Peaceful?

 

           Our mainstream media always seem to portray the world as a place where everything is really OK and the world on the whole is a peaceful place and capitalism is working just fine and dandy, except for a few places "away over there". However we can take a different view if we look at the anger, disgust and hatred by the people at a system they see as unfair, unequal, exploitative and brutally authoritarian. In country after country people are taking to the streets to vent that anger and disgust with the system and those who manage that system.  I doubt that there many countries on this planet that have not got protests on their streets, this paints a very different picture from the one that is spewed out from our mainstream media.

SubMedia System Fail 9.

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 http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page 

Ideas.

          Some interesting questions, how do we propagate the communities and workplaces with our ideas, how do we make anarchism mainstream, after all that is the aim, is it not? However as long as we rely on the corporate world for our communications and have the mainstream media as a source of information, our ideas will walk the back streets and the lonely lanes, just strange tales to the majority. Of course we don't need to go to San Francisco for such discussions, they can be organised in every town, city and village, we might be pleasantly surprised what comes out of it all. 

   Anarchistic Media & Pop Culture and Why We Should Make Our Own Media (A Brief Presentation & Participatory Discussion)

Where: Bound Together Books (1369 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA)
When: Friday November 12, 2021 (7 pm - 8:30 pm ish)
Why: ? Not sure, bored ?

        "How It Started/How It's Going": Anarchistic Media & Pop Culture and Why We Should Make Our Own Media (A Brief Presentation & Participatory Discussion with Dane Michael)
       What is anarchistic media & pop culture ? Is it making weird ass memes with dogs punching cops ? Making our own zines with our own perspectives & stories ? Producing magazines/journals, podcasts, autonomous websites (?), and other decentralized, self-organized media compositions outside the dominant culture ? Starting our own infoshops, autonomous community spaces, non-hierarchical collective bookstores, and/or unique cooperative/collective houses for building affinity-centered social relationships ? Posting up flyers, stickers, and graffiti with counternarratives advocating anti-state, anti-capitalist, and anti-hierarchical culture(s) ?
        Or is it, ultimately, none of the above, and just making TikTok dance videos ? Or maybe both ? I don't really fucking know, just throwing out ideas...

 

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France Today.

        According to our mainstream media, everything in France is running as usual, the capitalist country is just getting on with the daily exploitation of the subservient public. Of course if you look a little closer you will find that particular narrative is a load of bullshit. Once again the media propaganda machine proves it is the illusion creator for the capitalist system, by omission and false reporting.

       This summary of what is really going on in France will give some idea of how far from reality or mainstream media is. It only reports revolution and insurrection in those countries that are on their list of "enemies".

       This from 325:

Compilation of resistance in progress

The rage is infinite. Every day, a blow, a strike, a revolt in the country. In order that the many initiatives do not fall into oblivion, and to give an account of the social situation, here is an attempt to compile the strikes and actions that have been taking place in France since December 5th:

RAILWAY: RATP (public transport in Paris, Enough 14) strikes for 45 consecutive days; Paris virtually paralysed during public holidays. Daily blockades of bus stations, often suppressed. A strike at the SNCF lasting several weeks, the like of which has never been seen before. Railway workers multiplying the actions all over the country. The strike was “interrupted” on January 20th to forcus on blockades. On December 5, the Paris-Lyon-Marseille TGV line was sabotaged. At the end of December, traffic on the lines in eastern France was considerably slowed down by bang signals. Several stations were attacked by protestors, particularly in Savenay, Bordeaux and Paris.

ENERGY: Several blackouts in December, notably in the Prefecture of Nantes during a demonstration and in the Bordeaux police station. Targeted blackouts in January: at the Rungis market, the CFDT (French Democratic Trade Union Confederation), Orly airport, etc. Power was cut off during the “low-traffic hours” for hundreds of thousands of households. On January 15th, the Gravelines nuclear power plant was blocked by employees, with fireworks being fired in front of the buildings. Other power plants threaten to shut down. In the refineries, rotating strikes have been taking place since December. The announced fuel shortage is not on the agenda for now.

PORTS AND DOCKS: Operation ‘ports morts’ in most major port cities. On January 15th, in Le Havre, dockworkers attack the New Year celebrations of the employers in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry by throwing big fireworks and smoke. The celebrations are cancelled. Several blockades in Montoir de Bretagne and Fos. Still in Le Havre, the strikers invade city hall and gobble up pastries and champagne of the mayor’s New Year reception.

EDUCATION: The premises of the academic inspection of Alès have been walled in. Outdated books were thrown on the rectors’ offices. Various flash mobs. Selective support of high school students who block their schools. In several schools, teachers are preventing students from taking the baccalaureate exams from January 20th. The minister promises “warnings” and “complaints”. Resignations demanded.

CULTURE: The Paris Opera gave a series of street concerts. Open-air performance of “Swan Lake” with orchestra and ballerinas at Christmas. The choir of Radio France interrupted the New Year’s speech of the boss on January 8th with the performance of Verdi’s “Slave Choir”. On January 17, striking technicians and artists disrupted the programme of the Rouen Opera House and gave a concert in the street. The Louvre is blocked. The castle of Versailles on strike. The French National Library is on strike and has hung banners.

JUSTICE: Lawyers are camping out in front of the court in Bobigny on January 15th. The lawyers of Paris confiscate the files in the “comparution immédiate” (practice of immediate presentation to a criminal judge in case of arrest), plead in many cases for non-appearance and have the accused freed. In Rennes the lawyers plead for the release of all foreigners who are imprisoned in prison camps. In most courts the lawyers’ robes are laid down. The New Year’s speech of the Minister of Justice was interrupted in Caen. All 164 bar associations are on strike.

