Our Streets.

      While the propaganda machine of the Western capitalist system tries to portray a picture of a system working just fine, with everybody diligently enjoying the possibility of getting richer or perhaps becoming a celebrity, beneath this smoke and mirrors and facade of illusions, the people are on the streets in vast numbers trying to break the hold this system has over our lives.

      From Chile to France, from Ecuador to Lebanon, from Iraq to Sudan, the system is under attack by the ordinary people, calling, enough is enough. This is the time the various states unleash their guard dogs, those vicious psychopaths in police and military style uniforms, to beat, terrorise and intimidate the population, to get them back in line and subserviently accept their exploitation. However, it is getting harder and harder as the people gain in solidarity and lose their fear of the system's various control features.

      This from Catalonia, just another area where people are struggling for real change.

         The film is showing in London on the 6th. February, and Edinburgh on the 26th. February. Let's try to bring this film to Glasgow.

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

Colourful Police In Brutal Attack.

 

       Protestors always come up with imaginative ways in getting their point across, in a wonderful array of colourful variations. Of course the police can only respond in one predictable manner, brutal violence. No matter where the police meet protestors, from Nepal to New York, Kazakhstan to Catalonia, the pattern is the same brute force, the shape of modern democrcy.

This from Roar Magazine, thanks Loam for the link:

     Pro-independence protestors and antifa activists clashed with Catalan police at a rally to oppose a manifestation organized by JUSTAPOL (Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil Union) in support of the operation against last year’s referendum on Catalonian independence.

And more on how democracy works in Europe:

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Transformation From A State To A State!!

 

         What we are witnessing in Spain is the state bludgeoning of any area, territory, that wishes to remove itself from its authority. The state's survival depends on complete control over its fiefdom, it will not accept lightly any eroding of that fiefdom. What we are not seeing is a different entity being born, but just another state under the same yolk of capitalism and exploitation, a shifting of power between elites, not the emancipation of the people. In the new "Republic of Catalonia" workers exploitation will continue, power and wealth will still call the shots and cream of more and more from the efforts of the workers. The King is dead, long live the King, well the state is dead, long live the state, and so the sorry mess continues.

This from arrezafe: (not the best translation, but you get the meaning)

 Joint Statement CGT, CNT and Solidaridad Obrera on the situation in Catalonia

        The undersigned organizations, unions at state level, we share our concern about the situation in Catalonia, by the repression the state unleashed by the loss of rights and freedoms that this entails and will assume and the rise of a rancid nationalism It is appearing again in much of the state.
       We defend the emancipation of all working people of Catalonia and the rest of the world. Perhaps, in this context, it is necessary to remember that we do not understand the right to self-determination in statist key, as proclaimed nationalist parties and organizations, but as the right to self-management of our class in a given territory. Thus understood, self-determination spends more for control of production and consumption by workers and direct democracy from the bottom up, organized according to the federalist principles, the establishment of a new frontier or creating a new state. As internationalists, we understand that solidarity among working people should not be confined to state boundaries,
      What does seem very disturbing is the reaction that is being experienced in many parts of the rest of the state, with the exaltation of a rancid españolismo, more reminiscent of the past, cheered from the media and in tune with the authoritarian drift government, patent following the imprisonment of people for convening acts of disobedience or Article 155 of the Constitution. We are aware that this nationalist outbreak lays the foundation for further cuts of rights and freedoms, against which we must prevent. Sultry unit called "democratic forces" in justifying repression, portends a bleak picture for all future disagreements. It seems that the post-Franco regime that governs us for 40 years, close ranks to ensure its continuity.
        Such a regime that has existed and exists in both Catalonia and the rest of the Spanish State feels that their own survival is at stake. Widely questioned and plunged into a deep crisis of legitimacy, it is alarmed by how you build up the fronts. The threat to the territorial integrity of the state adds to corruption scandals, the discrediting of the monarchy, the question of bailouts and cuts that have been applied to the population, discontent with slavery in the workplace derived latest labor reforms, by lengthening the retirement age and economic Deduction of pensions, etc ... the constant calls to defend the Constitution should be understood as touches the tocsin to tackle this real existential crisis besetting. The danger is that in the process and sanction repressive rule as those seen recently in many Catalan cities behaviors become. Or worse ...
        Obviously, we do not know in which direction the events will choose. We remain attentive to what happens, willing to defend the interests of working people throughout the state. We will oppose with all our strength to repression and normalization of far-right attitudes, already perceived. Of course, let us not use the strategies of political parties whose objectives are foreign to us. At the same time, we will not stop encouraging the mobilization of the working class when it decides, by fi that it's time to shake off the dictation of a political and economic elites that take too much time managing control of the territory to serve, exclusively, their own interests.
          As combative class unions, libertarian and we will be at street level, in the mobilizations, as we have demonstrated on many occasions, against repression, cuts rights and freedoms and corruption.
        Perhaps the crisis Catalunya is the lace of a dying state model. Decant this change in one way or another depend on our ability, as a class, to take the process in the opposite direction to the repression and the rise of nationalisms. Trust make the end result more freedoms and rights, and not vice versa. We played a lot.


By RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS!
AGAINST REPRESSION the working classes!
CGT - CNT - Workers Solidarity

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From The Streets Of Catalonia.

          The stories are many and varied on what went on in Catalonia when the state's bully-boys, the police, started their crack-down on the voting in the Catalonia referendum. To get a full span of the police violence, here are a collection of videos from the streets of Catalonia. Again, I'm not putting my voice behind the nationalism in this case, but highlighting how the state behaves when its people do something it doesn't like. Thanks Loam for the link.

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

The Puppeteer And The Populace.

         When political scenes bubble up to large protests and uprisings, it is difficult to grasp the truth of the situation, mainly due to the propaganda and vested interested vomit, the flows from our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media. Of course this is what is happening in Spain at the moment, protests must be smothered or at least controlled, and must never become a threat to the existing power of the established power elite. This is in no way me throwing my voice behind the nationalist ideology, which is just the restructuring of a new state, a shifting of an imaginary border and a re-adjustment between the power elites. Nationalism can never be the road to the desired emancipation of all people.

      So to understand why the Spanish state is now openly displaying its true fascists colours, by dissolving a functioning parliament and forcing direct rule, you have to follow different threads. 

       This thread from Tarcoteca is very informative. I particularly like the metaphor of the puppeteer and his two puppets. This could equally apply to any developed world state. Democrat and Republican, Labour and Tory, etc. keeping the populace all baying for their particular puppet, but leaving the puppeteer to dictate the story line.

          And here is where we find the great metaphor of what the Regime’s reality is. Its authentic nature.

             Before us, the look of the left wing and the right side politically confronted, reflected in two masses TV channels apparently ideologically opposed which belong to the same Elites of the Regime.

         The best way to visualise it is imagining a puppeteer entertaining us with fights and confrontations between two puppets, one in each hand. And underneath the puppet theatre, a group of children shouting (us the population) submitted and stupefied masses standing up for one or another puppet, the ‘blue’ or the ‘red’.

The puppeteer doesn’t mind the children shrieks, neither which of the puppets have to win at ‘today’s function.’ The puppets and the puppet theatre are his belongings and this is the only thing that matters.

        In fact, seen that the children have begun to get bored of the ‘blue’ and the ‘red’ puppets, the puppeteer created two new puppets: the ‘orange’ and the ‘purple’. Within the Spanish reality, those two new puppets are the new political phenomena parties: Ciudadanos and Podemos whose their only task is to keep the function going and continue entertaining the stupefied masses.

        Either Ciudadanos and Podemos were launched at TV channels and media property of the Regime Elites. Do not doubt about both puppets being created to perform a specific role-play.
        Basically, Ciudadanos is in charge of accelerating the repressive timings of the Regime as well as helping to reinforce and support it. While Podemos focused on gathering all the unhappy ‘revolutionaries,’ to make them waste time on an endless blah, blah, blah. Preventing them from tearing down the Regime under the promise if people vote them (during the next polls in few years’ time) when they reach power (so never) they will change everything.

