Coronavirus.

         I haven't posted anything about the coronavirus, reason being I don't know enough about the situation to make any real input. However I think this quote from 325 is worth repeating.

From 325:

      From my perspective, the responses of both the American and Chinese governments have been pretty much the same: pretend that the problem isn’t so bad and that there are systems in place to deal with it, use the epidemic to stomp on basic human rights such as being detained without trial and freedom of movement and accuse anyone trying to highlight the seriousness of the epidemic of being part of a conspiracy or plotting to bring down the government. The difference between the Americans and the Chinese is that the Chinese don’t pretend to be a democracy that pays lip service to the notion of being a government “of the people, for the people and by the people”.
     What people need is accurate, openly available and reliable information about what is going on so that we, as individuals and local communities, can take the necessary steps to protect each other. That means paying attention to the people who have expert knowledge about flu epidemics. It means not listening to some ignorant pissant sitting behind their computer peddling the latest piece of crap from the 8chan website, an anti-vaccination website or from a President who thinks the answer to dealing with an epidemic that has killed over 33,000 people worldwide is to hold a prayer meeting and to blame his opponents. It means using science and sense, not stupidity and authoritarianism.

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Fascists And Migrants.

      The situation at the European border in Greece has become a war zone. Turkey, to push for support from NATO and the EU has started to use migrants as bargaining chips to further its land grab into Syria. Migrants in the eyes of the state are not people in desperate need but a thing they see as a problem or a group that can be used to build on their poisonous patriotism.

     Meanwhile as the various states procrastinate on this flow of humanity, vigilante fascist groups do their dirty work for them. Along the Greek/Turkish border these right wing thugs roam the area hunting migrants, terrorising them and subjecting them to brutal beatings, while the authorities turn a blind eye. On the Greek island of Lesbos, these fascists have gather from other countries to to roam freely attacking anybody that's doesn't speak Greek. 

     all this goes on uninterrupted  under the surveillance system of the state. This freedom granted to the fascist groups to use migrants as prey for their demented hunting forays, tells you the true nature of the states that try to control ever aspect of our lives. As long as states exist, freedom will struggle for survival.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

 

      Athens, Greece: On Saturday, March 7, 2020, anarchists and antifascists, anti-authoritarians marched through the downtown of Athens in solidarity with the migrants struggle, against all detention centers, against fences and borders. Against war, nationalism and fascism.

Greek vigilante groups in Evros are roaming freely the borders, terrorising and arresting groups of migrants that manage to find a hole through the fence, while in the greek island of Lesbos vigilante groups act like a mob that has set check points at the edges and the centre of Mytilene town (the capital of Lesbos island), verbally abuse any migrants in dinghies that reach the greek shores, attack and terrorize volunteers or NGO workers aiding migrants, smash their cars or violently beat them. Fascists from several european countries have flown to Lesbos island to take part in the mob that attacks anyone not speaking greek, migrants, NGO workers or tourists.

A school for refugee children has also been burnt to the ground by this right wing racist mob. Tourists, volunteers and NGO workers are fleeing Lesbos island because it’s not safe for anyone not speaking greek, except of foreign fascists and nationalists aiding the vigilante mobs.
        And while you would think that these despicable acts would be condoned by the majority at least of the people, the contrary happens. Racists, nationalists, conservative, neoliberals, right wingers, social democrats, even some self-proclaimed lefties, have united in a front, backing these acts or turning a blind eye on them.
      And when you hear their narrative, that the migrants are invaders and not people and that this is a war on Europe, you can’t help but remember another time when people were treating others like they were inferior, like the enemy and were applauding the attacks on people based on different characteristics and were applauding the burning of the enemy’s schools, shops and books, and they were laughing with the gassing of the “enemy” and were applauding the deaths of the “other” and then you remember this:
“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me”.
     On Saturday, March 7, 2020, thousands of anarchists, anti-authoritarians, antifascists and people in solidarity in Athens, Greece, did exactly that. They chose to speak out, in defence of humanity against fascism, in defence of a world without borders, in defence of those who don’t have a voice because it has been choked by the teargas, the guns and the barbed wire fences at the edge of “Fortress Europe”.
athens.indymedia

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The Desire To Be Free.

