Their Rules.

       Today, more than ever it is blatantly obvious that freedom is born of struggle, it can never be a gift from some high and mighty authority. The riots and mass protests on the streets of country after country across the world, are testament to this need for struggle to gain our freedom. The following is a wee compilation of a couple of wee articles I wrote some three years ago, what they say may have been obvious back then, but now I believe what they say is irrefutable as the states across the planet create more and more surveillance and militarised policing, and come down harder and harder on those who would dare to protest the state's authority.

        It should be obvious to any observer of the present economic system that rules this world, that it can't be reformed. Capitalism can't be converted into a caring compassionate, system that sees to the needs of all our people. Its basis is self gain based on the exploitation of others, others are there to be profited from, not cared for. So running to a ballot box putting down your mark, against a chosen party disciple, will not bring about the compassionate capitalism you hope for, nor will petitioning the political ballerinas that hold the reins of power because of that ballot paper.
        The creation of that better world for all, must take place outside the rules of capitalism, and outside the legislation of the capitalist minders, the state. The change has to happen among the people, by the people, in their communities and workplaces, in spite of, and in opposition to, the structures created by this enslaving economic system. We have no rules, we create structures and strategies as we develop, our needs will determine the shape of our new society, after we have built a bonfire of all the rules and legislations that bind us as units of profit, and as subservient units of the state.
     Those who confront the injustices of this greed driven capitalist system, openly and head on, often pay a high price. For some the price is their life, others it is being locked up in the various states' cages of repression. All deserve our unending solidarity, if our aim is to build a world of fairness for all our people. The state will not relinquish its authoritarian power willing, it will never offer the people freedom, it will not fade away quietly. It will fiercely attempt to crush all and any flowering of freedom and self determination, it can only survive by our subservience, our freedom and justice can only blossom from its ruins.

       Today's rule book was written by the enemies of freedom, we must tear it up and burn it along with all the other structures of the capitalist system.

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

Why Police?

       The mass protests that started in America, has mushroomed across the planet. An obvious sign that their is an underlying malaise at the root of this economic system. The anger is not just against the police and their daily brutality, sanctioned and funded by the state, this can be seen by the symbols of the system that are being attacked. What we are seeing is the latent energy of populations that have lived with a murmuring of anger just below the surface. Anger fermented by generations of exploitation, by ever growing inequality, by an ever more blatant plundering of the public wealth, all backed up by state repression and brutality.

       The callous brutality of the police is no aberration within this society, it is a deliberate production of the state, to enforce this continual plundering of the commonwealth for the parasitic few. If by some magic formula we managed to eliminate the police, the state would have to reinvent it to ensure its survival. It would need to recreate an enforcing system to allow its corporate masters to continue their exploitation of populations and destruction of the planet. 

       So let's focus on the real problem with our society, not the activators of the violence, but on the reasons why they are there in the first place, who trains, funds and sanctions them, and why. Answer those questions and you will stand with the protesters and show solidarity in this justified release of generations of pent up anger. The police are being ever more militarised  and are backed up by masses of legislation, devised and brought into law, not by the police, but by the planners of the system, those faces with names that sit in the marble halls of power, for no other reason than to protect the inequality and exploitation, to defend the status-quo. Unless you sit with those who sit in those marble halls, you should be supporting those on the street. Solidarity is the weapon that can bring down the injustice inherent in this savage economic system of violence and inequality.

      Not a new image, but a true reflection of the system under which our righteous anger has grown.

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

What Is The War On Drugs?

       This is not a new article, it first appeared in January 2015, it is as relevant today as it was the day it was printed. It is taken from a  collection of communiqués released by Chicago-based anarchist group Semillas Autónomas between 2014 and 2017. Some were flyers announcing or calling for specific actions, others were flyers distributed during actions, etc. One statement was written to be read at the Asamblea Popular to be held inside the consulate once it was breached, and was only circulated by video recording. For more information, visit semillasautonomas.org

 

 

Read version HERE:

Print version HERE

 What is the War on Drugs?” (January 2015)