        Therefore, it doesn’t matter which puppet children stand for the red, blue, orange or purple. They all speak through the puppeteer’s mouth and comply with the mandate’s roleplay…

      Here is where the Popular Rebellion we are living in Catalonia comes into context. The independence process changes everything because it doesn’t circumscribe at the fake democratic conflict but it directly attacks the Regime’s existence.

      We will see it clearly if we continue with the puppeteer and the puppet theatre metaphor. It turns out that suddenly, in the middle of the play of this puppet theatre, a rebel child has stood up and said: ‘I am fed up with this puppet show; I want to leave and play with a ball.’

      Damn child!

He is not supporting any puppet… he wants to leave! This is what Catalans did when they said that they liked to vote to decide their future. They have warned that they are keen to stand up and leave the function because they are fed up with the pantomime and the bloody puppets. They are fed up with the Regime.

           What has the answer of the puppeteer been?

         So, we have all seen it: facing the child’s protest both puppets, the red and the blue, gave up the ridiculous role of fighting between them and have started to insult the child, to ridicule him in front of other children trying to get his colleagues to oblige him to sit back and continue watching the play.

          Above everything else the most important is to prevent this rebel and insolent child from standing up and going to play with the ball; as others could go with him and the puppet show would finish. The control among children would be over, therefore, the business too. The Regime would come to grief and it would blow away all the bloodsuckers that live in it.

         In fact, this puppeteer sees his business at risk and has converted his puppets in fists and angered left the puppet theatre going after the impertinent child forcing and obliging him to stay.

        This is EXACTLY what is happening in Spain at the moment. And that is EXACTLY what the media at the Regime service did. All of the sudden, they have stopped being ‘left wing’ or ‘right wing’ and they have started to work in unison saying the same things about what is occurring in Catalonia, spreading the same insults, manipulations and lies.------

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Glasgow Stands With Catalunya Against Police Brutality.

     A couple of days late with this post, but still worth displaying. Glasgow shows its solidarity with the people of Catalonia who sufferer some of the worst police brutality seen in Europe for a considerable time.

       Solidarity banner drop today in Glasgow, in support of the October 3rd General Strike called by the CGT, CNT and many other anarcho-syndicalist unions in Catalonia protesting police violence and repression. The text reads: "GLASGOW STANDS WITH CATALUNYA AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE. SUPPORT THE OCTOBER 3RD GENERAL STRIKE." ¡Vamos!

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

Choose Only From The List.

        A vision of how representative democracy works in modern civilised Europe, where people are free to choose. As long as you choose from the offered box of sweeties. Don't try to choose from anything outside the state's offered box. To draw up a choice list of your own is considered a crime, and your chosen list will be brutally erased. To expect anything different is to be blind to history, the story is all there, written in the blood of ordinary people who have decided they want a different choice. The state is an antithesis of freedom, you choose one or the other, you can't have both. 

This video was lifted from arrezafe. 

A wonderful response from the people to the state's brutality.

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

It Is How The Beast Behaves.

 

      Why the anger at the Spanish state? It is behaving just as states usually behave, name a state that doesn't have its gangs of black clad bully-boys with their padded shin guards, elbow pads, protective helmets and long batons, backed up by another gang who have rubber bullets and live ammunition? Name a state that hasn't used these thugs against its own unarmed citizens? The Spanish state is just showing its true colours, after all the sanctity of the state was being attacked by young and elderly, armed with pencils and paper.

      How often have we seen from a multiplicity of media outlets and personal experience, this sort of state behaviour across the globe, but somehow there is always shock and horror when it happens. We should expect it, that's what the state's armed thugs are there for, to make sure that the people know their place, the citizens must behave as subservient sheep. Start to act collectively to shape your society and you will always feel the wrath of the state.

        Instead of criticising the Spanish state we should be looking at how to free our minds from the concept of a state, how to organise our society by means of the people taking control and shaping their communities, and society in general, to meet their needs and desires. As long as we participate in the charade of representative democracy, with its political parties, abdicating our own power to a handful of over paid political ballerinas, with their vested interests, we will see these scenes recur time and time again. Every time the people say the have had enough, the state will come down with the full compliment of its brute force apparatus. That's what it is there for, to keep you accepting your servitude.

