Monday, 8 June 2020

BLM & The Green.

 
       Glasgow's mass BLM protest held on Glasgow Green Sunday 7th June, was a well attended and peaceful affair, and what's more and unusual for Glasgow, the weather was kind. I wasn't there but a report from a friend who managed to attend, said that their estimate put the attendance at between 2,000 and 3,000. My friend also said that on the whole most people kept a reasonable distance apart, as did the police, patrolling in twos around the crowd.
        Let's hope that this coming together of all shades of humanity to protest the injustice and brutality inherent in this economic system we live under, stays together as a cohesive body. Let's hope that they continue their presence on the street and in their communities, not just against the police brutality but recognizing that the police are just a strand of this system and one the establishment hold sacred. The system sees the police as a necessary force to allow the powers that be continue their looting of the public purse and the exploitation of the people. It should be our aim not to change the police, but to change this entire system of privilege based on wealth and power.  
      As with all Glasgow protests, there is a plethora of hand made placards, snappy slogans, short to the point statements, which I always find fascinating, opinions scribbled on cardboard, cheap, easily and quickly made.
      Here are some of the placards from Sunday's protest, thanks to my young friend.









 
  

Sunday, 7 June 2020

Anarchy & Covid19.

What Might an Anarchist Society Look Like?

     1 The world’s resources would be held in common and shared with all the diverse life on Earth.
    2 People would manage their own lives, work and communities, and everyone would have a say in decision making through decentralised forms of organisation.
   3 Relationships in all areas of life would be based on mutual respect and equality regardless of gender, skin colour, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture etc.
    4 Work wouldn’t be boring and repetitive, but instead would be a means of voluntary self expression and fulfillment; unpopular or difficult jobs would be shared.
    5 Education would be integrated into daily life to produce free individuals who think for ourselves.
     6 Goods and services would be produced ecologically for human needs based on the principle “from each according to ability, to each according to need”

      Anarchist, by word and deed, strive for that better world for all, anarchism has the books, the leaflets, the history, the road map, and there has been the experience in several places in the world where these became practice. However the world changes and anarchism like that world must also change. We have to convince people that our philosophy would work in drastic situations, pandemic is the most resent event that anarchist must show that it could cope with, and better than, the present centralised autocratic state/capitalism system. That requires honest debate, co-operation and open mindedness.
     The group Anarchist Writers has produced an interesting article that perhaps will open and encourage that debate among anarchists and the general public.

Anarchy and Covid-19

       A standard reproach against anarchism is that it would not be able to withstand crises as well as hierarchies. This is often the underlying assumption of Marxist diatribes against Anarchism – although these usually invoke euphemisms to avoid admitting that what is really being suggested is that they and their party should be in power. Hence the assertions on the need for a centralised “workers’ State” to organise defence against the counter-revolution (i.e., anyone who disagrees with them), plan the economy, and so on – skilfully avoiding discussing the grim inefficiencies and tyrannies of the Bolshevik regime or the various counter-examples which show the opposite (most obviously, the response of the CNT-FAI to Franco’s coup).
      The coronavirus crisis – like any crisis – sees people “rally to the flag” and be more willing to view those in power in a good light. This happened in the UK with the serial lying, incompetent, self-serving, waffling, racist, sexist, homophobic lazy waste of space known as “Boris” but better called Johnson (and not only because that is his surname). It even happened with Trump – although his bump in the polls was both smaller in size and shorter in duration. Still, Trump does serve a purpose – making even Johnson and his response to the crisis seem better by default.
     Which raises a question – what would an anarchist society, an anarchy, do in the face of a coronavirus crisis?
This is no idle question for addressing a serious issue and the concerns it generates in the general public (i.e., people we want to become anarchists) should be something anarchists do. We must apply our ideas to real events if we take our ideas seriously and seek to see them applied – rather than an excuse to sound ultra-radical.
Now, there may be a tendency for some anarchists – as with “crime” (i.e., anti-social behaviour) – to simply say that a free society would not have any. This, as with crime, is not very convincing and, for example, Kropotkin did not suggest that. He argued, like other anarchist thinkers, that anti-social behaviour would, indeed, be vastly reduced in a decent society, but it would never disappear completely. Therefore any which remained would be dealt with via free arbitration between the parties in conflict, as well as community solidarity and self-defence conducted as humanely as an illness would be.
     The same can be said for Covid-19. Yes, a free society would be one based on workers’ control, so it is unlikely that it would be lacking in safe and hygienic working conditions. It would not have the same pressures from bosses to cut corners to maximise profits (and in non-mutualist anarchies there would be no market pressures to do likewise). It would not experience the hollowing out of society and its various institutions (not least health-care) that neo-liberalism has produced nor would it have people with low-paid, insecure jobs who have to drag themselves into work because they have bills to pay but, by so doing, spread the virus. It would not have obscenities like billionaires having a net worth far in excess of the costs of paying their workers decent sick pay for months.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Hope.

