Showing posts with label Contra Info. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contra Info. Show all posts

Sunday 5 February 2017

The Longest Running Peace Camp In The World.

 
         A couple of days old, but well worth publicising as much as possible. For those who don't know, the Faslane Peace camp, on the shore of Gare Loch, outside the gates of the Faslane nuclear submarine base is the longest running peace camp in the world, 35 years on site protesting, organising and keeping alive the anti-nuclear battle in Scotland. More steam to your elbow.
From Contra Info:
 Faslane, Scotland: 
Lock-on blockade at UK nuke sub base in Scotland:
         On 2nd of February, starting 06.30 AM, five anti-nuclear activists blocked the pleasantly busy morning traffic at the south gate of Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde (yes, they’re still having this monarchy thing going on) in Faslane, Scotland. South Gate is one of the two main entrances to the base and open under a certain schedule: it doesn’t take all that much to clog up their routines. Base staff did its best to direct the traffic to the North Gate, but soon enough the tailback stretched from the North Gate to a distance of over two miles: we climbed on our caravan roofs and tried to cycle down the line to see the end of the traffic jam, but no chance.
         “I can’t believe we still have to protest this shit! It’s a cliché, but true! The struggle against nuke weapons should be as out of fashion as other 80’s monstrosities, but now with the likes of President Trump or Prime Minister Theresa May it seems we’re headed towards a new arms race”, says activist Molly Garfield. “May has stated ‘I think we should defend our country, I think we should play our role in NATO with an independent nuclear deterrent’, so there you go. Nationalism, militarism, WMD’s. Down with all that, I say.”
        The lock-on crew was accompanied by three legal supporters and a photographer. The Ministry of Defence police arrived to the scene in some 20 minutes. Around here, the legal supporters are supposed to have the right to snap photos, feed bananas to protestor’s and observe that the cops at least try to behave. This time MoD’s were having a rotten day. PC 470 (they just like to be identified, don’t they?) tried to bully the photographer off by threatening to “smash that camera if you don’t stop taking photos”, while other simply pushed two observers some 20 metres away, well behind a barrier of uniforms.
       Not that we would’ve minded much. We were busy being amused by their continuous mishaps. At 07:00 AM, the hobby level cutting team from the base arrived, asking for the suitable camera equipment: only to find out their colleagues couldn’t find any. Next thing you knew was that they’ve managed to get a bolt cutter stuck on somebody’s lock-on, unable to continue. Thus, the traffic jam kept building up and road was nowhere close to get cleared before they managed to bring in the actual cutting team. On their arrival, the photographer was also tossed from the scene and view to locked-on activists blocked with police vehicles.
        By 09.20 AM all five activists were arrested and transported to the nearest cop shop. The South Gate was closed for approximately two and a half hours. The action was conducted by hippies from the nearby Faslane Peace Camp: thanks for support, one struggle!
       “On times when taking a stand or expressing one’s opinions gets you ridiculed, labelled as a terrorist or lectured how protesting of any sort is futile, do the bloody opposite. Faslane Peace Camp is rolling on to its 35th year, but seemingly the world leaders and arm dealers are not allowing it to retire any time soon. You could imagine that a nuke sub base would a tricky or dangerous location, but this seems more like a sitting duck for anyone up for a little direct action”, Roxy Newton, another activist, emphasises.
         The action is the second protest to take place within a short time. Both sparked by the revelation of the Royal Navy misfiring of a Trident II D5 ballistic missile from the HMS Vengeance last June and questions surrounding the cover-up of the test results and general madness of nuke weapons. Activists were also keen to express their solidarity with the Put Down the Sword crew who’ve ably demonstrated that for all the hyperbole espoused by polemic, self-professed Christians, the “Thou Shalt Not Kill” ethos remains the central tenet.
       The Faslane Peace Camp is a permanent protest camp dedicated to campaigning and protesting against nuclear weapons and related madness since 1982. The camp, located next to the HMNB Clyde, is celebrating its 35th Anniversary this year, and it’s welcoming all interested individuals to participate the fun and games available. No racism, no homophobia, no sexism: just direct action.

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

Monday 9 January 2017

Greek State's Six Year Old Hostage Released To Relatives.

