How Best To Get The Scum Fascists Of Our Streets.

        In Portland USA, the fascists and others of that rancid breed, show up, en masse, on a regular basis, all kitted out in their armour and armed, in an attempt to terrorise, beat up, and on occasions, kill those who they see as not part of their pure white, fundamental Christian, American paradise. They are on these occasions accompanied by an even greater number of more kitted up and well armed riot police and government agents from various strand of the state, to ensure a safe passage for the festering fascist mob. They are meet by antifascists who are usually outnumbered by the combined forces of the fascists and the state minders, and as a rule the antifascists are the ones that end up being beaten up and arrested by the police. At least one among the antifascists has called for a rethink of tactics and a different approach, perhaps we should all do likewise. Perhaps a muscle flexing face-off might not be the best approach, I do agree we can't ignore them, and they must be defeated.

      The following from It's Going Down:
A critical reflection on the mass antifascist actions in Portland on August 17th. 

 

 

      Since Trump’s election, the Alt-Right, fascists and neo-Nazis (as well as racists and misogynists of all stripes) have been bolder than ever. Around the country they have stabbed people, beat people up, and shot at them.
       In Portland, of course, they have descended nearly every other month for the past two or three years with the intention of instigating a street brawl and provoking anarchists and antifascists, as well as to doxx and threaten people’s safety. And people up and down the west coast have responded. We have allowed ourselves to be provoked each and every time, showed up in the hundreds or thousands, and gotten our asses kicked. We’ve had some shining moments, to be sure, but at the end of most of these demonstrations, all the antifascists I know – and I assume many others – leave feeling demoralized, disempowered, and sometimes in the ER scared to death about our friends lives. Neither the fascists nor the antifascists have changed tactics in these demonstrations. While the police get better at crowd control, become more and more violent, and put more money and energy into investigations, we continue to let ourselves be provoked and show up to do the same damn thing as the month and year before.
       The day before the demonstration on August 17th, a friend said to me, “We have to get these fuckers. The scope of their violence is so intense.” Yes, the fascists are violent and they routinely attack POC, queers and random bystanders. They should be attacked, and I would certainly celebrate if they all killed themselves. But these Portland demonstrations no longer feel like they are actually about attacking anyone. I show up terrified, knowing today might be the day I see a friend get shot. Given their guns and the police response, I do not show up expecting us to do anything more than be a symbolic gesture. Antifascists can talk a big game about how “we are going to show them.” We can show up with bats and batons and pepper spray. And yet, at every demonstration, our goal becomes to not end up in the hospital and maybe get a couple good punches in.
        On August 17th, we stood around for about an hour before the Alt-Right left the park and crossed the bridge, and then we walked aimlessly around the park because we had no other plan than the one we’ve always had. This is not an attack. It doesn’t show us our own strength, and it certainly doesn’t show them our strength.
       At this point, “antifa” feels like a brand name, not an ideology. My politics are larger and deeper than the image embodied by that word. As anarchists, we are inherently antifascist. I am not interested in being defined as “antifa” because we are so much more than that. There are plenty of “antifa” in the antifascist demonstrations who are not anarchists, who do not seem to have politics outside of beating up fascists in the street.
      At every demonstration, I’ve seen supposed antifascists using violently misogynistic and transphobic language, even making rape threats against the fascists. Those people are not on my team. If we were to encounter people like that outside of these demonstrations, they would be our enemies, not our friends. If making fascists bleed is the only thing have in common with each other, what are we fighting for? Where was the 200 person black bloc in Portland when 700 migrants were arrested two weeks before? Are those fascists not worth fighting because we can’t meet them in the street in a flashy muscle-on-muscle fight in front of the media?
       I do not want to fight for or with people who think it’s acceptable to make rape threats, or who use disgustingly misogynistic language. But Joe Biggs announces he is coming to town, and we all team up like we are one big antifa family. And in Portland, the “antifa” feels like a dog that comes when its name is called and gets kicked.
       When the fascists show up in Portland, how can we respond differently? PopMob will have their demonstration, which brings a lot of people in costumes and party attire, and that’s great. But the fascists thrive on us – the black bloc – showing up, too. So what if we didn’t show? I am not saying we should stay home. I am not saying we should not respond. But there is a lot of truth in the idea of “not giving them what they want.” Liberals use that phrase to mean we should stay home, but that is surrender, and we will not surrender.
        There are so many other ways of showing up the day of a fascist demo that do not involve having a face-off with them at the waterfront. We are creative. We are anarchists. We have so many enemies throughout the city that can and must be attacked. An attack on one fascist is an attack on all of them, and we don’t need to stand at the waterfront flexing our muscles in front of their body armor and their guns to strike a blow against them. Think of what 200 people in bloc could accomplish if we were not surrounded by 700 cops, the FBI, and the national guard. Think of how many other opportunities there are. Think of the fascists temporary glee when we don’t show up at the waterfront, only to find out that while they were waiting for us, we have taken action – and won – on another front.
       We need to refind our creativity. We need to remember how to make demonstrations joyful. We need to stop letting ourselves be provoked, and instead become the provocation.