      We all know prisons are meant to intimidate, subdue and repress individuals, to turn them into subservient subjects of the state, and also as a warning to us all, obey or else. However, the human spirit being what it is, the opposite frequently happens, instead of being subdued and subservient, a fire of anger builds up and often displays itself in open rebellion. The states response to this is always savage and brutal and the incarcerated must be brought under the control of the system, no matter the human cost. Despite this brutal state response, prison riots have been part and parcel of the inhumane prison system since the birth of these cages of repression.

        The most recent display of this righteous anger and rebellion in prisons and the state's brutal response, is still to a degree on going in Italy, in St Anna prison in Modena.

      This report from Act For Freedom Now:

      A revolt broke out today, March 8 2020 in the early afternoon, in St Anna prison in Modena.
        The fact was clearly seen from outside as three columns of smoke rose from the wings of the structure, as well as the significant coming and going of guards, and the presence of a police helicopter guarding the area.
Various relatives of the prisoners gathered, those in solidarity and other spectators from the surrounding area, seeing the GOM arriving in antiriot gear and distinctly hearing some shots.
       After some attempt at removal by the police, people still gathered in front of the prison, where vans, ambulances and prison minibuses were seen parading back and forth.
       At some point, after several requests for news by relatives, the Major of the Prison and an emissary from the prison director came out and told them that during negotiations with the rebels barricaded in the wing they had given them back their mobile phones in order to let them call the their loved ones. So they asked family members to answer the phone and convince them to come out.
      Towards the evening, in front of a large antiriot contingent, cops emerged escorting some of the prisoners, striking them while handcuffed; some were on stretchers.
       Already around that time some had escorted a bag containing a dead body.
It was possible to talk to some of the prisoners in the wing next to the field during the events, they gave news of transfers and that they would be the last to be transferred from the section, saying that they were being heavily beaten.
80 people have been transferred, apparently to Bologna, Reggio Emilia, Parma, Piacenza and Ascoli by at least four prison buses and other vans.
       The media of the regime reconstructed the affair as having started off from the workers’ section then spread throughout the whole prison where the prisoners would have burned mattresses and barricaded themselves in at least one of the structures, and apparently from some video seen taking possession of the armoury.
      Three people died during the revolt. Their identity and the exact cause of death has not been released. Another two are in intensive care.
     There is talk of serious damage to the structure and the destruction of documents. Important causes of the outbreak of the revolt would be the shutdown of visits and lack of mediators due to THE virus, as well as health safety inside the structure.
       Late in the evening there seemed to be rebels barricaded; THE SITUATION IS EVOLVING CONTINUALLY.

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Anarchists First!!

 

       Prisons, by themselves, are barbaric institutions of state repression, no matter the treatment the inmates receive. However it is within these institutions that the state sinks to the lowest level of depravity, callous cruelty and inhumanity. Those incarcerated in these swamps of inhumanity, see their very basic human rights abandoned at the whim of the state's mercenaries. Inside these state repression units, the normal rules of humanity no longer apply, you are there to be made an example of, you are used to deter you and others from any form of resistance to the state's control. Anyone who finds themselves enmeshed in this vicious inhuman system deserves all the solidarity and support that we can muster. At the moment it seems that, in many countries, anarchists are at the sharp end of this savage state treatment. "First they came for the anarchists---". Freedom can only rise when prisons crumble.

This from 325: 

Urgent news about comrade Ilya Romanov (Russia)

March 8th, 2020

IT/FR

       On February 18 and 19, there were rallies in Moscow in solidarity with Ilya Romanov, who, at the moment, is locked up in a penal colony in Mordovia [Eastern European Russia, near Nizhny Novgorod; NdAtt.]. In October 2019, Ilya had a stroke. Since then, he has been locked up in the penal colony hospital, a facility which is not suitable for treating his condition, which is still very critical. Indeed, the comrade is partially paralyzed (apparently half of his body is paralyzed). Ilya still has difficulty speaking, eating and being independent, even in the smallest gestures of everyday life. Ilya’s family and his lawyers were made aware of the stroke days after it happened, and the neurologist’s visit took place only two and a half weeks afterwards. He is not in any rehabilitation process and all the lawyers’ requests to have him transferred to a suitable hospital have been rejected; for weeks neither his family nor his lawyers were able to meet him or understand the gravity of his situation. It was not until November 28 that one of his lawyers was able to meet Ilya; The lawyer said that Ilya is paralyzed down one half of his body and cannot speak. He urgently needs the help of a speech therapist, as well as other doctors, but he is not allowed any specialist. Ilya is left to himself in a bed on a ward where he is locked up and he has been fed porridge for months. His neighbors on his ward in adjacent beds said that even the nurses in the ward never take care of him, but the inmates working there do it. On December 4, the medical commission of the penal colony again gave a negative opinion regarding Ilya’s transfer to a suitable hospital, because his condition did not seem serious enough to be incompatible with detention (!!!). The lawyers continue to use the legal channels and apparently his family has called to the European Commission of Human Rights.

