Leaflets?

            Visited Paisley yesterday, Saturday January 28th. To give a wee bit of support to the "Support the Strikers" Demo. Though not a vast number, it was good to see such diverse groups out to give their support to the strikers. A good array of flags and banners. After a few impassioned speeches, the demo moved on and marched through the main street in Paisley to Gilmour Street Station and ended there with a few more very impassioned speeches.
           Who are the strikers? they are not some alien group from some other place. They are your neighbours, they live up the street from you, you meet them in the pub, supermarket, on the bus and you stand next to them at the football matches. Your kids play with their kids, they are us. This is not a struggle between a group of workers and their employer, this is a struggle for a decent life for us all. For generations we have struggled and sweated to try to have a decent life for our families, and we have seen the rich get richer while we continue to get poorer. We have seen the social fabric of our society being shredded to appease the financial markets, we have seen the rich get bigger yachts, bigger mansions and more luxurious private jets. While we on the other hand struggle to heat our homes, struggle to put food on the table. So it is with enthusiasm that we greet the strikes and we must support them with determined solidarity, join them on the picket line in the streets, shouting loud and clear, Enough is Enough

Some photos from Paisley.

 

          If I have one criticism of the event it was what to me was missed opportunities. We must always realise that the aim of these demos is not to speak to the converted, but to reach out the those not yet involved, the passers-by. Where the demo gather at first, there were leaflets and papers being handed out to those passers-by. However when they marched off down the main street they seem to forget that they were walking with lots of people moving up and down the street on both sides, all potential supporters, if we can hand them a leaflet or some literature. There should have been individuals on the edge of the march pushing leaflets and papers into the hands of those casual passers-by. The same criticism can be said when the passed the open air market, people gathered there, the march should have stopped and made sure as many as possible had a leaflet of some sort, then continued their march to the station. If we don't reach that great silent majority, we are going nowhere. Leaflets and papers are our broadcasting system.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

My God!

         To day around the world there are glaringly obvious, brutally glaringly obvious, examples of why we should never allow religious groups to hold power. In Afghanistan we have the Taliban who enforce savage punishment on all and sundry from removing a persons hand to forbidding women to be educated. In Iran we have the Mullahs who preside of a regime that can accept young women being beaten to death for not covering their hair in the Mullah's desired fashion and kills and executes those who dare to oppose this insanity of religious dogma. Then there is Israel, with this insane belief that about 2,000 years or so ago, God gave them all the land that was Palestine and they have that god given right to take it all back no matter how much suffering or how many deaths this takes. In this country, the UK, the state still pays homage to the religious dictators that hold sway over millions of ordinary people trying to channel the public's thoughts along the strict dictate of their chosen God. All religions claim to be followers of a loving God of peace, but all religions have blood soak history they all have killed and will again, they'll kill those who dare to oppose them. The world is soaked in blood from religious wars, and it still divides the people of the world. Freedom, peace and justice cannot coexists with religion.
          The UK state hands 26 seats in the House of Lords to bishops of the Church of England. These planted members can and do vote on legislation, make interventions, but also they lead prayers at the beginning of each day's sessions. This puts UK on a par with the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the only two states on the planet that give clerics of the established religion automatic seats in the legislatures, where they can vote and shape legislation.

         Some of the religious conflicts that have soaked our planet in blood, taken from Andrew Holt, Ph.D.'s article, "Religion and the 100 Worst Atrocities in History"

"Taiping Rebellion- 20,000,000 Deaths (Rank- 6th)
Thirty Years War- 7,500,000 Deaths (Rank 17th)
Madhi Revolt- 5,500,000 (Rank 21st)
Crusades (in the East)- 3,000,000 Deaths (Rank- 30th)
French Wars of Religion- 3,000,000 Deaths (Rank 30th)
War in the Sudan- 2,600,000 (Rank 35th)
Albigensian Crusade- 1,000,000 Deaths (Rank- 46th)
Panthay Rebellion- 1,000,000 Deaths (Rank 46th)
Hui Rebellion- 640,000 Deaths (Rank 66th)
Partition of India- 500,000 (Rank 70th)
Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland- 400,000 Deaths (Rank 81st)"

         So it should be obvious that this is a very toxic mix, capitalism, state and religion, none of these entities offer freedom of thought or action, all of them are authoritarian and will always stand against the free expression of thoughts and deeds. To hold onto their power they need obedience from the "flock". Do we wish to be a "flock", do we need a shepherd. If we desire freedom and justice for all we have to smash these authoritarian establishments, whose foundations are power, privilege and a subservient population, and their aim is to hold on to those, privileges and that power and enhance their wealth.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Paper.

          I have often spouted about getting our message on the streets, and the need for greater leaflets, pamphlets, poster to proliferate on the streets and workplaces. They are our broadcasting system, our quiet teacher spreading our ideas and hopes. The anarchist movement owes a lot to those back allay, back shop, underground and open printing places. those dedicated individuals who spent hours printing and distributing our message, our hopes, our ideas. The printed word is as valuable as the meetings, street demonstrations and protests etc.. The printed word can quietly find its way into homes, workplaces and communities. It is difficult to imagine where we would be without those little presses churning out leaflets, periodicals, posters and pamphlets.
           So I am delighted that someone has brought together a history of those printing presses and the important part they played in getting those anarchists, ideas, hopes and visions to an ever increasing public. I for one will be ordering the book when it comes out.

 

London's anarchist HQ, 127 Ossulston Street, 1894-1927

Image courtesy of Libcom.

Article taken from Anarchist News.

