Profit Versus People.

        Gentrification is not a new phenomenon, nor is it confined to any one town or city. It is just one of the methods used by the financial Mafia to increase their wealth at the expense of the ordinary local people.
      At the moment there is a battle raging in the district of Exarcheia in Athens. The newly elected government, New Democracy is brutally trying to "cleanse" the district by removing people who wish to live together in co-operation mutual aid and a community of common interests, to allow property investors a free reign in filling the area with luxury apartments, expensive restaurants and high priced fashion shops, to syphon money from tourists to the property developers bank accounts. Tourism is their current milking-cow, their goose that lays the golden egg.
      In our world of high finance, the "economy" profit and growth, outweigh any human values, the poor will continually be pushed to the margins until they decide that enough is enough.
       This extract from an excellent article by Molly Crabapple. It is well worth reading the article in full.

      From New York to Berlin, gentrification is consuming cities, and any enchantment a neighborhood offers is a harbinger of its eventual doom. Hoping to boost low real-estate prices after years of economic crisis, Greece began granting the so-called golden visa, a five-year E.U.-residency permit in exchange for a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-euro investment in real estate, in 2013. Wealthy citizens of autocracies took up the offer. Chinese investors bought up blocks of buildings; one purchased a hundred apartments in Exarchia alone. Many of these apartments were converted into Airbnbs (the Web site has more than three hundred listings for Exarchia), which drove up the rents, drove out residents, and brought in tour guides, who attempt to repackage the neighborhood’s insurrectionary spirit as vapid, marketable cool.
       “They want gentrification, to promote this as a historic neighborhood while destroying its history of artists, struggles, intellectuals, and anarchists.” Anna told me. “They want to do what Berlin did, to sell the neighborhood’s past while killing its identity.” In the last decade, Berlin rents have risen more than a hundred per cent, and for Athenians like Anna, the city is a cautionary tale. Graffiti offered a succinct rejoinder: “Airbnb TOURISTS FUCK OFF REFUGEES WELCOME.” Neither refugees nor anarchists would fit into the city that had been dreamed by the world’s wealthy. That Athens would be a series of clean, glass-walled, interchangeable rooms, through which capital could frictionlessly glide.
        Throughout the winter, police repeatedly attacked Exarchia Square with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Sometimes the pretext was a protest; other times, it was an attack by anarchists on the police. One night, police trapped residents inside a café for hours. On November 17th, after a march commemorating the 1973 uprising, social media lit up with photos of protesters left bloody by police violence. Three days later, the Ministry of Citizen Protection issued an ultimatum: squatters had fifteen days to evacuate every squat in Greece. By late December, only a handful of squats remained, the last survivors of a network that had once given thousands of refugees a home.
        I thought of the words of an activist from Exarchia, when I asked him whether the government would succeed in fundamentally changing the neighborhood. “Exarchia is not just territory,” he answered. “Territory without people is nothing. I don’t care about losing Exarchia. I care about losing the people.”

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

Thieving Employers.

         If you know anything about your working class history you will be aware of all those long and hard struggles to wrestle some concessions from the employer class to improve our quality of life, The 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, paid holidays, sick pay etc.. They were long and hard struggles, and the progress was slow. Some people paid dearly in those struggle from being blacklisted by employers, arrested by the state and on occasions some paid with their life.
        A short period and people took these conditions as normal, only to find that bit by bit they were being dismantled by the employer class, all under the banner of efficiency, profit and the illusion of "freedom of choice". All these changes stripping away at workers conditions were always given the stamp of legitimacy by the state, the corporate bosses minders.
        From this we should all realise that conditions won from employers are not ours to keep, they will be taken back bit by bit by the employer class. Their battle for ever increasing profit and low production costs will always drive them to chip away at your conditions. This is done in various ways, today its methods include zero hours contracts, pushing workers to be "self employed" etc. freeing the employer from national insurance, holiday pay, etc. Also freeing the employer from any responsibility concerning the employee and their conditions.
        The only sure way to improve our working conditions on an ever improving scale, is to remove the employer, in other words bring down capitalism and its co-joined partner, the state.
       This extract may sound very familiar to lots of you, the total disregard by the employer, of the employee as a human being.