        As the mass protests and outrage at the public murder of George Floyd by the police, started to spread across the world, that little glimmer of hope that I always had, that one day all the single issue politics would disappear and become one mass worldwide protest movement against this savage, brutal and exploitative system and end it once and for all, that little hope grew brighter. Here at last the ordinary people of all the shades of humanity were coming together, this illusion of race was evaporating before our eyes. Perhaps now we would all see that the only real division in the human race is class. Though the hope is still there, I never underestimate the subterfuge, devious and brutal nature of the other class, the "establishment", the millionaires and billionaires the corporate bodies and their minders, the state. That is what we should be watching for, there underhand, hijacking and false propaganda to divide and undermine that unity.
The following is from FSP, (revolutionary feminism.)
The Barricades Are Burning.

       On Saturday, May 31, the world witnessed an historic event – the fires of mass rebellion broke out a few hundred yards from the White House.
Donald Trump, the political head of the most powerful imperialist state that economically and militarily lords over the whole Earth, was escorted to the secure bunker inside the White House fearing that the angry masses of Black, Latinx and poor white Americans would attempt to settle accounts with their president.
     Thousands of Black working-class youth have led massive protests composed of workers and the unemployed of all races due to the Covid-19 pandemic since the American dream has become a nightmare of growing poverty, the loss of housing, the lack of jobs, the super-exploitation of part-time employment, and the absence of adequate healthcare. Brave young people – both citizens and immigrants – faced off against brutal, murderous men in uniform to avenge the death of George Floyd by shouting, “No more police killings!”
      In a May 30 statement, the National Comrades of Color Caucus of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women wrote that, “The police have always been in the service of capitalism and white supremacy since its origins as the slave patrols of the South. Ever since, the corrosive power of white supremacy has been used to delude working-class whites into thinking that their interests lie with rich whites instead of their own class brothers and sisters of color.”
       Now the monumental crisis that the capitalists have created in the world economy that delivers its most violent and terrible blows to the lives of most the humble and dispossessed has drawn a clear line between the rich and poor, the exploiters and exploited, the oppressors and oppressed. 
The class interests of workers in the U.S. are beginning to overcome the racial barriers that the U.S. bourgeoisie has maintained to divide poor whites from poor Blacks since the founding of the nation.
      The moving expressions of solidarity around the world clearly illustrate that the working class is a single class and international. Let no wall stand in the way of grief over the death of George Floyd, a Black man; nor impede solidarity with the oppressed and exploited in the United States. The same state that drains the livelihood of workers in other countries beats and strangles its own people.
        It is time for working people around the world, united in suffering and pain, to stand up against capitalism that destroys and kills and end all oppression by building a socialist world.
Workers of the world, let us unite!
Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR)
Partido Socialismo y Libertad – Argentina
Partido Obrero Socialista – México
Freedom Socialist Party – United States and Australia
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Friday, 5 June 2020

Migrants & Solidarity.

      Migrant centres, camps or call them what you will, prisons would probably be a more accurate name, go hand in hand with violence, intimidation, humiliation and denial of human rights. This is easily verified by a little research into reports from those detained. Since these degrading institutions are ordered, created and organised by the state, what this highlights is another strand of the states vindictive, callous, psychopathic,  violent, racist structure. As another display of the state's callous brutality, in most cases it hands these institutions over to private corporations to run them at a profit, making money from human degradation and misery, operated by the low life that calls this "a job". It is an inhumane society that treats those fleeing war, famine, deprivation and death in such a threatening and vicious manner. A society that doesn't have compassion for all human life is a flawed and failed society. Police brutality on the outside, state violence on the inside, two sides of the same coin, are the pillars of a this society, built on plunder, privilege, exploitation, intimidation and control.
The following from Anarchists Worldwide:


