know Your History, Hamburg, 1923.

         An email from a comrade in Germany marking October 23rd 1923, uprising in Hamburg 

1923 - 2019  

    

       We commemorate the Hamburg uprising 96 years ago. In the early hours of October 23, 1923, our comrades stormed Hamburg police stations and disarmed the police. The signal for the revolution was to come from Saxony, but there was no revolutionary uprising.

       In Hamburg it was believed that there was fighting everywhere. But only in   Hamburg was fighting. For 3 days the workers fought against a heavily armed superiority.
       If there had been our German October 1923, how much suffering would have been spared mankind. No fascism, no support for Franco by the Nazis, no World War II and no Auschwitz...

     In the district of Barmbeck, which Ernst Thälmann called "immortal" in his 1925 speech on the Hamburg Uprising, the fiercest battles raged. Today, when I walk through the streets of this, my district, I feel sadness and pride, but no resignation. Our struggle is just, whether here or elsewhere in the world.

Larissa Reissner wrote about the Hamburg uprising.

Red greetings from Hamburg ! Reinhardt

Read Larissa Reissner's rendering of these heroic fighters HERE:

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

And The Fox Makes Friends With The Hounds!!

 

       I don't often poke my nose into the "Brexit" pantomime, or should that be tragedy, as I feel I would be entering a very badly working dilapidated  shithouse. The Boris Brexiteers are all cock-a-hoop over a trade deal with America peddling the illusion that we would get a "good" deal. However what the public should be aware of is that America is raw capitalism, capitalism with the gloves off, bare-knuckle capitalism, and will eagerly gobble up anything and everything that will make a profit for the predatory moguls that control the levers of capitalism. However, this article has some interesting facts, so I thought it was worth repeating in full.

This from True Publica:

      By TruePublica Editor: In the magical illusions of the smoke and mirrors ideology behind Brexit, we should be acutely aware of what a trade deal with America means. In our article this week – The MAGA Agenda – it seems that among those on the radical right – the government, their acolytes and corporate donors – there is a widely held belief that a favourable trade deal can easily be negotiated with the United States. But this belief flies in the face of historical evidence as the US has proved on more than one occasion to be a ruthless and exploitative (so-called) partner where its own economic interests are involved. It is naive to think that America will be a cooperative and fair ally or partner in the common interest – it won’t. And being a sycophant of Trump’s America – with his MAGA agenda will prove to be the final nail in Britain’s coffin.
      The radical right – members of the ERG, such as – Michael Gove, Iain Duncan-Smith, Priti Patel and Chris Grayling to name a tiny handful are driving Britain into the arms of a country that exploits everyone except the very few. American values are not British values and we should never dismiss the scale of damage that the USA inflicted upon Britain over the decades since the last World War.
     For Boris Johnson to use inflammatory language to stoke up nationalism and adopt Churchillian euphemisms as a means to his own ends would make those who lost their lives to save this country from all sorts of evils turn in their graves. The fact is that the Americans exploited our position during the War and especially from 1945 for their own financial and economic gain. They were not just duplicitous, they were shameless about it and Britain should never trust them again – much as the Kurds in Northern Syria have just found out to their horror.
       In the background, as the political warfare of Brexit rages on in the mainstream media, various Bill’s that relate to Brexit and future trade deals are being heard. For any politician to say that the latest Brexit deal continues to protect the rights of workers, protects the environment, food and medical supplies is simply lying, blindfolded or doesn’t understand the deceitful machinations of this government.
        On the announcement of a new Trade Bill (1), Jean Blaylock, trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said:

     “Parliament needs to have a say on trade deals so that unaccountable government ministers aren’t able to use them to slash regulations, entrench privatisation and block climate action. This should be a simple, basic requirement in any democracy. MPs, Lords, business and civil society have all steadfastly been raising this for the past two years, and earlier this year Parliament introduced a clause in the old Trade Bill to guarantee that trade deals will be voted on. Yet Johnson’s government is so scared of having to answer to Parliament that it plans to have a new Trade Bill that conveniently leaves out all of these democratic provisions.
      “We know that Johnson’s government wants to do a trade deal with the US in a hurry. Trump’s administration has already told us what it wants in deal, and it’s very worrying – chlorine chicken, higher prices for medicines, and an end to any attempt to rein in the power of Silicon Valley big tech firms like Google, Amazon and Facebook. A deal like that demonstrates the need for Parliament to be able to review what’s on the table and have a vote.”