More on the Portland fascist antifascist recurring battles.

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

Tomorrow Can Be Ours, If We Want It.

 

         The struggle in America at Standing Rock, over the Dakota Access Pipeline, is our struggle. It is not just about a pipe line and the pollution of a river, it is about the earth we live on and its total destruction by big business, for greed and profit to the few. The Dakota Access pipeline is a scenario that is being repeated across the planet, an insane juggernaut of destruction powered by the financial Mafia and the corporate greed machine, and in most cases, they have the full support of the various states, backed up by the brutal state apparatus. It will only stop when we the ordinary people, stand up and end this greed driven madness. A better world is possible, we have the imagination, the resources, the power, all we are lacking is the will. With that will and solidarity, that new world can be tomorrow.

Thanks Loam for the link, this from People's Tribune:

         When the Standing Rock Sioux of North Dakota discovered that a pipeline carrying fracked oil was to be built through their land, poisoning the land and its people, there near the headwaters of the Missouri River, destroying sacred sites and burial grounds, they stood up to block the machinery of destruction. This ignited a resistance that has captured the world’s attention, and gathered the support of hundreds of tribes, and massed thousands of supporters to the site in the struggle for water and life.
        In response, the governor of North Dakota called out the National Guard on behalf of the private oil company against the protesters. Private security hired by the pipeline company pepper-sprayed and set attack dogs on men, women and children. Because of the defenders bravery and solidarity, construction has been at least temporarily halted. The people have vowed to remain as long as it takes to protect the land.
        With their many dangerous pipelines leaking and spilling their poisons everywhere, their mauling of the Earth with fracking, only the oil companies, with immense power over and within the US government, benefit from this plunder. With the poisoning of waters in such cities as Flint MI and across the country, the plundering of the Earth by mineral extraction industries, and the use of water by private corporations, this has become a flashpoint in the people’s resistance to corporate rapacity.
        This struggle represents the unity of working people who have little or no stake in this corporate plunder. The native people at Standing Rock whose land is being decimated suffer from 85% unemployment and the highest poverty rate in the country. A growing section of the working class is heading in this direction, thrown out of the capitalist system by automation, no longer exploitable, targeted by police brutality and murder, their communities torn apart and their land and water poisoned. The so-called oil boom in North Dakota has mostly benefited the owners of the oil companies, leaving many people who go there for work homeless or laid-off and stranded.
      This conflict is coming to a dramatic head as more and more people are driven into poverty, despair and no future. This is unifying us around a common cause, the absolute necessity for a radical change in the economic system—from one of exploitation, artificial scarcity and destruction, to one of cooperation, with each other, the world around us and the Earth.
       Our stand is to hold the government responsible for protecting the Earth and its people. We can unite to create a cooperative society—this one global, national and regional—based on the abundance the new tools of production make possible, along with a social structure to support it. A new Fire is burning.  This is what Standing Rock is to us all.

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

A Requiem For Democracy.

     Corporatism just took a very large step forward in its battle to control national governments. TPP secret discussions, locked well away from public scrutiny, have finally been signed on the dotted line. In Auckland New Zealand out-of-touch Trade Ministers and corporate bureaucrats just put their thumbs to their noses and ignored millions of Internet users, plus millions of others, and signed the TPP agreement. At the same time, New Zealand police, the corporate world's government sponsored minders, were intimidatingly knocking on the doors of “known activists” demanding to know about any plans they may have to protest this extreme censorship plan.

        TPP is seen as an integral part of TTIP, and all part of the corporate czars plans to rule the world, over-riding any sham of democracy that we may think we have. These so called "trade agreements" put the corporate world in the driving seat, placing them in a position to challenge any legislation made by governments, that they consider might hinder their drive for profits. Health and safety regulations, minimum wage guarantees, and so on, can be challenged if the corporate greed machine deems them to be a drag on their drive for gold.

     The ratifying of these power-monger agreements can be seen as a requiem for democracy, another step in the march of power away from the people to the upper echelons of the faceless bureaucrats of the corporate world, its natural direction in capitalism. We have always argued that parliamentary party elections were an illusion, a smoke and mirrors trick to make you believe you have democracy, now it has become even less, it is no more than chewing gum and candy-floss TV entertainment. 

