Ashes Of Disaster.

        "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success". We are certainly facing a disaster on a gigantic scale.. We can see it as disaster and just try to get through it, or we can see it as an opportunity. Mutual aid groups are forming up all over the world, not just in UK. As the present economic system crumbles and creeks as it nears collapsing point, we can with mutual aid groups start to create an alternative to the exploitative capitalist system. Power can move to the communities, mutual aid groups can link up and grow, communities can start to sort out their needs and not wait for our lords and masters to create a dependency on their power institutions. The present economic system is practically on its knees, let's make sure it can never rise again and replicate the inequality, corruption and injustice of the past. By coming together in mutual aid groups, with a long term view, we can grow the roses of success from the ashes of this disaster.  

The following from Roar Magazine:

       With the shutdown of businesses, schools and countless other institutions, millions of people are facing loss of income, housing and access to basic survival resources, including food. Confronted by popular pressure and the specter of civil unrest, states have begun to undertake a “disaster socialism” of uneven and often contradictory aid measures. Still, conditions of emergency are intensifying by the hour and the current biopolitical regime faces an existential crisis.

Under such circumstances, the need for self-organized infrastructures of mutual aid, care and resilience could not be clearer. In the coming weeks and months, rent strikes and other acts of collective refusal are on the horizon. How could these works of mutual aid flow into the construction of a dual power situation? As the system collapses, can physical bases of autonomy and solidarity transform our relationship to the state?

      At Woodbine, an autonomous space and organizing framework maintained in New York City since 2014, this is what we have been preparing for — to mobilize our networks, skills, knowledges and energy to coordinate and provide for each other, while simultaneously building the longer-term capacity to face an uncertain future.

Digital organizing

      Although the severity of COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented in recent memory, many people in New York City seem primed for the moment, as if they have been waiting for a crisis of this magnitude to arrive.

       Last week, Sandy Nurse, a co-founder of the MayDay Space in Bushwick and a candidate for New York City Council tweeted: “Movement folks: we know how to mobilize quickly and effectively. Time to get in formation. Start the conversations now w/ local social networks & hubs on collaborating what safe direct support may need to look like, & what does scaling-up and cross-neighborhood collab[oration] look like.” We shared her post across our social media platforms and received immediate responses from friends and strangers alike reaching out to collaborate.

      Experienced community organizers and newly activated neighbors alike have joined a dizzying flood of online coordination, from social media posts to Google docs, Zoom meetings and Signal threads. Just yesterday, a Google doc titled “Mutual Aid NYC” migrated to its own website, where hundreds of individuals are making plans for autonomous mutual aid and disaster relief on a local, place-by-place basis. This avalanche of online discussion, from resource guides and social media “hot takes,” shows that there is much popular insight about how to to navigate the crisis. But questions remain as to who, how, when and where these calls for action will be taken up.

Legacies of mutual aid

        There is a long history of radical mutual aid that links service provisioning with the construction of dual power. In New York, this has been led by organizations like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, ACT-UP, and, in more recent years, Occupy Wall Street. Today, various decolonial and abolitionist formations have been established that involve mutual aid including Take Back the Bronx and NYC Shut It Down, which is already adjusting its Feed the People (FTP) program to the present crisis. These mutual aid projects exist alongside informal activities of interdependence, care and support that many communities already practice on a day-to-day basis. Now, New Yorkers are mobilizing these informal networks in more deliberate ways, aiming, for example, to connect vulnerable tenants with volunteers.

       The local experience of Hurricane Sandy provides an important example of both the possibilities and the limits of a crisis moment like the present. The self-organized “Occupy Sandy” was a city-wide infrastructure of spontaneous, self-organized disaster relief after the hurricane struck in 2012. Many leftist observers suggested that Occupy Sandy offered a prefigurative glimpse of “disaster communism,” an alternative, cooperative response to so-called “natural” disasters.

        However, in practice, Occupy Sandy functioned largely as a supplementary service provider within the void left by the state’s negligence. It never came close to becoming a sustained political formation, let alone one capable of forcing concessions from the ruling class. Most importantly, Occupy Sandy demonstrated a collective capacity to directly confront catastrophe. It served as a crucible for relationships, projects and spaces in the subsequent decade ⁠— including Woodbine itself.

        Understanding the legacies and continuities of mutual aid are crucial to acting in the current moment. However, none of us have faced the surreal condition of social distancing. What does organizing in real life mean now and what are our expectations of safety and responsibility?

The dilemma of “social distancing”

         As online attempts at mutual aid unfold, we must address the matter of real-life contact and physical space along with their ethical, medical and logistical dilemmas. While recognizing the urgency of “social distancing,” how can we prevent state-mandated isolation and quarantine measures from becoming tools of political demobilization? What does it mean to normalize quarantine as a necessary condition during an emergency? And what are our expectations when it comes to responses from the state?

        We know that there are experienced and trusted organizers all around us, and we also know there are dormant organizing frameworks and relations that will need to be revived and reactivated. We know that we will need to share skills and practices with groups throughout the country. There are many others out there — at home, online, wanting to help, to volunteer, to contribute — with skills, knowledge and resources beyond which any of us realize. There will be the need not only to provide for our friends, but also our neighbors and community members.

Continue reading HERE: 

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

Expropriation.

 

      Housing has become one of the many crises in our money orientated society. Our system has always pushed the illusion that we all should have a safe home to live and bring up our families. However for the ordinary people it is becoming obvious that it is indeed an illusion. We have always struggle to keep a roof over our heads, rents have always increased and sometimes shot up. Now however houses are financial assets to large financial institutions, things to be packaged and traded among the financial Mafia. There is no thought to what a house actually is, a place to have a decent life, a safe place to lay your head.