        Recently it became publicly known that systematic violence is perpetrated against refugees in the federal asylum camp in Basel (Switzerland). Obviously this violence is neither an isolated case nor is it limited to the asylum camps in Switzerland.
       This violence is systematic and the system has names. Those responsible are internationally represented and operate in many different places. Let’s name them and show them that their actions bear consequences.
The spread of the coronavirus has highlighted the violence of the European migration regime – both at the EU external border as well as in local asylum camps and prisons.
        This call wants to continue the intensified struggles against it.
What are federal asylum camps?
     Since the spring of 2019, asylum seekers in Switzerland are being administered in so-called federal asylum centres. The accelerated asylum procedures related to the erection of these new structures do not result in fairer procedures for most of the persons affected, but in faster deportation. The federal asylum camps are often geographically isolated. The type of construction, the location, as well as the rules imposed are reminding of prisons and other institutions that deprive people of their freedom. They are contributing to the racist constructs of the nation state and borders.
Whether the Swiss federal asylum centres, the German anchor centres, the CIE (Centro di Identificazione ed Espulsione/ Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros) or the French CPA (Centre de Premier Accueil): they are all part of the European migration regime, which categorises, isolates and deports people by force and coercion.
      For the maintenance of these camp structures, various sectors must be covered. The include, for example, construction, administration, delivery of food, transportation, servicing, surveillance and security services.
All these tasks are entrusted to companies that profit financially from the precarious situation of people in search of asylum.
What is happening is Basel?
      Reports from witnesses show that in the federal asylum camp in Basel people from the Maghreb are deliberately harassed, abused, beaten and in some cases seriously injured by employees of the Security AG. The disciplinary measures referred to by Securitas as “self-defence” often end in hospital for those persons affected.
        Securitas is mandated and gets covered by the camp operator ORS and the SEM (State Secretariat for Migration): Those persons affected by the mistreatment are being blamed for any incidents. The injuries inflicted by Securitas employees are racist portrayed in the official reports as self-inflicted injuries by “aggressive North Africans”.
     The federal asylum camp in Basel is located directly next to the (deportation-) prison “Bässlergut”. Both in the prison and in the camp, there was and still is resistance from detainees. Actions and attacks against these institutions also take place outside the walls.
Further info:
        Documentation brochure of the Securitas violence in Basel (in German): https://3rgg.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/3RGG_Immer-ein-Grund-uns-zu-schlagen_2020-1.pdf
   Information and past actions concerning the Bässlergut (in German): https://barrikade.info/tag/74
On the security business
       In Switzerland, Securitas AG is mainly responsible for “security and order services” in the federal asylum camps. Protectas is also deployed in the camps. Protectas is the Swiss version of the internationally active Securitas Group (logo with the three red dots), which has nothing to do with Securitas AG in Switzerland (eye logo).
There are many other companies that offer these services and thus carry out the direct oppression and control of people through psychological and physical violence.
On the “Organization for Regie and Special Projects (ORS)”
       In Switzerland, ORS has a near monopoly in the management of asylum camps. It operates internationally in Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain (under development) and has an EU office in Belgium.
ORS Service GmbH
Muthgasse 36
AT-1190 Wien
+43 (0)1 8906666-808
info@orsservice.at
www.orsservice.at
www.orsintegration.at
ORS Deutschland GmbH
Albert-Schweitzer-Str. 16
D-78052 Villingen-Schwenningen
+49 (0)7721 697 18 40
info@orsdeutschland.de
ORS Deutschland GmbH
Güterhallenstrasse 4
D-79106 Freiburg
Tel. +49 (0)761 769 931 20
info@orsdeutschland.de
ORS S.r.l.
Piazza Annibaliano 18
I-00198 Roma
Italia
info@ors-italia.com
www.ors-italia.com
ORS Group
14b Rue de la Science
1040 Bruxelles
Belgium
info@ors-group.eu
www.ors-group.eu
Further addresses (in Switzerland) of responsible companies can be found in the call at https://barrikade.info/article/3517
++++ This is a call! ++++
For solidarity beyond national borders. Let’s fight together against the Fortress Europe and all its pillars!

