TIME TO RAGE?

     As we look around at a world where poverty is endemic, war is pusued for wealth and power under the guise of protecting "us", the wealthy swan around floating on a sea of deprivation and death darkens every sunset, what do we do? We have created a system where the many struggle to heap privilege on a bunch of parasites and we talk to the parasites asking them to give us a few more crumbs. Isn't it time to change the way we address this world, isn't time to rage and as an old Korean saying goes, "Enjoy the ecstacy of your righteous anger? It is sometimes easier to say in a few verses of poetry what might take a few pages to otherwise say.

TIME TO RAGE.

Time to rage, like a river running wild.

Time to rise, to save the child.

Time to rage, like a mountain flood.

Time to rise, to stop the blood.

Time to rage, with righteous anger.

Time to rise, to point the finger.

Famine, misery, sickness, death,

stretch across these pleasant lands;

war, greed, hunger, blood,

sour the lovely desert sands,

charity, chat, quiet dismay

is not enough,

prayers, thoughts, what M.P.s say

is useless stuff.

Time to rage, like a river running wild.

Time to rise, to save the child.

Time to rage, like a mountain flood.

Time to rise, to stop the blood.

Time to rage, with righteous anger.

Time to rise, to point the finger.

 

ann arky's home.

LOST and/or STOLEN??

       From our ever looking, ever listening City Strolls comes this request, and it is one that I feel that all of our country should get involved in. The theft has been going on for years and like a card sharp in a dodgy casino, the Glasgow council shuffles this and that from the common good to the private sector. It is our assets and the corporate world wants it, all of it and the council sleep in their bed.

Questions that need to be asked;
Who has all our public artifacts?
Property for sale, whose propery is it?
Where do all the profits from the Common Goods go?
Who decides our land should be sold or what its use should be?

WANTED

Common goods detectives

The Family Silver of Scotland Scandal.

£1.8 billion or more of land and assets belonging to the public has

been lost due to centuries of mismanagement and corruption.

Campaigners claim this land and assets are being misappropriated

 or even stolen.

Treasure hunt

Where is our Common Good?

The Common Good is all around you ­ see if you can find some.

Send us  pictures. Ask us questions. What about your local library,

your park. Who do you think owns all the pictures and treasures

 in the art galleries?  Lets learn to find and recognise our

 public common good ­ take public ownership of it.

 Because if we don’t someone else will and we will

 never see it again.

www.bridgeweb.info

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FORTRESS EUROPE.

     As the rich countries of the world rip off the continent of Africa and the people of that continent descend into a life of continuous hell through famine, war, and total deprivation, there is that steady stream of brave individuals who try to make the journey to what they believe will be a better life in Europe. Of course Europe wants the riches of Africa and some of its cheap labour but it also wants to pick and choose who it lets across its borders, and is not too bother what happens to those not chosen. As the powers that be in Europe tighten their borders in an attempt to hold on to their privileged position of power and wealth, the deaths of thousands of migrants is the result. The list below is just the tip of the iceberg a more detailed account can be found  here.

     We have a responsibility to all migrants, they live at the harsher end of the same system as we do and are doing what we are trying to do, survive in this harsh and unjust and exploitive system. These figures reinforce the proof that the state is the enemy and all borders are an injustice.

27/10/09 Greece Boat sinks off Lesvos island. Three women and 5 children – all Afghans - were reported to be drowned AP

26/10/09 Italy 300 Eritreans and Somalis landed in Sicily after 5 days in the stormy sea. One man found dead on board Repubblica

07/10/09 Italy Migrants arrival in Gela, Sicily. Three bodies were recovered from the sea. Three other people were reported to be missing Ansa

23/09/09 Egypt Egyptian police shot dead one Eritrean trying to cross into Israel Reuters

19/09/09 Morocco Shipwreck off the island of Perejil. 8 bodies recovered, other 21 people were reported to be missing Reuters

16/09/09 Egypt Egyptian police shot dead two Eritrean refugees trying to cross into Israel Reuters

09/09/09 Egypt Egyptian police shot dead 4 African migrants as they tried to slip across the Sinai desert border into Israel. Here, at least 12 African migrants have been killed since May 2009 Reuters

01/09/09 Egypt Egyptian police shot and killed an African migrant near the border with Israel and seriously wounded an 18 years old women Reuters

31/08/09 Spain Boat landed in Canary island, in Granadilla (Tenerife), one dead onboard El Pais

29/08/09 Malta Body found off Bizzerbugia. It could be one of the passengers of the boat rescued two days before in the same area Ansa

27/08/09 Malta Migrants boat rescued off Malta, the body of a dead man was found in the sea during the operations Ansa

22/08/09 Italy The lifeless body of a man was found off Linosa, 24 miles on the north of Lampedusa Repubblica

20/08/09 Italia Five Eritreans rescued 12 miles south off Lampedusa claimed 75 passengers of the same boat have died during the 20 days spent going adrift in the Mediterranean, between Libyan and Italian shores. Their bodies were thrown in the sea by the survivors. Malta's authorities found 7 bodies in the open sea Ansa

20/08/09 Italy A man hidden under a truck just disembarked in the port of Brindisi, fall on the road and died immediately Ansa

09/08/09 Libya Libyan police killed at least 6 Somali refugees after a fight against a group of refugees who tried to escape from the detention camp of Ganfuda, near Benghazi. Other sources reported the victims would be 20 Fortress Europe

13/08/09 Greece Two bodies were recovered from the sea off the coast of the eastern Aegean island of Kos while another three people were reported to be missing Kathimerini

11/08/09 Spain Body found near Cartagena, between Cabo de Agua and the island of Escombreras La Verdad

10/08/09 Italy A boat broke the engine three miles off the island of Pantelleria. Four of the nine passengers try to cover the distance by swimming. One of them is reported to be missing Ansa

07/08/09 Greece Body found at Igoumenitsa port. He sneaked onto a truck believing it was about to board a ferry for Italy and he died after he jumped off when it appears that the truck was headed for mainland Greece Kathimerini

06/08/09 Algeria A migrant died after an Algerian coast guard vessel collided with a boat carrying migrants to Sardinia El Watan

31/07/09 Egypt Egypt police kill African migrant at Israel border. At least seven African migrants have been killed at the border since mid-May Reuters

27/07/09 Greece The Kurd refugee from Iraq Arivan Abdullah Osman who had been severly injured on the 3rd of April at Igoumenitsa port by Port police, while trying to reach Italy, died today at Thessaloniki hospital Reuters

27/07/09 Spain Parts of a body in advanced state of decomposition were found along La Fontanilla de Marbella beach, where one week before a dead body was recovered Sur

24/07/09 Spain One man is reported to be missing after he fell in the water during a rescue operation in front of Manilva coast, close to Malaga Sur

23/07/09 Turkey Three people killed in a road accident of a truck smuggling migrants near Kulp, in Diyarbakır province France Presse

22/07/09 Spain A dead body was recovered on the beach of La Fontanilla de Marbella Sur

17/07/09 Spain Lifeless body found in Cadiz sea, in front of Barbate. It could be the tenth victim of the shipwreck of June 29 Sur

15/07/09 Spain A third passenger of the migrants boat landed in Canary have died in the hospital of El Hierro Diario de Navarra

15/07/09 Spain Migrants boat landed in the Canary island of El Hierro. One dead on board. A second man died soon after his hospitalization Diario de Navarra

03/07/09 Egitto Egyptian police shot dead two Somali migrants on Thursday who tried to slip across the Sinai desert border into Israel Reuters

30/06/09 Spain 8 people were drowned, including 2 women, after a boat capsized in front of the coast of Barbate, near Cadiz El Mundo

28/06/09 Egypt Egyptian police shot dead an African migrant and wounded two others, including a 15-year-old, at the Israeli border Reuters

24/06/09 Egypt Egyptian police shot dead a migrant at the Israel border in the Sinai desert. The victim, thought to be in his 20s, was the third killed since mid-May Reuters

23/06/09 Italy Amir Rohol, a 19 years old Afghan, died after having fallen from a truck disembarked in the port of Ancona Ansa

17/06/09 Spain Migrants boat rescued off Murcia. A man is dead and a second one is reported to be missing Ansa