       How can we solve the problems in our world, when the control lies in the hands of those who wish to plunder the earth and exploit all its population? We have to shift the power away from the faceless accountants and corporate bureaucrats and into the hands of the people. We can't do this unless we smash the existing system of capitalism. 

More information:

https://www.facebook.com/openmediaorg

https://twitter.com/OpenMediaOrg

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

Black December.

       The Greek state is preparing for Black December, the police are organising to crack down on anarchists across Greece. The crack down has been going on for a considerable time, however, the call for Black December will allow them to escalate the brutal repression.

This from Greek Reporter:

       Greek police are on alert after jailed anarchist Nikos Romanos issued a written statement calling all anarchists to wage war against the state and “…take over city halls and blow up fascists and bosses.”
      As the November 17 celebration and the anniversary of the murder of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a policeman on December 6 approach, the 22-year-old man who is serving 15 years in prison for armed robbery sent a written statement to indymedia.gr website calling all anarchists to arms.
     Given that since December 6, 2008 when Grigoropoulos was killed there are extreme riots taking place in Athens and Thessaloniki with arson and injuries of policemen, Greek police are preparing to deal with the threat.
      In the long statement coming from inside Korydallos Prison, there is mention of a destructive “action campaign called ‘Black December'” which will “restart the anarchist revolution, inside and outside of prison.”
     “Let’s smash the windows of department stores, occupy schools, universities and city halls, let’s distribute texts that spread the message of rebellion, blow up fascists and bosses,” read the message co-written by Romanos and convict Panagiotis Argyrou, member of terrorist group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire.
        “… Let’s blow up the homes of politicians, throw molotov cocktails at cops, cover walls with messages, sabotage the normal flow of Christmas trade,” the statement continues.
        “…Let’s paint with ashes on the ugly buildings of banks, police stations, multinational corporations, army camps, television studios, courthouses, churches and charity organizations,” the statement further reads.
      Romanos was with Grigoropoulos on the night the 15-year-old was killed by policeman Epameinondas Korkoneas. Since then, Romanos pledged to avenge the death of his friend and fight against the state that killed him. In early 2013, Romanos, along with Yiannis Michailidis, Andreas Bourzoukos and Dimitris Politis were arrested during an armed robbery attempt at Velventos in northern Greece. 

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

 

Direct Action, Solidarity.

      Solidarity and direct action takes many shapes, in the community, in the workplace, on the street, it can be organised or spontaneous as circumstances demand. They are of course,  our strongest weapons against any form of attack, and it is always pleasing to see them in action against all the odds, and when needed most. 

       Anarchist News has some examples of friends and comrades standing up for each other.

      Whether it takes place on a dark street or in organized civil disobedience, being arrested is isolating and humiliating. The police lash zip ties around our wrists and tear us from our friends to parade us from jail cell to court until someone makes bail or the DA dismisses the charges.
But we don’t always face arrest alone. When we gather at rowdy demonstrations or busy street corners, we’re not just there to make trouble; we show up to break free of the daily alienation forced on us by work or school. There we see people freeing their friends from the cops: they pull them away by sheer force, open cruiser doors to let arrestees go, or simply land a well-timed blow to the head of an arresting officer.
These simple actions show us that the law and the state are not supernatural forces, but relationships enforced at the hands of the police. That’s why we appreciate all the different ways people have figured out how to de-arrest each other. Check out these ten examples:

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

The Growing Police Repression.

      Recently a group calling themselves the Angry Foxes Cell destroyed a nearly complete police firearms centre in Portishead near Bristol. Since then it appears that the Bristol police, with the help of the babbling brook of bullshit, the media, are branding all activists as extremists, "the enemy within".

This report from The Vast Minority:

     "The police and the state, as always, try to fracture us, they will try to prey on our weaknesses. We stand in unity and solidarity with all those who fight against oppression, capitalism and the state. We must create a culture of mutual aid and solidarity and most importantly: Resistance. We will support each other through whatever the state throws at us because we know that no matter what we will come out stronger."

Read the full article HERE:

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

He looks Like A Real Threat!!

Well what do you make of this? A 7 year old threat that must be retrained?

POLICE : Put your hands behind your back, Kevin, you're under arrest.

Put your hands behind your back.

I'm taking you to jail. Ok?

First, ok, listen to ...

Ah, ah, ah ... no tears.

You have the right to remain silent. 

Anything you say may be used against you in court.

You have the right to counsel during interrogation be, 

if you can not repay you the court will assign a public defender.

