Armed Forces Day
Yesterday, 27/06/09, marked the first in a worrying new state organised annual public festival. Armed Forces Day is being touted as a day to ‘celebrate’ the nations armed forces and, according to their website, “show our support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community: from currently serving troops to Service families, and from veterans to recruits.” (more…)
Demonstrate This Wednesday At the Greek Consulate
The Glasgow Anarchist Federation calls for a picket outside the Greek consulate on Wednesday to coincide with our fellow workers general strike in Greece.
Since the cold blooded murder of young Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday Greek cities have been alight with the flames of anger. We cannot allow the Greek state to attempt to stifle this anger by simply arresting the murderous police officers. The entire system of governance is to blame. Like the police in this country who feel able to murder youths the Greek police are simply better armed.
Join us this Wednesday outside the Greek consulate to voice your anger at this heinous murder.
The Greek Consulate is located at
1 Kirklee Quadrant
Glasgow
Tel: 0141 334 0360
We shall gather there from 2pm this wednesday as our fellow workers in Greece down tools in a general strike to express their disgust with the police and the state.
Please bring whistles, drums and anything else that will make a noise.
Some interesting links:
Please Help
With the freedom of movement block last Saturday
Please help Yosola and Haadiyeh Ogunleye (more…)
Secession, Anarchy and Nationalism
That’s one hell of a grand title for this post. This is mostly just some musings on a rather touchy subject.
I was recently involved in an e-mail debate around the secession of Wales from the United Kingdom. This was on an Anarchist e-mail list and the person who was posting calling for Welsh nationalism is a troll through and through. His claims that nationalism and secession are the same thing led me to wondering whether in fact they are.
All the small nation nationalists in this region (UK) are secessionist i.e they want to break away from the UK and from what they see as English domination/control.
I would not however say that all who call for secession are nationalists. For one thing there are members of the local bourgeoisi who may see an opportunity to gain themselves more power or a chance to make a greater profit. A lower rate of tax perhaps.
There are also people such as myself who thinks that secession is a good thing as it would bring the blame for unfavourable living conditions closer to home.
In Scotland, and in Wales to a lesser extent, there is a tendency to blame ones woes upon the much maligned English. More specifically upon the government in Whitehall. Whilst I’m all in favour of people blaming the state for the problems the system it propagates creates. The problem lies in that the government is perceived as a foreign government. This stops a lot of people short of laying blame where it belongs, on the capitalist system, and places it in the hands of a foreign oppressor.
I am of the opinion that once an area secedes from the union they will no longer be able blame the English for all their woes but will be forced to blame the bourgeoisie closer to home.
I do not think that I would ever agitate or work towards independence for any of the small nations of the UK, well maybe if Yorkshire decided they wanted Independence, but I would vote if a referendum was called for Scots independence.
Could’nt hurt.
Could it?
What Is There That Can Be Done?
Life is good. Life expectancy is approaching 100 years, technological marvels allow us to communicate with
Wher's My Flying Car?
people on the other side of the planet and it takes half a days travel should we wish to visit a friend on the other side of the world. Medical science can cure diseases and maladies that thirty or forty years ago would have been fatal, we can build telescopes so powerful they allow us to see the very edges of the universe. We can tweak the very essence of life and make crops that are resistant to pests and frost, indeed we can even go beyond this and harness the energies of creation itself by taming the atom and generating energy from the elements themselves.
We would appear as gods to our forebears of only a few generations past.
All of these marvelous achievements made by the human race yet still a child dies every couple of seconds due to poor water or through being malnourished. Still a third of children in this country live in relative poverty when compared to the lives of the affluent. Still we spend a full half of our waking hours working, selling ourselves to the highest bidder. We must do this of course for we have to think about the rent or mortgage, we have bills to pay and children to support. We honestly have enough on our plates without considering how others are faring, or to consider that life does not have to be like this.