      The big problem with having made a career out of writing fantasies and falsities as Boris Johnson has done is that no-one believes the promises of habitual liars. And so it is with the one institution that stands heads and shoulders above all others in the UK – the NHS.
       Last month, promises made by Boris Johnson that the NHS is “off the table” in negotiations over a post-Brexit trade deal with the US simply cannot be relied upon. As Nick Dearden says:

      “Johnson’s promise to protect the NHS should be taken with a very large pinch of salt, because the threat to our health system will be written across a US-UK trade deal, from the new powers it gives big pharmaceutical corporations to charge higher prices for medicines, to restrictions on preventing Big Tech companies from mining the NHS database.

     This will go well beyond a US trade deal, however. Johnson’s government is talking to countries across the world who will want to use Brexit to insist on even more damaging environmental policies from the UK. Only last week Malaysia said that reducing regulations on palm oil production would be the price of a post -Brexit free trade deal.”
      The other point to remember is this – why would any country rely on America in any deal to play fair and by the rules. They don’t even in their own country. American’s don’t trust the regulatory agencies to do their work properly or professionally when most of them are drenched in corruption or bribery scandals. Take for instance the USDA’s National Organic (food) Program. Described by national media organisations as a ‘feckless agency‘ involving its complicity in what might be the biggest consumer scam in decades: the sale of phoney organic food. It’s a scam that’s been going on for years and years and yet the federal government looks the other way. Millions of American consumers have been — and are still being — duped, buying pricier “organic” products that are imported into the country without the correct licences or country of origin certificates, repackaged and sold on – making huge profits along the way. Food products can arrive from places like China, South America or Africa, be covered in pesticides and ridden with deadly heavy metals and sold as healthy organic produce simply by repackaging with misleading attractive labels.
      Corporations all across America consider being fined billions of dollars for fraud and corruption as the cost of doing business. People and consumers are the last consideration. And healthcare companies are some of the worst in America. As the Forbes said at the end of last year – in an article entitled ‘Shame, Scandal Plague Healthcare Providers In 2018′ – “Unfortunately, the problems (of corruption) are endemic and deeply embedded in medical culture.”
       Nowhere are these ill-effects more apparent than in cancer care. A recent report titled “Unintended Consequences of Expensive Cancer Therapeutics” found that the last 71 chemotherapy agents to receive FDA approval extend life by an average of only 2.1 months—time often spent in pain, isolated from friends and family – purely for the purposes of making bigger profits. It’s extortion practices even extend to the heartbreak of a family member dying before your eyes.
        In America today – two-thirds (66.5%) of all bankruptcies are caused by not having the right health insurance. Last year, 530,000 families lost everything – homes, savings, assets built for retirement – to save a family member from illness – only for everyone else in the family to be pauperised. A recent study found that only 40 per cent of Americans have enough saved to cover a $1,000 emergency expense – and medical care comes with co-pay (percentage of contribution) costs that can roll into thousands depending on the cover.
       In 2019, the average price of health insurance rose above $20,000 for families that obtain their coverage through work. They pay just over $6.000 assuming that someone in the family has a good job as they employer stumps up $14,000 per employee – per year. The Keiser Foundation report into American healthcare costs said:

        “These numbers are grotesque. Insuring a single family for a year costs almost as much as a Honda Civic. This fact should be a subject of daily outrage, and it probably would be if more workers realized just how much of their compensation is devoured by the cost of health care. After all, every dollar a company pays to Aetna or Cigna is a dollar it might otherwise be able spend on salaries and wages.”

