Alternatives.

 

          How much longer will it take for humanity to permeate its way through our society. We have legislation making it virtually impossible for refugees to seek refuge when fleeing torture/deprivation/persecution/war and all its violent array of consequences. We have prisons that treat those enmeshed in its tentacles as less than human. We have poverty/homelessness/deprivation in the midst of unimaginable wealth, and still we hear the mantra from those with all the wealth, privileges and power, that this is the only way to run our society. Sooner or later we will all have to stand up and say loud and clear, this is a load of bullshit, there are alternatives that can see to the needs of all our people. No prisons, no persecution, no exploitation.

The following from Act For Freedom Now:

 

         On 24/12, comrade Haris Mantzouridis was discharged from the psychiatric hospital in Dafni and transferred to the Prisoners’ Psychiatric Hospital in Korydallos prison. He was immediately placed in “quarantine”, where he will remain from 4 to 7 days (it is not certain exactly how many).
The conditions there are deplorable, which reflects the general conditions of detention in the prison in the midst of a pandemic. He is kept in a very small room with three other prisoners, and new ones are added every day, which increases the actual chances of catching covid. The window is broken, so it is very cold, the mattresses are ripped, broken glass, blood and excrement on the floor, food is thrown away by all the prisoners, the possibility of communication with his own people is minimal.
         It is obvious that these conditions of detention further aggravate the already shaken mental and physical health of the comrade. We will be back for any further developments.
        No one alone – let there be no one alone in the hands of the State!
Immediate release of comrade Harry Mantzouridis!
Prisoners’ lives matter!
Assembly of Solidarity to the imprisoned, fugitives and persecuted militants
via: athens.indymedia

See also Toby Shone:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk    

UK Fascism.

 

       The state, any state moves inexorably towards fascism, it has no alternative as it seeks total control over its citizens. In the UK the state took a massive step towards fascism when on March 9th 2021 it introduced the The Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill. This single bill hands more power to the police, groups a raft of activities as crimes and introduces harsher sentencing. It is a vice clamp on our right to protest. Those who have the courage to stand up and oppose this curtailing of our democratic rights are being hit hard by the loaded judicial system that will defend and enact this step to fascism.
       In Bristol one such individual is facing a long prison sentence for openly protesting the injustice encapsulated in this legislation. He deserves and needs your support.

       Ryan Roberts’ trial for riot and arson is on the 25-27th October. If convicted he is facing a long sentence. He will be the first defendant to be brought to trial to have plead not guilty for charges relating to the 21st March Kill the Bill demonstration.
       Ryan is calling for solidarity and support
       We will hold a demonstration on October 25th at 8.30am outside Bristol Crown Court. We’d also like people to sit in court from the 25th-27th, to show that Ryan has support!
        On the final day of the trial we will hold a demo at 5pm outside the Crown Court.
        if you’re coming from elsewhere and need accommodation email bristoldefendantsolidarity@riseup.net
        We are also calling for you to do a solidarity banner drop or other action in your local area during October to show your support for Ryan
        Ryan is currently on remand in Bristol Prison. He’d welcome letters of support. Click here to find out how.

Solidarity is strength!
bristolabc 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Anti-Social!!!

          In this society if you don't play by the rules of the pampered privileged class you will probably find yourself at the wrong end of their loaded judicial system and the attendant enforcement apparatus. Try to set up some sort of alternative way of living that doesn't tie you into the consumer cancer that is eating the planet and you you will be labelled anti-social, trouble maker, or criminal. The state and its capitalist consumer model of existence, demands total obedience, and subservience to its rigid rules, that are there to protect the privileged powerful parasite class. That of course should not deter us from always seeking that alternative way to live, free from the capitalist mode of existence, it should open our eyes wider to the destructive, repressive structure of this greed driven state/capitalist economic straight jacket that tries to bind us all to its crippling tutelage. 

The following from Act For Freedom Now.