This extract from Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement

 Published on Anarchist News:

     WORKER: Well yes, my terms and conditions leave a lot to be desired. For example, I was on a contract for a maximum of 20 hours, but if I had no students I had no pay. So in reality because of the vagaries of the people we teach, who often have chaotic lifestyles, my hours could vary anywhere between 10 and 20 in a given week, so obviously my pay reflected this. Also we have to take leave around the school holidays. So effectively, because you can't earn enough annual leave to cover this amount you are without pay for around 8-10 weeks a year.
     AWSM: Is the pay good?
    WORKER: On paper it looks ok. I won't go into the exact figures, but it is $30+ an hour and seems generous. The reality however is very different. I get paid what is known as an inclusive rate. This means I get deductions for my holiday pay, which I know isn't that unusual, but also I have to pay the kiwisaver employer contributions out of my pay, which was a new thing for me and totally surprised me as I didn't even know that was a thing. Also we don't get paid for any time we spend preparing lessons or marking, and it is expected we are in the building at least half an hour before any class that we are teaching starts. Another thing that winds me up is once a month we are expected to attend staff meetings, without pay, that can drag on for over 2 hours, thanks to two managers who will talk and talk interminably about nothing much - of course they will be getting paid as they enjoy the luxury of 40 hour contracts.
      AWSM: In the previous question you said you were on a contract with a maximum of 20 hours, did this change?
      WORKER: Yes, at the end of Term 2 last year I was asked if I would like to take on a new course that involved 40 hours per week teaching. I accepted and they put me on a salaried contract which actually saw my pay drop by about $8 per hour. The course actually involved a lot more than 40 hours a week with gathering resources and marking, and of course, such is the lot of a salaried worker, you don't get overtime - but of course if you ever leave early then it is seen as theft of time. I got reprimanded once for leaving an hour early for a doctors appointment - this having worked for the previous 4 saturdays above my 40 hours to catch up with my workload.
      AWSM: Things like that must drive you mad?
     WORKER: Honestly, I have been in the workforce for a long time now and I have no expectation of being treated differently. I really don't think I have ever had a boss who I had any respect for and would treat you decently.
      AWSM: Are you still on that contract now?
    WORKER: No. As soon as my course finished they put me back on a 20 hour/Zero hour contract. Presumably so they don't have to pay me fully for public holidays. When I return at the beginning of next term I will be offered the 40 hour contract again.
      AWSM: How do your colleagues view their working conditions?
    WORKER: No-one really talks about it. I try and get others involved in conversations but they really don't want to rock the boat at all.

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

Anarchist Bookfaiirs, Where?

     Anarchist Bookfairs, great events for meeting like minded people, new people, swapping ideas, getting your nose into other people's literature and pushing your own. However, surely the whole idea is to bring new people to anarchism, not to fly around in the same circle. So where should they be held. In some back street squat, a small autonomous centre, a hired room in a local pub? I have always felt that we should be more ambitious and go as much in the mainstream as possible and meet the unconverted, the apolitical, the apathetic, the one searching for something different. We live in a capitalist society, so cost of course plays a part in where they can be held, perhaps we could all take a leaf out of the recent Manchester and Salford Anarchist Bookfair. 

     

One person's opinion from Anarchist News:

 

       The 9th Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair was dedicated to Donald Rooum (1928-2019), illustrator and long term anarcho. His image of anarchism's three personas (the punk, the bomber and the academic) was used on the bookfair's flier, and a very nice flier it was too. While it’s true that Rooum's work is often associated with the red and black Freedom, it's less well-known that Rooum himself identified as ‘a Stirnerite anarchist, provided "Stirnerite" means one who agrees with Stirner's general drift, not one who agrees with Stirner's every word.’ I’ll come back to that later.
      After following my friend’s directions from the tram stop, I was surprised to find the venue this year was not the backroom of a pub or the basement of a ‘social centre’, but was a museum in the centre of town. Maybe this says something about anarchists' desire to move from the fringes; maybe it's about the public opinion of anarchists in 2019. Either way, the People’s History Museum couldn’t be further from the underground Euro squat aesthetic of last year’s venue. I'd heard rumours that it was going to be hosted at the university this year, so it sounds to me like the organisers were trying their best to move from the Partisan into a more accessible, more mainstream location, and were somehow able to come up with the large deposit needed to book a space like the PHM. As I met my friend in the museum's hall, they admitted they missed the dinge of previous venues, but I for one was glad to be able to see the books and faces in the sunlight, and to be able to breathe as I moved from stall to stall.
      There were around thirty stalls in total, including Freedom up from London, Active Distro from Bristol, AK Press from Edinburgh, and PM Press from the North East. The other stallholders ranged from definitely anarchist (Elephant Editions), through questionable (Anarchist-Communist Group), to definitely not anarchist (New Internationalist). Also present were MARC and Footprint, two local printers who have long provided anarchists with affordable zine and booklet printing; Advisory Service for Squatters keeping it real in the back corner; Hunt Sabs with their latest Saboteur magazine plus fox teddies(!), and many more. Looking at the lineup, one can't help but wonder whether it is really a ‘book’ fair or is, in fact, an ‘organisation’ fair under a different name. One curious friend who came along for the morning noted that ‘lots of people here are determined to make more anarchists’ - I told them to be glad they’ve never been to the London ‘book’ fair, where the organisations wanting to sign you up outnumber the book publishers/distributors two to one. Next year I’d like to see fewer membership forms and more zines, magazines, booklets and books.
      Alongside the stalls were a series of talks and workshops that I didn’t attend. The ‘Education Space’ included book launches by PM Press (‘Journey Through Utopia’) and Ruth Kinna (‘Government of No One’ on Pelican), and a Q&A from The Anarchist Party (sadly not a rave but an actual political party). I heard The Anarchist Party were given hell by the audience for ‘working with the enemy’, which seems kind of hypocritical considering how many of the organisations present directly engage with the state and capital as their modus operandi. Speaking of which, a talk by the IWW’s local branch was apparently planned but didn’t go ahead. The final talk of the day, and the busiest, was by D. Hunter about Lumpen Magazine. I regret missing this one - Hunter's work articulates the horror of the daily grind like no other I’ve read this year.
       Bookfairs in the UK are mostly the same rotation of stallholders travelling from city to city with mostly the same stock and having mostly the same conversations. I’m always on the lookout for people who are doing something different. If, like the late great Donald Rooum, they are more into Stirner than they are into Bakunin and Bookchin, all the better. This year I found three: Elephant Editions, Gay Plants, and Forged Books. Elephant Editions you know. The other two I’ll let you discover yourself. Enjoy, you rebels, and let’s hope the organisers can tempt out Return Fire next year.
        As the day came to an end, I sat in the PHM’s cafe and wondered why so few bookfairs have a space like this, where you can retreat from the fray and read your new books. Am I meant to wait until I’m home? I spent the last hour sat sulking over a coffee, a slice of toast and At Daggers Drawn. There was no official afterparty, but Radical Routes had an evening film showing nearby, someone called ‘MCR Punks 4 West Papua’ had a gig in town, and Partisan had a queer karaoke a bus ride away. Tempting as all three were, come closing time I said my goodbyes and, with a pile of books under my arm, disappeared into the frozen northern night.