Do you understand? Say yes or no.

CHILD : ... yes ....

POLICE : I understand. Right.

Now I sit in the back seat and if you keep crying and you misbehave ...

From arrezafe. Translated from English to Spanish, to English.

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

The Right to Peaceful Protest.

     Here on the streets of Glasgow, the same streets that John MacLean, Guy Aldred, Willie McDougal and many others, held meetings and protests attended by hundreds, we are seeing the authorities  trying to stamp out that tradition of peaceful public protest. If they succeed, where is your freedom to voice your concerns and anger at injustice?

    A peaceful protest held in Gordon Street Glasgow, on February 22, saw two young men arrested for no more than using a megaphone to get the attention of the passing public. How often have you walked through our city streets and some preacher has been belting out his "message" through a sound system and no large police formation and no arrests? The authorities only send in their minders, the police, if it is a political protest, they can't have the people voicing their concerns publicly, others might listen.

     There is  campaign to right this wrong, to hold onto our right to peaceful public protest. It is our city, our streets, our right to freedom of expression.

More details HERE:

ann arky's home.

POLICE POGROM IN CENTRAL ATHENS.

 

With austerity come repression.

This from, From The Greek Streets:

        Since today morning large police operations are taking place in Athens. Police buses with hundreds of police officers start blockading entire building blocks and invading buildings, they stop and search violently everyone who looks foreigner. The people arrested without documents will be moved to the new detention centres. The minister of Citizen Protection M. Chrysochoidis stated: ” Athens will be cleared in a few days, We must re-occupy the public space”.

ann arky's home.

THE RIGHT TO PROTEST.

      A release from the Glasgow Defence Campaign in support of the right to protest. No matter what the state and its minders say, everybody has the right to peaceful protest, unless of course we live under fascism, which is a very strong possibility.

GLASGOW DEFENCE CAMPAIGN - ONE YEAR ON.

http://glasgowdefencecampaign.blogspot.com/2011/09/glasgow-defence-campaign-one-year-on.html

       The British state - the police, courts, parliament and media - has responded to the uprisings in English cities with a visciousness and hypocrisy that only the imperialist ruling class and its defenders are capable of. They ranted about destruction, anarchy, violence, disorder and lawlessness while the Royal Airforce had flown over 15,000 missions against the people of Libya and dropped high explosives on residential areas killing innocent men, women and children. What causes the greatest damage, we ask, a half brick or a jet fighter loaded with murderous missiles! Which is the more anti-social crime? Helping yourself to a pair of jeans or helping yourself to a country's oil?

      In this context, the reality of ruling class violence and lawlessness, we look back at the last year of the Glasgow Defence Campaign's work and the argument that we made in July of 2010 that the British state was preparing to attack the living standards of the working class through the cuts budgets and would attempt to control and criminalise all resistance to the rule of the wealthy. As a Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) supporter stated at a May Day rally in Dundee this year: the defence of working class living standards is the defence of democratic rights.

     Comrades from FRFI got out onto the streets of Govanhill, Glasgow last year to protest at the austerity budget of the newly elected Tory-Con Dem government. Within hours we were facing Strathclyde police's attempts to immediately close down our leafletting and petitioning. Regulations were cited and invented to try to force us off the streets. Our human rights to expression and association - clearly upheld in law- were ignored by the bullies in uniform as newspapers and stalls were seized and charges issued against FRFI supporters.

      We stood firm in the face of this political policing and fought back by openly challenging the police censorship and gathering support from every group and individual sharing our concern about the attack on democratic rights. We urged unity and public protest to defend those rights and warned that we were only at the begining of the state's attempts to limit and make any protest innefective and isolated.

      Towards the end of that year as students took to the streets everywhere to protest at education cuts we recognised the emergence of new police tactics to control, intimidate and criminalise protest. From Parliament Square in London to George Square, Glasgow, the kettle was on. FRFI supporters were targeted and arrested by police on protests in December and January and hauled in front of sham courts. Delayed arrests, house raids, frame ups, surveillance and assault were evidence of the state giving the green light to the police to close down protest. The Glasgow Defence Campaign was established to meet these attacks in kind, recording and exposing every incident of police harassment, naming and shaming the officers involved, taking protests to the doors of the District and Sheriff courts and the streets of Glasgow. The aggressive, bundled police operation to evict the Free Hetherington occupation on 22 March educated new layers of young people in the need to organise rapidly against such repression. On 16 April, following another week of arrests and convictions of FRFI and other anti-cuts activists, the GDC held a defiant rally in Glasgow city centre to demand an end to the political attacks, uniting progressive forces. Five days later, all charges against seven activists were dropped as they were due to appear in court.