       An update on the Greek state's treatment of Pola Roupa's six year old child, who was being held in a psychiatric hospital under police guard, after the arrest of the child's parents. It seems that the Greek state has been forced to relent and bring a modicum of humanity into its treatment of this child. You can rest assured that this action was not brought about by the state's compassion, but by the strength of protest, and the fact that the eyes of the world were watching. Of course the state hasn't taken its foul teeth out of the child just yet, the state's henchmen will decide the innocent child's future within six months. We cannot let any state's acts of repression to slip past unnoticed, we must always be vigilant and resist.
 Banner hung by the anarchist squat Utopia A.D. in Komotini, northern Greece: “Six-year-old captive; the hatred is growing; cops–judges–media filth, murderers”
         Today, Sunday January 8th 2017, after a new prosecutor’s order, temporary custody of Lambros-Viktoras Maziotis Roupas was given to the grandmother on his mother’s side, so his captivity in the psychiatric unit(!) of the children’s hospital in Athens was finally terminated. The six-year-old child left the hospital escorted by his first-degree relatives.
        Meanwhile, there were protests by inmates at Koridallos men’s and women’s prisons, Elaionas women’s prison in Thebes, and Trikala prison.
       Revolutionary Struggle members Nikos Maziotis, Pola Roupa and Kostantina Athanasopoulou have interrupted their thirst and hunger strike.
            A court will decide on the final custody of the child within six months.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk



Saturday 10 December 2016

Respect The Feelings Of Bulldozers.

   A little piece from Contra Info proving that bulldozers have feelings.
       In the early hours of December 2nd 2016, in Exarcheia, on the corner of Akadimias and Themistokleous St. a bulldozer at the service of DEI electricity company couldn’t take it anymore and decided to give an end to its automatized routine. Before its self-immolation the poor machine reportedly said:
      “Solidarity with the comrades Siao, Hodey and Maya, recently arrested in Germany for defending the Hambach forest!
      Strength to the anarchist Natalia Collado, imprisoned in Chile because she liberated a Transantiago bus with fire!”
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 28 November 2016

International Protests to Transnational Disaster.

     From Europe to America, the months long opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline is growing, but still needs more of your support. The water protectors are  not only facing the brutal force of a militarised police force, and the national guard, they are now heading into a fierce and bitterly cold winter. There have been a considerable numbers of water protectors injured, some severely, they warrant our strongest solidarity.  As well as actions of solidarity, they need material support to help them survive this two pronged attack.

      If you opposed Keystone XL, then you need to know about Standing Rock. Right now, hundreds of Indigenous activists are peacefully protesting the construction of a crude oil pipeline on ancestral lands, and they need your support.
Continue reading:

And from comrades in Exarchia Square in Athens:


        In the afternoon of November 24th 2016, we dropped a banner in Exarchia Square against the Dakota Access Pipeline, currently under construction in the US. This oil pipeline runs a distance of nearly 1,172 miles, from North Dakota to Illinois, and its cost is estimated to be around 3.7 billion dollars. In its destructive path, this mega-project is causing irreversible damage to territories, rivers and surrounding communities.
      Among the affected areas is also Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, where residents alongside people in solidarity resist the police, forces of the US army, and security guards of the groups assigned to construct the pipeline (Energy Transfer Partners being the main contractor). Repression has been so harsh over the last days, that among the hundreds who were injured there’s also an activist whose hand was amputated because of a concussion grenade fired by cops.
      At the same time, there have been many actions of resistance in various cities across the US and beyond, with rail-track and train blockades, direct actions and symbolic gestures of solidarity.
        We send strength to anarchist comrades and all others who fight in an anti-institutional, anti-hierarchical manner and without mediators against the construction of the pipeline, showing what it really is: one among the tentacles of domination draining the Earth.
       Our opposition to this and any other mega-project of the techno-industrial civilization stems from the conviction that the Earth belong to no one; from our need to defend by all means necessary everything that has remained untamed and wild in this artificialized world. Beyond any rhetoric of “ancestral” or “sacred” lands, we support the particular struggle until the liberation of the entire planet.

AGAINST THE OIL PIPELINE IN DAKOTA
ANATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST STATES, CAPITAL AND DOMINATION
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sunday 30 October 2016

Non Serviam - I Will Not Serve.

 
         Still the brutal struggle for justice continues, since September 9th. the slaves encapsulated within the American corporate prison system, have been in open struggle with their slave masters. There heroic effort demands our solidarity. Prisons on the one hand are the states refuse tips, where they dump individuals that are a nuisance factor to their system, where the dump those surplus to the requirements of the system, but in recent times they have morphed into something even more sinister, they have become large profit making corporate entities, slave camps to be utilised by capital. There is no place for prisons in a free and democratic society.
Warming the heart of freedom.

