500m more slum dwellers by 2030

 

       According to recent studies the population of the world’s slums is set to burgeon by more than 500 million within 25 years, By 2030 the number of city dwellers is likely to mushroom from the current 3 billion to more than 4.1 billion. However the appalling consequences of this is that more than half that number will be crammed into ghettoes and shanty towns unless plans for urban renewal are radically altered. Of course you and I know this is capitalism and that the plans to avoid this cruel, brutal event will never be carried out, in fact it is because of capitalism that this is happening.

        The World Watch Institute in Washington states that at present urban areas cover 0.4 per cent of the Earth’s surface and generate the bulk of harmful carbon dioxide emis­sions, and of the 33 cities projected to have 8 million or more residents by 2015, at least 21 are coastal and will have to contend with rising seas caused by global warming. However the capitalist system continues on its way driving people from rural areas into the cities. More than 60 million people – about the population of Britain – move into cities each year, mostly in developing countries.

       Dr Carolyn Stephens, a lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Cities are the Brave New World, with a minority living long lives in over-consuming afflu­ence, and where most die young in inescapable poverty.”

        David Satterthwaite, of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, said “— cities become among the most polluted and dangerous places, where one in four children dies before the age of five,”

        We can’t say that the corporate world is unaware of these facts, they cause the problem and the information is freely available, it’s just that it can’t prevent them as its only aim, come what may, is to increase profits to the greedy shareholders, who no doubt will never live anywhere near the ghettoes or shanty towns.

        If this problem is to be tackled it can only be done by destroying the corporate greed machine and its bed companion, the state apparatus that paves its way. The capitalist system has for centuries continued to widen the gap between rich and poor and to do this it has to rape and plunder the planet, the state system legislates to see that it has a free hand and all the military support it needs. Do you want to be, or your grandchildren to be among the future dwellers of the ghettoes or shanty towns? If not, then it is now we have to act, the slum future for millions of ordinary people is racing towards us. It is already here for millions, no city will be exempt.

ann arky’s home.

THE STATE AND BIG MONEY.

 

     Nothing ever changes in the relationship between the corporate greed machine and the state. Big business can and does create tensions and shape the state’s foreign policy, all draped in the cloak of patriotism and compassion for others. The state and the corporate greed machine have honour degrees in hypocrisy.

        In 2001, Bruce Jackson, vice president of Lockheed Martin and other members of the neocon Project for a New American Century, wrote to President George Bush stating that “American Forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.” What was driving his desire to help the Iraqi opposition, the love of the people or the love of the money involved? The previous year Bruce Jackson chaired the sub committee that produced the Republican Party’s foreign policy document that George Bush ran on in 2000. A few months after retiring from Lockheed Martin, Bruce Jackson in 2002 formed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Were Bruce Jackson’s views altruistic and driven by the concern for the Iraqi people or were they shaped by the billions of dollars that Lockheed Martin stood to plunder from the taxpayers as a result of the war?

         As Iraq burned costing countless thousands of casualties and ever mounting deaths, not to mention nearly $300 million a day of taxpayers money, another contractor driven organisation, The Iran Policy Committee is calling for pre-emptive strikes against Iran. Why is big business being allowed to shape a state’s foreign policy? They are simply the same organisation, big business picks up the loot and the state does the strong arm stuff. Working class bodies and taxpayers money will feed the corporate greed machine’s avaricious appetite for profit if they have their usual influence on the American state apparatus.

         Like I said before, this is not new, the history of the modern state is littered with the corruption of its bed partner corporate greed. It was one of their own, General Eisenhower, that called for, “An alert and knowledgeable citizenry” to stand up to the military industrial complex.

       Well isn’t it now time to stand up and dismantled this festering union of corporate greed and the state apparatus? Must we see endless wars and countless deaths stretch into the future of our children, all in the name of corporate greed? Must profit shape this world into an endless battlefield?

       We the people have the power, of that there is no doubt, all we need is the will. We must communicate, organise and resist our children’s future being dragged into this nightmare of endless wars.

ann arky’s home.

REASON TO DUMP THE STATE.

 

       The state system seems to survive in spite of its crippling restrictions on our civil liberties, today more than ever the state works against the general population and is simply the apparatus that keeps control of the population while the corporate world rapes and plunders the planet in its endless pursuit of profit. It protects a small group of pampered parasites and ensures that the wealth of the world flows in their direction and stays there. Why haven’t we as ordinary people brought and end to this enslaving system?