 

           This is a statement from some squatters in Bristol, who had 4 squats, including 40a Space, Salvation Army mutual aid/social centres and Wonky Arrow Books, a radical library.
 

 

        In the past days, we’ve had our buildings forcibly closed with anti-social behaviour orders, and we’ve been raided by hundreds of riot police. We’ve been beaten, pepper-sprayed, arrested, and sectioned.
       This is an escalation– it hasn’t been like this in the UK in years. Not that this is new. No, we see this as part of a long and brutal history of the repression of marginalised communities, and anyone who shows resistance or alternatives.
        The police and state media will try and paint this as the result of us being ‘anti-social’ – but isn’t it the police who hurt and intimidate us? Who break down the doors; who criminalize and target poor people, people of colour, travelling communities, people who live differently? It is the state and the police that are truly anti-social, at the core of the troubles we face in our lives. 

 

        This is an attempt to intimidate us, to repress mobilization in Bristol (especially around Kill the Bill) and to break down a community that is challenging the police and what they represent. We know that real community makes police obsolete.

 

 Continue Reading HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Police State.

         In towns and cities across the country people are organising "Kill the Bill" protests. This is not about a few lefties protesting, this is about climate change, working conditions, wages, peace movements, equal rights, injustices, corruption, about your right to display your anger or dissatisfaction with the way our country is being run. This is the 2021 poll-tax, it affects everybody and it must be resisted with the same anger and determination that brought down the poll-tax. You and everybody else has the right to protest, it is protest that brought about wage increases, better working conditions, end to slavery, end to child labour in mines and other industries, all real change for the benefit of the ordinary people was brought about by protests, they were never given to the people in a benevolent manner by the system. This bill will kill the right to protests as and when we feel the need, in this society, without protests we are at the mercy of the state and its corporate buddies who will milk the situation for their benefit, all to the detriment of our freedoms and conditions.
      The importance of killing this bill can't be emphasised enough, it puts the public in a straight-jacket and gives free rein to the state, it is the rock solid foundation of the police state. Total control of where you can meet up, how many and what sort of noise you can make, if any, and for how long. Our freedoms in this society are limited enough without taking away the one that has in the past allowed us to make progress in our desire for a free and fair society. Lose that right at your peril. "Kill the Bill", think poll-tax.

 

Leeds: 

 

Manchester:

 

Newcastle:

 

Bristol:

        Let's grow this list, make it cover every city, town and village in the UK. This will be the most important protest in defence of your freedom and your right to public assembly and protest. Kill the Bill, kill the police state.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Unacceptable.

 

         I doubt I have agreed with one word Bumbling Boris ever spoke, until now. I whole heartedly agree with his statement that the scenes of violence witnessed at the "Kill the Bill" protests, in Bristol and Manchester are unacceptable. The sooner that we get those thugs with their helmets, shields and flaying batons, off our streets the better. We then can get on with allowing the people to protest what is obvious a very undemocratic draconian piece of legislation, which is taking us deeper into the controlled police state.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Please Sir!!

          Looking at the Bristol action against the new police powers bill, to me it looked somewhat different from the normal run of protests, violent or otherwise. I don't recall ever seeing crowds battering a police van with police inside and the other police standing back and letting it happen, normally there would have been a charge with batons swinging. The protestors seemed to have a free hand to get things rolling in a particular direction, with lines of police officers standing in well disciplined rows. Of course I wasn't there, so rely on photos and videos and the written word. 

        Could this be the new form of policing in these events, with excellent surveillance and police having a camera on every uniform, plus special police with excellent cameras taking photos continuously and CCTV footage, they can let the damage go on for a while and make few arrests. The bulk of arrests will come from the surveillance information, with a knock on the door in the early hours of the morning, just like a normal police state. Less bad publicity of the police brutality while wrestling people to the ground. The following avalanche of media coverage of the damage will give the media a field day in calling for the need of more police powers to prevent such scenes happening again. The state will hold onto the powers they gave themselves during covid19, they will not relinquish these powers and the new police powers bill is there to increase and cement those powers. The state never willing relinquish power.