       Boris Johnson knows this. He was born in America. From faking his ancestral history to bendy bananas, eurocoffins, and the banning of prawn cocktail crisps. Boris Johnson has been fired more than once for lying and made to apologise for outrageous allegations such as he did about the Hillsborough disaster. From his philandering and now accusations of corruption with a pole dancing ‘entrepreneur’, Boris Johnson’s honesty and integrity in any area of life mean nothing. He will be as happy selling Britain down a river without a paddle for a bit of personal glory and people will believe him.
       Was it Noel Coward who once said – “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
      This trade deal cannot be trusted to be in the best interests of Britain if left to the whims and fantasies of this government.

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

We've Surely Learnt Our Lesson!!

        In 2008 the "crisis" hit the world, the choice of word "crisis" was very clever. A crisis suggests an event that everybody should run to assist in helping to alleviate, but this was not a crisis for everybody, this was a crisis for the money people from the excessive gambling of the financial Mafia. However to resolve their disastrous failure in the worlds biggest gambling casino the financial Mafia demanded that the governments of the world bail them out by plundering the public purse. We all know what followed was years of "austerity" for the ordinary people, slashing of social services, attack on wages and working conditions, a vicious attack on those receiving social benefits. The financial mafia recovered, but we the people still haven't recovered to where we were in living standards in 2008.

    The leeches that make up the financial Mafia have learnt nothing from that experience, the next "crisis" looms large on the horizon. For the first time in about ten years the US Federal Reserve is forced to lend emergency cash to banks to shore up their cracking structures. In the psyche of the financial Mafia the gambling frenzy didn't go away, it is their methodology for their get rich quick ideology. Most "financial experts" clam that the world's major banks are even more concentrated, and in the category of "too big to fail" than they were in 2008, and are more likely to fail in the inevitable coming financial crunch. After more than a decade of a very limp recovery, the global economy is looking at another "crisis". The bailouts and the easy cheap money policies, in no way went to fix the structural failures inherent in the capitalist system. The cheap money policies facilitated another boom in speculation and irresponsible lending, boosting share prices without any increase in real value and building that massive debt bubble that is now about to burst. 

       When that bubble burst, and it will, and soon, the failing banks and corporations will once again turn to the governments to heap the problem on the backs of the ordinary people. Surely this time round, unlike our capitalist gamblers, we have learnt something, and we will not tolerate an other decade or more of austerity to hit our families, so that the financial Mafia can again get back its massive gambling debts. We should by now be well aware of the game they play at our expense, and should take a more revolutionary road to protect ourselves and our families from this never ending cycle of bursting bubbles that heap poverty and misery on us, while the perpetrators regain all their plundered wealth.

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

The Shady Figures Behind Extinction Rebellion.

         I have tried a couple of times to express my opinion of Extinction Rebellion, that green capitalism is not the saviour of the planet, it is the next phase of capitalism's destruction of the planet, it is flawed and has a hidden agenda. It is an attempt to re-finance capitalism by means of a green agenda. At the risk of being a bore, I'll re-post this article, not a new one, but worth reading, it gives you an opportunity to peruse through  a catalogue of information that could perhaps give you insight into the background and make up of Extinction Rebellion.

This from ACORN: 

         The global movement calling for action on climate change has captured the imagination and enthusiasm of thousands of people who care about the future of our world.
       However, alarming evidence has emerged, suggesting that this movement is being manipulated by business interests who aim not to save the planet but to save capitalism, not to halt the environmental crisis but to profit from it, not to protect nature but to commodify it.
         We don’t want the powerful positive energy of nature lovers and environmentalists to be shunted into the sterile dead end of “green capitalism”, used as a PR tool to make it easier for governments to raid our collective piggy banks and channel trillions of pounds and dollars into the pockets of venture capitalists who have leapt aboard the “climate justice” bandwagon in the hope of getting very rich.
        For this reason we have put together this page of useful links, so people can study the evidence and come to their own conclusions.

Rebellion Extinction: a capitalist scam to hijack our resistance. An Acorn report.

So who exactly is Christiana Figueres? An Acorn report.