     A housing shortage keeps demand ahead of supply and therefore keeps prices rising, all music to the financier's ears. Rents keep out stripping income, homelessness keeps rising and the financial Mafia keep laughing all the way to the bank, to their luxury yacht, and to their opulent mansion. That's capitalism for you.

     It is encouraging to see that in some places people are taking action against this brutal exploitation of what is a human right, a safe place to lay your head. In Germany there is a movement to break this landlord rule over their lives. Others perhaps could take note and follow suit.

 This from Roar Magazine.

       Berlin’s spatial dynamics and organized working class show how to secure liveable spaces and combat the financial nature of housing: socialize them.

         Over the last few decades, housing in cities around the world has undergone unprecedented financialization and artificial speculation. Investors have never been richer. The worldwide value of the current real estate market is $217 trillion, 36 times worth the value of all the gold ever mined.

Profits from the commodification of the housing market have skyrocketed in step with the enclosure of spaces and the fixing of financial value to them. Living spaces are now complex financial products that can be packaged up into investment funds and swapped by companies across the world.

       As Raquel Rolnik, former special rapporteur to the UN on adequate housing, attests, “In the new political economy, centered around housing as a means of access to wealth, the home becomes a fixed capital asset whose value resides in its expectation of generating more value in the future, depending on the oscillations of the (always assumed) rise of real-estate prices.”

       Berlin has been the epicenter of the emerging struggle against capital, giving birth to a rebellious housing movement. A city-wide referendum is underway to expropriate “mega-landlords” with 3,000 apartments or more. If successful, the campaign could tip the scales away from speculation and essentially decommodify 250,000 apartments. In Berlin, tenants and housing activists are building upon shared struggle to break capital’s control over the home and democratize how and where we live.

Read the full article HERE: 

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

The Struggle Continues.

      We the ordinary people have a history we can be very proud of, and we should do what we can to remember those who helped make that proud history. We should tell their stories and keep their ideas alive, we are still struggling to achieve their ideas and dreams. Their lives can inspire us and point us in the right direction, the lives they lived should not be in vain. There are those today who are writing that rich history of the ordinary people in their struggle for justice and freedom, we must offer up our solidarity. It is our duty to carry that battle forward for that better world for all. The final chapter in that history will be our victory over injustice, exploitation, authority, poverty and wars.

From Roar Magazine.

• ROAR Collective

      From the barricades of the Paris Commune to anti-colonial resistance in the South Pacific, Louise Michel was one of the most important revolutionaries of the 19th century.

       Louise Michel, born on 29 May, 1830, is today remembered as one of the most influential and charismatic revolutionaries of the 19^th century. Her role in the Paris Commune of 1871 — first in the ambulance service and later on the front lines with the National Guard fighting against the Versailles troops — eventually led to her capture and deportation from France to a penal colony in New Caledonia.

It was during her exile that Michel turned towards anarchism, which would continue to dominate her writing and organizing for the rest of her life. In 1880 she was granted amnesty, and upon her return to France she continued her revolutionary activities, writing articles, giving speeches, setting up a soup kitchen for impoverished ex-prisoners who returned from exile, and traveling across Europe delivering her revolutionary message to large audiences. In 1890 she opened the International Anarchist School for children on London’s Fitzroy Square, before returning to France in 1895. Michel died on 10 January, 1905, after which her funeral in Paris was attended by more than 100,000 people.

      Michel’s revolutionary defiance is clearly expressed in her defense speech before the 6^th council of war after her capture during the defeat of the Paris Commune:

I do not wish to defend myself, I do not wish to be defended. I belong completely to the social revolution, and I declare that I accept complete responsibility for all my actions. I accept it completely and without reservations.

You accuse me of having taken part in the murder of the generals? To that I would reply Yes, if I had been in Montmartre when they wished to have the people fired on. I would not have hesitated to fire myself on those who gave such orders. But I do not understand why they were shot when they were prisoners, and I look on this action as arrant cowardice.

As for the burning of Paris, yes, I took part in it. I wished to oppose the invader from Versailles with a barrier of flames. I had no accomplices in this action. I acted on my own initiative.

I am told that I am an accomplice of the Commune. Certainly, yes, since the Commune wanted more than anything else the social revolution, and since the social revolution is the dearest of my desires. More than that, I have the honour of being one of the instigators of the Commune, which by the way had nothing–nothing, as is well known–to do with murders and arson. I who was present at all the sittings at the Town Hall, I declare that there was never any question of murder or arson.

Do you want to know who are really guilty? It is the politicians. And perhaps later light will be brought on to all these events which today it is found quite natural to blame on all partisans of the social revolution…

But why should I defend myself? I have already declared that I refuse to do so. You are men who are going to judge me. You sit before me unmasked. You are men and I am only a woman, and yet I look you in the eye. I know quite well that everything I could say will not make the least difference to your sentence. So a single last word before I sit down. We never wanted anything but the triumph of the great principles of the revolution. I swear it my our martyrs who fell at Satory, by our martyrs whom I acclaim loudly, and who will one day have their revenge.

Once more I belong to you. Do with me what you please. Take my life if you wish. I am not the woman to argue with you for a moment….

What I claim from you, you who call yourselves a Council of War, who sit as my judges, who do not disguise yourselves as a Commission of Pardons, you who are military men and deliver your judgement in the sight of all, is Satory where our brothers have already fallen.

