Tories, Party Of Welfare State.

  

        Anybody with half a brain cell knows that "austerity" was an ideological decision and not a necessity. It was a determined policy of plundering the public purse to feed the corporate tax havens. Though I have always been aware of the fact that the state feeds and supports the corporate beast with the false platitude that it helps the "economy" (the rich) and brings jobs. Although the facts were there, Somehow I never however thought of the Tory party as the party of a welfare state!!
      The article in "The Canary" explains it very clearly, well worth a read just to sort the facts out in your mind.

 

 

      An extract from The Canary article:

           The Tories run a secret welfare state for rich people that costs taxpayers up to £180bn a year

The long con

       The idea was never to shrink the welfare state. It was always to divert government investment from the human-welfare state for the many to the corporate-welfare state for the few. Imagine it like a long con.
       You create a sense of scarcity, like there just isn’t enough to go around. The coalition government did this with austerity; the Thatcher government did it with previous economic crises. Despite the 2007/8 financial crisis being caused exclusively by the private sector, and the private sector being bailed out by the government, it was reframed as a public spending crisis. And the very debt accumulated in rescuing the economy from casino banking became the excuse to rapidly cut funding for the welfare state.
       Then you begin pitting different needs against each other. Young people’s services versus elderly people’s security. People who were born here versus people who arrived here. People with jobs versus people without jobs. And thanks to the primal fear that people with little have when faced with having even less, a fight ensues. While that fight is happening, you merrily divert as much spending as possible to you and your friends. The best bit? When the scarcity you just created hits and things stop working in the human-welfare state, it just makes your case seem stronger. ‘See, we told you things were bad. This service needs more private-sector involvement to boost efficiency.’
       And so you go on. Every publicly-funded service is up for grabs – a means of siphoning taxpayer cash away from meeting public needs, and towards filling private pockets. In return, you’ve assured your post-parliament career in the revolving door of political and corporate life.

The enablers

        Perhaps the greatest enablers of the corporate-welfare-state long con are UK newspapers and media outlets. Just three corporations dominate 83% of newspaper reach in the UK. That’s just a handful of billionaires dominating the UK press. And they cannot be trusted to play fair when it comes to policies that invest in regular people rather than providing them with government subsidies or tax cuts.

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Refuse and Resist.

         The latest Spirit of Revolt,  “Read of the Month", since it is coming at the beginning of a new year, its only fitting that it should come from one of our new collections the John Frew Collection, it is a news sheet of the anti-polltax movement Refuse and Resist. That period when the Thatcher government tried to impose the poll tax on the people of this country was one of mass protests and open rebellion, as the people stood firm against this grossly unjust tax. Their resolve, solidarity and organisation eventually won the day and the poll tax was scrapped.

     Why not dip into the John Frew Collection and enjoy some of your own fascinating history. While there you could go on to explore the multitude of local history from the Glasgow/Clydeside area and further afield, from the numerous other collections held in Spirit of Revolt.

 REFUSE AND RESIST: Read on line. 

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

Fascism, The State's Natural Home.

      As the capitalist system of neo-liberalism lurches from crisis to crisis, its blatant dangers to all life and the very planet itself become more obvious, the various states response is to march firmly towards fascism. This is an attempt to stop the rapidly rising protests and insurrections that are flaring up across the planet, as people become more aware and more determined to call a halt to this greed driven insanity.
      Populations awash with poverty and deprivation because of this system, are now aware of the cause and are venting their anger with a strong desire to end this engineered injustice.
     The following article is from Greece, where since the election of the new government of the "New Democracy" party their has been a military style brutal attempt to crush any and all dissent. Migrants and any group that supports them, have come in for some savage treatment from the "New Democracy" facade. Autonomous spaces, long standing squats which have been hubs for local communities, groups who openly oppose the authoritarian rule and individuals who stand against the injustice, inequality and corruption of this exploitative system, have all felt the wrath of the Greek state as it strides further into the fascist mode, the states' answer to the rising fight for freedom and justice.

