Tuesday 26 November 2019

Glasgow Workers City, 1988-1993.

     Spirit of Revolt Archive hold lots of outreach events, where we try to bring the people to the archive, and bring their history to the people of Glasgow/Clydeside area. Some of these events are held in the Mitchell library, others in various venues across the city. Our most recent event was "Workers City" where we tried to bring to a wider public some of the flourishing activism in Glasgow of the period 1988-1993.


     This video is now available for viewing on our Spirit of Revolt website, in the "Audio-Video" section. 
    you can view it here and perhaps it will encourage you to delve a little deeper into our vast collection historical documents, serials, letters, pamphlets, posters, photos, memorabilia, our audio and video collection and much much more. It is your history, a history you should be very proud of and share.



       A display of material from Spirit of Revolt collections and a discussion, led by Tommy Kayes with James Kelman, Brendan McLaughlin, Billy Clark, Michael Donnelly, Ruth Gillett, Paul Anderson, Euan Sutherland and others on the formation and actions of the Workers City group (1988 - 1993). From the Blythswood Room, 5th Floor, The Mitchell Library, Glasgow.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Truly A Winter Of Discontent.

     There is no doubt that this year is different. Yes, there has always been protests in this unjust economic system, but this year there are many more and they are more intense with greater numbers on the streets, and they go on much longer, months, and still continuing. Have The people of Iran joined this world wide revolutionary movement?
     The Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan believes that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regime will not hesitate to massacre millions of Iranians, like it has done in Syria and Iraq as well as in Iran these these last few days. Therefore, the Anarchist Union of Iran and Afghanistan is prepared to declare that it will cooperate with all Kurdish, Arab and Baloch armed opposition forces. With respect to the widespread repression of defenseless people in Iran, we must be able to provide them with the right tools to defend themselves, before there are more dead and the people’s movement has been permanently suppressed. Therefore the need to form an armed revolutionary front to support and defend the people against the Islamic regime’s executioners is urgent and necessary. If it is possible to transport weapons to people inside Iran, you should not hesitate for a moment to prevent more people from being bled and buried. The duty of the revolutionary and radical opposition outside of Iran is to provide logistical and strategic support to the struggles and resistance of the people inside Iran
     I don't agree with everything in the following article but it is an excellent source to see the extent of these prolonged mass protests and gives hope that they will be joined by others rather than morph into some sort of formal agreement with the various states. Our support and solidarity could help immensely in preventing this morphing from happening.  From Democracy Without Borders: 

Youth celebrating the Lebanese revolution in 2019. Photo by Vicken Vincent Avakian with kind permission (source)
     This year has seen an extraordinary number of significant mass protests in over twenty countries or territories, many of which in a national context represented the biggest in recent times. They are often spontaneous, with a distinctly revolutionary nature. In many cases protesters would face a serious risk of arrest, injury or death. The ruling class, government or even the whole system of government, are the targets. Corruption, authoritarianism and/or austerity are their key motivators. ------
And:
    -------Obviously protests occur constantly, and we haven’t done a thorough data analysis comparing this year with historical averages. However, it’s generally accepted that the current protests aren’t normal. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria called them  “this autumn of protest”, and noted that “the politics of each of these movements seems quite distinct. But they are all occurring against a worrisome backdrop: a collapse of [global] economic growth”, which is now at its lowest point since the 2008 crash.
       We can take the line of thinking further and note that these various uprisings are in fact different theatres of the same conflict. 
      Protesters may be waving their national flags, and speaking of national rebirth – not global justice, but as the example of Ecuador especially shows, these national transformations can take place, but they must currently do so in spite of the prevailing global system, which is institutionally incompatible with the needs of the world’s population, captured by an undemocratic, ahistorical ideology which fetishises the balancing of national budgets with same year tax revenues which effectively prohibits effective development strategies, such as the provision of basic services or redistribution.
For the list of mass protests continue reading:
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Monday 25 November 2019

Disobedience.