     For those who do not know Ilya, some words on his journey: Ilya has participated in anarchist actions and demonstrations since the end of the 1980s. In 2002, he was arrested in Ukraine, accused of arms trafficking and of terrorism, as well as the preparation of an explosive device which was to be placed in front of a building of the Ukrainian secret services, to protest against the violent expulsion of a rally, Place Maidan, carried out by the police in October 2002. For this, Ilya was sentenced to 10 years in jail. On his release in 2013, he returned to Russia and had an accident during the manufacture of a firecracker [according to other sources, the device exploded while he placed it in front of a recruitment office of the army, in Nizhny Novgorod, October 26, 2013 ; NdAtt.]. Because of this accident, he had his left hand amputated and was condemned to another 10 years in prison, for terrorism, the sentence of which was transformed into nine years in a penal colony. He still has six years to serve. The way Ilya was treated is just one more sign of the brutality the Russian state has been using lately against anarchists. Ilya is a comrade who has never compromised with power, and that’s why they want to silence him.

Those who would like to help him and his relatives will find below the account number of his ex-wife and companion Larisa Romanova, as well as the Paypal account open for Ilya. Letters, postcards, expressions of affection are appreciated (when Ilya cannot read, there are bed neighbors in his ward who can help him. For obvious reasons, however, he will not be able to answer letters).

       For economic support: account n. 5368 2900 5608 4546 (holder Larisa Valerievna Romanova, bank: VTB)
Paypal account address: abc-msk @ riseup.net

To write to him:

FKU LPU num 21 UFSIN Rossii po Respublike Mordovija,
431200, Respublika Mordovija, Ten’gushevskij rajon, p. Barashevo,
Ul. Shtabnaja, d. 1,
Romanovu Il’e Eduardovicu (Bol’nica N. 2)
Russia

The address in Cyrillic letters:

ФКУ ЛПУ № 21 УФСИН России по Республике Мордовия,
431200, Республика Мордовия, Теньгушевский район, п. Барашево,
ул. Штабная, д. 1,
Романову Илье Эдуардовичу (Больница № 2)
Российская федерация.

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Liz Willis.

    Another month, another "Read of the Month" from Spirit of Revolt. For this  month, to mark International Women’s Day, Spirit of Revolt’s “Read of the Month” for March, is an article by Liz Willis, held in our John Cooper Collection, No. 3-52-1. It is a Solidarity Pamphlet No. 48. “Women in the Spanish Revolution” . Liz hailed from Stornoway, and was active in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and London as well as active against nuclear weapons at the Faslane nuclear submarine base. She died in 2019 from pancreatic cancer aged 72, . There is a very informative article on Liz Willis HERE.

You can read her pamphlet on line, courtesy of Libcom. 

Women in the Spanish Revolution. 

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Glasgow Women.

      International Women's Day, March 8th. Glasgow women can stand tall with a proud history of women who stood up and took their place in the struggle for that better world. 

    During the jingoism and the establishment's rampant patriotism pushing for everybody to get behind the imperialist war of 1914-1918, women in Glasgow took to the streets and faced the wrath of the media and large sections of the public in their drive for peace. This from Strugglepedia:  "--in June 1916 organised a peace conference in the city which gave birth to The Women’s Peace Crusade which became a dominant force in the anti-war movement. There is some variation on the actual date but June 10th 1916 is generally accepted as the birth of the Women’s Peace Crusade. A year later, June 1917 saw the Women’s Peace Crusade go national with the launch of the National Women’s Peace Crusade---"

     Collectively and individually, women of Glasgow have always played their part in the city's struggles, there is a catalogue of names some well known and others less known, but all played an important part in the fight for a better world for all. 