INDUSTRY: Work stoppages and strikes. On January 17, workers in the aeronautics industry in Clermont-Ferrand threw down their overalls.

HOTEL BUSINESS: On January 20th, Macron invites the bosses to Versailles. Two workers refuse to serve the prime minister: They were fired on the spot. Others write protest messages on their plates, causing great tension in the organisation of the ceremony.

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS: More than one million protestors were in the streets on December 5. Almost 2 million on December 17. In the following days of the general strike, more than one million people demonstrated. Serious clashes in Paris, Rennes and Nantes in December. Record number of burned cars on New Year’s Eve. On January 7, the multinational BlackRock is attacked by railway workers . On January 9, several trade unionists were injured during horrific repression in Paris. Numerous offices of En Marche (La République en Marche, Macron party) were attacked. Emmanuel Macron was evacuated from a Paris theatre on January 17. A journalist arrested / The presidential restaurant La Rotonde burned down the same night. Heavy repression against the yellow vests demonstrating in Paris on January 18.

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A mixture Of Alice In Wonderland And George Orwell.

       The mainstream media is the biggest manufacturer of lies we have ever witnessed. It fills the role of the state's mouthpiece and through misinformation, lies and distortions, creates the reality the state wants you to believe. It is a fog creating machine to blind the public from the reality in which they live. In this fabricated reality, truth is a far away island that has yet to be discovered. I formed this point of view many many years ago, and since then have seen nothing except evidence that reinforces that view.

      The following is a little piece I wrote approximately ten years ago, in those passing ten years the mainstream media has sank further into the mire of the world of putrid lies, misinformation and distortions, it has become the proud prostitute of the state.

Picture by John Hartfield. 

 

Some everyday headlines, WE ARE SPREADING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ. AFGHANISTAN IS A WESTERN SUCCESS. THE FREE MARKET SPREADS PROSPERITY. THIS YEAR WE WILL TACKLE AFRICA'S POVERTY.        

         Who so ever reads the bourgeois press will become blind. Slowly the fog rises, lies build on lies, lies spawn lies, lies shape your vision and reality is lost in a false consciousness. Trivia and mediocrity fill the mind, seek reality outside the putrid puss and you are deemed to be mad, a raving lunatic, possessed. The media teaches us all we need know of scandal and sport, crime and sex, who slept with who and where, depicting life as a smutty peepshow. Through the bourgeois press you’re fed your daily dose of loathsome lies, banal boring bromide, cliched crap, trivia and petty pulp. Our leaders are portrayed as heroes, supermen, and so the lies breed lies, and lies stretch back into the distant past, lies distort history until it is lost in a bizarre deformed fabrication. We then repeat the disasters of yesterday because the lies are everywhere blinding us. We can’t relate to reality, reality always takes us by surprise because we have no grip of reality, only the lies.

From ''Mein Kampf''
        "All this was inspired by the principle that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the (public) more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."   Adolf Hitler.

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Truth, That Elusive Gem.

      In this world of capitalism, financial speculation and imperialism under the flag of corporate development, that diamond known as the truth is an elusive gem. We can't find it in the words of our prancing puppet, political ballerinas, who dance to the tune of their masters, and sing the song of their lobbyists. Their main interest is driving their lucrative career, so truth is something with which they are not familiar, on the contrary, it puts the in a state of confusion.

      Now where do we find it, this elusive gem? We have to look at the interests and agenda of "big money", and accept that that particular tribe will never have the interests of the ordinary people at heart. They will destroy a country, its infrastructure, and throw its people into the mire of deprivation and death, all in the drive to further their grip and control over any country's resources.

      So to Venezuela, our mainstream media that septic puss ridden mouthpiece of "big money" will pour out tainted vomit, laced with their crocodile tears, of the suffering of the people of Venezuela, weaving the illusion that they care, in the hope that you will willing accept their greed driven agenda, of stepping in with our flag waving military and rescue the poor people of Venezuela.

     I, like most of you, don't really know what it is like living in Venezuela today, but we can accept that the people of Venezuela are suffering, and not from the results of their own actions, but I'm sure we both agree that what we are served up as "news" is well divorced from that elusive gem, the truth. I'm also sure that most will accept that it is a power grab by American "big money" and it will take a tremendous outpouring of loud public anger to stop this intended rape and plunder of a people and their resources. "Big money" is not in the business of listening to the people, until we destroy the beast, the Venezuela type of events will keep on happening.

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Rebellious Working Class Ended WW1.

        When it comes to WW1, most people in UK think it ended in victory for the "allies", the word "armistice" doesn't seem to register. What really brought an end to that particular imperialist bloodbath, was the collapse of discipline. Mutiny and rebellion were breaking out everywhere, troops had had enough, orders were ignored, officers were ridiculed, and the various states were anxious as to their survival. It was a class thing that finally put a nail in that particular psychopathic imperialist endeavour. 

       The following is an excellent article on libcom, posted by Jared, well worth reading in full, as we head into the hypocritical pomp and ceremony of establishment's charade of caring, that will be on display in the next few days. That babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, will wallpaper our lives with banal, patriotic jingoism and empty rhetoric, which we are supposed to swallow. Those who engineer and benefit from wars, will take the stand with bowed heads, who knows, perhaps thinking of the next great plunder and how they can get away with it all.

