Sixteen years ago, Scottish activists organised demonstrations at Glasgow and Prestwick Airports against their use, as stop off points for CIA prisoner rendition flights.
Members of @The_SSP_, @theSNP and members of the public disgusted at the reports of CIA kidnappings, detainment without legal representation or right, and torture, attended.
In those small, but passionate demonstrations, Scotland showed its disgust at the then Bush /Cheney/Rumsfeld etc administration.. And at the Blair enablers. And drew attention to the world to what was going on here, in our country.
These photos were taken with a cheap, disposible camera, on that dreich day in Prestwick Airport, Ayrshire circa winter 2005.
The Mauritanian is playing on Amazon Prime just now. If you haven't watched the movie, definately do. Its harrowing, angering, and shows what this small
group of people helped expose to the world.
We, Scotland, were... Are... On the side of right.
It's been interesting watching some quite popular left Twitter accounts and some comrades shift in two ways. Way 1- relief at the end of the tories, but organising to fill the vacuum left by a right leaning Labour party or way 2- a kind of capitulation to the beige Brownist/
Blairist nuLabourism. In the second way, I see people who have seen the destruction the tories have meted out over 14 years who are feeling a kind of relief, some of whom seem to be either suffering a kind of Stockholm syndrome as they see no escape from the relentless propaganda
of the liberal left (this happened with many between 1997-2001) or some who weren't that personally effected by the Tory attacks on the working class/most vulnerable people in our society, so are cherry-picking out positives that bolster the propaganda of the profit promoting
Holyrude magazine accepts sponsorship from the ecological catastrophic salmon farming industry; Coca Cola, who as a corporation have been implicated in the murder of Trades unionists in Columbia, and directly profiting from tge apartheid of Israel's occupation Palestine; & US
military (who are engaged in bombing Yemen, for example, and have provided support for Israel during tgeir opperations reulting in genocide in Palestine) tech providers, Leidos; and another company that has been accused of greenwashing. All of these companies get free
some to promote their interests in the magazine.
How can we trust Holyrood magazine to be anything other than a lobby magazine (as it is given free to MSPs?)
Condolences to the friends & family of Allan Armstrong of the Republican Communist Network , Emancipation & Liberation, a founding member of @The_SSP_ & @RIC_Scotland. He was a tireless fighter for socialism & an indefatigable Trades Unionist in the @EISUnion & Scottish
Rank & File Teachers & the Scottish Socialist Teachers Federation. Allan was also the chair of the Lothian Anti-Poll Tax Federation. He has been involved in many campaigns, including the Radical Independence Campaign. He is also the author of two
books, From Davitt to Connolly & The Ghost of James Connolly & many articles.
He was a good man who lived his life to help others.
We are launching a non-party campaign in Rutherglen & Hamilton West highlighting Labour's policies that have indebted our councils (and will for years) and their support for Tory policy/ Brexit etc.
If you'd like to help with funds, check our profile for paypal/kofi. Message us
if you can leaflet or will write to press/articles for us re Labour support for two child cap/bedroom tax/ privatisation/ ppp/pfi etc etc.
Labour are a Westminster First party. Scotland -Rutherglen and Hamilton West -
deserve representation that puts all of us and not bankers, corporations and billionaires first.
"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself..."
"...Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours, and make some other man who was
well able to defend us our King; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in
truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest
This place we congregated for over a decade may be dying. It is certainly being scraped for data... and a ton of companies will be gunning for Msuk as their stocks are hit by "Blue" pretendy accounts.
Personally, Twitter has been a place that has been incredibly
positive. It has been a place where I helped raise thousands of pounds for charities (eg after the Haiti earthquake, I helped a Glasgow charity raise £20k to help rebuild schools in Port au Prince); I led a political team who saturated the site with the left arguments
for Scottish Independence, and both with that team and Ungagged, helped lefties from across the world have their voices heard. We brought together demonstrations at Faslane, George Square, Edinburgh, and helped when the Home Office tried to kidnap new Scots.