04/06/09 Spain At least 18 people reported to be missing after their boat capsized 18 km from Tarifa (Cádiz) El Pais

03/06/09 Spain A cargo ship intercepted the corpse of a drowned migrant off Cabo de Gata, in Andalucia La Verdad de Murcia

02/06/09 Egypt Egyptian police killed an African migrant near Israel border along the Sinai. A second one was shot in the back and is in critical conditions Reuters

22/05/09 Italy The lifeless body of a migrant was found in the sea near the island of Cavoli, along the south eastern coast of Sardinia Ansa

02/05/09 Italy One of the 140 migrants rescued two weeks before by the Turkish Pinar cargo ship, died at the hospital of Caltanisseta for meningitis Ansa

30/04/09 Spain One of the passenger of a boat intercepted the day before 14 miles from Tarifa (Cádiz), died in the hospital of Isla de las Palomas El Mundo

23/04/09 Spain Two dead bodies were found in the Strait of Gibraltar by the Spanish Coast Guard Diario de Navarra

20/04/09 Spain One man drowned during the rescue operations of a boat departed from Senegal and directed to Canary islands, 27 miles off Nouadhibou El Dia

16/04/09 Italy 140 migrants rescued off Lampedusa by the Turkish Pinar cargo ship. During the operations, one 18 years old pregnant woman drowned Repubblica

08/04/09 Italy Migrants boat rescued by the Italian fishing boat Cesare Rustico, capsized. 3 people missing Ansa

05/04/09 France The dead body of a migrant was found in the Channel’s tunnel, died after he felt from the train under which he was travelling hidden towards England Le Monde

03/04/09 Italy Two bodies found on a migrants’ boat intercepted 60 miles south of Lampedusa Apcom

29/03/09 Italy An Iraqi was found dead in the port of Ancona, inside a Greek ferry coming from Patras, where he was embarked hidden under a truck Ansa

29/03/09 Libya Migrants boat sank off Said Biilal Janzur, a suburb of Tripoli, from where it had left three hours before. 20 bodies were recovered, while 210 people were reported to be missing Ansa

27/03/09 Spain According to the ngo Asociación Pro-Derechos Humanos de Andalucía, at least 581 migrants have died in 2008 trying to reach Spain: 239 off the Canary islands and 342 in the Mediterranean Apdha

26/03/09 Italy A migrant was found dead in the port of Venice, hidden inside a truck emarked on the Hellenic Master ferry, coming from Greece Gazzettino

26/03/09 Algeria According to the Nigeria’s Ambassador to Algeria, 14 people died in the desert after they got lost, ran out of fuel and water Nigerian Tribune

22/03/09 Spain Two people were reported to be missing after they fell in the sea during a rescue operation Publico

20/03/09 Tunisia A shipwreck on the way to Lampedusa happened off Sfax, near the Kerkennah island. 17 bodies were recovered while around 50 remained missing Ansa

18/03/09 Spain The lifeless body of a drowned migrant was found on La Línea de la Concepción seaside Sur

07/03/09 Spain A migrant was deadly injured trying to overcome the Ceuta border fence Abc

25/02/09 France A baby died few days after his birth near Dunkerque. His parents, Kurdish from Iraw, where traveling towards England and sleeping at the open air, in some barracks near the A 16 hiway Nord Littoral

23/02/09 Algeria According to official figures, the Algerian authorities have recovered from the sea the dead bodies of 261 emigrants since 2005. In particular: 98 in 2008, 61 in 2007, 73 in 2006 and 29 in 2005 Info Soir

21/02/09 Spain One dead body found on a boat carrying 35 migrants, intercepted 18 miles off Motril, near Granada La Razón

16/02/09 Spain 25 drowned and one reported to be missing after a boat capsized 20 metres from the coast of Lanzarote island, in the Canaries. Among the victims there are 4 babies, 4 children 8 to 11 years old, and two women, one of which was 8 months pregnant Abc

02/02/09 Spain Boat intercepted south of Gran Canaria island: 3 dead men on board El Pais

29/01/09 Tunisia 8 migrants were reported to be missing after their boat capsized off Hammam-Lif, 15 km south of Tunis Ansa

29/01/09 Turkey The bodies of 5 have been washed up on the coast of southwest Turkey town of Bodrum Kathimerini

25/01/09 Algeria 12 men are reported to be missing at sea, since they left, on January 2, from the coast of Arzew heading for Spain Quotidien d’Oran

21/01/09 Italy 53 migrants arrived to Lampedusa. One dead among them Adnkronos

19/01/09 Tunisia 26 people were reported to be missing after their boat capsized off La Marsa, near Tunis, trying to reach Italy Repubblica

15/01/09 Algeria 4 men are reported to be missing after their boat sank off Gdyel, near Oran Quotidien d’Oran

13/01/09 Greece The bodies of 2 migrants were discovered on the island of Leipsoi close to a half-sunken plastic rowboat Ansa

13/01/09 Greece An 18-month-old baby drowned off the island of Syros yesterday when a boat carrying 19 migrants capsized Kathimerini

10/01/09 Senegal A canoe capsized off Dakar and 4 women drowned Iht

08/01/09 Spain A boat of migrants landed in the island of Alboran, in Andalucia, one dead were found on board El Mundo

01/01/09 Morocco Migrant shot dead by the Moroccan police when trying to cross the border fence in the Spanish enclave of Melilla. He died after his hospitalization in El Hassani hospital, in Nador

ann arky's home.

MILITARY FAMILIES.

    If you have family connections with the military or know anyone who does and is against the war in Afghanistan, please contact the Stop the War office. More and more military families are getting in touch. As Michael Clarke, Director of the Royal United Services Institute is quoted as saying in Today's Guardian 'The cynicism that eventually corroded the morale of US forces in Vietnam is a spectre that is beginning to haunt the whole Afghanistan enterprise'.

Contact; office@stopwar.org.uk

ann arky's home.

The paperless workers at ISS fight for their papers.

        I just received this from a comrade and feel that it should be given as great a distribution and support as possible. Perhaps other workers could learn from their tactics, more occupations and then negotiate from strength, less walking out and allowing scabs to walk in 

CNT France : international@cnt-f.org

Hi comrades

More than 2000 paperlesses workers for the cleaning firm have gone on strike; occupying 30 sites in the Ile-de-France region. they are doing so with the support of unions and other groups who have joined with them to denounce the exploitation of undocumented workers and the arbitrary way in which their cases are heard by local prefectures. After having occupied the Cité des sciences in Paris on Sunday 18th October the workers then took over the headquarters of the company in Paris' 12th district (3 rue des meuniers) ISS is a cleaning sub-contractor and one of the leading 'multiservice' companies and has already seen it's offices occupied earlier this month. The company has never respected agreements and has fired undocumented workers after having exploited them for years. undocumented workers are found in great numbers and are indispensable in many sectors such as construction, public works, cleaning, securitty, catering, care work, agriculture, baking, etc. The majority pay their taxes and welfare contributions to health, retirement and unemployment funds. they don't take jobs away from anyone else and they are often forced to work in terrible conditions due to their legal status. Papers for all paperlesses workers, it's good for everybody!

CNT Cleaning union.

ann arky's home.

CROOKS AND LIARS.

       With the Glasgow North East by-election, (my home patch) due to take place next week, and a mountain of paper garbage pouring through my letter box and the unusual vistors at my door, I thought that this little piece that I posted in the Radical Glasgow web site prior to a previous election was still valid. It seems that some things never change.

       In today’s society we have lots of strange and bewildering events, festivals etc.. One of the most bizarre festivals is the “Festival of Crooks and Liars”, this comes round every four or five years and usually goes under the odd name of “elections.” This festival starts with the groups and/or individuals wishing to participate in the “Festival of Crooks and Liars” breaking into outbursts of incoherent verbal diarrhoea. These verbal outbursts tend to get loud, more ridiculous and more persistent as the festival date looms ever closer. The event culminates in a mad frenzy of the contestants running around the country trying to prove that they are indeed the biggest crook and the best liar in the land.

