Remember 9/11??

       In a few days the anniversary of 9/11 is coming up, and no doubt the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, will spew out its usual avalanche of phoney patriotism, aiming to get all and sundry beating their patriotic chests. This comment in no way detracts from the suffering of those involved in that tragic event. The Western imperialist states’ response to this tragedy was, the “war on terror”, which spawned a continuous series of brutal wars, that are still to this day, shedding the blood of thousands of innocent people. All the wars that arose from the “war on terror”, are still ongoing, with the devastating consequences to people, villages, towns, cities and countries across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. The “war on terror” was the West’s attempt to reassert its power and control over that region, for no other reason than its oil under the soil.
       However, the 9/11 that the babbling brook of bullshit will not give much, if any cover to, will be the tragedy of September 11th. 1973. This was the brutal overthrow of the elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende, by the butcher of the Chilean people, General Augusto Pinochet, let's not forget, he was a deeply religious man, who acted with the backing of US president Nixon. 

       The presidential palace was bombed, Allende committed “suicide” and there followed the usual fascist public burning of books, brutal torture, savage repression and disappearings. More than 200,000 Chileans went into exile, their lives destroyed by the savagery of the regime. Thousands of Pinochet’s political opponents were murdered, thousands of others ended up being tortured while held indefinitely in detention centres. Such was the savagery of the Pinochet regime that more and more states across the world started to distance themselves from his brutality. Even the US government of President Carter started to distance itself from this butcher, of course we all know that Margaret Thatcher loved him. Over his 16 years of savage power hugging, Pinochet shed the blood of countless thousands of the citizens of Chile. That is the 9/11 that will be to the fore of my thoughts when that date comes round once again. Though the New York 9/11 was a tragic event, it is dwarfed by the 9/11 of Chile, more deaths, more brutality, 16 years of ongoing torture and repression, backed by the so called democratic free West.

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

We Need To Empty The Cages.

      Most people are aware of the horrendous conditions in prisons in other countries around the world, as our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, will always highlight the horrors in foreign countries’ prison systems, creating the impression that we here in the UK are much, much more civilised, and we do things in a more humane way.
       Of course that is bullshit, yes there are prisons around the world that are far more brutal and have more disgusting conditions, but here in the UK our prisons are at bursting point. That in turn causes a rapid deterioration in already difficult conditions. Violence in prisons is rising, but then what do you expect if you throw people with substance addictions, mental health problems, learning difficulties, and a host of other problems, into under staffed over crowded and often brutal conditions.
        Prisons are not an answer to any of society’s problems, they are garbage cans where the nuisance, inconvenient, people are dumped by the state, a place to intimidate those who would dare to oppose and challenge the injustices of the present exploitative capitalist system we live under. Prisons and a civilised society are on opposite sides of a wide chasm. 

This from Anarchist News:

       The Empty Cages Collective are excited to announce a Tour of Northern England this September.
       Where: Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Durham, Manchester and Lancaster. Full details of locations and times to be announced. Please note if you live in a northern city or town and have capacity to organise a date – please get in touch.

When: 25th – 30th September 2016

        British prisons are currently recognised as undergoing one of the most serious deteriorations of conditions in living memory, recently exposed as being the most violent ever recorded.
       In November 2015 the British government announced plans to build 9 new mega-prisons across England and Wales. These massive, minimally staffed facilities, far from resolving any of the prison estate’s serious underlying structural issues, are only going to subject greater numbers of people to their abusive conditions.
       This September, the Empty Cages Collective and Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee are going to be speaking throughout the North on the impacts of these developments, and the emerging network to resist them.

For more info: info@prisonabolition.org 

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

Cages To Protect The Rich And Powerful.

          Contrary to the vomit that the babbling brook of bullshit spews out, prisons are not places where bad, bad people are sent. Prisons are cages where the state locks up those it sees as a threat to its power and control of the system. They always have been, and always will be, there for that purpose. The vast majority of people take umbrage at scraping a living while a band of greedy power mongers wallows in opulence, produced from the sweat of the ordinary people. No doubt they would take action to sort out that injustice. Hence the conditioning, by means of propaganda and a skewed education system, to a set of rules and regulations that will perpetuate the status quo, backed up with a phoney judicial system that will punish those who dare to undermine the glaring injustice on which the system is based. Prisons are one of the state’s tools in its armoury to protect the rich and powerful. They are also now part of the vast corporate slave labour industrial complex. If you call for justice, if you respect freedom, if you believe in humanity, then you must stand against the prison system and stand with the prisoners. 