Till next year.

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

“No Pasaran”, Solidarity Is The Weapon.

        Exarcheia is not a militarised controled zone, it is still a battlefield, and the residents and their supporters are fighting back. This latest action took the riot police by surprise, showing it can be done, as they say, "you can't evict a dream". Solidarity of the people will eventually defeat any authoritarian repression, we have the numbers, it is all a matter of coming together and cementing that solidarity.

This from Anarchist News:

Exarcheia Anarchists surprise riot police, reoccupy squat.

 

 On Friday 20 September 2019, on the three years anniversary of the occupation of the building that became known as “Spirou Trikoupi 17 Squat” housing refugees in the heart of Exarcheia (Athens, Greece), people were not deterred by the fact that the Squat had been evacuated on Monday 26 August 2019, following a massive police raid and that the neighborhood of Exarchia has been turned into a “militarized” zone, with constant riot police attacks against people in the area and social centers.
         Instead, they chose to celebrate the anniversary like the evacuation never happened by organizing a collective dinner on Exarcheia square to celebrate the Squat’s birthday, “with their one and only weapon… Solidarity!”, as noted in their public communique.
        During the event, people decided to defy the “militarized” law imposed on Exarcheia and while taking the riot police brigades by surprise, managed to enter the sealed -with bricks- building, symbolically reoccupying it, hang a huge banner writing “No Pasaran”, light up flares ans shoot fireworks, while more activists started to protest in the street in front of the building.
        They then exited the building the same way they entered, unnoticed, leaving the riot police on the spot astounded, that then had to bring a crane to enter the building from the balconies in a big operation, puzzled, trying to figure out what has just happened.

        This was the communique of the “Spirou Trikoupi 17 Squat”:

     “We are waiting for you all, at 7 p.m in the square of Exarcheia!
3 years ago, an abandoned building in the center of Exarcheia was squatted to house the hopes and the dreams of thousands people that passed by, in their pursuit of a better life. The 3rd bday of Trikoupi finds us evicted from our house but still alive and strong, fighting for our principles and our beliefs. We organize a collective solidarity dinner in the square, to make the statement that trikoupi was far more than just a building. It was and still is an idea! An alive and active community!
       Collective dinner this Friday 20/9, in Exarcheia square to celebrate our birthday, with our one and only weapon… Solidarity!

See you all there!

You can’t evict our dreams… You can’t evict a movement!
Our community will never die. Trikoupi is still alive!
Solidarity will win…“

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

The Great Anarchist Festival 2020.

 

      The Anarchist Festival Collective is again asking anarchists across the country to get involved and organise an event or events all over the country at the same period. I got quite excited about the idea when it was first announced for 2018 event, but sadly nothing much happened in Glasgow to support the idea. This year it is in May and takes in May Day, a wonderful opportunity for groups across the country to organise something. Can you think of a better way to get our ideas out to more of the public than a festival that happens in every city, town, and village across the country at the same time? This year, as I said it falls around May Day, the Glasgow May Days Group will be putting on its now annual May Picnic on The Green, this will be flanked by other events, film, talks, history walks, and who knows what else we can come up with. So to all those anarchist groups, large and small, let's try and get this into a bustling fun and educational event that happens right across the country all at the same time, it is up to us.