Please sir, will you share your millions equally with us all?

 

       I'm not advocating a be nice policy, as I doubt that that would have any effect what so ever. It is obvious that the controllers of the system with their billions in the bank and off-shore, are not going to willing dismantle this corrupt system of inequality and injustice. They will fight tooth and nail to hold on to their wealth, power and privileges. As they adapt their methodology to meet their desires and hold onto power, so we must adapt our methodology in attacking the system which enslaves us. Confrontation with the police is only one aspect of the armoury, the system is so vulnerable in so many ways. However we should have no doubt that to bring down a system so corrupt and ingrained in the minds of so many will take a wider range of tactics other than Bristol.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk      

Up Yours!

      Bristol, is a city with a large content of two  fingers "up yours" attitude to the establishment. I always read with interest and sometimes with a smile on my face, at some of what comes out of that fair city. Long may that spirit flourish and grow. Hopefully it could become infectious and be the next pandemic.

      This latest rendering from that part of our island may not be to everybody's liking, but it does continue that spirit of "up yours", which can be so endearing.

The following from 325

 

PDF: Engaged Combatant (Cover)

PDF: Engaged Combatant (Contents)

This is a collection of poetic ramblings by an anarcho-nihilist hooligan in Bristol, UK.

     Forging some kind of weapon by merger metaphors and poetry from lived experiences, an alternative from quick-fix solutions in the fast lane of instant gratification, stolen and twisted out of meaning, into some spiritual sloganeering which hopefully challenges a life of just material band-aid.

    The author feels like they are tidying up the loose ends in their mind!

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Dangerous Storage And Green Pollution Creating Machines!!!

        It is the height of hypocrisy for the government to talk about being green and then enter into plans to expand airports. Those "men in their amazing flying machines", leave the ground in lots of cases with 200,000 pounds, (weight) of high octane aviation fuel, and as the skim seamlessly through the air they burn most of that before landing, spewing it into the atmosphere. How many planes are in the air at any given time? Yet airport developers make statements like we will be carbon free in such and such a year, while planning to double capacity. Apart from the burning and spewing that poison into the atmosphere, there is the highly dangerous process, in every city that has an airport, of transporting and storing unbelievable volumes of this extremely volatile substance, usually in densely populated areas. Of course this will only get worse as the airport expansion brigade push there planet destroying plans, naturally the plans will all be painted "green".   

This from Act For Freedom Now:

Aviation Fuel Tankers Attacked in Bristol,UK
        In the heart of Easton, next to a school, in a busy residential area
between a well used railway line and a motorway, is enough aviation fuel to cause a major explosion. Aviation fuel contains over 2,000 chemicals. Once ignited it has a much higher BTU (British Thermal Unit) than gasoline and can burn much longer. In Easton, there are 6 white tankers, each 60 foot long.
      We are often labelled “terrorists” but if we were then… boom! bye, bye! Instead, we decided to attack these containers with dark blue paint. In executing this small act of defiance we hope to highlight their existance, and the danger they pose. This prank was also done to add to the current discourse and campaigns around the expansion of Bristol Airport.
      The huge quantity of aviation fuel is kept in case there is ever a
shortage at the airport. The reality is that the existance of these
tankers puts people’s lives at risk everyday, just so that corporations can continue “business as usual” at all costs. If anything was to happen at Bristol Airport, then this fuel would be taken to Filton Airfield. Filton Airfield is currently used by the National Police Air Service to fly the police helicopter (residents of Bristol will be all too familiar with it’s oppressive presence). Filton is also home to a large Airbus Factory, which was occupied in 2018. Airbus supply the Turkish regime with missiles, fighter jet components and other technology.
      The Bristol Cable have previously investigated these connections.
     The ports and docks of Bristol have a long history of profitting from slavery, the military, and, most recently, the distribution of fuel. Q8 Aviation recently celebrated the fact that over 10 million tonnes of aviation fuel had passed through Bristol dock. There is a huge network of pipelines that start in Bristol and were used in so-called ‘World War 2’ to disseminate fuel. The comedian Mark Thomas has commented on the voltality and precarity of this. The pipelines form a network all over this island. Thomas highlighted the use of signs on farm land in the South West to warn against digging (due to the pipelines). These signs are still visible near Avonmouth and the Severn Estuary, and the
pipelines are an accident waiting to happen.
        Bristol Airport has put forward plans for expansion, and wants to double it’s capacity (to 12 million). It has used green wash to legitimise this, publishing a ‘Carbon Roadmap’ which claims it will become “carbon neutral” by 2025.
     The amazon is on fire and we are sleep walking into an unprecedented ecological disater. Claims by any corporation to be “carbon neutral” are a sick joke at the expense of the planet. This is no time for offsetting.
      We are not XR. We ask for nothing, and make no demands. We are accountable only to ourselves. We don’t think that our action will change much, but we hope that it will make people think.
      Solidarity with the Indigenous Mura people in Canutama, Brazil who are fighting the destruction of the Amazon. Also, belated solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners (following the week of action 23rd-30th August), especially Der Drei Von Der Park Bank. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Read of the Month, SchNEWS.