    To name  few from the past, in no particular order, and hope that their names and deeds will always be remembered and honoured by us all. 

Helen Crawfurd, Jane Hamilton Patrick, Mary Barbour, Ethel MacDonald, Helen Brown Scott Lennox, Rita Milton, Of course there are more, many more, and some we will never see in the history books, but who are just as important as all the others. What is more important is that there are as many or perhaps more women now standing up and taking on the battles of the day, let's make sure we note their actions and remember their names. We can learn from the past. A good place to look to see what Glasgow's women are up to would be the Glasgow Women's Library.  

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The Nobodies.

        Most of the time we are preparing for, going through, or analysing the results of "an election" somewhere in the world, it's like an epidemic we can't quite cure, and we are told this is democracy.

 

 Myth of Democracy.
      We no longer have a political party system, it is a corporate state. No matter what party you elect and no matter the different and wonderful manifesto promises, after the election it is just as before with perhaps a little plus or minus this way or that. The smile on the face of the new messiah may look more radiant than the last, but the price of bread still goes up. The few over privileged parasites that have control of all the institutions in our society have bought the political parties and are in bed with the military. Big business is all, and war is big business, so we will have war, bloating the coffers of the corporate greed machine until they bleed us all dry. To the corporate world people are dispensable, profit is the name of the game.
       Turning to this or that political party creates the myth of democracy and the results prove that it is no more than a myth, an illusion spun by the media, another institution, which is hardly likely to speak against its master and owner the corporate world.
     If we want a better world where we see to the needs of all our people then we have to break the hold of that corporate beast. Communities have to take control of all those institutions and run them in federation with each other based on sustainability. We have to eliminate the profit motive from all we do, and create for the benefit of all, mutual aid being the key. No matter how you try to shape capitalism, no matter how green you think you can make it, it is unsustainable and will never work for the benefit of all, it is an elitist and exploitative system that works for the privileged few parasites who own those corporations.

Why Wait For History's Verdict?
       It is obvious that when historians come to write about the capitalist era it will be written up as a dreadful failure for humanity. They will be able to write about the fact that at its period of highest development, approximately one third of the world’s population were well fed, one third were hungry and one third were starving. They will be able to detail the misery of those fifteen million children who died of hunger every year. In their learned papers they will catalogue the enormous wealth poured into unbelievable destructive weaponry and they will calculate that in the midst of all that hunger and starvation, the price of one missile could have supplied 100 nutritional meals every day for five years. No doubt their findings will also include that to feed this grotesque beast of privilege and greed it was necessary to pollute and plunder the earth’s resources to the extent of destroying the planet’s ecosystem. Their conclusions will obviously be that it was a cruel, vicious, unjust, hypocritical and unnecessary system inflicted on the population of the planet by a small band of greedy, power hungry, over privileged parasites.
      Why do we have to wait for the historians verdict? We are now aware of the type of system that has been created and the misery that it inflicts on vast swaths of the world’s population. We know that the greatest benefits go to the smallest group, a useless, pampered bunch of parasites. We also know that it is a man made system, not something written in tablets of stone. It is well within our power and our imagination to dismantle this abomination of greed and hypocrisy, and replace it with a system of mutual aid. A system based on free association, voluntary co-operation and sustainability that sees to the needs of all our people, a system freed from the greed driven motif of profit.
      We have the imagination, the ability, and the resources, all we lack is the will.

       I see this poem by Eduardo Galeano as encapsulating the foundations and the structural fibres  of capitalism.

 

The Nobodies

      Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them- will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.

Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.

Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.

Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.

Who don’t have culture, but folklore.

Who are not human beings, but human resources.

Who do not have faces, but arms.

Who do not have names, but numbers.

Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them. 

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Wyatt Earp In Uniform.

 

       The gun totting cop is becoming more prevalent on the city streets across the world. However I think that America still holds that accolade of the most Wyatt Earps in uniform roaming the streets. We must always remember that these macho psychopaths are armed, trained, supported and payed for by the state, (your tax money) as its guard dogs. I must admit that on my many visits to Athens, I always felt a little bit apprehensive when approaching the Greek police. I just didn't like their menacing swagger, usually in twos or threes, all with their guns strapped to their sides. There has been various cases of where the Greek police have shown their idiotic unbalanced macho instincts when confronted with something they just don't like, remember Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15 year old teenager shot dead by an armed cop, while out having a coffee with his friend. 