Anarchist Festival announces its 2020 dates

 From Anarchist News:

 

via Freedom News
Anarchist Festival, a decentralised event happening across Britain and Ireland since 2018, has announced its 2020 dates. Here is what the Afest collective has to say.
         This is a call out to take part in what will be the third Anarchist Festival, happening across Britain and Ireland. The idea is simple: groups or individuals put on their own anarchist events and actions, concentrating on the dates of Friday 1st to Monday 4th May 2020, and the programme is collated and promoted by us on our website and social media( 1 and 2).
        So far the model has been a success, with a good range of well-attended events at multiple venues having occurred. The decentralised model means location shouldn’t be a barrier to putting something on.
        The ideal vision for the festival would be to see events, large and small, all across Britain and Ireland. The more events that take place, the more momentum the festival has, and in turn the more people might get involved and come into contact with anarchist ideas. The whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
         In recent years we have seen anarchist bookfairs pop up in cities and towns across the UK and it would be particularly good if those groups might organise something as part of the festival.
         But in practice anyone could put something on, whoever they are and wherever they are. This is a good opportunity to get anarchist thinking and practice happening in the local community, and outside of the usual anarchist circles. Ideas might include: reading an anarchist text in a local book group, organising a discussion in a local pub or meeting space, engaging the local community in a little ‘anarchism in action’, be it a solidarity action collecting for a food bank, a bit of guerrilla gardening, closing a street off for a party – whatever you think is best. There’s an archive of events from the last two years on the Anarchist Festival website, but don’t let what has gone before limit the possibilities. The potential here is endless, and the definition of what counts as anarchism can be at its broadest and most inclusive.
        A little history: the idea to do this came after feeling the absence of the London Anarchist Bookfair in 2018 and 2019. We couldn’t readily replicate the incredible organisational work that goes into putting the bookfair on, but those who wanted to could at least put on our own small events, and keep the spirit of a communal yearly anarchist event going.
        It is cheering to see that there is an attempt to get an anarchist bookfair in London up and running again in October 2020, but with the previous success of our decentralised festival we feel it’s worth keeping this initiative going too. By having our event in May it leaves a space of about half a year between the two events, allowing plenty of time for planning and organising.
        This year Afest will also fall on the weekend of May Day / International Workers Day. In the past this has been a bank holiday, but the government has shifted the holiday to Friday 8th May so as to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day, all of which seems like a fitting moment to go some way to reclaiming May Day’s anarchist roots.
        Do have a look at the website for more info, not least about what to do to submit an event for the programme. www.anarchistfestival.wordpress.com
Really hope you can get involved!

Anarchist Festival

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

Support For Anarchist Prisoner On Hunger Strike.

        Those who speak out against state repression and its bed companion capitalism will always feel the iron heel of its loaded judicial system, and deserve our unreserved support and solidarity. That support should be loud and visible.

The following from Anarchists News:

        In the afternoon of May 21st 2019, anarchists of “Rouvikonas” collective “invaded” the grounds of the greek parliament (the most “secured” building in Greece) in the center of Athens and attacked the main parliament building with red paint and flares, in solidarity to prisoner Dimitris Koufodinas, who is on hunger strike since May 2nd 2019 (his health is in a critical and serious condition), whilst despite the fact that he has been jailed since 2003 and he is entitled to a temporary leave of two days, his petition has been denied on the grounds of his political beliefs (a revolutionary left advocate).
       During the past few weeks there has been a barrage of dozens of attacks on high-profile targets in solidarity to hunger strike Dimitris Koufodinas, including the U.S. ambassador’s home, banks, luxury shops, political offices and police stations.

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

Brexit, We Need A Bit More Anarchy.

         I have mostly stayed away from the Brexit pantomime being performed by our political ballerinas, as it is nothing more than a squabble between the various capitalist groupings in the UK on how best to exploit the people of this island. My only comment was to say that in or out, half way in or half way out, we will still be governed and exploited by the capitalist class. My only surprise is how they have managed to get the vast majority of the exploited to join in and take sides in this battle on the methodology of how to exploit the people of the UK.

       I post the following article because it more or less repeats my sentiments and lets me vent a little bile.