        The aim of the “Festival of Crook and Liars” seems to be for the contenders to make every attempt to out do the other contenders in verbal rubbish, hyperbole and deceit. This part is foolish enough, but the part played by the public is much more of a mystery. It would seem that some members of the public believe that if they take part in this trip of insanity and actually vote for one or other of the contestants in the “Festival of Crooks and Liars” this will in some way end poverty and bring peace and stability to their lives. What is more strange is the fact that those who take part in the voting ritual of this festival have been doing so for many years and have seen the results each time to be that the “Crooks and Liars” do very well, but they themselves remain, relatively poor and insecure and their environment keeps going down hill, yet they persist in participating believing that somehow the next bunch of “Crook and Liars” will not actually be crooks and liars.

       Perhaps those “voters” should start to organise among themselves to take control of their own lives and communities and try to shape them the way that they would like in co-operation with others and leave the ridiculous show of insanity that is the “Festival of Crooks and Liars” for what it is, a dangerous illusion, a disempowerment that allows our wealth to be siphoned upwards.

 

ann arky's home.

The FSA, with both guns blazing!!!

       The current scandal on insider trading on Wall St. with regards the Galleon hedge fund and some other big guns in the rip-off money club seems to have come to court because of the authorities using wire tapping and other forms of surveillance. It is not unusual in the US to see these sort of affairs hit the headlines and the courts, after all there is plenty of that sort of thing about, it is the way big business works, but not here in the UK, we are a bit more refined. You see here in the UK financial world it is gentlemen that you’re dealing with. If you need proof of this then the outcome of the UK Financial Services Authority “investigation” into insider trading should be proof enough. When the British Financial Services Authority thought that there might be some dirty dealings, sorry, insider trading, they became utterly ruthless and sent a letter to all the UK financial institutions asking if they knew of any evidence of insider trading. Naturally nobody seems to have had any knowledge of this sort of thing, after all, this the UK, we would never dream of indulging in such grubby events. You might make a lot of money, but would you be able to sleep at night?

      

ann arky's home.

BENEFIT REGULATIONS TO BREAK A STRIKE?

       “New Labour’s new benefit regulations could be used, and I have no doubt that they will be used, to break any strike. The new regulations in trying to force people back to work, even where there is no work, state that after 13 weeks of receiving unemployment benefit and you are still unemployed but do not want your benefit to be cut, then you must accept a job interview allocated to you by your Job Centre liaison person.

       Sitting across the desk from your Job Centre liaison person this is the sort of thing you might hear, “It would appear that there doesn’t seem to be any jobs in your field of engineering, construction or even driving, however I have arranged an interview for you for one of those temporary jobs going at Royal Mail.” Of course if you refuse the job offered, you also lose the right to unemployment benefit. This is where the reserve army of unemployed can be called upon by any organisation that is facing strike action by its employees. I am sure this is how Royal Mail is attempting to break this strike and other employers will follow suit. This is also how a group of worried, vulnerable people in some degree of poverty, will be forced to scab on there fellow workers, not because they wish to scab or have no solidarity with the strikers but because it could mean extreme poverty for them and their families.

        This is just another example of how the state always works hand in hand with big business against the interests of the people of this country. And anther reason why all communities should fall in behind striking workers and give them unconditional support. Perhaps demonstrating outside job centres that use this bureaucratic fiddle to crush workers struggling to hold onto what meager conditions they might have, could be a start.

ann arky's home.

ARE YOU BIG BROTHER??

     One of the “shortcomings” with surveillance cameras is that there is an overwhelming volume of information and not enough people to watch and analyse the data. That problem might now be at an end. A company has recently developed an artificial intelligence system that can detect aberrant behaviour. This new system opens up the surveillance to the general public with you and I expected to be BIG BROTHER, and earn cash prizes for those of us who catch the most crooks, or could that eventually be, catch the most activists, or the most benefit cheats?? 

      The system is about to go live next month in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, UK. You are being sucked in to watch your neighbour. Or it could be a new way to occupy that ever increasing army of unemployed, keeping them busy watching cameras in the hope of earning a few bob.

Read more of the article here.

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THE FRUITS OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM.

     It is difficult to know where to start when looking at the effects of global capitalism but I suppose we could start with the fact that almost 1/5 of the world’s population lives in squalid unhealthy areas without water, sanitation or public services, and in one of the richest countries in the world, USA, its literacy ranks 10th out of 17 industrialised nations.

       When it comes to distribution of wealth the Guardian Weekly’s figures (2003) tell their own story. In 1970 the average American CEO made 40 times the average worker’s salary. By 1998 that had changed to 1,000 times the average worker’s salary. Another display of capitalism’s glaring inequalities could be the fact that in 1999 and 2000 the Carnival Cruise Line created profits of approximately $1 billion but paid virtually no corporate income tax while at the same time in 2000, a janitor employed by Carnival Cruise Lines maked less than $1:55 an hour. Another example of the system’s exploitation, if we really needed one could be the fact that in 2000 Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney maked $9,783 an hour compared with a Haitian worker who stitches Disney products for 28 cents an hour. Where is all this wealth that capitalism claims to be creating? An interesting fact tells us, 52 of the world’s largest economies are corporate economies. What do they do with some of this great wealth? In 1993 tobacco maker Phillip Morris decided to create a grassroots citizens group called “The Advancement of Sound Science” to fight regulation of the tobacco industry and to portray the dangers of smoking as unfounded. Another use the corporate world puts some its wealth to would be the example of ExxonMobil, one of the world’s most profitable corporations with sales of more than $1 billion a day. ExxonMobil used some of its money to fund some 124 organisations that deny climate change. In 2002, the US granted Poland, one of the poorer nations in Europe, an interest-free loan of $4 billion, what for, to purchase fighter jets.

      This reads like an indictment, when will the people come to a guilty verdict and pass sentence of banishment from the planet, on this vicious exploitive system.

 

ann arky's home.

WORKERS, REMEMBER YOUR HISTORY.

     Capitalism has always meant the workers have to continually struggle to maintain their standard of living let alone improve that standard. Nothing has been handed to the workers by capitalism, it has always had to be taken bit by bit and that struggle still goes on. The struggle will end when we finally get rid of the yoke of capitalism.

      In 1874 during one of the many of capitalism’s depressions, unemployed workers were demonstrating in Tompkins Square Park, New York, When for reasons best known to the authorities a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd indiscriminately beating hundreds of men women and children with their batons. Abram Duryee, New York’s Commissioner of Police is on record as having stated ”It was the most glorious sight I ever saw---”

      London 1888 saw, women and teenage girls that worked in the match making industry, the matchgirls, strike. The strike was against the poor pay, dreadful working conditions and the 14 hour working day. They were also striking against the working conditions which brought about “phossy jaw” a severe medical condition caused by phosphorous being deposited in the jaw bone resulting in toothache, swelling of the gums, and abscesses. It was a disfiguring and painful, foul smelling condition with the jaw bones eventually rotting turning greenish white and would glow in the dark. The jaw bone could be removed or it would gradually cause death.

     Strong public support for the girls and an outcry at the methods used in the factories forced the manufacturers to change these methods so as to eliminate “phossy jaw” After three weeks of strike action the London match makers capitulated. Though in some other countries manufacturers persisted in the old methods until legislation forced them to change.

      That’s capitalism, we know there is a better way.
 
     Read some of Glasgow's workingclass history HERE.
 
     ann arky's home.

BNP-KKK-Nazi fascist, all the same type of vermin.

So the arsehole Nick Griffin thinks his appearance on Question Time was like facing a lynch mob. In spite of his mates being Klu Klux Klan he doesn't seem to know what a lynch mob is. Well blob brain, take a good look at the picture, this is what a lynch mob looks like and for any more of the sordid details speak to you buddies from the KKK, they are experts in that particular field, they have along history of that type of vicious racism. But then I'm sure you know their history, that's why you signed up with them, just as you know the history of the nazi Hitler and you honour him. You are no friend of the working class, you and your bed-partners, KKK/Nazi types are leftovers from a dirty past and I'm sure the working class of this country will eventually dump you in the dustbin of history where you belong.

ann arky's home.

CRIME PAYS, IF ITS BIG TIME!!

       

      Austerity, cuts in social spending, benefit cuts, well that’s for you and me but not for those in the big club at the Westminster House of Corruption. It seems that one noble lady, no less than the Baroness Goudie has screwed the British tax payer for £230,000. How did she manage it, it’s easy. Live in London, buy a wee £200,000 pad in Glasgow and claim that as your main residence.