“The X Agenda”: what does XR actually stand for? An Acorn report.

Deepening our resistance, from Acorn 49.

Capitalist vultures target Jamaican sunshine, from Acorn 51.

Skin deep solutions & Greta and the story-tellers, from Acorn 52.

“The opposite of rebellion” – Paris activists slam XR leadership. An Acorn report.

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg for Consent by Cory Morningstar.

Volume I

1. The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.
2. The Inconvenient Truth Behind Youth Co-optation.
3. The Most Inconvenient Truth: “Capitalism is in Danger of Falling Apart”.
4. The House is On Fire! & the 100 Trillion Dollar Rescue.
5. The New Green Deal is the Trojan Horse for the financialization of nature.
6. A Decade of Social Manipulation for the Corporate Capture of Nature.
Volume II

1. A Design to Win; A Multi-Billion Dollar Investment.
2. Controlling the Narrative.
3. To Plunder What Little Remains: It’s Going To Be Tremendous.
4. For consent: they mean business.
5. The behavioural change project – “to change everything”.
6. Natural climate manipulations.

La fabrication de Greta Thunberg – pour consentement, acte I : l’économie politique du complexe industriel à but non lucratif

La fabrication de Greta Thunberg – pour consentement, acte II : la vérité dérangeante derrière l’embrigadement des jeunes
La fabrication de Greta Thunberg – pour consentement, acte III : la vérité la plus dérangeante : « le capitalisme est en danger d’effondrement »

La fabrication de Greta Thunberg – pour consentement, acte IV : la maison est en feu ! & le sauvetage à 100 billions de dollars

La fabrication de Greta Thunberg – pour consentement, acte V : Le New Deal vert est le cheval de Troie de la financiarisation de la nature

La fabrication de Greta Thunberg, acte VI [crescendo] : une décennie de manipulation sociale pour la captation de la nature par les grandes entreprises

Extinction Rebellion training, or how to control radical resistance from the ‘obstructive left’ by Cory Morningstar.

In defense of Cory Morningstar’s Manufacturing For Consent Series by Hiroyuki Hamada.

Unpacking Extinction Rebellion — Part I: Net-zero Emissions by Kim Hill.

Unpacking Extinction Rebellion — Part II: Goals and Tactics by Kim Hill.

Unpacking Extinction Rebellion — Part III: The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Kim Hill.

A Propos d’Extinction Rebellion — Partie I: zero emission nette par Kim Hill.

A Propos d’Extinction Rebellion — Partie II: solutions et tactiques promues par Kim Hill.

A Propos d’Extinction Rebellion — Partie III: La 4e révolution industrielle par Kim Hill.

Lettre ouverte aux militant·e·s d’Extinction Rebellion par collectif Désobéissance écolo Paris.

Extinction Rebellion : ni désobéissance, ni obéissance, mais servilité et crédulité – Paris Luttes.

Quelques heures sur le pont de la Concorde avec Extinction Rebellion – Paris Luttes.

Jutta Ditfurth zu Extinction Rebellion: „Irrationalismus einer Endzeit-Sekte“

Just Say No to Fake Action by Wrong Kind of Green.

Trees don’t grow on money – or why you don’t get to rebel against extinction by Tim Hayward.

Extinction Rebellion: Socialist Revolution by Simon Elmer, Architects for Social Housing.

Capitalising on Crisis: Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal for Capitalism by Simon Elmer, Architects for Social Housing.

Empty Gestures by the South Essex Heckler.

Greta Thunberg, PR and the “Climate Emergency” by Brian Davey of The Foundation of the Economics of Sustainability.

Greta Thunberg, Green Barbarism and #ClimateStrike – Azhar Moideen on why “climate” activism is against the interests of the Indian working class.

Between the Devil and the Green New Deal, by Jasper Bernes in Commune magazine.

Entre le marteau et l’enclume du Green New Deal – French translation of Jasper Bernes article.

Entro o Diabo e o Green New Deal – Portuguese translation of Jasper Bernes article.

