Rojava.

          In this world in the grips of insanity and savage brutality in the name of power and wealth, it is no surprise that the powers that be turn a blind eye to such atrocities as the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people and seizure of their lands, the Turkish state's war crimes against the people of Rojava. Our media is filled with how bars, restaurants, airlines are suffering because of covid19 and are screaming for tax payers money to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. The destruction of lands and killing of its people doesn't seem to register with their mind set.
       It is up to the ordinary people of this world to take to task the fascist Turkish state the Zionist genocide brigade and their bedfellows, among them all the major states on the planet.
      This call for support from the fighters of Rojava should receive all the solidarity and support we can muster, their dream can be our tomorrow.

The following from Enough is Enough:

 

Originally published by Anarkismo.

        Embargo, cutting off water sources and air strikes against civilians have been some of the war crimes committed by the fascist Turkish state throughout this year against the revolution in Rojava.
       While facing the internal political and economic crisis, the Erdogan government has to accept the failure of the military operations in the mountains of Kurdistan, appealing to the use of chemical weapons, in the face of the resistance of the Kurdish warriors of the revolution.
       The intensification of the attacks last October, the flyers launched from the aeroplanes and the recent troop movements threaten a new invasion of the autonomous territories in the North and East of Syria.
       At this delicate moment, we want to reaffirm our solidarity with our revolutionary comrades and all the peoples of Rojava and condemn once more the occupation of Rojava, the multiple aggressions and war crimes of the Turkish neo-fascist state and its jihadist allies, as well as their preparations for war.
      The Rojava Revolution, which is about to celebrate 10 years, and together with the free Kurdish mountains, represents not only a grassroots democratic and federalist alternative for the Middle East, but for the peoples of the world.
      In this 21st century of economic, social and ecological crisis, in a world transformed into a junta of great powers and capitals for financial speculation; the struggle and creation of projects of a different society have a global strategic role. The Rojava revolution, with its strong roots in the struggle of women, the deepening of democracy with broad popular participation and the protection of the environment, is a revolutionary example of these times from which the peoples of the world must learn.
      It is not a coincidence that since its beginning thousands of people all over the world have risen up in solidarity with the heroic resistance of Kobanê against the fascist forces of ISIS.
      ISIS, a criminal, obscurantist and fascist group, whose creation was facilitated by the disastrous US military intervention in Iraq, the funding and support of Saudi Arabia, and which has the ideological and tactical support of the Turkish state, and whose fighters were recycled as mercenaries for the invasions of Afrin and Serekanyie, and are now preparing to invade Rojava as a paramilitary force of the Turkish army.

Read the full article HERE:

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Croatia.

       As I keep repeating, pick your patch on the planet and you'll find the people, in angry protest at the way the system functions, and those pampered privileged individuals who manage the whole rotten affair. It is only right that information on these protests, uprisings, insurrections, rebellions should be widely known, perhaps encouraging others to take their righteous anger onto the streets and join the resistance to what is a foul, brutal, exploitative system that spawns destitution and wars. This report is from Croatia.

The following is from Anarkismo.net:

      Beating Our Heads Against the Wall – It Was Worth It (2020) is a short documentary film, that depicts a period of anarchist activities in Croatia (2008-2020), with a focus on the regions of Kvarner (Quarnaro/Carnaro) and Istria, but also on a larger scale across Croatia, and other countries such as Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. This document illustrates years of organisation, struggle, and lengthy legal proceedings.
      The photographs and graphics used in this film are from the period between 2008 and 2020. These visuals depict the student occupation of the university, street protests, workers' strikes, and visual propaganda used for various purposes. On the audio track (an interview from 2016), Radio Borba (Eng. Radio Struggle) interviews Eugen Babić after his conviction in a criminal procedure from 2014 onwards. Also included are audio clips of a protest in 2013, after which the police attacked the protesters. In this act of repression, 15 policemen were involved in the apprehension of Eugen Babić, in which others also suffered consequences, including a policeman. The focus of the radio interview is on those events.
     Network of Anarchists takes the credit for the film, commemorating the 4th anniversary of the verdict in Rijeka (2016). The film is meant for those who do not know what happened, those that want to remind themselves of the events, and those that think it’s all over.
October 25th, 2020
Publication Committee of the Network of Anarchists (Croatia)

 

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Anarchy Is For Lovers.