I must be cut off from society. You have been told to do so. Well, the Commissioner of the Republic is right. Since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share. If you let me live, I shall never stop crying for revenge, and I shall avenge my brothers by denouncing the murderers in the Commission for Pardons….

I have finished. If you are not cowards, kill me!

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

The Judiciary Doesn't Know The Meaning Of Justice.

        The judiciary is the machine that fastens the chains fashioned by the state for its own protection. Its purpose is set in stone, nothing to do with compassion, humanity, or human dignity, it is ruthless in its pursuit of defending the state and its powerful and wealthy masters. It is devoid of justice and is relentless in its drive to protect the establishment and all the unearned privileges that are heaped on its masters. The judiciary is the state's most powerful weapon against freedom and justice.

Following Extract from Roar Magazine.

       After spending five years behind bars as a political prisoner, Greek anarchist communist Tasos Theofilou reflects on life in prison and prison’s role in society.

Open Letter on the Commencement of the Trial at the Court of Appeal

November 2, 2016
        On November 21, after a nine-month postponement, my trial commences at the Court of Appeal. It’s been two years since the completion of my trial at the Court of First Instance, when I was sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment for the charges of common complicity to homicide and robbery in connection with the events on Paros Island on August 10, 2012. I was acquitted of participation in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire as well as of direct perpetration of homicide by a majority opinion.
      It was a political (not judicial) compromise, resulting from a conflict between the manipulation of the case by the police in cooperation with the mainstream media during the first days after my arrest, the lack of any evidence, the solidarity expressed by the community, and the reaction of independent media.
      From this emerged the temporary Solomonic solution of my partial acquittal of the charges, deferring the prospect of a conclusive decision until a trial at the Court of Appeal. There was an appeal initiated by myself, in which I upheld a full acquittal of all charges. There was also an appeal initiated by a gentleman called Δράκος [Dragon] — a public prosecutor whose surname obviously adds further symbolism to the witch-hunt orchestrated by the Anti-Terrorist Unit. Eventually, the division of opinion between the presiding judge, Mr. Hatziathanasiou — who voted for conviction on all charges — and the two other members of the court — who chose the more moderate option that eventually prevailed — made room for further manipulation. Mr. Δράκος, it would seem, felt that twenty-five years of imprisonment based on no evidence is not enough and went on to turn my trial at the Court of Appeal into a repetition of the initial trial. His appeal opened up the possibility of me not being fully acquitted or even facing a sentence harsher than life imprisonment. I believe that the event of my arrest, its manipulation by the mainstream media, my detention and initial conviction high-lighted certain issues that do not have to do with me personally.
    Rather, they bear a wider social and political importance. It is a manifestation of how a ruthless police state attempts to solidify the most extremist doctrines of judicial repression: from the medieval nature of my public castigation and the attempt to squeeze premodern criminal stereotypes into a fabricated pro-file; to the criminalization of friendship, comradeship or social relationships; as well as the use of supernatural or pseudoscientific evidence such as the notorious DNA on a hat, which forms the basis of this otherwise tragic story.
[…]
       My arrest is part of a crusade against the anarchist movement, launched and orchestrated by the law-and-order milieu: journalists, the Anti-Terrorist Unit, prosecution investigators, and wannabe Supreme Court judges. It is a crusade that dates back to 2009, when the dismantling of Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire was put forward as a pretext. A “vacancy” arose from the case of Nea Smyrni back in 2010. 1 A vacancy that the Anti-Terrorist Unit thought I “rightfully deserved,” when in August 2012 a citizen was fatally injured in his attempt to prevent the escape of the robbers of Alpha Bank in Naousa of Paros Island. They based my “informed appointment” on an actual meeting I’d had back then [in 2010] with my friend and comrade Kostas Sakkas at an eatery in the neighborhood of Kallithea, as well as on an imaginary meeting with the then [in 2010] unknown to me but now comrade, friend and co-prisoner, Giorgos Karagiannides. It was a golden opportunity to slander the anarchist movement by profiling it as a mob of ruthless and bloodthirsty individuals.
       It took the mobilization of all the mainstream media outlets broadcasting my arrest exclusively, striving to make the scenario appear plausible for a few days. For an entire week they presented me as a ruthless murderer. Photos of me went viral on the Internet while my commission to the courts on Loukareos and Evelpidon Streets, respectively, were broadcast live on all TV channels. In the name of law and order, judges, the media, and the police violated my rights and disgraced the famed presumption of innocence in every possible way. The media-cannibalism I was subjected to breached the aesthetic limits of the postmodern Dark Age we now find ourselves in.
      Of course, it was not just the authority of the media that pursued my conviction by means of abusing even my written works and my private life, cramming criminal stereotypes into my fabricated profile (especially that of the paranoid murderer); jurisdiction followed suit as well. It’s precisely the enforcement of media authority, after all, that made the lack of any evidence appear insignificant. Even the provocative statement at court: “Who knows, perhaps this man was not at the robbery,” which came from the then-commissioner of the Anti-Terrorist Unit, Mr. Hardalias, was thought of as less of a scandal and more of a statement that shouldn’t be noted in the minutes. It is a scandal because it was not just a statement that came out of his mouth spontaneously. It was a display of the power of a man and the service he represents in the space and time of a public trial.
       It is a scandal because he chose this arrogant way to manifest the absolute power that his service enjoys. He actually implied with cynicism: “I don’t care if he was or wasn’t at the robbery. I don’t care about minor issues like evidence. I have my reasons to want him in prison. And he shall be in prison.” This development came as no surprise given that the suppression of the anarchist movement had been assigned to the Anti-Terrorist Unit as its sole and exclusive responsibility.
    The Anti-Terrorist Unit is a police service that enjoys provocatively preferential treatment by the media, to the degree that crime news informs case files and is considered valid evidence of guilt. Of course, we shouldn’t have expected much more from the presiding judge, Mr. Hatziathanasiou, whose argument for my conviction on all charges went as far as to include the fact that I tend to use an electric razor — not a blade — during the freezing winter in Korydallos prison (meaning that, since one perpetrator appears to have no facial hair on the pictures taken by CCTV cameras and since he’s disguised, then it must certainly be me!). He also felt the need to include that I haven’t served in the Army and that I haven’t read Genet’s books.
     Needless to say he concurred with the draftsman of my criminal indictment, that my collection of fiction stories, Παρανουαρικό [Paranoir], as well as the crime reportage found in tabloid press of the poorest quality, such as Proto Thema, should be considered valid documents substantiating my guilt. Likewise, we shouldn’t be taken aback by the prosecutor, Mrs. Oikonomou’s, attitude. She simply thought it was . . . appropriate or even in line with her responsibilities perhaps, to nap during most of the proceedings. It came as no surprise that she ended up reciting the document of my indictment when she was called to declaim her proposal.
      These were, more or less, the conditions of my trial at the Court of First Instance. The political circumstances had placed the anti-terrorism witch-hunt at the top of the previous far-right government’s agenda. The Minister of Justice and former public prosecutor, Mr. Athanasiou, announced his intentions to introduce high-security prisons for terrorists within the first one hundred days of his appointment. The Anti-Terrorist Unit arrested Kostas Sakkas every other day with silly pretenses, forcing him to become a fugitive.
[…]
      I see my legal battle against all charges at the Court of Appeal as part of a wider battle against a ruthless police state, against judicial repression and its extremist doctrines. It is a bizarre existential battle in which adjudicators and prosecutors are parts of a single body — that of jurisdiction.
      As I did at the Court of First Instance, I would like to highlight yet again that I don’t pledge innocence and I will not plead with any judge to believe me. I am not innocent. In the class war, I’ve chosen a side. I stand with the underprivileged and the suppressed, the marginalized and the prosecuted, the transgressors and the accursed. I decided to take political action in the anarchist movement with the admittedly ambitious goal to strike down the social, political, and economic foundations of capitalism and its state. However, I denied, I deny and will deny again all the accusations of the actions they’ve charged me with. I never was a member of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, I didn’t participate in this robbery and, above all, I never killed and wouldn’t have ever been capable of killing an unarmed citizen for any reason or under any circumstances.

