The State's Pacifier, Police Violence.

 

        Yes the yellow vests struggle in France continues, but what we have to realise that it continues in face of extreme state violence against anyone who would dare to challenge the inequality, injustice and corruption of the French state. Those statistics of injuries are people, people's lives mutilated and changed forever by the callous use of brute force and dangerous weaponry, on which the state believes it has a monopoly. They believe they can use what force they wish with impunity, and those who continue to resist this savagery will be hit harder, and others will be chewed up in the state's loaded judicial system.

The extremely violent repression of the Gilets Jaunes movement has affected the lives of many, continuing a long tradition of police violence in France. In December 2018: three lives are affected by police violence amongst the chaos of the Yellow Vest protests in France. This film is dedicated to people all over the world mutilated and killed by police weapons. Please watch and share this independent short documentary which has been filmed over a year.

A story of police violence in France from Ross Domoney on Vimeo.

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Yes, Yellow Vests Are Still On The Streets.

      No, it hasn't gone away, one year on and the Yellow Vests are still on the streets of France in their thousands. Though you would never know this from our mainstream media. Of all the mass protests going on across the world, France is the nearest to us here in the UK. but we hear very little, if anything, about what is going on across the channel on the streets of France, but lots of what is going on in Hong Kong, Why?

       The Yellow Vest Movement, is planning a massive protest with strikes across France, on the 5th. December, they deserve our support and solidarity. What they are fighting against is the same problems we have here in the UK. deteriorating living standards, destruction of social services, increase in poverty and homelessness, gross inequality, evaporating working conditions and blatant corruption. All this midst unimaginable wealth, splattered around in the shape of luxury yachts, private jets, opulent mansions, limousines and bank accounts stashed away in tax havens. This is our world, it is only right that we should take to the streets to end this control of our lives by the greedy, wealthy and powerful.

      This from Acorn, Winter Oak: (For clarity I have posted the full article)

                  Thousands of protesters stream across the river, November 16th.

       “I am not ashamed to feel afraid from time to time. I keep on coming, but I understand those who don’t come any more because they’re too frightened”. So spoke Antoine, a 75-year-old Gilet Jaune marking the first anniversary of the Yellow Vest movement in the southern French city of Montpellier on Saturday November 16.
    This was just one of many protests and occupations across the country (notably in Paris) marking the birthday weekend and paving the way for a big day of strikes and actions on December 5. Antoine explained: “I’ve been here from day one and I’ve escaped police batons by a whisker on several occasions, even though my only weapons are my whistle and my gilet jaune!”
     The last of these alarming encounters had come just the previous week in Montpellier, he said, when the “forces of order” had attacked the demo right at the start. He had seen a riot policeman from the CRS bearing down on him, baton raised, but fortunately for the pensioner it was another protester who took the blow.
      I had already noticed that the majority of the demonstrators gathering in the Place de la Comédie were not wearing the trademark yellow singlets, in the stark contrast to the last time I reported from Montpellier, and Antoine said this was because of the massive police violence which protesters had been facing over the months. He was sure this was a deliberate strategy on behalf of the French state and felt that the previous week’s brutality was intended to dissuade people from taking part in the anniversary protest we were attending.
      Julian, an observer with the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, a human rights organisation, confirmed to me that the previous Saturday’s police behaviour had been particularly bad. “There was kettling and teargassing right from the start, for the first time here and without there having been any violence”, he said. “The state really wanted to stop the demo. It was kettled for an hour and a half”. He said there were some police who did their job properly, but others who certainly didn’t, particularly the plain-clothed BAC (Brigade anti-criminalité) units and the CDI (Compagnie départmentale d’intervention) for the Hérault area.
     With this in mind, it was quite a relief when the demo, a couple of thousand strong, was able to form up and leave the elegant main city square without any visible police presence. To the sound of drums, music and singing, we headed away from the narrow medieval city streets where the police would have been expecting us. But as we surged in the bright Mediterranean sunshine across a bridge over the River Lez and into the suburbs, the seagulls circling overhead were accompanied by a police drone tracking our movements. The protest paused for a moment at Place Ernest Granier, blocking cars and trams on this important intersection and then moved off again.
      It was now clear that the target was the south coast motorway which runs through the outskirts of the city and, an hour after the march set off, it was met with a line of riot cops blocking the road ahead. Not content with merely blocking the way, they advanced towards us and soon were raining volleys of tear gas cannisters down on the retreating protesters. Quickly, a Plan B was hatched and hundreds of us streamed across a small park surrounded by housing estates to seek out another route to the motorway. “Joyeux anniversaire!” sang the Gilets Jaunes in celebration of a whole year of joyful rebellion across the whole of this country.
      Again, police vans turned up to block the way and more tear gas filled the air. Despite successful attempts to create traffic jams to halt the police’s progress, they caught up with us again a mile or so later and this time the protest was cut in two, with hundreds caught in a kettle. The front part of the march ploughed on, still with the idea of blocking the motorway in mind, and came across the Village Jaune, a birthday-weekend occupation of the roundabout at Prés d’Arènes. Here there were tents, a large gazebo, trestle tables, banners, yellow balloons and an astonishing level of honking and waving from passing motorists, confirming once again that this movement enjoys high levels of support from the French public, outside the dominant metropolitan elite.
      What to do next? Some wanted to keep going for the motorway, some seemed happy to be on the roundabout and others wanted to head back and help out the part of the march kettled by police. In the end, there was little choice. Police advanced at speed from two directions, the tear gas began coming again and protesters scattered.
      The first year of this revolt has been a story of non-stop police repression, combined with the relentless sneering hostility of the corporate media. Can it succeed in the face of all that? “Yes,” one Gilet Jaune, Ingrid, told me. “I am quite sure of that, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We have to have hope. We want people to have a life, we want nobody to be sleeping on the streets, we want wealth to be shared. “The government will give way. We just don’t know when!” A fellow protester, Manon, said: “We’re still here because we have to keep on fighting. They are destroying everything.
      “We have to do this despite the police repression. We are fighting for another world and this is what we find ourselves faced with. It’s totalitarian neoliberalism. “We are fighting for people’s dignity. It is the same struggle everywhere, in Chile for example”. Manon said the strength of the Gilets Jaunes movement was the way it brought together people from all sorts of backgrounds. “We have created something completely different, a new generation of protesters. People have come together who would never have done so before”.
      Antoine, who had spoken to me about the way police violence was scaring some people away from protesting, said he didn’t think it would work in the long run. “I consider myself to be here as a representative of ten other people who have told me they are with me. Most people I know support the Gilets Jaunes. “The aspects that motivate me are social justice and human rights, which exist less and less from one Saturday to the next. “The Gilets Jaunes are much more representative of society as a whole than other movements I have been involved in, such as the trade unions”. There were even people involved who considered themselves to be on the political right, he said, although he questioned whether this self-designation was accurate, given the nature of the cause they supported.
     “The real right is that infernal couple of Macron and Le Pen”, he added, noting that Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, had abandoned her early pretence of supporting the Gilets Jaunes and had since reverted to form by allying herself with a fascistic police trade union which defends the use of violence againt protesters. Asked whether the movement could succeed, he insisted: “It has already succeeded, by bringing together people from very different backgrounds, which is something in itself”. This last point was reinforced by my conversation with Damien, a 74-year-old who explained that he was a retired policeman who had once been part of the notorious BAC units which have been in the forefront of the recent repression. He said former colleagues he had spoken to were now more or less just going through the motions, doing the minimum their job required. Damien said he was involved from the very start of the Gilets Jaunes revolt. “I’ve come back for the anniversary,” he added. “I’m still very unhappy about what I’m seeing”. Macron had managed to hold on to power by dividing people, he said, and by buying their collaboration. “Personally, I have nothing to complain about because I have got a good pension. But I can’t stand seeing people working all their lives and having nothing to show from it. “I am doing this for everyone. This is a movement which came from below. It was a little revolution and it needs to keep going, starting with December 5”.