     Two pieces of information I recently read, to me highlight the dreadful state of our world today. The first is the human savagery that results in the fact that every ten minutes a Yemeni child under 5 years of age dies of hunger. The other is the state to which we have driven the planet, the recent Australian fires have more or less wiped out the Koalas, having destroyed 80% of their habitat.
    There is much more, millions of people across the globe are on the streets fighting to end inequality, injustice, corruption and state brutality. We have devised a system that perpetuates wide spread poverty, injustice and corruption. A system that spawns wars and all the misery, death and destruction that goes with those wars. A system that has driven life on our planet to the edge of extinction. None of this was an unforeseen accident, nor was it inevitable, it was driven by blind greed and deliberate exploitation. If we continue down this road, sadly those driving this human tragedy will not be the only ones to suffer as the inevitable collapse unfolds.


     It may already be too late, even so, humanity that desires that decent world for all, must continue and re-double every effort, and find new imaginative ways to destroy this economic disastrous system and halt this man made disaster. We just can't throw our hands in the air, continue as we are, and watch our grandchildren's future disappear in a brutal man made extinction.
     The following quote is one answer to our problem:
     "You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth." Richard Grossman
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sunday 24 November 2019

The Freedom To Think Kurdistan.

     An event to mark in you diary, Thursday, 5th., December. One of Glasgow's literary sons and life time activist James Kelman has a new book being launched on that date. Obviously an event not to be missed.
Details:
   thi wurd presents the launch of James Kelman’s new book ‘The Freedom to Think Kurdistan’ at The Admiral Bar, Glasgow, Thur, 5th December 7-10pm. With James Kelman. Music from Eugene Kelly, The Dirt Roadsters. Fiction from thi wurd. £5 on the door.
Please spread details.

https://twitter.com/thiwurd/status/1195756406428913664

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

The Chilean People's Struggle Comes To London.


        There are lots of people in this country and else where who are unaware of the fierce state brutality against the people of Chile who are protesting in there hundreds of thousands against the poverty, deprivation  and outright barefaced corruption of the Chilean state. The reason being, our mainstream media don't bother to report it in any detail. Their silence makes them complicit. Those of us who do know about this brutal state repression cannot stay silent or we also are complicit in this brutality against a cry for justice. 
     To raise awareness of the struggle of the people of Chile, a piece of Chile came to London, I'm sure they would be welcome in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and any other city in this country.       The people of Chile's Struggle is our struggle, the poverty, deprivation and corruption that blights their life is alive and thriving here in our patch of the planet, it is all a matter of degree.


       Chileans and friends stage a flashmob performance of the folk protest song 'El Pueblo Unido jamás será Vencido' (The People United will never be Defeated) at St Pancras Station in London, Monday 4 November 2019. The song, which originates in leftwing political movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was made famous by the Chilean folk bands Inti-illimani and Quilapuyún, has become an anthem for the current protests against inequality and state brutality that have engulfed Chile in recent weeks. Several singers wore white gauzes over their eyes to symbolise state violence against protestors, many of whom have lost eyes to police aggression. At least 20 people have died in the protests.


Thanks Loam for the video link.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Saturday 23 November 2019

Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution.

       This month Spirit of Revolt's choice for "Read of the Month" is a pamphlet taken from our KM Collection. It is one of a group of 11 Direct Action pamphlets produced by Syndicalist Workers Federation. It is called Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution, by G. P. Maximoff, written around the 1950's. We are sure it will be of interest to all syndicalists/libertarian-socialists/anarchists, and those associated with that grouping and many more outside that grouping. We hope this little taster will encourage you to delve deeper into the wonderful collections held in our archive. Enjoy and learn.

Read on line:

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

Silence Is Complicity.