       I make no excuse for posting this in full, it should be writ large in the minds of this generation, as we stand looking at bloody war after bloody war, with the high possibility of even more devastating conflicts looming.

Some images of WW1 mutinies.

From libcom:

The untold history of armistice 

and the end of World War I
         ‘The best antidote to ideology is detail,’ writes Paul Mason. And the detail that’s missing this Armistice Day is that working people, when they take power into their own hands, can end whatever catastrophe is imposed on them.
        In 1918, after four years of slaughter, deprivation and hardship, the Central Powers of Austro-Hungary and Germany were rocked by strikes and mutinies. In February, a naval mutiny broke out at Kotor and sailors shot their officers; by October, the Austro-Hungarian army had collapsed from mass desertions and political upheaval. Soon afterwards a mutiny by German sailors at Kiel merged with other uprisings and quickly escalated into a full-scale rebellion against the imperial state, sparking the abdication of the German Kaiser and the proclamation of a workers’ republic on 9 November 1918.
       Preferring peace to full-scale revolution, an armistice with the Allied powers was signed two days later, on 11 November 1918. Working-class revolt had helped to end the First World War.
      Not that you’d know this from New Zealand’s centennial commemoration of armistice Day, Armistice 100. People across the country will take part in a number of sanitised official events, from joining the ‘roaring chorus’ to texting the Armistice Beacon. They’re unlikely to learn much about the strikes, mutinies and resistance from below that toppled both generals and governments.
      I’ve searched the program resources in vain for any reference to how and why armistice came about. Among messages of peace and the standard script of sacrifice and loss, there is a notable silence when it comes to the masses of working men and women who contributed to the war’s end. Instead, peace seems to fall upon the war like a happy sun-shower. The surrenders of the various Central Powers seem to just … happen.
       Why is there such a gap in the historical narrative? Surely it is not for lack of time or information. We’ve had four years of commemoration and some big spends to go with them (although not as much as Australia, whose $1.1bn dwarfs the $31m spent in New Zealand). It’s not as if the date crept up on us.
      Perhaps I’m being far too critical of the Armistice 100 program and the small pool of public historians working on WW100-related events. After all, I’ve been one of them, although if I’m honest, the feature on censorship and its marginal references to dissent during the First World War was possibly too little, too late.
      It would be wrong to see this glaring omission as some devilish scheme designed to serve the interests of capital and the state. There’s no conspiracy at play here. Instead, official historians are often hamstrung by codes of conduct and the mythical stance of neutrality, or by what is or isn’t palatable to their managers and their manager’s managers. Histories of social revolution, radical ideas, and the agency of everyday, working-class people are hardly the thing of monthly reports or ministerial press releases. And despite the big-ticket items of commemoration, the long, hard slog of quality, in-depth research is like the work of any modern workplace – of trying to do more with less.
       Perhaps, too, there’s something in the turn away from class as a framework of analysis – that is, if class was ever a frame of analysis in the first place (we have, after all, had numerous historians tell us that New Zealand was a classless society, free of a bourgeoisie and proletariat). As Paul Mason notes, ‘the termination of war by working-class action fits uneasily at a deeper level: for most of history the existence of a workforce with its own consciousness and organisations is an afterthought, or an anomaly.’ Instead of exploring the final months of the war through the experience of class or capitalist social relations, we have instead been fed a discourse that historian Charlotte Macdonald believes ‘has come to be strongly characterised by rather too neatly drawn themes of consensual patriotism, duty and sacrifice.’
      Yet if we centre class, and class conflict, in our reading of armistice, the history it reveals is somewhat different to the official account on offer.
       A few examples will suffice. On 16 October 1918, 14 men of the 1 New Zealand (Divisional) Employment Company were charged with mutiny after ‘combining together not to work in the NZ DIV laundry when it was their duty to do so.’ The men, most of whom were labourers, were all sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour for their collective work-refusal. That their sentences were later remitted does not negate their struggle.