     From Act For Freedom Now, Just one case of many:

Financial support for the persecuted antifascists
firefund.net/persecutedantifa

       On 1.11.2019 there was an arson attack against neo-nazis Golden Dawn’s head offices in Diligianni street, resulting in the destruction of the building’s second floor where N. Michaloliakos’ office (the secretary general of the party) is located. According to the file of the case, while the perpetrators were trying to escape, police cars belonging to the “counter”-terrorist agency pursued a car. The pursuit resulted in a car collision and to the policemen’s injury, with the perpetrators managing to get away.
     This incident was used as an excuse to start a targeting and persecution campaign against anarchists, which reached its peak with the arrest of two anarchist militants and the manipulative police tactics that aimed to put them in provisional custody.
      The bill of indictment’s upgrade by the “counter”-terrorist agency and the leaks to the media created the anticipation that the two comrades would be put in custody. In this climate of terror, the comrades and their lawyers were called to fight an unequal battle.
      More specifically, the state’s repressive mechanisms, with the CT agency in the lead role, fabricated according to the provisions of article 187A (anti-terrorist law) a “terrorist” group named “Taxiarchia” (Brigade) which first appeared in March 2017 with the attack against the (then) HQ of the neonazi party Golden Dawn in Mesogeion Avenue, under the name of “Pavlos Fyssas Brigade”. According to the court file, the group executed 6 attacks against structures and members of the fascist party up to its last hit against the head offices in Diligianni str. in November 2019.
      In that way, the authorities made an attempt to isolate certain claims of responsibility within a plethora of antifascist-anticapitalist actions which led, together with other things, to a significant weakening of the fascist movement in the last few years. Among dozens of attacks and claims of responsibility, they chose a few which, by having the noun “Taxiarchia” as a first component, could be presented to the investigative judge as persuasive evidence of “joining and participating in a terrorist organization”. The law enforcement authorities in their attempt to patch a case together, fabricated the existence of a terrorist group in order to sentence the two comrades to dozens of years in prison. And all this for the CT agency to restore its damaged public profile after the fiasco it suffered in Exarheia.
       More specifically, the court document, apart from the attack to the -then- party HQ in Mesogeion str, alludes to three more attacks against party members and the Local Organization in Aspropyrgos which led to the final shutting down of their offices. For these attacks, responsibility was taken using three different signatures, namely “Sahzat Lukman Brigade”, “Petrit Zifle Brigade” and “Abd Elsalam Brigade”. The arson against the Local Organization of Golden Dawn in the area of Menidi, which led to its shutting down for an indeterminate period of time, under the signature “Durruti Brigade”, is also referred in the court file. The same goes for the destruction of the Führer’s office in Diligianni street, an action for which no one yet has claimed responsibility.
        The expanded and unfounded indictment has been composed, among others, based on anonymous calls to the “counter”-terrorist agency which has no caller ID (!!!). The indictment is full of lies and exaggerations which can easily be demolished just by reading the file. The two comrades who were arrested about two months after the Diligiani incident, are prosecuted for two attacks against the Golden Dawn offices, the one at Menidi and the one at Diligiani str. The “evidence” in the authorities’ possession is that on the dates of the attacks, the comrades happened to rent cars for personal use, a fact that was considered suspicious by the CT agency.
        All this is happening in a conjuncture when the Golden Dawn trial is coming to an end and the state prosecutor (Adamantia Economou)has suggested the charges against the members of the neonazi party be dismissed. In this way, the murderous violence of the criminal organization is downgraded and legitimized.
       All this is happening in a conjuncture when the New Democracy government introduces bills which repress the right to strike, to protest and to the university asylum. In just a few months it attempts to take back everything the society has won in decades of struggles at a great cost and sacrifices. It launches an all-out attack on the social conquests using a policy of social genocide against refugees and migrants, while building an Orwellian racist and authoritarian police state which spies on militants and political spaces, fabricates prosecutions and indictments, aims to eradicate the resistance and to spread fear and conservatism in the society.
        It’s in this conjuncture that our comrades were taken to the state prosecutors on a flimsy indictment for their “crime” of continuing to struggle. The two comrades were released under strict conditions: they have to report to the police four times a month and deposit a 15,000 euro bail (per person) in order to avoid custody, until 17-1-2020. It becomes evident that way that the financial bleeding of the movement is an everlasting goal of the system and a primary instrument aiming at its eradication.
     It should be clear at this point that regardless of the blatant manipulation of the case, the defense of the militant antifascism and the movement’s anti-violence against the system cannot be confined in dilemmas of guilt or innocence. The movement’s self-defense against the authoritarian and market-based neoliberalism, which uses the fascism in order to crush social and class resistance, is the existential position of the struggle for a better world. It is the combat position of the oppressed all over the world and one of their principal means to assert their claims. Because the organized manifestation of the class anti-violence is our only chance against capitalism and state repression. Because the anti-fascist anti-violence may not be tried in civil courts, nor is legal or illegal. It is historically imposed and fair.
       Under these circumstances, we make a call to the movement as a whole to support the efforts of collecting the bail money till the set date, so that comrades will not be remanded in custody; to show again to the state and its mechanisms that the solidarity of the oppressed is the foundation stone for the formation of a revolutionary movement. This is the next fight we are called to give against the repressive mechanisms that attempt to put the comrades in provisional custody.

