A Thought From The Past!!!

      The following is a paragraph from a small article that I wrote some years ago. Amazing, I could quite easily have sat down today and penned the same article, as the powers that be, are working steadily at doing just what was proclaimed back then. 

–----- Some economists are proclaiming they have to to make it worse for the many. Insisting that governments must cut social spending to allow the real money makers to start creating greater wealth. While others state that the only formula is to cut social benefits and lower wages. Obviously the survival of the system is more important than the well-being of the people.

     Under these conditions, people have the right to defend themselves by what ever means possible, and that doesn't mean marching in an orderly fashion to some government office, and asking to be employed on a lousy job for a crap wage. We have a better imagination than that!!-----

      Ah well, I'll save it for another few years and use it again. Or are we really going to change things?

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I Think She Was A She---

      Poems come in many shapes and forms, say many things, some trivial, some profound, some deeply moving, some like an intravenous injection of emotion.

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The School Of Americas, A Blood Factory.

      For a while our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media has been giving some space, between celebrities, sex and sport, to the hundreds of thousands painfully grinding their way across Europe from the hell hole that is the Middle East. Not much cover to the fact that the reason for the brutal bloodshed taking place in that region, is the imperialists, past and present, greed and power driven desire to plunder the rich resources of the region.

     This is not a unique situation, it is the pattern of imperialism that goes on across the globe. At the other end of the world, that troubled continent, South America, has faced, and still does, the vicious brutality of empire, as the corporate greed behind the American imperialism, try to crush any opposition to their plunder of the resources of that region.

        South America is steeped in blood, the blood of ordinary people, savagely beaten, tortured, murdered and "disappeared". All at the behest of American corporate power, through the medium of the American military.

      Just as the European imperialists are seeing mass exodus from their killing fields to their "homeland", so the US imperialists are seeing a similar mass increase crossing their border by those fleeing the savagery of their military machine.

     The rivers of blood that have flowed, and are still flowing, to protect the profits of the corporate world, outdo the combined volume of the Nile, Yangtze and the Amazon. Truly, corporate profit can be measured in blood.
This is a video that everybody should see.

 

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Greece's Resurgent Anarchist Movement.

      Anarchist and anarchist groups should always change and adapt to the shifting conditions of the capitalist morass. The aim may be the same, but the route has to be devised as we move forward. In Greece where the capitalist system is an open fight of raw brutality, capitalism with the gloves off, so, Greece's anarchist movement is going through change, and a resurgence. 

This by Tommy Trenchard at Al Jazeera: 
GREECE'S RESURGENT ANARCHIST MOVEMENT.

A makeover

     Anarchy is not new to Greece. Though opinions differ on the details, anarchists say the movement started in the port city of Patras, and was brought across the Ionian sea by dockhands from Italy some time in the mid-19th century. Since then it has ebbed and flowed over the years, taking credit for helping to topple Greece's military dictatorship in the early 1970s and fighting educational reform throughout the 1990s.
     But since the beginning of the country's economic crisis in 2008, the movement has been resurgent as disaffected young Greeks look for alternatives to a political and economic system many see as discredited.
    On one Wednesday earlier in the year, I watched as masked anarchists in hoodies and black T-shirts hurled bottles and petrol bombs at riot police in front of the parliament building. Such exchanges have become routine.
      These are, perhaps, the images that most commonly come to mind when people think of anarchists. But after decades of being seen largely as a protest movement of ideologues and dreamers, Greece's anarchists are having a makeover.
      As frustration with conventional politics deepens, the movement is attempting to rebrand itself as a realistic alternative for disillusioned young Greeks by showing that it offers more than violence and vague ideas of freedom. The concert in Kesariani was a part of this initiative.

 

      "The revolution will not come with flowers," he said. "They need to see that we have the power to create but also to destroy. Again and again."
     Back in K-Vox, however, V is confident that their many pockets of support across the capital can capitalise on the current state of turmoil in the country. "The movement is maturing. All over Athens we have these assemblies now; everywhere small fires are burning. We hope they will join up until they take over the city."