NON SERVIAM – I WILL NOT SERVE YOU
“Worse than enslavement is getting used to it…” 
       Life in the modern civilized world comprises false representations, false patterns, and false formalities. Formalities that determine our upbringing within a family, our education, our professional career, our relationships, our emotions, our smiles or tears. Patterns that castrate the scope of our perception so that our thoughts are directed onto a moving walkway going only one direction. Representations that disguise the system’s functions and pathogenies so that we see life unfold only on stage, and never wonder what’s hidden backstage. So, the thousands of suicides of desperate debtors is just another statistic among the unpleasant consequences of the economic crisis, the impoverishment of the so-called third world is just an unfortunate fact, and its wounds will heal by charity organizations, the countless dead of modern crusades, the unfortunate victims of the absurdity of war, and the convict slaves in American prisons are simply antisocial elements that provide social services to Democracy.
      Prison itself is exile from life; a non-place and non-time behind the screen of a decent society, to make the ugliness that bothers the eyes of reputable citizens unseeable. Prisons are a proof of the perverse intelligence of authoritarian minds. They’re built onto walls echoing the screaming and weeping of thousands of people who’ve learned to sleep with anguish and despair. Prison is the country of captivity, the country where one learns to kneel before the “Forbidden”, a landfill for the disposal of human waste, an industrial dump where the social machine’s hazardous waste ends up. For most people, however, for all those who never learned to doubt, to question, to look beyond the obvious, prison is a security wall necessary to protect their peaceful and quiet life.
      It’s certainly hypocritical on the part of a society to display the supremacy of its democratic civilization, its humanitarian values and social sensitivities so vulgarly, when those deemed unfit to exist within the same society are piled up in souls’ warehouses. But it’s infinitely more hypocritical, and infuriating at the same time, to turn these imprisoned existences, these living dead, into a marketable value through a modern and sophisticated slave trade.
      Yet this is the reality for nearly 2.5 million inmates in US prisons, whom the modern Empire has turned into slaves. These prisoners-slaves are the lowest caste of social margins. They don’t only experience the cruelty of captivity, but are condemned to lose their human beingness altogether; to become slaves in the modern galleys of American hellholes to the financial benefit of privatized prisons and multinationals that, using part of this dirty money, support election campaigns of various politicians who promise order and security to their voters. In turn, the voters—predefined coefficients in a rigged equation—fulfill their role, and the solution is always obedience. That’s exactly why the happiest slaves are the greatest enemies of freedom.
      But there are other slaves who aren’t so happy. They are the “fallen angels” in a society whose authoritarian perversion treats humans as cogs. But these human cogs are slowly turning against this very society. Throughout the US and the prisons in that territory, an increasingly growing whisper starts to spread. On September 9th, this whisper is transformed into an angry cry of freedom, screaming in the face of the almighty corrections system the ancient cry of rebellion: “Non serviam – I will not serve.”
Continue reading:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

Saturday 29 October 2016

Man's Inhumanity To Man.

      We can never do enough to highlight the the atrocities that are the prisons of this world. How can freedom breathe when the prisons are overflowing, how can we listen to political posturing, when, across the world, human beings are incarcerated in appalling conditions as slaves feeding the capitalist system. Conditions under capitalism make it so easy to get lost in our own little world and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, that's how the system survives, divide and rule, solidarity is the weapon to bring it down. A letter of support to the striking prisoners in America and elsewhere, from prisoners in Greece:

Gentlemen, the dragon will fly out” is a saying attributed to prisoner George Jackson. On August 21st 1971, holding a pistol, he opened all the cells in an adjustment unit, taking jailers hostage. George Jackson was killed in his attempt to escape…
Since September 9th, prisoners in the United States have called for action against slavery.
       A multitude of “invisible” slaves (there are about 2.5 million prisoners in the United States) are condemned to forced labor, or as jailers of their own selves (internal work in prisons, cleaning, repairs, technical operations), or as cheap meat in the service of corporate behemoths (Honda, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, and many others). Besides, the 13th amendment to the US constitution clearly states: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” To put it simply, detainees are considered slaves as part of their punishment.
       Prisons in America—and not just there–aren’t only bars, walls, surveillance cameras or lockdowns. They’re also an enormous lucrative business. Prisons are a dirty dealing for continuously supplied shackled labor force without name and without voice. They represent a modern slave trade, making billion-dollar profit, that not only supplies the companies-caretakers but also the industry of lawyers, judges, cops, corrections officers, private prisons.
       Not long ago yet another judicial scandal, the “kids for cash” case, was revealed. President Judge Mark Ciavarella convicted juveniles (from 10 to 18 years of age) for the slightest offense, taking million-dollar kickbacks from the owners of private prisons Powell and Mericle with the purpose of supplying them with thousands of children prison slaves.
      In Greece, incarceration is much more “velvet”, but it doesn’t cease to be incarceration. Greek prisons may not supply multinational companies with slaves, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a well-staged business operation. Not only do prisons fund an army of leeches (lawyers, cops, corrections officers, judges), but they make big business with construction companies (through overpriced contracts), pharmaceutical companies (after Greek hospitals, Greek prisons are the second best customer of the pharmaceutical industry, since handfuls of psychiatric drugs are administered to prisoners to keep them asleep), and large supermarket chains (always making sure to overprice items sold to prisoners).
Continue reading:
Let's Roar.