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

Solidarity.

      This must be the time of a universal stand in solidarity between people across the world, a new era of universal solidarity. The public murder by the police of George Floyd, opened the flood gates to rage and out pouring of solidarity, our solidarity must encompass all those in struggle against this punitive, exploitative violent system. In our rage and fury at this brutal system we must not forget the others still suffering at the hands of the various "legal" systems of repression across the globe.
      This is a call for solidarity from Italy for comrades being dragged through the Italian state's judicial mesh.
From Act For Freedom Now:
 
 
      The second degree of the «Scripta Manent» trial will begin in Turin on July 1st, 2020. We ask comrades and people in solidarity for economic support, all the more important because in these months of lockdown the benefit initiatives have been reduced to a minimum if not completely interrupted.

The bank references to send money are:

Iban: IT56M0567617295IB0000592586
Accountholder: Omar Nioi
Bank: Banco di Sardegna
Bic/Swift code: SARDIT3S100

For any information contact the e-mail: cassamanent[at]anche.no
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Why Police?

       The mass protests that started in America, has mushroomed across the planet. An obvious sign that their is an underlying malaise at the root of this economic system. The anger is not just against the police and their daily brutality, sanctioned and funded by the state, this can be seen by the symbols of the system that are being attacked. What we are seeing is the latent energy of populations that have lived with a murmuring of anger just below the surface. Anger fermented by generations of exploitation, by ever growing inequality, by an ever more blatant plundering of the public wealth, all backed up by state repression and brutality.
       The callous brutality of the police is no aberration within this society, it is a deliberate production of the state, to enforce this continual plundering of the commonwealth for the parasitic few. If by some magic formula we managed to eliminate the police, the state would have to reinvent it to ensure its survival. It would need to recreate an enforcing system to allow its corporate masters to continue their exploitation of populations and destruction of the planet. 
       So let's focus on the real problem with our society, not the activators of the violence, but on the reasons why they are there in the first place, who trains, funds and sanctions them, and why. Answer those questions and you will stand with the protesters and show solidarity in this justified release of generations of pent up anger. The police are being ever more militarised  and are backed up by masses of legislation, devised and brought into law, not by the police, but by the planners of the system, those faces with names that sit in the marble halls of power, for no other reason than to protect the inequality and exploitation, to defend the status-quo. Unless you sit with those who sit in those marble halls, you should be supporting those on the street. Solidarity is the weapon that can bring down the injustice inherent in this savage economic system of violence and inequality.

      Not a new image, but a true reflection of the system under which our righteous anger has grown.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Thursday, 4 June 2020

Killing Machine.

        Most of the world's decent people are shocked and outraged at the public murder by the police of George Floyd, and the continuous killing of African Americans by the police on an almost daily basis, all strength to their righteous anger. However what doesn't seem to have yet entered the public consciousness is that in South Africa the police kill more than three times the number of people that are killed by the police in the United States per capita. Killing and violence are part and parcel of the state malaise. State killings and brutality are on an unimaginable magnitude during their many and continuous wars, these killings are of people in another country, usually under the pretext of bring peace and democracy, though the ordinary people of the invading country also pay a price. However the state doesn't stop its violence and killings in times of so called "Peace", in country after country ordinary people are brutalised and killed by the enforcers of their own government. The state and violence are inseparable. They kill to enrich their resources and markets, they kill to stop other states from gaining resources and markets, they brutalise and kill at home to preserve their festering system of greed and power.
 
     Killing and violence are the basis of their system, how else could they exploit, rob and plunder year in year out, how else could the garner the wealth created by the many, into the hands of the few. The killing will only stop when we finally accept that it is our responsibility to bring to an end this cancerous economic system. This is not just a fight against the police brutality and racism, it is a fight against a system that to survive it requires the back up of its many violent and killing agencies.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday, 3 June 2020

Watts,1965.

        What we are looking at in the wide spread riots and mass protests following the public murder of George Floyd by the police, is a mirror of Los Angeles, 1965, only on a much larger scale. It becomes obvious that in this capitalist economy nothing changes in the relationship between the state and the general population. The only change seems to be in the growing inequality and the more brutal and draconian methods to keep the system going in the same ruthless manner. I have no doubt these events will keep repeating themselves until we finally get rid of the root cause, the state/capitalist economic system that is driven by greed and profit, and has shackled our lives for centuries.

