And Still, Worker Kills Worker.

         When worker kills worker under some coloured rag or other, called “the national flag” it is seldom, if ever, because that worker hates the other worker. It is usually they have been conscripted, (forced) or because of the mainstream media, the propaganda mouth piece of the state, has convinced them that it is their patriotic duty. That we as morally superior beings have to sort out the evil of the other. An so shop keeper goes to kill bus driver, and school teacher goes to kill mother of four. Factory worker goes to kill office worker. We have had mass protests across the globe in an attempt to stop this madness, this exploitation of people for power and wealth of the few. However a simple glance at the world to day and it is obvious we have failed miserably. State sponsored carnage continues to turn vast swaths of our planet into abattoirs, the devastation of countries is total, its people, bus drivers, office workers, school teachers, factory workers and innocent parents and children, die in fiery graves with tons of rumble heaped on them as grave stones. In days gone by, in military conflict the casualties were mainly the military. Now with aid of our wonderful technology, the civilian population are, by far, the main victims in any war.
        Four years ago I wrote the following little piece and today it is more relevant than ever, wars are still portrayed as a moral answer to problems, despite the flagrant slaughter of the innocent.

    February, 2015, When Worker kills Worker. 

        On most occasions, war, in our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is portrayed as something heroic, with our side standing tall on the moral high ground, and the enemy crawling from the sewers with mean and nasty tactics. How else could they keep recruiting fresh young blood. We can be thankful for that band of heroes the poets, who experience war in all its brutality and record it, as viewed through the eyes of a human being, seeing the destruction and death of another human being.
      One such poet was the Gaelic poet George Campbell Hay, 1915-1984, born in Elderslie and brought up in Kintyre. Due to his pacifist values, for more than a year during WWII, he had tried to avoid conscription. Faced with prison, he opted for non-violent service in the army. George was sent to North Africa and given the job as night watchman. The events of the night May 7th. 1943 traumatised him, and he was never the same again. The event he witnessed was the allied saturation bombing of the German occupied town of Bizerta.

What is their name tonight,
the poor streets where every window spews
its flame and smoke,
its sparks and screaming of its inmates,
while house upon house is rent
and collapses in a gust of smoke?
And who tonight are beseeching
Death to come quickly in all their tongues,
or are struggling among stones and beams,
crying in frenzy for help, and are not heard?
Who to-night is paying
the old accustomed tax of common blood?

 
    Of course we  have to ask ourselves, why in Gaza and many, many more places on this planet, can these words still be applied. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Save The Planet, End Wars.

         I always maintain that governments who profess to be going "green" but continue to increase spending on their military, are hypocrites, charlatans and down right liars. Of course that is my opinion of all governments and their coterie. One of the biggest polluters of our atmosphere is the military, even when they are not blowing up this country or that country. Just the mere existence of the vast military budget is a blast of CO2 beyond belief. You can turn down your thermostat, boil less water in your kettle and take a shorter shower or shallower bath, but one super fighter jet taking to the air, in a few minutes, will over turn that a hundred fold. Even putting aside the mass killings, total destruction of infrastructure and unbelievable misery to countless thousands of innocent people, the shear pollution from a modern war is catastrophic for the atmosphere. A major conflict outstrips almost any other human activity in pollution.

       So to save the planet we have to start and get rid of the system that sees wars as an answer to its problems, and always keeps itself armed to the teeth to defend or expand its power and wealth. That means the dismantling of the capitalist system, and replacing it with a sustainable system based on co-operation, mutual aid and free from the profit motive, in a word, anarchism. 

        The revolutionary gesture no longer consists in a simple violent appropriation of this world; it divides into two. On the one hand, there are worlds to be made, forms of life made to grow apart from what reigns, including by salvaging what can be salvaged from the present state of things, and on the other, there is the imperative to attack, to simply destroy the world of capital.

-The Invisible Committee, Now, 2017

        Some interesting facts from Tarcoteca
         https://tarcoteca.blogspot.com/2019/06/el-ejercito-estadounidense-emite-mas.html

           A fact we should remember, the environment that we grow up in always seems normal, until we look over the wall and see, things can be different.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Hail The New Messiah.