Solidarity is our weapon

Contact with the assembly:

antifa-initiative@riseup.net – protov2free@protonmail.com

Antifacist Initiative

Αρχεία:

af-en.pdf

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

A Review Of Angry People.

       This past year has seen more mass protests in more countries  than before, and most have lasted much longer than the usual bursts of anger that this capitalist system evokes. With the help of the internet other countries become aware much sooner of what is happening around the planet, this in turns leads to support and solidarity, and perhaps an encouragement to those where the anger is still bubbling just under the surface. So it is always good to review these protests that have been exploding across the planet. We can always learn from others, and it is also necessary to find that common ground with others who have given vent to their righteous anger. 

This review of some of these events comes from Anarchist Agency:

       Just when you thought it was over, they were back: France’s gillets jaunes, the direct-action protest movement that arose in opposition to the Macron government’s pro-capitalist, anti-worker policies, was supposed to be all done in 2019, neutralized by police repression and the government’s token gestures at public “consultations.” Then, in December, the yellow vests appeared again as Macron moved to “reform”—i.e. slash—French old-age pension provisions. Once again, thousands of working people were back in the streets, saying enough is enough to the global elite’s efforts to impose neoliberal policies on an increasingly angry populace.
       That’s just one example from an amazing surge of resistance in 2019. The year was full of reaction and repression all over the globe, and as the months wore on, resistance grew: in Egypt,Colombia, Chile,Ecuador, post-coup Bolivia, Haiti, Lebanon, Russia, Catalunya, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. In the U.S., Native American resistance focused on Standing Rock intensified, and antifascists made clear that they will continue to oppose the resurgent, racist far right as long as it gains strength. The specific causes were not always the same, but in every case, state repression and backing of capitalism and the right were the catalysts and direct action was the most dynamic part of the response.
      Direct action is also beginning to infuse the fight for the survival of our planet in the face of climate change, as activists everywhere become bolder at confronting a system bent on either ignoring the crisis or slow-walking its response to the point of irrelevancy.
      At Agency, throughout 2019 we highlighted the role of anarchists and the anarchist movement in this global resurgence of opposition to state repression and capitalism. Anarchists provided much of the presence in the streets against the neo-Klan, neo-Nazi shock troops of Trumpism in the U.S. In July, a Willem Van Spronson, an anarchist, was fatally shot by police after attacking an ICE immigration detention center in Washington state. Predictably, the right-wing response was to demand that antifa be declared a “terrorist” group. Anarchists continued to play a growing role in the opposition to repression of Palestinians in Israel, to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies in America, and the resistance to xenophobia and neoliberal “reforms” in Greece, Denmark, and other countries. We’ve told this important story through the Agency newswire, syndicated articles, commentaries, press briefs, podcasts, and the harvest of stories from other media that we gather in our Critical Voices section.
      At the same time, anarchists were building a culture of freedom and mutual aid in 2019. In Athens, Exarchia continues to be the center not just of support and assistance for migrants, but of a vibrant anarchist community. The multiethnic, antiauthoritarian community of Rojava was decimated by a Turkish invasion of northern Syria, launched with the tacit approval of Washington, but not before it carried out one of the most creative experiments in self-government without the State since the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) launched in Mexico 25 years ago.
      Anarchism is about expanding our imaginations to include new forms of resistance and new ways to define ourselves as creative individuals and communities. Agency strives to tell this story as well, and we did so in 2019 by bringing together news about anticapitalist bike activism, farming as a tool against climate change, and the work of anti-fascist metal and neo-folk bands to counter the far-right in the music scene.
        All of which goes to show that the struggle against the State, capitalism and authority, against racism, colonialism, sexism and gendered intolerance, plays out in every corner of our lives, all the time. As anarchists, we work to bring these struggles closer together and highlight the many ways we are creating a new society in the process of resistance. Here are some of the stories Agency followed in 2019, and will continue to follow.

Read the full review HERE:

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

Rationalism Or Insanity?