The problem's too big
the perpetrators unknown
you can't beat the system
all on your own.
So it's easy to withdraw
find your own little cage
turn a blind eye to the suffering
stifle your rage,
but the greed goes on
the poverty's still there,
you can't just leave it
for your children to bear.
Others feel as you do
eager to put things right
but locked in isolation
it's a hopeless fight,
so don't sit in silence
behind a closed door,
your voice can help raise
a whisper to a roar.
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Friday 14 October 2016

Living In The Illusion Of democracy.

          It always is the pattern, the so called democratic states always come down hard on those who fight for freedom and solidarity between people, while supporting the marches and actions of racist fascists. Anarchist and anti-fascists are always at the receiving end of state repression. The state spouts democracy while stifling any journey to equality and freedom, fosters divisions in society, while waving the flag of patriotism calling for unity to reclaim some mythical great past. It is in the face of this that we have to call on solidarity, and face this ongoing and ever strengthening state repression.
This from Contra Info:

          On Saturday November 19th, there will be a demonstration in The Hague, The Netherlands, against the wave of repression that Hague anti-fascists and anarchists have been facing in the last year. One who attacks one of us, attacks all of us. Solidarity through struggle!
       Within the last year, repression against anti-fascists and anarchists has greatly increased, with The Hague in the middle of it. An area ban for anarchists was issued for the Schilderswijk, in an attempt to break the struggle against the racist, violent, and murderous police. After that, another area ban was issued, this time against anti-fascists who have been resisting against the extreme right wing Pegida demonstrations. Damage claims of 50,000 euro were demanded from several anarchists who resisted against the eviction of social center De Vloek, which had been squatted for 13 years. The mayor also tried to shutter the local Autonomous Center. Furthermore, subsequent demonstrations were forbidden, people were intimidated by the police at home and on the street, numerous preventative arrests were made, and attempts were made to recruit informants.
          But these are not just attacks against individual anarchists and anti-fascists. This is an attack against all who fight  against racism, this is an attack against all who stand for a world without exploitation and discrimination, this is an attack on all of us. And this attack cannot go unanswered! This is a call for solidarity, because solidarity is our weapon against the isolation being forced on us by the police and the mayor. We must defend our autonomous spaces and structures!
         Come to The Hague on November 19th. Because the chains of the state dripping with racism and oppression must be broken! Because one who doesn’t fight has already lost.
Fight repression!
More information you find on:
fightrepressiondemo.noblogs.org
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Thursday 13 October 2016

21st. Century Slave Revolt.

        Over 20,000 prisoners involved in strike action across America, and our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, doesn't notice. Keep in quiet, starve it if publicity, and perhaps it will disappear. Or perhaps they don't want to give those on the outside any ideas about resistance. It could be that they will blanket this action in silence and secrecy, and when they decided to use their usual brutal force in an attempt to crush it, then that will also go in silence, away from prying eyes of the public. We can't let that happen, this brave action by so many prisoners who suffer harsh and brutal treatment, and are forced to work as slave labour, must have our open support. It is our duty to give this action as much publicity and support as possible, drag the curtains of silence open, let the world know of this slave labour empire, and the resistance of those trapped in its tentacles.
This from Contra Info:

         It hardly seems necessary to summarize what has gone down inside U.S. prisons since September 9th. Hunger strikes, work stoppages, and riots have spread throughout the country on a scale that we likely aren’t even fully aware of yet. Some uprisings appeared took us by surprise, such as in several Florida prisons, while others presumably grew from recent organizing endeavors on the inside, such as at Kinross in Michigan or Holman in Alabama. By rough estimates, over 20,000 prisoners were involved in some way. That’s huge.
       On the outside, solidarity burned so brightly all over the world. Banner drops, graffiti slogans, noise demonstrations and more showed that we had the backs of all who would partake in the strike. It is worth noting however that the vast majority of this took place the first weekend of the strike. But this prison strike—and the struggle against prisons more broadly—is about more than a day or a week. It didn’t start on September 9th and it isn’t ending any time soon. Some prisoners may return to work while others decide to stop working for the first time. It’s easier when there is a definitive date to take action on, to build momentum towards, but that’s not going to be enough.
       Therefore, we would like to offer a call for renewed actions in solidarity with the prison strike and the struggle against prison society. Right now many are organizing anti-repression campaigns for striking prisoners and that is of course very necessary and not nearly as exciting work. But it would be a mistake to conceive of this struggle in a linear fashion—that is to say, a single wave where we demonstrate as it crests and write letters as it crashes. How many prisoners hadn’t heard about the strike until after it had started? How many knew but didn’t think people would actually be there to support them? Three weeks after the start of the strike, inmates in Turbeville, South Carolina rebelled against a guard and took over their dorm. How can we stop while inmates are still risking their lives for freedom?
       We propose the week of October 15th – 22nd for a concentration of actions to remind everyone locked up by the State that we will always have their back. Once again, it is important to take these dates with a grain of salt. No one’s going to judge you if you take action on October 23rd, or in November, or even in 2017. Neither should anyone sit on their hands waiting for the 15th to get going. New Year’s Eve should also be kept in mind, which has traditionally seen noise demonstrations outside of prisons every year, despite being an equally arbitrary date.