      The following is an extract from an article written for anarkismo.net 

 

 

  -----To many liberals, progressives, unionists, activists of various just causes, Democrats of all stripes, democratic socialists, and concerned citizens, the problem the U.S. is facing is essentially that Donald J. Trump is president, and is backed by the Republican Party. I disagree with this widespread belief.
      It is likely that Trump will be removed from office in the next two years, whether by impeachment (unlikely due to the Senate Republicans) or by national elections (probably but not certainly). Liberals, progressives, etc., look forward to this as a glorious day. The sun will come out from behind the darkling clouds, little birds will sing again, the miasma of evil and stupidity will lift from the land, and all will be well again. Things will finally go back to “normal.”
      Alas, I do not think that things will be “normal” ever again. I too long to see the vile Trump gone. I am not cynical and have hopes for the future. Yet I do not see the replacement of Trump by a Democrat or other establishment politician as the coming of a glorious new day.-----

      Sadly this train of thought is not peculiar to the US, it is alive and well in most of what is misnamed as, "Western democracies". The thought goes, if only we could get rid of May and get Corbyn on the throne, everything would be back to the good old Halcyon days of ever lasting summers. Every so often, in an attempt to sooth their anger and dissatisfaction, the peasants are allowed to choose a new "leader". The failure of the present one has become unbearable, so to keep the system going, we are allowed to usher in a new Messiah. Blair's New Labour, Tsipras's Syriza, or what ever, but some how the dark clouds return. You would think by now we would have realised that we have changed the Messiah every five years or so for centuries but our problems are still there. By now we should realise it doesn't matter who the hell we stick on the throne, they end up shafting us. Forget the adoration of a new Messiah, forget the need to have some throne from which wisdom, justice, equality and freedom will flow. If we wish to solve our problems we will have to do it by ourselves, by coming together in communities and workplaces and taking control. We can shape our lives all by our selves, we are best placed to see what our needs are and how best to see to them. We have to ignore the "representative democracy" evangelicals who with a sack full of phony promises, are calling for you to put them in a comfortable, well paid job, where they can tell you what to do. Anarchism offers the tool that can solve most of our problems, all we have to do is become aware of the tool and learn to use it with ever increasing confidence.  

   

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The People's Palace Winter Gardens Is Ours.

        The battle to save the Glasgow People's Palace Winter Gardens is just beginning. It is up to the citizens of Glasgow to get behind this protest and save what has been a pleasure, an education and a sanctuary, for the people of Glasgow and visitors alike, for for generations. It is part of Glasgow's Common Goods, it is ours, and it must be preserved as it is, has always been, and should be for generations to come. The councilors sitting in George Square should get it into their head that we, the people of Glasgow pay their wages, to look after our Common Goods, for the benefit of the people. They therefore must listen to those people and drag their business fixated minds away from the idea that everything must make a profit or it is a burden.  

      A wee video to remind people that this protest must go on and gain in strength until we get what we want. Thanks Bob. The video is also available to view on Spirit of Revolt's Audio/Video section. (https://spiritofrevolt.info/audio-video/ )

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Anti-Semitism--Anti-Zionism!!

       The great antisemitism witchhunt: McCarthyism redux. By John Wight 

https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/29/the-great-antisemitism-witchhunt-mccarthyism-redux/

          This article was first published on March 1st of this year, however, it is given fresh relevance in the wake of Labour’s reinstatement, and then re-suspension, of Derby MP Chris Williamson.

PUTNAM: Now look you, sir. Let you strike out against the Devil, and the village will bless you for it! Come down, speak to them — pray with them. They’re thirsting for your word, Mister! Surely you’ll pray with them.

PARRIS: (swayed) I’ll lead them in a psalm, but let you say nothing of witchcraft yet. I will not discuss it. The cause is yet unknown. I have had enough contention since I came; I want no more.
Arthur Miller – The Crucible

         In his magisterial autobiography, Timebends, describing his motivation behind his classic work The Crucible (extracted above) — the most compelling and enduring allegorical piece of drama to grace the American theatre — Arthur Miller reveals the following: 

      What I sought was a metaphor, an image that would spring out of the heart, all-inclusive, full of light, a sonorous instrument whose reverberations would penetrate to the centre of this miasma. For if the current degeneration of discourse continued, as I had every reason to believe it would, we could no longer be a democracy, a system that requires a certain basic trust in order to exist.”

        The ‘miasma’ referred to by Miller in the above passage was the atmosphere of censorious paranoia whipped up by the anti-Communist witchhunts of the 1940s and 1950s, starting under the auspices of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established in 1938, joined thereafter by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate hearings into alleged Communist infiltration from the late 1940s. 