More photos HERE:

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News Or Propaganda?

 

Prague, November, 16th. 2019.,

     Protests are raging in numerous countries across the globe, more and more people are rising up against the intolerable inequality, injustice, corruption, wars and rampaging poverty that the present economic system creates and perpetuates for the vast majority of the people of this planet.

France:
 https://www.france24.com/en/tag/yellow-vest-protests/

Chile:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/month-protests-chile-persist-gov-concessions-191118231609475.html

Bolivia:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/16/bolivia-protests-five-killed-in-rally-calling-for-exiled-moraless-return

Ecuador:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ecuadorian_protests

Haiti:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Haitian_protests

Lebanon:
https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/after-month-protests-lebanon-what-next

Iraq:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50440110

Sudan:
https://www.voanews.com/africa/protesters-sudan-condemn-previous-days-attack-security-forces

Czech:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/19/czec-n19.html

      Of course this is not by any manner of means a definitive list, there is more, much more unrest against poverty, corruption, injustice and inequality that exists amidst unimaginable wealthy and opulence, all plundered from the work and sweat of the ordinary people. The world is exploding in mass protests.

      Watching the mainstream UK TV news recently I got, each evening, over a considerable period, a roughly 10/15 minutes slot of the protests in Hong Kong, but nothing of note on any of the other mass protests taking place across our world, I wonder why? Then of course my twisted mind went into overdrive. Could it be that the UK imperialist establishment still see Hong Kong as part of the British Empire and naively believe that the UK public will therefore be more interested in that than all this other stuff going on in other people's empires. Or perhaps it is another piece of propaganda that can be used against that, in the eyes of the Western imperialist's, great evil place called China. Who knows, but for sure it is not a balanced and fully informative coverage that we are getting. It is very selective and biased in favour of the establishment view. So can we call it news or propaganda?

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France, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, Now Catalunya---.

 

        Across the globe people are taking to the streets, to mention a few, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, France, and elsewhere, now Catalunya, the demands may differ, but they all have something in common, dissatisfaction with the system. A realisation that the system isn't delivering what it says it will, it is not meeting the demands of the vast majority of the people.

This from crimethinc:

 

  Catalunya: A Week of Escalation
Could the Riots Open a Horizon Beyond National Sovereignty? 