      Baroness Goudie, a personal friend of the Prime Minister, lives with her husband in a nice little £1.5 million shack in London. It would appear that she has lived practically all her life in London, brought her two kids up in London and her husband is a leading barrister in London but claims that her main home is Glasgow. This little arrangement has allowed the noble Baroness to claim £150,000 in accommodation expenses plus an estimated £80,000 for travel expenses between Glasgow and London.

       Now week in and week out some poor individual gets done for claiming a couple of quid above what our masters say they are allowed, and they get done. The mistake they are making is the piffling little amount they are doing, it seems that to get off with it you have to think big, screw them for hundreds of thousands and you will probably get a severe finger wagging.

   

ann arky's home.

POOR LITTLE ISRAEL!!!

      The Israeli state with its spin, complicity of other imperialist states and the world-wide Zionist lobby has succeeded in convincing world public opinion that it is a poor small state, an innocent victim merely trying to protect itself. As a victim it can avoid responsibility, a victim cannot be held accountable. However, the facts don’t convey that picture, Israel is the world’s fourth largest nuclear power, but still spouts the image of the poor little kid in what Netanyahu refers to as a “neighbourhood of bullies.”

      Israel produces 10% of the world’s arms and is the largest recipient of arms the US distributes to malevolent regimes around the world, yet still maintains the stance of the poor little victim in its conflict with the Palestinian people. Israel is an imperialist occupying power, that since 1967 has expropriated hundreds of thousands of acres of Palestinian land for its own illegal settlements, demolished over 11,000 Palestinian homes, has repeatedly attacked densely populated cities such as Hebron, Bethlehem, Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus and Rafah with artillery, bombs, laser-guided missiles and snipers. Yet the Israeli state still escapes accountability for this state terrorism, still crying “poor victim.”

      Israel has an economy three times larger than Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine put together. It has created a situation where 70% of the Palestinian people live on less than $2 a day and still escapes any responsibility towards the innocent people it rules.

      Not so long ago the military might of the Israeli state, with the financial support and blessing of the US, deliberately killed an innocent civilian population and wreaked havoc on the infra structure of another country, Lebanon. More recently the “poor little kid on the block” was ripping Gaza apart and slaughtering its people, a third of those killed were children, and it does it with complete impunity, while the other imperialist states make rumbling noises about a peace keeping force to protect poor little Israel.

      Who will rebuke the Israeli state, who will hold it responsible? Certainly not the other world imperialist states, Israel is a member of the powerful imperialist club and as such can carry out these barbaric acts and expect no more than a few platitudes and some insincere finger wagging. Only the people can call a halt to this barbaric system of state terrorism and only when we join hands across borders as brothers and sister and create a world of communities based on mutual aid, labeling the state system and its bed partner, corporate capitalism, as “man’s darkest hour” and throwing it into the dustbin of history.

 

ann arky's home.

Banker's bonuses or heated homes??

       As the bankers and hedge fund managers recovery from their pause in the greed feast and start to gallop away again with their stratospheric bonuses the rest of us can look forward to a cold winter.

       The latest government figures show that the number of families in the UK affected by fuel poverty has risen from 2.4 million in 2006 to 3.25 million in 2007. As fuel prices soared through 2008 the projected figures for England alone are expected to reach 3.6 million for 2008 and 4.6 million for 2009. Add to this the rest of the UK and you have a shocking and unacceptable level of homes living in fuel poverty in a country that has just handed the bankers billions of our money.

        These figures came as Citizens Advice announced the number of people falling behind with fuel bills had increased by nearly 50% in the past six months, and by more than 80% over the past three years. Between April and September Citizens Advice bureau in England and Wales saw a 46% increase in the number of people coming forward with fuel debts compared with the same period last year. The majority of people seeking help over debts to energy companies were of working age; 5% were over 65 years old, while 25% had a disability. We are in a society where the weakest and the most vulnerable suffer the most.

        It is obvious that the government targets to end fuel poverty among vulnerable households by 2010 and among all households by 2016 is just so much “hot” air, as are their targets to end child poverty and all the other election propaganda. As unemployment soars and all the parties are showing an eagerness to wield the axe at the social services it should be obvious to all that this system is not for the benefit of the ordinary people.

        We acquiesce to a system of privilege for the parasites and watch our children, elderly, and poor suffer the indignity of poverty at the same time as we watch the bloated parasites frolicking around in yachts and on sun drenched islands sipping the favourite Champagne. Is this the best we can do for ourselves and the rest of humanity? Surely we can devise a fairer system, we have the resources to see to the needs of all, all we need is the will to destroy this man made system of greed and create a society based on mutual aid and sustainability. A fairer system that sees to the needs of all those in that society based on free association, voluntary co-operation and is free from the profit motive.

 

ann arky's home.

ANN ARKY TO WILLIE BAIN.

    The following is a short e-mail from ann arky to Willie Bain the Labour candidate for the coming Glasgow North East by-election.

Hi,

      received your propaganda through my letterbox and feel that you are somehow assuming that the people of the area are rather simple and have short memories. You continually go on about the SNP ripping off Glasgow, and in doing so place the blame for the state of the area on the SNP, but seem to overlook the fact that this area has had a Labour MP for 74 years and for the last 12 years, a Labour government at Westminster. Are we to take it that the previous labour MPs were worthless, plain stupid or worse and somehow you are going to ride in on your white charger and save the area? Tell us how, if you are elected and end up down in the Westminster House of Corruption among the 600 odd other political careerists, you will make an impact that will benefit the people of Springburn.

      You state that you will clean up the shopping malls and streets by clearing them of drunks and drug addicts, where will you put them, somewhere that will cost no money and need no infrastructure? Can you tell us why we have so many drunks and drug addicts in the area and what you will do to stem the flow of young lives being destroyed in this manner? Of course bearing in mind that the previous 74 years of Labour MPs and 12 years of Labour government have seen the area continue to tailspin down the tubes of poverty and deprivation.

       You ignore the history of your own Party and the way it has treated the people of this area and to believe that you will move the Party machinery to act differently from its long past is somewhat naive and little arrogant to say the least.

 

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YOU SAVE THE WORLD ----- FOR WHO?

       When the powers that be start telling us to save the planet, they are talking to you and me, the guys at the bottom of the ladder. We have to turn the heating down 1 or 2 degrees, just boil enough water for one cup of tea, have a quick shower rather than a nice deep bath. You should walk or get on your bike rather than the car, take the bus not the car. All very well, but while you’re sitting in front of the tele with the lights out and a tea-cosy on your head to keep you warm, just think on these few things.

         At the beginning of next year Russian oligarch Roman Abromovich will take delivery of his new yacht, it will be the biggest private owned yacht in the world. The 557 footer Eclipse is estimated to have cost £300 million. It comes equipped with its own private submarine that doubles as an escape vehicle. Among its other little extras are a military grade missile detection system, armour plating around his own master suite, bullet proof windows, two heli-pads, swimming pool, luxury spa and an anti digital camera device to stop people photographing his frolicking.

        You see he needs this one as his other three have specific uses. His Pelorus, (377ft.) room for 22 guests and 40 staff, that’s a nice ratio, is for entertaining and has two heli-pads. His Ecstasea, (282ft.) Chinese themed interior, is for cruising. While is dinky little Sussorro a mere 161ft, is for short journeys and loaning out to friends. You could ask??

         The annual overhead cost for his little fleet is more than £15 million and the cost of filling the fuel tanks on his Pelorus is a fiddling loose change of £73,000.

        You see, less energy for you, more energy for them. We could of course get rid of his type and that would mean we could boil a wee bit more in the kettle, keep the heating comfortable and have a nice long relaxing shower, now that’s not too much to ask, is it?

 

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FROM INSIDE IRAN.

The following is a letter taken from the July issue of an underground paper called “The Street” published in Iran. The issue can be download from here:

http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=41789627&f=343373&u=20664667&c=2725740

         Thirty days have passed since what they called the presidential elections. Thirty compact days, during which in tandem with the terror, the bullets, tortures and the regime’s lies, the collective con- sciousness and awareness of the people have developed and morphed. The true nature of the Islamic Republic and its anti-human laws and regulations has been exposed to all, and people have discovered the power of their numbers and their togetherness.