 Support for US prison strike September 9th. 2016. 

 

This from Radio Fragmata:

          It’s been years now that the various state agencies of repression order the conduct of investigation under the sole criterion the suspects’ political status. This is the status of the anarchist, mainly of the one who turns his/her ideas into actions, of the one that arms his/her desires and attacks state authority. So each investigation has to do with the possible prosecution of comrades according to the laws of their “democracy.” Police prosecution that starts off with texts and extends to all possible actions is not new amongst the anarchist circles. On the contrary, there is a past record on relative prosecutions in countries such as Italy, Chile etc. where there is a strong comrade presence promoting direct action and intervention. The common goal of contemporary international police is the prevention of anarchist propaganda, anarchist action and the spreading of our ideas. For this reason, in many cases they don’t even hesitate to put aside the refined mask of “democracy” that supposedly allows “freedom of speech and ideas.” And thus, any illusion that anyone may still hold is withdrawn. Things are now clear: “anarchist action or speech is either illegal or nothing at all!”

Read the full article HERE:

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

The Voice of An Imerialist Soldier.

      We all know, or should know that the invasion of Iraq was based on a false picture, an illusion created by the Western imperial states and propagated by that vile babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. However it is still good to keep hearing it, and driving home the truth, that wars are about resources, power and wealth for that secret cabal sitting in the marble halls of power. 

     I saw this personal account of the vile nature that inevitably creeps into the individuals that find themselves caught up in these imperialist brutal wars, on the arrezafe site.

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

A Bike, Sunny Weather, And Short Sleeves.

         Well the weather is being kind to us, another lovely day. Again familiar territory, the Campsie Hills area. I honestly believe that because of the number of times, over many years, that I have cycled round the Campsie area, that my bike could probably do it without me. Never the less, I like to tag along for the pleasure. Today was warm and sunny, with a 15/16 mph wind. Purring along wearing short sleeves, at the end of August, while drinking in an ever changing vista, is a pleasure to behold.

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

Reality Or A TV Farce???

       So for a moment, let’s think of the world we live in, and by our daily grinding labour, support and maintain, the world that the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media tells us, is the best way to live our lives. A world that if we decided we no longer wish to tolerate, we could bring crashing down.
        It is a world of pampered parasites draped in ermine, with their snouts deeply stuck in the trough of public money. A world of corporate bosses with their private jets and super yachts, plundering the wealth that we create. A cabal of callous self seeking, careerist politicians, who with empire in mind, legislate life and death of the poor, while protecting bonuses for the rich, and ensuring austerity for the many. A world where an abundance of wealth slushes around, but never finds its way to those, the ordinary people, who create that wealth.
         If we wrote this as a story for TV, we could understand it as a far fetched tale of greed, corruption, of exploitation, and injustice, but as a reality, created by our own sweat and blood, well it beggars belief.

Home to the many.

 

  ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

MUST WE TOLERATE
the giggling audacity of the rich
midst the pitiful anguish of the poor,
those boated cavaliers
using pillage to secure
their lives of arrogant excess,
a pirate's plundering tour.

WHERE IS IT WRITTEN
that this world must be
a place where the many toil and sweat
grinding out their meagre existence
in poverty, hunger and debt,
while the hubristic greedy few
live the life of a pampered pet.

LET'S TRY AGAIN
no more war, no deprivation
a world of sharing, a world of giving
a chance for all to grow and prosper
in a culture of friendship and forgiving.
With true love and understanding
we can create a new way of living.

 

Sir Philip Green's £100 million yacht.

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

Tarbet Again.

       This Sunday saw me again cycling up the Loch, (Loch Lomond), and why not, it's a lovely run, with beautiful scenery, with the added pleasure of cycling along a shore of panoramic magnificence. It never fails to delight me as I trundle my way along its winding shore road. A very busy road traffic wise, but relatively safe as there is a metre wide lane at the side for bikes along most of its length. Lately I seem always to stop at Tarbet and take a couple of photos, but the length of the loch is is a photographers paradise. It's just that I don't like stopping until I get to where I'm aiming for, perhaps next time I'll take the trouble to stop at the beautiful village of Luss, or drop by the Inverbeg Hotel and take a few snaps. 