 

     So many people still see anarchism as that unruly individual, hell bent on destruction because they want to do what they want and screw everybody else. This is the picture painted by the pro-establishment mouthpiece the mainstream media, in its determination to maintain the status-quo. 

     Of course anyone who has looked seriously at anarchism knows that this a deliberate fabrication to defile and destroy the only real road to a free society based on co-operation, mutual aid, equality of opportunity, sustainability and peace.

This quote from Anarkismo, puts it better than I could.

**Many people regard anarchism and socialism as contradictory programs. This is based on the conception of "socialism" as state ownership of the economy. Yet historically, anarchists have regarded this program as "state socialism" or "authoritarian socialism." They have rejected such views in favor of "anarchist-socialism" or "libertarian socialism." This concept of anarchism as a variety of socialism remains important today in opposition to pro-capitalist "libertarianism" and to "democratic socialism"--that is, reformist state socialism.**

Read the full article HERE:

      Perhaps we are to blame for not getting the true principles of anarchism across as the accepted view. Taking a leaf out of the capitalist book, propaganda, propaganda, propaganda, we should still be flooding the streets and workplaces with those bits of paper that proclaim anarchy is for lovers. Lovers of humanity, lovers of respect for the individual, lovers of co-operation to our mutual benefit, lovers of mutual aid, lovers of organisng together to solve our problems, lovers of our planet and its sustainability. Who in their right mind would object to joining such a group.  

A Needless Sea Of Tears.  

Though we live in a world of callous commerce 

and know justice

is an altar where the caring are sacrificed,

see freedom as a river that runs parched

in the fierce desert of poverty,

our thoughts cannot be chained

our dreams will not be caged.

We will think beyond the profit race

dream beyond the market place

in friendship clasp each human hand

with compassion try to understand

our differences, our hopes, our fears,

dragging this world from its needless sea of tears.

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The Web Of Illusions Woven Around War.

        Wars and their reasons are probably the most savage and brutal illusions foisted on the people of any and all countries. Wars are always labelled defence of democracy, for liberty, justice, to bring democracy to others, just wars, wars to bring peace. They are never stated to be for the growth of empire, to grow resources and markets, to stifle the growth of competitors in the big corporate battles, to fan patriotism and get the public behind the government. Part and parcel of this system and society of illusions that swamp our minds and blind us to reality.

An interesting excerpt from an article from Anarkismo: 

World War One and 100 Years of Counter-Revolution.

--------FROM THE WAR ON TERROR TO A NEW GREAT UNREST
        Despite the brutality of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, international opposition did deter the US military from bombing people on the scale of the Korean and Vietnam wars. At the same time, however, the US population's reluctance to sacrifice its soldiers compelled the US military to use a level of violence to protect its personnel that only increased opposition to the American presence. Unable to bomb people into submission or to win their support, US defeat was inevitable.
        This defeat later helped to encourage the Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East. Unfortunately, counter-revolutionary repression and civil war have, so far, crushed these uprisings. But the US and other Western governments still need to use troops on the ground to stabilise these counter-revolutions and people’s reluctance to sacrifice any more soldiers makes that an extremely risky proposition. Unable to unite their populations around wars in Iraq, Iran or Syria – let alone the Ukraine – Western politicians are, instead, keen to commemorate the national unity and futile sacrifice of past wars in a desperate attempt to pretend that we really are ‘all in this together’.
        With no concession to any historical truth, Barack Obama has praised the ‘profound sacrifice’ that Allied soldiers made in 1914-18 ‘to fight and die for the freedom we enjoy’. Meanwhile, David Cameron was so fixated on the idea of the sacrifice that British soldiers ‘made for us’ that he used the word ‘sacrifice’ eight times in one commemoration speech. Fortunately, if Britain, with its strong military traditions, cannot tolerate the sacrifice of 179 soldiers in Iraq, then no Western societies are likely to tolerate the sacrifice of vastly greater numbers in any new global war. Nevertheless, the Western ruling class are still hoping that people will agree to sacrifice their living standards in order to compete with workers in Asia and so, somehow, rejuvenate Western capitalism.[13]
       Such a sacrifice, such a ‘race to the bottom’, would be less bloody than the inter-imperialist competition of 1914-18, but no less pointless. As in the early years of the Great War, people will go along with government propaganda for a while but – eventually – they will realise that they are sacrificing their lives for nothing. Then it may only be a matter of time before we see social unrest comparable to that of the Great Unrest. And, this time, our rulers will have serious problems containing any such unrest because there is no easy way to divert people’s energies into war as there was in the Cold War – or in the Great War.
       The British Government’s desperate attempt to revive what Cameron called the ‘national spirit’ by commemorating the monstrous slaughter of 1914-18 is a good opportunity to expose the real history of capitalism and its counter-revolutionary wars. See http://therealww1.wordpress.com for information about future events and for more anti-war articles.