         Those wisps of illusion that had forced many into sweet thoughts of step-by-step change have been blown away, and the flames of awakening have spread across the rooftops in the country. In their fight against the coup regime, people have come to see the deep contradiction between a system based on velayat-e faqih [guardianship/rule of religious jurist] and a popular system based on people’s will. When their singing throats became the targets of the regime’s bullets, the people saw the anti-human nature of the Sepaah [Revolutionary Guards] and the Basij. People found out all about the regime’s daily, hidden crimes, when it became apparent to all that their social wealth had been spent to procure the latest and most sophisticated instruments of police oppression, and the most technologically advanced know-how at the service of spying and controlling the citizens. Kamenei issued the command for the killings, and every day since a new corpse is handed to still another grieving, yet rage filled, family opposing them. That inept clown, Ahmadinejad, talked of freedom, while thousands of the country’s youth were lined up in death camps, awaiting to receive their daily dose of torture. This regime wrote illusory letters to their promised Mehdi the messiah, while the nation’s mothers in search of their disappeared children were insulted in the corridors of the Islamic halls of justice, and saw the catastrophe of the events in their shaken hopes.

         This consciousness has grown and a collectivity has made it impossible to breath the suffocating air any more. To make the passage from consciousness to proactive action, to go from understanding the oppressive, unjust and corrupt social relations to changing those relations and building a just, free and equal society, this passage is dependent on organization. Let them speak of easy solutions for change, those who are horrified of the people’s power, and those who have tied their hopes to the replacement of a layer of today’s rulers with a layer of tomorrow’s rulers. Leave them with their dreams and ideas such as a Green TV station that would remote control the people from afar, and render them into political observers, not actors. However, the people, who did not remain mere observers of the coup and intervened in their fate with their own lives if need be, are marching far ahead of the coloured dreams of that crowd. The people have realized that to overthrow this organized injustice, they need their own organization. An organization that, unlike the party suggested by Moussavi, will not submit to an existence in the poisoned crevices of the coup regime’s laws, an organization that will grow in order to smash open the cracks in the system and reach to the air of freedom.

          A large people’s organization is an association of small organizations, which sprout and gather strength from within the heart of the struggle against the coup, and which will guarantee the people’s rule by defeating this anti-human system.

 

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WHY THE IRAQI BLOODSHED??

Now that the blood and the dust is beginning to settle in Iraq, the real reason for the illegal invasion of that country is now becoming clear. We were told all sorts of fairy tales to justify the slaughter, to get rid of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Then it was to get rid of that wicked, nasty, nasty Saddam. Now that the contracts are being signed, as Iraq’s oil fields are privatised against the wishes of the Iraqi people and against the wishes of the Iraqi oil industry unions, it is difficult to conceal the truth.

BP has just agreed the details of its contract to develop a vast oil field in the Basra area and other companies are lining up to gobble up the rest of Iraqi oil. A blood curling slaughter of innocents to open up the Iraqi oil fields to the big corporate world, as they make sideway glances in the direction of Iran.

 

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LEST WE FORGET.

       As November 11th., Remembrance Day approaches the heads of state with bowed heads and solemn faces will make their usual vacuous platitudes in honour of all those who have been killed in the catalogue of state sponsored wars. Lest we forget, wars are the states’ method of survival and enlargement, it is not workers wishing to kill workers, they are the tools used by the state on its war pilgrimage.

      The solemnity displayed by statesmen/women at these occasions is meant to convey the impression that it is all different now and lessons have been learnt. However nothing has changed, the brutal saga rumbles on and on. After two world wars we moved to a variety of more local wars, remember Suez, then Korea, let’s not forget Vietnam, then fast forward to Afghanistan and Iraq with our states eyes on Iran. In between times our state and some of our “allies” after condemning the nazis, went on to build their own concentration camps in places like Kenya, Malaya and Algeria, to mention just a few. Then of course the states colluded with each other as millions were shipped from German concentration camps to Soviet camps. During the war, even although the Jews were a target of the Nazi German state, our own state locked up hundreds of German Jews. We should also remember that during the second world war strikers in the north of Italy were bombed be both sides. Remembrance Day should stamp upon our minds that the power mongers of one state have more in common with the power mongers of another state than they have with the ordinary people of any country.

       As the heads of state and their generals appear for their photo opportunities on Remembrance Day and speak those words “Lest we forget”, who will raise a voice for those 1 million+ Iraqis killed in the imperialist blood bath for oil, or the thousands of Afghan civilians slaughtered for who knows what. Who will raise their voice as the slaughter goes on week in week out to call, enough is enough, the state must go so the wars can end.

     Lest we forget, all wars are products of the state and until we get rid of this insane state system we will continue to see our young men and women being sacrificed at the alter of state power with our “allies” becoming our new “enemies” and our old “enemies” becoming our new “allies.” In the State/capitalist world, war is always good for business.

 

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Help the needy and get shut down!!

A COMMUNITY law centre that provides free legal advice in Glasgow to more than 3000 people each year is to close. Lawyers at the East End Community Law Centre are mounting a legal challenge over the loss of £250,000 council funding. The centre, which was set up 12 years ago and has seven full-time staff, including two lawyers and a legal trainee, will shut next year. It follows a shake-up of advice services by Glasgow City Council.

It has awarded a £2.4million contract to a new consortium of services, East Glasgow Advice, which is made up of Citizens Advice Bureau, the Greater Easterhouse Money Advice Project and Govan Law Centre. Hundreds of people in the East End have signed a petition opposing the law centre closure, which is in the Ladywell centre in Duke Street. Its lawyers are mounting a legal challenge of the loss of funding, arguing the £2.4m contract was the highest value of nine the council advertised in September 2008. Marcus Parham, a solicitor at the centre, said: "We deal with more than 3000 clients each year and bring in well over £3million to the community.

"A lot of our cases deal with employment tribunals and benefit claims. It is a lot of money for the most vulnerable people in the area. About 70% of our clients are disabled."

"We will try to deal with as many cases are possible, but we are now having to turn people away."

"There is also ongoing litigation over the loss of funding."

Glasgow East MP John Mason said: "I am concerned there will be a reduction in the provision of legal advice in the East End. The centre deals with around 3000 cases each year and it is my understanding the new service will have the capacity to deal with only 250."

A council spokesman said: "In the past, the 27 organisations that made up Glasgow's Advice Network had been developed without any over-arching clear strategic framework, resulting in fragmented service provision across the city. "The way money advice, welfare rights, housing and employment and legal advice services were provided required modernisation." "We moved to a commissioning approach, which saw a consortium called East Glasgow Advice be awarded the contract in this area of the city." "Changing the way we fund these advice services will mean improved service provision across the city, in addition to providing a fair and transparent allocation of resources."

Publication date 15/10/09   Thanks Caroline Wilson.

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CAPITALISM, PARTY POLITICS, CUTS, UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY.

The Tory cronies plans for you and I have been spouted at the recent Tory conference. One Tory millionaire, man of the people, actually stated that cutting your benefit will improve your quality of life. Another stated that we are too generous because some families receive benefit that is more than the minimum wage. If benefit is the minimum that the government thinks you can live on, where does that leave the minimum wage? Shouldn’t they be talking about raising the minimum wage? Other ideas they have to help us all, is to make you work longer before you get your miserly pension and when you do get it, it will be less. Then of course there is the plan for the sick on incapacity benefit, they will all be tested to see if some bureaucrat thinks your sick enough to resist their coercion to get you into some crap job with even more crappy wages.

Of course Labour are no different, they just plan different cuts, and while the Tories catch phrase is “We are all in this together” Labour keep saying “To encourage growth”. The reason for all these “necessary” cuts is the massive debt “we” have. What debt you might ask, why the billions we gave to the banks and other large businesses. Having saved “them” and their greed driven shareholders, we now have to pay the price with wage cuts, wage freezes, massive unemployment, and cuts in social services. Why wait until the pain really hurts before asking, “Was it worth it?”. We all know it was not worth it to us the ordinary people, all we have done is save a lot of very wealth parasites from going down the tubes. We have hawked ourselves up to our necks, so the really wealthy can continue to milk us.