     Another incident of the Rambo attitude of the Greek police came quite recently and was met with mass resistance from university students and joined by others.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

       It all started on Monday 24 February inside the grounds of Athens University of Economics, when an off duty cop in plain clothes got off his bike and began harassing an immigrant street vendor outside the front gate. The policeman was spotted by anarchist students due to his boots and his helmet that bore the police insignia and was immediately confronted. In his panic, he began running inside the university grounds and managed to trap himself in a dead end corridor, pulled a gun on students and with his finger on the trigger threatened to shoot them while pointing the gun at them for at least 5 minutes, while desperately calling his colleagues on the phone to come and rescue him. The students, not losing their cool, but at the same time not taking a step back demanded he puts the gun down and exits the university grounds. Few minutes later scores of riot policemen stormed the university and attacked students during school hours with flash bang grenades and asphyxiating gas creating chaos because of one imbecile cop that thought he was a cowboy.
       Following these events, that shook the academic community, a protest was called by students on Wednesday 26 February from Athens University of Economics, that the incident took place, to the greek police headquarters, (2.5 km away). Thousands of people took part in the protest, demanding the university asylum to be reinstated (forbidding the police to enter any university grounds, as it was the case for decades, until few months ago, when the new right wing government abolished it).
      When the protest reached the police headquarters and after the main body of the demo had passed in front of the building, several anarchists attacked it with stones, using fire extinguishers to fog the policemen’s vision.
      Riot police brigades and police bikers charged into the crowd with their bikes, ramming people with them as a weapon and throwing them to the ground, chasing, attacking and arresting anyone they could. Many students managed to get into the metro subway station nearby but the police started to throw asphyxiating gas grenades inside the station and while they gave an order for the passing trains not to make a stop, in order to trap hundreds of people down there, in a horrific atmosphere of people breathing with difficulty due to the gas, while at the same time, disrupting the public transport by creating a problem to hundreds more passengers that were planning to get off the tube at that specific metro station.
        Following the events the students decided to occupy the Athens University of Economics on Thursday and Friday, 27 and 28 of February 2020. On Thursday, February 27, 2020, along with many people in solidarity from the occupied “Athens University of Economics” the squatters of “Vancouver Squat” that was evacuated by the greek riot police on November 2, 2019, took the riot police by surprise and symbolically reoccupied the squat lighting flares on the rooftop.

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Isreali's Apartheid.

 

      Any observer of elections in the "democratic representative" style governments, will know that they change nothing. They may tinker around the edges, but will leave the power structure as before. What they can sometimes tells us is the way the majority think. The recent Israeli elections, as expected, left the Israeli state much as it has always been, but it did tell us that the majority of the population of Israel are right wing, believers of land grabbing and the persecution of those on the land they wish to grab.

     During the recent Israeli elections, Netanyahu made no secret of his plan to grab more Palestinian land for Jewish settlements and get rid of those who have lived there for centuries. Still the people of Israel said yes, that's what we want.

His nearest rival in the election was another right wing authoritarian, with just a slightly different shade of racism and race supremacy. How do you deal with a people with that mind set? 

I think Gideon Levy's article hits it on the head.

       You can be disgusted, you can be fearful, you can even be shocked, but you can’t deny his incredible talent: Benjamin Netanyahu the wizard struck again. Now he’s also an alchemist – take a serious indictment, scatter incitement, and win the admiration of the masses. You can be contemptuous, you can denounce it, you can even rise up against the nation that voted that way, but you have to respect its choice. To bow your head. It’s the will of the people. The people want Netanyahu.
      The time has come to recognize that fact: Israel is right-wing, hard right. Racism is politically correct, personal corruption makes no difference, as long as you guarantee the continuation of Jewish supremacy, rule over another nation, arrogance and hatred. Peace, equality and justice are for the weak. Not for most Israelis. They said it loud and clear on Monday, more decisively than in the two previous election campaigns: Netanyahu is our king. Netanyahu is the king of most Israelis.

Read the full article HERE: 

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Not News!

    This is just a wee blast from the recent past. I penned this about three years ago, but felt I wanted to spout it all again, as it is a train of thought that never leaves my mind. "When will we ever learn"

Too Old For The News.