Read the full article HERE:

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More Private, Less Public, Makes Lots Of Money For The Few.

        Sometimes it is worth repeating some things, as the enormity of what an article says is not fully grasped by the general public. Privatisation is sometimes seen as a national decision, and so people lobby their national government about their concerns regarding the privatisation of this or that. However, your national government is obliged to follow the privatisation agenda at the dictate of the international financial Mafia on behalf of the corporate juggernaut. Nothing is safe from privatisation if there is the possibility of profit being made from that entity. Your government will have to follow that dictate or suffer the full power of that international financial Mafia, in several ways. The flight of capital sanctions and other underhand deals to bring the country to heel or abandon it to dire poverty and deprivation for the masses. It is not your government that needs to be addressed, it is the whole stinking system of a world that is driven by profit and greed of the  few at the expense of the many, in a word, it is capitalism that is the problem.

      I posted this 9 years ago, it could be yesterday and it will be tomorrow, unless we address that fundamental problem, capitalism.

Extract from an old article on : http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=3768

      Throughout the world, public services have been under attack for the past twenty years. Forming a central plank of the capitalist globalisation agenda, ‘privatisation’ and ‘competition’ are the seemingly unchallenged dogma of modern capitalism. The levels of privatisation which have taken place worldwide are absolutely mind-blowing. During the 1990s alone over $900 billion worth of public assets were transferred into private hands. Globally this agenda is pushed by the World Bank and the  World Trade Organisation (WTO). The basic theory by which these bodies operate is that all decisions should be made on the basis of profitability alone. Economies in the so-called ‘developing’ world have been carved up under re-structuring deals called Structural Adjustment Programmes which have been like manna from heaven for international business. The World Bank website(1) , for example, “provides information on more than 9,000 privatisation transactions in developing countries from 1988 to 2003”. This information is presented as ‘revenue generating opportunities’ for international capital. The current phase of the WTO’s strategy for the imposition of its privatisation agenda is the General Agreement on Trade in Services – which looks to sell off such basic services as healthcare, education, housing, water supply, waste management etc. This strategy is driven not in the interest of the ordinary people of these countries but by the needs of international capital. As David Hartridge Director, WTO Services Division put it quite succinctly: “Without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector, particularly companies like American Express and Citicorp, there would have been no services agreement and therefore perhaps no Uruguay Round and no WTO.” (2)

      This privatisation agenda has had disastrous consequences for many peoples and communities in the developing world. According to journalist John Pilger,

       “The introduction of school fees where there was previously free education has driven many poor families to withdraw their children from school, while hospital fees have put basic health care beyond the reach of millions. Although they acknowledge the harm which privatisation has brought to poor communities in the Third World, the World Bank and IMF still insist on prescribing it as an economic model. Water privatisation is just one example. The World Bank notes that water in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince costs up to 10 times as much from the private sector as it does from the public supply, and that poor families in Mauritania now have to spend a fifth of their household income on water. Yet both the World Bank and the IMF continue to force water privatisation on developing countries. During 2000 alone, the IMF made water privatisation or full cost recovery a condition of loan agreements to 12 African countries. The World Bank has promised Ghana an extra $100 million in loans if it privatises its water supply.”

       What has changed in the passing 9 years, just more privatisation and less public assets and public spaces. So it will continue, until we remove the basic cause of most of our problems across the world, remove capitalism root and branch.

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Hail The New Messiah.