       What have we become, here we are almost a quarter way through the 21st. century and we, the supposed pinnacle of evolution, have a man sitting on the throne of the most powerful military power on earth, who is wrapped in the ignorant babble of fundamental religious nutters, who still believe in that invisible man in the sky, watch their faces and get worried. What's more in there stupidity, they are asking their supposed fair and just loving god, who is supposed to love all humanity, to make America the greatest nation on earth. Talk about twisted brains. If that wee man in the sky is up there, then I am asking him to deliver Trump and his band of deluded nutters to the nearest psychiatric hospital, as soon as possible.

      It isn't funny anymore, this is the man with his finger on the nuclear button  who doesn't take any advice but acts on impulse and on prods from people like Pompeo, who is a Christian fundamentalist who believes passionately in the "Rapture". What have we become, and what will we do?

Pinnacle of Evolution

There’s a crazy ape, who

by means of incredible intransigence

has mastered the art of carnage;

through dogged determination

in a ruthless rampage

raised the body-count beyond belief.

This crazy ape

creates the human chronicles

as a cruel callous calendar,

transforms our indulgent earth

into a primitive barbaric abattoir.

He struts across the land

with bumptious pride;

he’s destructive, he’s devious,

demands dominion

planet wide.

His claim to fame,

history immortalised in rivers of blood.

Even so,

this crazy ape called man, believes

he’s the GODS’ sublime solution,

progress’s perfection,

the pinnacle of evolution.

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

No Borders, No Prisons

       Detention centres, prisons, call them what you will, they are all state tools of repression, symbols of inhumanity, an abomination in any civilised society. Those who work in them are usually contaminated with the same DNA of the institutions that pays their wages. Who with a shred of humanity would want to be a guard over another human in a cage.

     This article is from Greece, but Greece is not alone in treating humans in this manner, we can all look a lot closer to home and find mirror situations. Migrants are one of the many state scapegoats, tools in the state's propaganda machine.

This From Enough is Enough:

       Athens, Greek territory. On December 19, 2019, was our last visit to Petrou Ralli Detention Center. Once more the number of detainees had increased and reached no50 50 women from 15 different countries. Indonesia, Ethiopia, Albania, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iran, Italy, Cameroon, China, Tibet, Belarus, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Turkey. In our effort to talk with them, some police officers were in such close proximity that prevented women to express themselves freely about situations they experience. The behavior of some officers was also provoking towards us.

Originally published by Athens Indymedia.

        A characteristic testimony: “When we came here they forbade us to wear our headscarves and told us:” Out of here you can be Muslim, here NO! Here you are Christians… “
        Another testimony: “A police officer invaded into the shower room, while a prisoner was bathing, and made her pull the towel…” At the time, the health of several of them was very bad. Despite our own pressure for two women to be transferred to a hospital as emergency cases, nothing really changed. Τhese women are still very sick. Also, there are no doctors during weekends and during the night time, at Petrou Ralli. On Christmas day we were informed by relatives of prisoners for possible initiation of a few women on hunger strike. The day after our visit they started writing their experiences in the following denunciation letter, where they describe them with their own voices. Experiences that we can simply only imagine. Women from six different countries asked their will for their letter to be publicized. When you have lost everything you do not fear anything.
        Their voices should be heard in the whole world. You can discuss it in your assemblies. The organizations and institutions that talk about human rights should stop fooling us and playing with the plight of migrants and refugees, who are led to extermination.
        We stand by and admire these women for their bravery and solidarity they show to each other…

No person illegal, no person invisible

     Our Rebel sisters are right for the abolition of detention centers and opening of Borders, for stopping illegal racist & misogynist behaviors, for smashing verbal, physical and mental torture

The passion for freedom is stronger than all kinds of prisons

In streets, in squares and prison cells, migrant women you are not alone

The House of Women, for the Empowerment & Emancipation

spiti.gynaikon@gmail.com

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

Death Throes Of A Psychopathic Fantasy.

      Quite a long article, but it does feel good to get it off your chest, this piece by Paul Edwards, rolls out a lot of my own thoughts over the years. Not that the rest of the capitalist countries of oligarchs, dictators and  representative democracies are not corrupt, just that America leads the world on brutality, greed, corruption and fabricating illusions. I also believe that the end of American savage self destructive imperialism will happen sooner rather than later, and boy, will that leave a mess, that we the people will have to clean up to survive, and attempt salvage the disaster and turn it into that better world. We should be preparing for it now.