    Something about living a long time, news never seems like news. Recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation announced that almost one third of the UK population are living on an inadequate income. In its statement it said that during 2014-15, approximately 19 million people were surviving on less than the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). Mired in that 19 million group of desperate people are six million children, roughly 45% of all UK children, and 1.8 million pensioners. These depressing figures are up from six years ago when they were quoted as, 15 million, or 25% of the population.  

       Why do I not see this as news? Well has it ever been other? It is just bubble gum and candy floss to plaster across that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media. Through the years, as I have seen governments come and governments go, I have been reading figures like this. Under one government the figures improve slightly under the next they deteriorate, so we switch governments again, and the process goes boringly but brutally on its destructive way. Yes we the ordinary people wrestle small gains here and there, but slice by slice they are taken away from us, and we have to start all over again in the constant struggle to try and get a decent standard of living. Poverty has soared and then slightly abated, homeless has grown and then slightly abated, child poverty has increased and then slightly abated. However, none of these problems have ever been addressed  and solved. Nor can they, the system is incapable of solving these problems, or surely it would have done so by now. Have no illusions, the system has the wealth and the resources to sort it all out, but doesn't. Based on the profit motive, these problems are actual results of the system, a few must gain while the majority must lose, that's capitalism. So if you wish to see that 45% of UK children ceasing to be a statistic on a poverty scale, if you wish to see those 1.8 million pensioners live the remainder of their lives in reasonable comfort, don't ask for better allowances, organise to destroy the system that is responsible for these statistics of misery and anxiety. We must accept that it is a class war, and at the moment we are losing, but we have the numbers, the ability, the resources and the imagination, to turn that tide and be the winners of that better world for all.

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

The West And Slavery.

 

     Libya has slipped out of the media glare, except for the odd report about the nasty Haftar, who is attacking the "legitimate" government of Libya. For "legitimate" translate as hand pick Western stooges who were planted in to facilitate the Western imperialists wishes. This so called "legitimate" government has never had control of the whole country just a slice around Tripoli. The rest of the country is controlled by various factions, tribes, war lords, all squabbling for power. Haftar has more or less taken control of the oil, as far as the West is concerned, that's all that matters about Libya, oil. Though, for the moment, this bloody episode in Libya has stalled into a death creating stalemate.

    What the media has put into "forgotten memory" is why Libya is in such a state of turmoil, poverty, violence, corruption, destitution and death. This is all down to the West's engineered disposal of Gaddafi. Though I'm not one who kneels at the feet of Gaddafi, this western lead blood bath has been responsible for turning a country with a developed health service and education system, where the majority of the people were living in reasonable conditions, into a quagmire of poverty and violence, where the ordinary people are suffering death and destitution on a daily basis. Libya is now a territory controlled by warring factions, who see violence as their road to power. It is now a territory where slave trading is carried out openly, where African migrants are openly sold to the highest bidder.

    All this misery, deprivation, violence and death lies clearly at the feet of the Western "democracies" who engineered and supplied the armoury and the devastating air power to destroy this once developed country. The people of Libya continue to live under this quagmire of violence, corruption and misery, while the West has moved on to destroy our countries in its march for control of resources.

Libya's slave trade:

    By the time his Libyan captors branded his face, Sunday Iabarot had already run away twice and had been sold three times.The gnarled scar that covers most of the left side of his face appears to show a crude number 3. His jailer carved it into his cheek with a fire-heated knife, cutting and cauterizing at the same time.

From Ted Galen Carpenter:

A new report from the United Nations bluntly conveys the extent of the continuing chaos in Libya and the suffering it has caused. Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Libya, stated that the impact on civilians of the country’s nine-year internecine war “is incalculable.” That horrible situation is the long-term outcome of U.S. and NATO actions, and it is well past time that guilty officials are held accountable for their disastrous policies.

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Julian Assange.

        Those who still hold on to the illusion that we here in the UK live in a democracy just have to take a good look at the way in which the British state  is dealing with Julian Assange. Consider the length of his incarceration and the treatment during that unjust incarceration. He is being treated worse and under more restrictive conditions than the way the state treats the most violent of offenders, and we all know that their treatment is unjust and brutal. Julian Assange is not a violent and dangerous man, but the state treats him worse than a wild animal. This is a deliberate attempt to silence those who might consider exposing the dirty secrets of the state. The state always murders democracy.

