Democracy And Police Violence.

           It appears that in Germany you can't put up posters depicting police violence, without dire consequences.
This from Hyperallergic:

 Kalabal!K Library

           An anarchist library was raided earlier this month in Berlin after police executed search warrants in the hunt for two men wanted in connection to a series of posters depicting police violence during the last year’s G20 protests in Hamburg.
          Kalabal!K, located on Reichenberger Strasse in Kreuzberg, was searched on the morning of May 9 after police suspected two men wanted for libel were located inside. Just after 5:15am, Berlin police reportedly broke open the door of the anarchist library with an angle grinder. They also stormed an apartment in the same building, as well as three other apartments in the Neukölln and Tempelhof districts.
           The State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) gave Berlin police permission to search the premises of Kalabal!K, which is located in a left-wing project house known as “Reiche 63a,” part of a collective run by the Self-Governing Comradeship of East Berlin, where police reportedly seized evidence including data carriers, as well as illegal weapons and guns.
         Police arrested two men, aged 24 and 27, on suspicion of spreading slander in connection to the “wanted” signs that were posted around Kreuzberg in December of last year following the violence at the G20 summit in Hamburg. The posters in question depict several members of the Hamburg police and local politicians, who are accused in the renegade poster of forming “a terrorist group for the purpose of attempted manslaughter, serious injury, mistreatment and kidnapping.”
          Politicians depicted in the poster include the Federal Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz; Senator Andy Grote; and Hamburg’s Chief of Police Hartmut Dudde. According to activists, these individuals were responsible for motivating police aggression during the Hamburg G20 protests last July, where for several nights left-wing groups demonstrated against the summit.
           Criticism of police aggression during G20 was widespread, with several journalists reporting a disproportionate use of force to put down demonstrators. According to a report by Constanze Nauhaus in Der Tagesspiegel, “the police deployed such a massive force to surround the demo’s starting point at Hamburg’s Fischmarkt square that it was almost impossible to count the number of water cannon and reinforcement units stationed in the surrounding streets.”

This is the offending poster:

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Pentagon's Worry, A Population Too Unfit To Fight!!

       Received this info from a comrade, thanks Bob. I felt I had to post it in full, as I believed I would be doing the American people an injustice if I didn't try to help to expose how the people are exploited, abused and suffer under the yoke of the world's largest economy and strongest military power. Like Professor Hynes says, it is ironic that the Pentagon is the one establishment apparatus that raises the alarm on this situation, albeit, for all that wrong reasons. It is cold comfort to realise that capitalism will eventually produce a population that is so unsuited to fight its imperialist  battles. 

      Of course America is not unique in this dispossing of the people, it is the inevitable pattern of all capitalist/corporate imperialist nations, it just a matter of pace, some slowly, some more rapidly. In its blind greed driven quest for profit, it is a case of the capitalist system killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

H. Patricia Hynes: Youth & the Pentagon       To my astonishment, I began receiving daily news updates from the Pentagon, innocuously named the Early Bird Brief, about a month ago. One particularly perverse news brief warrants mention: the number of out-of shape and unfit youth is an imminent national security crisis, (not because they matter for themselves), but because they are “too fat tofight,” as one writer put it.
         According to a report commissioned by the Pentagon, 7 of 10, or more than 24 million young Americans between the ages of are 17 and 24, are not qualified or eligible to join the military because of inadequate education, overweight, poor health and criminal records. (1)
       Let’s dig more deeply into this, particularly in the light of the Pentagon’s overfed budget while education, health and social services budgets are starved of funding, and in the face of evidence that our government cares more about weapons and wars than the health and wellbeing of our children and youth.
Education
       The 2015 high school graduation rate, which ranged from 66% – 94% in the 50 states and District of Columbia, ranks near the bottom when compared with other industrial countries. A recent international study found that American students with a high school diploma had math skills equivalent to those of high school dropouts in other comparable countries. They fell significantly below international students in literacy skills and scored last in technology skills. (2)
Physical Activity and Overweight
       Nationally, almost 1 in 3 youths between ages 10 and 17 are overweight or obese. Recent national surveys find that high school students are spending more recreational time on computers, watching less television, and getting little physical activity. (3) Less than 8% of youth between 16 and 19 meet national guidelines for 60 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity. (4)
Nutrition
    Unhealthy foods are heavily marketed to children, with 91 percent of American children having poor diets according to national reports on child obesity. One in 5 U.S. children (more than 15 million) live in poverty and “food-insecure” households — having limited access to adequate food and nutrition due to cost and local availability. Low-income children generally live in low-income neighborhoods; and they are much more likely to be overweight or obese with limited access to sidewalks, parks, recreation centers and quality food stores. (5)

The trends in inequality are criminal: 