        Starting Monday, in response to draconian sentences imposed on politicians who promote Catalan independence, tens of thousands of people across Catalunya have engaged in sustained rioting and disruption. Although the majority of the movement remains pacifistic, a few thousand participants have rejected the leadership of political parties and organizations, opting for open confrontation with police. The various mobilizations are still taking place in confluence, however, making it very difficult for the police to control. Protesters have reportedly used caltrops, Molotov cocktails, and paint balloons to disable police riot vans, while keeping individual officers at a distance with lasers and slingshots and driving away helicopters with fireworks. In the following report, we review the events of the past week and explore what is at stake in this struggle.

       As anarchists, we have a more robust conception of self-determination than mere national sovereignty. All governments are based on the asymmetry of power between ruler and ruled; nationalism is just one of several means by which rulers seek to turn us against each other so we don’t unite against them. We consider it instructive that the Catalan police have worked closely with Spanish national police throughout the last several years of repression; even if Catalunya gains independence, we are certain that independent Catalan police and courts will continue to repress those who fight against capitalism and seek true self-determination. At the same time, there is a longstanding tradition of anarchist and anti-state activity in Catalunya, and we are inspired to see some of this coming to the fore in resistance to the violence of the Spanish state. It is possible that the latest escalation of conflict in the streets of Catalunya will be a step towards the radicalization of the entire movement and the delegitimizing of state solutions.

Let’s look closer to see.

A detailed day to day report on the events: 

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Coming To A Street Near You.

         It is now obvious that the powers that be in the West are preparing for the army to be ready to function in civilian areas, in the event of civil unrest or threat of insurrection. They are always better prepared than we the public are, they do their planning well in advance and with unlimited funding. We tend to react to circumstances that are forced on us, rather than accept that there is a class war already operational at the moment. It is sold to us in various guises, austerity, national emergency, privatisation, gentrification, balancing the books, etc. when these start to hurt and anger rises, we react, but they are well prepared to quell that anger by force. What are our preparations for self defence?

      This from Act For Freedom Now:

 Coming to a street near you.

         For decades France has been one of the most important arms suppliers to the four corners of the world. With a flourishing industrial-military complex, it regularly carries out wars, supports irregular troops (such as that of general Haftar in Libya) and is also training on its own territory… and that of its neighbours. In the context of the ‘Motorized Ability’ program signed in June 2019 with one of NATO’s privileged partners, Belgium, it will supply the latter with 450 armoured vehicles (382 Griffon troops transporters and 60 Jaguar recognition vehicles), which will be delivered from 2025. Another aspect of this agreement is the strengthening of ‘strategic partnership’ between French and Belgian ground troops, which takes form in particular with conjoint training. This might seem quite banal, were it not for the fact that the army decided to train not only in barracks and appointed centres [1] that reproduce cities in miniature… but directly among the civilian population by performing exercises on a real scale.That’s how more than 1,000 Belgian and French military will occupy the provinces of Namur (ten municipalities located in the triangle Walcourt-Hastière-Couvin) and Hainaut (triangle Beaumont-Chimay-Froidchapelle) from 18th to 25th September 2019.

         ‘The goal is to start a French-Belgian military cooperation by integrating units in both countries in a civilian environment. It will also allow us to exchange skills and improve our inter-operations action in many sectors, such as radio communication and weapons use’. Yes, you read right, the goal is that of operating on a large scale ‘in a civilian environment’ as happened after the 2015 attacks, but above all that of carrying out an operation meant to improve ‘weapons use’. More precisely, 150 vehicles and 600 soldiers (fifty fifty for each of the States involved) will be deployed in twenty villages, with over 300 taking care of assignment (personnel, examiners, logistics) and… and… and… 100 soldiers who will play the part of rural insurgents euphemistically called ‘opponents’, who hide among the population.

         This military training operation, called ‘Celtic uprise’ (a reference to Brexit), has ‘a fictitious country in crisis’ as its scenario, and the goal of the murderers in uniform is no longer simply hidden behind vague humanitarian pretexts to aid the population, as it was years ago, but this time it also officially includes ‘patrolling, making sensitive points secure’ and of course ‘antiterrorism actions’. It’s been known for some time that the army has been preparing for interventions within the European borders in case of urban insurrections or rural guerrillas, scenarios that even NATO projections took seriously. As for us, it’s time we took seriously the proposals that insist on the need to be involved in it now [2]; to map carefully industries and technological companies, but also everything that is sensitive to the correct operational functioning of domination: communication networks, transport routes, resources and energy networks, strategic supplies of raw material and food; to develop technical skills and precise knowledge in order to put them out of use; to think today of forms of informal coordination and develop anarchist projectualities, valid in times of peace as well as of war, because the distinction between the two is no longer appropriate…

          [1]. Such as the 12,000 hectares of CENTAC (combat training centre) in Mailly-le-camp (Aube) and the 6,000 hectares of CENZUB (urban action training centre) in Sissonne (Aisne).

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Why I Decided To Fight.

  

       Why I decided to fight: 

       letter from a Yellow Vest prisoner

        Thomas P is just one of many Gilets Jaunes prisoners in France, locked up for their participation in the mass uprising against the neoliberal Macron regime. Below are some excerpts from an open letter he wrote from jail, after three months behind bars. 