From University of Hawai'i News

            Anarchist letterpress printers and presses from the late 1800s through the 1940s is the focus of a new book by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Political Science and Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty member.
          Professor Kathy Ferguson’s work Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture, details the importance of printed materials that galvanized anarchist movements across the U.S. and Great Britain. The book will be released on February 24, and is published by Duke University Press.
          Anarchism is a political movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and holds all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary. Ferguson shows how printers arranged text, ink, images, graphic markers and blank space within the design of a page. Their extensive correspondence with fellow anarchists and publishing their radical ideas brought the decentralized anarchist movements together. By diving deeper into the practices of anarchist print culture, Ferguson points to possible methods for cultivating contemporary political resistance.

 

Professor Kathy Ferguson.

               “The anarchists organized a remarkable political movement largely through their print culture: writing, printing, distributing, reading, and archiving their publications brought them together. Their success suggests that the act of making things together generates political energy,” Ferguson said.
              Ferguson is the author of several books, including Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets, which is about a central figure in the anarchist movement. She is working on another book on women in the anarchist movement whose contributions have been underrated or lost. Ferguson’s goal when writing these two books is to bring women more fully into anarchism, and at the same time to bring anarchism more fully into feminism. She hopes to bring these radical histories to light to make our understanding of them more robust so that we can use them better today.
            The Department of Political Science and Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies are housed in the Mānoa College of Social Sciences.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Why Not?

  Well, why not?

Why Not?

I see hungry children crying beside warehouses of food

I see the elderly cold hungry alone in an ocean of plenty

I feel anger when caskets draped in that coloured rag

carried home with military pomp weeping families

another causality of greed privilege power

Day and daily I see greed praised as success

rich as celebrities poor as failures

I swim in a sea of fabricated illusions where privilege is progress

where truth dies a lonely death somewhere in a corner of our heart

Yet within my heart I have millions of seeds of love

I know I must plant and let grow

So why shouldn’t I be an anarchist?

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info

A swamp

Image courtesy of Ray Davies. 

          Looking at today’s politicians is a bit like looking at the lives of charlatans. Across the Atlantic we have the Trump saga of corruption and delusions, the Biden affair of having classified documents lying hither and thither about his home and various offices. Over here at our end of the swamp we have in that chamber of pomp and privilege, the House of Lords, one of their members, millionaire Michelle Mone, faces accusations that her husband has been linked to at least three tax avoidance schemes by HMRC, so she takes “leave of absence” from her place in the house of ermine, which means of course that she doesn’t have to disclose her financial affairs. Down among the millionaires in that misnomer, The House of Commons, when in fact it is a house of millionaires, we have ex Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi being fined by HMRC for a reported sum of over a million pounds for avoiding having paid a reported sum of over £3 million in tax. According to him and his cronies, it was an oversight and not deliberate. This is a man who is reputed to have a personal wealth of £100 million. Now one would imagine that a shrewd business millionaire would have the sense to employ a shit hot accountant to make sure his tax affairs were in order, just to keep his “good” name. Will we hear of an accountant being dismissed? Knee deep in wealth, failing to pay over £3million in tax in a tax avoidance scheme, just an oversight, yes and the moon is made of cheese. Of course we know that one Boris Johnson is never far removed for scandal, lying and bluster, well true to form another little piece of skulduggery has surfaced. It appears the Boris was strapped for cash and needed a guarantor for an £800,000 loan, and according to a report in The Sunday Times, a meeting was arranged between Canadian business man Sam Blyth, Mr Sharp and Boris with the idea of Mr. Sharp being a guarantor for Boris’s loan. Mr Sharp was later appointed as chairman of the BBC, an appointment that is made by the Prime Minister and Culture Secretary. Are you reaching for your mask to try and avoid the stink coming from the sewer that is politics today. When will we wise up and bring this festering sewer of a swamp to an end, can’t you hear them laughing at us. We struggle to heat our homes, put food on the table and are told how to live our lives by multi-millionaires who see £3+ million tax avoidance as an oversight. Do we really think this is the way to organise our lives? Is this the society that we want for future generations?

Image courtesy of Global Witness.

Visit ann arkyu's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Quiet.

           Though we have millions of people who take their anger on to the streets and show it in other very visible means, direct action etc., we should not forget that quiet multitude. Their silence does not equate with acceptance of this unjust capitalist system. They are aware that their lives are not what they could be, they are aware of the inequality. These are the people we have to convince that we can build a better world for all, without that quiet majority we are going nowhere. They want a better world, we have to raise their anger, so that they will join us on the streets, in strikes, in solidarity with all those in open struggle against this festering greed driven capitalist system. 

                                             Image courtesy of Kids Creative Chaos.

Another wee gem of a poem from the Chinese poet Xu Lizhi.

"Conflict"

They all say
I'm a child of few words
This I don't deny
But actually
Whether I speak or not
With this society I'll still
Conflict

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

A Con.

 

          Our lives are plagued by spivs and conmen who prance about in expensive clothes and sit in the corridors of power. One such spiv, a boss of an energy company, has just stated that high energy prices are here to stay, this is after the energy companies have made billions in profit. What these spivs and conmen don't mention is that wholesale gas prices have plummeted. The reason energy prices sky rocketed  in the first place was the imperialist blood bath in Ukraine and Europe stopped buy Russian gas. At that point in time the price of wholesale gas jumped to around 800p per therm. There little secret is that it has now dropped to 150p per therm, below what it was before the Ukraine affair. Have you noticed this in you energy bills? No you haven't, the reason being the statement made by that energy boss, high energy prices are here to stay. They don't want to see those billions in profits shrink, they're on a bonanza and loving it. How does it feel to be continually ripped-off by a bunch of very rich and greedy spivs and conmen. Like I said before, they are laughing at us, what are we going to do about this continuous plundering of the ordinary people, to fatten the bank accounts of the parasite class of spivs and conmen and furnish them with more expensive yachts, private jets and gas guzzling limousines?

Image courtesy of Catalyst Commercial

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info