We see the afore mentioned wonders and of course we are glad, and often times amazed at ourselves and our creation. We do not however benefit from these wonders despite the fact that they are paraded in front of us, a carrot to the stick of unemployment perhaps? We do of course share to some small extent in this progress, mobile phones, computers and cheap holidays in the sun have become the norm now rather than the preserve of the wealthy.
Honestly That's What They Look Like 
Proof that the system works? Well yes the system does work but the question is for whom? Whilst we may have a better standard of living than our great grand parents and have access to some of the wonders of technology we still work as long and have as little time as they did to enjoy our lives. Is it any wonder we at times go out and get raucously drunk or take drugs and dance like wild things of a weekend? If this system did actually work for us then why would we be so stressed that we require a weekend of debauchery to unwind? But this system does work, just not for us.
The present system works in so far as it maintains the imbalance of wealth and power both in this country and abroad. Whilst we spend our days working in call centres, on production lines, serving coffee or whatever we do to earn a living the wealthy few who sit atop this society grow even more wealthy for far less work than we will ever know. To top it off we are told that we have to tighten our belts and make cuts in what little we do have to enjoy in order to stave off the effects of the coming ‘credit crunch’.
“We are all in this together” is the coming mantra of the newspapers and morning TV shows. Even the wealthy will feel the affects of the economic downturn we are told. It may in fact be true that the wealthy few will have to make adjustments to their lifestyles due to the world economy but they will not be affected in anything like the way we are. Fuel prices
More In Common With Her Than Zombie Tranny Anne Gloag!
A Fine Example Of The Ruling Class - Zombie Tranny Hell!
are sky rocketing along with the price of food. The parasites at the top of society will never have to make the choice between warmth and food, a choice no human being should have to make in the twenty first century.
That anyone should have to make decisions like this is disgusting, equally as disgusting as the poverty that is rife around the globe. That may seem a little but disproportionate but when we consider the advances the human race has made over the last century and a half that either situation exists is intolerable.
There are various reasons why these situations exist. Liberal guilt-mongers would have us believe that it is our standard of life in western countries that leads to poverty in so
Parisite - Oh and Noose, you're doing it wrong.
called third world countries. If we would just buy that £5 jar of fairtrade coffee instead of the half that price regular coffee then everything would be OK! Such utter rubbish only continues to feed this system of exploitation that keeps the poor poor whichever part of the word you live in. The fact of the matter is that there is plenty to go around so that not a single person on the planet has to go hungry or cold. In fact there is enough to go around that every person on the planet could have their own solidly built home complete with plasma TV, internet access with room for a hot tub. The only problem is all the resources of this world are owned and controlled by a fabulously wealthy parasitical minority.
So the question remains what is there that can be done? We are in an extremely low point in the social conflict that has dominated the history of the human race. This is going to change in the near future however as the full effects of the credit crunch are felt and as the state and business react to attempt to counter the downturn in profits. This low point though gives those of us who see the inequality within society a chance to build the organisations and networks that we are going to require in order to combat the sure to be coming attacks on our class and to spread revolutionary ideas and modes of organisation.
In order to increase our lot in life and the lot of our children and grand children we have first to build up our strength so as to best be able to resist the attacks of capital and to build that strength through our resistance and our victories.
And Yes, Flat Caps Are Mandatory In The Class Struggle
How do we do this then? Well the first place of activity should be within our communities. By building strength where we live we will better be able to resist rent hikes by unscrupulous landlords and resist the insidious creep of groups like the BNP who would only make things worse by sowing the seeds of racism that will split and fracture our communities further. By claiming that we have more in common with rich folks who happen to have been born in the same country as us they would cloud our eyes to all that we have in common with our neighbours who may have come from afar.
How then do we go about building this strength then? The first obvious step is to form neighbourhood and residents/tenants associations. By building groups that encompass as much of the community as possible we can work together to take on landlords and the council when they threaten us and our neighbours with either eviction or by refusing to maintain the public spaces in our area like we pay them to.
