Requiem For A Journey Of No Return.

       In Athens on December 6th. 2008, young 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead in the street by a cop, dying in the arms of his young friend of the same age, Nikos Romanos, who is now in a Greek prison.

    This event sparked some of the largest and most widespread riots seen in Greece, 

     Nikos has never spoken publicly about that night and the death of his friend, until now. 

      His public article, "Requiem for a Journey of No Return" can be read on Contra Info.
This is a small extract from that public letter written from prison:

  ------The most ridiculous part of it all is the fact that the propaganda mechanisms of domination attempt to portray murders committed by cops as isolated incidents caused by deranged personalities, as accidents that always occur due to negligence.
     Police murders are neither isolated incidents, nor a Greek phenomenon. They are an extreme manifestation of the democratic imposition upon social margins, poor-devils, delinquents, insubordinates, migrants. Furthermore, police murders confirm that the liberatory war exists, whenever they target insurgents who arm themselves and fight domination with the flame of freedom burning in their hearts.
     These killings are a logical consequence of cops’ perceptions of their role, perceptions with which these individuals are indoctrinated to staff the repressive machines that shield the social machine’s orderly functioning.
     Police firearms do not go off with murderous intentions only in Greece; they murder 15-year-olds in Turkey because they participated in anti-government demonstrations, they murder 16-year-olds in Italy because they didn’t pull over at a police traffic stop, they murder mothers and children in Palestine, they murder dozens of African Americans in the US on purely racist motives, they murder migrants in Sweden’s suburbs, they murder youth in England’s poorest hoods; they murder repeatedly and serially in all corners of the planet to impose social peace.
      And if the examples I’ve brought are known to many, because they have been linked with small-scale and large-scale uprisings in response to statist murders, they do not cease to be a mere drop in the ocean compared to the storm of murderous crackdowns launched by security corps in defence of capitalist domination.
     If we close our eyes and ears to the ceaseless flow of dominant propaganda, we’ll be able to listen to the thousands of anonymous deaths in police stations, terrestrial and maritime border areas, concentration camps, psychiatric institutions and prisons, war zones across the Middle East, and sweatshops that exterminate contemporary slaves. Anyone can hear the cries of people who are being tortured in police cells, who commit suicide in a confinement facility out of desperation, who are sunk by coast guard cops and drowned in the cold waters of the Mediterranean Sea, who are crippling their bodies over multinationals’ production machines in third world countries, who are buried under rubble after blind aerial bombardments conducted by capitalist empires.--------

Read his full account HERE:

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

You Resist, Or You Are Complicit.

 

      Hi friends, comrades, acquaintances, good to be back, hope you all had as good a time as I enjoyed. Though I enjoyed the few days up in St Andrews, and had a wonderful time with the grand-kids, it did nothing to quell the anger and disgust in my belly at the the system under which we live, and under which my grand-children will have to grow up and scratch out a living. I can only see their lives having a bleaker future than I had, UNLESS!!

      We all have to realise we live in an environment of class war. 

 

Benefit sanctions = class war
Workfare = class war
Wage restraint = class war
Bedroom tax = class war
Zero-hours contracts = class war
Austerity = class war

      The system is a system based on class war, class war is necessary for the system to protect and further the wealth and power of the parasitic cabal that live off the backs of the ordinary people. It never has, never will, and is not intend to, spread the wealth created by the people among the people. If we the people wish to enjoy the wealth that we create, then the system under which we live will have to be destroyed. Capitalism is a cancer on humanity, and a death knell on the environment. The pace of the destruction of peoples and the environment by the capitalist system is ever increasing, and will continue to do so, until we stop its cancerous growth. It will not stop of its own accord, it will not stop because the parasites at the helm consider that they have enough. It will only stop when we say, we have had enough. Accept the legacy of a destroyed world and continuous exploitation for our grandchildren, or start now the fight to destroy this vicious plague of greed, this time-bomb on the planet. 

      There are many ways to fight, undermine, and short-circuit this system, we can all play our part, the system is dependent on our compliance to its needs, the myth of perpetual growth. 