         “When times seem slow and uneventful we let ourselves stagnate, but imagination and revolt are like muscles: the less we use them the weaker they become. We can push back the boredom of less eventful times and point towards insurrection. Solidarity actions and struggling on our own timelines is a way we can create momentum and tension when there isn’t much.”


– “Our Own Timelines” Anathema, Vol 2 Issue 6

        It is undeniable that many comrades exist outside of realities where organizing a protest or noise demonstration is tenable. Many of us are still searching for a few like-minded comrades, let alone attempting to bring out a crowd. There are still opportunities to act, whether it is a one or two person team dropping a banner or putting up posters, or hosting a letter writing or informational event that can help connect future accomplices. It certainly can never be overstated how important writing letters of support and calling in to prisons is in and of itself, but why pass on an opportunity to build our capacity?
        If nothing else, we should all feel ashamed that the most active city in terms of U.S. prison strike solidarity actions is Athens, Greece. They already have such a head start but we can at least give them a bit of challenge, can’t we?

– Some Restless Uncontrollables

supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org / //itsgoingdown.org/ / iwoc.noblogs.org/
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Monday 26 September 2016

The Many Shapes Of The Spirit Of Resistance.


        Across the world states are in crises, as the system they attempt to manage, capitalism, is itself, in crisis. Capitalism has mandated the states to manage the civil population, while they rip them off, but more and more people are seeing through the shabby illusion, more and more the people are resisting. As capitalism lurches from one crisis to another, the state’s job of managing the people becomes a task doomed to failure. Resistance to this system of control and exploitation takes many shapes, from the organised groups, to the individuals who fight the system on a daily basis, in their own particular way, but fight they do. Of course in the eyes of the system, any acts of resistance, which in fact are self defence, will never be classified as such, it will be labelled, vandalism, hooliganism, terrorism, and a host of other demonising isms. This will then be followed up with the full violence and brutality of their “judicial system”. The artefacts and symbols of the exploitative, repressive system of the festering marriage of capitalism and state are all around us. The expensive cars, the luxury hotels, the designer label shops, the banks, the sweatshop places of labour, the injustice of poverty, all supported by an army of police and CCTV cameras, all to let you know your pecking order in this hierarchical nightmare. However that is also one of its weaknesses, everything is out their, open to acts of self defence, acts of resistance, acts of righteous anger.


       This article, posted in Contra Info, is from Brazil, a country no stranger to the savage ravishes of capitalism, and no stranger to the people's resistance to this brutal system:
          Every stone thrown is the expression of indignation of all of us, tired of being used, manipulated and dominated by those in government, by the media, by the multinationals… A brick is charged with rage, frustration and more than anything else the freedom of disobedience, of disrespect to property. A brick into a window is the expression of insubmission, of those instincts that were not and never will be domesticated and pacified. It is the capacity to overcome the margins of citizenist protest towards the path of free rebellion. A brick carries all the courage of leaving the house and abandoning the role of the spectator in front of a screen, to run out to the streets and transform them into a field of political action.
       The streets, where we meet, do not belong to anybody but the revolt. The streets open the way to take back our lives, they open the way to insubmission and dignity… They open the doors so that everyone can be responsible for themselves without depending on any institution, they open the way of “fuck the State” and of autonomy… and we are there because our rage is expanding, against the social order, not against the puppet that carries the title of the President, but against the entire state structure… because it’s clear to us that the streets shout much more than “Out With Temer”.
      From the streets, we’re uncontrollable, in the complicity of the hoodie we’re stronger, and we can live intensively in spaces where the banks will never be something to be defended but institutions that profit from inequality, that take over lives with blows of credit cards and financial interests. There where the bourgeois car is not a dream but a symbol of vanity; where a shop is selling privileges and not just clothes… where we’re able to attack materially against domination.
       That the internal repression led by candidates and affiliates of political parties don’t put a halt to our rage, that they don’t put a halt to direct actions…

We had enough of being commanded…
 
Read the full article HERE:
Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
 

Thursday 22 September 2016

To Struggle For Justice, Means You Will Be Attacked.

