Remember Gezi Park?

        Remember Gezi Park protests in Turkey, if you do it will be thanks to our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. Well, despite the silence from those meant to inform, and the brutal repression from the regime, the protests go on and have moved forward. Turkey has not seen many peaceful days since Gezi Park, squats and workers control have been growing, people are resisting the privatisation of public spaces, and the regimes covert support of ISIS has brought more protests on to the streets. There is also a growing awareness by the people, that Turkey is an economic bubble about to burst. Under the glitzy veneer of skyscrapers, opulent shopping malls and an avalanche of "must have" labels, anger is growing, and not just in Turkey, but across the whole of the creaking capitalist edifice. As the gap between rich and poor grows, so does the anger. Can the day of reckoning be far off?

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

From Kurdistan Anarchists Forum.

 

From Anarkismo:

Interview with the Kurdistan Anarchists Forum (KAF) about the situation in Iraq/Kurdistan

       The experiences of many of us have proved or at least shown that it is very, very hard for a libertarian/anarchist idea and direction to grow and develop inside a hierarchal organization. Not only this, it is impossible for such ideas and directions to remain or stay and continue in an ideological nationalist organization. We can always separate or distinguish between the social movement and the leftist political movement whatever form they have because the leftists and politicians are always authoritarian and corrupt. We can see in reality the leftists are always trying to tame and control struggles and the movement of the mass people and use them to achieve their own political aims, making political capital out of it. 

 What do you think of the US bombings?

       Before the US decided to bombard and hit the ISIS bases, there were a lot of rumours and news that ISIS was created by the US, UK and Israel. The more reliable evidence that we can refer to was from Edward Snowden about this. Now when they (UK and US) decide to attack ISIS and sell weapons to the KRG, it is to undermine Edward Snowden's information and the rumours that spread widely. 

    We are against intervention from the US and Western countries and also selling weapons to the KRG. We know this is big business for them, that can make a lot of profits through this trade. We also do not want Kurdistan to become a battlefield for all the Jihadist groups in the world against the US, Western countries and the Kurdish, in which so many innocent people would be killed and many places would be destroyed. In addition, the war situation creates more haters between Kurds and Arabs, between Kurds and Sunnis. In the meantime it caused the emergence of many racist and fascist groups.

     The only winners in the wars are the big companies who sell weapons and war equipment, and the losers - as always - are the poor people. 

Read the full article HERE: 

 

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A Living Thing, Or A Marketable Product For Profit.

       Chickens, ducks, cattle, salmon and many more species are not treated as living things, but merely as marketable products, farmed in factories in totally unacceptable, cruel and barbaric conditions to produce the best cash return for large organisations. Perhaps we should watch a few of these films before we go shopping for our daily food.

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

Funny Money.

      Some interesting figures on the debt situation across Europe and USA. It is impossible to give an accurate figure for any of these countries as the debt rises every second. In the case of the UK, its debt rises by approximately £5,170 per second, and the US by $54,486 per second. Top of the pile is the US with a debt mountain of $19,159,510,996,817, of course that is already an out of date figure as we speak. The UK is now in the trillion dollar debt league, with a staggering £1,441,621,181,818, pile of debt bleeding its citizens, again, an out of date figure due to it rising every second. 

Debt and interest by country:

Country.      Debt.                   Interest per year.     Per second.

Italy.    €2,281,485,254,811     €106,549,306,816     €3,379

Greece. €372,379,166,104      €27,101,544,783        €859

Spain. €863,519,211,914        €41,485,995,580        €1,316

France. €2,110,778,333,757   €57,774,866,678        €1,832

UK.    £1,441,621,181,818      £45,148,202,514        £1,432

USA. $19,159,510,996,817    $518,163,271,991       $16,431

        From this handful of countries the financial Mafia is raking in €22,181 of tax payers money every second, 24/7, on interest payments alone. World wide we have managed to pile up more than $53 trillion in debt. Bearing in mind that practically every country in the world has a mountain of debt, who do we owe this mountain of money to, is there that amount of money on the planet, In the entire world, there are only 5 countries free from debt, British Virgin Islands, Palau, Liechtenstein, Brunei, and Macao, they seem to get by without debt.

     Obviously countries don't move boxes of Dollars, Euros or Pounds around the world, it doesn't exist, the financial Mafia merely tap numbers on a keyboard, and hey presto, your country has money in its account. An insane system of smoke and mirrors, a financial house of cards, a gambling casino based on phoney money, and it is about to “all fall down”.

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

TTIP, Secret Talks And Corporate Lobbyists.

 More on TTIP from SumOf Us:

       Environmental standards, workers’ right and food hygiene are all under the chopping block with TTIP. And even worse: these incredibly sensitive policy areas are being negotiated away in secret -- so far only lobbyists of the big corporations have had access to EU lawmakers.

       But this is about to change. The European Ombudsman -- the place where European citizens can lodge complaints about EU politics -- has opened a formal investigation into TTIP and its lack of transparency following pressure from civil society. We have only 7 days left to write to the Ombudsman and let her know how we feel about our rights being negotiated away in a secret trade deal.

Write an email to the Ombudsman today!

      While lobbyists of the big corporations from Monsanto to Nestle to Exxon Mobile have been going in and out of meetings with lawmakers in Brussels, ordinary citizens are often standing in front of closed doors. That has to change!