This from Anarchist News:
via Anarchist Communist Group

      The spectacle of the Brexit debacle would be comic if it weren’t for the fact that the consequences of the antics of the politicians will be felt largely by the working class. We are seeing the complete inadequacy of politicians of all shades. The phrase, ‘they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery’ comes to mind! So why do we still let them decide our future?
       It is clear that they are only thinking of their own political futures rather than sorting anything out. The right-wing Tories want to see Britain becoming some kind of Singapore – an offshore unregulated tax haven off the coast of Europe in which workers are exploited even more then they are already. The SNP has eyes only for what might make people more likely to vote for an independent Scotland. Labour is divided between those who think leaving the EU and curtailing immigration will somehow make it possible to have a workers’ paradise under the leadership of Corbyn and those who are forging links with business interests who want cheap labour and free trade. The centre – some Tories and Liberal Democrats – are mainly concerned with business stability and keeping markets open to business. Then there are the racists and the little Englanders who think that by leaving the EU the British Empire will live again.

       For anarchist communists, whether in or out of the institutions that are the EU, we know that the only way we will be able to resist the attacks from the bosses and the State is to build up a strong international working class movement. We argue for no borders, not the open borders of capitalism, but the free movement of people whether they are from Europe or elsewhere. Low wages and poor conditions can only be fought by a strong united movement which includes all workers wherever they come from originally.

 

 

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Voltairine de Cleyre.

          I have always enjoyed the poems of Voltairine de Cleyre, (November 17, 1866–June 20, 1912) and admired the woman. What some Glaswegians may not know is that she visited Glasgow and thanks to Glasgow anarchist comrades she got to see some parts of Scotland outside Glasgow, and stated she loved the highlands. Though I think it was mainly around the Loch Lomond area that she visited.
           I particularly like this poem by Voltairine;

 

The Road Builders

(“Who built the beautiful roads?” queried a friend of the present order, as we walked one day along the macadamized driveway of Fairmount Park.)

I saw them toiling in the blistering sun,
Their dull, dark faces leaning toward the stone,
Their knotted fingers grasping the rude tools,
Their rounded shoulders narrowing in their chest,
The sweat dro’s dripping in great painful beads.
I saw one fall, his forehead on the rock,
The helpless hand still cluthcing at the spade,
The slack mouth full of earth.
And he was dead.
His comrades getnly turned his face, until
The fierce sun glittered hard upon his eyes,
Wide open, staring at the cruel sky.
The blood yet ran upon the jagged stone;
But it was ended. He was quite, quite dead:
Driven to death beneath the burning sun,
Driven to death upon the road he built.
He was no “hero”, he; a poor, black man,
Taking “the will of God” and asking naught;
Think of him thus, when next your horse’s feet
Strike out the flint spark from the gleaming road;
Think that for this, this common thing, The Road,
A human creature died; ‘tis a blood gift,
To an o’erreaching world that does not thank.
Ignorant, mean and soulless was he? Well —
Still human; and you drive upon his corpse.

Philadelphia, 24 July 1900

This from Anarchist News: 

Voltairine de Cleyre:

American Radical

        Born in Michigan in 1866, Voltairine de Cleyre was named after Voltaire. By the time she died forty-five years later, she had lived up to the free-thinking and trouble-making reputation of her namesake. The famous activist Emma Goldman called de Cleyre “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced.”

De Cleyre wrote:

        The first act of our life was to kick against an unjust decree of our parents, and we have unflinchingly stood for the kicking principle ever since. Now, if the word kicking is in bad repute with you, substitute non-submission, insubordination, rebellion, revolt, revolution, whatever name you please which expresses non-acquiescence to injustice.

       Her own father was a working-class French immigrant who earned his American citizenship fighting in the Civil War. Her mother was the child of abolitionists. Her parents sent young Voltairine to a convent school, where she learned how to be a debater and an atheist. She was writing poetry at six. At nineteen, she was writing and lecturing on Free Thought, the philosophical idea that truth should be based on reason and empiricism rather than authority and dogma.

De Cleyre’s radicalism was above all “a rhetoric of self-decolonization aimed at disrupting the ideological configuration of her readers’ interior lives, freeing them to rearticulate those lives.”

        In her short life, she would publish “hundreds of works—poems, sketches, essays, lectures, pamphlets, translations, and short stories,” writes scholar Eugenia DeLamotte. And yet de Cleyre would be largely excluded from history for the next century because of her radical stance. DeLamotte describes de Cleyre’s radicalism as above all “a rhetoric of self-decolonization aimed at disrupting the ideological configuration of her readers’ interior lives, freeing them to rearticulate those lives” and imagine change.

         De Cleyre made a precarious living in Philadelphia teaching English to the Jewish immigrant community. She also tirelessly wrote, edited, lecture, and organized. The events of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886—which led to four anarchists being executed after a dubious trial, as part of the struggle for the eight-hour work day—turned her into an anarchist.

        In her essay on de Cleyre, communications scholar Catherine Helen Palczewski explores de Cleyre’s radical critique of the “sex question” in such writings as “The Gates of Freedom,” “Sex Slavery,” “They Who Marry Do Ill,” and “Why I Am an Anarchist.”