       Not much in the news just now about the Turkish invasion into Syria aided and abetted by their jihadi friends, and given the nod by America. No mention of the destruction of an area democratically organised by the people, the area of Rojava. A small area being brutally and savagely destroyed by NATO's second largest army. No pictures of the suffering of those people at the mercy of a messianic dictator armed to the teeth with the latest and most powerful weapons. Silence in the presence of brutality is complicity. Since 2011 the people of Syria have seen their country obliterated, hundreds of thousands killed or maimed, and millions of the people displaced, and now Turkey wants to carve a slice of the country off for as its own, and still the silence. A people brought to deprivation, desperation and their infrastructure destroyed, all as part of the power game between the various power-blocks vying for control of the resources in that area. Let's stop electing leaders and playing their games to their rules, and make that decision, that for the peace of the world and the benefit all the people of this world, the entire system has to be destroyed, root and branch.

via barrikade:
Comrades,
        I think it is important now that our voices of Rojava, out of the heart of that battle, are being heard. A fight for the life, for an existence in dignity, for real democracy and for the freedom of all women. I want to tell how the resistance of Serekaniye went on, how the beginning was, how the end was and also what happened in between. Serekaniye right now is in the hands of jihadist groups that are being supported by Turkey, upon approval by the United States. At a time they said there would be a five-day firearm rest…. we didn’t believe it for one second. And that’s how it was – the attacks didn’t stop, maybe they’ve been reduced, but they continued attacking us with heavy artillery, bombings and airplanes. When there are bombings, there is not much that can be done; hide behind a tree and hope, that they didn’t see you running or that they found your place.
Those five days of supposed firearm rest actually have been decisive for the United States and Turkey, to redefine the conflict, to realign the situation of war, confrontation and resistance against our forced withdrawal that no one expected. No one could believe it, after 11 days of resistance, beautiful and very hard at the same time. Leaving the city. The Turkish invasion of Serekaniye did start some days before, 8th of October, with a bombing of our military post that hasn’t been answered, for not to unleash what happened later anyway. It was an attempt of the friends to protect the people and the society. But the next day, about 3 to 4 pm, another bombing of a post of the YPG took place, where 5 friends have fallen, and since then they bombed the whole border.
        The first days have been very chaotic. We tried to keep calm and to prepare for the invasion. Yes, the last months of the preparation made sense, it became reality. To realise despite all fear, what war actually means, the bravery to assure oneself of a made decision, and at the same time, there are the doubts, that everything will be silenced, that no one in this world will hear about that barbarism. When war arrives, it is a distant war, with a lot of unexpected bombings, that you’ll only hear at the very last moment. When the bombs fall, they fall, when it happens, it happens. After days you learn to acknowledge them, and at the same time when the wounded friends start to arrive, along with the feelings they awake in us; sadness at one hand, because the war machinery is monstrous, and at the other hand the strength to also fight for them. All the defending units, those that already have been here and those that arrived when the Turkish aggression intensified, kept the city safe despite movements of the jihadist groups and enabled the transfer of the wounded to the city Til Temir. Until Turkey cut that road and it wasn’t possible anymore to bring them there.
Continue reading the article HERE: 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Friday 22 November 2019

This Morning I Turn My Face To Poetry.

        Some mornings I turn me face away from the world I live in, and try to see another world. This is a morning I turned my face to poetry, and pocked my nose into some of the poems of El Salvadorian poet Roque Dalton born 1935, murdered 1975. 