       Three days after armistice, on 14 November 1918, a riotous throng of men from the New Zealand Division gathered in the town square of Beauvois, France. Monty Ingram, a bank clerk from Whakatāne, recorded the event in his diary. ‘A great gathering of troops were harangued by a chap in the Dinks, who, standing on a box in true labour agitator style’ called on the military authorities to send them home. After a Padre was physically prevented from speaking and a staff officer was howled into silence, the men, now in their thousands, marched on Division Headquarters ‘and swarmed over the place like bees around a honeycomb.’ When Major General Andrew Russell finally appeared in the doorway, he was ‘badly heckled by all sorts of interjections thrown at him and by being called all the b-b-b’s under the sun.’ Russell’s speech fell on deaf ears. Instead, the crowd ordered their general to get in touch with the War Office and cancel any orders sending them to Germany. According to Christopher Pugsley, appeals to the honour of the Division and the threat of dire punishment prevented further action. Still, Russell recorded in his diary: ‘must watch for Bolshevism.’
      This temporary levelling of rank was triggered by frustrations about demobilisation, but class was ever present. As Dave Lamb notes, the widespread mutinies across the Allied forces broke out too soon after armistice for delay in demobilisation to be the sole cause. ‘Antagonism towards officers, hatred of arbitrary discipline, and a revolt against bad conditions and uncertainty about the prospect of being sent to Russia all combined with the delay, confusion and uncertainty about demobilisation.’
        Observed William Wilson, a farmer: ‘Codford [Camp] the last few weeks has been unbearable, discipline has gone to the pack and the troops don’t care a damn for officers and NCOs.’ Strikes by British dockers and seamen caused further delays, and further examples of direct action. There was conflict in Bulford and Sling camps, where New Zealand troops were charged with ‘endeavouring to persuade persons to mutiny’ and sentenced to hard labour. And on the transport ships home, unpopular officers found themselves victim to collective justice. In these moments, when the soldiers took power into their own hands, the generals were powerless to act.
       Back in New Zealand, the sudden end to the war, coupled with the influenza pandemic, also tested the home front military command and their ability to enforce discipline. Two weeks after armistice, the Chief of General Staff, Colonel Charles Gibbon, found himself rushing to Featherston Military Camp, where the troops were mutinous. 5000 men had staged a ‘violent’ demonstration in front of camp headquarters and presented a list of demands to the commandant. Gibbon and Defence Minister James Allen endured a stormy confrontation with the men’s delegates. In the face of mass protest, Gibbon and Allen gave in to some of the soldiers’ demands around demobilisation. By December, the recruits were marching out of Featherston at the rapid rate of 500 a day.
      The militant self-activity of working people – whether they were soldiers, industrial workers, or both – was a deeply entrenched concern for the New Zealand government. The upheavals of 1918, home and abroad, fed into a developing ‘red scare’. By 1919, red scare rhetoric came to dominate the public sphere. Prime Minister William Massey urged his Reform Party faithful to ‘secure good men to stem the tide of Anarchy and Bolshevism’. Allen believed ‘there was so much lawlessness in the country that the only thing that could save [it] from going to damnation was the drill sergeant.’
      Wartime regulations were extended into peacetime. The power to deport undesirables was legislated in 1919. Distributing revolutionary books or pamphlets remained seditious. And now that soldiers trained in killing had returned to their jobs and their pay disputes, firearm acts were passed allowing the state to clamp down on whole working-class neighbourhoods.
     Fear of working-class resistance strengthened the apparatus of state surveillance. Meetings of radicals were secretly attended by police and fortnightly reports were sent to Police Headquarters. Detectives in each district systemised this work by compiling an index of individuals who had ‘extreme revolutionary socialistic or IWW ideas’. This signaled the formation of New Zealand’s first ‘Special’ Branch and laid the groundwork for all future spy agencies in New Zealand. The unrest unleashed in the final months of the war directly influenced the monitoring of dissent in New Zealand for years to come.
       This is a small taste of the untold history of armistice and the end of the First World War. Instead of learning about it, the turbulent events leading up to and after armistice are turned into joyous celebration. Cloaked in the language of peace, Armistice Day becomes an official exercise in justifying the insane loss of life.
      We might even be tempted to see Armistice 100 as an example of what Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen calls the ‘industrialisation of memory’. In his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Nguyen also examines the ‘memory industry’ – the museums we take our children to visit, the sculptured grounds of Pukeahu National War Memorial, the Armistice Day parades at sunset. For Nguyen, at the root of this industry is the industrialisation of memory.
Quote:
      Industrialising memory proceeds in parallel with how warfare is industrialised as part and parcel of capitalist society, where the actual firepower exercised in a war is matched by the firepower of memory that defines and refines that war’s identity.
        In other words, memory and the memory industry are weaponised. And while the memory industry produces kitsch, sentimentality, and spectacle, the industrialisation of memory ‘exploits memory as a strategic resource’.
        It is how bodies are produced for current and future wars.