This from Not Buying Anything: 

     Consumerism is a war on everything, and we are being compelled to be its soldiers.
      Citizen's money is transformed into consumer bullets, bulldozers and bombs, wreaking havoc far and wide. And we aren't even happier for all of that. Lazier, for sure, but happier? Not so much.
      Advertising is the most insidious propaganda ever produced. It has formed our world view, our purpose for living. “I shop, therefore I am. If some is good, more is better.” It is causing us to volunteer our lives to the pursuit of more everything, and damn the consequences.
       Overconsumption is an act of violence. It harms others, the planet, and the person doing the consuming. It is not a positive act for children or other living things, which is why its explosive powers must be defused and the lies and corrosive myths of consumerism laid bare.
The truth is that harbouring unlimited desires and living large is not in our genetic make up. For most of the human timeline we have lived simply in small nomadic groups. Excessive possessions for most of human history were nothing more than a hindrance, and they still are today.
      We have only recently been drafted into Operation Live To Consume. Citizens have been carefully trained to be consumers, consuming far past the point of need. Perhaps that is the good news.
We still have deep desires in our genetic make up to live that planet-friendly simple lifestyle that worked for us over tens of thousands of years, and still does among the few today that continue these ways.
The ultimate planet-supporting thing to do is to be a conscientious objector, refuse to fight on the consumer battlefield, and commit to a life of nonviolence.
       We can all rejoin the original mission - Operation Consume To Live. It is a mission of enough, of peace and contentment. Of sanity and solidarity.

Remember, we are governed by consent, we can withdraw that consent. 

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

A Wee Break.

      To all my followers, acquaintances, friends and comrades, thanks for your support, banter, criticism and information, here's wishing you all the very best in the coming years. Later today I'm off up the east coast for a few days and will not be back until the end of the year. So the blog may be sleeping for a wee spell. Thanks again, and see you soon, solidarity, freedom and justice.

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

A Serious Problem With Authority.

       A poem from The Anarchist, by Roland Michel Tremblay, translated by Sheila MacLeod.

 

A Serious Problem with Authority

Ever since I was born you’ve told me what I should do with myself

I’ve never been free to take the slightest little decision

And if I once stood up to tell you I wouldn’t do something

Once just walked away to do something else

That something else soon became your Plan B

I went on doing whatever you wanted me to do

And you wonder why I hate authority

Why I don’t take kindly to criticism

Why I can’t stand people telling me what to do

It’s because you’ve planted these powerful authority figures everywhere

At every level of my existence

Some sort of authority is fencing me in

Checking up on me, spying on what I do

And if I object, however feebly, an army descends on me

An army of parents, teachers, supervisors, directors, priests

Psychologists, policemen, soldiers, agents of all sorts of outfits

What counts is order, conformity’s the thing, total peace without compromise

Well, I’m telling you I’m not the one who has a problem with authority

Too many people have too much authority over everyone else in the world

Don’t be surprised when everything blows up in your face

When someone suddenly pulls a gun and fires it among you at random

You were asking for it and you’ll find it yet

Roland Michel Tremblay. 

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

 

The People's History Of Struggle.

        I would like to take this opportunity to talk to you about “Spirit of Revolt”, this is an archive of struggles by the ordinary people, no party political material or support, no trade union history or support, simply a record of the direct actions by people in their daily battles for a better life and for justice. The material we collect is from and about, activists dead and living, events major and small, mainly from the Glasgow/Clydeside area. Why do we feel passionate about, collecting and preserving this material? It is obvious that if you write a history and a large slice of that history is ignored or lost, then you are getting an inaccurate record, a false history, a jigsaw with parts missing. If history fails to record the day to day struggles of the ordinary people, which in many cases it does, then that people become a people without a history. However the ordinary people are certainly not without a history, they have a rich history of ingenuity, resilience, imagination, courage and endless struggles against injustice. It is important to have this recorded and preserved and made easily accessible to the people, it is a history of which we can all be very proud.
      We at Spirit of Revolt feel we do a very important job, all of us are volunteers, most are deeply involved in that history. Our aim is to collect and preserve this material, but not to have it gather dust on some shelves in dark corners of a back room. We wish to bring it alive, make it easily accessible to the public at large, by digitalising it and putting on our website for all to see, read, and hopefully learn from. We also hold exhibitions highlighting events from that grass-roots working class history, hoping that it will help people to see the value of their own history and learn from that history. 

From our poster collection.

       Sadly we live in a capitalist world, and though we are volunteers, we do have costs. Our biggest cost being the need to have a qualified archivist to catalogue this material to international standards, for ease of access and study. There are other cost involved, web design and hosting, computers, scanners and other miscellaneous equipment. All of this trying to raise funds, takes up our time, time that we could devote to the archive itself, improving access, and developing outreach projects.
        So now the pitch, if you think we do a good job, which you think is valuable, and you would like to see us continue, then perhaps you can be tempted to support us financially in some small way, no donation is too small. It can be a one of donation, or better still a small monthly direct debit donation of say two, or five pounds a month, or what ever you feel you can afford. We will be extremely grateful for every donation, you can rest assured it will help us to prolong and improve the archive and its accessibility.