        The state, is the state, is the state, no matter where it's ugly head appears. The format is much the same across the world, the rich and powerful control society, and the state apparatus defends them against any change to that set-up. Methods may differ from state to state, some more brutal than others, but all will go to what ever lengths it feels are required, to make sure nothing alters that format. So if you are among those who see this arrangement as unjust and based on corruption and exploitation, and you decide to challenge that position, beware. They have ways and means of trying to silence you, from demonising you through their propaganda arm, the babbling brook of bullshit, that goes under the banner of the mainstream media, and where that fails they have their strong armed minders the police and secret services, who are backed up by that loaded dice, the judiciary. The judiciary, of course, work from a set of rules made up by the rich and powerful to protect their privileged position. The state and freedom are divided by an unbridgeable chasm, just as, justice and capitalism are likewise incompatible. 
Rome, Italy: Communique from Daniele from Regina Coeli prison
“Between these four increasingly narrow walls, I cultivate my hatred of the system. “
       If you are an anarchist get it into your head, if you have not done so already, that it could be your turn to end up in prison sooner or later, and that the paths that could lead you there are many.
       If you are an anarchist, first, you have to be careful about what you keep at home: simple things, trivial or almost, become components of devices or explosives in the cops’ reports, a story we have also seen recently in Bologna with a comrade ending up in AS2 in Ferrara. Even books, pamphlets and leaflets, so-called “paperwork”, become proof of affiliation with terrorist organizations.
     And then there are the classic conspiracy charges, usually 270a, that allow the guards to throw you inside without even bothering to provide “concrete evidence”.
     In short, the roads are many, but the reason is one: being irreducibly aligned against power.
       If I say this it is certainly not to complain about the iniquity of democratic justice, but to point out how easy it is for an anarchist to end up in prison, no matter how careful one is. Awareness of this risk should not scare us, just keep us ready.
       So “Scripta Manent” was not at all unexpected but is a repressive attack whose only uncertainty was “when”, not “if.” An attack by the democratic regime against those who, within it, still refuse to submit to the values and morals of dominion by getting into in a conciliatory perspective of dialogue and compromise, but remain in open confrontation with power.
     “The State is not thinkable without lordship and servitude … For the State it is indispensable that nobody have an own will; if one had, the State would have to exclude this one; if all had, they would do away with the State.”
      After all, whether you end up there or not, prison is still in the path of an anarchist. Because it is a spectre that hangs over you, because it has taken friends or loved ones, or just because it is the foundation of this society that we hate (“repression is civilization”).
      But the constant threat of imprisonment is not enough to stifle the rage we feel in front of the hundreds of thousands of animals killed and tortured every day, in front of entire ecosystems wiped out by the greed of technological society, in front of the millions of individuals forced into alienation at the workplace, held in vile prisons or concentration camps for migrants, and all the people killed by hunger and wars. And how can you bow your head resigned in the face of the continuous interference of the State in our lives?
       This society where everything has its price like in a shopping mall, where anything can be bought and sold as long as you have the money, this society based on profit no matter what the cost will always have an extreme enemy in who is not willing to trade their life and their dignity. Money is the only driving force of this system of death and misery. The State legitimates it, the police defend it, the newspapers give voice to its lies. Anarchists reject it and attack it.
      Solidarity with those arrested, those under investigation and those raided in operation “Scripta Manent”.
       Solidarity with those who are paying the price for opposing this system of domination in this world.
      With those who under a leaden sky choose to bring about the storm. For a world built on the ruins of this one. “Charges upon charges, sentences upon sentences, what counts is the hour of capitulation.”

Daniele Eccheccazzo

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

Saturday 17 September 2016

Let's Open A State Cage.

      An urgent appeal to the wider anarchist community and all those who seek justice. Mutual aid is a cornerstone of anarchist principles, and it can take many forms and under all conditions.
 This from Contra Info:
     The Warsaw 3 have been arrested in May and kept since then in a high security jail with very limited contact to the outside and are facing severe sentences under the new anti-terrorist and anti-anarchist laws.  They are still awaiting trial.
     Today during a court hearing concerning the filed complaint for the prolonged arrest of the 3 anarchists, a decision was made to release them on bail. A fee of 20 thousand PLN (4600 euro) of bail was set for each of them. If the money is transferred in a weeks time (7 days from today, until 21st of september), the arrested will be released and kept under police surveillance instead.
      60 thousands PLN (13 800 euro) is a fortune for the families and friends of the arrested. Gathering these funds in one week time seems barely possible. If you can – show your support, either financially or by forwarding the call for collecting funds. Every euro brings us closer to getting them out.
     Leaving the arrest would mean for the arrested anarchists the end of everyday tortures they suffer after more than 3 months in solitary confinement. We cannot let this chance slip out of our hands!
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Tuesday 12 July 2016

A Failed And Doomed Species????