      While the stock market nearly doubled between 2008 and 2014, the number of American children living below the federal poverty level increased by 18%. (6)
Health
    One in 8 U.S. children and teens had a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in 2011, an increase of 43 percent since 2003. This condition can cause learning setbacks, behavioral difficulties and result in excessive medication of children. (7) The percentage of U.S. children with asthma doubled in the 1980s and 1990s and has increased steadily since then. The reason for the increase is poorly understood, but many possible factors include exposure to secondhand smoke, obesity, poor housing (mold, mildew, infestation), air pollution and children’s immune systems failing to develop properly. The prevalence of asthma among 15 to 19 years olds is about 10%. While there has been increased slowing, asthma rates are highest among African American, Puerto Ricans and poor families. (8) Asthma is the primary reason that children miss school – and thus, a real setback in learning. The Pentagon’s chief concern: asthmatic youthare “too sick to serve.”
Crime
      The Mapping Police Violence project has correlated the impact of police in schools with the criminalization of youth. Over the past two decades, 10,000 police have been stationed in schools. In that same period, there has been no impact on violence in schools. Yet, one million students have been arrested, with black students much more likely to be arrested than white students, for behavior that prior to police presence warranted detention or suspension. (9) So what’s the remedy, according to the Pentagon, for their shortage of recruits? Improve education, nutrition and physical exercise; reduce youth crime and drug use. But doesn’t this border on insanity to have the military, among all the federal agencies, sound the alarm of this multiple youth crisis – in education, health, nutrition, fitness and crime – when their mission is to arm youth and send them to war from which many will return with brain injuries and traumatized (PTSD).
Further, where will the funding for improved education, nutrition, physical exercise and crime reduction come from, given our federal budget loots education, environment, health and housing while expanding military spending? The recent Congressional budget deal allots 54% of the discretionary budget to the military and 5% each to education, housing and health. Trump’s 2019 budget request lards the defense budget even more while reducing education by 14%, health by 26%, housing and community programs by 35%, and energy and environment by 36% as compared to the 2017 budget. (10) Some might call this psychotic, or more politely, cognitive dissonance.
Meanwhile, 

      Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to address childhood obesity and lack of exercise to improve children’s health has not been sustained by the Trump administration. As of December 2017, the administration had not appointed new directors to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Further, Trump’s 2019 budget, a massive entitlement program for the weapons industries and private military contractors, proposes eliminating 14 environmental programs, among them ones that worsen air pollution and indoor environment of low-income homes – triggers for asthma and poor lung function. (11) The epidemic in massacre of children and youth in schools and elsewhere in our society is rooted in our national metastasis of guns. Since 1963, three times more children and teens have been killed by guns in this country than U.S. soldiers died in wars abroad. (12) Even with the most recent school shooting, Congress would not pass a gun control law; and the president reflexively called for arming teachers and then backed down from gun reform after meeting with the NRA. The youth of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who confronted U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on lack of national gun control, held press conferences and achieved limited gun control legislation in Florida; the high school students from Maryland and Virginia who staged a demonstration and die-in in front of the White House and the U.S. Capitol; and the students across the country who will march in protest on March 24 – are the wise ones. Soon, as they have said, they will vote; and then they will run for office. And they, hopefully, will extract the rotten roots of this country awash in war, weapons, gun violence and a hornets’ nest of gun and weapons lobbyists.

Pat Hynes, a retired professor of environmental health from Boston University, directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, http://traprock.org.

 

 

1. https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-looming-national-security-crisis-young-americans-unable-serve-the-military

2. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/03/10/469831485/americas-high-school-graduates-look-like-other-countries-high-school-dropouts.

3. https://stateofobesity.org/childhood/

4.http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wltr/files/201801which_u.s._states_pose_the_greatest_threats_to_military_readiness_and_pu.._.pdf

5. https://stateofobesity.org/childhood-obesity-trends/

6.https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/29/six-big-losers-our-booming-economy

7. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151208150630.htm

8. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/asthma
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/28/460845335/childhood-asthma-rates-level-off-but-racial-disparities-remain

9.http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43732-killing-children-in-the-age-of-disposability-the-parkland-shooting-was-about-more-than-gun-violence

10.https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2018/trumps-fy2019-budget-request-has-massive-cuts-nearly-everything-military/

11.https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Fourteen+Environmental+Programs+Eliminated+in+Trump%27s+Budget+Proposal&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

12.http://www.childrensdefense.org/newsroom/child-watch-columns/child-watch-documents/ViolenceAgainstChildren.html

 

 

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Police Violence, The Bedrock Of A Fascist State.

          The May Day riots in France have a more sinister undertone than just police beating up "hoodies" and intimidating people so as to prevent further protests. The police in France like those in Greece, and probably elsewhere, practically vote en-mass for the far right. This is the foundation of a police state, the bedrock for a fascist establishment, irrespective of how you vote.

       Those who fear the election of Marine Le Pen must understand that the French police are already carrying out an effectively fascist program. Not only do the majority of policemen admit to voting for the extreme right, but the state is already employing them to implement totalitarian conditions. Migrants and refugees can tell a lot about this.
       In this two-week interval between the two rounds of the election, it is becoming clear that the real seizure of power is not taking place through the election, but at its borders, more or less concealed, in the increasing autonomy of the police force. In our last report, we explored the ways that extending the state of emergency has both paved the way for the police state and rendered it invisible. Since the arrival of Le Pen in the second round of the elections, we see the police behaving as if she had already won the election.