The following extract from an article by Finian Cunningham:

       The persecution of Julian Assange is one of those breakthrough moments when suddenly people realise that almost everything they have been told to believe is not true.
       This week the Australian-born journalist and publisher has been subjected to a show trial in a British court with the threat of extradition to the United States looming. If he is extradited, the 48-year old is facing 175 years – a death sentence – in prison on wholly contrived espionage charges.
       Assange is being persecuted for the sole and simple reason that he exposed war crimes and systematic corruption by the US government and its Western allies. His years of arbitrary detention and the torture endured over the past year while in solitary confinement in a British dungeon are a grim warning to all citizens. The warning is that their supposed democratic rights are non-existent as far as the powers in Washington and London are concerned. If you dare speak truth to power, then this fate will also be yours.
       Thus, when it gets down to it, the harsh reality is that there is no such thing as democracy in the US or Britain. Elections and media are but window-dressing to hide the brutal truth that fundamental, basic democratic rights of free speech and due legal process are not inalienable principles, but rather are dispensable privileges whenever the powers-that-be ordain so.
       Julian Assange’s incarceration and pillorying is like an inquisition from medieval times happening in the year 2020. He dared expose the rampant, systematic crimes of so-called authorities through his Wikileaks site. His blasphemy was to expose the charlatans and mass-killers who masquerade as pious leaders. --------

Plot to kill Julian Assange

More on Julian Assange from Craig Murray.

     Mark Summers QC outlined that in the case of Belousov vs Russia the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg ruled against the state of Russia because Belousov had been tried in a glass cage practically identical in construction and in position in court to that in which Assange now was. It hindered his participation in the trial and his free access to counsel, and deprived him of human dignity as a defendant.
      Summers continued that it was normal practice for certain categories of unconvicted prisoners to be released from the dock to sit with their lawyers. The court had psychiatric reports on Assange’s extreme clinical depression, and in fact the UK Department of Justice’s best practice guide for courts stated that vulnerable people should be released to sit alongside their lawyers. Special treatment was not being requested for Assange – he was asking to be treated as any other vulnerable person.
     The defence was impeded by their inability to communicate confidentially with their client during proceedings. In the next stage of trial, where witnesses were being examined, timely communication was essential. Furthermore they could only talk with him through the slit in the glass within the hearing of the private company security officers who were guarding him (it was clarified they were Serco, not Group 4 as Baraitser had said the previous day), and in the presence of microphones.----------

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I Am The Crowd.

 

       Mass protests started in Chile in October 2019, the public rage carried it forward to an insurrection, as banks, metro stations, police stations, petrol station etc. were torched, shops looted and set on fire. The states response was savage, brutal and persistent, at least 31 people died, thousands were injured and tens of thousands arrested. The new year saw a lull, but it appears that the people's anger is rising again, with protests increasing in regional cities including Valparaiso and Antofagasta. Also in Santiago Square, which was the focal point of last year’s protests saw another large demonstration.  

       The anger and the problems of the people have not been resolved, the fire still burns, and will continue to burn until the people find justice, freedom and peace, which can only be found outside the economic system of capitalism. 

The following from 325:

Letter to a Chilean about the current situation (IIIsytem of capitalism.and last)’ by Gustavo Rodriguez
—To Joaquín García Chanks and Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda, comrades and co-conspirators.
       “Let’s continue the assault on the existent with all means, undeterred by those who would silence us with weapons from the stockpile of reaction, be they the kick of the democratic jackboot, the empty chatter of opinion or the siren calls of the candy men of hope.” Jean Weir; Tame words from a wild heart.
     “Whomever is determined to carry out their action is not a brave person, they are simply someone who has clarified their ideas, who has realized the futility of striving to play the role assigned to them by Capital. They are aware, and attack with cold determination. And in doing so they realize themselves as a human being. They realize themselves in pleasure. The kingdom of death disappears before their eyes.” Alfredo Maria Bonanno; Selected Texts.
       “Let us put a stop to the conjuring tricks of dialectics. The exploited are not carriers of any positive project, be it even the classless society … Capital is their only community. They can only escape by destroying everything that makes them exploited.” At Daggers Drawn
      When history is written – with capital letters, the one that the victors have always written and will write – about the generalized insurrection in Chile at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it will have to be read with extreme meticulousness, since it will be reflected in the supposed motivations of the “crisis” that produced the revolt.
      Once again, the economic analysis will prevail – with emphasis on “the obscenity of misery” that has caused that uncertain denomination they call “Neo-Liberalism” – and, the poor negotiating capacity of a superb government that failed to meet popular demands and chose for the continuity of a regime of corruption and impunity, a (constitutional) heir of one of the bloodiest fascist dictatorships in the Americas.
      However, nothing will be recorded of that anonymous power that shaped the anger of despair, of the nihilistic actions that transformed into a sweeping energy which disrupted normality whilst mercilessly attacking the reality that oppresses us.
      This power will be made invisible (at best) and / or, reduced to a mob of “anarchist and lumpen elements, in addition to groups allied to drug traffickers to unleash looting and vandalism”(1), and stifled in the peaceful condition of “Legitimate” protests and the transcendental importance of the new constitutional fetishes as a legal guarantor of “The needs of the People”.