IX Love Poem

The ones who widened the Panama Canal
(and were put on the silver roll and not on the gold roll),
the ones who repaired the Pacific fleet
at the military bases in California,
the ones who rotted in jail in Guatemala,
Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua
for being thieves, smugglers, scammers,
for being hungry,
the ever-suspicious ones
(‘I bring forth this individual
arrested for being a suspicious bystander
with the aggravation of being Salvadorian’),
the ones who filled the bars and brothels
of all the ports and capitals in the region
(The blue cave, The panty, Happyland),
the ones who grew corn in foreign jungles,
the kings of the crime section,
the ones who no-one ever knows where they’re from,
the best craftsmen in the world,
the ones who were mowed down with bullets while crossing
the border,
the ones who died from malaria
or scorpion or snake bites
in banana plantation hell,
the ones who cried drunk for the national anthem
under cyclones in the Pacific or snow in the north,
the freeloaders, the beggars, the potheads,
Salvadorian sons of bitches,
the ones who barely made it back,
the ones who were a bit luckier,
the eternal illegals,
make-all, sell-all, eat-all,
the first to pull out a knife,
the saddest sad people in the world,
my countrymen,
my brothers.
This from Cordite Poetry Review:
        As far as tragic poets’ stories go, Roque Dalton’s (El Salvador, 1935-1975) is perhaps the most tragic in Central America. In the 1950s as a Law student, he was the brightest of a literary movement which is now referred to as the Committed Generation, a group of militant leftist writers who saw art as a revolutionary act. ‘Commitment’ meant joining the cause of a communist revolution. Since any kind of dissent had been outlawed by military dictatorships in El Salvador since the 1930s, signing up to such an endeavour led to prison, exile or death.
     Dalton embodied the movement’s spirit of radical, experimental and bohemian writing – he is equally known for weaving uncompromising leftist politics into avant-garde free verse as he is for a life of drink and escapades in various soviet-aligned countries. He called some of his collections ‘literary collages’, by which he meant a combination of found poems (historical documents, news, old poems, etc) and his own poetry around a theme, whether it was Communism in Latin America, the history of El Salvador or life in exile.
      With a conversational style that reneged of the overly poetic (Dalton claimed to have ‘nothing to do with the Neruda family’) he borrowed from Salvadorian slang and celebrated a devious way of life with a brash sense of humour. His poems, though sometimes dated for the references to communism and revolution, still resonate with a common Latin American experience: a history of corrupt governments kept in power by a small group of wealthy families or the U.S. with the complacency of subservient middle classes and ineffective bureaucrats. Names of presidents and generals he mentions only need to be changed to current ones.
       In Roque Dalton’s world reality in El Salvador was so mad that your options were to laugh or join the revolution. Or both. Dalton joined the People’s Revolutionary Army (Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo or ERP), one of five clandestine groups that eventually formed the FMLN guerrilla in the 1980s, now the political party in government. The ERP was regarded as the most extreme faction of El Salvador’s left wing movement.
     The tragedy of Dalton came abruptly in 1975, when, after returning to El Salvador after years of exile or jail, he was murdered by his own comrades who accused him of being a CIA agent. The circumstances of his killing are sketchy due to the secretive internal workings of the ERP and the fact that his alleged killers, (the ERP leaders) have never stood trial.
Continue READING:


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Thursday 21 November 2019

The Media And The World In Protest.

 
      The fact that the world is afire with mass protests against  the present system of greed, inequality and corruption seems to be totally missed by our mass media. We get the usual 10/15 minute slot on Hong Kong, then we are launched into a similar time span on the affairs of a rather dim witted corrupt self centre parasite prince. This is then followed by another longish spell of the to two main contenders in the UK's latest crooks and liars competition. This is followed by a slice of the US pantomime of the Trump impeachment, "Greatest Show on Earth". This is your "news", as far as our media is concerned the rest of the world is just fine, so go and get on with your Christmas shopping and we'll keep you informed.
       Most, if not all of these mass protests across the world, are against the system that our establishment wish to protect and preserve, and are being treated with the most savage and brutal repression from the various states, something that should be at the top of any true journalists note pad, but we have silence, because the media stooges only follow the narrative of their pay masters.
        In Iraq for the last two months or so, thousands have been on the streets, ports have been blocked by strikers, and more and more people are joining them on a daily basis. This despite some of the worst state violence against its own people. Where are our media cameras and reporters? Why, outside Buckingham palace, The White House and in Hong Kong.