These groups would however be extremely weak if they are isolated and only focus on the problems of their own community, Nimbyism makes us weak. By forming these groups we must encourage others to do so and then work together with one another. Not just on issues that concern all of us but on issues that may only concern one area or community.
If the residents of Possill struggle against the Glasgow Housing Association running their area into the ground and they win then they become stronger, if we all struggle with them and win then we become mighty and no force in Glasgow or beyond can stop us.
In order to prevent these groups being taken over by opportunist politicians or those with agendas that would divide us then we would have to be careful how to go about forming these groups and with how they work together. By restricting the power of elected officers within these groups to the point where they can merely carry out mandated instructions from the entire group then we reduce the risk of groups being steered by those with a political agenda that does not benefit us. By groups networking with one another in a federation and organising through meetings attended by delegates who again have to carry out a strict mandate then we reduce the risk of these same people derailing the actual work we have to do for their or their parties own ends.
The second place of struggle is obviously the workplace. In the UK we have seen a massive downturn in union membership with hardly any young people today belonging to a union. This is a terrible state of affairs seeing as how the union is traditionally the first place people encounter struggle within a workplace. As appalling as this is it is not at all surprising when we even take a perfunctory glance at the trade union movement as it is today. What then is thee that can be done?
All the answers to societies problems coming soon followed by a wee bit on why ‘radical’ greens would have us all living in caves and grooming one another for lice.
Organise, Resist, Win!
An End To Faith Schools And An End To Faith
According to the Scottish Government there are 395 faith schools in Scotland which compared to Englandshire’s 7000 or so doesn’t seem too bad, but it’s still 395 too many. These ’schools’ are funded by the government and therefore by taxes paid by all of us whether we are rational or not. I fundamentally oppose any superstitious half wits ‘right’ to stunt their child’s development by sending them to one of these divisive institutions.
It is just plain wrong that anyone should be able to teach superstitious nonsense as fact and it’s absolutely out-bloody-rageous that the rest of us should be expected to pay for it. The teaching of the loony tune ideas of the supernaturalists makes me feel sick to the core. How can we expect to advance as a species when we allow witch doctors and stone age troglodytes to be responsible for our childrens education?
It’s all very well if you want to think that you’ve got a magic space daddy that is going to party with your ghost after you shuffle off this mortal coil but teach it to your kids as fact and you should have your children taken off you and you should be sterilised for the good of the human race.
Lying is not a good thing folks and lying to children is abhorrent.
I am sick that these wing nuts who hold ridiculous fucking beliefs should be afforded any respect from a rational society. That this respect is demanded and given makes me really pessimistic about our future. These beliefs should be held up to ridicule and venom on a daily basis.
There is no more evidence for ANY form of intelligent creator than there is for the existence of fucking leprechauns. Religious and spiritual belief has caused untold suffering all over the world and stands side by side with both statism and capitalism as the worst disasters to befall our species. At least capitalists and statists can provide concrete evidence for how and why they exist rather than the bollocks spouted by the faith types of the world.
For the final word on how I feel about faith, well the Abrahamic ones anyway:
Christians: He didn’t even exist FFS!
Jew: Stop mutilating your children! It’s not big, it’s not clever so stop it okay.
Muslims: I don’t care where or when you lived sleeping with a child makes you a nonce.
My Red Top Confusion
I just saw the headline on today’s Daily Rectum – ‘immigrant tells of horrific attack‘ or some such thing. My first thought was ‘yeah and it was encouraged by scum papers like youse’.
I thought I would write a wee bit about the press fostering racism so did a search on the rectums web site for ‘asylum seekers’ ‘immigrants’ and ‘illegal immigrants’. Guess what? I couldn’t find a single example of the rectum spouting reactionary rubbish about johnny foreigner. In fact all the articles about asylum seekers and immigrants were either really positive or neutral; even the stories tagged ‘illegal immigrants’ were neutral rather than the frothing bluster I was expecting of a red top.