The shore of Loch Lomond at Tarbet with the peak of Ben Lomond just visible.

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

Vanishing Money!!

         In this capitalist world where money is quality of life, what could we do with $6.5 trillion? How many schools, teachers, doctors, nurses, could we add to strained parts of our society, how many libraries, how much social housing, how many kids nurseries could we create? It is by all measure of things, a massive amount of money. Yet it appears that the Pentagon in USA, has somehow misplaced that amount and doesn’t know where it has gone. It just can’t account for that bundle of taxpayers money, I guess it must have fallen down the back of the till!! 

      Adding to the appearance of impropriety is the fact that thousands of documents that should be on file have been removed and disappeared without any reasonable explanation.
      A new Department of Defense Inspector General’s report, released last week, has left Americans stunned at the jaw-dropping lack of accountability and oversight. The glaring report revealed the Pentagon couldn’t account for $6.5 trillion dollars worth of Army general fund transactions and data, according to a report by the Fiscal Times.
       The Pentagon, which has been notoriously lax in its accounting practices, has never completed an audit, would reveal how the agency has specifically spent the trillions of dollars allocated for wars, equipment, personnel, housing, healthcare and procurement’s allotted to them by Congress. 

Philip Green's wife Tina, received the largest dividend in corporate history, from her husband's company.

  

     To you and I know this is not oversight, bad arithmetic, or sloppy bookkeeping, it is just another example of the endemic corruption in this system of capitalism. It happens on a gigantic scale when it comes to taxpayers money, but is not confined to that area. Over on this side of the Atlantic we have had the recent BHS money illusion, now you see, now you don’t, whoosh, and its gone. By recent assessments, the BHS pension fund deficit is running at close to a billion pounds, £717 million to quote the Guardian. 

 The pension fund seems to have disappeared, but I have a beautiful new yacht.

     Slush funds, bribery, backhanders, special “bonuses”, massive pension pay-offs, off-shore tax havens, corruption, all part and parcel of a stinking corrupt system that feeds an army of greedy parasites at our expense. This is capitalism, these are not anomalies, this is how the whole rotten system functions. Is there anybody out there that still has a shred of belief, that this is the best humanity can do with the finite resources of our planet? Is there anybody out there who believes that this festering cancer can work for the benefit of all the people of this planet?

       Let’s put all our petty differences aside, let’s concentrate on the one task that would eliminate poverty and war, let’s come together to work to bring down this edifice to greed that is the real burden on humanity’s shoulder. Let’s assign capitalism to the dustbin of history, under the label, “humanity’s darkest hour”.

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

A Call For Solidarity.

A call for support from Merseyside Anti-fascist Network.

       Our much loved sister, Michelle Smith, pleaded guilty to the state charges against her for her participation in organised direct action against fascists in Dover on January 30th 2016.
     On Tuesday 12th July Michelle was sentenced to 12 months in Prison at Canterbury Crown Court.
     On that dreadful day in Dover, the state supported a group of armed and dangerous fascists to meet together in public and bring terror and hate to the streets of Dover. These neo-nazis demonstrated with the protection of the police, they hurled insults and threw missiles at our comrades, the public and at the police.
     Michelle is passionate in her beliefs and in standing up for the rights of people to live without fear of racist attacks.
      Michelle has never been violent, she has remained dignified even when these thugs have repeatedly threatened her home address, her children and her livelihood. Michelle remained dignified when one of these thugs attacked her in her in her work place.
     She has spent her life in the service of others. She is a single mother of two children and her involvement in anti-fascism has always been about making this country a safer place for them to live. Her actions were taken to resist racism and fascism.
   We believe that anti-fascist action is always self-defence. By confronting fascists and their ideas we strive for people to live without fear. We stand with Michelle and always will do. We ask every one of you to remember the atrocious history of violence that fascists have done and continue to do to our society and to support us by joining, campaigning and donating to the cause.
     We will not allow our comrade to be forgotten; we will campaign for her release
      She is in there for us, and we are out here for her.

No Pasaran!

       If you want to write to Michelle message our page and we will send you her details.

Solidarity x

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

Just An Expendable Cog In A Machine.