      One is no longer innocent when one has seen ‘legitimate’ violence, legal violence: that of the police.
      I saw the hatred or emptiness in their eyes and I heard their chilling warnings: ‘disperse, go home’.
      I saw the charges, grenades, and beatings in general.
      I saw the checks, searches, traps, arrests, and jail.
      I saw people falling, blood, I saw the mutilated.
      Like all those who were demonstrating this February 9th, I learned that once again a man had just had his hand ripped off by a grenade.
       And then I did not see anything any more, because of the gas. All of us were suffocating.
       That’s when I decided not to be a victim any more and to fight.
       I’m proud of it. Proud to have raised my head, proud not to have given in to fear.
      Of course, like all those who are targeted by the repression against the Yellow Vests movement, I first protested peacefully and daily, I always solved problems with words rather than with fists.
      But I am convinced that in some situations conflict is needed.

      Because debate, however ‘big’ it may be, can sometimes be rigged or distorted. All that is needed is for the organiser to ask the questions in a way that suits them.
     We are told on one side that the state coffers are empty, but we are bailing out the banks with millions when they are in trouble, we are talking about an ‘ecological transition’ without ever calling into question the production system and consumption at the origin of all climatic disturbances.
     We are millions who shout at them, saying that their system is rotten, and they are telling us how they are trying to save it.
     The challenge of street clashes is to manage to push back the police, to keep them in line: to get out of a trap, to reach a place of power, or to simply take the street.
     Since November 17th those who have threatened to fire their weapons, those who brutalise, mutilate, and suffocate unarmed and defenceless protesters, those who are not the so-called ‘breakers’, they are the police.
      If the media does not talk about it, the hundreds of thousands of people who have been at the roundabouts and in the streets know it.
      Behind their brutality and threats, it is fear that is hiding.
      And when that moment comes, in general, it means that the revolution is not far away.

 Read the full English translation of the letter here.

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We Have A Right To Be Angry.

      As any observer can see all capitalist economies create unimaginable wealth, but the ordinary people are continually mired in poverty, inequality, poor housing, homelessness, poor wages etc.. However, most of the time the people struggle on the best they can, but that underlying anger simmers away, France is no different. For more than twenty weeks now the people of France have been taking to the streets to vent that anger. Though the numbers may have been slightly diminishing during that period, it takes a lot of anger to sustain that level of activity on the streets, for that period of time, in the face of fierce police brutality.

      The recent event in France of the fire and destruction of a vast symbol of religious wealth and power, changed things. This symbol in a few days received almost a billion euros for its restoration. Yes, ordinary people probably threw in some of that money, but the bulk of it came from the rich parasites and the state, the same rich parasites that are responsible for those low wages, crap low paid jobs and the inequality the the people are angry about. Proving once again that to the establishment of this society, the symbol is worth more than human dignity.

       This lavishing almost a billion euros on a symbol of religious wealth and power, was another spark to the fire of anger that fills the people of France. So week 23 of the Yellow Vests protests saw the numbers soar dramatically. With the increase in numbers came an increase in anger. The shear hypocrisy of this society is blatantly laid before the eyes of the struggling poor. You are worth less than a piece of architecture that symbolises religious power. Yes in the eyes of some, a fine looking building, but worth more than your dignity?

     I have always maintained that real change in our society will only come when enough of us get angry enough, to openly vent that anger. A revolution may be based on love, freedom and equality, but can only come to fruition and the back of extreme anger. Anger displayed openly and in large numbers. So to people of France I say, enjoy the ecstasy of your righteous anger, maintain it until you get what you want, and to the rest of Europe, look and learn. In the face of avoidable injustice, misery, poverty, deprivation, homelessness and inequality, we have a right to get angry, and defend ourselves.

      Protestors warned that troops will open fire!!! Another symbol of our so called democracy.

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Those Tinpot Dictators.

 

   The brutality that states will inflict on their own citizens to maintain their power over them is well documented.

    After eleven weeks of mass protests the figures are shocking to say the least. The number injured by police varies according to source but government figures put the number at 1,700, knowing governments, these figures will be an under estimate. Again numbers seriously injured in the protests varies according to source and are put at between 124 and 353. Some of the serious injures being sight impairment, lose of an eye and broken bones, to a hand blown off. Most of the injuries were caused by “defensive bullets” known as Flashballs or LBDs and stun grenades which contain a dose of TNT. On one occasion during the protest  on December 1st. the police fired 10,000 tear gas canisters, working out as approximately one for every protester present on that day.

     The extent of savagery that these tinpot dictators in foreign lands will go to to hold on to their wealth and power is a testament to their depravity.

     Ooops, sorry, these details are not some foreign tinpot dictator, this is our own home grown variety, this is modern day France and is happening today, against the Yellow Vest protester. This is European democracy at work racking of the violence on protesters in the hope of breaking their resolve to effect change. The last thing Western European power mongers want is change that might impinge on their wealth and their grip on power. Capitalism is a savage beast that can't be domesticated, it has to be put down.

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The Suffering Of The Libyan People, Part Of The Grand Plan.

       The destruction of Libya by the Western imperialist military wing, NATO, is no longer news. We are supposed to sit back and consider it a success and the people of Libya have been given democracy, thanks to our unselfish assistance. What a massive distortion of the truth, eight years on and Libya, and I'm not spouting praise for Gaddafi, far from it, what was a modern state with a national education system, health service and other modern facilities, has been reduced to a barbaric feuding tribal land, where poverty and bloodshed are co-joined twins. All part of the Imperialists' strategy to destroy any power structure in that part of the world, so that its resources can be freely plundered. Syria an on going process and Iraq, are similar scenarios, with Iran and Venezuela, marked for similar treatment. The callous savagery of Western imperialism knows no bounds. 