        ‘The best antidote to ideology is detail,’ writes Paul Mason. And the detail that’s missing this Armistice Day is that working people, when they take power into their own hands, can end whatever catastrophe is imposed on them.
        First published by Overland Literary Journal. Jared Davidson is a labour historian and archivist based in Wellington, New Zealand. His forthcoming book, Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920 is out March 2019

Posted By Jared
Nov 10 2018 04:20

 

There Is Only So Much Bullshit We Will Take.

      I didn't get any of this from any of the tributaries of that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, you have to look elsewhere for any real news. How long before the rest of the country decides it has had enough of the bullshit fed to them from our political ballerinas via the bullshit propaganda machine called the "media"?

This from Act For Freedom Now:

Report from events outside the New Cross Assembly

     What we saw last night 6.11.18 was real people power in action, as people continue to fight against the destruction of Tidemill community wildlife garden in Deptford and the eviction of the adjacent flats at Reginald House. This follows last week’s eviction of the Tidemill occuption by hordes of cops and bailiffs, which was strongly resisted throughout the day. The area now remains a fortified zone, permanently surrounded by dozens of bailiffs.
      At 7pm on Tuesday evening, around 40 people, furious about the planned destruction of yet another green space & eviction of yet more council flats, gathered to protest at the Lewisham Mayor and councillors who were due to speak at the New Cross Assembly. Despite there being plenty of empty seats in the room, us common riff-raff were shut out and prevented from participating in their ‘democratic processes’.
       So instead we made our feelings heard from the outside, banging on the gates and makeshift drums and eventually making it right up close to the half-open windows, through which cries of “stop demolition”, “careerist parasites!” and “no one believes your lies!”, and plenty of cheers of support for the angry locals inside the event were expressed.
      Councillor Joe Dromey, a particularly smug-faced, upper-class advocate of the destruction (and son of Harriet Harman no less) was the first politico to leave the event. As he did so, he was mobbed by the fiery crowd. He couldn’t face his constituents and eventually opted to be bungled into a police van to drive him home.
      Meanwhile, Lewisham Mayor Damien Egan’s attempts to make a quiet getaway were foiled, as the crowd spotted him and encircled his car. Some people lay passively in the road while others stood around the car. The message was made very clear to the young mayor: drop the development, hands off tidemill. The cops waded in and, without giving any formal warnings to leave, set about dragging people out the road and violently chucking people about left right and centre. Several of them appeared completely unhinged, charging and punching people in the face.
      For about 5-10 minutes, the mayor’s car was unable to leave its parking space as the scuffles with the cops continued. Eventually, enough violence was used by the police to clear the path, enabling the mayor and his colleague to begin driving slowly through the backstreets of Deptford. But at every turn, brave and passionate people with little concern for their own safety, got back into the road, or tried to make barricades with bins. This was it: Tidemill had become a symbol of every dodgy development project in the area, of lie after lie by self-serving and patronising local politicians, of destruction of our neighbourhood and the environment. People really have had enough.
       To get the car through, the police had to bring in heavy reinforcements and dogs. Met police Commissioner Cressida Dick even made her way down by the end of it and was sighted talking to the chief cop on the scene. At one point, crazed skinhead cop #1393 inexplicably made a beeline for a harmless and entirely peaceful young brown man who was walking alone about 10 metres ahead. This psychopath threw himself on this poor lad, chucked him to the floor and proceeded to asphixiate the totally passive guy, digging his thumbs into pressure-points on his neck so that his face was rammed up against the concrete, and knelt on his knee for extra measure. It looked like he was going to kill the guy, and the many people who witnessed it said so. Given that there were lots of people who had been much closer to Egan’s car, this was yet another overt case of pure racism, premeditated assault, and outright police brutality. This took people’s attention away from Egan’s car which was then able to get away onto New Cross Road at around 10pm. The poor guy was arrested and taken to Lewisham police station, where a group went to support him.
      The racist assault & arrest by the cops aside, the night was a really promising one. It was fantastic to see impassioned people taking to the streets again, uncompromisingly defending our neighbourhood from corporate parasites, fighting ecocidal destruction, and refusing to play to their silly game of ineffectual quiet protest.
      Later that night, Councillors Joe Dromey and Paul Bell pulled out the inevitable tired old tropes of ‘legitimate’ vs. ‘illegitimate’ protestors, masked vs. unmasked, young vs. old, ‘native residents’ vs. interlopers, poor vs. middle class & respectable -i.e. those naive enough to continue to play along with their sham consultations and faux democratic processes.
      No-one but your suited cronies buy it. We’ve gone right through the petitions, the utterly futile ‘debate’ in your forums, the legal processes and the passive protests. And Lewisham Council has run roughshod over all of them.

There’s only so much bullshit that people will take.

SUSTAIN THE RESISTANCE!

DO NOT LET THE POLITICIANS DIVIDE US!

NO HOMES ON A DEAD PLANET!!!

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Just Another Figurehead In The Capitalist Dictatorship.

        Another election and another right-wing swing of a government, Jair Bolsonaro, ex-army officer who sings the praises of Brazil’s military dictatorship of 1964-1985 and has defended its use of torture on leftist opponents, “I am in favour of torture — you know that. And the people are in favour of it, too.”
        This psychopathic, anti-abortion, racist, homophobic nonentity, has been handed the power to control the lives of the people of Brazil, his policies should be clear, as he carries the nickname of, “The Trump of the Tropics.” . Obviously big money was behind him, making sure their desired illusion was woven by the Brazilian, babbling brook of bullshit, their mainstream media. Fantasy answers to the people’s problems, appealing to the lowest common denominator, and bolstering poisonous nationalism.

         It shows the power and efficiency of the babbling brook of bullshit, when it can win votes for a man who sees nothing wrong in rape, his comment to female official, “I would not rape you because you are not worthy of it.”, and after having fathered three sons stated that his fourth child, a daughter, was his moment of weakness. Somehow the propaganda machine of the rich and powerful has persuaded the people of Brazil to hand over power to this lover of dictatorships. No doubt, with the control of the police, military and judicial system in his hands, he will go about hastily carving his own name on the list of brutal dictators that have shed the blood of millions of ordinary people, a list that has savaged the history of the ordinary people.
         For years now, we have all lived under the dictatorship of capitalism, and in countries where there is insufficient control by that dictatorship, up pops the “hero” who will make the country great again, who will take us back to the illusionary “good old days” when everything was fine and dandy. It has been said often and by many, that elections change nothing, this is not exactly true. Under the dictatorship of capitalism, elections function to change the degree of control needed to keep that dictatorship in power. This is what has happened in Brazil, with the aid of the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, backed up by big money from powerful people and corporations, this election will reshape capitalism in that country, giving it greater control over the people of that country and its resources.
       The enemy is not the dictator, the real enemy is the dictatorship of capitalism over the world’s people and its resources. Jair Bolsonaro, is just another figurehead of that dictatorship.

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Ideas In Closed Circles?

       As anarchists are 100% for the abolition of the state, it surely follows that the state will be 100% against anarchism. Hence its propaganda mouthpiece, the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, will paint anarchists as mindless, violent advocates of destruction, and its biased and corrupt judicial system will deal with them as such. Because of this misrepresentation of anarchism, I have always been a strong advocate of showering our towns and cities with paper, leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc. all explaining what anarchism is really about. Our "propaganda" has to be stronger than theirs. I'm not dismissing direct action and other projects of autonomy, but without the general public getting to know what we are all about, they will still carry this media based caricature of anarchists in their minds.