The bloodbath in Baghdad
19 November 2019
        The death toll in the mass protests that have shaken Iraq for the last seven weeks has risen to over 330, with an estimated 15,000 wounded. Young Iraqis have continued to pour into the streets in defiance of fierce repression to press their demands for jobs, social equality and an end to the unspeakably corrupt political regime created by the US occupation that followed the criminal American invasion of 2003.    
      Most of those killed have been felled by live ammunition, including machine-gun fire and bullets fired by snipers, both randomly into crowds and at identified protest leaders. Others have suffered hideous fatal wounds from military-grade tear gas grenades fired point-blank into the demonstrators, in some cases with canisters ending up lodged in the victims’ skulls or lungs. In addition, water cannon have been employed, spraying scalding hot water into the protests. Forced disappearances have been reported, while families of victims shot to death by security forces have been compelled to sign statements acknowledging the deaths as “accidental” in order to receive the bodies of their loved ones.  

An injured protestor is rushed to a hospital during a demonstration in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)

      This brutality has only succeeded in drawing ever wider layers of the population, and in particular growing sections of the Iraqi working class, into the anti-government mobilizations. In Baghdad, protesters have succeeded in occupying three strategic bridges over the Tigris River leading into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where government buildings, top officials’ villas, embassies and the offices of military contractors and other foreign agencies are located.
        In the south of the country, demonstrators have once again mounted a siege of Iraq’s main Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr near Basra, reducing its activity by over 50 percent. Oil workers announced Sunday that they were going on a general strike in support of the demonstrators, and columns of workers organized by Iraqi unions poured into Tahrir Square to back the protests. In the southern Shia heartland of Iraq, the teachers unions have led a general strike movement that has shut down most cities.
      Only in the predominantly Sunni northern areas of Anbar Province and Mosul, which were bombed into rubble during the so-called US war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), has the protest movement failed to bring masses into the streets. This is not for any lack of sympathy, but rather the threat of a renewed military offensive against any sign of opposition. Even those in the region who have expressed their solidarity on Facebook have been rounded up by security forces, while the authorities have made it plain that anyone there who opposes the government will be treated as “terrorists” and ISIS sympathizers.
      If anything approaching this level of both mass popular revolt and murderous repression were taking place in Russia, China, Venezuela or Iran, one can easily imagine the kind of wall-to-wall coverage they would receive from the corporate media in the US. Yet, the Iraqi events have been virtually ignored by the broadcast networks and the major print media. This is certainly not for lack of popular interest in the country.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 20 November 2019

Joe Hill Remembered.


      I'm a day late with this, but then again our working class heroes should be remembered and honoured every day of the year.
      Joe Hill, also known as Joe Hillstrom, his original name was Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, (born October 7, 1879, Gävle, Sweden)
       Joe Hill was a song writer and organiser for the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, He immigrated to America from Sweden in 1902, and spent years drifting across the country seeking work where he could. In 1910 he joined the San Pedro, California local of the Industrial Workers of the World, becoming its secretary. In 1903, his most famous song, “The Preacher and the Slave” appeared in the IWW’s Little Red Song Book. This is sung to the tune of “In the Sweet Bye and Bye” and contains the words:

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. 
 
Photo from Britannica.com

       Joe hill was executed by firing squad on November 19th. 1915. His conviction was based on purely circumstantial evidence, and despite mass protests and appeals, and suggestions that his conviction was because of his radical views, his execution went ahead. The night before his execution he stated to IWW member Big Bill Haywood “Goodbye Bill. I die like a true rebel. Don’t waste time in mourning. Organize.”
Also on the eve of his death he wrote:
 My Will is easy to decide
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don't need to fuss and moan.
"Moss does not cling to rolling stone."
My body?—Oh!—If I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my Last and Final Will—
Good Luck to All of you,
 Joe Hill

And HERE:
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The Crime Of Obedience.