For anarchy, for communism,

Tasos Theofilou

Read the full article HERE:

Export Then Import The Same Stuff, And Make Lots Of Money.

      Is there any rational person on this planet that can't see the insanity of capitalism. We are always told to encourage "trade" that's the savior of the country, increase trade and we get rich. Of course the "we" doesn't include you and I. The idea seems to be we grow lots of food and then export it, so we need to import food to survive, makes perfect sense if you make you money from trading, but blasts the atmosphere with tons of CO2 and other poisonous emissions, but what the hell, it gets you a private jet and a £150 million yacht.

      For those who haven't yet quite grasped the insanity of capitalism, this article from Roar Magazine, should clarify the total greed driven insanity of this destructive economic system that destroys the planet and only benefits the few.

          The way trade works in the global economy is often absurd. Food routinely gets shipped halfway across the world to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Mexican calves — fed imported American corn — are exported to the United States to be butchered, and then the meat is exported back to Mexico for sale. More than half of the seafood caught in Alaska gets processed in China, and much of it is sent right back to American grocery store shelves.
         Compounding the insanity of this “re-importation” is the equally head-scratching phenomenon of “redundant trade”. This is a common practice whereby countries both import and export identical quantities of identical products in a given year. For instance, in 2007, Britain imported 15,000 tons of chocolate-covered waffles, while exporting 14,000 tons. In 2017, the US both imported and exported nearly 1.5 million tons of beef and nearly half a million tons of potatoes.
        On the face of it, this kind of trade makes no economic sense. Why would it be worth the immense cost — in money as well as fuel — of sending perfectly good food abroad only to bring it right back again?
        The answer lies in the way the global economy is structured. Direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels, on the order of $5 trillion per year worldwide, allow the costs of shipping to be largely borne by taxpayers and the environment instead of the businesses that actually engage in it. This allows transnational corporations to take advantage of differences in labor and environmental laws between countries, not to mention tax loopholes, in service of making a bigger profit.
         The consequences of this bad behavior are already severe, and set to become worse in the coming decades. Small farmers, particularly in the Global South, have seen their livelihoods undermined by influxes of cheap food from abroad. Trade agreements have made it impossible for companies to compete in the global economy unless they base their operations in places with the weakest protections for workers and the environment. And all the while, the share of global carbon emissions produced by commercial shipping is set to rise to 17 percent by 2050, if action isn’t taken to curb our addiction to trade.  But policymakers currently have little incentive to reduce unnecessary trade: bizarrely, emissions from global trade do not appear in any nation’s carbon accounting.
        The action will therefore have to begin with peoples’ movements around the world. We must call for an end to subsidies that only benefit giant corporations, as well as an end to tax policies that encourage things like re-importation and redundant trade. Perhaps the most critical step towards sanity would be the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels. Without governments covering the cost of their emissions, transnational corporations would have to radically reconsider the way they operate.
          Making these changes will not be easy. Generating momentum for trade policies that promote community health, small farmers, and ecological stability will not happen overnight. But the first step is raising awareness of trade as an issue, and overcoming the unwillingness of most major media outlets, politicians and think-tanks to discuss it critically.
         To that end, Local Futures has released a tongue-in-cheek short film and an accompanying factsheet, highlighting the absurdity of the current global trade system and pointing to some ways out. The film and factsheet have been launched as part of #InsaneTrade Week, a social media campaign Local Futures is running from March 25 to April 1.