      For a considerable number of years I produced a paper called "The Anarchist Critic", as well as walking through Glasgow's streets handing it out, to all and sundry, I would leave it at various places, on buses, in cafes and pubs, etc.. I'm not claiming I started a social revolution in Glasgow, but I do believe that I may just have altered some people's perception of anarchism. On a massive scale, I'm sure it would create a different view of our beliefs and why we do what we do. Social media seems to have replaced the paper in your hand, I know that social media has a place, but there are millions of ordinary people who never enter the world of internet social media, and we neglect them at our peril. Unless the general public are aware of our ideas, in times of crisis, when they look for answers, they are not going to pick up our ideas, if they unaware of them in the first place.

      I know it is easier to sit down at a computer and publish your thoughts and ideas, your activities etc. but I feel your are talking to a rather closed circle of the same group of "followers", and "friends".  On the street, everybody you hand your paper to is a stranger, somebody new, and day in day out, that is a lot of strangers getting what you  are trying to do and say. I have spouted this before, but I do despair that we are missing avast swath of people who are the very people we have to convince, our ideas are for their benefit, and their kids benefit.

      Will I ever see the return of "The Paper" popping up across our towns and cities, in our communities. Local info shaped around anarchist ideas, in your hand to read, to keep for reference, to pass on to friends and work mates? Not nostalgia, just a belief that we are missing a valuable weapon that would be a wonderful conduit for our ideas.

 

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

Wars And The Media.

       In the cycle of perpetual wars that we are mired in, we should remember the part the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, play in manufacturing acceptance of wars and the death and destruction that follows. They are the propaganda mouthpiece of the various states, and by misrepresentation, omitting facts, distorting evidence and ignoring consequences, they create the illusion that it is a "just war", a "noble cause". However, history tells us that it is always a battle of opposing power structures aiming to increase their power and wealth, or hold on to it against a competing power structure.

     In every war, it is the ordinary people that pay the savage price in death and misery of this insanity, while the wealthy and powerful gain the spoils from the slaughter.

     An event well worth making a point to attend is the coming film show and discussion being put on by The Scottish Peace Network, 

         On Wednesday, 31 October, 7 pm, Wellington Church, Glasgow Uni campus, the Scottish Peace Network will be screening a major portion of We Are Many-- a excellent film about the massive, coordinated, worldwide demonstrations on 15 February 2003 to halt plans for a war on Iraq by the US and the UK.
      This film screening and discussion is part of a series of events closing four years of counter-centenary actions and events aimed at telling the truth about the causes and consequences of the First World War.
       The truth then and now is that official lies and media manipulation play a big role in the build up to, and perpetuation of, war.
        Please join us for the film and discussion as we try to stay true to our goals and values: No More Wars. No Justice No Peace.

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

Hypocrisy And Crocodile Tears.

        Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is all a flutter, shouting “outrage”, “despicable” “savagery turned loose”, and filling papers and TV time with the alleged murder of journalist,  Jamal Khashoggi. Yes, if true, this is a despicable act, though not the worst act carried out by any state, and should be condemned. However, the coverage, to me seems out of all proportion when compared to the vicious, brutal, savage acts carried out by states across the globe. Where is the “outrage”, “despicable” “savagery turned loose” regarding the unbelievable brutality that is happening in Yemen? Where are the reams of paper, the hours of TV coverage on what is turning out to be the worst humanitarian crisis since the second world war. A country being reduced to conditions beyond belief, famine, cholera, daily mounting deaths, maimed and displaced millions. Men, women, elderly and children being encapsulated in unbelievable brutality on a daily basis. All this with the blessing of the imperialist West, it couldn’t happen without the arms from the UK and the US. We pile in the latest weapons of mass destruction into the hands of a medieval, autocratic, dictatorial, brutal regime and turn our eyes away from how they are used. Because it is good for business, large profits can be made from fostering this type of savagery.

        Nor is there much coverage of the Philippine psychopath Duterte’s war on drugs, being floated under the euphemism of “Philippine Drug War” known also as “Operation Double Barrel”. Nothing more than a vicious operation to silence dissent and intimidate the population, giving a free hand to the state minders to beat, terrorise, and kill at will.
       On these matters our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media barely raise an eyebrow, these items of savagery don’t fit their propaganda script. 

On the Philippines, this from Freedom News: 

 

 

  World, Oct 18th
        As most of you probably heard, Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte, who assumed office in July 2016, had launched the “Philippine Drug War” known also as “Operation Double Barrel”. The disgraceful campaign aims at “the neutralization of illegal drug personalities nationwide”.
      The policy gave a green light to cops to routinely execute drug suspects and then plant guns and drugs on them. What’s more, there is evidence that the police is using hospitals to hide their killings. Duterte also urged the citizens of Philippines to lynch suspected drug addicts and criminals.
     In Summer 2018, four Food Not Bombs volunteers have been killed, and one has been framed for drug possession and is in jail awaiting trial. The families and friends of the victims believe that both the murders and the arrest are the result of Duterte’s war on drugs.