 Unity Trust Bank plc.

 Account name: Spirit of Revolt

 Account number: 20290793

 Sort code: 60-83-01

 Contact us with any questions and enquiries.

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

 

To Challenge Injustice.

 

     Spain, Greece, America, and countries across the world, anarchists are imprisoned, simply because they can't stand by and see injustice and do nothing. To stand up to the craven injustices in this society can bring you into direct conflict with the full wait of the state apparatus. The state stands for authority, control, and the defence of wealth and power. Challenge this and you are deemed an an enemy, an irritant to the smooth running of that control machine, you have to be silenced. No country is immune from this repression, where you have a state, you have repression. Whenever this happens we have a duty to stand with, and show solidarity with, those who feel that brutal force of the state, simply for standing up to injustice. Here in the UK, we have the recent case of Peter Simpson. He has earned our support.

       Pete Simpson was remanded on the 17th December 2015. He is awaiting trial for ‘violent disorder’ after being attacked & arrested by police at an anti-cuts mayday demonstration in Cardiff, South Wales. He is on trial with another co-defendant in January 2016. Pete has spent the last several months with an electronic tag, his freedom severely restricted, and a change of bail address led to the court remanding him to prison.

       Please write to Pete at: Peter Simpson A6060CF, HMP CARDIFF, Knox Rd, Cardiff, WALES, CF24 0UG

        Stamps, envelopes, writing paper & books are also welcome. As well as any donations. Banner pictures, dedicated actions & other forms of solidarity are also invited from comrades across the world.

         We also recommend using emailaprisoner.com if you are writing from abroad.

For any queries please email bristol_abc@riseup.net

       For the latest updates visit: https://bristolabc.wordpress.com/support-pete

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

She Won't Survive The Move---

American Sermon

I am uniquely privileged to be alive
or so they say. I have asked others
who are unsure, especially the man with three
kids who’s being foreclosed next month.
One daughter says she isn’t leaving the farm,
they can pry her out with tractor
and chain. Mother needs heart surgery
but there is no insurance. A lifetime of cooking
with pork fat. My friend Sam has made
five hundred bucks in 40 years
of writing poetry. He has applied for 120
grants but so have 50,000 others. Sam keeps
strict track. The fact is he’s not very good.
Back to the girl on the farm. She’s been
keeping records of all the wildflowers
on the never-tilled land down the road,
a 40-acre clearing where they’ve bloomed
since the glaciers. She picks wild strawberries
with a young female bear who eats them. She’s being
taken from the eastern Upper Peninsula down
to Lansing where Dad has a job in a
bottling plant. She won’t survive the move.

Jim Harrison. 

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

 

 

Cuba, Re-awakening.

      What is happening in Cuba, now that American imperialism has decided not to strangle the island and its people, but to swallow them. We all know that when America softens its stance to any country the price that country pays, is to allow the army of American corporations to stomp all over the country and its people. the question is, how will the people of Cuba respond?

      Anarchism in Cuba, is shaking the dust off itself, and starting a steady re-birth. More power to its elbow. The following is an extract from an article in The Fifth Estate, some Glaswegian comrades may remember Mario, who visited Glasgow recently, and while here, among other things, popped into the Spirit of Revolt exhibition, The Rent Strikes, 100 Years On.

“We Want to Revive Anarchism in Cuba”
       The Cuban movement erased by Castro is coming back & they need our solidarity.

  Isbel, Mario & Jimmy (photo: Gabriel Uchida)

      Changes in the Cuban state’s regulation of private enterprise and in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S. over the last decade are opening up new possibilities and dangers for Cuban society.
      However, the new conditions have also inspired the rebirth of the long-repressed anarchist movement on the island. The Alfredo Lopez Libertarian Workshop (Taller Libertario Alfredo Lopez, TLAL), named for an early 20th century Cuban anarcho-syndicalist, is one of the main groups accomplishing this task.
      In the 1980s, there was a loosening of the state’s control over cultural matters. Cubans became very active in the punk movement, and street graffiti began to appear using the circle-A, understood as a symbol of freedom.
       The collapse of the Soviet Union and the so-called socialist camp at the beginning of the 1990s inspired many to think about a thorough critique of actually existing authoritarian socialism—in Cuba, as elsewhere.
        One clandestine student group active in the 1990s and early 2000s devoted themselves to studying anarchist ideas and incorporating them into their protests and challenges to the official culture. Anarchism was attractive because of its criticism of authoritarian and bureaucratic rule and its simultaneous concern for human freedom, political confrontation, self-organization, and social justice.