In any sane society based on social justice this would never arise. Production would be based on the needs of those in that society, not on the greed of sweaty handed shareholders, there would be no profit driven large corporations riding roughshod over the planet and its people. Capitalism is not an inevitable natural structure, it is a greed driven man made system that benefits the very few at the expense of the many. It is no more than a social system that can be destroyed and sent to the dustbin of history. We have the ability and the resources to create a new system, one based on the needs of the people and sustainability. The longer the delay in the change from the destructive capitalist system to a sustainable social system the greater the risk to all life and the planet itself.

 

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What's your problem man?

 A diagnosis from The Agonist,

       "The greatest flaw in patriarchal civilisation has been the over-emphasis on the masculine archetype (identified with spirit) and the devaluation of the feminine one (identified with nature). This has been reflected in the fact that the god-head has no feminine dimension, in the neglect of the soul and in the misogyny responsible for the repression and suffering of women. The history of the last 4000 years has been forged by men, determined by male perspectives and directed towards goals defined by men - principally the goal of conquest. (this is no sense intended as a criticism; in the context of prevailing belief systems and general level of consciousness, things could not have been different).

However, because of the powerful influence of this long formative experience on the development of religion and science as well as our cultural ideas and patterns of behaviour - civilisation has been built on this unbalanced foundation.

Where there is no relationship and balance between the masculine and feminine principles, the masculine principle becomes pathologically exaggerated, inflated; the feminine pathologically diminished, inarticulate, ineffective. The symptoms of a pathological masculine are rigidity, dogmatic inflexibility, omnipotence, and an obsession with or addiction to power and control. There will be a clear definition of goals but no receptivity to ideas and values which conflict with these goals. The horizon of the human imagination will be restricted by an overt or subtle censorship.

We can see this pathology reflected today in the ruthless values which govern the media, politics, and the technological drive of the modern world. We can see the predatory impulse to acquire or to conquer new territory in the drive for global control of world markets, in the ideology of perpetual growth, in new technologies such as the genetic modification of food. We see exaggerated competitiveness - the drive to go further, grow faster, achieve more, acquire more, elevated to the status of a cult. There is contempt for the feeling values grounded in the experience of relationship with others, with other species, and with the environment. There is a predatory and compulsive sexuality in both men and women who increasingly lose the capacity for relationship. There is continuous expansion in a linear sense but no expansion in depth, in insight. The pressure of things to do constantly accelerates.

The result? Exhaustion, anxiety, depression, illness which afflict more and more people. There is no time or place for human relationships. Above all, there is no time for relationship with the dimension of spirit. The water of life no longer flows. Men and women and, above all, children, become the victims of this harsh, competitive, uncaring ethos:

women, in their desire to be accepted in a world ruled by men, and because the feminine value has no clear definition or recognition in our culture, are drawn to copy the pathological image of the masculine which itself incorporates fear of the feminine."

 

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Is technology making us stupid?

Although I am against any form of pariamentary politics and against the party system I believe the following article from the SPGB is worth debating

"Do you ever wonder whether the smarter technology becomes, the dumber and lazier we become? At one level, of course, this can’t be true. Literacy rates in almost all countries are in the high nineties, and the information revolution can scarcely be said to have rendered people more ignorant than they were hundreds of years ago. Advanced capitalism needs workers skilled in the ‘knowledge economy’, and can scarcely afford for its school indoctrination centres to turn out workers who aren’t up to the job. But still, when you try to have a conversation in a pub with a group of people who are simultaneously writing phone texts, checking their email, Facebook, Twitter accounts and RSS feeds, and looking over your shoulder at the cricket scores on the giant TV screen, while humming along to the rock tune on the in-house speakers, you might be forgiven for thinking that less is sometimes more. It seems as if people don’t discuss, think, concentrate, criticise, evaluate. All they’re doing is time-slicing in a perpetual multi-tasking environment. What you are dealing with is, arguably, a case of social attention deficit hyperactive disorder. An entire society in need of ritalin. The world is drowning in an ocean of data, but data is not information and information is not knowledge. Data consists of bytes or small packets, which must be compiled into some kind of order so as to provide meaningful information. Thus the words ‘lion’, ‘fish’ and ‘eats’ are data, while ‘lion eats fish’ or ‘fish eats lion’ or ‘lionfish eats’ are alternative forms of information. There is a similar difference between ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’. For knowledge to exist, small pieces of information must be collected and processed into some meaningful agglomeration, like molecules building into more complex organic systems. Knowledge is thus a construct which it takes time, patience, communication and experience to build. In the Dark Ages, knowledge was a treasure locked up behind monastic walls. In the Middle Ages, it was still the preserve of princes. With the dissolution of the monasteries in Britain knowledge began to be secularised, and the invention of printing revolutionised its spread. The information revolution which began with printing and has lately accelerated geometrically with the internet has certainly involved a knowledge revolution but the two are not the same and the one does not necessarily entail the other. From a world subdued in ignorance modern workers now face a perpetual storm of information from which it is perhaps becoming harder, not easier, to extract meaningful knowledge. It is not only the speed and intensity of this ‘data rain’ which swamps the mind. It is the fact that it is being broken down into smaller and smaller packets, knowledge being deconstructed, digitised, quantised and miniaturised for faster transmission. And to cope with this onslaught, the mind becomes less reflective and more selective, picking and choosing what it will process according to its preset value judgments, making it less rather than more likely that new ideas will be adopted. Time too is at a premium, and technology is taking knowledge away from the library and the desktop towards the e-reader and the smartphone, from email to Twitter, from debate to mere chat. Some futurists, like Ray Kursweil, have been predicting the advent of the Singularity, a technological point beyond which it is not possible to make any predictions at all. The nature of the Singularity is popularly supposed to be the development or evolution of true machine intelligence, but could it be that instead of machine intelligence rising to meet us, we simply sink until we pass it on the way down? Some say it’s Google making us ga-ga, others that it’s screen-burn to the brain. But where most such concerns are merely the same old bourgeois snootiness against youth or the lower orders, socialists have got legitimate reason to worry, because this could all play into the hands of capitalism. The ruling class loves to  infantilise us, making us think we’re too dumb and childlike to take responsibility for ourselves without their ‘guiding’ authority. It would be scary to think that this might come to be true. Our best hope is for a political Singularity, something no techie is predicting. The Zeitgeist Movement appears to be making huge strides in popularising non-market production for use, and another group is calling for a World Strike against money in 2012. These might grow or they might fizzle out, like the anti-capitalist movement. But for such a post-capitalist society to succeed it cannot be imposed from above or gifted to the world by one or two visionaries. Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere  are all useful means of communicating ideas, but they’re not oriented towards what is also necessary: focussed reflection and critical debate. It’s not that people are incapable of these abilities, but if they are not accustomed to them they may try to avoid them. The danger is the spread of soundbite socialism at the expense of depth."

http://tinyurl.com/ybdxzrq

Feedback, however critical, will be appreciated.
Yours for a world without wages (money, poverty and war),

Robert Stafford

Internet Department

www.worldsocialism.org/spgb

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Defence industry dominates EU’s security research programme

PRESS RELEASE


EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AT 00:01 GMT, 25 September 2009

Defence industry dominates EU’s security research programme

The NeoConOpticon report, released today by the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Statewatch, reveals the extent to which Europe’s largest defence and IT contractors are benefitting from a €1.4 billion EU “security research” programme that has the explicit aim of fostering a European Homeland Security industry to compete globally with the USA in a fast growing market.

“The whole process appears to have been designed by lobbyists, for lobbyists“, says Ben Hayes, TNI associate and author of the report. “In its desire to increase ‘industrial competitiveness’, the EU has effectively outsourced the design of the security research agenda to the some of the corporations that have the most to gain from its implementation”.

Defence giants including Thales, Finmeccanica, EADS, Saab and Sagem Défénsé Sécurité are amongst a host of corporations to which the European Commission has turned to help set the agenda for security research, develop Homeland Security strategies for Europe, and bring the relevant security technologies ‘to market’. Of 46 security research contracts awarded in the first year of the EU’s Framework Programme (FP7, the Union’s research programme for 2007-2013), 17 (or 37%) are led by defence sector contractors.