Read the full article HERE:

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Lest We Forget, Alexandros Grigoropoulos December 6th. 2008.

       Today, December 6th. this evening to be precise, is the seventh anniversary of the murder of a 15 year old youth in Athens Greece. That Saturday night, just after 9pm, some youths are chatting in a café in Exarcheia, just as they do most Saturday evenings, two police arrive, there are some words, the police leave, then return shortly afterwards, two shots ring out and 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos falls to the ground and dies in the arms of his young companion. This cold blooded murder by the police, sparked some of the worst riots in Greece. For weeks the righteous anger of the people of Greece spilled onto the streets. This callous murder lit the touch paper of the powder keg of anger that had been rippling just below the surface, an anger that to this day is still there, fuelled by the continued plundering of the people of Greece, by the financial Mafia and their cohorts in government.

      This is a very fitting video to the memory of young Alexandros, showing that the people do not forget their own. It is also a display of the desire for freedom that is locked in all our hearts. An awakening in the people's consciousness to the fact that, there is a better way, we do not need to be tied to the debilitating yoke of capitalism.

This from Anarchist News: 

      Outside Greece, solidarity demonstrations, riots and clashes with local police also take place in more than 70 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, the Hague, Copenhagen, Bordeaux, Cologne, Seville, Sao Paulo, as well as Nicosia in Cyprus, and Paphos proving for the first time before the “Arab Spring” that people could spread the news and react through protests for the same matter around the globe, from San Francisco to Wellington and Buenos Aires to Siberia.

      While the unrest was triggered by the Alexis Grigoropoulos murder by police, the reactions lasted for so long simply because they were rooted in deeper causes, like the coming economic crisis a year later, which was already being felt by poorer classes and younger generations through rising unemployment rate and a feeling of general inefficiency and corruption of the authorities, institutions and right wing politicians of the Greek state (mainly New Democracy and PASOK political parties).

Read the full article HERE:

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Quran V Bible.

      It is weird how the accepted religion is good, but other people's religion is backward, out of step with human nature, and in cases downright cruel. However I personally put all of them in the one rat-bag that has plagued humanity for countless centuries. The religious cherry pick their religion, quoting the parts from their holy-of-holy books they like, but ignoring the parts that are unpalatable. I just loved this little experiment carried by a couple of individuals. A video well worth the watch.

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Syria, The Compassionate Face Of Imperialism!!!

       It can be taken as a truth, that all those involved in the bombing of Syria, do not have at heart, the well-being of the Syrian people. So many nations from across the globe, running in to help the Syrian people?? In this capitalist, imperialist world, it beggars belief. What the motives are for each of those nations involved is extremely difficult to get a handle on, one thing is sure, at the baseline, it is self interest. Who stands to gain what if this happens, who stands to lose what if that happens, is all very complicated if we don't have all the facts. As in all wars, truth and facts are casualties. There is no point looking to that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media for clarity, they pedal illusion, wishful thinking and propaganda.

 Imperialist building blocks of democracy.

     Counter-Punch, has an interesting article that helps to supply informative parts of the jigsaw, that is the Middle East, Syria in particular.

------As for Washington’s “strategy”, it now boils down to the CIA need of a new rat line. That could imply sitting on the – weaponized – sidelines watching Turkmen and Kurds slug it out, thus creating an opening for the Turkish Army to intervene, and the Russian Air Force to prevent it, with all hell guaranteed to break loose. ------

Read the full article HERE:

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William McIlvanney.

         Just heard, William McIlvanney died aged 79, they announced his death as "crime author dies", I never read any of his novels, though I'm sure they were brilliantly crafted, but loved his poetry. He seemed to be able to get into the heads of so many characters, his poetry could distil what it is to be human. I find it difficult to pick out one that stands out from the others, they, to me, are all up there on the high altar of wonderful poetry.