Green New Deals – The Degrowth Perspective. Features links to some useful articles challenging “green growth”.

The climate movement: what next? by Clive L. Spash, ecological economist.

Of ecosystems and economies: re-connecting economics with reality by Clive L. Spash and Tone Smith.

Le mouvement climat, et après ? par Clive L. Spash, économiste écologiste.

The Paris Agreement is a suicide pact – this is why by Clive L. Spash;

Le capitalisme vert utilise Greta Thunberg, par Isabelle Attard.

Green capitalism is using Greta Thunberg by Isabelle Attard (English translation)

‘Green growth’ won’t save the planet by Oliver Taherzadeh and Benedict Probst in The Ecologist.

Towards a revolutionary ecology: an interview with Max Wilbert.

Wind energy development, conflict and resistance. Interview with Alexander Dunlap.

Podcast. For Your Consent: Climate Activism and the Financialization of Nature. Last Born in the Wilderness interview with Cory Morningstar.

Podcast. Saving the Earth or Saving Capitalism? The Inconvenient Truth Behind Today’s Youth Climate Campaigns. Global Research interview with Cory Morningstar.

Podcast. The Green New Deal Will Not Save Us. Jasper Bernes of Commune magazine talks to This Is Hell!

Podcast. Between the Devil and New Green Deal. Last Born in the Wilderness interview with Jasper Bernes.

Video. Selling Extinction by Prolekult.

Video. Who runs Extinction Rebellion? Heiko Khoo reports.

Video. Earth Trek: The Economics of the Future. On the commodification of life.

Video. A Message to Greta Thunberg and the Youth Climate Strikers from Charles Eisenstein.

Video. My alarm about Climate Change & Extinction Rebellion by anarchist Andrew Flood on his new We Only Want the Earth Youtube channel.

Video. Andrew Flood: Violence, Non-violence and Extinction Rebellion.

Video. Ce qui cloche avec Greta Thunberg. Tatiana Ventôse sees through the hype.

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

A "Letter"?

       It seems that petulant Boris has sent something to the EU but hasn't signed it. That reminds of of an incident away back in my slavery employment days, when I was tasked with sending a large bundle of pre-printed letters to clients. There was so many that I just rapidly put in the name and address of the client added the info the company wanted me to insert, and duly popped them in the post. Some days later, the head office got a "letter" from a gent who said "I received this piece of paper through the post this morning, I assume your were trying to send me a letter. Perhaps you should instruct your staff that a letter requires a date and a signature. Therefore I will just simply ignore this piece of paper and drop it in the bin".
       I don't know if this is the law or just protocol but worth thinking about on this occasion.

Smug arrogant petulant dangerous prat. Boris.

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

Dissent And The State.

          A short video of a day of protest in Catalunya, October 18th, 2019. A brief view of how democracy works in Europe, how the state treats dissent, the force and brutality varies from state to state, but the methodology is easily recognisable, militarised police, and random violence against protestors. A methodology that should surely shatter the illusion of democracy. Thanks Loam for the link.

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

France, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, Now Catalunya---.

 

        Across the globe people are taking to the streets, to mention a few, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, France, and elsewhere, now Catalunya, the demands may differ, but they all have something in common, dissatisfaction with the system. A realisation that the system isn't delivering what it says it will, it is not meeting the demands of the vast majority of the people.

This from crimethinc:

 

  Catalunya: A Week of Escalation
Could the Riots Open a Horizon Beyond National Sovereignty? 

        Starting Monday, in response to draconian sentences imposed on politicians who promote Catalan independence, tens of thousands of people across Catalunya have engaged in sustained rioting and disruption. Although the majority of the movement remains pacifistic, a few thousand participants have rejected the leadership of political parties and organizations, opting for open confrontation with police. The various mobilizations are still taking place in confluence, however, making it very difficult for the police to control. Protesters have reportedly used caltrops, Molotov cocktails, and paint balloons to disable police riot vans, while keeping individual officers at a distance with lasers and slingshots and driving away helicopters with fireworks. In the following report, we review the events of the past week and explore what is at stake in this struggle.