         I must admit that I had never heard of Tetsuya Ishida the Japanese artist who was killed by a train at a level crossing in 2005, until I visited arrezafe site. However having a look soon convinced me that I had missed out on something special. Tetsuya painted ordinary working people, but as embodied in some for of mechanism or object for use. Human, but not living the life of a human, just part of a mechanised system. He captures the moribund boredom of employment, and the fact that we are all just usable objects in this capitalist system.

More images HERE:
This short video is a tribute to his memory.

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

September 9th. Prison Strike.

 

        It is well documented, but little publicised, that the American prison system is nothing more than continuation of the slave labour system that existed prior to the 13th. amendment, that supposedly abolished slavery. American prisons are profit making corporations, where human rights are non-existent, a vast slave empire hidden from public scrutiny. It is also a model that is being replicated here in the UK and else where. A society that cages its people is a society that must be abolished, and remade in the interest of all its people. Modifying prison regulations and prison reform, still leave you with the barbarity of humans in cages, an unacceptable situation.
       The coming September 9th. American prison strike demands support across all borders, solidarity knows no borders.

 This from Contr Info:

Call for International Anarchist Action
in Solidarity with US Prison Strike

 

        On September 9th [the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion], prisoners across the United States will begin a strike that will be a general work stoppage against prison slavery. In short, prisoners will refuse to work; they will refuse to keep the prisons running by their own labors. Prisoners are striking not just for better conditions or changes in parole rules, but against prison slavery. Prisoners state that under the 13th Amendment which abolished racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners. Prisoners see the current system of prison slavery to thus be a continuation of racial slavery, which is a system that generates billions of dollars in profits each year for major corporations in key industries such as fossil fuels, fast food, banking, and the US military.
      Soon after the passing of the 13th Amendment, many former slaves were soon locked up in prisons on petty offenses, quickly returned to their former roles as slaves. Over a century later, the Drug War sought to deal with the growing unemployment rate brought on by changes in the economy (outsourcing, financialization, deregulation, etc.), as well as the threat of black insurrection which grew in the 1960s and 70s, by throwing more and more people in prison. At the same time, the state and corporations continued to look towards prison labor as a source to generate massive profits.
       Due to all of these factors, at the present time round 1 in 100 American adults is locked behind bars, and many more are on probation, parole, house arrest, or in immigrant detention facilities. While African-Americans, Native, Latino, and poor whites make up the bulk of the prison population, black, brown, and red convicts make up much a higher percentage of inmates than their white counter-parts. For instance, there are currently more African-American people locked within the prison industrial complex than were held in racialized slavery prior to the American civil war in the 1860s. It is in this climate that prison rebels have organized themselves to carry out the strike.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Coffins From Derry.

       Sometimes the Glasgow dialect can be difficult to grasp, and the magic of words lost even though the passion may shine through. This may have been the case in the last post, so for comrade Loam and those others who might not have been able to grasp all the words, here is a transcript of Victoria McNulty's poem Coffins From Derry. Thanks Victoria.

Coffins from Derry

A thousand flood
Could have burst The Clyde
Each day of 1848
Had it not been for people.
The undead
Sailed in coffins from Derry.
Irish fever
Spilled from the Foyle, to
Boil the banks with Typhoid, the
Young scratched with fleas from starving rats
To be sacked -
Abandoned in Scotland's slums,
Feared and greeted by no one.
When my family crossed to Scotland,
They didn't flea famine,
But civil war.
The Gaeltacht already Black An Gorta Mhor,
Their names now warning signs on windows.
No work or trade gave way to
Forgotten faiths
And altered names; just tags of tarrier, terrorist and taig.
Coffins aren't made of mahogany today,
Just tarpolin and waves.
Not Killkenny's mass graves
But the beds of the Aegean Sea-
The road from Damascus stacked with similarities
Even Saul could see,
Floatsome children line beaches,
Their flesh all bloated and grey like typhus
Their parents, skeleton faces
Line security gates and fences -
Wire poked with frail famine hands-
Lips stitched and stomachs pitted
As Joe McDonnell, Bobby Sands....
And still we say they're not like us,
Don't belong like us.
I can never forget,
Scotland is cut from refugees,
And I am privileged.
My mothers made their journeys for me,
So now I watch from couch
And TV,
Miles from pipe bomb and peace walls.
Yet I will not fall silent,
I stand tall I stand proud
In welcome and unity
I stand in solidarity
With displaced people now residing in Scotland.

