Saturday 13 July 2019

Walls And Messages.

       I tend to go on about a presence on the street and in our communities by means of the paper, leaflet, sticker and poster. However there is another method of keeping you message on the street, and it doesn't cost a printer, ink cartridges and paper. I am of course talking about graffiti. It seems, like the paper on the street, to have gone out of fashion. Done in the right places it can last much longer than the paper, though it doesn't find its way into people's houses, but it can make its way into their minds. For some of us, a wee walk down memory lane.

Anarchists & Underdogs 

Images of Social & Political Graffiti in the UK.

       Long before the days of social media and online petitions graffiti has been used as an expressive display against the corporate and political powers that be. When I say graffiti, I don’t mean the multi-coloured three dimensional ‘tagging’ and artwork that you see aside canal towpaths and scrapyards, I’m talking about early graffiti, hand written messages and slogans written by anarchists and underdogs across the county.
      I picked up a couple of books on this subject ‘The writing on the wall’ by Roger Perry and ‘Graffiti’ by Richard Freeman. These books show a number of early images of graffiti dating from the 1960s through to the 1970s, a long time before the Bronx and subway inspired art reached our shores. Amongst a number of nonsensical written messages and slogans, there are pictures of graffiti which addresses racism, capitalism, greed and inequality, all daubed across the walls and bridges of our inner cities and suburbs.
These images got me intrigued and made me want to dig deeper and seek out more images of this nature. A high number of the images I came across were taken during the turbulent Thatcher years, where tensions were high and the disenfranchised expressed their anger and feelings towards the Tory government and authorities of the era.
There is something about the images below, a bold statement that makes you think deeper about the message being put across and what became of the people who wrote them.
Gallery
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‘Black is Beautiful’ Moss Side, Manchester, 1969. Photo © Michael Ward
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‘No Nazis in Bradford’, 1970s. Photo © Don McCullin
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‘Eat The Rich’ Notting Hill, 1977. Photo © Roger Perry
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Dalston, 1978. Photo © Alan Denney.
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‘I Fought The Law’ Ladbroke Grove, London, 1977. Photo © Roger Perry
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Notting Hill Gate, 1974. Photo © Roger Perry
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‘Dada Is Everywhere’ Malden Road, Kentish Town, 1974. Photo © Roger Perry
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‘Strike A Body Blow to Capitalism’ Kings Cross, London, late 1970s. Photo © Roger Perry
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‘All Submission To Authority Humiliates All Exercise Of Authority Perverts’ Clapton, North East London. Photo © Roger Perry
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‘Words Do Not Mean Anything Today’ Chalk Farm, Camden, 1975. Photo © Roger Perry.
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Elgin Avenue, London, 1970s Photo © Roger Perry.
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‘I Can’t Breathe’ London 1960s Photo © Richard Freeman
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‘Anarchy Lives’ East London, 1976. Photo © Judy Greenway.
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‘We Want Decent Housing’ Hackney, 1970s. Photo © Unknown.
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‘4,000,000 Unemployed, Thatcher Is Guilty’ Brixton, 1984. Photo © Mark McNestry
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‘Don’t Cry For Me Maggie Thatcher’ Isle Of Dogs, 1980s. Photo © Unknown.
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‘Wake Up Maggie’ Merseyside, 1980s. Photo © Unknown.
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Thatcher Is An Android, 1980s. Photo © Unknown.
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‘Scargill Rules’ Taken during the 1984-1985 Miner Strike, Easington Colliery, 1984. Photo © Unknown.
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‘Why Vote? Anarchy’ Toxteth, 1960s. Photo © Unknown.
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‘High Poll Tax’ Bury, 1991.
‘Free Kuwait with Tiger Tokens’ Hulme, early 90s. Photo © Richard Davis.
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‘Snort Cocaine For Kicks/Fight Racist Scum’ Hulme, 1985. Photo © Unknown
‘Pigs get the f*ck outta here’ Hulme 1980s Photo © Richard Davis.
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‘Ouch!! I’ve Been Hit By The Poll Tax’ Hackney, 1990. Photo © David Corio
It’s Grim Up North, M1 Motorway, circa early 1990s. Photo via KLF online.
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Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Thursday 11 July 2019

Imprisoned Within The Illusions Of Freedom.