    Some photos from those Watts riots, 1965.

Rare footage from Watts 1965:



      The following is an extract from quite a long article, but well worth reading, from "Bureau of Public Secrets" on those 1965 riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles.
The Decline and Fall of the
Spectacle-Commodity Economy

     
  August 13-16, 1965, the blacks of Los Angeles revolted. An incident between traffic police and pedestrians developed into two days of spontaneous riots. Despite increasing reinforcements, the forces of order were unable to regain control of the streets. By the third day the blacks had armed themselves by looting accessible gun stores, enabling them to fire even on police helicopters. It took thousands of police and soldiers, including an entire infantry division supported by tanks, to confine the riot to the Watts area, and several more days of street fighting to finally bring it under control. Stores were massively plundered and many were burned. Official sources listed 32 dead (including 27 blacks), more than 800 wounded and 3000 arrests.
        Reactions from all sides were most revealing: a revolutionary event, by bringing existing problems into the open, provokes its opponents into an inhabitual lucidity. Police Chief William Parker, for example, rejected all the major black organizations’ offers of mediation, correctly asserting: “These rioters don’t have any leaders.” Since the blacks no longer had any leaders, it was the moment of truth for both sides. What did one of those unemployed leaders, NAACP general secretary Roy Wilkins, have to say? He declared that the riot “should be put down with all necessary force.” And Los Angeles Cardinal McIntyre, who protested loudly, did not protest against the violence of the repression, which one might have supposed the most tactful policy at a time when the Roman Church is modernizing its image; he denounced “this premeditated revolt against the rights of one’s neighbor and against respect for law and order,” calling on Catholics to oppose the looting and “this violence without any apparent justification.” And all those who went so far as to recognize the “apparent justifications” of the rage of the Los Angeles blacks (but never the real ones), all the ideologists and “spokesmen” of the vacuous international Left, deplored the irresponsibility, the disorder, the looting (especially the fact that arms and alcohol were the first targets) and the 2000 fires with which the blacks lit up their battle and their ball. But who has defended the Los Angeles rioters in the terms they deserve?
        We will. Let the economists fret over the $27 million lost, and the city planners sigh over one of their most beautiful supermarkets gone up in smoke, and McIntyre blubber over his slain deputy sheriff. Let the sociologists bemoan the absurdity and intoxication of this rebellion. The role of a revolutionary publication is not only to justify the Los Angeles insurgents, but to help elucidate their perspectives, to explain theoretically the truth for which such practical action expresses the search.
Continue reading HERE: 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Tuesday, 2 June 2020

The Murmur.

      As I have always said, nobody knows the spark that will ignite the fire. Police brutality goes on day and daily, in country after country, and there is an angry murmuring. George Floyd's public murder by the police, thanks to modern technology, circulated the world, that was the spark that ignited this fire. This was not a sudden and unexpected explosion, this is the release of decades of pent up discontent and anger, decades of having injustice heaped on you on a daily bases. George Floyd threw open a door through which our anger could run free and express itself and attack the causes of those decades of brutality and injustice. 
     Of course you'll get the so called voices of "reason" condemning the destruction and looting, but where were they when for centuries the wealth created by the many was continually being looted by the few, where were their voices when the few, through the state and corporate bodies heaped destruction on our home, the planet? In a society where the majority are continually being looted of the wealth they create, what the apologists for the state, the media, call "looting" is merely taking back some of what you created. The trillions paid to the corporate world as a "bailout", is nothing more than looting the public purse by the state to comfort the wealthy few. 
      Yes, this anger may subside, and authority take back control, if that happens, then the brutality, the plundering of public wealth, the gross inequality and injustice will return, and you will have to accept it, or ignite another fire. The state authority and its accompanying brutality will not melt away because you desire it to do so, it will require the full force of your anger to rid ourselves of that scourge. 
      This could be the birth pangs of a new world as it struggles to be born, trying to push its way from the darkness to a bright new future. The choice is ours.
The Murmer Of The Poor

Brokers, bankers, Earls, Dukes,
callous, mercenary, pirate crew
gasconading through the land
Bloated, pampered, privileged few.

Striding with selfish arrogance
plundering as you go
grasping at the fruits
the common people sow.