 

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

We Owe Our Migrant Ancesters

       We can all feel with passion but trying to express that feeling, be it anger or love, is more difficult, We can all feel strongly about injustice, and frustrated that we can't portray that same passion to others, in the hope of finding common ground upon which we can act. Poetry is an amazing vehicle for getting those passions out to others, of saying what is really in our hearts.

 Do you believe he done this to claim a paltry benefit?

       There is a lot of passion burning in people about the injustice that migrants suffer, and though there is a lot of action to support migrants, there is need for more. This poem by  Victoria McNulty burns with passion, but also helps us understand that migration is a human thing, it's what humans have been doing since they first walked this earth. Whether it be in search of a better life, or fleeing persecution, people moved, it is a survival thing in every human, and it will continue. Migrants are our brothers, sisters and our parents from the past, and will be our brothers, sisters and our parents of the future.

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

No War But Class War.

       Under capitalism, the festering cancer that dominates our lives, the ordinary people fight a multitude of battles, there are plenty of injustices to pick from. There is racism, sexism, patriarchy, gender problems, inequality, injustice, militarism, and so the list goes on. All of these struggles are important, but winning one or all of them, will not bring this corrupt exploitative system crumbling down. There is the core battle that has to be fought, and that one struggle is the only struggle that will free us from the crushing power of the capitalist system. We have to realise that it is a class based system, that is its foundation, it ability to function. We are its serfs, its peasants, its slaves, and no matter how many injustices we manage to right, the same class system will still be in place. There is an "elite" of privileged parasites who control every aspect of our lives, and we feed them generously. Until we eradicate that class bases of our society, we will never be free, we will always have injustices and exploitation as the norm of our lives. Class war is the only road to demolish this needless burden on the shoulders of humanity.

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

Aberfoyle Old And New.

       Wednesday 24th. was a glorious day, lots of blue sky, beaming sunshine and a light wind, a cyclist's dream world, so I headed for Aberfoyle. The little town of Aberfoyle in the Trossachs area is a lovely little spot. It has been the haunt of walkers and cyclists from away back and still is, though there has been a lot of changes. As a young apprentice in the shipyards one of my interests was hill walking and the bus from Dundas Street Glasgow to Aberfoyle was a weekend regular. At the Weekend I think it was walkers and climbers that made up 100% of bus company's customers.

The main street Aberfoyle, with Ben Lomond in the distance. 

      It was a ritual, you all poured off the bus at Aberfoyle square, a small square in the centre of the town. The ragtag bunch that hit the town soon head of in usually two directions, some would take the road to the right and head over The Duke's Pass to Lendrick Youth Hostel or to their favourite camping or dossing spot. Others would head along the shores of Loch Ard to the Loch Ard Youth Hostel or likewise their particular camping spot or doss. Our spot if the weather was good would be to follow the Ledard Burn up the hill, where there were plenty of good camping spots at the side of the burn with the clear water of the burn gurgle down to the loch. Lots of those walkers/campers/climbers arrived with a guitar slung over their shoulder and for the crowd that made Loch Ard area their base, it would almost be obligatory at night to head to the Alskeith Hotel on the shore of the loch, where there would chatting sing and general mayhem until the hotel decided it was time to throw us out, then the little groups dispersed in the darkness to their hostel tent or doss.

 Outside The Forth Hotel, Aberfoyle.

      In those days the last bus out of Aberfoyle on Sunday night was something that you will never see again. All the now dirty, sweaty hoard, would pile into the bus, and if it was a wet night the windows would soon be steamed up. People would be taking of socks and bits and pieces, wringing them out and drying their feet etc. It was not that unusual for someone sit in the floor of the passage way in the bus, light a Primus stove and start to do some sausages or what ever was left over and share around. Guitars would be strumming and songs would be ringing out. All this as the bus wound its way in the darkness through those winding twisting roads back to Dundas Street Glasgow. Once there it would disgorge it human cargo who would then thin out as the made the last bit of their journey on a corporation bus or tram, usually to one of Glasgow's many slums or some housing scheme.

      Still popular with walkers/cyclists etc., Aberfoyle has changed, now a popular tourist attraction with special parking places for tour buses, but is still very much recognisable, however, the main difference is that now the main means of travel to the town is by car or tour bus, they are everywhere.

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