        There is a tendency to refer to people in this society being free or in prison, as if there was a clear demarcation between the two. It is all a matter of degree, in this so called free democratic society. Our society comprises of two types of prisons. The vast majority are confined to the open prison, with its illusions of freedom. However, you are still confined within the framework of controls, managed by CCTV cameras that record your every move and build a record of where you’ve been who you met and when. Then there is the confines of the wage slavery, binding you to a particular routine to earn the right to live a precarious half decent life. Your quality of live is inextricably link to your market value on any particular day. You are obliged to be subservient to the established order of inequality, laid down by the wealthy and powerful powers that be. Otherwise you could be transferred to the other prison, the closed prison. This is the one for those who cannot accept the stifling demeaning restrictions of the open prison, those who dare to challenge the system and its inequality and exploitation. In this prison surveillance is total, complete with bars, locked cages, guards, restricted movement and deprived of family and friends. It is where you end up if you can’t or won’t play by the rules laid down for the smooth running of this unjust and exploitative system. In the open prison your potential is limited to your market value, in the closed prison you potential is demeaned and destroyed by deliberate policies to turn you into a subservient citizen, so that you can be returned to the open prison to be a marketable asset to the system.
        If we talk of tearing down the walls of prisons to create a free society, we will not only have to address the walls of the closed prison, but the walls of the open prison as part and parcel of the same struggle for freedom for all. The walls that prevent equality across the whole of society, the walls that prevent the freedom of unmonitored movement, the financial walls that prevent the full development of the potential of all in society, and governs and stifles the quality of each of our lives. Tearing down one prison’s walls without addressing the other, still leaves us imprisoned within the confines of an unequal and exploitative system.
        Let us in unison start to tear down walls and re-imagine justice.
And again, one of my favourite quotes:

"Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"

A quotation from Omar Khayyam's, Rubaiyat.
Let us with fate conspire.

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

Wednesday 10 July 2019

A Prophet Or A Deamer?


     Probably in contrast to my previous piece.

PROPHET OR DREAMER?

Am I a dreamer?
Ever dazzled by unrisen dawns,
always hearing the song of liberty
though freedom's flag is torn.

I walk towards a world
no borders, kings or slaves;
history claims the warrior's hand
peace the crown of bays.

I see the hungry feasting
midst the brotherhood of man;
all the children singing
the fear of famine gone.

I find the common man
hold his brother dear
create a world of social justice,
Elysian fields their sphere.

Freedom's flag is torn,
quiet is liberty's song,
unrisen suns still to dawn;
prophet, or dreamer born?
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Hope Or Now??

      Some years ago I read "The Coming Insurrection" by The Invisible Committee, and found it extremely interesting and informative, an excellent read. Since then I have plucked quotes from them every so often. I am now reading "Now" another of their renderings and again I find it fascinating. It is available as a free download from Libcom Library.
       The following is an extract from the first chapter, "Tomorrow Is Cancelled", I wonder if it resonates with you as it does with me? 
 
 


--------Hope. Now there's at least one disease this civilization has not infected us with. We're not despairing for all that. No one has ever acted out of hope. Hope is of a piece with waiting, with the refusal to see what is there, with the fear of breaking into the present-in short, with the fear of living. To hope is to declare one­self in advance to be without any hold on that from which something is expected nonetheless. It's to remove oneself from the process so as to avoid any connection with its outcome. It's wanting things to be different without embracing the means for this to come about. It's a kind of cowardice. One has to know what to commit to and then commit to it. Even if it means making enemies. Or making friends. Once we know what we want, we're no longer alone, the world repopulates. Everywhere there are allies, closenesses, and an infinite gradation of possible friendships. Nothing is close for someone who floats. Hope, that very slight but constant impetus toward tomorrow that is communicated to us day by day, is the best agent of the maintenance of order. We're daily informed of problems we can do nothing about, but to which there will surely be solutions tomor­row. The whole oppressive feeling of powerlessness that this social organization cultivates in everyone is only an immense pedagogy of waiting. It's an avoidance of now. But there isn't, there's never been, and there never will be anything but now. And even if the past can act upon the now, this is because it has itself never been anything but a now. Just as our tomorrow will be. The only way to understand something in the past is to under­stand that it too used to be a now. It's to feel the faint breath of the air in which the human beings of yesterday lived their lives. If we are so much inclined to flee from now, it's because now is the time of decision. It's the locus of the "I accept" or the "I refuse," of ''I'll pass on that" or ''I'll go with that." It's the locus of the logical act that imme­diately follows the perception. It is the present, and hence the locus of presence. It is the moment, endlessly renewed, of the taking of sides. Thinking in distant terms is always more comfortable. "In the end," things will change; "in the end," beings will be transfigured. Meanwhile, let's go on this way, let's remain what we are. A mind that thinks in terms of the future is incapable of acting in the present. It doesn't seek transformation; it avoids it. The current disaster is like a monstrous accumu­lation of all the deferrals of the past, to which are added those of each day and each moment, in a continuous time slide. But life is always decided now, and now, and now.------
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Tuesday 9 July 2019