Author: Local Futures.

             Local Futures is an international NGO that raises awareness about the need to shift away from dependence on global monopolies, and towards decentralized, regional economies.

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

ISDS, No Friendly Society.

        ISDS, a rather innocuous seeming acronym, some may no doubt connect it with International Sheep Dog Society. However, it has another more sinister and undemocratic association connected to the corporate juggernaut and the financial Mafia, that's where the initials stand for Investment-State Dispute Settlement. This is a neat piece of legislation that allows companies to sue governments if the feel that that government has passed legislation that could harm its profits. Supposing a government passes some health and safety regulations and a large company thinks it could harm its profits, it can then sue that government and claim millions/billions in compensation, tax payers money of course.

      Here are some recent cases from Politico:

         In 2011, Australia introduced some of the world’s toughest legislation on tobacco packaging. It obliged manufacturers to remove all branding and sell cigarettes from plain brown packs dominated with grisly health warnings.

       Tobacco companies attempted but failed to overturn the legislation in Australian courts. Then Philip Morris tried another tack. It unearthed an ISDS clause in a 1993 trade agreement between Australia and Hong Kong — where Philip Morris Asia is based — and sued the Australian government.

          The case is still pending, but Australian media estimate taxpayers are having to fork out the equivalent of €34 million in lawyers fees for just the first phase of the litigation.

           In Europe, Swedish energy company Vattenfall is seeking €5 billion compensation from the  German government over its decision to phase out nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima radiation leak in Japan.

         Canada’s Lone Pine Resources Company is using a U.S. subsidiary to sue its own government for $230 million under ISDS provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That’s in response to a provincial authority in Quebec calling a moratorium on fracking for natural gas under the St. Lawrence River.

Such cases help explain mounting concern among the public and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic over ISDS provisions in the TTIP negotiations.

         Emotions are particularly strong in Europe, where there’s already widespread unease in some countries over the impact TTIP could have in areas ranging from privacy to labor laws and genetically modified organisms.

Read the full article HERE: 

         More on this pampered, privileged parasites' plan to run roughshod over the health and welfare of the people in their greed fest for profit.

From Roar Magazine:

        Over forty of the corporations listed as WEF “Industry Partners” have been involved in ISDS cases, often intended to undermine or discourage progressive policy, including environmental protections, minimum-wage increases and public health measures.
      ISDS clauses, found within a range of trade and investment agreements including the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), enable multinational companies to sue states via secretive international tribunals if governments take actions which they believe unfairly impede their profits.
       The “Stop ISDS coalition”, an alliance of over a hundred NGOs, including Greenpeace, ActionAid and Public Services International organized the action as a launch for a petition to the European Union to end the promotion of ISDS and support a Binding UN Treaty on Transnational Corporations to give people and governments the ability to hold the private sector to account.
      Some examples of ISDS cases by WEF corporations include:

• Cargill sued Mexico in 2005 after the Government implemented a tax on high-fructose corn syrup to address the country’s obesity crisis. Cargill used ISDS under Nafta to extract over $70 million in damages from Mexico’s public budget. Cargill used the WEF in 2018 to launch a Corporate Social Responsibility project, claiming to “address social issues using the power of food.”
• In 2015, Novartis threatened to use ISDS to successfully discourage the Colombian government from making a life-saving leukemia drug more accessible through compulsory licensing. The drug, which has brought in over €40 billion in revenue for Novartis, sold for over $15,000 per patient per year; twice the average person’s income.
• In 2008, Dow Chemical sued Canada after Quebec banned the manufacture and sale of harmful pesticides. Dow Agrosciences declared the subsequent settlement a victory, and commentators noted the case may discourage other Governments from moving ahead with their own pesticide bans.

Read the full article HERE:

       So this is how capitalism works, profit above all else, health and welfare, living conditions, etc. don't even appear on the list of priorities of the corporate juggernaut and the financial Mafia. If you rely on governments to sort this one out, you'll have a long wait, governments rely on these bodies and have little to no power over them, and these bodies use governments to protect their interests. It is a relationship that excludes the people, their aims and desires.
      To see to the needs of all our people in a fair and just society, first dismantle capitalism, then work from there.

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

The Need For More Leaderless Action.

      What is happening in France should be of tremendous interest to all those who wish to change society away from this corporate/state plutocracy to a system controlled by the people. This not a protest organised by some trade union or political party, this is a spontaneous uprising by people across a wide spectrum and not following the dictates of some ideology. Here we see people who didn't wait for the "leaders" to tell them to take to the streets, it grew among the people and spread across the country. Union leaders, bureaucrats, academics, party leaders, and academics stand confused, and I would think a little afraid as they can't get control of this phenomenon.  

     I have often said that nobody knows the spark that will start the fire. This particular fire that is raging across France started with a few disgruntled truck drivers who voiced their views on social media. That was the spark that ignited the underlying anger and discontent that rumbles under the surface in every corporate/state plutocracy that controls and exploits the lives of millions. All I can say is keep creating those sparks, the tinder is there, one spark is all it takes.
Two opinions of democracy:

 Photos by Abdulmonam Eassa

      There is an excellent article on the events in France by Jerome Roos, in Roar magazine. Here are a couple of extracts:

        What began four weeks ago as a nationwide response to a widely-disseminated Facebook call by two angry truck drivers to block local roads and highway toll stations in protest against a new “ecological” fuel tax introduced by Macron’s government has now spiraled out into a full-blown popular revolt against the banker president and the wealthy corporate elite he so openly represents.