       Obedience is a failing in humans, following orders is the abdication of your own will to that of another. So which is worse, the tyrant who issues the order or the subservient that follows those orders? My own personal opinion is that the order follower is by far the greatest threat to the freedom of the individual. Without them all tyrants, dictators, demagogues etc. would fail miserably. Without the ability and desire to asses your actions and come to you own decision, your nothing but a pawn in another’s game plan. Just following orders or blindly doing your duty are probably the most under estimated crimes in society. Nobody knows better than you what your desires are, and nobody has the right to make that assumption.
      If we desire that better world for all, then we have to be rid of the order followers, the obedient and subservient, each individual has to take responsibility for their actions, you can’t hide under that shield of “only following orders”. To do so is the abdication of your right as a rational human being. Be a freethinker, question everything, take responsibility for your actions, so consider their outcome very carefully.



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

Tuesday 19 November 2019

To Weather Seasons Such As These.

      Two very recent reported incidents from within our very rich country that should make us all rise up and  crush this pitiless economic system of greed and inequality.
    One is the recent case of a man dying in a carpark in Glasgow in sub-zero temperatures, the other a man dies in the job centre after being told he is fit for work. What kind of society can tolerate this inhumanity? these are not isolated cases. Deaths from the cruelty of the universal credit system runs into thousands, deaths among the homeless runs into hundreds. These are not accidents, these are the result of deliberate policies legislated by people with lots of money and in most cases at least two homes, our political ballerinas. all of them well shielded from the ravages of their ideological policies.
     William Shakespeare's words from "Seasons Such As These" are probably very apt for our times as they were in his:
Poor naked wretches, wherese're you are
that hide the pelting of this pityless storm,
how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
from seasons such as these.
 

       Homelessness is not a failing of the individual, it is the abject failure of the system we tolerate, but for how much longer, for how many more avoidable deaths?

The Warmth Of A dream. 

He lay in a dark doorway, dreamed of home,
night frost locked his joints
morning rain chilled the marrow of his bone.
In the dream there was a sister,
a pram in a garden, a crowd of youngsters
who called him “mister”, a time of little pain.
Are these youngsters the same young men, who
now laugh at him, throw beer cans,
piss on him as he lies drunk in some dark lane?
When was that first step down this slippery slope,
when was that first step to no forgiveness.
No will to rise to beg for food,
numbness kills the pain.
The dream brings a warmth that feels good,
dark fog shades out consciousness,
an ambulance carries off a body washed in rain.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk   

News Or Propaganda?

 
Prague, November, 16th. 2019.,

     Protests are raging in numerous countries across the globe, more and more people are rising up against the intolerable inequality, injustice, corruption, wars and rampaging poverty that the present economic system creates and perpetuates for the vast majority of the people of this planet.

France:
 https://www.france24.com/en/tag/yellow-vest-protests/

Chile:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/month-protests-chile-persist-gov-concessions-191118231609475.html

Bolivia:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/16/bolivia-protests-five-killed-in-rally-calling-for-exiled-moraless-return

Ecuador:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ecuadorian_protests

Haiti:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Haitian_protests

Lebanon:
https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/after-month-protests-lebanon-what-next

Iraq:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50440110

Sudan:
https://www.voanews.com/africa/protesters-sudan-condemn-previous-days-attack-security-forces

Czech:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/19/czec-n19.html

      Of course this is not by any manner of means a definitive list, there is more, much more unrest against poverty, corruption, injustice and inequality that exists amidst unimaginable wealthy and opulence, all plundered from the work and sweat of the ordinary people. The world is exploding in mass protests.
      Watching the mainstream UK TV news recently I got, each evening, over a considerable period, a roughly 10/15 minutes slot of the protests in Hong Kong, but nothing of note on any of the other mass protests taking place across our world, I wonder why? Then of course my twisted mind went into overdrive. Could it be that the UK imperialist establishment still see Hong Kong as part of the British Empire and naively believe that the UK public will therefore be more interested in that than all this other stuff going on in other people's empires. Or perhaps it is another piece of propaganda that can be used against that, in the eyes of the Western imperialist's, great evil place called China. Who knows, but for sure it is not a balanced and fully informative coverage that we are getting. It is very selective and biased in favour of the establishment view. So can we call it news or propaganda?
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 18 November 2019

Why Do We Tolerate Them.