Hooray, We Have Big Bombs!!


       What is it that people see when there is a military parade? What is it that they are cheering? Why such joy at the sight of trained killers and weapons of mass destruction? Can't they see the blood stained rubble, the maimed kids and body parts, the fear, anguish and pain of a population? A population that has no other desired than to get on with their lives, struggling to care for their family and friends, just like you and I. All states do it, glorify their military and try to sell war as some sort of heroic stance against evil, what ever evil is. They always keep war as some sort of moral answer to their problems, concealing the facts that, as well as being the largest environmental polluter on Earth, it is also one of the largest money making businesses, for the few, on the planet. There is something sick at the heart of a society that revels in its ability to inflict mass killings on civilian populations.
        This is a wee bit late, almost a week after the event, but still well worth the read.
This from Common Dreams:

        President Trump’s order to the Pentagon to have an aerial parade of military aircraft over Washington, DC on July 4 provided a history lesson of America’s war mongering in the past two decades, and a terrifying view of what might appear in the skies of Iran if John Bolton gets his way.
      "With the U.S. political and media dogs of war howling again for blood in Iran, Trump’s decision to showcase America’s aerial firepower must have been cheered by the war hawks in the administration and Congress, and their friends in the weapons industry."
      The combat aircraft that were cheered by Trump’s supporters as they flew low over the monuments in the nation’s capital have not been cheered by people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Palestine as the same type of planes fly over their homes—terrifying and killing their children and wreaking havoc on their lives.
      Over those countries, Air Force B-2 Spirit, Air Force F-22 Raptor, Navy F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and F/A-18 Hornet stealth fighters and bombers fly so high they are not seen or heard—until the massive explosions from their 500- to 2,000-pound bombs hit and obliterate everything and everyone in their radius. The blast radius of a 2,000-pound bomb is 82 feet, but the lethal fragmentation reaches 1,200 feet. In 2017, the Trump administration dropped the most massive non-nuclear bomb in its inventory—the 21,000 pound “mother of all bombs”—on a cave tunnel complex in Afghanistan.
     While most Americans have probably forgotten we are still at war in Afghanistan, the Trump administration “eased” the rules of engagement, allowing the military to drop more bombs in 2018 than in any other year since the war began in 2001. The 7,632 bombs dropped by American aircraft in 2018 made U.S. weapons makers rich, but hit 1,015 Afghan civilians.
      The Boeing-made combat attack Apache helicopters, a crowd pleaser on July 4, have been used by the U.S. Army to blow up homes and cars filled with civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Israeli military uses them to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the Saudi military has killed children in Yemen with these death machines.
      Billions of dollars worth of U.S. planes and bombs sold to Saudi Arabia raked in record profits for weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. But they pummeled Yemeni civilians since the air war started in 2015, killing people in marketplaces, weddings, funerals, and 40 children on a summer outing in a school bus. Radhya al-Mutawakel, chairwoman of the Yemeni human rights organization Mwatana, says the U.S. has legal and moral responsibility for selling weapons to the Saudi-led coalition. “Yemeni civilians are dying every day because of this war and you (America) are fueling this war,” al-Mutawakel said. “It is a shame that financial interests are worth more than the blood of innocent people.”
      One notorious vehicle of death that was not flown above Washington was America’s assassin drone. Perhaps it was too dangerous for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to be flown close to the President of the United States and a crowd of American citizens with its history of numerous inexplicable crashes and intelligence failures that have caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq.
       John Bolton, who has the ear of the president every day, wrote in an op-ed in 2015 saying that in order to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, the U.S. should bomb Iran. Now that he has goaded Iran into stepping up its enrichment of uranium as a result of the U.S. reneging on the nuclear deal and European signatories bailing out on their responsibilities in the agreement, Bolton is itching to start the bombing. So are Bibi Netanyahu and Mohammad Bin Salman. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia have been trying for years to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran. Colleagues in the humanitarian and refugee arenas in the Middle East tell us a war is coming and are preparing for its nightmarish consequences throughout the region.
       With the U.S. political and media dogs of war howling again for blood in Iran, Trump’s decision to showcase America’s aerial firepower must have been cheered by the war hawks in the administration and Congress, and their friends in the weapons industry. But to those of us who want peaceful resolutions to international disputes, the Fourth of July display was a chilling reminder of the horrific deaths caused by successive Administrations’ propensity for war and the terror that might soon be raining down on the people of Iran if John Bolton gets his way.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 8 July 2019