And how various groups can gel:

       In recent days, the political crisis has been aggravated by what appears to be a veritable convergence of social struggles. On December 1, ambulance drivers joined the fray, demonstrating in front of the presidential palace with screaming sirens. On Monday, December 3, French students radicalized their ongoing struggle by blocking access to over 200 high schools; the following Thursday an estimated 100,000 of them participated in a nationwide walkout against Macron’s changes to university admission procedures and a rise in administrative fees. Shocking footage of several dozen students being placed in stress positions by riot police for an extended period of time soon went viral and served to further inflame the tensions and anti-police sentiment among the gilets jaunes. Then, last Saturday, thousands of environmentalists at a pre-scheduled climate demonstration in Paris donned yellow vests in solidarity. Meanwhile, the main unions for French farmers, truck drivers and public transport workers have all announced their intention to go on strike.

The need to ignore the old avenues of dialogue and compromise:

      Four weeks in, the uprising also continues to confound mainstream journalists and experts. “The gilets jaunes have blown up the old political categories,” one French media activist told ROAR on Saturday night, after a long day of riots in the capital. “They reject all political leaders, all political parties and any form of political mediation. No one really knows how to confront or deal with this movement — not the media, not the government, nor anyone else. What we are witnessing is unprecedented in French history.” While the outcome of these dramatic developments remains uncertain, it is clear that France is currently living through a rupture of historic proportions, taking the country onto uncharted terrain. For the left, the emerging scenario presents both exciting opportunities, but also a number of significant political risks. How are radical and autonomous social forces to insert themselves into this unfamiliar and uncertain situation without losing sight of the dangers that lie ahead?

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Imperialism's New Debt Colonies.

       What is the difference between a bag full of money and a gunboat? None, they are both weapons of imperialism. Capitalism shapes itself according to its needs, the gunboat was replaced by the more subtle bag of money, but when that fails it has no hesitation in going back to the gunboat. Though nowadays the gunboat is much larger and more powerful, as the Middle East has found out in recent times. Modern capitalism still uses blood, death and destruction to further its ends, but in recent years it has swung behind the bag of money model to dominate and subjugate nations, Greece obviously springs to mind as a country beaten into submission by the bag of money, in the form of debt.

        

           This is an excerpt published by ROAR Magazine from Jerome Roos’ essay, “The New Debt Colonies”, well worth a read, Marxist or not.

          Today we are witnessing the resurgence of an old phenomenon: the debt colony. A decade after the collapse the U.S. housing bubble and the onset of the worst capitalist crisis in living memory, governments around the world continue to bear the burden of historically unprecedented public debt loads. In some cases, most spectacularly in the peripheral countries of the Eurozone but also in a number of emerging markets, these mounting financial obligations have led to crippling sovereign debt crises – which have in turn impelled the dominant creditor powers to intervene aggressively on foreign bondholders’ behalf, imposing highly intrusive regimes of international financial supervision on distressed borrowers in order to ensure continued debt servicing. The fiscal autonomy of Greece and Puerto Rico, in particular, has now been abolished in all but name, although similar processes have long been afoot elsewhere as well.

        This contemporary experience in turn carries strong historical echoes. A century and a half ago, Karl Marx already observed how the emergence of the national debt in early-modern Europe constituted one of the “most powerful levers of primitive accumulation,” leading to the “alienation of the state” by private financiers and “giving rise to stock exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.” These dynamics intensified during the Age of Imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the export of European and U.S. capital to the newly independent countries of Latin America and the Mediterranean added an international dimension to this long-standing process of dispossession through debt. During this period, the dominant creditor powers regularly subjected distressed sovereign borrowers to external financial control – often under force of arms. The British invasion of Egypt in 1882, the German push to establish an International Financial Commission in Greece in 1898, and the appearance of European gunboats on the Venezuelan coast in 1902 are but some of the most prominent cases in point.

       Today, such long-standing processes of financial subjugation continue in a new form – through what has euphemistically come to be known as “international crisis management.” Ever since the Mexican debt crisis of 1982, banks and bondholders in the wealthy creditor countries have increasingly come to rely on their own governments and international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank to impose painful structural adjustment programs on crisis-stricken debtor countries in the developing world. Over the course of two decades, international creditors – private and official alike – went on to plunder the immense wealth of the Global South, from Argentina to Zaire, aggressively opening up local economies to foreign capital and restructuring them in line with the neoliberal prerogatives of the Washington Consensus. The result has been a vast flow of capital “upstream,” from public hands in the global periphery to private hands in the advanced capitalist core, with developing countries transferring an estimated $4.2 trillion in interest payments to their creditors in Europe and North America since 1982, far outstripping the official-sector development aid these countries received during the same period.¹

           In the wake of the global financial crisis, these same methods have now come to be applied on a massive scale in the capitalist heartland itself. The result has not just been a new wave of “accumulation by dispossession,” but in some cases also the effective abolition of national sovereignty. When Greece’s fledgling Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was forced into a humiliating capitulation to his European creditors in the summer of 2015, for instance, an anonymous diplomat from a Germany-allied country candidly described the terms of surrender as “akin to turning Greece into an economic protectorate.”² In his memoirs of his brief tenure as finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis repeatedly denounces the creditors’ financial intimidation tactics as an example of “latter-day gunboat diplomacy.” When Poland’s foreign minister was asked for the reason behind his country’s refusal to join the euro, all he had to do was point south: “Greece is de facto a colony,” he explained, “We don’t want to repeat this scenario.”