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

Workers, Remember Your History, The State Is Brutal.

      Today, July 25th marks the 106 anniversary of a week of brutal repression and bloodshed in Barcelona. July 25th. 1909 was the start of a week when the Spanish army took to the streets against its own people and with vicious brutality, put done a wave of anger and discontent in the city, similar attacks on the people took place in other cities across Catalonia. It became know as the "Tragic Week". We should always remember, the state, Spanish or any other, will have no hesitation of killing its own people when ever it feels that its power is threatened. It has happened time and time again in country after country.

This from wikipedia:

      Tragic Week (in Catalan la Setmana Tràgica, in Spanish la Semana Trágica) (25 July – 2 August 1909) is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the Spanish army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia (Spain), backed by anarchists, socialists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909. It was caused by the calling-up of reserve troops by Prime Minister Antonio Maura to be sent as reinforcements when Spain renewed military-colonial activity in Morocco on 9 July, in what is known as the Second Rif War.

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Workers Know Your History, Angel Pestana.

      A life dedicated to the cause of the ordinary people, one of our own, Angel Pestana Nunez, born in poverty in Ponferrada, Spain, on Feb 14, 1886, he was politically active throughout his life. At the age of 15 he was imprisoned for his part in a political rally. After travelling to North Africa and France, he settled in Catalonia and became involved in the local anarchist group. In 1918 he became editor in chief of the newspaper Solidaridad Obrera. During his editorship the paper ran a powerful campaign against the local police force. In April 1919 after Catalonia was subject to massive protests, he was detained and the paper banned. On returning from a visit to Russia he was again detained. Pestana was also victim to an assassination attempt by the Spanish authorities, while giving a speech in Manresa. In October 1936, with the start of the Spanish Civil War, he was appointed general sub-commissioner for war, but resigned shortly after this due to ill health, he died December 11, 1936. 

 

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AN ANARCHIST LIFE.

     It is always important to keep alive the deeds and names of anarchists who have lived their life with honesty and a dedication to the principles of anarchy. They make our history something to be very proud of and worth broadcasting far and wide. From them our generation and those that follow can draw inspiration and they add to the richness that is anarchism. For those interested in the lives of anarchists, past and present the DVD of the life of Umberto Tommasino is now available at: An Anarchist Life.

      A documentary film on the life of Umberto Tommasini, an anarchist blacksmith, born in Trieste in 1896, then moved to Vivaro and then back to Trieste, he crossed the 20th century, through revolutions, wars, social struggles with an enthusiasm and a vitalism unique and fascinating. Between Italy, Paris, Spain, the fascist confine, the Catalan revolution, the 68 movements and beyond, a story collected in the book of Claudio Venza and Clara Germani "The Triestine anarchist" now to be republished by Odradek with a presentation of Claudio Magris. An incredible man, from the book you have the impression of vitalism and such a strong irony, a human approach to all issues, and a contagious enthusiasm.
       We will enjoy to cross the 20th century and Europe accompanied by this humble man, that partecipated directly to the making of history, facing the Big Characters of European History with an anarchist attitude, as equal (Gramsci, Di Vittorio, Vidali and so on..) as a simple and direct human being, that risks, gets into action with no compromises, keeping alive his enthusiasm and coherence.
      The reasons to make this film are many, maybe one is to tell about what was the partecipation in politics in the 20th century, not only the image of negativity of the ideological clash and violence that today's post ideologic ideology tries to present us. It will be a film on what we lost and why.

Excerpt from:  Produzioni dal Basso:

ann arky's home.

FIRST THE AUSTERITY, THEN THE REPRESSION.

          Although the mainstream media fail to report the continuous and mass protests across Europe, doesn't mean that it is not happening. In cities across the continent people are on the streets showing their anger at the plunder of all public assets and the resultant poverty being heaped on ordinary families. The millionaire managers of the financial Mafia system, (the elected governments), are looking at ways of forcefully repressing any attempt by the people to change the system. There line of attack will be, first by trying to conceal the fact that ordinary people are taking to the streets and secondly by passing ever more draconian legislation, on the pretext that it is only hooligans and trouble makers trying to disrupt our “smooth running and fair society”. Also to try to put fear into the minds of those angry groups, hoping they'll all sit at home and watch the Olympics or some other money making con-trick. As things get worse, as they inevitably will, the powers that be will never be able to contain the anger of the people, they have more to lose than we have.