      We need actual citizens’ participation in a process that is going to affect our lives as profoundly as the TTIP. We need true access -- to the negotiating documents, the meeting reports and full transparency about which lobbyists are meeting with European lawmakers.

Here is what you need to do: write an email to the European Ombudsman to demand full transparency about the TTIP and in particular the comings and goings of corporate lobbyists. It will only take a few minutes but it will be totally worthwhile.

Here are some talking points you could use for your email:

• The EU should be extremely open and transparent and immediately release all information on the TTIP negotiations, especially when it concerns areas such as environmental standards, workers’ rights and health and safety. 
• The EU should lay open all communication between lobbyists of big business. Sadly, so far business had way more access to negotiations than normal citizens. That needs to change. 
• The EU should release a list of all the meetings that corporations have had with lawmakers.

     Remember: the more personal your message, the more likely it will be read by the Ombudsman.

The leaders of the European Union are starting to really feel the people’s discontent with this secret trade deal. And this is also thanks to you. Thousands of SumOfUs members complained to the EU Commission about corporations being able to sue governments -- the ISDS clause in TTIP. Many of you have chipped in to support our TTIP work and the development of the European Citizens’ Initiative. Now is the time to keep up the pressure!

Send an email to the Ombudsman to ask for full access to the TTIP negotiations and transparency about the comings and goings of corporate lobbyists.

     Thanks for all you do, 

Anne, Hannah, and the team at SumOfUs

More information:

European Ombudsman launches public consultation in relation to the transparency of the TTIP negotiations

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

Getting Fat On Other People's Sweat.

       Some crazy figures in this capitalist world that show the inequality created by this insane, unjust, exploitative system. Despite the screams of disaster and crisis in 2008, and not forgetting the Eurozone problems, according to a recent report from Credit Suisse, global wealth has more than doubled since 2000, reaching over £150 trillion, During this period have you personally felt the benefits of this remarkable growth? On the contrary, for you and I, this period has been one long spell of “austerity”, falling incomes, shrinking social services and deteriorating living standards. 

     Crisis or no crisis, we still create wealth at an enormous rate, where is it going? Well, there are approximately 5 billion adults in the world today, but just 8.4% of whom own 83.4% of all household wealth. At the other end, approximately two-thirds of adults in the world have less than $10,000 of net wealth, while approximately 3.2 billion adults have nil, nothing. 

     So at one end we have billions of people with no wealth what so ever, nothing. While we have 32 million people who own $98 trillion of the world's wealth, that's 41% of the total. At the top of this heap of parasites, wallowing in unbelievable unearned wealth, we have just over 98,000 individuals who have more than $50 million each, with almost 34,000 of those owning more than $100 million each. It works out that 1% of the population own 41% of the world's wealth, 10% own 86%, and the bottom half, the you and me's, own just 1%. 

    It doesn't take a mathematical expert to work out that we have enough material wealth to see to the needs of all our people, but this man made, crazy, greedy driven system, is not built to do that, it is doing what it was meant to do, make rich people richer, and to hell with the rest of you. However, never forget that the parasites are getting fat on our poverty and sweat, every penny of that wealth was created by the you and me's of this world, it is ours, we just have to take it all back, but when? 

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

An Open Letter.

      Willie McDougall was one of Glasgow's life long anarchists and a bitter anti-war campaigner. As a conscientious objector he was sent to Dartmoor prison. Somehow he managed to get his hands on a bicycle and proceeded to cycle off, making his way back to Glasgow, where he continued his anti-war campaigning. 

 Photo courtesy of Bob Jones and Gina Bridgeland.

       This is an extract from an open letter he wrote to Mr Callaghan, leader of the Labour Party. Though some what dated, it still makes for interesting reading.

        The entire letter can be read at Spirit of Revolt, "Read of the Month"

RENT, INTEREST AND PROFIT.

      The old Fabians, although reformist, carried out a vigorous propaganda against Rent, Interest and Profit, all legalised forms of robbery of the common people. This view was also held by such famous socialists as Upton Sinclair and Robert Blatchford.

      In order to buy off counter-revolutionary violence the latter were prepared to pay modest compensation to these robbers, but only for their own life time. In the case of landowners they quoted John Ball, the Kentish Priest, whose text was: "When Adam delved and Eve span who was then the Gentleman?" He was hanged for demanding the land for the people.

      Somewhere along the line in all countries the land was stolen by force, or deceit from the common people. The Red Indians in America, the Zulus in Africa, the Aborigines in Australia were massacred, while in Europe and in Scotland there were Sutherland-type Clearances.

     Jack Jones has quipped that two-thirds of the members of the House of Lords are descendants of cattle thieves, land thieves or Court prostitutes. This applies also to our landlords. Whoever got the original titles had no moral or ethical right to acquire, sell or bequeath them.

     Blatchford cleverly shows the unfair parallel with the useful writer or inventor.... The latter's copyright lasts only 50 years whereas land rights, like interest are in perpetuity. The burden of interest which lies like an Albatross round the necks of all our big cities, causes rents to be at least three times higher than necessary. As our great Scottish revolutionary, John Maclean, pointed out, the perpetual burden of interest on the nationalised industries makes it difficult for them to be viable.---- 

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