Queer Liberation — Not Rainbow Capitalism

        I'm in agreement with the London Anarchist Federation critique of this years Pride in London parade. It is so easy to go for the big event that requires money and then you draw in the backbone of the exploitative system that stands for anything but equality and freedom.

Queer Liberation — Not Rainbow Capitalism

An anarchist critique of Pride in London

       This year, Pride in London is doing its best to commemorate fifty years in LGBT+ struggle, from the Stonewall riot to now. It is a significant milestone. We must remember those who took part in the riot, such as Stormé DeLarverie, Marsha P Johnson, and Sylvia Rivera, and the ways that their actions as gay and trans activists helped to kickstart the gay liberation movement from the late 1960’s. But if these activists were to show up at Pride in London today, would they be happy with what they find? Would they even be allowed to march?
       It would be shortsighted to stop where we are today and think that Marsha or any of the others who were there on June 28th would be happy with where we are today. We do not yet exist in a society where being gay, bi or asexual is completely accepted. And we definitely don’t exist in a society where being trans is completely accepted or even partially understood.
       And, in case you haven’t noticed, we are still living under a capitalist system that sucks the profit out of anything it can get its hands on, including progressive societal movements. Simply maintaining the status quo is exactly what those in power are trying to do, which means pain and struggle for those caught in the margins.
       Pride in London is no longer an act of resistance in the way that Stonewall was. Stonewall was a riot against the police; Pride in London marches with them. Stonewall encouraged everyone to participate; Pride in London hosts TERFs and requires payment in order to be in the march. Simply looking at their website shows us that this march is not something revolutionary, but simply another route to monetary gain. The revolution will not be televised, but it also cannot be sponsored. Barclays, Amazon Music, and Tesco are sponsoring this year, just to name a few rainbow capitalists. As Peter Tatchell says of these corporations:
       “They’ve got the money, so they have huge extravagant floats that outshine and overwhelm the LGBT+ community groups…Many of the companies have degayed their floats. They don’t mention LGBT+, just Pride.”
       It isn’t new to see companies trying to cash in on societal movements. But if we continue to allow marches like Pride in London to be co-opted by corporations and greed, Queer Liberation will become less of a battle cry and more of a Che Guevara t-shirt.
       We stand in solidarity with groups like Reclaim Pride in New York, and Transgenialer CSD in Berlin. Pride needs to be a people’s movement, not a capitalist’s parade. The Anarchist Federation condemns the way Pride in London has betrayed what pride really means: liberation. We stand in solidarity with our trans family who continue to suffer like Marsha did, and for all those affected by anti-LBGT+ violence. Queer Liberation, not rainbow capitalism! No pride in capitalism!
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Call For Action.


From Act For Freedom Now:

Biarritz,(BasqueCountry):

INTERTERRITORIAL DIRECT ACTION WEEK,
 8 – 14 JULY AGAINST G7

CALL FOR AN INTERTERRITORIAL DIRECT ACTION WEEK AGAINST G7
       It had been called an Interterritorial Direct Action Week from the 8th of july to the 14th against the G7 summit that it would take place in Biarritz (Basque Country). It’s a call to extend the fight that from some months ago has started to organize against this G7 summit from the Basque Country to other places, to respond through the direct action against it and the system that it represents.
We’ll meet in Biarritz.
Autoorganization and fight!
via : g7ezinon.info/en
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Why Vote, It Only Encourages Them.