     My small tribute to William McIlvanney is this verse V, from "Initiation" in his book, "In Through The Head". 

My father's personal Midian was The Strike,
Say 'nineteen twenty-six' and watch his eyes
Bruise still with images of boot and pick.
Beyond the room's bright warmth he heard the cries
Of children starving and the feet of men
Subduing anguish to a measured walk,
You didn't interrupt his anger when
He brought up gouts of blood in his talk.

'Sam Harris hanged himself',''Ah've see a wean
Whose staple diet was a dummy tit.'
'The batoned bastards beat up unarmed men.'
Not an economist's view, He didn't find
The key that locks pain safely in a law.
Raw facts still looted comfort from his mind,
Broke into his indifference. He saw
Only the cold, blind heaving ranks who crushed
Into the closing justice of their time
Only to be rejected. Pictures strung
Out of his mind unbroken, newsreel rushed
Straight from the scene of an historic crime;
The pit-cage talk before fierce hopes were hung
On a slender thread of unity; the bands
That grouped lean jowls round any bone of news
To sharpen hope's teeth on it; big quiet men
Who rotted with their pockets round their hands;
The shame of looking at your children's shoes;
Soup-kitchens; five fags shared among ten;
At countless corners the spontaneous wake
Held by silk-mufflered men for self-respect.
Hearing him talk you came to realize
That history is what time leaves in men's eyes,
The shape their thinking takes. His was a fate
Coined in the twenties, already out of date
By the time the thirties ended or before,
Survivor of an unofficial war,
The scars he carried made him not quite fit
To enjoy the subsequent peace or understand
That this was all the gain their fight had brought.
He did not recognise the promised land.
You might, of course, have cited this bright room,
Full bellies, clothes, as what their guts had won.
But that was an impertinence to him,
Whose dream had seemed as certain as the sun.
Were bingo, the telly, hire purchase cars
As a measure of their sacrifice enough?
Later, in casual talk or busy bars,
You seem to hear a distant ideal sough,
Cry of a Dodo haunting the pleasant day,
Recalling the need to care, a debt to pay.

Thanks William, for your window onto humanity.

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

 

Spanish Democracy.

     Europe, a continent of democratic countries!!! Or so the propaganda narrative goes. Such horrors of imprisonment without trail only happens in those nasty dictator countries, not here in democratic Europe. However any person that opens their eyes, will know that the state apparatus in any country in Europe, as elsewhere, can make the rules up as they go along. Being imprisoned for two years without trial blows a hole in the veneer of European democracy, it shatters the illusion of democracy spouted by the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. If two years seem extremely excessive, how about four years?

This from Contra Info: 

Spanish prisons: Contact address of anarchist prisoners
Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar
      On October 28th 2015, the Spanish justice decided to extend the period of pretrial detention for anarchists Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar for two more years. They were arrested on November 13th 2013, accused of participation in a terrorist organisation, of havoc and conspiracy. Though the Spanish penal code sets a limit of two years of incarceration without a trial, the State can in fact impose an extra remand period of two years on the ground of “special reasons”.
The comrades have been transferred to the prisons in Asturias:
Mónica Caballero Sepúlveda
Francisco Solar Domínguez
C.P Villabona-Asturias
Finca Tabladiello s/n
33422 Villabona-Llanera
(Asturias) España/Spain
Strength to Mónica and Francisco!

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Winter.

 

         With more than 8,000 air-strikes on Iraq and Syria in the last fifteen months, and now Britain joining the carnage, it is difficult to grasp the horror of the daily life of those left in that region. In spite of the unbelievable bombardment of that area and its people, Cameron tells us that it will take a long time to complete their task. What will be left of the region when the imperialists consider their job done? All in all the situation fills me with dread and anguish, my heart weeps for the people who daily are at the receiving end of this destruction of everything they have built over the centuries. We are creating a wasteland filled with dead, maimed, traumatised people, a generation of children growing up knowing nothing but violence and carnage, how will they find love in their hearts.