        It would appear that the representatives of the predatory class are having a get together in Madrid this December 2nd-13th.. There they will wine and dine on the best that you and I can provide, after all it is us that produce everything and pay for their hospitality, How ironic considering that they are the creators of our poverty and deprivation. They will be meeting up to discuss how best to guarantee their privileged positions, their power and their wealth. These are the people who come with the blood of ordinary people on their hands, they plan and execute wars, killing and maiming millions, they are responsible for the destruction of infrastructure in country after country, they plunder the resources of the planet for their own power and wealth.
    However their biggest crime is probably that fact that they are responsible for the destruction of the planet, and show no serious signs of trying to do anything to halt that destruction.
    This event in Madrid will be the gathering of the enemy of the people, the friends of  the corporate juggernaut, the representatives of the gross inhumanity that burdens our world, and we are expected to applaud them. No doubt the media will paint them as wonderful planners of our future, planners of a better world, but it will be a better world for that little band of predatory parasites. Why do we tolerate them, wine and dine them?
 
       December 2nd, the rulers of the world are coming to Madrid. Some of the biggest murderers of this planet, of the biggest responsible of its devastation. They come to fill their mouths and calendars with the next plans of “fight against climate change”. While global capitalism continues intact and most of the CO2 emissions emanate from industrial production, while their companies keep devastating forests and mountains to extract its natural resources.
      And if that wasn’t enough, at the same time, Chile burns and their streets are still covered by the ammunition caps from the security forces. But Piñera couldn’t see his political planning disturbed by the revolt, he couldn’t admit the mediatic focus questioning his dictation before such a social explosion. And thanks to the kindness of Spanish government, now he will be able to continue with his plans without getting disheveled.
      But in Chile, normality couldn’t be held anymore, and we neither want to hold it here. We won’t allow the world leaders meet to design the destruction under the look of sustainability and respect, as if everything continues to go normally. As if they haven’t been destroying all this time, as if they wouldn’t carry thousands of corpses in their backs. We won’t give them such legitimacy. Also, because we know, that the best way to show solidarity with the rebels is nothing but extend the revolt. Like in Hamburg, we want this summit to become hell.
     Therefore, we encourage the system enemies to meet in Madrid, in the dates when the world owners have their appointment in this city. Stay aware to the next calls and infos. There will be enabled spaces to host those coming from other places.
     On the other hand, neither do we trust that politics gestated in parliaments and offices will stop the destruction or stop the way to the collapse, that is increasingly inevitable. But we trust in the ability of every one to act, individually or in groups. That’s why we want to make a call for decentralized action to point the responsible of environmental destruction. Politicians won’t act against the Capitalism interests, but we do. Against climate change; direct action.
Attack those who destroy the Earth.
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Proud Of Our "Walk Of Pride", Glasgow.

 
   
  Though our "Walk of Pride" to mark the great victory of the 1915 Glasgow/Clydeside rent strike attracted a fair amount of attention at the start at Buchanan Street Steps, not many followed on with the walk. However those that did, made up for lack of numbers by their passion, enthusiasm, pavement art and of course, the informative speeches by "Strong Women of Clydeside" all from the women of that rent strike in 1915. A lesson in solidarity from which we can all learn. Well done to all involved, 
     We should never forget those from the past who stood up and took on the onslaught of the exploiters from the predatory class. We owe them a debt of gratitude, and we can learn from them, as we still face similar struggles today.
A few photos, thanks to Keith.





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