      When it comes to what I call the "Crooks and Liars Competition", electing your new master, anarchists usually abstain, some might make their way to the ballot box and destroy the ballot paper. However you have to hand it to our Greek comrades, they do things a little bit different in that neck of the capitalist swamp. I like the way the article refers to the "perpetrators" as "self-styled anarchists"!!  Does that mean that their anarchism was not imposed on them?

Protecting your freedom to select a new master.

     A group of ten self-styled anarchists stormed a polling station in Exarcheia, the infamous neighborhood of Athens, stole a ballot box and set it on fire a few minutes before the voting ended for the general elections.
       The perpetrators used a sledgehammer to threaten electoral clerks before grabbing the ballot box and making off with it. According to Greek electoral law, the voting at the polling station will be repeated next Sunday.
 
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Sunday 7 July 2019

The Judiciary, The State's Dehumanising Machine.

        Any state's judicial system is a ruthless, inhuman, destroyer, devoid of empathy, that functions solely for the protection of the status-quo, the safeguarding of the power and privileges of those who hold the reins of power. Some states are worse than others, but it is all a matter of degree. The case below is not an exception but just one of the many cases of the degradation of a human being at the hands of the state.
From Act For Freedom Now:

Solidarity with Andreas Krebs
– A summary (Situation July 2019)
July 7, 2019.

There is also an German and Italian version of this text!
       Our friend and companion Andreas is currently imprisoned in Naples (Italy). Since his imprisonment in Germany Andreas has been known as a rebellious prisoner. In April 2019 he was sentenced in Italy to 24 years in jail. In addition, Andreas has recently been diagnosed with kidney cancer. His health is deteriorating and we fear for his life. Actually, he should undergo surgery months ago, but the Italian authorities refuse to transfer him to a hospital.
Andreas was in the clutches of the German judicial machinery for years and he was in jail for a total of 16 years. He is a rebellious prisoner, participated in building the prisoners’ union (GGBO) behind bars, he went on hunger strike several times against the prison conditions and also participated in a solidarity hunger strike for the prisoners in Greece. To date he repeatedly publishes texts against the prison society, in which he describes everyday life in captivity.
       In autumn 2014, after his release, he met his current wife Jutta. Both decided to spend a quiet retirement in the south of Italy. At the end of December 2016 there was a dispute with his former employer, who attacked Andreas and strangled him. Andreas stabbed him in self-defense with a penknife. Sadly, the victim died in the hospital three days later under mysterious circumstances, although it was said shortly after the act that he would survive.
        What followed was an unprecedented hunt against Andreas and Jutta. Jutta received death threats via Facebook while in the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison he was maltreated and tortured by the family members of the deceased, who are still working in that jail. Since the surveillance video confirmed Andreas’ statement to have defended himself, he came after several days in custody in house arrest. There they were exposed to constant “visits” by the police and hatred from large parts of the population. The family of the victim besieged their home, so that Andreas and Jutta could not go out for weeks. Finally, they felt forced to flee and went back to Germany. There, Andreas was arrested less than half a year later on the basis of a European arrest warrant with the help of the anti-terror unit of the German police. Andreas was back in jail in September 2017.
         In December 2017, he was then completely unexpectedly relocated to the jail in Burg with the participation of masked cops of another anti-terrorist police unit. Andreas repeatedly wrote in letters about the intolerable conditions in the jails in Volkstädt and Burg. In April 2018, Andreas was finally totally overhasty handed over to extradition custody in the jail in Berlin Moabit, finally to be delivered in May 2018 as a German citizen to Italy.
        Andreas is since then in the prison of Secondigliano, one of the largest high security prisons in Naples (Open Street Map). Since May 30, 2018 the trial against him was conducted there. In November 2018, some hearing dates took place, which Andreas’ wife Jutta also attended. In the courtroom, the relatives of the victim tried to assault Jutta and threatened her again massively.
         On April 1st, 2019, the trial ended in the first instance with a sentence of intentional murder of 24 years imprisonment. Andreas was already visibly physically and mentally marked by the conditions of detention in the jails of Volkstedt, Burg and most recently in Berlin-Moabit. Andreas’ critical state of health was systematically ignored and denied. He was repeatedly refused medication, clinical investigations and operations. In addition, his detention conditions were aggravated, since the German police pretends that he has a close relationship to (former) RAF members.
        In Italy, Andreas’s health has improved by no means. On the contrary: Andreas was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer. In recent weeks he had to cope with acute kidney failure. He suffers from very heavy water retention throughout his body, especially in his legs and at times he can not walk anymore. He is still refused a transfer to a hospital and an operation, necessary for months and also promised by the prison management. Andreas is rebellious as usual, is committed to other prisoners and reports repeatedly about the violent everyday life in the jail of Secondigliano, the arbitrariness of the guards, the neglect and undersupply of all prisoners and the racism against African fellow prisoners.
      Andreas is happy about support of every kind! For medicine and reasonably edible food he has to pay himself.
If you want to donate money:
Payee: Krebs
IBAN: DE 90 1005 0000 1067 1474 26
BIC: BELADE BEXXX
Reference: Spende/Andreas Krebs
        Write Andreas in jail, he is happy about every little postcard. You also can send books, newspapers, magazines or colorful paper, it all will come through. He is very interested in motorcycles and philosophical issues.
Andreas Krebs
Sez. 1 Stz.1
Sez. Mediterraneo (CASA CIRCONDARIALE SECONDIGLIANO)
Via Roma Verso Scampia, 250,
Cap 80144 Napoli (NA),
Italy
If you want to know more about Andreas, then go to
https://andreaskrebs.blackblogs.org/
(in German)
       Call numerously in the German embassy in Italy and demand medical care for the prisoner Andreas Krebs! Anything else is a failure to render assistance!
Mr. Besken (Ambassador) +39649213285
      Let us show to Andreas that he is not forgotten. Solidarity actions of any kind are welcome!
Freedom for all prisoners! Down with all the prisons!
Freedom and luck for Andreas Krebs!
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Saturday 6 July 2019