Spun me out so it has, I may complain to the Press Complaints Commission about them not behaving in an acceptable manner for a red top. :-/
Bewildered at this I began to wonder whether my opinion of the other main stream papers was as skewed and that maybe the press had changed since I started ignoring them many years ago. Well I figured the best place to look, do a litmus test as it were, would be that old chestnut the Daily Hate Mail. The Hate Mail has for many,many, many years been a bastion of bigotry and a forum for the filthy felchery of fascists. There are probably not that many alive today that recall the Mails cheering of Mosley’s blackshirts or their owners chummy relationship with his ‘dear fuhrer‘. Surely if they have changed then it would mark a massive leap forward in the conscience of the media.
To my complete non-surprise they have not changed and are still bang at the job of promoting racism and hatred whilst doing their damnedest to drag this country even farther down the slippery slope into the cess pool of fascism.
Ach well, so much for wishful thinking.
Terrorists? My Arse!
So the Scottish Government is to spend £3.8 million on creating 50 counter terrorism jobs over the next two years. £3.8 million doesn’t sound like a lot of money considering the obscene sums that get spent on warfare and lining the pockets of the already wealthy but i even this amount a proportional amount in relation to the terrorist threat to Scotland?
Scotland itself has only ever been the target of one pathetic attempt at a terrorist ‘attack’ so why the need for all this money that could be better spent else where?
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said
“The Scottish Government is fully committed to the fight against terrorism and that is why we are equipping our police forces to tackle this menace”
What menace? A bunch of numpties attempted to drive a non-explosive explosive in Glasgow airport, failed dismally and only succeeded in hurting themselves and launching Smeato(tm) into stardom. Shaking in my boots so I am.
I say non-explosive explosive as, despite what was inferred by all the scumbag papers at the time gas bottles do not explode. They are under high pressure with a brass pressure valve on the top that breaks as the gas heats up and the bottle shoots off like a rocket. Frightening to witness yes and more than likely deadly to anyone it happens to hit but hardly the apocalyptic levels of carnage the sun et. al. claimed.
“”We all need to work together to reduce the threat of another terrorist attack.” said MacAskill. Well yes we do need to work together but not to defeat the sort of terrorist attack that you mean boyo. This announcement in itself constitutes a terrorist attack upon the people of Scotland. By spending all this money and warning of dire things to come if we do not ‘protect ourselves’ you foster a climate of fear.
I accuse you Kenny MacAskill of terrorism in the highest order. You and your cronies in Edinburgh are guilty of spreading terror, fear and paranoia throughout the Scottish populace with the intent of achieving political ends.
Throwing more and more money at the terrorist ‘threat’ is absolutely ridiculous. there have been less terrorist attacks in the UK over the last five years than in any five year period over the last twenty. The threat from terrorist attacks is significantly less since the good Friday agreement and the cessations of hostilities from the IRA(whichever flavour)
Since 2000 there have been 11 terrorist attacks. The 1990’s saw 24. The amount of terrorist attacks has not increased, it has dropped. What has increased however is the level of terror that is being inflicted upon us by the government and the media. Not since the cold war have we seen such a frenzy of fear-mongering from the powers that be and the press. Like pigs in shit they are revelling in their new found excuse to do away with what few civil liberties we have and the fear that they spread causes us to cheer them on as they tighten the chains around our ankles.
We already have more CCTV cameras in this country than anywhere else in the world, id cards in the pipeline, government plans to intercept every e-mail and mobile phone calls. Our health service is being destroyed, our school system is being privatised, our friends and family members are being sent to their deaths for a profit margin in Iraq and Afghanistan, our communities are being run into the ground, racism and intolerance are being fostered and encouraged by the media and scum like the BNP. We are to put it bluntly on our way to hell in a handcart.
So we really do have something to be afraid of but it sure as hell isn’t terrorism as the media portrays it.
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