Arthur Miller

        The period concerned, commonly referred to as McCarthyism, illuminated the parameters of free speech and expression in a country and culture which prides itself on both. It drilled home the profound truth that tyranny is less the by-product of totalitarian political systems and more the product of totalitarian ideas and nostrums that sustain political orthodoxy in a given space and time. And, too, whenever those ideas and nostrums come under challenge, said democracy is exposed as a cloak behind which mendacity resides, ruthlessly seeking malcontents to expose and miscreants to punish. In Britain in 2019 we need no longer turn to US history for an understanding of McCarthyism and its execrable fruits.
       For in Britain in 2019 McCarthyism is with us and among us, corroding our public and political discourse, poisoning it with the untruths, lies and mendacious smears of some of the most malignant political forces that ever existed in these islands.
       Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment — political and security — in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains on the windows in Downing Street.
      Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has to intents been usurped by his deputy Tom Watson, a man for whom Shakespeare’s “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!” line from The Tempest could have been written with in mind. 

Labour Friends of Israel

       Watson is the Labour Party’s Matthew Hopkins, the infamous witch-hunter whose reign of terror in 17th century Britain finds its metaphorical equivalent in the 21st century with the objective not of locating and hanging out to dry antisemites but instead anti-Zionists, which means to say genuine anti-racists.
       For what is Zionism if not racism, a species of white supremacy responsible for relegating the humanity of five million men, women and children of the illegally occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip to that of latter-day Helots?
      Adding to the mountain of intellectual and moral ordure erected in service to this miasma of untruth and base hypocrisy, are the findings of a UN investigation into the Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli snipers during last year’s Great Return March in Gaza.

According to the UN’s Santiago Canton:

        Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.”
       In diplomatic-speak, Mr Canton is here referencing the manner in which Israeli soldiers shot down dozens of unarmed Palestinians — among them children, medics and journalists — like deer in a forest, with some of those Israeli soldiers caught on tape laughing and celebrating their ‘kills’.
       It is to this monstrosity of an apartheid state Tom Watson and his friends are giving succour and sanction; and it this supremacist juggernaut of oppression we are expected to accept as compatible with left-wing progressive values.
       There is nothing more grotesque than being lectured to about antisemitism, or any other form of racism, by apologists for a racist apartheid state. Yet this grotesquerie is precisely where we have arrived at in response to Corbyn’s unlikely elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party.
        His legacy as a staunch supporter of Palestinian human rights and self-determination has been weaponised against him and his supporters by a pro-Israel lobby within and without the Labour Party, plumbing depths of indecency last witnessed during the era of McCarthyism across the Atlantic.
       For those who doubt how deeply entrenched the pro-Israel lobby now is within the UK body politic, Al Jazeera’s blistering documentary The Lobby is required viewing.
       Given the context and the stakes involved in this ongoing witch hunt and smear campaign, the lack of meaningful resistance on the part of Corbyn is unconscionable; his refusal to mobilise his base in the face of it inexplicable. The result has not been to see it disappear but for it to prosper and grow in ferocity.
          Be under no illusion either of the complicity of key figures in and around the Labour leadership in whipping up and/or acquiescing in this baseless hysteria — Lansman, McDonnell et al. — to the point where Corbyn has been rendered well nigh unelectable as a prospective prime minister.
         That this is a smear campaign and witchhunt conducted, regardless of the fog of obfuscation deployed to the contrary, on behalf of a foreign power — and an apartheid power at that — compounds the offence.
        But this issue is now bigger than Corbyn. It is about where we stand on matters of intellectual and moral integrity; and most of all on the rights we accrue to an oppressed people and those of their oppressor. Future generations are watching and waiting for the stance that we take.
         Arthur Miller understood this, which is why his light will shine forever bright as a beacon of moral courage in an age of deceit.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Don't Call The Cops.

 

       Perhaps cops in this country don't kill as many people as they do in America and some other countries, but they are still the authoritarian minders of an unfair, unequal, exploitative system. The powers that be try hard to present the police as your friendly neighbourhood protectors, and encourage you to call them to every neighbourhood/family crisis, incident and/or dispute. The end result quite often is violence, and someone being unnecessarily "criminalised". Perhaps we should work more at trying to resolve most of these matters in a reasonable supportive neighbourhood manner, not easy, but better than playing into the hands of those that attempt to control your every action by mass surveillance and threat.