Democracy Western Style.

Some extracts from a Middle East Eye article: 

       NATO’s bombardment of Libya in 2011 was never about human rights. Rather, it was the wilful creation of a failed state, designed to ensure the country could never again re-emerge as a strong, united, independent power

       Of course there is not always unity between the Western imperialists, there is deep rivalry between the various power blocks within the power hungry cabal.

A blood-soaked chessboard

      At the same time, Libya continues to serve as a blood-soaked chessboard for inter-imperial rivalries between Western powers, with France and Italy backing different sides in the ongoing civil war, each vying to position itself as the "indispensable power" in the region. To this end, May saw a conference hosted by Emmanuel Macron in Paris – with the Italians cut out – while Italy held its own rival event in Palermo six months later.

     Neither produced anything concrete for Libyans, although the French president's promise of December elections may well have spurred further violence, as each side sought to create facts on the ground in the run-up. The elections, needless to say, never happened - nor could they have, in the absence of any kind of agreed constitutional framework for carrying them out. 

      Even when they come together to destroy a country, they can't always agree on dividing the spoils, greed dominates their entire individual ideology.

     - the progress of the LNA, the reconciliation with Gaddafi loyalists, and the success of the Libyan-led negotiations - were a blow to the US-UK policy of militia-led destabilisation.

Read the full article HERE:
   
      Looking at the Libya, Iraq and Venezuela situation, the logic should surely follow that with the mass protests in France and America, surely it is time for intervention to bring these poor suffering people democracy, NATO, where are you when you are needed.

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

Yellow Vests.

       When ever there is a grassroots movement, protest or open people's struggle in another country it is always difficult to get at the truth of what is really happening. The main reason of course being that babbling brook of bullshit our mainstream media, where some people look for information and receive nothing but distortion and establishment propaganda. They will certainly not paint nice colours around any protests that threaten the power of Western governments.

       So it is always welcome when you get a report from somebody who is there.

This report from Anarchist News:  

 

 

       A statement from the Yellow Vests shows the political sophistication we must develop as similar social struggles emerge in the declining United States.
        An excellent friend in Paris forwards this:
Pour transmettre aux anglophones qui seraient intéressés…
Call from the Yellow Vests of Commercy to set up popular assemblies
“We will not be ruled. We will not be divided and bought off.”
NO TO RIP OFF! LONG LIVE DIRECT DEMOCRACY!
NO NEED FOR REGIONAL ‘REPRESENTATIVES’!
          For nearly two weeks the movement of yellow vests has brought hundreds of thousands of people in the streets all over France, often for the first time. The price of fuel was the drop of diesel that set the plain on fire. The suffering, the enough-is-enough, and the injustice have never been so widespread. Now, all across the country, hundreds of local groups are organizing themselves in their own different ways.
       Here in Commercy, in the Meuse, we have been operating from the beginning with daily popular assemblies, where each person participates equally. We organized to block entrances to the city and service stations, and filtering road blocks. In the process, we built a cabin in the central square. We meet there every day to organize ourselves, decide next actions, interact with people, and welcome those who join the movement. We also organize “solidarity soups” to live beautiful moments together and get to know each other. In equality.
      But now the government, and some parts of the movement, propose to appoint representatives for each region! That is to say a few people who would become the only “interlocutors” to public authorities and summarize our diversity. But we do not want “representatives” who would end up talking for us!
       What’s the point? At Commercy a punctual delegation met the sub-prefect, in big cities others met directly with the Prefect: they ALREADY have conveyed our anger and our demands. They ALREADY know that we are determined to finish off with this hated president, this detestable government, and the rotten system they embody!
       And that’s what scares the government! Because he knows that if they begin to give in on taxes and fuels, they will also have to back down on pensions, the unemployed, the status of civil servants, and all the rest! They also knows VERY WELL that they risk intensifying a GENERALIZED MOVEMENT AGAINST THE SYSTEM!
      It is not to better understand our anger and our demands that the government wants representatives”: it is to supervise and bury us! As with the union leadership, they look for intermediaries, people with whom they could negotiate. On whom they can put pressure to appease the eruption. People that they can then buy off and press to divide the movement to bury it.
      But that’s without counting on the strength and intelligence of our movement. It’s without counting that we are thinking, organizing, developing our actions that scare them so much and amplifying the movement!
         And above all, there is a very important thing: everywhere the movement of the yellow vests demand in various forms, something that is well beyond the purchasing power! This thing is power to the people, by the people, for the people. It is a newsystem where “those who are nothing” as they say with contempt, regain power over all those who stuff themselves, over those who rule, and over the money powers. It’s equality. It’s justice. It’s freedom. That’s what we want! And it starts from the grassroots!
        If we appoint “representatives” and “spokespersons”, it will eventually make us passive. Worse: we will quickly reproduce the system and act from top down like the scoundrels who rule us. These so-called “representatives of the people” who are filling their pockets, who make laws that rot our lives and serve the interests of the ultra-rich!
         Let’s not put our finger in the gear of representation and hijacking. This is not the time to hand over our voice to a handful of people, even if they seem honest. They must listen to all of us or to no one!
        From Commercy, we therefore call for the creation throughout France of popular committees, which function in regular general assemblies. Places where speech is liberated, where one dares to express oneself, to train oneself, to help one another. If there must be delegates, it is at the level of each local yellow vests people’s committee, closer to the voice of the people. With imperative, revocable, and rotating mandates. With transparency. With trust.
         We also call for the hundreds of groups of yellow vests to have a cabin as in Commercy, or a “people’s house” as in Saint-Nazaire, in short, a place of rallying and organization! And that they coordinate themselves, at the local and departmental level, in equality!
         This is how we will win, because that, up there, they are not used to manage it! And it scares them a lot. We will not let ourselves be ruled. We will not let ourselves be divided and bought off.
          No to self-proclaimed representatives and spokespersons! Let’s take back the power over our lives! Long live the yellow vests in their diversity!