       Now, faced with the anger of inner city youth facing poverty and unemployment - sparked off by another police killing - the British state's real methods of operation are obvious to many more people. Their idea of justice is to ignore the theft of billions by the wealthy elites represented in the cabinet and parliament or the corruption of policemen and women by the millionaire press and to treat the working class as criminals deserving only of a prison cell should they rebel.

      The Glasgow Defence Campaign states its commitment to the argument that the defence of democratic rights is the defence of the working class. We define that working class as workers in jobs, youth in revolt on the streets, the disabled and poor, immigrants and asylum seekers- all those who the rich are trying to make pay for an economic crisis not of their making.

       The police who tried to close down our political activity last year and who were made to back off by the campaigning work of the Glasgow Defence Campaign have been made bolder and more arrogant by recent developments. At the time of writing this statement, concern is rising about a steep rise in deaths at the hands of police - 3 killings in 8 days. Recent arrests in Glasgow and the return of police interference in legitimate and legal political organisation should put us all on alert and demands that unity and solidarity must be fought for and built in the struggle to defend democratic rights and in the fight for real justice.

POLICE HANDS OFF PROTEST!
DEFEND DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS!
AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL!
Issued by the Glasgow Defence Campaign, 6 September 2011
glasgowdefencecampaign.blogspot.com

Contact: glasgowdefence@yahoo.co.uk

 ann arky's home.

BED FELLOWS.

    Over the last few days I have come to the conclusion that when the Pope visits this country nothing happens in the world. There is obviously nothing to report, nothing of importance being said or happening. Every newspaper you pick up has page after page of photos of faces and crowds, headline after headline of the same event. Interviews with the mesmerised members of the "flock" who all make meaningless statements which we have grown to expect from the followers of this mass hysteria.

       All it shows is that the so called "newspapers" have nothing to do with news and all to do with propaganda. We are being drowned in a tsunami of irrational gibberish as if it was the accepted way of life of the people of this country. This is an organisation that is having trouble recruiting and swaths of those it has recruited are paedophiles and child abusers, only a very small number of the people of this country regularly enter the organisation's brain-washing units known as churches. It is a extremely wealth organisation that continually holds out the begging can, has repeatedly hidden abusers and silenced the abused. It preaches a dogma of repression against women and  gays, rants against the right of women to choose abortion and spouts the ridiculous rubbish that condoms spread aids.

     In spite of all its cancerous preachings, our media give it all the propaganda that it wishes, our mouth-pieces of the state, the politicians, give it the stamp of legitimacy. Of course the two corrupt power-mongers are well matched. 

    As long as the church and/or the state hold sway, freedom will be an elusive prize.

ann arky's home.

CALL FOR SOLIDARITY.

         

 

      A little behind but only received this in the form of a leaflet the other day and thought it deserves support, after all who will be next in their attempt to silence the opposition to their slash and burn policies? Trying to push one group out here and another out there is their way of trying to silence the public and frustrate any attempt at the ordinary people organising themselves against the millionaires' club.

Govanhill Police Attack the Right to Organise.

        On Tuesday (13/07.2010) Fight Racism-Fight Imperialism set out to hold one of its weekly stalls outside Lidl Victoria Road. Within 15 minutes of setting up we were approached by two police officers; Pc. Ishaque (badge number- G282) and Pc. Willie Neil (badge number-G480) who have tried to shut down our own and other activists stalls before but failed. Two FR/FI activists were charged with selling a newspaper without a permit ( which the human rights act 1998 allows us to do) and were also charged with obstruction. Our table and 13 FR/FI newspapers were seized!

Defend Democratic Rights! No to Political Policing!

        FR/FI will not be intimidated off the streets and will defend the rights of ourselves and others to oppose the wars, spending cuts and blatant corruption (e.g. Steven Purcell) of Britain's rulling-classes. I the period before the full crunch of the spending cuts is felt; lower the already miserable living standards of Glasgow's poor; police should be shown that they cannot attack our democratic rights without promting a fightback. Let the people of Govanhill decide who should be allowed to sell their newspapers, not a few coppers hiding behind their badges!

What You can Do?
Send e-mails of complaint to -SouthsideCentralCommunityPolicingTeam@strathclyde.pnn.police.uk
or phone 0141 532 5312 demanding our table and newspapers be returned and that all charges be dropped.

Support our right to sell newspapers! No to censorship!

L:eave your details for upcoming meetings and events or contact us at glasgowfrfi@yahoo.co.uk



http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/



ann arky's home.