This from Montreal Counter Information:

        In the early morning of Monday June 10th, the Montreal police shot a man. A neighbour was having a crisis. Instead of doing anything helpful, they harassed him for hours. They had guns pointed at his head. They finally shot him in the leg through hs own apartment door early monday morning. On Sunday June 17th anarchists in the St-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal put up posters reminding our neighbours to think twice before calling the cops.
       St-Henri is famously undergoing a rapid and brutal gentrification process. Gentrification is fueled by social cleansing. This means arresting and relocating people with mental health issues, the poor, drug users, sex workers, and all of us trying to get by in a cruel world. One way to resist the over-policing and gentrification of our neighbourhoods is to stop calling the goddamn cops. We made posters that name all the unarmed people who have been killed by the SPVM in the last few years, because this is fucking serious. Cops will always escalate the situation, we can’t trust them. Instead let’s build relationships of trust between neighbours — Let’s make police obsolete! Please download and share these posters — let your neighbours know that COPS KILL, and share some alternatives to calling the police, so no one else has to have their neighbours blood on their hands.

 COPS KILL (to print, 11 x 17″)

12 Things You Can Do Instead of Calling the Cops (11 x 17″)

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

And What The Fuck Are We Going To Do About it?

 

        What can be more refreshing than the truth spoken with due emotion and anger. If only our so called journalists on the mainstream media spoke with such true feelings and spat out the truth untarnished by "diplomatic" niceties, distortions, and fabrications. Of course the US is not the only tarnished state with blood on its hands, glance around the world and see a similar pattern, it is just that the US is bigger and stronger than the rest, so is better at the bully-boys tactics. Yet we tolerate this endless brutality, no matter which state holds sway over our lives.  Thanks Loam for the link:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

An On Going Battle.

A Battle Yet To Be Won.

 

At the crack of dawn with weapons drawn

We seek that better tomorrow
where freedom blooms like flowers in a wild meadow
Justice drips from ever leaf on every tree
Heart’s desires run wild, a herd of prancing fawns
Unchained, unfettered, imagination hurtles us
Towards a better world, of bright sparkling dawns.
In the stream of liberty we cleanse our minds
Of wars, fear, violent death and anguish
Heal the scars of alienation, poverty and exploitation
Hand our children the heritage they desire and deserve
A life of freedom, peace and plenty
Unshackled potential guarded by friendship and co-operation.
The battle is not yet won
So, each day we must
At the crack of dawn with weapons drawn
Seek that better tomorrow. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Glasgow Winter Gardens Protest.

   

           In today's world there is so much the ordinary people can get angry about from austerity cuts, diminishing social services, vanishing libraries and disappearing public spaces. That's not mentioning the sabre rattling by corporate governed politicians. Glasgow, like other cities has its own areas where angry mass protest is the only voice we have left.

      One area where the Glaswegians are up in arms is about the sabotage of the People's Palace Winter Gardens. A historical landmark, part of the Common Goods, on the Glasgow Green. For many, many years it has brought pleasure and education to countless Glasgow citizens and visitors alike. However in line with the business dictated agenda in the city chambers, some times referred to as The Kremlin in George Square, such places are seen as a burden. So through a policy of neglect the Winter Gardens have fallen into a state of disrepair, the business orientated council now sees the only way to keep the site is to turn into a money making entity. The council's answer to all its ills is to usher in the white knight of private capital. That is not what the people of Glasgow want, we want our Winter Gardens to stay as they were intended and have always been, free for all to enjoy for future generations.

      Thursday saw some of Glasgow's finest, the ordinary citizens, make a loud and colourful protest outside the City Chambers, demanding the council listen to those who pay their wages, and remember they are there to serve those citizens. Those citizens are demanding the Winter Gardens receives the repairs it needs and stays as it is for future generations.

     Some photos and a video from the protest:

    

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Mozart, Mahler And Palestine.

         A wee treat for lovers of freedom, lovers of music and friends of Palestine.