Read the full article HERE: 

I Am The Crowd.

I am the crowd

I swim in the quagmire of poverty

its hooks, its barbs, tear at my flesh

rupture my dreams,

I hold my breath for centuries

hoping to break through, gasp pure air.

Through the murky mire

I see bright things, shiny things, sparkle

I see women in fine dresses, men in silk shirts.

I ask myself,

why do I swim in this cesspool?

I want the light and warmth of rectitude

to caress my labouring body,

seeds of my dreams to bloom

like wild flowers in a meadow.

One day, I will use my boundless strength

to haul this torn, battered being

out of the morass

onto the warm grassy bank,

when I do;

woe betide you, women in fine dresses

woe betide you mister in your fine silk shirt

should you ever try to get in my way,

for I am the strength of the world,

I am the crowd.

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

Smiling Thieves.

      There are endless of ways to point at the insanity of our current economic system of capitalism, to point to its savage cruelty, to its gross inequality, its destruction of our ecosystems, its exploitation of people, its plundering of the Earth's finite resources, its endless wars, its infinite catalogue of other crimes against humanity. Lots of us have been doing so for many years, more and more are joining in this cry for sanity, and an end to our demise at the hands of insane greed. No doubt many more will join us before we finally end this darkest hour in human history.

       I like this accurate assessment of our economic system from Not Buying Anything:

             No one earns billions of dollars. You have to steal that kind of money.

      There is nothing to admire in the money hoarding, cheating ways of the billionaires.
      They want us to believe that their business model is based on their hard work. They want us to believe that they are richer than us, because they are better and smarter than us.
       Their story claims that they are "self-made".
      Their story is false - they have stolen their wealth using capitalism's bogus business model.

Capitalism's Bogus Business Model

- exploit workers, crush unions, don't pay a living wage, gig economy
- never acknowledge responsibility, or pay for, environmental damage
- avoid and evade taxes
- push for more government subsidies and bailouts
- privatize profits, publicize losses
- employ shady accounting practices
- use corruption, lies, coverups and cheats
- sell junk/planned obsolescence
- debut constant upgrades
- spend $1 trillion/yr on mind and behaviour altering advertising and propaganda
      We have all been the victims of the billionaire's bogus business model, which is premised on endless growth, based on infinite resource extraction from a finite planet. We can now see that model has lead us to the brink of collapse.

      As hard as it may be, we need to end this parasitic relationship. You may feel that what is happening in the world of business is not right. Trust that you are correct in feeling this way. There is nothing right about the billionaires.

     It is important for us to ground ourselves in our own reality, and have a support network that allows us to join together to cooperatively figure things out. They want us atomized and weak, so joining together in solidarity is the obvious response.
     We are pleased that this a place where that can happen. It wouldn't be possible without you, and we are grateful for your participation in this project.
     It is more effective to light the candle of truth, than to curse the darkness of the billionaires plan for us.

         "Anyone who cheers for any billionaire to win anything is a pathetic bootlicking loser. Billionaires are worthless, parasitical, untalented, unnecessary middlemen.
        “Philanthropy” is just another billionaire narrative control tool, same as buying media outlets and funding think tanks.
         Build a library named after yourself and you’ve got this “philanthropist” label that pundits use so that people call you that instead of “parasitic sociopath”.
        If wealth had anything to do with hard work, single moms would be the billionaires."
- Caitlin Johnstone 

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