LONG LIVE PEOPLE POWER, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE!

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

From Arrest To Trial----Ten Years!!

         The wheels of state "justice" can turn very slowly, after ten years, a group of anarchists known as the Tarnac nine, who were arrested with a show like a Hollywood movie, finally arrive in court. This is a report of the start of the trial from Anarchist News:

          Ten years after being rounded up in a well-publicised raid by anti-terror police, defendants in a trial for the alleged sabotage of a rail line did their best to ridicule the prosecution and show their lack of respect for the court this week. The case, which started out as an accusation of a terrorist plot, appears to have been sparked in part by reports from a British undercover cop who has since been exposed by environmental activists.

        "Monsieur Coupat, is it really necessary to eat your snack during the proceedings?" presiding magistrate Corinne Goetzmann asked the star defendant on the first day of the "Tarnac trial" as he bit into a cereal bar.

       The following day she gently reproached him for drinking the Latin American drink maté in court, informing him he did not have "a monopoly on irony" when he protested that she had said he had the right to drink during the trial.

      During the first two days Julien Coupat and fellow defendants joined their lawyer in interrupting prosecutor Olivier Christen and casting doubt on the police's evidence.

        But on Friday Goetzmann took a more no-nonsense tone.

"I'm well aware that in this trial some defendants felt an anger that needed to be expressed, which is why it seemed important to me to let them [speak]," she said. But, she went on, "That is not how a trial happens, the evidence must be discussed, people must listen to each other".

From terrorism to criminal conspiracy

        On 11 November 2008, Coupat, 43, and his ex-wife, Yildune Lévy, 34, were among nine people arrested by some 150 police officers in front of TV cameras in a raid on a farmhouse in south-west France where they were all living. Echoing the police's version of events, the right-wing interior minister at the time, Michèle Alliot-Marie, claimed that an ultra-left terrorist plot had been foiled.

        The group was accused of being behind five acts of sabotage on the railway network in which steel hooks were hung on overhead cables, posing no risk to life but a serious threat of damage to trains.

Coupat and Lévy were finally accused of placing a hook on cables on a high-speed TGV line near Paris on 7-8 November 2008 and charged with terrorism.

        But 10 years later the terror charges have been dropped. Coupat and Lévy now stand accused of criminal conspiracy, along with Elsa Hauck, 33, and Bertrand Deveaud, 31. Two of their comrades, Christophe Becker, 41, and Marion Glibert, 34, are charged with forgery or receiving stolen documents, and Benjamin Rosous, 39, and Mathieu Burnel, 36, are charged with refusing to give DNA samples, a charge four of the other accused also face.

Police report's inconsistencies

       A key element of the prosecution case - a report by police who tailed them on the night of the crime - came under the spotlight on Friday. The defence pointed to inconsistencies, including the fact that one of the officers signed another report in a police station in Levallois-Perret at the time he was allegedly following the suspects.

        The prosecution claims he signed a fax sent from the station the next day. Coupat and Lévy say they drove around the Paris region in Coupat's father's Mercedes because they knew they were being followed and that they tried unsuccessfully to book a hotel room.They claim the police at some point gave up tailing them and then invented the rest of the testimony after the act of sabotage was discovered the next day.

       The defence's request for the police officers' phones to be traced to establish their whereabouts has been turned down on the grounds that their numbers are a state secret.

British undercover cop

        The French police were allegedly tipped off about the Tarnac group by a British undercover police officer who has since been exposed by an environmentalist group he infiltrated.

Mark Kennedy, alias Mark Stone or Mark Flash, has been accused of being an agent provocateur. He is also one of five British police officers at the centre of a legal case over their alleged deception of women into having serious relationships with them while they posed as activists.

        Like several of the others, Kennedy has a wife and children. He has since told the media that he was used by the police forces of 22 countries, has declared that he has regrets over the role he played and, according to the Guardian newspaper, sued the police for manipulating him and failing to protect him from falling in love with one of his targets.

         Kennedy appears to have been the source for an account of a visit Coupat and Lévy paid to the US, crossing the frontier illegally from Canada to avoid having biometric passports. They admit meeting like-minded people in New York but insist that their encounters were not a sinister global anarchist get-together, as it has been portrayed in the police account. "I abhor being placed in the position of defending myself by a fake police officer," Coupat declared when refusing to plead innocent or guilty on the first day of the trial.

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

The State Is The Antithesis Of Freedom.