 

        The "Read of the Month"  on our Spirit of Revolt website is a little different this time. It consists of some cartoons and drawings taken from the Anarchist paper, SchNEWS. The paper was produce by Brighton anarchist over a number of years, and ceased publication 2014.
     Some interesting and some amusing, but always with a punch. Spirit of Revolt has a number of issues of SchNEWS in their archive and these are available to view in the Archive Department on the 5th. floor of the Mitchell Library. We will of course be putting them on line at some point, but scanning is a slow process, we have thousands of documents, photos, leaflets, booklets papers and serials etc. to scan and we can always use volunteer scanners, so if you are interest in helping in preserving anarchist, libertarian-socialist history get in touch. info@spiritofrevolt.info

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Down Bristol Way.

Bristol Tattoo Circus 3rd + 4th November 2018 

 

  

         We are excited to say Bristol will be hosting it’s first ever Tattoo Circus this year! Open at 10 both days and stuff going on all day and till late.
 

What’s going down?
       It will be a weekend full of tattoos from local and international artists and will be a chance to bring together folk from tattoo, DIY and anarchist circles. There will also be workshops on prison abolition, stalls, tasty snacks and music throughout the weekend. The principle of a Tattoo Circus is that it is a non-hierarchical, non-competitive and non-commercial event where nobody makes a profit. Everyone involved will be donating their time for free and all money raised will go to Bristol Anarchist Black Cross, a group focused on supporting prisoners and furthering campaigns for prison abolition.
 

History of the Tattoo Circus:
       The first Tattoo Circus happened in Rome in 2007 as a solidarity event, to support the anti-prison struggle and to create a space where tattoo culture and political activism could merge. Since its birth 11 years ago, tattoo artists from all over Europe (Barcelona, London, Thessaloniki, Bern, Athens, Madrid, etc.) have come together to co-create events with the aim of supporting political struggle of various kinds and also celebrating tattoo and DIY culture.

 

More information and full program HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Operation Pandora, UK Version.

 

     Today, Friday, 16 January, is a day of international solidarity with the anarchists in Spain being harassed and arrested by the Spanish government's Operation Pandora. However, like I said, this ideology of repression against anarchists is not confined to Spain. Here in the UK, the anarchist community around the Bristol area is at the receiving end of a UK version of "Operation Pandora". I have no doubt what so ever, that this will spread across the country. The state will always, first try to silence those most vociferous in their critique of this rotten, stinking, unjust system of power and corruption, they are seen as the greatest threat to its monopoly of power and violence. Stand up in solidarity for all those who see this cancer called capitalism as a blight on humanity. Solidarity has no borders.