           The following are a few excerpts from a speech made in court  by Athena Tsakalou during the case of CCF escape trial. Deep down I can empathise with the words and feelings, perhaps that comes with an ageing mind and a feeling of weariness, however, foolishly or otherwise, I keep pushing those thoughts away and replacing them with that infernal and eternal optimism, but they are still there, lurking in the background, with the events in the world feeding them.
This from Contra Info:

          There comes a moment when you take a look back at the years in your life, and you realise you’ve left to live far fewer than the years you’ve already lived; that is, if everything goes well. And this is a strange but intense sensation, which makes me ask myself to be sincere. Not in the simple way we often think about it, but in an essential, deeper way.
I don’t like to say: where is this world going? It’s something that we – people at an older age – often do, but such a phrase conceals some sort of innocence that I refuse to accept. I prefer to ask myself: how do you yourself walk through this world?------
As a species, how do we measure our success?

Assuming that, throughout the centuries, people have intended to live, if not a life of happiness, at least a joyful life, their history to date shows that they’ve failed. History books, either the official, inspected ones, or the secret ones that it’s hard to come by, show that people have failed. It may be that the conditions for survival or living standards got better – although ‘better’ is relative, as this is not the case in some parts of the earth – but the pain, the horror of wars, of hunger and oppression continue to rise.
Of course there’s a difference; a nightmarish difference. Nowadays, death is no longer caused just by hand-to-hand combat on the battlefields where, even from a distance determined by a firearm, you’re able to see the falling body and hear the cry of pain, and regardless of how much dehumanised you’ve become, this sight and sound leaves a peculiar imprint within you that, at some point, might make you not want war anymore. On today’s battlefields, we find ourselves in the era of smart bombs, and one is able to retain ‘their innocence’ by pressing a button which brings mass death; that’s the difference.
For some time now, more than 10,000 refugee children who were travelling unaccompanied have disappeared in Europe over the past 18–24 months. There are fears that many of them have fallen victim to exploitation by organised crime networks…
The world’s 62 richest people hold as much wealth as half the population on the planet…
The earth’s products are enough to feed its entire population, yet millions of people, millions of children die of hunger.---------
Do we hold on to hope and optimism, or as a species, admit that we failed?

And it’s about time we said: after so much human blood watering the earth’s soil every day, after all this lament filling the earth’s air, if there’s no change of course for the human species, if the human mind isn’t crossed by a lightning at some point, so that we see everything differently… then indeed it’d be a brave decision if people eventually said: ‘for so many centuries, we’ve been unable to find joy; we might as well admit that as a species we aren’t capable of something like this; we might as well admit our failure and leave calmly; let us be the last of the humans; let us admit that only trees deserve life, continuity, eternity as they’re free of the instinct of war, of horror.’
Lately all I want to do is plant trees. And someone might ask me: but is this truly your deepest desire? No, I haven’t done well; I’m still determined by the ability to see as far as my eye can see, to keep my mind off things by taking pleasure in small joys; but when I open the eye of my mind to a worldwide wandering, a worldwide looking, and I see how small a share joy has in people’s lives, I say once more: if the dream doesn’t enter people’s lives, if there’s no change of course for the human species, only trees deserve continuity, life, eternity.
Athena Tsakalou
Read the full article HERE:
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Wednesday 27 April 2016

You're Free To Vote For Your Own Exploitation.