       As anarchists, we have a more robust conception of self-determination than mere national sovereignty. All governments are based on the asymmetry of power between ruler and ruled; nationalism is just one of several means by which rulers seek to turn us against each other so we don’t unite against them. We consider it instructive that the Catalan police have worked closely with Spanish national police throughout the last several years of repression; even if Catalunya gains independence, we are certain that independent Catalan police and courts will continue to repress those who fight against capitalism and seek true self-determination. At the same time, there is a longstanding tradition of anarchist and anti-state activity in Catalunya, and we are inspired to see some of this coming to the fore in resistance to the violence of the Spanish state. It is possible that the latest escalation of conflict in the streets of Catalunya will be a step towards the radicalization of the entire movement and the delegitimizing of state solutions.

Let’s look closer to see.

A detailed day to day report on the events: 

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

Thomas Muir Festival 2019.

         Thomas Muir, one of Scotland's many principled radicals, one of those severally dealt with by the authorities he challenged, is being celebrated in a festival at the end of October until the end of November. Well worth marking your diary.

Thomas Muir Festival 2019.

Whats on / All Events

         Events and times may change, please check website and/or our facebook prior to attending an event, to make sure times & details are up to date

Thomas Muir Symposium:  Tuesday 22nd. October.

‘Commemorating Thomas Muir:

Past, Present and Future’

Drawing on speakers from Scotlands’ academic community, secondary school pupils and members of local history societies. Afternoon includes talks and music

Where: St Ninians High, Kirkintilloch

Time: 12.45pm to 4.30pm

Free: Booking required -

email address: dwmmartindon@live.co.uk

University of Glasgow Thomas Muir Lecture. Thursday 31st. October

on Democracy and Civil Society

Inaugural Lecture: Professor Sir T.M. Devine, 'Unyielding Power: Foundations of Elite Supremacy in Eighteenth Century Scotland'

Where: Kelvin Hall, Glasgow

Time: 6pm Free (Booking essential)

2019 East Dunbartonshire Schools

Art Competition & Exhibition, 16th.-24th. November.

Finalist Exhibition: Art work short listed and selected by a panel of judges. Over all winning pupil and school will be announced.

Ages: P1 to S6

Where: Thomas Muir Coffee Shop, Bishopbriggs, G64 1RP

Time: 9.30am to 4pm (Mon - Sat) Free (Drop in)

Michelle McManus

& The Flaming Blackhearts in Concert. Friday 29th. November.

Unique, intimate venue with superb acoustics

Support: Jo Mango

Where: Cadder Church, Bishopbriggs G64 3JJ

Time: 7:00pm for 7.30pm to 10.15pm

Price: £14 + booking fee

Booking info...

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

Between Dignity And Poverty.

A small extract from an article by Chris Hedges:

       Immanuel Kant coined the term “radical evil.” It was the privileging of one’s own interest over that of others, effectively reducing those around you to objects to be manipulated and used for your own ends. But Hannah Arendt, who also used the term “radical evil,” saw that it was worse than merely treating others as objects. Radical evil, she wrote, rendered vast numbers of people superfluous. They possessed no value at all. They were, once they could not be utilized by the powerful, discarded as human refuse.
        We live in an age of radical evil. The architects of this evil are despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction. They are stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms. They are orchestrating the growing social inequity, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a cabal of global oligarchs. They are destroying our democratic institutions, turning elected office into a system of legalized bribery, stacking our courts with judges who invert constitutional rights so that unlimited corporate money invested in political campaigns is disguised as the right to petition the government or a form of free speech. Their seizure of power has vomited up demagogues and con artists including Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, each the distortion of a failed democracy. They are turning America’s poor communities into internal militarized colonies where police carry out lethal campaigns of terror and use the blunt instrument of mass incarceration as a tool of social control. They are waging endless wars in the Middle East and diverting half of all discretionary spending to a bloated military. They are placing the rights of the corporation above the rights of the citizen.