      Here in the UK we are having a slowly-slowly approach to arming the police, a policy that will accelerate as protests and unrest increases. After all, do you need armed police to tackle 99% of the crime in this country? They are there to control civil unrest, which the establishment see on the horizon, as their policies start to inflict ever more misery on the population.
     The swing to the far right is not just in those countries "over there", it is here, and across Europe and elsewhere. Prepare to sentence future generations to the harshness and divisiveness of an ever increasing right-wing establishment, or organise to resist this cancer that is eating our society. At the heart of this march of authoritarianism is capitalism, a capitalism that has the state apparatus in its pocket, and uses it to implement its desired policies, of increased profit at the expense of the people. This will not end when their coffers are over flowing, as they are at the moment, their greed is insatiable. They will continue to plunder the planet and decimate its population to the point of total destruction. They need an authoritarian state to protect them as they drag us to that destruction. Only we the ordinary people, can stop this death march, those in power are blinded by their avarice.  

        The evening of the first vote was the occasion of an anarchist-organized call to gather at the Place de la Bastille for a “Night of Barricades.” Dozens of people were wounded by police that evening, humiliated, undressed in the street. Journalists were beaten up with their own cameras.
      Two days later, statutory refugees (who are officially supposed to benefit from “state protection”) were expelled from their homes and thrown into the streets by police, for no reason, out of pure racism. The next day, a friend’s squat was attacked by the police. Our comrades were tackled to the ground with a Flash-ball on the temple. One of our friends was subjected to sexual assault in the car that took her to the police station. Coincidence or not, a few days prior, that squat had hosted a projection of videos we have made in Paris over the past few months documenting police violence against migrants.
       All this is further evidence, should more evidence be necessary, that fighting against the extreme right means fighting against the State. It is something we must make a daily practice.

        The police violence was some of the worst seen in Paris recently. and is a policy that is being refined to intimidate people from any form of protest. After all all those armed to the teeth police didn't just materialise out of nowhere, they are recruited, armed and trained in establishments all over the country and are paid for by the public. They same is going on here.

        In response, some people throw stones. Fireworks too. Some Molotov cocktails. The police pushed us relentlessly towards the Place de la Bastille, shooting at us without pause. Once there, they formed a trap at the foot of the steps of the Opera Bastille with perhaps two hundred people inside it. For those people, it turned into a scene of tragedy worthy of The Battleship Potemkin. The police pushed people on the steps while soaking them in tear gas. We could see nothing, there was no place to escape, people crashed against the steps, jostling and falling on top of each other like in the Odessa Steps Sequence.
         Fortunately, we were not in this group. The police pushed us onto Avenue Daumesnil, then Boulevard Diderot.
Picture yourself in this scene. Tear gas grenades are exploding incessantly. Sometimes you think you can escape by a street, so you run there—in any case, you have no choice, because you need to breathe—but the police are waiting for you on every street. As soon as you pass the street corner, they kettle you in, shooting concussion grenades into the middle of the crowd, knowing perfectly well that there is no space to avoid them.

Read the full article HERE:

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The Most Effective Cops Don't Wear Uniforms.

         The most effective cop doesn’t wear a uniform, the most effective cop is in your head. Today the population, to a great extent, has been domesticated, where individuals have animals to do their bidding, so the state has citizens to do its bidding. We have been domesticated from birth by the education system, the pattern is planted, obey the teacher, obey the authority, abide by the rules and you will go through the system unmolested, abide by the law and you be fine. The mould has been set and is firm and strong, go to school, carry that obedience through to your work place, respect authority, don’t rock the boat, just conform. Of course when the few don’t, and those who haven’t succumbed to the conditioning, start to think for themselves, then that’s when the more brutal conditioning comes in, the appearance of the uniform, the baton, the tear gas, the controlled cages, etc.. This whole system of conditioned domestication relies on fear, there has to be that shadow hanging over you, there has to be that dark place waiting for you if you disobey, that’s the duty of the systems minders, the cops, the judicial system and its isolated cages. It is extremely difficult to act as a freethinking individual when you are conditioned from birth, when your value structure has a foundation of respect for authority. Respect should never be an obligation, it should be something that is earned by verifiable evidence. There is no other purpose for the police than to protect the wealth and power of those in authority, to keep the system running as it is, unequal, unjust, and exploitative. Yes there may be spin-off, they may catch a rapist, or a paedophile, but that is incidental to their real purpose. In all probability the catching of a rapists will be done with less violence that breaking up a peaceful protest about an injustice in society.
       If we want to be a society of freethinking individuals, we have to get rid of the cops in our heads, expel them, we have to see the real purpose of the uniformed cops, only then will we able to challenge the injustices of this greed driven system of corruption, only then will we be able to create that better world for all, only then can we be our own person.

 

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Workers Know Your History, Simon Chapman.

          We must always remember our own, or the other side will airbrush them out of history, and we are the poorer.

       An obituary by Johnny Void taken from Freedom.

Simon Chapman, A Very Distinguished Fucking Anarchist

         Over the last couple of days the strangest thought has plagued me.  Two simple ugly words have kept emerging, only for me to lock them out and ridicule them as bizarre.  Simon’s dead.  Just to write it down feels like treachery.  Part of me looks forward to seeing him, to sharing a drink and dispelling this nonsense.  He’d say something wry, and witty and that would be that.  He was good like that.  Was.  Sometimes the shittiest word to ever have to use about a friend.

