BLAIR’S WAR – BLAIR’S LIES.

Protest 21st January 8am Queen Elizabeth 2nd Centre, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster,  SW1P3EE http://stopwar.org.uk/content/view/2217/1/

             Tony Blair is back in front of the Chilcot inquiry. The hearing comes against a background of the statement from his chief legal adviser which effectively says that Blair ignored his advice over the legality of the Iraq war. Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general in the Blair government, has said that he felt uncomfortable with Blair’s public statements in the run up to war. 

        It is clear that Blair had a strategy of not asking for legal advice from his
legal adviser, trying to avoid it being put in writing, and in general
ensuring that he heard nothing which might hold him back in his determination to follow George Bush into the war.
         Blair deliberately went to war despite knowing that the lawyers thought the war was not legal. He is now giving evidence for a second time at Chilcot, to try to explain the discrepancies between his original evidence and that of Goldsmith.
      Stop the War, along with CND and BMI, is calling a demonstration outside the Chilcot inquiry this Friday, 21st January, at 8 am. We are asking everyone who can be there to attend. He is scheduled to be in the hearing  from 9.30 to 2pm but there is now talk of him being there all day because of this latest statement. We would especially encourage people to come from 8 till 10.30, but there will be people there for the duration of the hearing.

Other things you can do to highlight Blair’s lies:

1. Call a local protest/set up a STW stall on Friday if you can’t make it to Westminster.

2. Hold a meeting on Truth and lies about Iraq – we can help find speakers for you.

3. Donate to Stop the War to help our campaigning, and take out a direct debit/membership to contribute to our work over the coming year.

Protest 21st January 8am Queen Elizabeth 2nd Centre, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster,  SW1P3EE

 

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THE DEAR CONCRETE PLACE!!

Subject: North Kelvin Meadow.
        “Time is running out to save an award winning community green space in Glasgow’s West End from Developers”.
     North Kelvin Meadow, a well used and supported green-space in the heart of Glasgow’s West End is now the subject of a planning application to build 115 flats, which if successful, will mark the end of this well loved community initiative. The developer New City Vision Ltd (NCV) chosen by Glasgow City Council has now kicked off their drive to gain planning permission for their housing development by holding two public meetings allowing the community to comment on their design. However the fundamental question of whether any housing development is right for this green space will not be up for discussion (1). They expect their main planning application to go in by March 2011. Even after two and half years of hard work by the community, GCC have chosen “to carry on regardless with the sale process” and to bulldoze North Kelvin Meadow. They have never consulted with the local people about what should happen to this land.

         Local people have been looking after this land in the absence of any management by the Council. And this work has been recognized for two years in a row with an award from Beautiful Scotland. They have cleared dumped rubbish off the land, regularly pick up litter, run a community composting service, and have set up community allotments so that local residents can grow fruit and veg. This green space is in constant use by dog walkers, children, and others who appreciate it as a wild park. They would like to extend their work to provide a permanent resource for the benefit of the whole community. The development by New City Vision will destroy this work and ensure there is one less public resource for the people of North Kelvinside.
        *Douglas Peacock Chairman North Kelvin Meadow Campaign:*
         “This planning application if successful will result in a Meadow and community Allotment being bulldozed, 100s of trees being cut down and a successful award winning community initiative ceasing. Thats not a great legacy to leave the next generation to say the least! This land has never
been built on and always used for the local community and that should continue.”
         “Glasgow City Council are out of step on what people are looking for on this issue, this is backed up by the number of politicians voicing their support plus 1000 people to date have signed the petition, that and the overwhelming support from local people asking that this green space not be built on.”
    *SNP Depute Leader Nicola Sturgeon* has recently mentioned, in Dec 2010, the plight of North Kelvin Meadow: http://www.snp.org/node/17556
*Notes*
         1. A pre planning application was recently introduced by the Scottish Government to help communities, understand and get up to speed with what a developer is planning in their area prior to its main application for planning consent. This period last 12 weeks. North Kelvin Meadow is one of the first in Glasgow to be in this new process. Crucially though people aren’t being asked, and have *never* been officially asked, what they like to happen to this land. This pre planning consultation is mainly about what should happen to the small amount of open space which currently is shown as a small roundabout within the housing complex e.g. should it be grass, trees, seating, BBQ area, tarmac etc?