According to Palczewski, contemporary reformers like Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Crystal Eastman, Helen Gurley Flynn, and Louise Bryant likened marriage to prostitution. “De Cleyre, by contrast, developed a general critique of social roles and institutions by rejecting the institution of marriage, arguing that women are raped in marriage, not prostituted by it.” In de Cleyre’s own words, “And that is rape, where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the agony of bearing children that she does not want.”

De Cleyre also rejected the social purity movement of the day and the suppression of obscenity that went along with it. Birth control information, for example, was then considered obscene.

       Palczewski calls de Cleyre “an important rhetorical and feminist figure because her anarchist feminism is an early precursor to many of the radical critiques of women’s sexual status that came out of the ‘second wave’ of feminism.”

        Intellectually fierce, de Cleyre had a short and difficult life. She wrote her own epitaph: “I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.”

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

Anger And Frustration Will Open The Gates to Change.

Today's Western Democracy. 

 

      It should be obvious to all that the idea of voting for a different party to "govern" you, will only produce the same tasteless loaf of bread, just cooked in a different oven. Real change can never come from keeping the same basic principles of profit and continuous growth. Likewise relying on those parties which wish to participate in the management of this system will only lead to new faces sitting on the throne of power. As this awareness grows it becomes obvious that it is not party ideology that will force change, it is anger and frustration. Only when the people start to say to hell with this being shit on generation after generation, and decide to do something about it, without waiting for their esteemed leaders to tell what and when, only then will we see real change. The first burst of anger may not be successful but it will set the pattern as people start to feel the strength and power they hold. They will forge their own answers in the heat of struggle, there will be no need to stop to see what the rule book says. Each answer will be born from the problems that arise.

      All the more reason we should be paying particular attention to the Yellow Vests actions and seeing the possibilities inherent in that form of struggle. The new future can only come about by destroying the corrupt and decadent present. The Yellow Vests may not be the birth of the new future, but it could be the consummation of that birth, that is up to all of us.

       Anarchist News has is a well documented and detailed article on the Yellow Vests which is well worth reading in full:

       Since November, France has been shaken by the yellow vest movement, a grassroots reaction to President Macron’s proposal to increase fuel taxes in order to force the poor to pay for the transition to “ecological” technologies. Like the Occupy movement, the yellow vest movement cohered around shared tactics and frustration rather than common goals or values; consequently, the movement has been a battleground for many different political agendas and factions. The far right initially took advantage of the movement’s “apolitical” character to gain influence, especially online; but as the movement spread and the clashes with the police intensified, anarchists and other uncontrollable rebels also staked out ground within the movement.

Continue reading HERE:

https://anarchistnews.org/content/yellow-vest-movement-showdown-state 

       

         Also worth a read is the article by David Graeber:

       If one feature of any truly revolutionary moment is the complete failure of conventional categories to describe what’s happening around us, then that’s a pretty good sign we’re living in revolutionary times.

      It strikes me that the profound confusion, even incredulity, displayed by the French commentariat—and even more, the world commentariat—in the face of each successive “Acte” of the Gilets Jaunes drama, now rapidly approaching its insurrectionary climax, is a result of a near total inability to take account of the ways that power, labour, and the movements ranged against power, have changed over the last 50 years, and particularly, since 2008. Intellectuals have for the most part done an extremely poor job understanding these changes.

Continue reading HERE:
http://news.infoshop.org/europe/the-yellow-vests-show-how-much-the-ground-moves-under-our-feet/?platform=hootsuite

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Anathema.

      The Latest issue of Anathema is now available, Vol. 4 issue 11. It is an excellent read, there is also another detailed article on The Yellow Vests, well worth a read.

From Anathema

Volume 4 Issue 11 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)
Volume 4 Issue 11 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)
In this issue:

• Cash Bail
• Yellow Vests From Afar
• Brosnan Security In Chico
• Welcome To The Future
• Revolutionary Letter #18
• On Splitting
• N17 Report
• Black December
• Phones & Security Culture

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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!

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Remember Our Own.

       A little homage to one I never knew, though I do believe I have met him at some events or other. I am also sure others felt his warmth, while others felt his wrath. I also believe that if we look at the lives of true fighters we find they always leave a path to help those who follow.