        These ongoing developments raise a number of important questions about the relationship between contemporary patterns in international crisis management and Europe and America’s long-standing history of financial imperialism. How different is our contemporary era really from the “era of gunboat diplomacy” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the dominant creditor powers also regularly intervened in the debtors’ sovereign affairs to defend bondholder interests? What are the continuities and discontinuities between the two periods? And can the hotly debated and polemical notion of imperialism still serve as a useful analytical tool to help us make sense of the current conjuncture? If so, how far can the classical Marxist theories of the phenomenon take us in elucidating the asymmetric power relations at the heart of the contemporary global political economy – and what, if anything, can be done to revamp existing theoretical frameworks to better reflect the enduring relevance of imperialism in our time?

           In what follows, I will argue that imperialism clearly remains an important factor in the early 21st century – even if the original Marxist accounts require extensive revision in light of the recent transformations of global capitalism. The lasting contribution of the classical theorists was to anchor their critiques of imperialism within a broader critique of political economy, highlighting the central role of finance in driving imperialist relations of domination. This, I argue, should remain the starting point for any contemporary analysis of imperialism. At the same time, however, the classical theories also suffered from a number of important limitations. Most consequentially, perhaps, they tended to emphasize the more overt manifestations of imperialist power (territorial conquest and military intervention) at the expense of its more subtle, structural dynamics (operating through the global financial system), which ended up blinding them to some of the underlying dependencies that later kept the asymmetric power relations between debtors and creditors in place even in the absence of territorial conquest or military intervention.

Read the full article HERE:

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Imperialists Trying To Extinguish The Flame Of Freedom.

        The region of the Middle East seems doomed to be the battle ground of the world's imperialists as the carve up the region and crush any attempt by the people to foster freedom and democracy. This latest imperialist plundering adventure by Turkish dictator, Erdogan is nothing less than a savage attack on people trying to create a society freed from the capitalist authoritarian system, our imperialist masters will not tolerate areas where people act and think for themselves in the interests of all.

       The following is an extract from an article by Dilar Dirik, from Roar Magazine, calling for active support for the people of the region around Afrin, a call to come together and stop this imperialist slaughter of the ideals of freedom and justice for all.

         As I write, the Turkish army is engaged in an illegal cross-border invasion of the Syrian-Kurdish region of Afrin. Claiming to fight “terrorists,” the Turkish state — an EU candidate, ally of the West and second-largest NATO army — launched an act of aggression against the same people who earned the world’s respect for defeating ISIS with their courageous sacrifices and historic resistance. The military campaign includes pro-Erdogan Free Syrian Army (FSA) troops and poses a threat to 800,000 civilians, half of whom are internally displaced people who sought refuge in Afrin from regions like Idlib and Aleppo.
       The targeting of Afrin exposes every letter in the ABC of imperialism. The attack could not have been launched without the approval of Russia, which controls the airspace over Afrin, as well as the consent of Iran and Assad. According to officials in Afrin, Russia proposed to protect Afrin in return for handing over control to the Assad regime. But as the offer was rejected, Russia gave green light to Turkey’s invasion.
      The United States, meanwhile, which conveniently used the Kurds as “reliable boots on the ground” in Syria for the last years in the international anti-ISIS coalition, stays quiet over their NATO ally’s ambitions to sacrifice the heroes of the ISIS war, merely warning Turkey to “avoid civilian casualties.” European governments, especially Germany, have their own stakes in the game, as mostly European weapons and tanks are used by the Turkish army; weapons in the hands of fascists, which drive millions of people to leave their homes and risk death to become refugees in Europe.
       Seven years into the war, Syria is destroyed; ISIS came, killed and left; genocide and massacres have been committed; the region’s demography and ecology have changed; Assad seems to be here to stay. The legitimate demands of all Syrians who took to the streets and risked their lives to call for dignity, freedom and justice against the Assad regime have been betrayed bitterly. Meanwhile, the powerful state actors in the region and beyond seem to have come full circle, as more than half a million people died and around 6 million have been displaced. Activists speak of the Third World War taking place in this region.
        It is within this context that Turkey launches its war on Afrin, far exceeding the historical hostility of the Turkish state towards the Kurdish people. The battle symbolizes the two options that the peoples and communities of the Middle East face today: between militarist, patriarchal, fascist dictatorships on the one hand, controlled by foreign imperialist interests and capital, or the solidarity between autonomous, self-determined, free and equal communities on the other. The defense of Afrin is an opportunity for the left to unite against fascism and mobilize against militarism, occupation and war.