      The following is an extract from an article written for anarkismo.net 

 

 

  -----To many liberals, progressives, unionists, activists of various just causes, Democrats of all stripes, democratic socialists, and concerned citizens, the problem the U.S. is facing is essentially that Donald J. Trump is president, and is backed by the Republican Party. I disagree with this widespread belief.
      It is likely that Trump will be removed from office in the next two years, whether by impeachment (unlikely due to the Senate Republicans) or by national elections (probably but not certainly). Liberals, progressives, etc., look forward to this as a glorious day. The sun will come out from behind the darkling clouds, little birds will sing again, the miasma of evil and stupidity will lift from the land, and all will be well again. Things will finally go back to “normal.”
      Alas, I do not think that things will be “normal” ever again. I too long to see the vile Trump gone. I am not cynical and have hopes for the future. Yet I do not see the replacement of Trump by a Democrat or other establishment politician as the coming of a glorious new day.-----

      Sadly this train of thought is not peculiar to the US, it is alive and well in most of what is misnamed as, "Western democracies". The thought goes, if only we could get rid of May and get Corbyn on the throne, everything would be back to the good old Halcyon days of ever lasting summers. Every so often, in an attempt to sooth their anger and dissatisfaction, the peasants are allowed to choose a new "leader". The failure of the present one has become unbearable, so to keep the system going, we are allowed to usher in a new Messiah. Blair's New Labour, Tsipras's Syriza, or what ever, but some how the dark clouds return. You would think by now we would have realised that we have changed the Messiah every five years or so for centuries but our problems are still there. By now we should realise it doesn't matter who the hell we stick on the throne, they end up shafting us. Forget the adoration of a new Messiah, forget the need to have some throne from which wisdom, justice, equality and freedom will flow. If we wish to solve our problems we will have to do it by ourselves, by coming together in communities and workplaces and taking control. We can shape our lives all by our selves, we are best placed to see what our needs are and how best to see to them. We have to ignore the "representative democracy" evangelicals who with a sack full of phony promises, are calling for you to put them in a comfortable, well paid job, where they can tell you what to do. Anarchism offers the tool that can solve most of our problems, all we have to do is become aware of the tool and learn to use it with ever increasing confidence.  

   

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The Liars And Cheats Competition.

 

          The Western electoral system of "representative democracy" is sold as a system where the people are in control and decide who should run the country, However it is a system that the rich and powerful bunch of parasites, love and endorse, why? Simple because it creates that illusion of people controlling their destiny, and in no way changes who is actually in control. Elections are merely a platform for the various factions within the power mongers club, on what little variations they wish to make in their carving up the wealth of the country. A slight shift in power from one bunch of over privileged parasites to another, without the need for blood. What is more, the wealth they are slicing and dicing to their own particular advantage, is a wealth that is totally created by the individuals that vote and support the illusion, and have no real say on how that wealth should be divided. Elections are nothing more than a liars and cheats competition, the group that can convincingly spout the greatest lie, is usually the group that gets the bosses seat, until the next election charade. 

         An extract from an interesting article on the American election from Anarkismo.net:

       In demonstrations across the United States, protesters have raised signs saying, “Not My President!” Obviously they are not denying that state machinery has given Donald J. Trump the position of head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, ruler of the mightiest and wealthiest state in the world. What they are denying is Trump’s legitimacy for the position, his moral right to claim the presidency.
     Under the capitalist system, electoral democracy serves several purposes. One is that it permits factions of the ruling capitalist elite to struggle over their different programs (based on differing interests) and to make final decisions—without civil wars or establishing a dictatorship (both of which can be costly).
      Another major purpose of capitalist democracy is that it fools the people into thinking that they run the country. It lets them think that they are free people, not subjects of a very rich minority. It distracts them from the fact that the day after an election, most adults go to work (those who have jobs) and take orders from unelected bosses. This goal requires that they see the government as legitimately representing the voters.
      That became an issue even before the end of the campaign. Expecting to lose, Trump insisted that the election was “rigged.” He refused to say whether he would accept the results if he lost. Politicians and pundits, Democrats and Republicans, were aghast! They cried that it was contrary to the whole system to not accept the election results. It was essential to peacefully hand over power. They reminded us how George W. Bush had lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but that the Supreme Court majority had given the election to Bush—and that Gore, as a loyal supporter of the system, had not fought it. Even earlier, Richard Nixon believed that he had lost to John F. Kennedy only because (Nixon told close friends) the Daley machine in Chicago had fraudulently over counted votes for Kennedy. But Nixon did not make a fuss. That was supposedly the American way!