        This from Vast Minority:

         NEOLIBERALS are beginning to panic in the face of growing global resistance to their brutal and corrupt system. The illusion of democracy and 'government by consent' is evaporating in a heated spiral of popular defiance and increased repression. Opposition is thus becoming deeper and more radical, as the obvious impossibility of reform opens a new generation's eyes to the necessity of revolution.

          One example of this process is Spain, where the state has announced a package of draconian new laws to criminalise dissent. Jorge Fernandez Diaz, the interior minister, said "serious disturbances of public order and intent to organise violent demonstrations through means such as social networking" would carry the same penalty as involvement in a criminal organisation under the new reform. He also said that the measures would extend authorities' powers to deal with passive resistance as contempt of court.

         The measures would make it "an offence to breach authority using mass active or passive resistance against security forces and to include as a crime of assault any threatening or intimidating behaviour," he said in Congress. In addition attempts to disrupt public services such as transportation would also be made a crime. During the recent general strike picketers blockaded bus and train stations in an attempt to bring transportation to a halt. "New measures are needed to combat the spiral of violence practised by 'anti-system' groups using urban guerrilla warfare," the Interior Ministry clarified in a later statement. Catalonian interior minister Felip Puig has said he wants the new laws to "make people more frightened of the system" - a clear admission of the direction the neoliberal establishment is now heading.

Read the whole article:

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AN ANNIVERSARY, MARCH 10th.

        Through out their history anarchists have been despised and persecuted by the state and employers alike. We could fill a very large telephone directory of those who have suffered at the hands of this particular authoritarian duo. From blacklisted to beaten, executed and assassinated the anarchists have had it all flung at them. It is not difficult to understand why this brutal onslaught should be thrown at this particular group of individuals. The last thing that the state or employers want is for people to think for themselves and take control of the society in which they live. In order to protect their wealth and power both these organisations need a subservient populace, anarchism would be the demise of such exploitation. Anarchists are about the complete restructuring of society, the abolition of exploitation, an end to power over anyone, and the creation of a society that sees to the needs of all our people. It is no wonder that the powers that be in the state and the corporate world will do everything in their power to dirty the image of, and destroy anything associated with, the words anarchist and anarchism.  

       However, we anarchist still have a lot to celebrate, in spite of the phony propaganda and the violence against us, we are still here, but we should always remember those events that have tried to prevent that being the case.

March 10th, From Wikipedia:

Salvador Segui.(centre)

 

Salvador Seguí (Tornabous, Lleida Province 1886 – Barcelona, 1923), known as El noi del sucre ("the sugar boy") for his habit of eating the sugar cubes served him with his coffee, was a Catalan anarcho-syndicalist in the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions active in Catalonia. Together with Ángel Pestaña, Seguí opposed the paramilitary actions advocated and carried out by other members of the CNT.^[1] On March 10, 1923, while completing preparations to promote the idea of emancipation as a form of social empowerment among workers, he was assassinated by gunshot on Carrer de la Cadena, in Barcelona's Raval District, at the hands of gunmen working for the Catalan employers' organisation under protection of Catalonia's Civil Governor, Martínez Anido.^[2][3] At this same shooting, another anarcho-syndicalist, Francesc Comes, known as Perones, was wounded and was to die several days later.

He has received many tributes since his death, and a foundation has been launched in his memory, the Fundación Salvador Seguí, based in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia.

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CATALONIA1936, NEW WORLD ORDER?

        As the people's anger with the present system of financial apartheid rises to white heat, will we see again what happened in Spain in 1936? Will the workers take control of their environment and work places, will they start to build a society based on the needs of the people? A society of co-operation and mutual aid is in the hearts of all the ordinary people, all we have to do is let it out.

ann arky's home.