As part of a (temporary, and self-imposed) exile from all politics, I didn’t know his health had deteriorated so much.  We weren’t the kind of friends who lived out of each other’s pockets.  There are many who were closer to him than me and I wish them all my love.  But for almost 15 years he was always there.  At crap protests and good ones, festivals and parties, we’d find each other and we’d usually end up drinking together.  We shared a love of getting proper twatted and so we did that a lot.

        The London anarchist movement would have looked very different without Simon Chapman.  From the Movement Against The Monarchy to the Wombles, to May Day, several squatted social centres and finally Class War, Simon was an active presence both on the streets and behind the scenes.  Countless flyers were produced by him over the years. He helped organise dozens of gigs, parties, campaigns and demonstrations and I was lucky enough to work with him on several of them. Up until very recently he was still updating the Class War website.

          It was the streets where his heart lay though and he was no passive peaceful protester.  He got nicked all the time when he was younger.  He fucking hated capitalism, was never afraid to get his hands dirty and despised the police.  And he had good reason.

In 2003 Simon was arrested during a vicious police tear gas attack at a particularly fruity anti-capitalist protest in Thessaloniki, Greece.  It was claimed he was carrying petrol bombs in his rucksack and he was held on remand with charges hanging over him that could have seen him spend the next 20 years in prison.  Six other people were arrested and charged in similar circumstances.  All denied the allegations against them.  Photographic evidence soon emerged that showed the rucksack the police claimed Simon was carrying was not the rucksack he was arrested with.  It was a transparent fit up.

          The treatment of those arrested was obscene.  All were beaten savagely following their arrest. For the first few days of his incarceration Simon was left virtually blind after the police smashed his glasses.  He couldn’t see a fucking thing without his glasses.  Despite these abuses the UK’s Labour government did not lift a finger to help.  Neither did any other state. So the prisoners took the only action left available to them and began a hunger strike.

A militant Europe-wide campaign fast emerged demanding that all seven prisoners be released.  Greek embassies were picketed across the continent and in some cases attacked and occupied.  In Barcelona the Metro system was shut down during an international day of action in solidarity with the prisoners.  In the UK a relentless campaign targeted the Greek Embassy and Tourist Board.   Parts of Athen’s University were repeatedly occupied, whilst fierce demonstrations throughout Greece resulted in more arrests.

          In the end Simon didn’t eat for almost seven weeks. All the hunger-strikers were repeatedly hospitalised, such was the strain on their health. In the final days the prisoners stopped accepting fluids.  By now the solidarity campaign was at fever pitch as the risk that someone might die grew ever closer.  Mainstream media across Europe began to take an interest, lured by sensationalism and smelling blood.  Faced with international embarrassment, and concerned about creating seven martyrs who would shine a light on the corrupt Greek police, all the prisoners were released on November 6th 2003 and the charges against them dropped.  Simon came home.

Then, five years later, the bastards came for him again.  After repeated appeals from the Greek state prosecutor the charges against four of the original seven were re-instated.  In 2008 Simon was found guilty of a string of exotic sounding and terrifying charges including Distinguished Riot  and the creation, possession and explosion of bombs.  He was sentenced in his absence to eight and a half years in prison.

           Under the threat of a European Police Warrant, which was likely to see him dragged from his home by our own filth and handed over to the Greek authorities, Simon was forced to return to Thessaloniki in 2010 to appeal the conviction.  In the ensuing trial the police evidence was repeatedly demolished by the defence teams.  The case ended in humiliation for the Prosecutor with all charges  thrown out for all four defendants except for a hastily cobbled together guilty verdict of “minor defiance of authority”.  This misdemeanor was enough to justify the time those accused had spent in prison, although the six month sentence was suspended and Simon once again returned home.

             Simon was much, much more than just one of the Thessaloniki Seven.  But I suspect none who knew him well would deny the shadow these events cast over his life, and the impact they had on his health.  Of course our own state also put the boot in, subjecting him to years of benefit cuts, Atos assessments and at the mercy of London’s fucked private sector rental market.

          Throughout all this Simon stayed strong, never stopping fighting, or laughing and never losing his faith that a better world would one day be possible.  He was kind, and clever and both ruefully cynical and enthusiastically hopeful at the same time.  He was also more than just an anarchist.  As well as raising his fist, he also raised his daughter who he regularly spoke of with loving pride*.  His loss will leave a big hole in many lives.  The last thing he would want is tears, but he will get them.

           For myself, if you find me hassling you to come and find an off-licence with me at some boring, stale protest then sorry, but it’s because Simon isn’t there anymore.  And those are hard words to write, to accept as real.  I will fucking miss you mate.  I’m sorry I didn’t see you whilst you were so sick but glad my last memories of you are happy ones.  At least the bastards will never take you alive again. Rest well Simon, you deserve it.   Love and rage.

Johnny Void x

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Lest We Forget.