Take heed, you swaggering fat cats
in our world you don't belong,
that murmur you hear is the poor
rehearsing an angry song.

The day is fat approaching
when our chorus loud you'll hear,
then all your greed and treachery
will surely cost you dear.

A price you'll pay for being blind
to the hungry at your door,
oh, haste the day our angry chorus
becomes a mighty roar. 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday, 1 June 2020

Looters.

       Somethings I always expect when I visit Not Buying Anything, compassion, insight, respect and common sense. Qualities if we all acted upon, we would have arrived at that better world by now.
   Here are Gregg's latest thoughts on today's society.
Looters On A Rampage. 

 
      I was going to write about my garden, which is fully planted, but there is so much going on in the world right now I find myself needing to sow some ideas in the fertile soil of the internet first.
      So here goes with some random thoughts.
      * When you steal the contents of a store you are a looter.
     When you steal the contents of an old growth forest you are an enterprising industry leader.
     * When telling a lie, tell a whopper. Keep repeating it. If challenged, double down. 
      For example - "You are free." "We care." "TINA." "Corruption only happens in other countries." "You have Freedom of Assembly."
     * You can rob more money by owning a bank than by robbing a bank. 
     * There is never enough money for the people's projects.
     There is always enough money for propping up crony capitalism.
    * When you dump a load of steer manure on a CEO's doorstep you are engaging in "domestic terrorism".
     When that CEO dumps toxic shit in your drinking water he is engaging in "bringing jobs and prosperity to your community".
     * When a crowd of people are in the street (some with automatic weapons), disrupting traffic and screaming moistly for haircuts and a sit down fast food meal, they get a police escort.
     When a crowd of peaceful, non-violent, non-armed citizens are in the street screaming (also moistly) for justice they get pepper spray, rubber bullets and police infiltrators/provocateurs instigating violence to discredit their message.
    * When you try to save the Earth you are an ecoterrorist and will be rewarded with scorn and incarceration.
     When you succeed in destroying the Earth, if you are lucky, you will be rewarded by becoming a billionaire.
     I can see who the real looters are, and where the real violence is coming from.
      It is not the citizens I have seen in the streets, who are largely peaceful and compassionate toward each other and loving toward their communities.
    Right now the real looters are on a record-setting multi-trillion dollar rampage. It is the largest transfer of wealth in the history of large transfers of wealth.
     And the largest purveyors of violence on the planet are state authorities trying to keep our necks under their knees. "We can't breathe!"
     These truths aren't being reported while we are obsessing over The People's understandable reaction to an obviously messed up social and economic situation.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Crazy World.

       When you survey the world we live in you see so much blatant injustice, poverty, corruption, greed, violence and inequality, in the midst of unimaginable wealth. You see and hear the wealthy being applauded for their pilfering and greed, and you ask yourself, why do we tolerate this plundering of the common wealth by the greedy few. We could all write volumes of the way the world is being destroyed by that greedy few. There is another way to live, we could put it all right if we the many would only rise up and take control. There is a better world in all our hearts, we just need the courage to take control and start to build it here and now.


 THIS CRAZY WORLD.

In this crazy world,
             half dead from dereliction
             half brutalised from deprivation
             half drowned in a sea of greed
             half devoured by perpetual need.
Where
             war shrieks from East to West
             famine seldom seems to rest
             hunger stalks the layman’s life
             poverty kills with a silent knife.
We find
            a pompous pampered arrogant clique
            live a life that’s smooth and sleek
            far removed from want and fear,
            bought with another’s sweat and tear.
Yet
            not a word do they speak
            to aid the fallen or the weak
            preferring to kneel at luxury’s shrine
            repeating their mantra, “This is mine”.
Now watch them
            peddle lies of tongue and pen
            slyly hoard their plunder then
            with spurious sanctimonious phrase
            shed crocodile tears at man’s malaise.
Where
            is it written that masses must sweat
            deprivation and misery a constant threat
            covering the world in measureless wealth
            so the few can plunder with avid stealth?
In friendship
            let’s clasp each human hand
            with compassion try to understand
            our differences, our hopes, our fears
            dragging mankind from this sea of tears.
Creating
            a world where justice flowers
            the many reap the fruits of toiling hours
            a world of sharing, tending the others need
            an end to privilege, plunder and greed.

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