What is at stake

        Within the context of the war on ISIS, the same states that are known to have fueled jihadist forces inside Syria — especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — became part of a coalition led by the same powers which invaded the Middle East for imperial interests, committed war crimes in the name of “fighting terrorism,” and thus established the ground on which ISIS would eventually flourish. The forces that represent systems of capitalism, authoritarian statism, religious fundamentalism and in some cases pure fascism, were put in charge of establishing democracy and peace.
       Meanwhile, as ISIS captured the attention of the international community, the initial issue of Assad’s dictatorial and bloodthirsty rule was side-lined, as were any notions of a lasting and just peace for Syria. With the entrance of Russia on the Syrian war scene and the role of Iran, the false binary of Sunni-Shiite animosity — a commonly used trope to disable just solutions in the Middle East — was reinforced. Regardless of all the conflicting interests of the involved powers, their common practice was the suppression of meaningful dissent, grassroots resistance and projects for genuine democratic alternatives. On the ground, this led to the mobilization of fascist and sectarian ideologies for which people were willing to die and kill.
      By default, any attempts at popular self-determination and self-defense against colonialism and capitalist exploitation would need to be annihilated for this concept to work. That explains all the hostility campaigns towards the liberationist Rojava revolution, including the attempts of big powers such as the US to use Rojava militarily and try to empty its politics of its revolutionary principles. Taking advantage of the contradictions emerging within the imperialist power games, the Kurds, trying to stay true to revolutionary ideals while being literally surrounded by fire and in temporary tactical alliances with some actors, have constantly been accused of being puppets of imperialism in their attempt to establish radical democratic systems of self-governance, while defending millions of lives from certain death by ISIS fascists.
      Sadly, the sectarian and dogmatic sections of the international left were unable to read these emancipatory politics and act accordingly, allowing imperialism to go ahead by refusing to extend vital solidarity to the Kurds when it was most needed. There is still time to correct this mistake.

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Turkey's "Blowback".

      The Kurdish problem has always been a thorn in the side of Turkey, but now it appears that Turkey has found an answer to that problem, IS. Having allowed an open border for IS, and allowing arms to roll through, Turkey now seems to be prepared to stand by and let IS do its dirty work, crush the Kurds. Though it may suffer "blowback" as hundreds of thousands of Kurds cross into Turkey and the resident Kurdish population rise up in anger at Turkey's shameful and brutal alliance with IS. It also appears that the mighty "super-powers" with their million pound smart bombs and faster than sound million pound aircraft, can't stop a bunch of religious fundamentalists from moving in and massacring a town, Or are they not that interested in saving the people of that unfortunate town?

This from ROAR Magazine:

      Kurdish anger is exploding onto the streets of Turkey and across Europe in protest at Western inaction in Kobanê and Turkish collusion with ISIS. As the extremist militants of the Islamic State close in on the besieged town on the Turkish-Syrian border, with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) running low on ammunition and Kurdish commanders warning of an impending massacre, the Turkish government and the US-led coalition appear to be content to stand by and let ISIS unleash a bloodbath in the city.

     In recent days, thousands of Kurds have descended upon the Turkish town of Suruç, just miles from Kobanê, in an attempt to cross the border, break the siege and bring supplies and reinforcements to their family, kin and comrades. Turkish troops have responded by sealing off the border crossing and firing teargas and rubber bullets both at Turkish Kurds trying to break into Syria and at Syrian refugees fleeing towards Turkey. Cut off from the outside world and without much air support, the YPG fighters are left to fend for themselves.

Read the full article HERE:

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Ouroboros, The New Israel.

      What happens to a nation that dehumanises another nation, how does that society come to terms with its brutal treatment of other human beings. how does it justify its savagery? What is happening to the people of Israel as they get behind their government's inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people?

 

“Tomorrow there’s no teaching in Gaza, they don’t have any children left,” chanted supporters of the attacks on Gaza, waving Israeli flags. 

This from Roar Magazine:

Of course, none of this is unique to Israel. War and occupation have always brought out humanity’s inner bestiality — from Auschwitz to Abu Ghraib, from Hiroshima to Vietnam. (And no, observing that simple historical fact is not the same as equating Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust.) The same fundamental human bestiality has been an undeniable feature of all massacres and all colonial regimes. Not too long ago, great thinkers like Paulo Freire, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon observed with great lucidity how the European colonizer, by brutalizing the colonized, ended up brutalizing himself. Running a colonial regime, they noted, requires not just the dehumanization of the oppressed, but — much more importantly — the thorough dehumanization of the oppressor. Human affects like empathy must be actively repressed to keep the colonial order intact; not only to justify the brutality ideologically, but simply to cope with one’s own atrocities emotionally.

Read the full article HERE:

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Democracy Administered By A Baton.

       That illusion that is woven, that hall of smoke and mirrors, that thing called "representative democracy" that we are asked to believe in, is like a drifting crocodile, it seems benign, unobservant and harmless, until you disturb the waters, and then it lashes out and viciously attacks you. You can disturb the waters of this type of society by simply demanding change, seeking justice, or calling for an end to corruption. Wherever people take to the streets demanding justice, we see the brutal force of the state, the police are now "tooled up" like the military, and staffed by brutal thugs. The more the people want change the more this becomes apparent. Greece has seen some of the worst in Europe, of state violence against its own people. However, Greece is not unique, recent protests in Spain have seen the same vicious repression being unleashed against the Spanish people, who are demanding an end to the dire poverty that is being heaped on them by the financial mafia. European democracy is an ugly, violent beast, and will be come more so, as the austerity ideology is pushed to the limit, driving more and more people into poverty and deprivation.

How democracy looks in Spain, this from RoarMag:

 

       After a demonstration in Madrid on Saturday night, seven photographers were assaulted, beaten and injured by police as they tried to cover an arrest.

       Just yesterday I wrote a piece arguing that Spain, alongside a number of other countries that have experienced mass street protests in the past three years, is rapidly sliding into a new form of authoritarianism — an ostensibly “democratic” authoritarianism that hides behind a facade of free markets, fair elections and respect for the rule of law to secure the increasing concentration of wealth and power by shrinking the public space for democratic participation and popular dissent. In this brave neoliberal world, politics is giving way to policing.

       Just in case this argument required any further evidence, consider these images that emerged from Spain last night. It shows seven colleagues — all independent or professional photo- and video-journalists — being assaulted, beaten and injured by riot police for trying to cover a violent arrest at the end of yet another day of protests. The videos below speak for themselves:

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