This from Vice:

       The vast majority of Bristol's anarchist community aren't like this. With their status as queen-and-country-hating tabloid pariahs, few people would be aware of any difference between different anarchist groups. But their methods, goals, and targets differ radically. Groups such as the Anarchist Federation (Afed) and Solidarity Federation (Solfed), which constitute a majority of the scene in the UK are involved in open, public-facing, class-based community work—handing out leaflets, helping workers who go on strike, that kind of thing—rather than acts of fly-by night vandalism.
      But these distinctions don't seem to count for much as far as the police are concerned. Over the past few months, activists from across the anarchist community say the police have been targeting them arbitrarily and indiscriminately. They say individual activists have been harassed, houses raided, workplaces visited, and arrests made without charges.
      The police maintain that they are searching for suspects linked to the IAF, but activists say they are targeting anyone that publicly identifies as an anarchist. And they say it's getting worse by the day. For the last week I've been talking to different members of the anarchist scene in the West Country and the impression I've got is of a community under siege.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Growing Police Repression.

      Recently a group calling themselves the Angry Foxes Cell destroyed a nearly complete police firearms centre in Portishead near Bristol. Since then it appears that the Bristol police, with the help of the babbling brook of bullshit, the media, are branding all activists as extremists, "the enemy within".

This report from The Vast Minority:

     "The police and the state, as always, try to fracture us, they will try to prey on our weaknesses. We stand in unity and solidarity with all those who fight against oppression, capitalism and the state. We must create a culture of mutual aid and solidarity and most importantly: Resistance. We will support each other through whatever the state throws at us because we know that no matter what we will come out stronger."

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

IT'S A GLOBAL STRUGGLE.

     
      Red and black flags waved as a dozen people from the Anarchist Federation, Industrial Workers of the World, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Solidarity Federation and other individuals took part in a picket of the Glasgow premises of Adecco for one hour between 4 and 5pm on Friday 20th January.

      A couple of hundred leaflets were handed out to curious passers-by explaining how Adecco are supplying strike breakers to replace workers on an indefinite strike at the ABB Factory in Cordoba Spain. We also explained how the lower wages and job insecurity encouraged by employment agencies like Adecco worsens conditions for all workers.

      One member of Adecco's staff came out and laughed when we told her why we were there and then had her fag break. 2 other members of staff came out to ask what we were doing and took the leaflet. One falsely claimed that we weren't making it clear that the Adecco strike breaking was in Spain to try to disassociate their office from the dispute. However he did accept they were part of the same company. Placards clearly stated the demands of the strikers in Spain – equal pay for all workers at the ABB Factory in Spain, respect for all ABB and Adecco subcontracted workers, a safe workplace for all workers, ABB and Adecco should talk to the strikers, Adecco should stop providing scabs for strike breaking, sacked strikers should be re-instated by ABB and Adecco collective bargaining rights and job security for all workers. Another placard in Spanish, based on a banner by the strikers union, the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) called for the defence of all jobs.

      The other member of staff called the police. The police turned up to ask what the picket was about and to say the protest was fine as long as we didn't block the entrance and then quickly left. No one crossed the picket line. The police returned a bit later to tell us they had spotted us on Facebook and to repeat what the picket was about!

       A postman calling at neighbouring offices stopped to say even though he wasn't going to Adecco he wouldn't cross a picket line even if it was one man and a dog. He was a Communications Workers Union rep who also trains people in other unions. He took our leaflets to put up on noticeboards at the main Glasgow sorting office in Glasgow. He will also be giving them to Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) members he is currently training through Union Learn at the Tesco Extra in Springburn. A passing teacher also stopped to voice his support. He had been out on November 30th.

        Pickets also took place in Brighton, Bristol and London. Since November 28th there have been numerous solidarity pickets around Spain and one as far away as Chile.  From Mark M.

Updates on the strike at:   http://www.cnt.es/On

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