Sma' Shot Day, Burning The Cork.

 
       Paisley was a famous weavers centre producing intricate patterns that became world famous. Like all workers, the bosses tried to get as much profit out of them as they could, and pay them as little as possible. In Paisley this came to a head with a long and bitter strike in 1856, in which the strikers won their battle. Each year now the strike is celebrated on the first Saturday of July with a march and a celebration of the burning of the "Cork".

 Photo courtesy of Paisley.org.uk
    
 This from Radical Glasgow History Project.


THE PROBLEM.
      In the 19th century the intricate patterns of the Paisley weavers work was held together by an unseen strong thread called the Sma' Shot. This secret stitch held together Paisley's famous shawls and without the stitch the patterns would come apart. The weavers had to pay for the thread but the fact that it was unseen meant that the manufacturers who purchased the patterns would not pay for the cotton in the sma' shot.
CONFRONTATION.
       By the middle of the century the Paisley weavers were fed up with the bosses tight-fistedness and decided to take strike action. In 1856 after a long and bitter dispute the bosses caved in and the weavers won their claim to be paid for the hidden thread.
CHARLESTON DRUM.
    The original Charleston, (a district in Paisley) drum which historically was used to rally weavers in times of disputes, is now in the Paisley Museum, a copy of the original drum is now used to rally the masses on Sma' Shot Day. The climax of the celebrations on Sma' Shot Day is the burning of an effigy, in top hat and tails, representing “the Cork” who was the despised boss in the days of the dispute.
LONGEST RUNNING CLASS WAR CELEBRATION.
      From 1856 the first Saturday in July, a traditional Paisley holiday was named “Sma' Shot Day. This celebration of the weavers victory continued until 1975. For a few years it seems to have been dropped but in 1986 the tradition was revived and continues today.
 The loom that drove the weavers from cottages to factories.


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An Anarchist's Dream.


          How would you put the anarchist dream into words, so that anybody would understand? In all probability you would consider some large volume packed with inspiring words and deeds. Rather than pressuring our simple minds to getting that volume out and circulated, how about we just borrow these few lines from the past.

"Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!"

A quotation from Omar Khayyam's, Rubaiyat.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Friday 5 July 2019

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. 
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Thursday 4 July 2019

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.
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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

Monday 1 July 2019

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