Winter

Dark malefic clouds crowd the sky

winds carry the stench of carrion to every nostril,

the crazy ape has followed the faculty of hawks.

All around stand crows, magpies, jackdaws, vultures,

edacious eyes anticipating their putrid feast.

A weary Cassandra laments;

doves, hearts weeping for a better yesterday

forsake their olive branches.

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Capitalism, Born Of Greed, Survives By Greed.

       Looking at this insane world of capitalism, you become accustomed to its many contradictions. For example, if you live in a rich country you would imagine that you would be better treated financially than if you lived in a poorer country. Well not so if you happen to be a pensioner.

      If we take the 10 largest economies in the world, US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France, India, Brazil, Italy, Canada, and look at how they treat their pensioners we get some strange results. If we take pensions as a percentage of the average wage, we find that all the richest economies with the exception of Canada, are at the bottom end of that table, with the poorer countries paying their pensioners a higher percentage of average wages. The two largest economies find themselves at the very bottom of the league, with the US paying its pensioners a miserable 17.3% of the average wage, while its main competitor China, paying a paltry 2.0%. The UK, fifth in the league of large economies, finds itself in the bottom half of the pension league, with a derisory 21.6% of average wage, almost half that of the poorer New Zealand, whose pensioners receive 40.1%. of the average wage. 

       Of course it is not just in pensions that we find this inequality and injustice, the system of capitalist economics is built on such inequality, it's how the system functions. Wealth is created by the vast majority of the people, but the wealth then flows up towards a small cabal of parasites, who surround themselves with opulence beyond our imagination. To maintain that life in the cocoon of unearned wealth, the parasites have to continually plunder the wealth produced by us the ordinary people. Hence the cuts in our standard of living, education, health care, and all social services. The differences in our conditions at the bottom of this insane system is brought about by the majority having to fight individual battles to gain some of the inadequate crumbs left by the parasites, creating different strata of poor and poorer. The system is not based on logic, rationalism or compassion, but on the control of all the means of production and distribution, and that, for the moment, is firmly in the hands of the parasites. So it will continue until we decide that we have had enough of this plundering of the produce of our labour, and we take control of those means of production and distribution. 

Pensions as % of average wage.

New Zealand 40.1%
Denmark 36.3%
Ireland 33.0%
Canada 32.2%
Netherlands 27.1%
Australia 27.1%
France 25.6%
Sweden 23.2%
UK 21.6%
Japan 20.1%
Spain 19.6%
Italy 19.1%
Germany 19.0%
US 17.3%
Turkey 6.0%
China 2.0%

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What Cost Bombing?

     It is no surprise that after last night's expected success of the imperialist warmongers, in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, the same cabal that tell us we must have austerity to balance the books, we can't afford decent social services, these are difficult times, we shouldn't live beyond our means, have no problem opening the nations cheque book for war.

        According to the the Ministry of Defence, (should be renamed, Ministry of War) figures released in 2010 state that every time a Tornado plane takes to the air, it costs the taxpayer £35,000 per hour. Assuming the average flight lasts about six hours, not excessive, that comes in at £210,000 an excursion. Of course they will not be flying paying tourist, each Tornado will have a payload of probably four Pathway bombs, (£22,000 each) and two Brimstone missiles, (£105,000 each) that takes us to the staggering cost of £508,000 per plane per mission. Of course these instruments of destruction rarely fly solo on missions, they tend to fly in pairs. So that takes your cost of each mission to a little over £1 million. Of course our air-force has much more expensive weaponry at its disposal, they could take off with our super-duper destructive toy, the Storm Shadow, at a cool £800,000 each. Now that would make a nice big bang. 