Please read and support.
Read the full article HERE: 

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

Homelessness.

        Homelessness is an indictment against any civilised society, in a very rich country, where most people struggle to maintain a half decent standard of living and a small army live in extreme opulence, it is a savage brutal crime, an unacceptable injustice. Sadly it  is part and parcel of the capitalist system, and over recent years we have seen the numbers of homeless grow. To sort homelessness, we need to be rid of this inhumane system of capitalist exploitation of the many by the few. Society has to get rid of this greed driven profit based system, and replace it with a society that sees to the needs of all our people, based on mutual aid, co-operation and sustainability.

      In this episode of Circled A Radio, founder of Streets Kitchen Jon Glackin talks about the hardship of the homeless and the impact Government austerity is having on poor people. Streets Kitchen is an independent organisation which gives food, sleeping bags and other essential items to the homeless.

          Listen HERE:

 

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

Striking Miners.

       And still on miners, striking Spanish miners show that quality that abounds in the working class, ingenuity.

      This video of striking Spanish coal miners during the 2012  miners strike. when they blocked roads and clashed with police inside a mine in the northern region of Asturias. Thanks arrezafe

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

The Barbarity Of The Israeli State.

      What can you add to this video commentary, I can add nothing, except anger, disgust, and a hope that it will motivate more people to rise up against this barbarity, this inhumanity, this genocide, perpetrated by the Israeli state and financed by America, while the rest of the world looks the other way.

Why Top Veteran Journalist Reporter Anchor Jon Snow is Being Pushed From Channel 4 News
Posted by David Birkett on Monday, 7 December 2015

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

From Hero To Rogue, The Working Class Journey.

 

          A poem from a previous generation, though written about the miners, it applies equally to all members of of the toiling class in this stinking exploitative system. 

The Miners.

Ye're heroes, aye, ye're heroes,

When workin' doon the mine.

They slap yer back an' praise ye,

Ye're gallant lads an' fine,

Toilin' there among the damp

Where nane o' them wid daur,

Ye're heroes, aye, ye're heroes,

When gettin' coals for war.

They humour ye, an' praise ye,

As ye keep the bunkers fu',

An' the convoys bring the foostuffs

That they ration out to you;

Or the troopships tak' yer brithers

To the battlefields afaur,

Ye're heroes, aye, ye're heroes

When gettin' coals for war.

They'll promise ye high heaven

As the furnace flames ye feed,

In a world that's mad wi' murder,

Truth is sacrificed to greed;

As factories belch their smoke-clouds

An' their profits daily soar,

Ye're heroes, aye, ye're heroes,

When gettin' coals for war.

It was yince a different story----

Das ye mind their hunnish tricks?

They battoned ye in "Twenty-one",

Ye were jailed in "Twenty-six",

Did they aid ye in the "Thirties",

As yer miseries did increase?

Ye were traitors, rogues, an' workshies

In pipin' days o' peace.

They flatter to deceive ye,

Their creed is aye the same;

Watch them when the victory's won,

The'll try the same old game

Forget their rosy promises-----

Remind them if ye daur,

An' see how they treat the heroes

Who produced the coals for war.

James Mitchell.

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

Which Side Are You On?

From Rabble:
A poster to download and print. PDF (5MB) here. 

       These are the rich. They carve up the world for their profit. The work we do, the rent we pay, the debts we owe, all go to them.

       These are the cops. They are the guard dogs of the rich, programmed to use violence to protect their masters’ wealth.

       These are the migrants. They are people who were born in places exploited by centuries of colonialism and corporate greed. Who rose up against the puppet dictators of the rich. Who escaped from tyrants and bombs. Who are harassed by cops wherever they go. Who are fighting for the freedom to move.

So, whose side are you on?

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

The Education Production Factory.

         Modern state education is in fact not education, it is programming children to fit into a capitalist system as a productive unit, the human aspect of the individual is secondary, if considered at all. It is also the state's way of conditioning children to accept authority, an necessary attribute for the survival of the state. Teachers in the modern state education system are the state's soft police. If they fail to shape the child into a subservient subject, then the hard police and the judiciary system will take over and continue the conditioning. The state's final policing authority is of course the military. 