         Scottish Friends are supporting 3 concerts by Palmusic UK Ensemble who play Mozart and Mahler piano quartets and a range of Arabic folk music .
        The concerts are on the following dates -
       Friday July 5 at 1pm in Stevenson Hall , Royal Conservatoire of Scotland -100 Renfrew Street Glasgow G52 3 DB

      Saturday July 6 at 3pm - St Andrew’s Church and St George’s West Church -13 George Street Edinburgh EH2 2 PA

       Sunday July 7 at 7:30 pm - St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral - 1 High Street Dundee DD1 1TD

         Please pass the word round and help get a good turnout . Be really good if you could circulate information in your networks .
        Entry to concerts is free and people can just come along on the night .
        A voluntary donation will be taken at the concerts for the charitable work of Palmusic UK and the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine .

Regards Arthur West
On behalf of Scottish Friends of Palestine

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Concentration Camps, Detention Centres And Democracy.

        The Trump guy is flag waving America into raw fascism, his "America uber alles" comes with all the trappings and dangers of blind nationalism. There may be those who disagree with the label "fascism" in this case, but if we take the words of that well know fascist Benito Mussolini as a guide "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power", then there is no doubt that America is well and truly standing that vile dehumanising swap of fascism. Of course if we use Benito's quote as a guide, where does the UK or the EU stand? There is no doubt that the corporate juggernaut exerts considerable power over the states in both these cases. Have we sleep walked into fascism? America has already got its militarised police, its mass surveillance and its concentration camps, we in the UK have our mass surveillance and our "detention centres", places where those ever so nasty foreigners are locked up, before they can taint our purity. This in spite of the fact that we are all a form of mongrel human animal. Of course most people will agree that concentration camps and detention centres are an anathema to a free democratic society, but they are there.
        In my humble opinion, if we continually allow capitalism to exist it is inevitable that we would end up locked the tentacles of fascism. Capitalism is a system devoid of humanity, it does not in any way consider human well being. Its whole existence is for the purpose of amassing large amounts of wealth in the hands of the few. To do this it must conceal its true purpose from the public and control the legislation that allows it free rein to do so, certainly not the basis for a free and democratic society.  

        The following is an article  from "Birds Before The Storm" on America's concentration camps and the need to tackle these and other abominations head on. Of course it applies to our own particular patch of soil on this planet.

 

What Are We Going to do About These Concentration Camps?

magpie
        The first time I saw the Klan, I was ten years old. My brother and one of my sisters were in the car, and my dad was driving. We were stopped at a light and maybe five Klan members in full regalia were offering leaflets to white drivers. My father, a white man, rolled up the window, locked the doors, and grabbed the steering wheel in a death grip. When the light turned green, we drove away. “Those people carry guns,” he told us. He was excusing himself for not getting out of the car and physically confronting five large men, an action which could easily have put him in the hospital or worse. He probably did the right thing. He had three children in the car. There were five of those guys. The cost/benefit analysis of starting a fight was all wrong. But the Klan, wherever it shows its hideous face, should be confronted. Should be fought, through whatever means.
Sometimes we have to fight.

Which brings us to the concentration camps in America.
      My entire adult life, I’ve been politically active. I’ve gone to countless demonstrations. I’ve been in jail in two countries for fighting against things I consider deplorable. These past couple of years, I’ve been more of a cheerleader for antifascism than a street warrior, to be sure, but when Nazis come to my small town I’m out there with everyone else ready to tell them that it’s a shame their lungs are functioning. Yet this morning here I am, at home, just trying to live my life. I’m going to play a show later tonight, and I have to practice my harp.
       I have a lot of experience trying to just live my life while horrible shit is happening. Maybe you do too. Maybe you’re trying to drag yourself out of poverty while millions of people are in prison. Maybe you’re raising your kids while carbon pumps into the air and the US refuses to consider any agreement to limit the effects of climate change. Maybe you’re used to this.
       Every day, we make cost/benefit analyses and most of us decide not to do anything that would get us thrown in prison or gunned down by the armed forces of the state. We sit and think about that poem; you know the poem. “First they came for the communists and I didn’t say anything because I was not a communist…”
      That poem is derived from the post-war confessions of a pastor, Martin Niemöller. A conservative, he initially supported Hitler’s rise to power; he only decided to oppose the dictator when Hitler insisted the state was more important than religion. By the time Hitler came for him, of course, there was no one left to speak out.
        So what the fuck is wrong with our cost/benefit analyses? There are concentration camps on the border. By and large, they aren’t holding American citizens. So in the short term, it’s safer to do nothing. Maybe complain on Twitter. Maybe write articles like this. In the long term, though?