          Cry "Freedom" and the state will take a dislike to you, act on that cry, and the state will try to crush you. It's the same story the world over, you are free to be obedient and subservient. You are given World Cups, Olympic Games, shopping malls, limitless TV channels of trivia, bubble-gum and candy floss, what more could you want?  Break that mould, and you face the wrath of the state, with its many tentacles it can reach into your life and slowly strangle you. Our history is a litany of names who sought freedom and who have perished at the hands of the state and its binding laws, all there to protect the powers that be. So the sad tale goes on, yesterday, today and tomorrow, unless enough stand up and cry "Freedom" and as one body in solidarity, start to act on that cry.

From Insurrection News:

      17.03.17: Erdoğan Çakır, imprisoned in France for membership of the DHKP-C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front), has been on an indefinite hunger strike since February 15, 2017. The reason for this is that he began a one week hunger strike in solidarity with revolutionary prisoners in Turkey on February 13 and was attacked two days later by the guards at Villenauxe prison.
       In a report from the revolutionary press, it stated that on February 15, dozens of guards entered his cell and attempted to subject him to a degrading body search. Erdoğan Çakır, who resisted the search, was stripped naked under duress and locked in an isolation cell. He then extended his hunger strike indefinitely following this incident.
       On March 4, his daughter Gülcan Çakır went on a solidarity hunger strike which she carried out in her home. There have also been protests in front of Villenauxe prison.
Erdoğan Çakır N ° d’écrou: 10255 EA 2BC B209 CD de Villenauxe Route de Sezanne 10371-Villenauxe la Grande France

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

Impossible Takes Just A Little Longer.

        Where in the capitalist world is there peace? In country after country people are in direct action against this system that is foisted on us as the only game in town. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media will ridicule, lampoon or totally ignore any suggestion that there is a better way to organise our lives other than capitalism. The system is portrayed as the pinnacle of civilisation, yet all around us is poverty, homelessness and bloody wars, for control of the earth's resources. There is mass hunger in the midst of plenty, deprivation surrounded by wealth, large swaths of our planet are being steeped in flowing warm blood of innocents, and still the babbling brook of bullshit laud this dystopia as the bringer of peace, freedom and prosperity. Yes, there is that small band of parasites that have their hands on the control levers of power, who enjoy all that peace, freedom and prosperity, but it is not the vast majority of humanity.

       However, we are awakening, across the planet the ordinary people have seen through the smoke and mirrors of the capitalist illusion, and are taking steps to challenge "the only game in town" philosophy. In small bands  and large groups, they have taken the road to challenge the hegemony of capital, and its corrosive effect on all of us, and the very planet that we inhabit. With the advent of better communications, we are linking up and joining hands, and increasing our solidarity, our small sporadic struggles are now more than ever becoming one massive battle to challenge and bring down this savage, brutal, insane system of destructive greed, exploitation and unearned privilege.

       From Chile to Australia, from Italy to Greece, from France to America, in all corners of our world, people are taking up the struggle against this capitalist cancer, we can shape the world to see to the needs of all our people, we have the numbers, the power, the skills and the imagination, this world is ours by right of our sweat and blood, we just have to make that final grasp.

Mapuches still resisting in “Chile”

By actforfreedom

       In a march commemorating the ninth anniversary of the murder of indigenous Mapuche activist Matias Catrileo, shot in the back by police, protesters stormed the financial district of Santiago, Chile.
They demanded charges against Mapuche spiritual leader or ‘Machi” Francisca Linconao be dropped. She is charged in an arson attack that killed two wealthy land owners in ancestral Mapuche lands. After a 14 day hunger strike ‘to freedom or death,’ she was released on house arrest the same day as the march and ended her hunger strike. Protesters denounced ongoing police violence against indigenous peoples in Chile.
       Decrying cases like that of Brandon Hernández Huentecol, 17, who was shot in the back by police last month. Huentecol has had 12 operations and remains in critical condition. His family denounced police efforts to buy their silence.

Australia:

       As a minimum response to the capture of our comrades, some anarchists in Sydney painted a solidarity mural.

Solidarity with the prisoners of the social war. For the annihilation of every prison.

Mexico:

       The community of Suc-Tuc in Campeche form a self-government against corruption and repression of their authorities
Demián Revart
“Impossible takes just a little bit longer”

France:

Left-wing activists have clashed with riot police during protests over new labour laws that are bringing havoc to the streets of Paris today.

And so it grows until we win.

Our Future

Once upon a time,

in our not so distant past

stood a beautiful, a unique world,

laden with promise,

a world where our future was open,

our potential vast.

Now, seduced by glinting tinsel of the mad

our reason quivers

on the edge of a dark abyss.

We have created a world

where wastelands abound

where we

the many, the marginalised, the ordinary,

struggle to survive in voracity that astounds

are seduced

to create wastelands in our minds,

slowly accepting chaos

in a world of insanity.

Here corporate monsters

of hypocrisy, contradictions,

sever the fragile cord

that unites being with being

     However, our future doesn't have to be that way, the choice is ours. 

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

Permanent State Of Emergency, Permanent Revolution.