             Here in the UK the British state’s level of brutality is relatively low at the moment, however, this is is not a sign of a mellowing, or that of a benign beast. The level of state violence rises and falls in line with the amount of protests against, and resistance to, its control over our lives. This slight trough in UK state violence is in part a sign of our compliance to its power, they see no threat. This can, and has changed dramatically, as soon as the establishment senses a rise in resistance to its power. For those lulled into a false sense that the state is a talking shop for the expression of “democracy” would do well to look back at our history.

1911 Liverpool General Transport Strike: 

          As the rail strike began to spread across the country, a mass demonstration in Liverpool was declared as a show of support. Taking place on August 13 at St Georges Plateau, 100,000 workers came to hear speeches by workers and leaders of the unions, including Tom Mann. The demonstration went without incident until about 4 o'clock, when, completely unprovoked, the crowds of workers suddenly came under attack from the police. Indiscriminantly attacking bystanders, the police succeeded in clearing the steps of St George's Hall in half an hour, despite resistance from strikers who used whatever they could find as weapons. Fighting soon spilled out into nearby streets, causing the police and troops to come under attack as workers pelted them with missiles from rooftops. Becoming known as Bloody Sunday, the fighting resulted in scores of injuries on both sides.
          Fighting across the city continued for several days, coming to a head when a group of workers attacked a prison van carrying some arrested strikers. Two workers were shot dead by troops during the ensuing struggle, one a docker and the other a carter.

Then Glasgow’s own Bloody Friday: 

             On Friday 31 January 1919 upwards of 60,000 demonstrators gathered in George Square Glasgow in support of the 40-hours strike and to hear the Lord Provost's reply to the workers' request for a 40-hour week. Whilst the deputation was in the building the police mounted a vicious and unprovoked attack on the demonstrators, felling unarmed men and women with their batons. The demonstrators, including large numbers of ex-servicemen, retaliated with whatever was available, fists, iron railings and broken bottles, and forced the police to retreat. On hearing the noise from the square the strike leaders, who were meeting with the Lord Provost, rushed outside in an attempt to restore order. One of the leaders, David Kirkwood, was felled to the ground by a police baton, and along with William Gallacher was arrested.
RIOTS AND ARRESTS.            After the initial confrontation between the demonstrators and the police in George Square, further fighting continued in and around the city centre streets for many hours afterwards. The Townhead area of the city and Glasgow Green, where many of the demonstrators had regrouped after the initial police charge, were the scenes of running battles between police and demonstrators. In the immediate aftermath of 'Bloody Friday', as it became known, other leaders of the Clyde Workers' Committee were arrested, including Emanuel Shinwell, Harry Hopkins and George Edbury.
TROOPS.
       The strike and the events of January, 31, 1919, “Bloody Friday” raised the Government’s concerns about industrial militancy and revolutionary political activity in Glasgow. Considerable fears within government of a workers' revolution in Glasgow led to the deployment of troops and tanks in the city. A full battalion of Scottish soldiers stationed at Maryhill barracks in Glasgow at the time were locked down and confined to barracks, for fear they would side with the rioters, an estimated 10,000 English troops, along with Seaforth Highlanders from Aberdeen, who were first vetted to remove those with a Glasgow connection, and tanks were sent to Glasgow in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Friday. Soldiers with fixed bayonets marched with tanks through the streets of the City. There were soldiers patrolling the streets and machine guns on the roofs in George Square. No other Scottish troops were deployed, with the government fearing fellow Scots, soldiers or otherwise, would go over to the workers if a revolutionary situation developed in the area. It was the British state’s largest military mobilisation against its own people and showed they were quite prepared to shed workers’ blood in protecting the establishment.

Then much more recently, the 1984/85 Miners Strike:

     Black and white photographs taken by friends, family and supporters at the 1984 Battle of Orgreave helped subsequently to demolish Police prosecutions for rioting that were levelled against 95 striking mineworkers. But at the time, very few close-up – and potentially incriminating – pictures made it into the news coverage of the mainstream media.
       Most press photographers and television camera crews were penned in behind police lines, and therefore kept largely to the perimeter of the eight-hour confrontation between pickets and mounted police.
       While newspapers and television news bulletins captured the scale of the conflict – and especially the graphic images of police on horseback charging through the pickets – there was nothing like the visual record of hand-to-hand combat that would be available today as a result of the abundance of camera phone pictures and videos that invariably emerges from demonstrations and protests.
        No wonder the iconic photograph taken by John Harris of Lesley Boulton, cowering as a mounted police officer approached her with a raised baton, has become an enduring image of the strike, reproduced repeatedly to illustrate the violent response of the police as the pickets assembled outside the Orgreave coke works on June 18, 1984.

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The Violence Of The State's Minders.

       How can a person who is known to the authorities, and who under their instructions, presents himself to the local police station, end up dead during this visit and classified and buried as an unknown person.This is just another case of callous police brutality. The minders of state power know that the establishment will protect them, as they do their bosses dirty work. From America to Greece, from UK to France, police violence is well documented, but never prosecuted. However we should never forget that brutality, nor where they stand in relation to the ordinary people.

       This horrifying case of alleged defenestration is not the first in police history, and, sadly it will not be the last. 