The four murdered activists are:

Chris Jose Eleazar (aka Mokiam)
Food Not Bombs Bukidnon/Davao volunteer
Born: Nov.17, 1990 Killed: Sept. 15, 2018

Jan Ray Patindol (aka Pating)
Food Not Bombs Davao volunteer
Born: January 2, 1989 Killed: Sep.15,2018

Jessie Villanueva De Guzman
Food Not Bombs Baliwag Volunteer
Born: June 2,1990 Killed: July 6, 2018

Patrick Paul Pile
Food Not Bombs Baliwag Volunteer
Born: December 10, 1988 Killed: July 23,2018
      Chris Jose Eleazar and Jan Ray Patindol were tortured and killed during a police raid on the home of a Food Not Bombs volunteer on in September 2018. Their bodies were covered with cigarette burns and bruises. The police claim that they “fought back”, however, the victims’ friends said the two did not resist and that the wounds on their bodies indicated that the two young men were tortured.
      Jessie Villanueva De Guzman and Patrick Paul Pile were murdered in separate incidents in July 2018. They were very active members of Food Not Bombs Baliwag. Both made their living as night-time tricycle drivers.
      Jessie was killed by the police in Baliwag, Bulacan. A week after his murder, Patrick took a passenger on his tricycle. At the end of the agreed route, a group of police were waiting. Patrick was killed by one gun shot to his back. He is one of many tricycle riders killed in similar way.
      In all four cases, the police claimed that the victims were killed during “legitimate operations” and that they resisted arrest and “fought back.
       In August 2018 in the municipality of Bantayan, Cebu, a Food Not Bombs volunteer Marco was arrested and is awaiting trial after apparently being framed for drug possession. Marco is a long standing activist: he initiated the Food Not Bombs project in Bantayan.
       He is enduring hellish conditions in prison. Despite of the political situation in the country, his supporters would like to do anything it takes for Marco to get a fair trial in what they know first hand is a corrupt state.
      In a crowdfunder website created to help Marco fight his charges, Food not Bombs organiser Chris writes: “A kind person called Marco (Cram) who I met on a quiet island called Bantayan to the north of Cebu was arrested in early August for allegedly using and selling drugs. During this arrest a packet was planted on him. He is innocent of the charges. It seems that he was set-up and if left unaided will become just another jail statistic.”
      Human rights organisations estimate that up to date, Operation Double Barrel lead to the death of more than 12 thousand people. In the first year, the victims included 54 children. Lawyers who defended drug suspects have also been targeted.
      The Amnesty International report from January 2017 details “how the police have systematically targeted mostly poor and defenceless people across the country while planting ‘evidence’, recruiting paid killers, stealing from the people they kill and fabricating official incident reports.” In the report, AI expressed deep concern “that the deliberate, widespread and systematic killings of alleged drug offenders, which appear to be planned and organized by the authorities, may constitute crimes against humanity under international law.”

You can support Marco’s campaign here.

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

Cherish The Bootlickers And The Entrepreneurs.

       Yes, with reverence and wall to wall coverage, that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, reported the Pope's visit to Ireland. However, despite the massive turnout, paid little heed to those who see through the illusion of the God men and their grovelling groupies of fools and exploiters. Thanks Loam for the link.

       Sarah Clancy performs her poem 'Cherishing for Beginners' at the Stand for Truth rally on the day of the Papal rally in the Phoenix park Ireland.

Cherish the meek
cherish the ranchers
cherish the guards
cherish the bankers
cherish the virgins
then ride them and cherish their sisters,
cherish tax exiles and entrepreneurs
cherish the rewards of intergenerational privilege
or if that's too hard for beginners
sure cherish the Rose of Tralee for starters,
cherish the goal and the point and the foul
cherish the priest's dirty sheets
but not the women who wash them,
don't mention her
or what she might need,
go on though and cherish the IFSC
and its type of laundries-
those ones are fine,
they are grand sure.
Cherish Them.
Cherish the pope and his
band of transglobal bootlickers
cherish the bishops
who moved paedophile priests
around like chess pieces
and were afflicted with severe mental reservations
every time child rape was mentioned
cherish the bureaucrats
who know that the institution always comes first
cherish the shame they implanted
on the whole population
then cherish the suicides
as collateral damage
in an otherwise virtuous struggle
cherish the high moral ground
they reached by tramping on
the graves of dead babies,
cherish the ring kissers
who made it all possible
sure give them a big round of applause
don't the y deserve it
Cherish the men
because they couldn’t help it
if the women and girls went and fell pregnant,
cherish the foetus, the heartbeat,
but not the person it's in
then cherish the small graves
in their undisclosed wastelands
cherish the shovels
and boot soles that dug them-
let there be no doubt about it-
Yes We Can!
cherish the children
if they're from the right class
aren’t travelling people
and are not for god’s sake
seeking asylum,
don't forget too that we must
cherish the mute
and cherish the sheepish
but hate those in need,
worship Fr Peter McVerry himself,
go ahead make him an icon
but don’t listen to what he’s saying
about anything.
Cherish the poor
for how you can use them
to frighten those
who are just one rung above
cherish the people
who learned early and often
what happens to those
with big mouths,
cherish your local TDs,
and the crowd in Listowel
who didn't care that he raped her
sure wasn't he one of their own?
Yea cherish the rapist,
why don't you?
Cherish the golf course
and its sprinklers
sure Irish Water will save us
cherish piece work and internships,
and zero hour contracts
aren't you lucky you have a job at all?
Do you not remember the coffin ships
and are you not grateful?
Yea cherish your own exploitation
cherish the school board,
for our lack of gay teachers,
cherish women's place in the home
then cut their allowances,
sure they don’t deserve them
having all of those children
repeat after me- Cherish Privatisation;
and if you don't then you better learn
to cherish the knock on your door
in Jobstown in the morning.
Consider this a warning.
Cherish Dev and Pearse
and blood sacrifice
but don't mention James Connolly
who said until Ireland's women are free
none of us will be, most of all though
cherish outsourcing and remember
your call is important,
you too will be cherished equally
if you can afford it
as soon as an operator
becomes available
which may well take
another hundred years.

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

The World Of Millionaire/Billionaire parasites.

        I never usually pay any attention when the parasites of the establishment start to carve up one of their own. However reading our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, you would imagine that the Manafort trial in America was a case of one naughty rogue millionaire who broke the rules. He is charged with tax avoidance, fiddling loan applications and secret bank accounts. The reality of course is that this sort of behaviour among our millionaire/billionaire parasite class is par for the course. It doesn't take much research to find out that the tax haven financial racket is not in recession, it is in fact booming. As the millionaire/billionaire plunderers grow in wealth, their accountants and lawyers seek ever new ways to conceal their wealth and to avoid paying their due taxes, it is a thriving industry.  

      So why is Manafort being taken to task for doing what they are all up to? You can rest assured it is not moral indignation at his behaviour. It is just the usual power struggle among the millionaire/billionaire parasite class. They always play legal games to gain power for one plundering group and/or to undermine the power of another plundering group. Wealthy powerful groups don't make good bedfellows, driven by greed they all want more and see the other group as a threat to their power and wealth.

       So fry Manafort, and even send him to prison, it will not in any way clean up the system of greed, corruption and exploitaion that controls all aspects of our lives. The system is built on greed, corrution and exploitation, and there are plenty more "Manaforts" beavering away at plundering and stashing their ill gotten gains in tax havens and secret bank accounts. It is the system, we need to fry and dismantle, to rid ourselves of the cancer that is the Manafort culture, but don't expect the millionaire/billionaire parasite class do do that for you, that task is up to us, the ordinary people of this world.

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

Just Text Death.

 

      At the age of 84, sometimes a wave of despondency washes over me. Having spent more years than I can remember fighting against, and shouting about, the insanity and savage brutality of this economic system that controls or lives, a quick glance tells me things are worse than ever. The opulence of the few grows ever greater, the poverty and misery for the many persists and keeps growing.

      Take the Democratic Republic of Congo avast country sitting on incalculable wealth but for the people of Congo unimaginable poverty, disease and bloodshed. The reason the people of Congo suffer so much is because of the countries vast wealth, surely a sign of greed and insanity.

      Four years ago I wrote a piece on the Congo, then, 2014, the so called First African World War, had been shedding the blood of the poor for 17 years. Today the bloodshed, poverty and death continues.
From The Guardian: 

         The humanitarian situation is dire. More than 13 million Congolese need humanitarian aid, twice as many as last year, and 7.7 million face severe food insecurity, up 30% from a year ago, the United Nations said in March. Many humanitarian officials complain that global attention has been diverted to more heavily reported crises in the Middle East.
          More than 4.5 million people are displaced, the highest number in the DRC for more than 20 years, latest figures show. There are outbreaks of cholera. The fighting is, as Kapitu feared, getting worse.

        Yes, our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, has a basket of dire world crises from which to cherry-pick.

         The article I wrote four years ago, the only change has been an increase in poverty, bloodshed and death, for the ordinary people, and increase in the wealth of the corporations milking the natural resources:

         It says a lot about our present economic system when you look around the world and find that countries with the richest natural resources have some of the poorest people on our earth. The Middle East is a wash with oil, which transfers into unbelievable wealth, but you can't say its people are all very rich. This pattern is repeated across the planet, another example is the Democratic Republic of Congo. A vast country, the second largest in Africa, the 11th largest in the world. As well as having coal, oil and diamonds, it is also the richest source of cobalt in the world. That rather dull looking material produces unimaginable wealth for the corporate world, but little for the people of the that country. In fact it is the opposite, this immeasurable wealth is probably the main cause of the suffering of the people.
         Because of the economic system that prevails today, blood will be shed to get control of that wealth. Sadly that blood is shed for the end product of things like mobile phones and laptops, and these are products that the vast majority of the people who produce that raw material will never see.
        If it was just dreadful working conditions and poor pay, that would be bad enough, but we are talking about millions dying and millions more suffering unimaginable violence. Since its bitter struggle to be free from the Western colonialists, the country has been blighted by violence, and at the root of that, is the fact that it is very rich in raw materials like cobalt.
      The Second Congo War, sometimes referred to as the “African World War”, as it involved around twenty armed groups and nine other African countries started in 1998. No doubt all eager to get a slice of that wealth. Although “Peace Accords” were signed in 2003, fighting continued in the east of the country through 2007. In this region the prevalence of all manner of sexual violence and rape is often described as the worst in the world. Since 1998 this conflict has claimed the lives of more than 5.4 million people. Though this was a brutal conflict, more than 90% were not killed in combat, they died from such things as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malnutrition, brought about by the usual companions of war, displaced populations ending up living in unsanitary, over crowed conditions, combined with lack of shelter, clean water, food and medical care. What is even more tragic, 47% of those deaths were children under five.
         The country also has great agricultural potential but this is being stifled by this conflict, which still continues. It is the struggle to control those vast mineral resources that drives this most brutal and savage conflict. Is your mobile phone worth it?
       Surely we have the imagination and the ability to devise a economic system whereby natural resources do not equate with misery, poverty, deprivation and bloodshed for the many, and unbelievable opulence for the few.

ann arky's home.