 America bring democracy to Iraq.

       From The Greanville Post, by Paul Edwards:

      Back in the days when the Deep State’s diktats commanded a modicum of credibility, its stated goal was worldwide military “full spectrum dominance”. Twenty years of grossly humiliating failure in its murderously ineffectual floundering has rendered that idea null, even to doctrinaire NeoCon wanks.
       Instead, the WWII term for total situational dysfunction and chaos is now so perfectly descriptive of our national Goon Show that it seems made for it. Back then, when a major planned operation went tits up, GIs described it as “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition” and the acronym stuck. Consider:
       America raped and bludgeoned half a dozen countries that never harmed it while financing two that injured it materially. That monumental destruction, and the funneling of billions to whore states Isreal and Saudi Arabia (much of it earmarked for death merchants Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing) gorged the War Machine at the price of tens of thousands of young American’s lives, bodies, and sanity. Americans mostly don’t care, of course, but that, too, is a fubar indicator.
       In America’s chief industry and source of psychotic pride--making weapons of war--the genius of Capitalism has diligently devised ways to gouge more and more money for less and less quality in extravagantly non-performing turkeys. The motive, Putin observed, is that while Russia makes arms for defense, America does so to maximize War Machine profits. This is why America puts billions into endless iterations of gold-plated F-35s that break down and don’t work, and aircraft carriers that were gangbusters at Midway against Zeroes but are now just lumbering, gigantic pinatas Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles will blow the jujus out of in a Moscow minute.
       Russia’s hypersonic, non-ballistic missiles--its phenomenal Avangard inter-continental system (Mach 27) and the Kinzhal and Zircon land and sea-based missiles that operate above Mach 9 (6000 mph)--are untrackable and indestructable by US defenses, and are generations ahead of anything America is even testing. This data isn’t secret; it’s openly available and the US Military has it. Regarding the old days of bitter US/Russian weapons rivalry, Mr. Putin said, “They didn’t listen to us then; they’ll listen to us now.”
     America has lately performed the exquisitely difficult geopolitical maneuver of alienating all nations it considers friends while simultaneously actively provoking those it considers enemies. That extraordinary diplomatic Quadruple Axel had never yet been attempted, much less accomplished.
      America has undermined, abrogated, or withdrawn from the entire web of international nuclear arms control treaties, in addition to unilaterally and dishonestly sabotaging the nuclear JCPOA with Iran to the dismay of our “partners”. It did this at a time when it’s futile mayhem in the Arab world has made it the butt of the world’s derision, its Imperial hubris has alienated even its European vassals, and when Russia and China, which have been moderate and restrained in absorbing US rants and tantrums--knowing the mortal risk of brinksmanship as America can’t--have the resolve, if forced, to go all in and show this deluded Empire what real war is all about.
         In addition to its military and diplomatic faceplants, the US has appalled and estranged most of the world with its oafish, braindead denial of rapidly accelerating climate change, and is leading the omnicidal charge of gross polluting nations against all science and sanity toward a blistering, toxic, inundated, and perhaps even humanly uninhabitable earth.
        So much for our status in the world; America is the active definition of fubar at home. A blundering Capitalist Fascist tyranny burlesquing shamelessly as a democracy, run as a Mafia Family for its vicious oligarchs and owners, with a Kshatriya class of Deep State Security thugs managing its clownish Punch-and-Judy politics to mesmerize the rubes, it has baldly stolen every benefit, every right, every security, and every source of pride from its dull people and left them with porn, dope, toons, and cage fighting in place of hopes, dreams or aspirations beyond becoming one of their own exploiters.
       Our Capitalist ruling class, entrenched in absolute power behind a symbolic Potemkin Government of flunkies comprised of a contemptible claque of hicks, clods, whores, and sleazy, Cracker hypocrites--our Congress--that stages infantile foodfights to cozen the gullible, rapes and robs us with the blessing of a justice system that is the black embodiment of corruption. Pathologically greedy, Capitalists have abandoned production as a less efficient way to plunder the public good than financial chicanery, bank fraud, and tax crime. Poisoned by their disease, they lack even the foresight to alter their sick voracity in the face of the climate catastrophe that is driving mass extinction and may portend the end of humanity itself.
        After half a century producing nothing of benefit to the American people, our Congress, fiercely divided for melodrama’s sake on fairytale principles neither gang respects or adheres to, focused only on doling trillions in fiat money to its masters, is fully engaged in an exercise so ridiculous and debased that a rational nation would summarily dissolve and eliminate it.
        A criminal sociopathic President, impeached by a criminal, sociopathic Congress, not for high crimes in which they have been deeply complicit, but on two empty, trivial, puny premises, with the charade locked in insoluble stasis while the clueless country hurtles toward catastrophe: this is what is laughingly referred to as government in this sad, stupid, criminal nation.
        QED, Fubar is indisputably the term that applies. Perceptive cynics will take issue, saying that because great Capitalist thieves have both hands deeper into the national till than they ever have proves that the system is working as intended. On a superficial level the argument is defensible but behind the heavy protective armor of Imperial propaganda lurks the broad insider economic awareness that the day of dollar hegemony is at sunset.
          Russia and China are dumping treasuries by the hundreds of billions and buying gold in unprecedented quantities. Money cognoscenti are deeply troubled by enslavement to a currency supported only by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S.A., in which they now have no faith whatever. Decoupling from the dollar as the world reserve currency and adoption of a basket of currencies in its place will bring a devaluation jolt that will disintegrate our massive debt-disabled national financial junkyard and bankrupt us all.
           Back in the days of Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe, GIs not under fire at the Front could laugh at Army disasters and joke about the fubar. We don’t have that space: our Front is everywhere and we can’t escape it. The plain fact is it is terrifying to live in an evil, dying, decomposing Empire. There is no joy in exposing systemic failure of ones own. There is only a profound and wounding sadness in the awareness that your country is a horror, a criminal monster, and the source of so much misery and pain to so much of the world. It is pure grief to find that all you have believed, likely loved, and certainly identified with, is false and rotten at its core. Yet life and beauty have always survived the deaths of empires, and love never dies. History, as well as Dylan Thomas, assures us that “Death shall have no Dominion.