When is it time to act?
        It’s easy to feel like I have my hands full dealing with the local Nazi problem where I live. The paramilitaries that are crashing pride parades with guns and burning down community centers and doxxing antifascists eat up a lot of my brain space.
       It’s also easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of problems confronting us. The war on people with wombs. The war on trans people. The war on people of color. Climate catastrophe. The United States has always been a Bad Thing, from when slaving colonialists founded it all those years ago to when it became the police force of the world a hundred years back to when it declared a “war” on drugs to when the prison system—and its literal, legal slavery—became a for-profit industry. It’s always been a Bad Thing and we’re kind of numb to that. We suffer from a kind of disaster fatigue. Our ability to be outraged has already been heavily taxed, and sometimes climate change and concentration camps are simply Too Much Problem for us to wrap our heads around. Problems have this way of terrifying us into inaction, into numbness. Collectively, right now, we’re a deer in the headlights.

I, we, need to work our way through that. Fast. Now.
       They’re not coming for me today. I’m a trans woman, so yeah the right wing is working its base into a fervor blaming me for all our social ills and to be certain I’ve gotten a lot worse attention from strangers since Trump came into office. But no one is trying to put me in a camp. I could keep my head down. A short term cost/benefit analysis says that I should.

Fuck that.
        When mass action is called for at these camps, consider going. If you can’t go, support the actions. Support the people who take action who aren’t taking the kind of action you might take personally. Support pacifists who lock themselves to the gates of these places. Support rioters who break glass, cut fences, or physically fight the forces who are locking up children. Support the activists who target every aspect of this murderous machine. Support them all vocally and support them all financially. Do not let them play us off each other. Do not let them divide us.
       Any study of successful social movements in history is a study of how peaceful strategies and militant strategies, which seem opposed both tactically and ethically, complement each other very well. We need people who resist peacefully. We need people who resist less peacefully. And most importantly, we need to not get caught up fighting one another instead of our enemies.
       We need to take action. To be clear, voting is not action. Voting, very specifically, is a way of asking someone else to act for you. Engage in electoral politics however you would like. But never let the state strip you of your agency. You’re a human. You’re a person. You have the capacity to take action, to effect change. You have the capacity to work with others to do… well, pretty much anything.
It is completely possible for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of us, to surround these camps and force them to release the detainees. It could work with fewer people than that, too, though I have a feeling there’s an awful lot of anger, an awful lot of power, waiting to be unleashed against the machinery of oppression right now. Mass action is risky. It’s messy. It’s terrifying. It’s also the right thing to do, and it’s perhaps only way out of this mess. There are a million problems, but this is one of them. And to change everything, you pick one problem and start there.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Sabotage By The Kremilin In George Square.

 

               Glasgow Green has been a place of importance to the people of Glasgow through the ages. It has been the meeting place for, gatherings of all kinds, political protests and, among other events, May Day celebrations. It has also been under attack from the city council, my late friend Joe used to call them, "the Kremlin in George Square" there were talks of selling of part and now by neglect, that precious gem on the Green, the People's Palace and Winter Gardens is under threat. like everything we have, the Green included, we have to fight to keep it the way we want it to be.

       This latest fight is to safe the People's Palace Winter Gardens. Let's all rally round and defend what is ours, it is not the property of the city council to do with it as it wishes, it is ours part of the Common Goods.

This is ours.

From Bob Hamilton bob@citystrolls.com

          It is not called the People's Palace for nothing:
         A place of working class history, artifacts and memorabilia relating to the People who made Glasgow. Not for the first time it’s been under attack from the councils secret service. (When do they tell you anything? A. When places are falling apart due to the councils own negligence.)
        The first thing that needs to be understood is the Winter Gardens are part of the Peoples Palace, not a separate entity as the council would want us to believe. And as such should have been considered under the same repair scheme as the recent renovations to the museum part of this historic institution. Not blanked off and perhaps to be manipulated by Glasgow Life into another marketing tool the same way as the Green has been to promote disruptive and destructive entertainment spectacles.
        While we congratulate (with some critique) the work to restore the wonderful Kibble Palace, the renovations to the Burrell, the fancy pavements in Suchiehall Street and all of the other major developments given the green light for funding. But we look once again to the East End and of course the short end of the funding stick.
          Not for the first time we have had to battle the council in culture wars, concerning the Peoples Palace, (City of Culture1990) and historically the park it sits in in, (The Battle For The Green 1931) These events all relate to the history of the Peoples Palace and that history has been a struggle to maintain, the same as the present situation will take to resolve.
          We are asking the people of Glasgow (and beyond) to become part of that on going history by defending the maintenance and repairs to the Winter Gardens as an important part of the Peoples Palace and worthy of the same care and attention given to other historic projects in the city carried out in the peoples name.
         Join “Friends of the People's Palace, Winter Gardens and Glasgow Green” on the 27th 12:00 at the city chambers Bring some music make a day of it.
        It is summer after all. (I think:)