      Sometimes I read a phrase, a paragraph, a few words, and they sink in through the dark labyrinth of my ageing mind and out trickles a stream of words. the following is my latest such a trickling.

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 bread,
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.

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

The Rent Strike Revisited And Lessons To Be Learned.

        The Glasgow Rent Strike 1915, culminated in a mass march and demonstration outside of the Glasgow Sheriff court which forced the government to introduce the "Rent Restriction Act, 1915" which benefited tenants across the country. 

        A Glasgow group is organising some events during mid November to mark the anniversary of this magnificent working class victory. Those wishing to take part are welcome to attend the next organising meeting which will be held on Sunday 27th. October, 1:30pm in the Electron Club at the CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. All welcome, hope to see you there with your thoughts and ideas.

      There will be march/rally held outside the Sheriff Court and  film show. Details of the march/rally have yet to be finalised, and will be made public as soon as possible, the details of the film show are:

Free Film Show,

Date: Monday, 11th. November.

Time: 7:30pm.

Venue: CCA cinema,

           350 Sauchiehall Street,

           Glasgow.  

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

Empathy.

 

           I posted this away back in 2010, and we are still at it, fostering hate in the defence of the wealth and power of the privileged few in the capitalist world. If only we would walk a mile in somebody else's shoes. Or as Rabbie Burns said, 

" O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us"

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

Ecuador, The Struggle Continues.

           Anybody who stands up to state repression or struggles for justice, knows full well that the state apparatus will use whatever force is needed to try and subdue the protestors. The state needs control of the population to safeguard its power, wealth and privileges. The people living on that plot of land called Ecuador are at present feeling the wrath of a frightened state institution as its brutality intensifies in a desperate battle to gain control of the population. Despite this force the people continue their struggle for justice and freedom.
         An extract from an article on Crimethinc:

 

 

     --------On October 8, thousands of indigenous people occupied the Parliament building in Quito. Can you describe for us what happened there?

       In fact, the Indians arrived on October 7, on Monday, and there was a pitched battle in Quito that lasted five or six hours involving students, social movements, and other residents of Quito who were trying to keep the police busy in order to enable the indigenous comrades to enter. Recall that we are living in a State of Exception, so the military is on the streets and had blocked Quito’s main entrances, the North and South entrances, to prevent indigenous people from other provinces from entering. However, the people were so well-organized that the military did not have enough intelligence at their disposal to stop them. The fact that the fight took place in the city center also opened up gaps that enabled the indigenous people to reach the historic center.
      Just as we pushed the police back, we saw the crowded trucks coming and the bikes that accompanied the indigenous caravan. It was a very exciting moment.
      They went directly to El Arbolito Park, next to the Salesian University, where logistical support for the movement is organized. The following day, a rally took place at Parque El Arbolito and people agreed to take the Assembly (the parliament building in Quito). When we arrived there, a first delegation entered, then gradually more and more people entered, while there were thousands of people at the door of the Assembly wanting to enter. Police shot tear gas canisters at people, which created a mass panic. People could have been trampled to death because many could not breathe; people ran in various directions. Meanwhile, police continued to fire tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at protesters. At that moment, a very great repression began.
      The Assembly, strategically speaking, is like a small fort perched on a hill; to protect it, the police positioned themselves at a higher point so that snipers could hit the protesters with tear gas canisters and also live rounds. As a result, the police inflicted a large number of injuries and some deaths, as they were in a strategic position.
      The idea of going to the Assembly was one of the actions that the indigenous movement had decided to carry out during these days in Quito. Until yesterday [Wednesday, October 9], there was a lot of concern because there was no clear strategy, while the government refused to back down and kept increasing the repression. The fact that police sent tear gas into shelters and peace encalves such as the Salesian University and the Catholic University caused a great deal of outrage; in a way, this was a blow to the government, because the news circulated despite the news shutdown that the mainstream media and the government have been trying to maintain.
       Today [Thursday, October 10], in the morning, eight police officers were captured by the movement and brought to the large popular and indigenous assembly at the House of Culture, where there were about 10,000 or 15,000 people. The reporters who were there ended up broadcasting the assembly live, even if they didn’t do it in the best way. In a way, this broke the media siege by disclosing, for example, the fact that an indigenous leader of Cotopaxi, Inocencio Tucumbi, had been killed. He had lost consciousness after inhaling a lot of tear gas and was then trampled by a police horse. That had not appeared in the mainstream media. Suddenly, the dead appeared on the big television channels and it became clear to the general public that—yes, the government is killing people and carrying out repression at an extreme level!--------

Read the full article HERE:

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

Extinction Submission!