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

Proto-Fascism.

 

      Well that's that over with. I have never been one for ritual, ceremony, tradition, I've always felt they got in the way of freedom of self expression. I'm not one for things should be done this way at this time of year, and if you don't conform you're some sort of oddity. I'll continue to wear my oddity as a badge of honour.

The goal of neo-liberalism ideology.

       And so for something completely different, not new, but it might help shock the party mood back to reality. Prophesy, or reflection of the present and possible future. 

The same can be said for most countries.

Extract from;

AGAINST THE NEW AUTHORITARIANISM 

by HENRY GIROUX 1-894037-23-5

PROTO-FASCISM.
Page 94/95;

        Neoliberalism is not only an economic policy designed to cut government spending, pursue free trade policies, and liberate market forces from government regulations. It is also a political philosophy and ideology that affects every dimension of social life. Neoliberalism has heralded a radical shift that defines the citizen as consumer, disbands the social contract in the interests of privatized considerations, and separates capital from the context of place.Within this discourse, as Jean and John Comaroff have argued, "the personal is the only politics there is, the only politics with a tangible referent or emotional valence. It is in these privatized terms that action is organised, that the experience of inequity and antagonism takes meaningful shape." Unnder such circumstances, neoliberalism portends the death of politics as we know it, strips the social of its democratic values, and reconstructs agency in terms that are utterly privatized. It provides the conditions for an emerging form of proto-fascism that must be resisted at all costs. Neoliberalism not only enshrines unbridled individualism as a central feature of proto-fascism, as Herbert Marcuse reminds us, it also destroys any vestige of democratic society by undercutting its "moral material and regulatory moorings," and in doing so, offers no language for understanding how the future might be grasped outside the narrow logic of the market. But there is even more at stake here than the obliteration of public concerns, the death of the social, the emergence of a market-based fundamentalism that undercuts our ability to understand how to translate privately experienced misery into collective action, and the elimination of the gains of the welfare state. There is also the growing threat of displacing "political sovereignty with the sovereignty of the market, as if the latter has a mind and morality of its own.'" As democracy becomes a burden under the reign of neoliberalism, civic discourse disappears and the reign of unfetered social Darwnism, with its survival-of-the-slickest philosophy, emerges as the template for a new form of proto-fascism. None of this will happen in the face of sufficient resistance, nor is the increasing move toward proto-fascism inevitable, but the conditions exist for democracy to lose all semblance of meaning----

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

Alasdair Gray, Poet, Writer, Artist, Comrade.