Perhaps it is because there is a powerful disposition in each of us toward developing a view of the truth, a value structure, that favours the circumstances into which we happened to have been born. Where we start from always seems normal, therefore correct, it is only with observation and reasoning that we realise other ways and start to question our values. Interaction with others should stimulate or reasoning, unfortunately, self ennoblement can be and often is, the invisible cement of religious and political dogma. Against this invisible barrier the only defence is the ruthless application of reason. Reason must be the doorman that evicts and prevents entry of self-serving false entailments that attempt to shape our value structures. inducing us to accept a false reality. Reason should force us to see our true position in relation to the social structures we build.

Each of us has the faculty of reason, and it is our right, as well as our responsibility, to exercise it. Surrendering this faculty to others, for what ever purpose, whether it be to the authority of the state, church or political party, is neither a rational nor an ethical option. Holding a particular belief can never relieve us of our responsibility to strive to justify our beliefs in the light of evidence. The state by its nature negates the individual’s right to govern his/her own life by reason, as it demands allegiance. Today we have marauding religion infested politics on the rampage with powerful states infused with religion, this is intrinsically flawed and extremely dangerous to us all, since they must insist on their version of the truth against all others. A considerable amount of the violence across the world is manifestation of this fact. How we interact, one with the other can have no reference to revelation but only to ethical truths that can be discovered through human reason. Our capacity for such reasoning and that each individual is capable of ethical consideration, is what gives each of us the right to equal worth, this in turn makes any need to appeal to divine revelation redundant. It should also allows to see the state in its true colour and look beyond this system to a better world built on reasoned co-operation and mutual aid.

 

FIRES OF THE FUTURE.

FIRES OF THE FUTURE. 

I am fire,

I surge, I hiss,

sometimes bursting forth in a flame

that lights up the world

illuminating unimagined dreams.

Then the black cloak

blankets out the glow.

Again all is dark,

but, still

beneath the surface

I surge, I hiss,

I endure, waiting, seeking,

building up pressure.

One day I will explode

destroying forever

the Tartarean crust of oppression.

I am fire,

I am the people.

ann arky’s home.

Grooming for subservience!!!

 

      It is often said that we are sleepwalking into a police state. I would disagree and say that if we aren’t already there we are certainly galloping straight into the cage. On top of all the intimidating national database, ID cards, security checks and armed police at various points we are now to be hit with the police carrying portable finger print scanners. In spite of the fact that there is considerable doubt about there accuracy as the rely on a flat scan and not the rolled scan with ink as used in police stations. 

      While all this is going on there are people, who, seeing the dangers are protesting against this continued intrusion by the state into our every personal detail and movement. However there are those without a voice who are being weaned on this intrusive fabric of the police state and it is going on more or less without any real protest. Our children are being subjected to a more invasive regime than we would readily accept yet we seem to do nothing.

      What our children are being subjected to is nothing short of the panoptic society. Below are listed some of the infringements to their human rights, which, by our silence we blindly endorse.

Police stationed in Eastbank Academy, Campus Cops. Glasgow, from 2002 now widespread in schools (BBC News 16.09.02, Evening Times, 09.10.07

CCTV mass surveillance (31 cameras) in Perth Academy 2003; playgrounds corridors and stairways. (SCS)

Fingerprinting nursery pupils for library books, to be implemented in Queen Street nursery, Falkirk 2006 (Forest;2007)

Random Drug testing in schools called for from Head Teachers Association of Scotland (HAS) 2006

Fujitsu “Palm Secure” biometric palm scan, Todholm Primary School Paisley, (first in Europe) 2006 rolled out to 14 Education authorities by 2007, (Yarg Biometrics based in Perth) (Forest; 2007)

Amey Infrastructures Services (Glasgow) contractors for PFI builds biometric scanning into new school construction Renfrew, 2007.

RFID radio frequency identity cards- Active frequency tagging sewn into school uniforms, Hungerhill School, Doncaster England age 11 – 16 (Spartan Solutions and Sun Microsystems)

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) databases include samples from anyone arrested over the age of 10 regardless of being charged or convicted or innocent.

Microdrones used by Merseyside Police are flying remote controlled ‘spy drones’ (tried out in Iraq) fitted with CCTV cameras now used for tackling antisocial behaviour from 2007.     

      If our kids are subjected to this degree of surveillance as soon as they walk into school they are likely to grow up with the assumption that this is normal and will hardly protest as the intrusion creeps ever more personal as they grow into adulthood. This is only possible by our silence and the co-operation of the state’s soft police force, the teachers. It has to be attacked or the next generation will be walking zombies of the true police state, where their every personal detail and movement is known and checked to see if it complies with the wishes of the state.

ann arky’s home.

 

 

 

THE TOOL OF NATION STATES—-GENOCIDE.

     It is endemic in every nation state, it is part and parcel of the nationalist philosophy, “our people are pure, our culture superior, other nationals inferior, other cultures either brutal, backward, decadent or all of these. History is littered with the brutal genocide of innocent people just because their culture was “different”, their language “different.”

Our world of nation states is a world built and controlled by psychotics who believe that they are superior and in a position to lead the world. Their reality separates them from any other human that is in someway different and in their world difference equates with inferior. Their beliefs of national superiority have sent rivers of blood flowing across our tiny world.

This will only change when those who believe that all people are basically the same and have the right to self expression and respect wrestle control of their lives from the nationalist psychotics and dismantle the nation states.  

One Face of US Genocide.

      Migrant child imprisoned at Hutto prison in Texas for over six months with her mother. The prison fed children spoiled milk and forbid them toys, while mothers were sexually assaulted and chained to their beds during medical examinations. Homeland Security denied entry to the United Nations Rapporteur for migrants in May 2007 at the for-profit prison of refugee and migrant infants and children./Photo Jay Johnson-Castro More information from: HERE

ann arky’s home.

WHEN WILL IT EVER END???

 

 

The 20th century man

In 1918, I, a man of the 20th century, ordered 10,000 men

like me over the top. A similar man, on the other side,

ordered machine guns, howitzers, and mortars to fire.

He had to stop my men.

He did. Few of them returned. And most of them – like me –

were scarred in mind for life.

I did it. He did it. His Emperor did it. My President did it.

Our Stone Age ancestors did it.

In a hundred days I sent a thousand bombers across the Channel

to blow apart and incinerate my fellow man, just as some of them

had gassed and burned to ashes many more of my fellow man.

They did it. We did it. I did it.

And you know something? I wasn’t even born when I sent

my fellow man to death at Belleau Wood;

and only a child when I rained fire on Hamburg.

But as certain as I live today, I did it.

Years later, when I am gone, when others bemoan

the slaughter at Verdun, the fiery atomization of Hiroshima,

the disembowelment of Vietnam, the consuming fireballs of 9-11,

death grants me no rest, because if others don’t know him,

I know the 20th century man behind those horrors.

If it could, my earth bound fleshless jaw, bone grating against bone,

would try to form these words:

I – did – it.

Robert W Proctor  November 2002

More anti-war poems HERE.

 

ann arky’s home.

THOSE CRIMINAL BRITISH!!

 

     According to a group of “experts” (its always “experts,” though anybody can see the glaring obvious.) the “youth custody service” is in crisis and facing meltdown, there are no more places. Young inmates are being held at units hundreds of miles from their homes, making it extremely difficult to stay in touch with their families. These conditions of overcrowding and isolation from families invariably leads to more young people being brutalised and more young people committing suicide. Why do we do this to our kids? No young person deserves this kind of treatment, is there no alternative?

       When we talk about the “youth custody service” we are talking about criminalizing and brutalising working class youth, – young working class people in overcrowded prisons. The overcrowding in the “youth custody service” mirrors the overcrowding in adult prisons, prisoners are being held in police stations as the prisons can’t cope, meanwhile, the UK state is considering the use of prison ships and building SUPER prisons. In this system if its not working, then more of the same, only more brutal is their only answer. As far as the powers that be are concerned, it would seem we are a nation of criminals.

       Are we to believe the prison system is bursting at the seams because our kids are worse and we as a population are more criminal and anti-social than other European countries? Or could it be that the system we live under is more unjust and socially divided because of poverty, lack of opportunities and amenities, more authoritarian and eager to exert control over the population and by doing so criminalizes and incarcerates ever increasing numbers of the population?

       We can’t get rid of the injustice, the poverty, the lack of amenities nor the lack of opportunities without changing the system from one of profit to one of social needs, though that should be our aim. We can however do something immediately about the criminalizing of our kids. We can open up a dialogue between the youth in our area and the adults, discuss with each other what we want and what are our problems and how we can help each other to sort things out to everybody’s advantage and get away from this split in our communities of what looks like marauding packs of youth and disgruntled adults the two rarely speaking to each other. In so doing we would short-circuit the police activity and stop this brutalising and criminalizing of our kids. It would also give us more control over our own environment and help us to shape the community we live in. However, not until we get rid of this system driven by profit and based on the greed of the few pampered parasites, will we be able to create a society based on social justice, the needs of all in our communities, peace, co-operation and sustainability.

ann arky’s home.

WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW!!

ann arky’s home.

COMMUNITY POLICING???

 

       Most people here in the West believe that police brutality is something that happens in other parts of the world, some nasty dictator’s patch, not here in our free and democratic lands. After all, as the saying goes, when you want to know the time ask a policeman. Of course the reason for this misapprehension is not that our police are necessarily less brutal than other states, it’s just that our media never show the brutality that is handed out by our fine boys in blue, it is always photos and video clips of those nasty police in other countries, weaving the illusion that it doesn’t happen here. However everybody that has ever taken part in a protest of one sort or another will have their stories to tell, it could be what they witnessed or what they received at the hands of the thin blue line.

         We should never forget that the police are there to safeguard the state and its institutions, not as some people seem to think, to protect them from muggers or house-breakers. That sort of activity is just a spin off, a training ground, an information gather procedure, a public relations exercise.

       The above photograph, which could have been taken in any country, was taken in Germany June 2007, as you can see, they are simply applying the law with fairness and impartiality, just doing their duty, or could it be more accurately described as provoking, intimidating and brutalising, all in the name of freedom and democracy.

         Britain like all other states has a history of brutality to working class people when ever they have stood up to question the actions of the state. Two prolonged crimes of brutality in Britain in recent times that are now working class folklore could be the brutality heaped on the miners and their supporters in the 80s and the violence against the poll-tax protesters during the same era. Of course we all can come up with our own memories of the boys in blue and how they helped you across a busy road.

 

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.

         In recent years the military might of the Israeli state, with the financial support and blessing of the US, deliberately killed members of an innocent civilian population and wreaked havoc on the infra structure of another country, Lebanon. More recently the “poor little kid on the block” ripped apart and slaughtered the people of Gaza, 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.

       Today in brazen fashion the Israeli state openly spouts plans to evict yet more Palestinians from their homes to build more homes for Jews.

         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, labelling 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.

TWO SIDES OF THE COIN??

 

The Ultimate Battle.

TOMORROW’S WORLD.

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about.

 

I WANT TO BELIEVE!

 

I want to believe

All that is good is out there

Sleeping in hearts that live in dark valleys,

About to blossom like some magic woodland,

In spite of war, in spite of greed

The essence that is humanity struggling to be free.

All around death arrives in many guises,

Silent as the frost poverty kills,

The ruthless march of war

With every drum beat seeks God’s blessing,

While the God fearing kill the God fearing,

Slaughter in the name of the greater good.

I want to believe

All that is good is out there

Sleeping in the hearts that live in dark valleys

About to blossom like some magic woodland,

Not just as the dream of poets.

ann arky’s home. 

STATE TERROR.

 

     If anyone has any doubts about the brutality of the state all they have to do is take a look at the history of aerial bombing. As far as the state is concerned aerial bombing has always been an instrument of terror and an excellent means of colonial control. In the 1920’s the British imperial state apparatus used it to terrorise dissident Kurds and Iraqi tribesmen as it attempted to exert its control over the Middle East. Other imperialist states did likewise in their colonies. Of course to show their concern about this brutality and their desire not to use it on their own population, the imperial states at a 1933 Geneva Convention debated outlawing aerial bombing, except for, “police purposes in outlying regions”, it seems it was all right to maim and terrorise those troublesome natives over in the colonies. Of course the debate ended in them rejecting the whole idea of a ban on aerial bombing.

        A few years after this, during the Spanish civil war, Germany, with the consent of holy Franco and therefore God’s blessing, unleashed a brutal aerial bombardment on the Spanish town of Guernica. Of the town’s 10,000 inhabitants at least 1,600 lay dead with more than 900 bleeding and buried in the rubble, aerial bombing had come to the imperialists’ own backyard and the line between civilian and military had been washed away with blood.

       The second world war saw the various states indulge in carpet bombing of none military cities and towns, of course each blaming the other of criminal acts. This horrific process culminated in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with the loss of thousands of civilian lives. Since then the imperialist states have moved on to napalm in Vietnam and “shock and awe” in Iraq, from simplistic bombs to cruise missiles, all on civilian populations.

       Can there be any trust for an apparatus controlled by a wealthy elite that shows such disregard for the lives of ordinary people? The state’s only purpose is to protect its own power and the wealthy coterie of parasites that control that power and has nothing to offer the ordinary people. The state and its military appendage must go, must be consigned to the dustbin of history to bring an end this barbarity and before the people can have any control over their lives.

      The future of the ordinary people lies in federated communities built by the people who live in those communities, based on the needs of those people founded on sustainability with free association, voluntary co-operation and mutual aid and freed from the corrupt forces of power and profit.

THE STATE AND FEAR.

 

      As far as the state is concerned the politics of fear is the most effective way of gathering support for the state apparatus. People’s fears, manufactured by state propaganda, lead them to accept all manner of draconian measures that they are told will protect them from the foreign enemy. Terrorism, the faceless, invisible threat, is the perfect candidate for the state to further its control over its citizens. In the eyes of most of its people the state is seen as protecting them from that faceless, invisible threat while tightening its control over them. Because the Orwellian state, the desired outcome of all modern states, will only be accepted through a fear from which the state is believed to be protecting us, it is therefore not foolish to expect that the state will create and foster such fears.

      Since the 9/11 affair we have seen the state in this and most other countries pass more and more control legislation that they could never have attempted had there not been a climate of fear, a fear fanned by their propaganda. In this country we now have more CCTV cameras per head of the population than any other country in the world, mass surveillance of the ordinary people on a scale never before envisaged and it is readily accepted because of this climate of fear. Further to all this, UK Ministers have suggested a plan costing up to £12bn on a system that would track, tag and store internet history, e-mail records and telephone calls of every person in Britain, The proposal, would entail installing hundreds of hidden devices to tap into communications on the internet and via mobile phone providers. A national database would be created to store the information. A first installment of £1bn has already been allocated to the Government’s central intelligence agency GCHQ. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “Any suggestion of the Government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister.” There have also been fears voiced concerning security issues about maintaining such a large database.
       MI5 currently conducts limited e-mail and website surveillance, but still requires permission from the Home Secretary on a case-by-case basis to carry out the checks. If the new proposals are implemented, the intercepts would be comprehensive and automatic. The Home Office said no formal decision had been taken and said it “did not recognise” the £12bn price tag being put on the system. However sources said officials had made clear that ministers had agreed “in principle” to the program.

       Examples of e-mails that will immediately be flagged to MI6 putting your house under 24 hour surveillance with the possibility of you being shot 5 times in the head at close range whilst running for your train – “yeh, the party was a real blast” “Met Gloria, she is dynamite” “The visit went down a bomb.”

        With this control and mass surveillance we see our right to peaceful protest being stifled, dissent being labeled suspect or even terrorist in nature. We now have to ask ourselves, is this fear justified, what is the REAL evidence, are we prepared to see our lives being tied in ever tightening controls, our every movement monitored and our avenues of protest being closed down? Is this acceptable in a so called democracy? It is now more than ever time to challenge the state before there is no right to peaceful protest, no voice of the people to rein in the obtrusive power of the state. Later could be too late.

ann arky’s home.

FRIENDS DON’T DO TERRORISM??

     

       It is all history now but it does show what American imperialism will get up to to bring down what it sees as a rival system. William Blum’s book is an amazing expose of what lengths the United States was prepared to go to, to discredit and destroy East Germany:

 

 

“It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more.”

 (See Killing Hope, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion.)

          To all intent and purposes, that’s terrorism, however we don’t call it that when we do it. This perhaps gives us some insight to why the Berlin wall was built in the first place.

ann arky’s home.