       On Extinction Rebellion, I have made my views known in a couple of previous posts, I still hold the view that those behind this movement are not what they portray themselves to be, and are leading the public along a road that will not solve the problem of possible planet extinction.

     This is an extract from an article, which I endorse, from Acorn:

         We are well aware that there are many genuine grassroots activists involved in Extinction Rebellion protests, people we know are on our side. But more and more questions are being asked about the nature of the organisation itself, about the true agenda of the leadership lurking behind a flimsy illusion of horizontality.
         The non-existence of a mass radical anti-capitalist movement in the UK (let alone a radical ecological anti-capitalist one!) means that XR has appealed to a lot of people who have long been waiting for some kind of rebellion to finally emerge.
        Perhaps they have been tolerant of XR’s eccentricities (starry-eyed love of the police, dogmatic non-violence bordering on control-freakery, connections with business interests, refusal to consistently condemn capitalism) because they are the only show in town and it is a question of XR or nothing.
        The same is not true in France, though, where revolution is often in the air and where the last year has seen a full-on yellow-coloured challenge to the neoliberal state. XR have been active there too, but their fake radicalism and lame submissiveness to authority has shocked many eco-radicals and anti-capitalists, who have been voicing their concerns online.
        On October 12 the “Désobéissance écolo Paris” collective published an open letter to Extinction Rebellion members, containing a wide-ranging critique of the organisation and its approach.
      Then on Monday October 14 two reports appeared on the anti-capitalist Paris Luttes site. The first of these was entitled “Extinction Rebellion : ni désobéissance, ni obéissance, mais servilité et crédulité” – “Extinction Rebellion: Neither Disobedience or Obedience, but Servility and Credulity”.
      Reporting on the XR occupation in Châtelet, it said “Extinction Rebellion scuttled its own initiative in a total absence of strategic thinking and analysis of power struggles”.
       It explained: “The ‘diversity of tactics’ working group on Wednesday evening had asked each of the six blockade points to start thinking about what we would say to the press, the authorities, the public, on the day that we were moved on.
     “For instance, it was suggested, in the spirit of a convergence of struggles, that we say ‘we are not leaving without the passing of a law for carbon neutrality by 2025 and an amnesty for all activists incarcerated during the various Gilets Jaunes protests’. That would have been awesome.
      “But the XR leadership decided, at a sparsely-attended assembly on Friday morning, October 11, to dismantle the camp, to move most of the equipment and to pull out from the six blockade points.
      “In short, XR removed everything which made this public space a living space where we could discuss, debate, get to know each other.
       “The given reason was, of course, the next day’s action, but anyone with a minimum of strategic sense should have seen that this camp, now that it was there, now that it had been reinforced by Gilets Jaunes and other anti-capitalist and environmental activists, the night before the weekend, had definite subversive potential. Predictably the action on Saturday October 12 was, on the other hand, a total flop”.
       The article went on to comment: “This is not a case of ‘non-violent civil disobedience’ nor indeed of ‘obedience’ since there was no official warning from the police or the authorities. It was rather a case of servility: we ended the camp before even having been ordered to leave. This is exactly the opposite of struggle or rebellion”.-------

------- They added: “It was a rather pleasant surprise to see that many XR activists did not stay stuck in the XR box, did not shy away from more radical action, less focused on media PR, and were asking real political questions about the scope of these actions. As often happens, the grassroots could quickly outgrow the organisation”.

Read the full article HERE: 

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