        As children we are taught a false history, a value structure that puts wealth possession above well being, our future success will be measured by how much we can earn, not by what we can contribute, the progress of success is seen as a ladder, you have to climb above others, you have to climb higher. Grades, diplomas, degrees, all badges in the drive to get up that ladder, competition rather than co-operation. I know we can do better than this for our children.
From More Thought:

Wild Children - Domesticated Dreams:  

An Interview with Layla AbdelRahim

       “Schools teach children the principles of death and of suffering. They do not teach them the principles of life, which is diversity, which is being out there in the world. They teach them within closed systems, within closed buildings and walls, separated from the rest of the world. They teach them that violence is legitimate when it is applied from the top to the bottom and that it is illegitimate when it is practised in resistance or defence of diversity and life. They teach children that humanity is alien to this world, that success means pleasing those in authority who will own the products of our flesh, of our effort, of our work, of our love.” - Layla AbdelRahim 

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

The Avoidable Refugee "Crisis".

 

      Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, has grown tired of the suffering of the refugees fleeing the imperialist created hell in the Middle East, and has moved on to other images, like royalty visiting hospitals, and celebrity squabbles. However, the tragedy, the suffering and the shattered families continues on a scale not seen since the second world war. Thousands risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean, only to find they are herded like cattle and forced to exist under the most adverse conditions. In fact in this capitalist society, cattle are seen as a valuable commodity and are sheltered, fed and watered, for further use, humans however, are expendable. 

   This crisis hasn't gone away because the babbling brook of bullshit has stopped reporting it, the sick, the elderly, the children are still suffering on a massive scale, here, in Europe, one of the richest areas on Earth. We have the wealth, resources and ability to sort this avoidable disaster, but this greed driven system will not allow us.  We cease to be human if we treat humans with inhumanity.

      Eye witness report & film from the Front-line of the refugee crisis in Lesvos.
     Awareness and fund raising film screening and Q&A with film maker Guy Smallman who is just back from Lesvos, and visiting Scotland for two days only. Donations will be going to support refugees in Greece.
Edinburgh:
Tuesday, December 15 at 5:30pm
Hunter Lecture Theatre, Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place,
EG3 9DF
Glasgow:
Wednesday, December 16 at 7:00pm
Boyd Orr room 513 (Lecture Theatre D), University of Glasgow
https://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/stateless-in-lesvos-screening-and-qa-with-film-maker/

      We are very lucky to be able to screen this short (25min) documentary shot this November on one of the islands considered the front-line of the refugee crisis. Focusing on the solidarity of ordinary people in the face of government-led racism and incompetence, this film will show how the working class in Greece are defying the state and showing their solidarity with refugees.
      The director, Guy Smallman of Reelnews, will be travelling to Scotland fresh from the press film screening and will be on hand to give a Q&A on his first-hand experiences. You can check out his travel-blog for the project here:http://reelnews.co.uk/the-lesvos-blog/
      This event is free to attend. There will be an opportunity to give a financial donations to send to Lesvos, but it is just as important to come along and raise awareness.
     Glasgow event co-hosted by Glasgow AFed and Glasgow Uni Anarchist Soc. https://www.facebook.com/events/194379107567573/
      Edinburgh co-hosted by counterinfo lab and the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh https://www.facebook.com/events/106327519737862/

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

Capital, The Enemy Of Workers Rights.

      To any sane person it absolutely ridiculous that being a workers rights activist should be dangerous, yet the nature of the beast that has wrapped itself around the world, makes such activities extremely dangerous. You are seen as an enemy of capital, and that in the eyes of our lords and masters, is an evil philosophy.

An appeal from IUF:

      Labour rights activists are being held in criminal detention following a wide-scale police crackdown in the southeastern Chinese province of Guangdong December 3-5. Police targeted independent worker rights centers and arrested, questioned and detained staff and volunteers against a background of factory closures and rising worker protests and strikes. Seven of the more than two dozen arrested activists are either in detention or cannot be contacted. Confirmed as being in detention and denied access to lawyers for reasons of 'national security' are Panyu Workers' Centre director Zeng Feiyang and staff member Zhu Xiaomei; Foshan Nanfeiyan Social Work Services Organization director He Xiaobo; and Deng Xiaoming.
        The IUF-affiliated Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) and Globalization Monitor have initiated an online petition to the Chinese government, calling for the immediate release of all detained activists and an end to the repression of labour rights organizations. CLICK HERE to add your name or that of your organization to the petition - links to translation in various languages are at the top of the page, scroll down for the English text.

 

 December 10 - International Human Rights Day - HKCTU and labour support groups rally for the release of detained labour activists on the Mainland.

This story is posted on the IUF website here

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