          Repression, repression, repression, it is the same the world over, corporate bodies control the world, it's repression that keeps the system together, governments do the corporate bidding, and the state apparatus enforces it, by means of strong arm tactics of the police and the judicial system. Stay in line, accept your humble place in the scheme of things, don't hinder the flow of wealth upwards to the parasites, and certainly don't try to change the system. These are the rules of the capitalist society, and woe be tide anyone who tries to break those rules. In the capitalist system your are free, you are free to accept your poverty, your ever falling living standards, you are free to vote to continue your exploitation, and the plundering of your wealth. But you are certainly not free to call for an end to this unjust, unequal, exploitative system that favours the few at the expense of the many.
            The following is just one example of how speaking out against the brutal injustices of the system will be met with more brutal repression.
        Last Sunday night (April 24th) one person was arrested in The Hague (Netherlands) on suspicion of pasting The Anarchist Wallpaper. He is being charged with instigation against authority, inciting violence and pasting of a poster. On Thursday the person who got arrested will be brought in front of the examining judge, who will decide whether to release him or transfer him to preventive detention.
Last week anarchists spread hundreds of Wallpapers in the neighbourhoods Transvaal and Schilderswijk and other places in the city. The first issue of the Wallpaper is about the uprising last year in the area of the Schilderswijk, where thousands of people rebelled for days against the police and the state after the murder on Mitch Henriquez, who was strangled to death by the police. Henriquez was yet another victim of violence by the racist police force of The Hague. Many months after the uprising the police were still hunting the rebels of last summer.
      Now that someone is locked up again and it seems that the prosecution is very eager to keep him as long as possible on the suspicion of spreading a poster, expressing our solidarity is the only thing we can do. Solidarity through action.
Stop the repression! Solidarity with the prisoners! Down with the police and the state! Long live anarchy!
Below the main article of the Anarchist Wallpaper:
Down with the cops and the State! Long live the revolt!
On the Schilderswijk revolt
          In the summer of 2015 a revolt shook up the Schilderswijk in the Hague. A revolt against the daily repression and racism of the cops. Against the suffocating reality of exploitation and unemployment. A revolt of those who decided to break with the normality of State repression. The tables were turned and the cops were chased off the streets. The murder of Mitch Henriquez, another racist murder by the police, was what sparked the revolt. Let’s not forget, let’s not forgive!
The politicians, media, mosques and all kinds of neighbourhood initiatives depicted the revolt as an everyday riot, as a criminal act of which the perpetrators had to be punished severely. Don’t believe them; those organisations that live off state subsidies, those who want to push forward their own agenda at the costs of the oppressed, those that sell out the oppressed in order to be able to join those in power. That people are oppressed in neighbourhoods like the Schilderswijk is obvious. Not being employed because of your name, or exploited at a meager salary while the bosses, big companies, politicians and banks are only becoming richer.
       The scapegoat politics that is integrated in the State is blames people of colour for poverty, housing problems and austerity measures, only to make people distrust each other. But refugees, Moroccan and Surinamese people are not the cause of these problems. The real problem is the State and its politicians that only care for the bosses and big companies, and the police that murders, who wants to protect this at all costs.
        The revolt in the summer of 2015 was not an everyday riot. It was a legitimate revolt against everything that oppresses us. It was a revolt against the police that terrorises us on the streets. Against the incessant control of CCTV, ID-checks and the so-called “zero tolerance” policy that we only see in poor neighbourhoods. It was a revolt by a community that refuses to be divided by political games any longer. For years we have been asking for change but no one wanted to listen; the only option left then is to revolt. For our dignity, for our existence.
         Those who revolted and refused to bow down to repression are those who have not lost their dignity. It is precisely these people that offer hope for a different, better future. That this summer may be a hot one!
Down with the cops and the State! Long live the revolt! Long live anarchy!
Autonomen Den Haag
in German
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Friday 1 April 2016

States' Cattle Herding Exercise.

         The "refugee crisis", I prefer to call it "the humanitarian crisis ignited and exacerbated by Western foreign policy" to the causal  glance appears to be chaos, but I see it as the usual state control. People are channelled and controlled, "the Balkan corridor" and then herded like cattle at border points and the states are getting organised at the point of entry and setting up a deportation system. As usual the various states will disagree on method and pace, but all agree in herding and control over the movement of people.
          From one of the entry points, at a No Borders Kitchen on Lesvos, a report by Contra Info:
        On the island of Lesvos, where the deportation machine is working at full speed, all the camps for refugees are cleared out and the registration center ‘moria’ has showed the true purpose and is now functioning as an deportation centre, NBK is still standing strong and operating at full speed.
         The current situation is that we now host a couple of hundred refugees, who have been hunted down on the island by frontex and police and have no other place to go. The kitchen is up and running day and night to help anyone in need on food, shelter, medical aid and a (semi)safe place to rest, where refugees work side by side with people in solidarity on an equal level. We host, the refugees participate, and together we keep the camp up and daily life running.
        Already the rumors were spreading that NBK will be evicted soon, since its an ‘ illegal’ camp and the last camp on the island were refugees are to be found, besides the unfortunate ones who have been arrested and moved to the Moria deportation center (which is still called a ‘ registration center’ by the officials). For days we have had police coming by in small numbers, sometimes checking passports of people in solidarity, sometimes searching people for drugs outside NBK, sometimes counting the numbers of people in the food-line and taking pictures.. Also they started arresting refugees on the road from NBK to the city of Mytilini, which is a huge problem since NBK as it’s on a dead-end street and there is only one way to walk.
Read the full article HERE: 
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/09/18/refugee-crisis-frontex-border-agency-budget-increase-fingerprint-check-failings/

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