The report also reveals the extent of Israel’s participation in the EU security research programme, which is controversial in the light of widespread criticism of Israel's human rights record. Israeli actors or entities are participating in 10 of the first 46 projects, leading four of them. The Counter Terrorism Bureau of Israel’s National Security Council, the Israeli Defence Force and the Israeli emergency services are among the security experts selected to advise the working groups of the European Security Research and Innovation Forum (ESRIF).

There has been only minimal democratic scrutiny of the programme and very little monitoring of its implementation. The design of the ESRP has been outsourced through sub-contracting and the creation of ad hoc EU groups comprised of government officials, security ‘experts’ and companies selling homeland security products.

“There is, of course, nothing new about governments consulting about policy, particularly at the EU level, but while corporations have been embraced by the ESRP, parliaments and civil society have been largely excluded. The process has been wholly undemocratic,” says Hayes.

The ESRP is promoting the development of a range of technologies that could engender systematic violations of fundamental rights, according to the report. They include militarised border controls, surveillance and profiling technologies, the widespread collection and analysis of personal data, automated targeting systems, satellite and space-based surveillance, and ‘crisis management’ tools. While these high-tech systems can be used for ostensibly positive purposes such as environmental observation and traffic control, they also represent an unprecedented state intrusion into every sphere of daily life.

“It is not just a case of “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”, concludes Hayes, “it feels more like turning a blind eye to the start of a new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards.”

The research examined all 85 of the projects funded under the EU security research programme to the end of 2008, together with several thousand related EU-funded R&D projects from other thematic programmes.

Transnational Institute (TNI) +31-20-6626608

Nina Brenjo +31 (0) 63 484 2129 (nina.brenjo@tni.org) or

Ben Hayes +44 (0) 20 8802 1882 (ben@statewatch.org)

Download the NeoConOpticon report here:

http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/neoconopticon-report.pdf and http://www.tni.org/reports

For more information visit: http://www.tni.org/or http://www.statewatch.org/

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THE CRIME OF HOMELESSNESS!!

With the recent economic crisis unemployment is rising rapidly and with this comes repossessions and an increase in homeless. Even before the present economic disaster the number of homeless in Scotland has been steadily increasing for the 7 consecutive years to 2007. During this period the number of homeless related cases handled by the Citizens Advice Bureau has double to 8,000 for 2007. In Scotland at this moment in time there are 40,000 listed officially as homeless, what will the total be by next year? Approximately 50% of the 40,000 official homeless are young people aged 16-24, and this figure does not include those who are not listed as they find a bed by moving around their friends. Add to this the fact that “social” housing is at its lowest level for ten years. While waiting lists for rented housing is rising steadily.

Glasgow is by far the worst in the homeless league with 7,310 officially listed, Edinburgh 2nd. with 4,912 and North Lanarshire 3rd. with 2,653. This with thousands of skilled building workers being paid off in the last 12 months.

What kind of society have we allowed to fester under our noses where the most basic necessity of civilised life, a home, is denied. Only by creating a society freed from the corporate greed for profit and based on the needs of the people will we see an end to this crime. The marriage of state and the corporate world is war and poverty for the many and luxury for the parasites.

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Scab lorry blockaded in Edinburgh bin dispute

People acting in solidarity with the Council Cleansing workers successfully blockaded a WCR scab lorry for 30 minutes in Edinburgh city centre on 18th September. Waving IWW placards proclaiming NO MORE WAGE CUTS around 25 people stopped the WCR lorry at the top of Blair Street , as it moved out of Hunter Square . Cleansing workers are banning over-time and working to rule to oppose wage cuts, and Edinburgh Council have brought in private companies to do their work.

Photos of action

The scabs were unable to move their lorry or empty any bins, as protestors surrounded the vehicle and urged them to show solidarity with workers resisting wage cuts. Despite frantic scab phone calls it was only when the police eventually arrived around 6.30pm that the WCR lorry was able to escape.

Police demands for the name and address of one alleged participant were successfully resisted, and no arrests were made. One demonstrator said: "We are very encouraged by the success of our action today. We will definitely be back on the streets very soon to take more direct action in solidarity with the Council workers under attack."

" We explained to the workers who were scabbing that what they were doing was wrong and that in these hard times people have to stick together and not stab each other in the back........fighting for the crumbs from the rich man's table...", said one of the several IWW Union members involved.

ASSISTING WAGE CUTS.

The 3 workers in the lorry are believed to have been enlisted by the private agency Assist, which has been recruiting via St Andrews Square Job Centre. One claimed to have been forced to take the job by the Job Centre, but an activist from Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty pointed out : "Your benefits cannot legally be cut if you turn down a job doing work normally done by workers in dispute. We will give 100% solidarity, including if needbe direct action, to anyone threatened with a benefits cut for refusing a scab job."

City of Edinburgh Council cleansing workers are banning over-time and working to rule to oppose wage cuts being imposed by the Council as part of so-called "pay modernisation". Supposedly intended to equalise male and female wages, the scheme is in fact reducing wages for many workers, cleansing workers being set to lose around £300 per month. Almost all Council manual workers are threatened by such pay cuts. Meanwhile cleansing workers in Leeds are on all-out strike against similar wage cuts.

For more info see Edinburgh Council cleansing workers speak out

SCABSPOTTING: WCR.

  Scab lorries are operating throughout the city centre and other areas. They include small lorries with a white cab emblazoned with WCR, and a maroon cage on the back. There are also full size bin lorries, typically either maroon or dark blue, with WCR on the side. Some Shanks Waste lorries are also scabbing.

Industrial Workers of the World

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty

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Saul Alinsky on the 30's.

Taken from The Progress Report. Also posted on Politics in the zeros.

Part of a Playboy interview with Saul Alinsky in 1972.

PLAYBOY: How close was the country to revolution during the Depression?

ALINSKY: A lot closer than some people think. It was really Roosevelt’s reforms that saved the system from itself and averted total catastrophe. You’ve got to remember, it wasn’t only people’s money that went down the drain in 1929; it was also their whole traditional system of values. Americans had learned to celebrate their society as an earthly way station to paradise, with all the cherished virtues of hard work and thrift as their tickets to security, success and happiness. Then suddenly, in just a few days, those tickets were canceled and apparently unredeemable, and the bottom fell out of everything.

But then people began to come together, to join forces, to help each other.

Now, in America, new voices and new values began to be heard, people began citing John Donne’s “No man is an island,” and as they started banding together to improve their lives, they found how much in common they had with their fellow man. It was the first time since the abolitionist movement, for example, that there was any significant black-white unity, as elements of both races began to move together to confront the common enemies of unemployment and starvation wages. This was one of the most important aspects of the Thirties: not just the political struggles and reforms but the sudden discovery of a common destiny and a common bond of humanity among millions of people. It was a very moving experience to witness and be part of it.

PLAYBOY: You sound a little nostalgic.

ALINSKY: Yeah, those were exciting days to be alive in. And goddamn violent days, too. Whenever people wail to me about all the violence and disorder in American life today, I tell them to take a hard look back at the Thirties. At one time, you had thousands of American veterans encamped along the Anacostia petitioning the Government for a subsistence bonus until they were driven out at bayonet point by the Army, led by “I shall return” MacArthur. Negroes were being lynched regularly in the South as the first stirrings of black opposition began to be felt, and many of the white civil rights organizers and labor agitators who had started to work with them were tarred, feathered, castrated — or killed. Most Southern politicians were members of the Ku Klux Klan and had no compunction about boasting of it.

The giant corporations were unbelievably arrogant and oppressive and would go to any lengths to protect their freedom — the freedom to exploit and the freedom to crush any obstacle blocking the golden road to mammon. Not one American corporation — oil, steel, auto, rubber, meat packing — would allow its workers to organize; labor unions were branded subversive and communistic and any worker who didn’t toe the line was summarily fired and then blacklisted throughout the industry. When they defied their bosses, they were beaten up or murdered by company strikebreakers or gunned down by the police of corrupt big-city bosses allied with the corporations, like in the infamous Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago when dozens of peaceful pickets were shot in the back.