         During our imperialist intervention in Libya in 2011, 16 Tornado GR4s were employed, at £35,000 per hour flying cost, and used 230 Brimstones missiles, (£105,000 each) and a number of Storm Shadows, (£800,000 each). Of course there are other costs involved, support and back up services, also these planes often have to refuel in the air, a very expensive exercise. What if just one aircraft is lost, at a cost of £9.4 million.

      So you see how the costs stack up as the missions continue over a period of years. The other imperialist forces have been bombing Syria for approximately 15 months so far. Considering that some of the most powerful military in the world have been bombing the hell out of Syria for that amount of time, what difference do you think the British imperialists will make?

       Like I keep saying, we are a very rich country, it is just that that wealth, created by all the working people in this country, is not shared out fairly among those wealth creators. It is hoarded by our lords and master to keep them in unimaginable opulence, and for operations to protect their imperialist power.

         Apart from the outrageous financial cost of these imperialist escapades, there is of course the human cost, the destruction of villages, towns and cities, comes with incomprehensible death, misery and trauma, to hundreds of thousands of families. We are seeing the result of our imperialist's recent endeavours in the Middle East, as hundreds of thousands of families now find themselves facing a European winter living in fields and inadequate camps. Among those families are sick, elderly, and children, all fleeing a hell-hole, a dystopia, created by the actions of the imperialists quest for power and wealth.  

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We Are Complicit.

At the age of 81, this poster says what I feel in my heart.

        Today, the members of the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption will decide if the British imperialist hierarchy will unleash their modern destructive air-power on Syria. The extreme right-wing faction in the Labour Party have demanded a free vote on this matter, and with their usual overpowering arrogance, they say the will vote according to their conscience. They utterly fail to grasp the idea of democracy, they simply can't accept that they are there to represent their constituencies and not their own personal view.
        What will happen if the pompous arrogant mouthpieces of the British imperialist establishment succeed in getting their way, and it certainly looks as if they will? That babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will swamp us with maps, showing lots of lines and strange names, photographs of UK war-planes, there will of course by videos of our “clever smart missiles” turning a rather hazy something into a cloud of dust. What they will not show of course, is the body parts lying around after the dust settles. They will also pump out that old UK military myth, we only kill “bad guys”, but somehow in every war zone we are involved in, the local inhabitants keep burying the damaged bodies of their men women and children. 

        At present some of the most powerful military powers on earth are bombing Syria on a vast and daily basis, Syria is a waste land, its people are fleeing in their millions, Britain's contribution to that mayhem, will be more death and destruction, more terrified traumatised families fleeing a Western created Dante's inferno. The UK imperial establishment's only reason for entering this destruction of a country, is its desire not to miss out on the spoils of war, when the imperialists start to carve up that unfortunate land. The pack of imperialist wolves are tearing Syria apart to fulfil their original aims, to bring down the Assad regime and open Syria's resources to the corporate world. The Syrian people are not on that agenda, they can go to hell in a hand cart as far as the big boys in the imperialist team are concerned. 

          Like Afghanistan, like Iraq, like Libya, and further back, Malaya and Suez, and many others, our involvement in Syria has nothing to do with democracy, nothing to do with the local people, it is all about imperialist powers carving up the world to their own advantage.
         Under the present system, Britain's blood stained path will continue, we will continue to send our young people to foreign lands, waving the false flag of democracy, they will destroy and kill, to further the power of UK interests, to plunder other people's resources. Only the will of the people can stop this greed driven human disaster. As it continues we are complicit, we swallow their lies, we turn a blind eye, we settle into our own comfort zone, we ignore the suffering of others. This brutal crime may be planned and instigated by the powers that be, but they need us to carry it out, we are the tools they use to savage other people, people just like us. 

         It will take something more than lobbying your MP, to end this cancer that is eating the human race. It will take a revolution of consciousness of the ordinary people, and the will to destroy the present system. 

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