     The death of Alasdair Gray on Sunday 29th. December 2019 will be a tremendous loss to the People of Glasgow and much further afield. As well as being a generous man, donating to Spirit of Revolt as well as many other groups, he was a man of compassion, insight and a battler, never afraid to speak out in defence of justice and humanity.
       The following video is from the last event he shared with Spirit of Revolt, “Writers for Miners” held November 2018 in Mono, where, despite the dreadful November weather he turned up and read one of his poems, which he referred to as “A long poem about humanity”. Thanks Bob at City Strolls for the video.

Alasdair Gray reading at, “Writers for Miners” Video

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

In Defence Of An Ideal.

       I was recently, reading on Anarchists World Wide, an interview with a defender of the city of Serekaniye in the district of Rojava against the second largest army in NATO and its air-power, the fascist Turkish forces and their co-patriots ISIS fighters. An extremely moving report on what it is like to be involved in the defence of a territory that is more than land but an ideal a vision of a better world for all.
     One passage stood out in my mind about the importance of creating a solid foundation for that ideal that you wish to fight for and defend.

From Anarchists World Wide:

        I think one of the most important things I’ve learned here is the value of commitment. The commitment to really decide to fight the rest of your life. To make a decision that is not easy and to dump all your energies and time in building a base, to do it in the long term and with perspective. Not wanting to do things too quickly, but having perspective of what the revolutionary construction of a territory means, including society, people. I am not saying that in Catalonia there is no commitment, I say that there comes a time when, in the face of oppression, there is no possibility or half measures, it is one thing or another. And sometimes we expected to respond, but if we respond without having built the entire base on a social, ideological and structural level, the response to the attacks will be very short. It will not be long because it will not be ideological, it will not be based on common and shared values.
       And then, of course…how to say it in Catalan? There is much talk here about bawerî, about faith. I believe that at home we have no faith in our own steps, in our structures, in our commitment, also at the vital level. Because if we do not start with ourselves, if we do not fight against our sexist personality, against the competitiveness that exists in us and the capitalist mentality that we have, if we do not learn to live collectively, how can we consider a real change? This is what I have seen here, that life and struggle are the same, that we have to get people to believe again, get organized again and not be afraid of difference, because the difference is what makes community.

Read the full article HERE:

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

These Hard Times!!!

 

        So times are hard, it's a struggle to pay rent/mortgage, heating and eating. It's a worry seeing to the needs of the kids. You have a crap precarious job and your pittance of a pay fluctuates, you're never sure how much you'll get in the next pay packet. Or you could be shackled to a job seekers allowance, circumstances that will dominate your life until you are sold to some greedy employer. Like I said, these are hard times, well not for everybody, while you strain and struggle to live a half decent life, there is that other class of citizen. The pampered parasite class, the rich and wealthy that live off your sweat and toil, who prosper by your poverty. The grotesque difference in wealth distribution built into this capitalist system has now reached unimaginable proportions. While you try to sort your affairs in £s, there is that other group who shuffle their income in £-billions, a lot of it to tax havens, so that they don't have to contribute to the running of our society. The cornerstone of the capitalist system, exploit the many for the benefit of the few, syphon all the wealth created up to the few at the top, and let the rest struggle and scramble for an existence as best they can.

    Some new figures on that grotesque unequal distribution of wealth that is held up as a measure of success. We live in a system whose motto is "Greed Is Good".

       This from Huffpost:

 Jeff Bezos, president and CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post.

        The world’s richest 500 people increased their collective wealth by 25% in 2019 – a stark reminder of worsening income inequality.
        The 500 wealthiest people held a collective net worth of $5.9t (£4.5t) – an increase of $1.2t (£917b) over 2019 alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Topping the list of richest people were familiar names: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, followed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, French luxury group head Bernard Arnault, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
         The richest Briton to appear on the list was Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest man and CEO of chemicals company Ineos – ranking at number 52 on the index with a total net worth of $20.8b (£15.9b). He was one of 16 people from the UK to appear on the 500-strong list. A total of 171 people on the list were from the United States.
         A study earlier this year found that the 400 richest people in the US owned more than the 150 million people in the bottom 60% of the country ― and that since the early 1980s, those 400 richest Americans had tripled their wealth.

        There you have it, these are hard times, well only for the many and for as long as we tolerate this crime against humanity that goes under the flag of capitalism. There is an alternative, just think about it.

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

The One-Way Mirror Society.