        It is approximately a year since the introduction of the "state of emergency" in France. All states jump at the opportunity to introduce a "state of emergency", if they feel that there is the possibility of increase protests against their ideology. The state of emergency in France was supposedly introduce to prevent terror. However, it has been used against all manner of protests, those protesting the new labour laws in France have come in for some very brutal treatment, with the judiciary drawing on the new emergency powers to bring down its heavy hand on those who were involved in those protest. Youth have been at the receiving end of this increased repression.Thousands of arrests, hundreds of thousands injured, hundreds of homes searched, and increased police repression in the neighbourhoods. It all adds up to more control over the population, dressed up as protecting them from terrorists. Of course France is not unique in this respect, with any state, it is always control at all costs.

This from Revolution Permanente.

Rather a poor translation from the French, but still readable: 

        Almost a year after the events of November 13 become the permanent state of emergency as it celebrates its first anniversary. A year state of emergency that Bernard Cazeneuve detailed figures on Monday during a working meeting "against terrorism and radicalization." Not surprisingly, it is in terms of the effectiveness of repression in preventing the attacks that Interior Minister wished to emphasize. War weapons seizures, number of "radicalized" expelled, everything is good to justify the state of emergency. A yet all relative efficacy to prevent attacks, but extremely effective to suppress the protesters against the Labour Law and strengthen the security noose in the neighborhoods. Here is our statistical assessment of the state of emergency. Damien Bernard Before an audience of prefects and prosecutors, Cazeneuve presented a quantified assessment of its state of emergency. More than 4,000 administrative searches, nearly 95 house arrest still in force, nearly 600 firearms seized "with 77 weapons of war." Moreover, nearly 500 arrests were carried out which resulted in 426 police custody. Nearly 430 prohibitions from leaving the country, and 54 websites blockages making "apology for terrorism" and a twenty mosques and prayer rooms closed because "radicalized" are also counted.
         Effective against terrorism. Really ? The figures announced by the Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday 7th November at a meeting on counter-terrorism, aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures taken by the government as part of the state 'emergency. An address especially for reassurance about the terrorist threat. We would then be in good hands, the measures taken by the government have borne fruit. Yet to become permanent emergency, inherited his exceptional measures of the war in Algeria, the extension of police powers, the acceleration of judicial procedures, are in no case prevented the attacks, as the illustrated those of Nice, or priest murdered at the Eglise Saint-Etienne du Rouvray. In his book A president should not say this, Hollande himself confessed having used the state of emergency to rein in environmentalists during the Cop21. And to our camp, what assessment of the state of emergency? Yet while Cazeneuve completeness boasts with its "results" on combating terrorism, he fails another assessment of the state of emergency. Thus, in the June 17, according Bastamag, they are at least 753 people, including a hundred people under 18 who have been pursued since the beginning of the mobilization against the Labour Law end of March. Among these procedures, 135 were cleared away. Overall, two-thirds of lawsuits aimed violence to the police, 79 damage, 133 relate to "participation in an armed gathering." The state of emergency is also the brutal police repression during the protests, including youth, more than 5,000 arrests, and hundreds or thousands of injured, a figure at least difficult to determine as the census make invisible by the media most often injured from our side.
       Justice at two speeds. For the protesters, it is accelerating, for the police slowed down! After the police repression, it was the accelerated justice that fell on the protesters, in the form of double punishment. Under the effect of the state of emergency, justice was at least expeditious. The judicial institution has distinguished itself for its rapidity in putting the demonstrators in prison, sometimes reserving a reprieve by chance. Under police pressure, immediate appearances were legion often leading to heavier penalties, including for persons with a criminal record. On the other hand, cases involving police forces dragged on, and ended most often by non-places. Exceptionally, suspended when the aggression is too big, filmed and seen by millions of people, as for the policeman who struck the young student of Bergson. Strengthening the repression in the neighborhoods, trade union repression is not to be outdone! The state and its police forces did not wait for a state of emergency to repress young people from working-class neighborhoods. Techniques of repression that are inherited from the colonial era and structurally affect racialized people. The state of emergency resulted in an increase in the police presence in the neighborhoods, an increase in the controls on the facies, and led to an increase in Islamophobic acts, the tracking of the "radicalized" Muslims encouraging it. But it is also the trade union repression that has leapt, post-Labor law. In particular, trade union repression took place on SNCF railway workers, with the cancellation of two railway workers in Strasbourg, and numerous cases of judicial repression. They are also ex-employees of the CGT Goodyear, who are subject to two years of suspended prison. Many UL secretaries are under the patronage or judicial repression, as for Reynald Kubecki, co-secretary of UL CGT Le Havre. State of emergency until when? One year already. The "state of emergency" which was "not to last" was extended following the bombing in Nice on 14 July. On 21 July, deputies and senators voted to extend the state of emergency for six months, until January 2017. This state of emergency has become permanent and the government has reinforced it lately following the Police demonstrations, with an additional 100 million, to strengthen the means of repression of the police. At the same time, where Cazeneuve boasted his record of the state of emergency, Manuel Valls was at the same time doing everything possible to convince the tourists who deserted the Hexagon to return thanks among other things to the release of 15 million Of additional euros supposed to allow the security in Ile-de-France, notably through the installation of surveillance cameras. So that this government does not pass the relay of the state of emergency to the right, which could succeed it, it is indeed to the construction of a front against the state of emergency and for the defense of our rights Democratic processes to be organized.

Continue reading, (in French):

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