Those who kept their jobs were hired and fired with complete indifference, and they worked as dehumanized servomechanisms of the assembly line. There were no pensions, no unemployment insurance, no Social Security, no Medicare, nothing to provide even minimal security for the worker. When radicals fought back against these conditions by word or deed, they were hounded and persecuted by city police and by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, who back in those days was already paranoid, while in Washington the House Un-American Activities Committee hysterically sounded the alarm against the gathering Bolshevik hordes. As bloody strikes and civic disorder swept the nation, the big cry was for law and order. Nobody talked about pollution then; yet the workers in coal and steel towns were shrouded in a perpetual pall of soot and black dust, while in cities like Chicago, people in the meatpacking areas grew up amid a stench so overpowering that if they ever ventured out into the country, the fresh air made them sick. Yeah, those were the good old days, all right. Shit, the country was far more polarized and bitter then than it is today.
ann arky's home.

“RIOTS IN THE STREET”??

A recent statement by Brendan Barber, the General Secretary of the TUC, that that public sector job cuts could raise unemployment to four million and lead to “riots on the streets”, is correct in so much as unemployment will rise dramatically in the coming year and four million or more is on the cards. However what we don’t want to see is “riots in the streets” as that would dissipate the energy of the working class and allow them to be vilified by the media and clobbered by the state forces. What we want to see is mass occupation of work places and workers taking control of their own affairs. We can of course open up soup kitchens and wait for the corporate world to offer us more boring jobs at crap wages, or we can fight back and take control of our work places for the benefit of all in society. There are always choices, it is up to us, their way or our way.

ann arky's home.

YOUR DEBT-THEIR PROFIT.

The multi-billionaire, former US Federal Reserve chairman and guru of the economic greed brigade, Alan Greenspan has recently stated that the crash will happen again. This is an idiot’s blinding statement of the obvious, we all know capitalism is not a system of perpetual growth as they would try to make you believe, it is a system that can only continue by getting as many ordinary people as it can in to the drudgery and slavery of massive debts. Remember, crash = ordinary folk losing their jobs and homes because of the greed of the parasites, and in their language, recovery means them getting back on the bandwagon of a greed feast at your expense. In there language, ordinary people losing their jobs, homes and facing bankruptcy = temporary economic setback. Without your debt the system will crumble. So all you good folks out there, pay off your debts, buy nothing but essentials, (better still, try swapping, recycling and free-exchange systems) and the watch this vile, stinking, corrupt system crash into oblivion, so we can stand by and watch all those parasites die of financial starvation. Then we would not have to witness the lives of ordinary people being devastated at regular intervals in the name of profit for the Greenspan brigade

ann arky's home.

ANOTHER 9/11??

September 11 1973 saw the death of the first democratically elected Marxist socialist president of Chile, elected in Nov 1970, he was also the first elected Marxist socialist president of any of the Americas. History states that he died by his own hand during a US backed military coup by General Pinochet, who went on to be military dictator and ruled Chile with a brutal iron fist until 1990.

General Pinochet’s rule was noted for the savage repression and the number of disappearances of any who dared to oppose his brutal dictatorial regime. Working class organisations were viciously eliminated where possible.

ann arky's home.

ANARCHISM? WHAT’S THAT?

      Ask the average person on the street what they think of “anarchists” and they’ll all probably say something like “chaos” “violence” “mayhem” or some other negative expression. Ask them what they have read of anarchist history or anarchist theory and they will probably say “nothing.” So where did they get their opinions? Obviously they got those opinions from the propaganda organ of the state and the corporate greed machine commonly called “the media”. Why should the media give anarchists and anarchism such a bad press? Could it be because they see anarchism as the greatest threat to their desire and ability to rule over and exploit the people of this world? The state is an hierarchical structure set up to control the people and legislates to protect the wealth of the corporate greed machine. Anarchism is a non-hierarchical system of sharing and mutual aid to the benefit of all in society, the two are totally incompatible. The corporate greed machine works to exploit the population and drag all the wealth up to a privileged few, it puts a price on everything and excludes all those who can’t pay the price, be it healthcare, housing, leisure, services or the necessities of life. Anarchism seeks to see to the needs of all in society and for society to be shaped by all those who take part in that society. The state/capitalist/corporate system produces an ever widening gap between rich and poor, plunders and rapes the planet in an endless drive to increase profits to the shareholders of the corporate beast. Anarchism seeks sustainability through a system based on free association, voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Given a choice why choose to be exploited, why choose to struggle for the benefit of the privileged few, why sell your children into poverty? We can produce enough to see to the needs of all on this planet, the reason we don’t is not lack of resources it is simply that the system says “NO”, there must be profit in every action, profit for that greedy privileged few who control the corporate greed machine. We accept a system of winner take all and to hell with the hindmost, our compassion and commonsense surely demand we look at the alternatives. It is only commonsense to attempt to break the downward spiral of the corporate driven consumer juggernaut that destroys the environment and creates the illusion that happiness comes in pretty packaged boxes, at a price. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to try to create a better world of peace and freedom from deprivation for all. Anarchists point the way, anarchism is the tool.

ann arky's home.

9/11 --- 12/16??

      Say 9/11 and everybody will know what you are referring to and as the 8th anniversary passes, heads of state will pass their comments similar to Tony Blair’s words, “the worst crime ever committed against humanity.” It was indeed a dreadful crime and many suffered and died with many more carrying the loss of loved ones for the rest of their lives. On the pretext of hunting for its perpetrators it also unleashed brutal violence and wars in other countries backed up with all the might of the Western world. That violence still continues in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, there is no comments from Western leaders on the brutal crime committed on 12/16?? December 16. 2009 will mark the 11th. Anniversary of an even more brutal crime against humanity than 9/11. A crime that caused more deaths and more destruction than 9/11. It will pass without any wall-to-wall media coverage, without the bowed heads of those political leaders in the West, I doubt if it will even get a mention. Its perpetrates will not be hunted down and brought to justice. Why, because they were Western leaders and not a vague foreign organisation. Three years before 9/11, December 16, 1998, Clinton and Blair set in motion Operation Desert Fox and for four horrendously terrifying nights, defenceless Iraqi civilians were brutally assaulted by an invisible enemy. 10,000 people died, mostly women and children, more than three times the number on 9/11. The “military” targets that were obliterated included Baghdad’s residential area, Hal Adel, the Baghdad Museum of Natural History, Baghdad’s Teaching Hospital, the Tikrit Teaching Hospital and the home of Saddam’s daughter Hala.What rained down on the civilians of Iraq those four nights included, 325 cruise missiles launched by the US Navy, 100 launched by the US Air Force. On top of this UK and US bombers flew 650 sorties. The pentagon had calculated on a “medium-based scenario” of 10,000 civilian deaths. A calculated, state perpetrated kill that had no legal sanction, no UN mandate, no form of international authorisation. Tony Blair has often used 9/11 as a support for the attack on Iraq, but Operation Desert Fox, 16/12 was three years before 9/11. Why are the perpetrators of the 16/12 “the worst crime ever committed against humanity” not being hunted down and brought to justice, we know who they are and where they are.

Originally printed in the Anarchist Critic Sept. 08 but worth printing again.

SCOTTISH UNEMPLOYMENT.

Those who still hold the illusion that capitalism brings prosperity to all should perhaps look at the unemployment figures for Scotland. In a written answer in the Scottish Parliament Jim Mathers wrote that the figure for those 18 to 25 years old in the Eastend of Glasgow who were unemployed and not in education or training in 2008 was 32%. The figure for Shettleston and Baillieston for the same year was 37.4%.

For those unemployed, not in education or training between 16 and 19 in the 15% most deprived areas of Scotland in 2008 it was a staggering 24.6%. The 2008 figure for Scotland as a whole for those 16 to 19 it comes in at 11.9%. For the Scottish population as a whole it is approximately 6%.

With those in employment struggling, and in some cases in poverty, we can be assured that each percentage point in these unemployment figures represents real poverty. Real poverty in the midst of arrogant flaunted wealth of the “elite” parasites that infest our society, and this will continue as long as we follow meekly the party political system and the corporate greed mongers. What the system has in store for us as it tries to “fix it” is higher unemployment and savage cuts to the social services, while they weave the illusion that happiness can be purchased in the high street and the only way to save the world is to feed the consumer machine.