       We live in a glass bubble that has been constructed around us all by state spying agencies, city council surveillance CCTV and of course our corporate masters. Your mobile phone is a direct link to most of these surveillance groups, your computer is a suction machine for the spying class. Go out and leave you phone at home and your are followed, monitored and profiled by CCTV, facial recognition and car number plate logging. All this data collection is not done with your consent nor is it for your benefit, but for the benefit of the state and the consumer juggernaut that is capitalism.

      You may believe that you lead a private life minding your own business, but your privacy is an illusion and the details of your life are big business. You are the pawn in their vile and secretive constructed glass bubble. Today's society is a one way mirror, and we are at the wrong end. Privacy is not a given, in this society the opposite is the case, it is a privilege for those who have the time and the money. Your privacy is something you have to work at and even then you will not be completely successful in your aim. However there are things you can do to curtail some of the extremities of their prying eyes.

         There are some interesting info which we can all follow to this end in the article from Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Read the report here:  Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Download the report here: Surveillance Report:

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

Television, To Be Or Not To Be?.

         A poem for today, and of course tomorrow, or a New Year's resolution. Time to stop that nasty mind numbing screen, spewing sewage on the floor, so thick and putrid that it blocks the door, it fills your mind with a nasty smell, you’d believe you're down a dirty well. It blocks the windows from the sun, makes you forget out there can be such fun.

Television - Poem by Roald Dahl

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

Roald Dahl

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

A World In Revolt.

 

France. 

      It is obvious that our world is changing and changing rapidly. Unrest and mass protests to open rebellion is there on the streets in country after country. Some  protests suffering violent repression similar to a military attack, but still they go on. Some are prolonged and intense and ask no concession from the state. Due to the violent nature of the state and the gross inequality and injustice of the capitalist system, this unrest will continue to grow. Our question is how do we unify it and create sparks that start the fire in other areas.

 Chile.

  From "Groups for the Diffusion of Disorder"

on athensindymedia, via Act For freedom Now:

        Our lives are flooded with the ultimatums and commandments of the State, capital and civilization.
       In the dens of slave labour where we have to sell our labour power to survive, the bosses’ ultimatums are the voice of capitalist development at any cost. The voice of the neoliberal onslaught, the voice of the murderous intents of the bosses who torture our bodies with intensified working schedules, the abolition of Sunday off, work without insurance, no safety measures, layoffs and blackmailing.
       In our schools and colleges the orders of the State and capital are the voices of discipline to the barbarism of our times, telling the treacherous story of submission to the powerful, they are the voices of nationalism and intolerance, the deletion from our memory of every moment of the social war. Their goal is to create a new generation of disciplined slaves, always eager to enter the capitalist line of production without being conscious of their role.
Without a trace of essential knowledge of the history of struggles and uprisings against States and their power. Having accepted their peaceful coexistence with those responsible for their poverty, starvation, wars. Having accepted that the struggle is futile and capitalism is the winner of history.
        In the neighbourhoods where we live and fight, called Exarchia or not, the ultimatums of the State find us in amphitheatres and squats, demonstrations and conspiracy rendevous. Their ultimatums speak the language of modern totalitarianism, police repression, organized and coordinated State propaganda through the media, of their normality that is full of violence for anyone who doesn’t fit into it.
       Their ultimatums are the other side of State terrorism. They are the police batons that smash heads in Exarchia, are the images of refugees surrounded by cops entering buses to be sent to the hell of concentration camps, are the sexist comments and threats of sexual violence from the riot cops to anyone who doesn’t like them, are the dozens of invasions against squats and centres of struggle, is the military occupation of an entire neighbourhood by the police- cannibals scum, is the police surveillance against comrades with bugs and hidden cameras, is the kidnapping of comrades from their homes, the State’s anti-terror campaign is an essential ingredient for the imposition of the law and order doctrine.
       These and many more are some pieces that indicate the central political strategy of the State to conduct a totalitarian war against the anarchist movement aimed at exterminating it before any social unrest emerges on the street. The authorities know that the anarchist movement has the potential to act as a detonator in social struggles. They see that the flames of rebellion are spreading to every corner of the world. That the social and class inequalities that are essentially the locomotives of capitalism are becoming a choking loop around its neck.
        It is a common assumption now that we are at a critical historical juncture.

Continue reading: 

 Greece.

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

Imagine.

      Not a new video, but just imagine!!

        To be honest I don't see Trump as waging any new wars, more as a coup maker, a sanction-wager and a pulveriser of the poor, obviously still surplus to humanities requirements.

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