This from Anarchist News:

      So passes Jay. Militant individualist nihilist anarchist. The biggest crust lord we’ll ever meet. A lover, a fighter. Jay lived a life at the margins, a life which was an all-out war for freedom against the techno-industrial machine that is killing all that they love – wild nature, the wild individual self, and now themself. A fiery Glaswegian, apologising for nothing and bowing to no-one. Jay lived at the Faslane Peace Camp for a time, battling nuclear Armageddon. A vicious squatter and traveller, resisting evictions and was most at home in the moment. A busker, beggar and street-drinker. Site-life road protester. Hitch hiking metal punk, crust, sludge and doom show organiser and frequenter. Guitar, bass and washboard shredder. Tarps, caravans, polyprop, bikes and burners. Courageous hunt saboteur, scourge of the elite.
        During their life on the wild fringes they developed necessary survival skills which they cherished. They loved making benders and shelters, cooking delicious feasts on open fires, prolifically shoplifting and scavenging from the debris of civilisation. They scorned this world that denied their pure wild tendencies and revelled in rupture; sharing spoils with comrades, lovers and friends. As tenacious and feisty as they were, they were also the most loving and kind to those close to them.
       They had a close affinity with non-humans, instantly becoming trusting friends with mistreated and vulnerable dogs, cats and goats. They spent time at FRIEND Animal Sanctuary in Kent, caring for animals rescued from lives of torture. Some of us were privileged to know the tender, soft sides of Jay and be on the receiving end of their care and devotion. Mischievous, hilarious, creative, kind.
         Jay chaos’d over to the mainland in 2016, finding new freedoms. (I who write this am not familiar with their life spent there, and welcome those who know more to edit this piece if they wish.)
          A thinker, a doer. Jay wrote and published zines and pamphlets. Jay acted on their word and unleashed all sorts of radge shit that we will tell around the fires with comrades. Think of these, smile, cry, cheer and fight on with renewed ferocity.
        They lived and died to their word, which was a word of total, indiscriminate and urgent destruction against all that denies freedom, wildness and what they loved. Their war in this realm came to an end in the beautiful land called Galicia in the evening of December 2nd, 2018.
Some words from Jay:
          “Total liberation is my own war, a war that I have fought for years, against every cage, every civilisation, every society, every creed, every ideology and morality. It is a matter of fulfilling my creative-destructive desires. It is misanthropic. It is existentialist. It is striving against all domestication. It is my vengeance for all the years that this prison-society has stolen from me, my vengeance for the destruction and pollution of the natural environment, my vengeance for the nonhumans whose lives I respect more than the life of any “human”.

My total liberation means total war!
War to the bitter end!”

Let the fires burn!
Long live anarchy!

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

The State Watching You In Your Kitchen.

         We are aware that we live in a surveillance society, the evidence is all around us, and in lots of cases openly visible. We see the cameras in shops, pubs, transport vehicle, bus-stops, bus stations, train stations, airports and on our streets at strategic points. Then there is the phone tapping and physical surveillance by members of the state's policing system. If we want to escape them we stay at home or live in our cars. Well maybe not, if you are involved in any form of dissent from the established power structure of the state, then your home and/or your car may not be as private as you think. Big brother may have taken up residence in your home or be sitting beside you as you drive around with your friends.

        The following is well worth reading it is from Des oreilles et des yeux via Anarchist News.

        The States, according to their role of repression of individuals and groups doing subversive actions, put in place ways of keeping those individuals and groups under surveillance. It seems that some of this surveillance is done through the hiding of surveillance devices in the spaces we live in.
      These devices take different forms : microphones, cameras, geolocation devices. Targeted spaces can be all the spaces we go through : buildings, vehicles, public space. These practices are sometimes legal, authorized by a judge for example, and sometimes not, done illegally by intelligence agencies.
       We noticed the lack of informations available around us concerning this kind of surveillance. What is the real use of these devices by intelligence agencies? Which kind of devices are used? In which contexts? How efficiently? What can we do to oppose this kind of surveillance?
          Therefore we decided to gather informations about the subject, with the idea of writing and publishing a booklet in a few months. We want to focus in this booklet on surveillance carried out by intelligence agencies and political police in European States against individuals or groups doing subversive actions. Also, we limit ourselves to the study of physical surveillance devices hidden in the spaces inhabited by the suveilled individuals and groups (so we won’t talk about other kind of surveillance such as shadowing, phone-tapping and Internet surveillance).--------

Continue reading: 

A list of devices found in homes and cars:

The examples list can be downloaded here :

• (english) http://desoreillesetdesyeux.noblogs.org/files/2018/11/examples_english.pdf
• (french) http://desoreillesetdesyeux.noblogs.org/files/2018/11/exemples_francais.pdf

The archive containing the devices pictures can be downloaded here :

• (english) http://desoreillesetdesyeux.noblogs.org/files/2018/11/archive_english.zip
• (french) http://desoreillesetdesyeux.noblogs.org/files/2018/11/archive_francais.zip

     This list would be included in the final booklet, along with summaries concerning the locations of devices, how they work, and possible ways of detecting them.

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Mutual Aid Is A Natural Human Attribute.

 

 

          When it comes to the welfare of the people, time and time again, self organising, mutual aid and co-operation, comes out on top, well above and beyond any state run operation or corporate financed endeavour.