The Mexican government claims to be fighting a war against narco traffickers. But the government has always been in the drug business, and cartels now control government officials and institutions across the country. The narco-state is indeed waging a war – but it is a war in the interest of the big players of global capitalism. It is part of continuing and enforcing trade agreements such as NAFTA, which force open all of Mexico to the unhindered extraction of profit. The function of the war is to impose a political and economic restructuring of Mexico in the interests of transnational capital. This war is good for big business. This is what social movements call narco-capitalism a form of globalization in which national governments are key players in the global drug trade, and the drug trade plays a key role in expanding the control of transnational corporations over land, resources, and people. Meanwhile, these same governments adopt an official policy of “War on Drugs” as a pretext for increased militarization and for subjugating their people.
        The US-sponsored War on Drugs in Mexico since 2006: 100,000+ people murdered and 30,000+ disappeared; mass graves in Guerrero, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, and other states; a rise in attacks against transmigrants; increase in torture and executions; expansion of the drug trade and of extraction industries; mass economic displacement, land and water dispossession of indigenous peoples and campesinxs; neoliberal “reforming” of education, labor, judiciary, energy and finance.
       The United States has been funding this war through the Merida Initiative and other “anti-arcotics” programs. About $3 billion has gone to transnational logistics and consulting firms that “restructure” Mexican society to make it friendly to foreign investment, or to buying weapons from US manufacturers and paying private military companies. The same thing happens with the $11.3 billion that Mexico has spent. This is public money, money stolen from people on both sides of the border – and it is going directly to Boeing, Raytheon, Blackwater, Halliburton, and others. The US private sector and government also facilitate the transfer of military-grade weaponry into the hands of the drug cartels – over 90% of the weapons used in narco killings originate in the United States.
      The US sponsors the slaughter, thus justifying an increase of military intervention. As in the case of Colombia, an increase in US-backed (para)militarization correlates with high levels of displacement and dispossession of people, especially indigenous people, living in areas of strategic economic importance, and these displacements serve the interests of mining companies and other transnationals. As the war on drugs expands, transnational corporate control over entire regions expands, and exploitation of the people and the resources deepens.
        The United States has a history of training military and paramilitary forces in the use of terror. The governments tell us that terror is the product of cartel violence and that state military+police forces are the only possible solution. But government forces also strategically use disappearance, execution, torture, and mutilation against specific populations. They target students, workers, campesinxs, indigenous peoples, activists, all those who resist or who could resist, including communities organizing armed self-defense. The goal of terror is political: it is not only about killing people, but also about silencing, intimidation, eliminating political resistance, and destroying lifeways. The United States has perfected the use of terror over decades of experimentation in Central America and the Middle East: it is called counter-insurgency.

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

The State Is Repression.

     As the babbling brook of bullshit that is our mainstream media, spews out fantasy stories from Brexiters and Remainers, it deliberately turns its focus away from anything that might show the Western "democracies" indulging in there routine state violence, against those who resist the brutal onslaught of the corporate juggernaut. Not many photos, not many reports on the resistance of the water protectors standing firm against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Not many reports of the militarised police brutality throwing the full weight of the American repressive system against unarmed and peaceful demonstrators.  

     Of course we should not be surprised, the so called "mainstream media" is no more than the propaganda unit of the corporate dictatorship under which we live. Their main purpose is to weave illusion, breed compliance, encourage celebrity worship and sustain subservience. 

      Well in spite of their smoke and mirrors and ignoring the reality that is all around them, resistance is still there, it is growing, and sooner or later it will prevail. As the state ups its repression, the people will up their resistance.

        Something that our modern super efficient mainstream media failed to notice.

      Demonstrators protesting against Dakota Access Pipeline say they are trapped on a bridge as North Dakota police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at them, according to live reports on social media.

      The demonstration is taking place on Highway 1806, just north of the main protest camp against the pipeline.

    Officers have also reportedly deployed water cannon on the protesters in below-freezing temperatures, and are using LRAD sound devices.

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

Self Interest Based Compassion.

       Just as a by-the-way, once again my broadband has been behaving like an bad buy, second hand car. Down for the last three days, after being fixed last week, after a ten day breakdown. All is not perfect in our world of hi-tec.

      Bloodshed across the Middle East and Ukraine, among other places, and talk of having a look at highly militarised police forces. Talk of saving this group but not bothering too much about that group, compassion based on self interest, that's the game of world politics. 

An Interesting article from Reader Supported News, by William Boardman:

 

       Rescuing 20,000 or so Yazidis matters more than bringing relief to almost two million Gazans in cities under siege by a relentlessly expansionist, right-wing Israeli government bent on ethnic cleansing? Well, maybe that’s not exactly what Tel Aviv/Jerusalem is up to, but decades of repetitive behavior that includes repeated war crimes is anything but reassuring. How is it better to keep arming Israel, the better to kill Palestinians, or at least to kill those Palestinians who survive the lethal and illegal Israeli occupation and blockade, when the alternative is to support the United Nations and perhaps prevent more atrocities?

       Rescuing 20,000 or so Yazidis matters more than protecting at least as many Americans in Ferguson, a city under siege by white privilege? Saving the Yazidis for now matters more than bringing justice to African-American Americans who have suffered their country’s crimes against their humanity for longer than the United States has existed? How is it better to arm local police with the weapons of international war in a country where police already commit the atrocity of killing a black man on average every 28 hours?

Read the full article HERE:

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