The Rigging of the 2016 U.S. Election

       The most obvious aspect of the unfairness of the 2016 election results is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. She won almost 3 million more votes than Trump. Due to the distribution of the votes, however, she lost in the archaic Electoral College. In the 18th century, this was originally created to be a buffer between the voters and the election of the president, to be a compromise between large and small states, and to strengthen the power of the slave-holders. The distorting influence of the Electoral College is increased by the “winner take all” rules of almost every state, so that Democrats in Texas and Republicans in New York might as well stay home. No other capitalist democracy has such an indirect system; in all others, the “popular vote” is just the “vote.” Despite its obvious injustices, the establishment has never made an effort to alter or abolish the Electoral College.

Continue reading HERE:

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Capitalism, The Juggernaut Of A Corrupt Gambling Casino.

      We all know, or should know, that capitalism is corruption personified, a juggernaut of a gambling casino, a sewer from which the rich and greedy feed off the backs of ordinary people. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, spews out figures about the "markets", trying to cloak them in some form of science and legitimacy. When in fact, the "markets" are just a horde of very rich individuals and institutions, shifting their unearned wealth around the tables of the large gambling casino, in an endeavour to get more unearned plunder, or to re-coup their losses. Of course under the rules of capitalism, while this bunch of parasitic leeches, play their gambling games, millions of ordinary people suffer from these adjustments and shifting of capital.

      Should the "markets" collapse, the plundering pirates of the corporate and financial world lose lots of their unearned booty. However the factories, mines, oilfields, farms and orchards, and all the means of production and distribution would still be there. All we would have to do is take them over, and organise them to cater for the needs of all our people, and create the type of society WE want. We are lead to believe that the "markets" are important to us, so we follow their narrative and share the greedy leeches concerns, this in turn perpetuates the whole stinking system of greed and corruption.

In saying that, here is an interesting article from Anarkismo:

       It was long ago stated that capitalism came into the world dripping in blood and dirt, from every pore, from head to toe. While it has demonstrated that it won’t simply collapse under its own weight, the recent goings-on around the current capitalist crisis have shown that with age it has become even more hideous. Capitalism is now rank with massive state intervention required to simply keep its rotting body moving: through states propping up the financial sector and deepening the colossal attack on the working class.

Fallout from Chinese stock markets

     The goings-on that have once again highlighted capitalism’s depravity, are the turmoil – starting in China – that has occurred over the last few weeks on stock markets; including the underlying causes that led to it, and the actions that the ruling classes have taken since then to try and end it, or at least alleviate it.

Read the full article HERE:

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MARIKANA MASSACRE.

      Although the Marikana massacre hit the headlines in our babbling brook of bullshit, the media, it was soon dropped for other affairs like cabinet re-shuffle and the disability benefit cutting ATOS sponsored paralympics. In South Africa, as far as the general working population is concerned, not much has changed since the days of apartheid. The full horror has still to unfold and what we should never forget, this is not a one of horror, this sort of thing has happened in every country in the world at some point, to a larger or lesser degree. This is how corporate capitalism protects its profits, fear, intimidation and brute force. 

An excellent article from Anarkismo:

      The sight of policemen brutally gunning down striking mineworkers at Marikana was truly galling. At the very least 300 rounds of live ammunition were fired at workers (and not only those seen on TV) by the police using automatic assault rifles in a military style operation [1]: the infamous consequences being 34 workers killed and perhaps as many as 87 injured [2], with some workers still unaccounted for [3]. Most of the workers were also reportedly shot in the back [4] and some executed [5]. To add insult to injury, and with what was clearly some relish, the police arrested 260 workers in the aftermath [6]. This often even involved policemen literally sticking the boot into injured workers. Allegations have also subsequently emerged that 190 of these arrested workers were tortured, some for up to 3 days, whilst being held in surrounding police stations [7]. One worker also claims that he was taken to a room on Lonmin’s property, who owns the mine at Marikana, and handcuffed to a chair and beaten with a rubber pipe by police in a bid to extract information about the ‘leaders’ of the wildcat strike [8]. Not to be outdone in callousness, Lonmin issued an ultimatum that unless the rest of the striking workers returned to work by 7am on the 21st of August disciplinary actions would be taken against them [9]. The strikers though have ignored Lonmin’s threats, and at the time of writing, most remained out on strike [10].

Read the full article HERE:

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