        The ravaging of Puerto Rico by hurricane Maria, left the people of Puerto Rico without electricity, among many other things. It has taken the state almost a year to get most of the country back on grid. In the meantime, anarchist mutual aid groups have sorted the problem for some of the smaller villages, months ahead of the state run operation. Whats more, the electric grid system installed by these groups belongs to the community. If only the majority would learn this lesson and act upon it, what a different world we would inhabit.

This from Anarchist News:

         In August, nearly one year after Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and plunged its 3.4 million residents into darkness, island officials heralded a milestone: The lights were back on. The state-owned electric company even tweeted a photo of a smiling family it said was the last to receive power.
          But Christine Nieves, an activist in Mariana, didn’t celebrate. She and her small mountain community near the southeastern coast had already restored electricity—on their own. Tired of waiting on the government’s halting repairs, she worked with a band of self-described “anarchistic organizers” from the mainland to install a small solar grid, one of more than a dozen like-minded efforts across Puerto Rico. By the time electric workers showed up, Mariana was two months ahead of them. (The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority declined to comment for this article.)
        The power uprising over the second largest blackout in world history provides a window into the civic and political landscape in a place where government institutions, saddled by bankruptcy and a federally appointed management board, failed in devastating ways. It also underscores a sobering reality a year after Maria: Many Puerto Ricans are, to some extent, still on their own. For eight months after the storm, Mariana residents lived without stable means of lighting, refrigeration or laundry. “People were on the verge, psychologically and physically,” says Nieves.
         She and her partner established Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo, or Project for Mutual Aid, to coordinate clean-up efforts, prepare meals and check on locals after the storm. The initiative attracted the attention of a mainland group called Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, whose founding members did disaster relief work in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. To MADR co-founder Jimmy Dunson, Nieves’s efforts echoed his own group’s “anarchistic organizing”—revolution with more purpose than protest. MADR volunteers were already in Florida, helping in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, when family and friends alerted them of the dire situation in Puerto Rico. They pooled their own money and solicited donations to purchase water purifiers, solar power equipment and plane tickets to the island.
          “It was quite surprising when they showed up to our operations, and they kept coming back,” says Nieves. Together, the two organizations distributed food and water and provided basic health care, setting up a key project: the installation of a solar-powered “micro-grid” in Mariana, a self-sustaining electric system owned and managed by the community.
           Working with local construction workers, electricians and even firefighters, volunteers overcame understaffed ports and destroyed roads to import a solar array, battery bank and storage container to protect all of the equipment from future storms. Total cost: $60,000, funded by donations. The grid now powers an abandoned school turned communal kitchen, a laundromat and an office, where residents can charge their electronics and tools. The system does not reach individual homes, but its modular design can be expanded or transported to where need is greatest.
          Twenty miles to the northwest, volunteers have installed a smaller system in Caguas, a city in the heart of the island. Despite police efforts to block them, locals seized a building and turned it into the Centro de Apoyo Mutuo, or Center for Mutual Aid. “There are over a dozen mutual aid centers all throughout Puerto Rico,” says Dunson, “and if the funding comes in, we will work with each and every one of them to set up similar photovoltaic systems.”
            While there’s been little proselytizing in Mariana, radical ideas are in the air. “What we have talked about is self-governance,” Nieves says, “and we’ve talked about self-organizing.” She uses the Spanish term autogestion, or self-management, which anarchists have advocated since the time of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the 19th-century French philosopher who was the first to describe himself as an anarchist. Is the movement supported by authorities? “That question assumes that local government and police are actually involved and active,” says Nieves with a laugh.
         Elsewhere on the island, law enforcement has pushed back. Dunson describes one incident from October: Arriving in several vehicles, including an armored car, police conducted a night-time raid on a church that MADR was using as its base of operations in Guaynabo, a municipality west of San Juan. According to Dunson, officers claimed they were acting on a call about kidnapping and questioned the volunteers at gunpoint, asking if they were building bombs, involved in “antifa” or advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government. After searching their belongings without consent, Dunson says, police evicted them from the church, threatening them with arrest if they returned. (Calls to the Puerto Rico Police Press Office went unanswered.)
            While Dunson acknowledges that authorities sometimes assisted MADR by providing volunteers with food, water and other supplies to distribute, he argues that government is nevertheless poorly suited for disaster relief. The state-owned electrical grid, for example, was allowed to fall into such disrepair that even after Maria passed, it suffered at least two more big outages following patchwork repairs.
             “The government has access to a vast quantity of money and supplies,” he says. “But even if everybody in that institution had the best of intentions, due to their top-down nature, they do not have the fluidity or flexibility that more grassroots initiatives have.” He cites reports of supplies rotting in government offices and accusations that both island agencies and federal authorities hoarded desperately needed construction materials.

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