(defenestration: While the act of defenestration connotes the forcible or peremptory removal of an adversary, and the term is sometimes used in just that sense,^[6] it also suggests breaking the windows in the process (de- also means removal). Although defenestrations can be fatal depending on the height of the window through which a person is thrown or throws oneself or due to lacerations from broken glass, the act of defenestration need not carry the intent of, or result in, death.) Wikipedia.

This from Contra Info:

      Open letter from the prisoners of Greek prisons to the jointly responsible ministers of public order and justice:
      On the 3rd of August 2016, the recently released—and former co-prisoner of ours—Pëllumb Marnikollaj goes to Patisia Police Station [Athens] to present himself before the relative authorities in fulfilment of the conditional terms of his release. Under up-until-now unexplained circumstances, he is transferred to Red Cross Hospital and, eventually, to the morgue. Shortly before being buried as of unknown identity—and despite the fact that his identity was known to the authorities—his relatives collect his corpse and allude to torture and defenestration.
       We are not the ones in charge of judging on what really happened. However, the number of reasons, which we have, not to believe the version of the Greek Police equals to the thousands of prisoners found in Greek prisons. It’s not merely the clumsiness in the way police attempted to cover the incident up; neither the fact that their explanations go against any common sense. (Come on, misters of the Greek Police. Who would believe that not only a prisoner, but even a citizen that visits a station to have his ID card issued would ever be allowed to roam around police offices, opening and closing windows undisturbed?)
     We have every reason to believe the family’s version of the needless death of our co-prisoner because every single one of us has endured the atrocities that take place inside the interrogation offices of police stations. We might not have had a first-hand defenestration experience; however, plenty of us have been under its threat as form of a not at all uncommon method of interrogation. We have, also, all been surprised by the fact that the windows of police stations are adorned with “flower boxes”.
      That we draw up this letter and make it public does not at all mean that we have the slightest hope for an investigation or that those responsible will eventually be held accountable. It’s already straightforward that we, the poor, the unemployed, the immigrants, all those who fill up your prisons are obliged to pay the price of our deeds. In contrast, those who brought us here by means of sweeps, batons and automatic guns will always enjoy the immunity that you open-handedly offer them, since double standards apply when it comes to decisions upon what is regarded as crime and what is not.
      Finally, we make it clear to all that we, as prisoners of the Greek prisons, do not intend to take sides in the game that the Greek and Albanian embassies play. We only want a reply. Even if we take the provocatively untrue version of the police seriously, Messrs. Ministers, is it the capacity of former prisoner or that of immigrant that allows a human being’s death to be dealt with such worthlessness that not even objects deserve?

PS: As an action of protest, we will be delaying our night return to our cells by one hour for three days.

Prisoners of Greek prisons

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

We Have To Destroy To Build A New.

 

      New York, what is going on, a picture that you will not get on our babbling book of bullshit, the mainstream media. Well worth the watching through its 31 minutes. No Borders, Sur Negro, First Chapter, New York.

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

An Eye For An Eye!!!!

         Not a lot in that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, about what is happening in France. The protests continue, the police's violent repression continues, and the bullshit bunch look for some royal happening or anti-Semitism in the Labour party, to spew across your TV screens or to fill their sheets of toilet paper. However what is happening in France is real anger on the streets, by real people, and the violence against them is real and brutal, spearheaded by a so called socialist President. Despite the state repression, Nuit Debout is still alive and thriving. Can it grow, can it spread?

This from Contra Info:

 Rennes, France: A demonstrator loses an eye

         On Thursday [April 28th] a student of our university lost an eye, simply for having demonstrated. Whilst retreating with all the demonstrators following a CRS charge [riot cops], he was taken freely as a target and hit in the face by a flashball shot. Given that this government has nothing but police violence to bring to the youth as a response, will it take a death for it to cease?

        It could of been any one of us. So no, we won’t forget, we won’t forgive, and most of all we won’t give in.
Neither fear nor violence will stop us and Sunday we’ll return to the streets.

We’re all thinking of you Jean-François! Strength.

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

Capitalism Has No Human Side.

        During this recent "refugee crisis", in Europe, (it should really be named a "Western imperialist war crisis"), Germany is seen as the good mother hen, welcoming more refugees than other countries, it would have us believe it is showing the human face of the capitalist system. However, Germany needs lots of young workers, as it is facing a fast shrinking working age population. According to recent statistics, Berlin estimates its working age population will shrink by 6 million people by 2030 as the number of deaths outstrips births, making it hard to keep the economy growing.

 Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel speaking recently in the German parliament:

"If we manage to quickly train those that come to us and to get them into work, then we will solve one of our biggest problems for the economic future of our country: the skills shortage,"

        So, not so much humanitarian as economics of the corporate world. Germany is set to spend $10 billion on the refugee situation in Germany, but more or less refuses to spend on helping the "refugee crisis" that is swamping Greece. No, the refugees have to make the miserable and dangerous journey across Europe on their own, with cases of young and old dying in the process. Not so much the face of humanity in that situation.
      Another incident that shows the true face of the German state, is how it treats those of its own citizenship that choose to live their lives different from the desired government state of subservience, those who choose not to be hypnotised by consumerism.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