For May Day link https://mayday.link/events-2018/

https://mayday.link/

radicalimagination.co.uk

citystrolls.com

inthecommongood.org

People live by bread, by economics, not politics.--

For a wee bit more on Glasgow's working class radical history visit;
Spirit of Revolt 's Strugglepedia.

 This is ours, defend it against the sabotage of the City Council 

Visit ann ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Why I'm An Anarchist.

 

          I lifted this straight from Dog Section Press, there is nothing I could say about the article, except to say just read it.

Why I'm An Anarchist by Benjamin Zephaniah

         I got political after I suffered my first racist attack at the age of seven. I didn’t understand any political theory, I just knew that I had been wronged, and I knew there was another way. A few years later, when I was fifteen a marked police car pulled up to me as I walked in Birmingham in the early hours of the morning, three cops got out of the car, they pushed me into a shop doorway, then they beat me up. They got back into their car, and drove off as if nothing had happened. I had read nothing about policing policy, or anything on so-called law and order, I just knew I had been wronged. When I got my first job as a painter, I had read nothing on the theory of working class struggles or how the rich exploited the poor, but when my boss turned up every other day in a different supercar, and we were risking our lives up ladders and breathing in toxic fumes, I just knew I had been wronged.
        I grew up (like most people around me) believing Anarchism meant everyone just going crazy, and the end of everything. I am very dyslexic so I often have to use a spellchecker or a dictionary to make sure I’ve written words correctly. I was hearing words like Socialism and Communism all the time, but even the Socialists and Communists that I came across tended to dismiss Anarchists as either a fringe group, who they always blamed if there was trouble on demonstrations, or dreamers. Even now, I just checked a spellchecker and it describes Anarchism as chaos, lawlessness, mayhem, and disorder. I like the disorder thing, but for the ‘average’ person, disorder does mean chaos, lawlessness, and mayhem. The very things they’re told to fear the most.
        The greatest thing I’ve ever done for myself is to learn how to think for myself. I began to do that at an early age, but it’s really difficult to do that when there are things around you all the time telling you how to think. Capitalism is seductive. It limits your imagination, and then tells you that you should feel free because you have choices, but your choices are limited to the products they put before you, or the limits of your now limited imagination. I remember visiting São Paulo many years ago when it introduced its Clean City Law. The mayor didn’t suddenly become an Anarchist, but he did realise that the continuous and ubiquitous marketing people were subjected to was not just ugly, but distracting people from themselves. So more than 15,000 marketing billboards were taken down. Buses, taxis, neon and paper poster advertisements were all banned. At first it looked a little odd, but instead of either looking at, or trying not to look at advertising broads, I walked, and as I walked I looked around me. I found that I only purchased what I really needed, not what I was told I needed, and what was most noticeable was that I met and talked to new people every day. These conversations tended to be relevant, political, and meaningful. Capitalism keeps us in competition with each other, and the people who run Capitalism don’t really want us to talk to each other, not in a meaningful way.
       I’m not going to go on about Capitalism, Socialism, or Communism, but it is clear that one thing they all have in common is their need for power. Then to back up their drive for power they all have theories, theories about taking power and what they want to do with power, but therein lies the problem. Theories and power. I became an Anarchist when I decided to drop the theories and stop seeking power. When I stopped concerning myself with those things I realised that true Anarchy is my nature. It is our nature. It is what we were doing before the theories arrived, it is what we were doing before we were encouraged to be in competition with each other. There have been some great things written about Anarchism, and I guess that’s Anarchist theory, but when I try to get my friends to read these things (I’m talking about big books with big words), they get headaches and turn away. So, then I turn off the advertising (the TV etc.) and sit with them, and remind them of what they can do for themselves. I give them examples of people who live without governments, people who organise themselves, people who have taken back their own spiritual identity – and then it all makes sense.
            If we keep talking about theories then we can only talk to people who are aware of those theories, or have theories of their own, and if we keep talking in the round about theories we exclude a lot of people. The very people we need to reach, the very people who need to rid themselves of the shackles of modern, Capitalistic slavery. The story of Carne Ross is inspiring, not because he wrote something, but because he lived it. I love the work of Noam Chomsky and I love the way that Stuart Christie’s granny made him an Anarchist, but I’m here because I understand that the racist police who beat me have the state behind them, and the state itself is racist. I’m here because I now understand that the boss-man who exploited me to make himself rich didn’t care about me. I’m here because I know how the Marrons in Jamaica freed themselves and took to the hills and proved to all enslaved people that they (the Marrons), could manage themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love books (I’m a writer, by the way), and I know we need people who think deeply – we should all think deeply. But my biggest inspirations come from everyday people who stop seeking power for themselves, or seeking the powerful to rescue them, and they do life for themselves. I have met people who live Anarchism in India, Kenya, Jamaica, Ethiopia, and in Papua New Guinea, but when I tell them they are Anarchists most will tell me they have not heard of such a word, and what they are doing is natural and uncomplicated. I’m an Anarchist because I’ve been wronged, and I’ve seen everything else fail.
           I spent the late seventies and the eighties living in London with many exiled ANC activists – after a long struggle Nelson Mandela was freed and the exiles returned home. I remember looking at a photo of the first democratically elected government in South Africa and realising that I knew two thirds of them. I also remember seeing a photo of the newly elected Blair (New Labour) government and realising that I knew a quarter of them, and on both occasions I remember how I was filled with hope. But in both cases it didn’t take long to see how power corrupted so many members of those governments. These were people I would call and say, “Hey, what are you doing?”, and the reply was always something along the lines of, “Benjamin, you don’t understand how having power works”. Well I do. Fuck power, and lets just take care of each other.
           Most people know that politics is failing. That’s not a theory or my point of view. They can see it, they can feel it. The problem is they just can’t imagine an alternative. They lack confidence. I simply blanked out all the advertising, I turned off the ‘tell-lie-vision’, and I started to think for myself. Then I really started to meet people – and, trust me, there is nothing as great as meeting people who are getting on with their lives, running farms, schools, shops, and even economies, in communities where no one has power.