2 *North Kelvin Meadow web site* <http://www.northkelvinmeadow.com>

for further information email northkelvinmeadow@gmail.com
3. *Images for publication* available for download and use from
http://www.flickr.com/groups/northkelvinmeadow/
4. *New City Vision Ltd* <http://www.cloustonstreet.co.uk>

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2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2010. That’s about 8 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 173 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 265 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 14mb. That’s about 5 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was May 16th with 49 views. The most popular post that day was BIG BROTHER IS HERE!!!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were digg.com, healthfitnesstherapy.com, slashingtongue.com, accesstoinfo.blogspot.com, and the-best-twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for annarky1, pan european strike, “mickey z”, http://www.justiceforaafiasiddqui, and annarky1.wordpress.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

BIG BROTHER IS HERE!!! May 2010
1 comment

2

500m more slum dwellers by 2030 March 2010

3

GENERALS RULE. May 2010
2 comments

4

REASON TO DUMP THE STATE. March 2010

5

ISRAEL’S HISTORY OF AGGRESSION. April 2010

WHO NEEDS YOU BABY!!!

 

       Isn’t about time we woke up to the fact that national governments are no more than the corporate world’s minders. They certainly don’t function for the benefit of all in society, they do the bidding of their corporate bosses. We now live in a corporate society where the corporations control everything and nothing will be done that might in any way hinder their progress to amass ever greater profits. We should always remember that a pool of unemployed helps to keep wages down, it is a bonus to the corporate world. You can lobby the millionaire cabal in the Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption all you want about more jobs and all that crap but basically they don’t need you. The corporate world is not in the least patriotic, the Asian manufacturing is booming and the companies that are falling over themselves to join that bandwagon over there are all familiar names to the Western workers. In the past the booming West sent its affluent workers as tourists to the East, now it is in reverse, the affluent Asians are visiting the poorer West. The corporate world doesn’t much care which way it goes, as I said before, they are not in the least patriotic.

It is strange that the corporate world and anarchists should have one thing in common, we both want the end to national borders. We anarchist want to see the end of the state and its borders so that we as people can co-operate, function freely in federation with all other people to our mutual benefit. The corporate world wants an end to national borders but only for capital to move freely around the globe exploiting any pool of cheap labour it can find and all for the benefit of that little band of parasites, the shareholders.

The reality is, we don’t need them, we make and distribute everything in this world, we can do so in a much more efficient, equitable, just and sustainable manner if we eliminated the parasites and and got rid of their mantra, profit above all else. They on the other hand do need us to continue to be exploited, so as they can maintain their pampered parasitical existence.

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MARCH FROM A TO B, THEN–!!!!

  

            “They’re laughing at you.”   

            I was at the mass “demonstration and rally” against the cuts, held in Edinburgh on Saturday 23^rd. The figure was put at about 20,000, it was very colourful with lots of banners fluttering in the stiff breeze. As we marched down Princes Street it seemed to be a very sombre, quiet and sedate affair, we could have been following a funeral. At this point a comrade turned to me and in a cynical manner stated, “This will have them shaking in their shoes.”  When was the last time a government in this country changed its policies because of mass demonstrations and rallies? It certainly wasn’t the Iraq war, it went ahead in spite of the largest demonstrations seen in Britain and across the world for many a year. It wasn’t the poll tax, the poll tax disappeared because of civil disobedience, non-payment and grass roots organisation and the marches and rallies turned to riots. Around 11am. on Thursday 21^st. 11 people occupied a large bank in Glasgow city centre and closed the bank for a couple of hours. They left before there were any arrests. Those 11 probably had a greater impact than the 20,000, though the 20,000 gave a lot of police officers some easy overtime payment.

       If you want a government to move in a particular direction then you have to have strategies other than marching from A to B waving your banners and shouting at the selective deaf. Selective targets, boycotts, work to rule, occupying and selective picketing have to be among your weapons, Surprise and unpredictability are the hallmarks of good planning, mass rallies may politicise more people and can be a gauge of the support for a particular idea but are hopeless weapons by themselves if you are trying to implement change.

           If everybody at that demonstration and rally went back to their community and workplace and organised to fight at that level, in federation with other communities and workplaces, it would have a far greater effect than organising another and bigger demonstration and rally in a few months time. The struggle for change has to be every day and everywhere.

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DOCUMENT 8.

 

      Almost a week of sparkling, entertaining, informative, stimulating, provocative, thought provoking, events. A chance to meet up with old associates and meet new friends, create new networks, meet like minded people, or just enjoy yourself. Come along, you’ll never know what you’ve missed if you don’t.

Document 8 :

 *International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival *

26th to 31st October 2010     CCA, Glasgow,   Full Programme: http://documentfilmfestival.org
http://documentfilmfestival.org/

Associated events, include:

Radical Independent Bookfair (RiB) @ Doc8  Full Programme: http://www.ribproject.org     

City Strolls @ RiB
Hang out and chat about what is going on in the city, or what else could
be going on.    http://www.citystrolls.com

Doc8 : a night of agit pop

Thur 28 Oct 2010 : 9pm onwards : CCA Terrace Bar
a frivolously refreshing night of ‘political’ pop
http://www.agitpop.org

Michael Albert @ RiB

“Participatory Economics” (Parecon)
Friday 29th October, 1pm Details: http://www.ppsuk.org.uk/matour/glasgow.html

Doc8,  The Immediate Broth Presents…

Three films interrogating the juncture between the subject,
and an urban environment ever more subordinate to the marketplace.
Neil Gray / Sacha Kahir / Nick e Melville
Saturday 30th October, 1.15pm

PEN Showcase @ Doc8

Readings from Document 8 PEN writing workshops
Allison Miller, Tom Leonard
Sunday 31 October, 8pm

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Roma in Europe

  Roma family in Italy.

   

Read Amnesty International’s  page on the plight of the Roma in Europe and help to see that they are given, at least, the same human rights as the rest of us.   

    The Roma are one of Europe’s oldest and largest ethnic minorities, with an estimated 10 to 12 million Romani people living within the countries of the Council of Europe.

Existing predominantly on the margins of society, Roma are among the most deprived communities in Europe. They suffer massive discrimination and are denied their rights to housing, employment, health care and education. Roma communities are often subject to forced evictions, racist attacks and police ill-treatment.

Amnesty’s work on the rights of Roma forms part of our global Demand Dignity campaign, focussing on the human rights abuses that are a cause and a consequence of poverty.

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YOU CAN’T EAT GUNS!!!

 

        Most people agree with aid to poorer countries, They hold the belief that their tax money is going to help poor people in those poorer countries. However in most cases this is not the case, invariably the aid comes with strings attached. There are usually conditions that a large proportion of the aid is spent on buying goods and/or services from the donor country. In other words your tax money goes through a loop and into the pockets of the corporate world. One example is the “aid” package recently sign by Obama which gives Israel $3 billion in “aid” this year 2010, and a further $30 billion over the next ten years. That’s a lot of tax payers money, perhaps the Israeli government will spend it improving the lot of the poorer Arab Israelis or perhaps trying to improve relations with the Palestinian people. There are of course a few strings attached, the “aid” package is conditional on them spending 75% of the amount on military hardware from the United States. Then again there is America’s strategic protection of Saudi Arabia, that is linked to recent $60 billion sale of aircraft, benefiting, not the people of Saudi Arabia, but USA defence manufacturers in some 44 states with approximately 77,000 jobs involved.

         Hence Hilary Clinton’s anxiety about the UK defence cuts and especially the replacement of the Trident nuclear “deterrent”, as the warheads would be purchased in American and the servicing would also be done there. So a large slice of the £80 billion of tax payers money that would be required for this project would eventually end up in the coffers of the American arms industry. Now we can’t jeopardise that flow of tax payers money slurping its way into the the rich parasites pockets, can we? We subsidise the corporate world at every turn, we bail out the gambling bank casinos and we give tax payers money to the arms industry, yep, war is big business.

ann arky’s home.

HE’S COMING TO GET YOU!!!

       On 20th October millionaire Osborne, one of the millionaire cabal at the Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption, will spell out his hatchet job. We will know then just where and how viciously the chopping will be done. We already have pieces of the slaughter out in the open, social housing budget, hacked by app.80%, family allowance stops at 16, discouraging the poorer section of our society from continuing their education after that date. By some estimates, 500,000 public sector jobs to go and approximately the same from the private sector. Housing benefit cut, forcing some families onto the street, and so it goes on. This an attack on all sections of the working class with the poorest taking the hardest hit.

       All this is supposed to make us fell better in the long run, tell that to those thrown onto the scrap heap of poverty and unemployment. Tell that to the kids of those families as they grow up to find that further education is not for them and a job is a slim possibility. However, the financial sector is happy and the bond markets are happy and of course that’s where our millionaire cabal’s friends hang out ripping off all and sundry as they privatize everything in sight.

          The biggest and most blatant grab for all public assets by the corporate world since the start of the welfare state. These cuts will see the end of councils and government providing services. All will be delivered by the corporate greed machine as it squeezes everything to drain the last drop of profit from everything and anything. You will now find yourself at the mercy of the profit grabbers, if you can’t provide them with profit you will be excluded. In their world money talks and that is the only language they understand, no compassion,  no mutual aid, no seeing to the needy, no co-operation for mutual benefit, no caring society, pay up or get out.

        Welcome to the 21st, century Victorian Britain, if you are in need and don’t have much money, then just hope that there is a charity in your area that handles your sort of problem. Or organise to take control of your communities, take control of your workplaces. Just remember, they need you, you don’t need them.

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WE’RE BANKSTERS, WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING LAWS.

  

    I just love that image, it encapsulates the banking sector perfectly. We have just handed them billions of pounds to save them going bust and now we find they are ripping off the borrowers big time in a downright open fraud. The following article gives you some insight to the fraudulent plunder of the public by the gangsters in suits in the city. Do we need these parasites?

By Zack Carter, Media Consortium blogger

A massive foreclosure fraud scandal is rocking the U.S. mortgage market. Wall Street banks and their lawyers are fabricating documents, forging signatures and lying to judges—all to exploit troubled borrowers with enormous, illegal fees, and in some cases, improperly foreclose on borrowers who haven’t missed any payments.

The fraud is so widespread that it could put some big banks out of business and even spark another financial collapse. Fortunately, things haven’t fallen apart just yet. With strong leadership from President Barack Obama and Congress, the government can help keep troubled borrowers in their homes and prevent another meltdown.

Read the full article HERE.

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PERCHANCE TO DREAM!!

Another wee gem from the archives, this time it’s Bread and Roses September 1978. This must be every Animal Liberation supporters dream. 

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YESTERDAY IS BACK!!

Just another wee bit of evidence showing that today’s “austerity cuts” are nothing new. It’s the same old new crap. Again I dive into history via Bread and Roses September 1978.

For more on Glasgow’s working class  history look HERE. 

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WORKERS, KNOW YOUR HISTORY!!!

I keep repeating my pet little mantra, Workers, know your history or repeat yesterday. No doubt there will be lots of people out there thinking that this cuts thing, is something new, a blip in the wonderful efficient capitalist system. However if you look at history you’ll see that it is the normal partern for this type of society. What gains the workers have won over the years by many and long struggles soaked in blood, sweat and tears have always to be defended as the system attempts to take everything back to feed the parasites at the top of this stinking system. What is happening now, cuts and increasing un-employment is just the system doing its thing, yesterday happening again, simply because we haven’t learnt from the past, we have forgotten our history so we repeat yesterday.

   To make my point I have taken a cartoon from an old newspaper, not any old newspaper, but one worth reading. It is from a 1978 Bread and Roses paper. 

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ALL THEY THINK OF IS MONEY!!!

     Cartoon from Black Flag Vol. VII No.6 1984. 

       Recently an old friend gave me some 1970/80s back numbers of the wonderful magazine Black Flag. What surprised me most was that nothing seems to have changed and what was being said then is still relevant today. There was the struggles against cuts, the miners fight to keep their jobs and their communities. Today its still the cuts and the dole, cuts in all aspects of the social fabric of our society and public service workers, among others, fighting to keep their jobs. The parties come and go, the new leaders come into favour and fall out of favour, the people always have to struggle to try to hold onto what they have. The system never changes, wealth is created and moves up the syphon to the elite pampered parasites who control the levers.

      While our millionaire masters wallow in unearned wealth, they preach to us, the lesser beings, about having to make sacrifices. They can stand in front of a live audience, and with a serious face and not a hint of bushing with shame, can spout such crap as “We are all in this together.” “We have to make difficult choices.” “We all have to make sarifices.” Not one of those with this master plane of cuts and sacrifices will in any way be affected by their legislation. They are the propaganda masters of the corporate world, they weave the illusion of having common ground with the ordinary people. Let’s make it clear, there is no common ground between the pampered parasitical emlpoyers and the struggling ordinary people.  They want you to work as long as possible, as hard as possible for as little as possible and pay them for everything you’ll ever need or want, at a profit to them of course. We want a fair, just and decent society that sees to the needs of all our people based on mutual aid and sustainability. Tell me, where is the common ground? We are diametrically opposed, for our vision of society to become a reality we have to get rid of the opposing view that people are there for exploiting and creating wealth for shareholders. It is their world, or it is our world, it can’t be both. Which do you want?

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BEYOND VOTING.

        

        With massive strikes and demonstrations likely to esculate in the coming months perhaps the general public should be looking at what next. What lies beyond this stinking corrupt system of corporate capitalism, what alternatives do we have to the equally corrupt representative “democracy”  How can we change the world forever in our favour?

The following is an extract from Ken Knabb’s ” The Joy of Revolution.”

 

          “In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates’ stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues — apart from the feeble threat of changing one’s vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in “democratic” regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don’t even know who they are…. “

Read the full article here;

 http://www.bopsecrets.org/recent/beyond-voting.htm

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