      Following an attack of a police officer nearby, a 500-strong anti-riot team backed up by special forces, dogs and helicopters stormed into the so-called “occupied house” at 94, Rigaer Strasse (or “R94”) on Wednesday night. Police raided the two houses next door the following day and kept up a heavy stop-and-search presence till now.
      Taking place at one of Berlin’s best-known anarchist project, the raid has sent shockwaves through the city, sparking a heated debate on whether it was a case of necessary public safety or unlawful police overreach. For the police and their defenders, the raid was an inevitable consequence of continuing disorder and antagonism coming from the squat. For their critics, the assault on the officer was an excuse used by the police to launch an only quasi-lawful attack on people who they disliked.
       The incident nonetheless has more resonance than as a local street battle alone. While they’ve been in retreat for years, Berlin’s squats were long a high-profile part of the city’s fabric, forming a cornerstone of the city’s alternative mythos. The raid on Rigaer 94 suggests that the city’s authorities are no longer prepared to to let their pigs eat stones in this area, as it happened many times.
        Berlin police say that the four assailants that attacked their colleague were seen escaping into Rigaer 94. When backup officers arrived and entered the building, they found the courtyard and basement massed with potential weapons including metal rods, fire extinguishers, gas cylinders, and a shopping cart filled with cobblestones—a horde they immediately shared via photographs on Twitter. In the interests of public safety, the police returned in greater numbers five hours later, clearing the building and making arrests of supporters outside.

Read the full article HERE:

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

The Rent Strike To Bloody Friday, Part Of The Same Struggle.

 

     Friday, January, 1919, a date that we should never forget, that was the day that brought about the stationing of armed troops on Glasgow's streets, they were also stationed at entrances to the docks around the city. As is usual in these situations, it was the workers that had come up with the rational decision, To help alleviate the unemployment situation after WWI, the idea was to cut the working hours and try to soak up the unemployed. A 40 hour week was the suggestion, but the state and the employers would have none of that. By 30, January, 1919, 40,000 workers in the engineering and shipbuilding industries in Clydeside were out on strike, plus approximately 36,000 miners from the coalfields in Stirlingshire and Lanarkshire, who were also on strike. 

        On the Friday, January, 31, a demonstration, of an estimated 60,000 citizens, in support of the shorter working week took place on George Square. Unexpectedly and unannounced, the police attacked the demonstrators, an action that lead to all hell breaking out.

THE DEMONSTRATION, BLOODY FRIDAY.
On Friday 31 January 1919 upwards of 60,000 demonstrators gathered in George Square Glasgow in support of the 40-hours strike and to hear the Lord Provost's reply to the workers' request for a 40-hour week. Whilst the deputation was in the building the police mounted a vicious and unprovoked attack on the demonstrators, felling unarmed men and women with their batons. The demonstrators, including large numbers of ex-servicemen, retaliated with whatever was available, fists, iron railings and broken bottles, and forced the police to retreat. On hearing the noise from the square the strike leaders, who were meeting with the Lord Provost, rushed outside in an attempt to restore order. One of the leaders, David Kirkwood, was felled to the ground by a police baton, and along with William Gallacher was arrested.

       The situation was volatile, and the authorities were getting very nervous indeed. Our lorda and masters in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, feared what the state always fears, that the people were taking control of their own lives. Something had to be done, and the only answer the state ever has, is violent repression, and has no qualms about turning the military on its own people.

RIOTS AND ARRESTS.

After the initial confrontation between the demonstrators and the police in George Square, further fighting continued in and around the city centre streets for many hours afterwards. The Townhead area of the city and Glasgow Green, where many of the demonstrators had regrouped after the initial police charge, were the scenes of running battles between police and demonstrators. In the immediate aftermath of 'Bloody Friday', as it became known, other leaders of the Clyde Workers' Committee were arrested, including Emanuel Shinwell, Harry Hopkins and George Edbury.

TROOPS.

The strike and the events of January 31 1919 “Bloody Friday” raised the Government’s concerns about industrial militancy and revolutionary political activity in Glasgow. Considerable fears within government of a workers' revolution in Glasgow led to the deployment of troops and tanks in the city. A full battalion of Scottish soldiers stationed at Maryhill barracks in Glasgow at the time were locked down and confined to barracks, for fear they would side with the rioters, an estimated 10,000 English troops, along with Seaforth Highlanders from Aberdeen, who were first vetted to remove those with a Glasgow connection, and tanks were sent to Glasgow in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Friday. Soldiers with fixed bayonets marched with tanks through the streets of the City. There were soldiers patrolling the streets and machine guns on the roofs in George Square. No other Scottish troops were deployed, with the government fearing fellow Scots, soldiers or otherwise, would go over to the workers if a revolutionary situation developed in the area. It was the British state’s largest military mobilisation against its own people and showed they were quite prepared to shed workers’ blood in protecting the establishment.

        Of course "Bloody Friday" should not be seen in isolation, it didn't just spring up from nowhere, it was just one flashpoint along a long road of struggle by the ordinary people for a better life.