That’s why I’m an Anarchist.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Workers Rights Under Attack, As Usual.

 

       In this world awash with countries that call themselves "democracies", Labour Start comes up with some information that those at the front line of protecting and/or furthering workers rights are well aware, but perhaps facts with which the public at large are less familiar. A system that puts profit and continuous growth as its priority and only object for its existence, can never put workers rights on its agenda. Unless to find ways to whittle down the cost of that labour. The system and workers rights are incompatible, what ever rights we have as workers has been fought for and wrestled from the system, at a cost to those involved, sometimes the ultimate cost, their lives. Our rights have never been give, we have wrenched them from the system. Nothing will change until we change the system we live under.

      This from Labour Start:

 Today in Geneva the International Trade Union Confederation is releasing to the world the results of its annual Global Rights Index.

The picture it paints is not a pretty one:   

• Trade unionists were murdered in ten countries - Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Zimbabwe. 
• 85% of countries have violated the right to strike. 
• 80% of countries deny some or all workers collective bargaining.
• The number of countries which exclude workers from the right to establish or join a trade union increased from 92 in 2018 to 107 in 2019.
• Workers had no or restricted access to justice in 72% of countries.
• The number of countries where workers are arrested and detained increased from 59 in 2018 to 64 in 2019.
• Out of 145 countries surveyed, 54 deny or constrain free speech and freedom of assembly.
• Authorities impeded the registration of unions in 59% of countries.
• Workers experienced violence in 52 countries. 

You can now download the full report here.

What can we do about this?

First of all, let's make sure that every single member of our unions knows about this report.  We cannot guarantee that the mainstream media will give it the publicity it needs.  But if every single person who gets this email message shares it with others, the impact will be enormous.

Please -- share this email, share the link to the ITUC Global Rights Index, post it on Facebook and Twitter.  

Together, there are millions of us.  Together, we can reverse these trends and ensure that the rights of all workers are respected, no matter where they live.

Thank you.



Eric Lee

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk