Keelie 39.

 

         The Glasgow Keelie 39 is now available, as usual packed with what you would expect from wee Glesca Keelie. Out spoken, exposing the government's deliberate attacks on the poorest in our communities, pointing the way to resist, lots of info on how to resist and get involved in fighting this perpetual cull on the poorest and most vulnerable, helping to get that better world for all our people. The Keelie will be found in the usual places pickets, protests, demos and on the street in general. Watch out for it and grab your free copy of Glasgow's most radical newspaper. 

You can read The Glasgow Keelie on line HERE

         If you want a wee bundle to spread among your mates, or have something to say about today's injustices, corruption, and financial shenanigans of our lords and masters, contact us HERE. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Shame.

 

           February 12th. a day of protest against the oncoming tidal wave of price rises and tax increases. Protests took place across the country, Glasgow was no exception George Square the venue. Despite the lousy Glasgow weather a fair crowd assembled bringing their anger on to the streets. Due to a little problem I was unable to attend but took up a vantage point in a cafe across the road. Well at various protests I have heard the phrase "Shame on You", and thought it rather ineffectual. Sadly as I look around at the various  flags and banners, I could see at least four large Scottish Socialist Party flags, at least two large CP flags, trade union banners, and then I thought, "Shame on you", no where was there a black flag, or red and black flag. Here were these other groupings shouting loud and handing out their literature, to receptive hands but I detected no anarchist display. These were ordinary citizens of Glasgow and were on the street to show their anger at the enforced poverty they are facing, looking for answers. They would be receptive to our ideas if we had been there shouting as loud as the others. After all we have much more to say than those who were there doing the shouting with their display. A missed opportunity,  we should be on the streets where ordinary people gather to voice their anger. One of our comrades did manage to hand out approximately 400 Glasgow Keelies, all well received and eagerly taken. We could have done so much more.

Some photos from the protest.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info      

You-topia.

 

        I found this film, informative and inspiring, though there is hardship and bitter struggles, it unfolds in poetic beauty, its narrative is woven with hope and determination and a strong reminder, as the film says, "Remember, you are the You-topia." I hope you get as much from it as I did.

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

No Borders.

 

        Solidarity, unity, co-operation and no borders are the foundation stones of our victory over this economic system that condemns millions to a life of misery. A system that has only one aim to increase profit, wealth and power to the few. As the inequality grows so does the anger and the resistance, however, likewise the state, the corporate beast's minder, increases it repression, surveillance and brutality to meet that resistance. It is aware of the rising anger and resentment, if unchecked could bring its plundering to an end, so it will increase its viciousness and brutal repression in an attempt to hold onto its very survival and to retain its wealth, power and privileges. 

       We either accept the life of inequality, injustice, mass poverty, murderous deprivation, total surveillance, and continuous wars, that this system hands us, or we resist with all the strength we can muster, and take our anger to the streets. Our world of resistance may seem fragmented, but make no mistake, it is the same battle across all borders, a struggle for justice, equality and the right to a decent life for all. If these struggles happening across the globe, come together across all states enforced borders, our victory is assured. The alternative is unacceptable.

 

 

         A call with passion and from the heart from Berlin.

The following is from Act For Freedom Now:

International Call for Action and Discussion Days in Berlin 30.10.-01.11.2020
International Demo in Berlin 31.10.2020
UNITED WE FIGHT!
       Connect Urban Struggles – Defend Autonomous Spaces
Over the last years we experience a global resurgence of reactionary politics. State and capital, in a constant process of intensifying exploitation and expanding repression, used the global capitalist crisis, which started a decade ago, as a chance to further restructure relations of power in their advantage. Their political answer is materialized in a shift to the right, with a political alliance of neoliberal economic policies coupled with strong nationalistic narratives and repressive policies against resistance and progressive movements. The new face of authoritarianism has unleashed an all out attack against individuals it considers unnecessary or those that choose to resist and collectivize against the ruin of their lives. In our current period, states the world over used measures against Covid-19 to extend repression, policing and surveillance against societies. At the same time, the failings of neoliberal healthcare systems have led to masses of deaths and increasing inequality due to access to healthcare.
To all of this, people in different areas of the world answer with massive resistance on the streets. Movements with different perspectives have revolted, for example in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, or more recently in France and the USA. The common thread of all these movements is their distance from institutionalized and systemic politics and the choice of self-organization and horizontalism in the fight against authority.
     The movement in Germany is fighting against exploitation and oppression in the belly of the beast. Since the movement reached a climax of mobilization against Hamburg’s G20 summit in 2017, the German state intensified and broadened its repressive arsenal with the goal to suppress and isolate the movement: this has seen the biggest public manhunt since the state repression since the 1960s and 70s, widening of police measures such as preventative arrests and extrajudicial surveillance, increased penalties for crimes against police and the ban of the popular German indymedia website “linksunten”.
In the city of Berlin over the past years the movement has come under constant attack through the eviction of its infrastructure, with gentrification manifesting itself in an attack on marginalized and struggling parts of society: rising rents making life unbearable, more than 5.000 forced evictions of houses per year, increased policing of public spaces and an overall changing social geography in the city. On the one hand this destroys or displaces spaces that the movement uses to support itself. Through heavy policing and state repression, subversive lifestyles and political organization is made impossible within public spaces. On the other hand capital is given space to invest and increase profitability through real-estate, privatization of security through cameras, fences and walls, smart city developments and big public-private partnership projects.
      The struggle of self-organized spaces in Berlin has developed against this background. The eviction of the bar collective Syndikat last August, and the broad mobilization of the movement against the eviction, was only the start of the upcoming fight for our infrastructures. The anarcha-queer-feminist house project Liebig34, the autonomous youth center Potse and the bar collective Meuterei are threatened by imminent evictions. The house project Rigaer94 was again raided in July, in an attempt to use the background of the raid several vain attempts to evict squatted flats were made without any success, since all flats could be held by the people inside or taken back. This phase of evictions might become the biggest attack on the autonomous infrastructure in Berlin since the 1990s.
       These collective spaces have chosen to stay and fight back in different ways. Their struggle has rallied the movement German-wide as a fight we are all a part of: against private property and capital, against the displacement of people from their houses, against gentrification of our neighborhoods, against a patriarchal and racist system which marginalizes, silences and oppresses the voices of those being exploited or deemed expendable for the system. Against this the projects put forward self-organization and solidarity, defiance of property and confrontation with the state and a direct attack on the oppressive social structures of hetero-patriarchy, nationalism and individualism.
      We are traversing a critical period, both for society and for radical movements worldwide. Under the dogma of “law and order”, state and capital are intensifying their attack on society and trying to further their dominance of all aspects of everyday life, stopping every collective vision and claim, and every perspective of resistance and struggle.
       Recognizing Berlin as the capital of one of the most dominant capitalist countries worldwide, we aim to intensify the social struggle in the heart of the beast. Giving a strong answer and creating perspectives against one of the most unbearable states of the world, that consists a model for many countries worldwide and which through its bureaucracy and structures infiltrates all the aspects of our lives leaving no space for self organization and anti-institutional struggles, will create a legacy not only for the local movement but for every rebellious cell worldwide.
       By the end of October an official eviction date of Liebig34 may be public. We will get together to prevent this. And if it has already been evicted in the weeks prior, we will take it back!
       We need all the force we can and call for support to defend our projects. Borderless solidarity is one of our strongest weapons. We want to use this opportunity to make the anarchist perspective more visible and bring the discussion about our ideas, praxis and strategies forward. The days prior to the demonstration on 31.10. will offer space for a plenary assembly, exchange, discussions and ways of actions on our common goals, strategies, occupying ground and collective defense.
        We consider this demonstration as an opportunity to come together to create a breach in their plans and multiple moments of ragefull, dynamic and militant experiences in which we abandon the defensive role and instead take the street as an active and offensive movement.
         Thus we hope to make these days part of a continuous discourse and not yet another unconnected event with no followup.
For these reasons we call for people to take the streets and destroy their plans of evictions. Although our fights in different corners of the worlds take different characteristics as we struggle in different contexts, borderless solidarity and the bridging of our struggles has been possible in the past, and is necessary for the future. Let’s choose confrontation and resistance, and seek them in collective moments beyond borders; let’s make their plans a disaster.
        We join the call of Terra Incognita to turn this year’s October into a month dedicated to solidarity and standing up for every occupied ground threatened by repression.
Lets bring our rage together!
Berlin 30.10.-01.11.202
International Demonstration 31.10.2020
via Liebig34.

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

The Flickering Flame Grows.

      Although the protests in France have been going on for more than a year, and covering all major cities and towns, it is still difficult to know exactly what is going on. The reason of course  is our media stay silent on such affairs especially if they are near to home, for fear of contagion. They know the population are angry, and here that anger is still simmering beneath the surface, the last thing they want is to give fuel for that anger causing it to burst onto the streets.

       If you are interested in what has been happening and is still happening in France, then the list of some of those actions over the year are listed by Anarchists Worldwide. It makes for interesting reading, showing the mosaic of direct actions and how they morphed in this highly technical society. It would appear that direct action of resistance is keeping pace with rapid changing technology that shapes and controls our lives.

The Anarchist Worldwide list in PDF form can be downloaded HERE: 

That was the year that was---

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

Again, Direct Action And Solidarity Win.

 

          Once again direct action and solidarity wins the day. The ZAD occupation has been running for years. The project to build a massive new airport in 5,000 hectres of wetlands and small hamlets was first raised in the 1970's, the protests grew larger and took on a more direct action approach during the 2000's, and the area has been occupied since. The protesters have determinedly held their ground and increased their presence, despite heavy and at times brutal, military and police opposition. It has now been announced that the massive destructive project has been cancelled. 

         However the struggle goes on, with the locals and protesters laying out their demands of what is to happen to this extensive piece of land that the state grab for the airport.

This report from Freedom News UK:

         In a communique the famous horizontal community Zone à Defendre (ZAD) has declared a “historic victory” and called for “expropriated peasants and inhabitants to be able to fully recover their rights as soon as possible.”
         The entirety of the land area devoted to the airport project — 1,650 hectares of land declared as being of public utility in 2008 — currently belongs to the State, with the exception of three roads crossing it. the ZAD has argued that this land should be kept in public hands and, rather than turned into an airport, put into forms of public lease for the benefit of the community and wildlife.
         Responding to reports that the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport project is now officially dead, reps for the ten-year environmental occupation campaign wrote:

         This afternoon, the government has just announced the abandonment of the project.
        We note that the declaration of public utility [key to enabling large projects to function and compulsory purchases to happen] will not officially be extended. The project will definitely be null and void on February 8th.
     This is a historic victory against a destructive development project. This has been possible thanks to a long movement as determined as it is varied.
          First of all, we would like to warmly welcome all those who have mobilised against this airport project over the past 50 years.
        Regarding the future of the ZAD, the whole movement reaffirms today:
         The need for expropriated peasants and inhabitants to be able to fully recover their rights as soon as possible.
The refusal of any expulsion of those who have come to live in recent years in the grove to defend it and who wish to continue to live there and take care of it.
        A long-term commitment to take care of the ZAD lands by the movement in all its diversity — peasants, naturalists, local residents, associations, old and new inhabitants.
To implement it, we will need a period of freezing the institutional redistribution of land. In the future, this territory must be able to remain an area of ​​social, environmental and agricultural experimentation.
       With regard to the issue of the reopening of the D281 road, closed by the public authorities in 2013, the movement undertakes to answer this question itself. Police presence or intervention would only make the situation worse.
       We also wish, on this memorable day, to send a strong message of solidarity to other struggles against major destructive projects and for the defense of threatened territories.
         We call to converge widely on February 10th in the grove to celebrate the abandonment of the airport and to continue building the future of the ZAD.
      Acipa, Coordination of Opponents, COPAIn 44, Naturalists in struggle, the inhabitants of the ZAD.

A new e-book on the struggle,
 Defending The ZAD, can be read HERE:

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

Resistance And Solidarity, Our Winng Weapons.

       More on the the eviction of the Banc Expropiat in Barcelona. Flour bombs, reminiscent of Glasgow's 1915 rent strike.

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

"We Ask For Nothing, We Are Taking It All".

        Only those unfortunate souls who glean their information from the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, see the system as working fine, but with odd and rare blips of some sort of “crisis”. They live in the smoke and mirrors of the propaganda fog produced by that mouth piece of the system, that wonderful illusion creating machine they call “The Media”. Cast your eyes towards the real world, and you see a different picture. You see poverty, deprivation, brutal wars, and state violence, a world awash with inequality and injustice, you also see a system in its death throes. However, you also see resistance, resistance to this continuous exploitation of the many by the few. Across the globe people are rising up and not demanding change, but creating change, you can’t demand freedom from a system that is built on, and can’t survive, without power and authority, you have to take it. There can be no compromise between capitalism and justice, the are totally incompatible.
        From Russia to Canada, from Norway to Mexico, people are waking up to the fact that they hold the power, all they have to do is use that power, they now realise that capitalism is not the only game in town, it was not created in tablets of stone by some deity, it was man made, and can be man destroyed, for people to have justice and freedom, capitalism must go. However, the beast will not go quietly, it will not relinquish its power and privileges without a fight, it will use every dirty trick in the book backed up with raw brutal force. That's the price of justice and freedom.

 This from Act For Freedom Now:

         These last two months (March-April) the streets of major cities in France have been transformed into fields of resistance, where mass protests and clashes are taking place in the framework of the general strikes which are against the new labour legislation of the government. Barricades, luxury cars and police cars burnt, cops and undercovers beaten, banks smashed, people masked up with stones in their hands, are some of the images that prove to us that in every corner of the earth the war against the state and capital still rages and that nothing is over…
       “We ask for nothing, we are taking it all”, “No insurrection without fire”, “Destroy wage slavery” etc, are some of the chants from the black bloc and the anarchist groups that clash and express their
refusals in the street. As was expected, all that’s taking place could not be without the labour leaders and reformists who speak of provocateurs, liken the black bloc with the fascists, condemn the violent practices against the state and at the same time have relations with the police. Because, fortunately or unfortunately, pacifists and deniers of violence – whose existence clearly favors the rulers – are a global phenomenon. The time is near when they will get what they deserve.
          At the same time, the forces of oppression use plenty of teargas, brutally beat protesters and arrest people. In a nutshell, they do everything under the orders of their superiors in order for them to protect their bosses and the peaceful citizens-subjects. It is more than obvious now that the economy is collapsing, resulting in it showing its real face: Hunger wages combined with wretched working conditions, that contribute to an inhumane middle ages-like work environment, where the worker is the modern slave on the production line. At the same time, repression intensifies and strengthens, in order for the police-state in the streets to become a daily routine and for whoever seeks the attack on the world of authority to hesitate to take action.
End the false dilemmas. Whoever chooses inactivity, chooses their chains. The moment is now, the place is here. From the streets of France to the alleyways of Chile, from the mountains of Mexico to the avenues of Athens. The whole world is a field of unrest! 

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

 

CAMERON - MILIBAND, TWO OF A KIND!!

        The following is a short extract from Tony Benn's speech made at the weekend. It is all well and good what he says, but we don't want to to defeat the government and see a Miliband Labour government in its place. After all the man himself Ed, has said that they cannot reverse the cuts. To replace the Cameron/Clegg millionaires with look-a-like named Miliband is hardly going to improve the conditions of the ordinary people of this country. They are all singing from the same music sheet, it's just that the Cameron mob are singing it as a reel, while the Miliband bunch want to sing it as a waltz. The end result will be the same, a drastically decimated welfare system, a low wage economy and millionaires making loads of cash. It is not the faces at the front of the package that is the problem, it is the package itself.

          “The present government is mounting the biggest attack ever made on the welfare state created after the Second World War. Their aim is to finish the work begun under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

         When people came back from the war, the view was that it was the responsibility of government, representing the people as a whole, to provide affordable homes, free medical care, education for all, and key public services.

        All of that is now under threat. The Con-Dem Coalition's programme of austerity and privatisation will take us back 80 years.

          We are going to need a tidal wave of resistance from below to defeat the government. Every one of us needs to get active, involve others, spread the spirit of resistance to help to build a united mass movement to stop the cuts.”

What we want is a mass movement of resistance to change the system, not to change the face at the podium or the bums on the seats of power, and party political politics will never do that.

ann arky's home.