        Like all the events in political struggle it is difficult to trace the thread back to what brought it to this stage, Bloody Friday 1919 is no different. This was not just an attack on a large demonstration in Glasgow, it was the culmination of a series of radical events in Glasgow and the Clydeside area where the state showed its brutality. Perhaps we could even take it back to the 18th century and the radicals like Thomas Muir and others. However we can certainly take it back to the rent strikes of the first world war, the forming of the Labour Withholding Committee, (LWC) The Clyde Workers Committee (CWC) and the political climate of that period. 

A warehouse in the east end of Glasgow 1919.

    All of these events are lesson for us to learn from, solidarity, organisation, co-operation across our communities and our workplaces. Something we have to get to grips with in this more fragment type of society that we find ourselves living under. 

      Something else we should never forget, this wasn't the first time that the British establishment had brought out the military to break a strike. During the 1911 dockers strike, the military shot dead two strikers on the streets on the street in Liverpool.

Liverpool during the 1911 strike.

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

The Strangling Grip Of The State.

 

        Across the globe, states are moving towards the right, albeit at different paces, but the direction doesn't alter. The bogey man is always held up as the need for tighter legislation. That bogey man could be, war on drugs, a clamp down on the violent criminal element, the big global bogey man at the moment, is the war on terrorism. This particular big bogey man has fringe aspects such as, undeserving refugees endangering our wonderful way of life, and that other one, "radicalising", these engender an atmosphere of fear and anger, which helps keep the populace in quiet acquiescence of the state's ever tightening grip, a grip that if unchallenged, will eventually strangle any semblance of civil rights we may still have.

 Spain:

      The so-called Ley Mordaza, or Gag Law, imposes heavy fines for “administrative infractions” and maintains a registry of the citizens who commit those infractions.
      Though the expansive legislation threatens a variety of uses of public space and legalises prohibited border control practices such as summary expulsions, it is its aggressive attack on the right of citizens to protest that has attracted the most attention from media and human rights organisations.
    The legislation especially targets the types of protest and disobedience favoured by the indignados movement, such as unauthorised protests, blocking evictions or surrounding high institutions of the state.
     It also affects trade union protest by essentially prohibiting picketing and any disruption of services. Maria José Saura of the leading CCOO trade union told Equal Times that “the Gag Law turns conflicts over labour into an issue of public order. With no room for unauthorised actions, what we’re left with is protest as a farce.”
       The Gag Law also works in tandem with a new reform of Spain’s penal code, which classifies transgressive actions in public space as administrative sanctions, thus leaving them to the discretion of police officers through the application of fines on the spot.

Mexico and Costa Rica:

        President Peña Nieto of Mexico brags about his neoliberal policies to privatize public resources, cut social services, and force anti-union education “reforms.” His government has also been exposed for its ties to drug cartels and the killing and jailing of political activists. There’s a connection. Increasingly, Peña Nieto’s economic plans hinge on crushing all opposition — by effectively making protest illegal.
          To the south, Costa Rica does the same. Both countries are part of an international campaign to repress dissidents. They are backed by the USA, which launches offensives to hound its own movement leaders.
        Among the most militant opponents of this strategy is Heriberto Magariño Lopez, a leader of the teachers union in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. He is also a national leader of the Partido Obrero Socialista (POS), which has been active in defending and uniting all those fighting the regime’s attacks.

France:

      In the wake of the deadly attacks in Paris earlier this month, France declared a state of emergency and implemented sweeping anti-terrorism measures.
      When lawmakers extended that state of emergency (and its security provisions) for three months, some eyebrows arched over the potential cost to French civil liberties. In an interview with NPR, Jean-Pierre Dubois, the president of France’s Human Rights League, raised the issue of how French authorities could overreach into matters beyond terrorism.

But when you come to the articles of the bill, it’s not at all terrorism. It’s everything about security and public order. That means the exceptional extension of the police powers and the exceptional restraints of civil liberties is not at all only for the purposes of fighting terrorism but for anything during three months. And we don’t understand that because it’s not really very fair to tell people it’s about terrorism and to extend so much the exceptional law field in a way.

        On Sunday, demonstrators gathering in Paris to protest the global climate conference learned firsthand about France’s new security measures when they encountered riot police with pepper spray and stun grenades. According to reports, the vast majority of the roughly 200 people arrested after clashing with security forces were held in detention.

Italy:

      Torture is not currently a crime under Italian law. The legal shortfall is blamed for the acquittal of the most serious charges against baton-wielding policemen involved in the night time raid on the Armando Diaz school in Genoa.
      In 2012, 25 officers were found guilty of falsifying evidence concerning the raid, in which some 200 masked anti-riot police swooped down on sleeping activists, breaking bones, chasing those trying to flee and beating many senseless.
       The police planted two Molotov cocktails in the building to justify the raid and repeatedly lied about what happened.
       The more serious charges of grievous bodily harm and libel fell by the wayside because the statute of limitations expired, and none of the convicted served time behind bars.

 And elsewhere:

       In a number of recent front lines of popular protest, state capacities have been reconfigured to meet the challenge. In some instances, as in Greece, this has meant periods of emergency government. In Chicago, in Quebec and now in Spain, it has meant the expansion of anti-protest laws. The Spanish government’s punitive anti-protest draft laws are, critics say, an attack on democracy.
       Another example emerged in 2011, when Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, requested that the city council pass “temporary” anti-protest measures in response to the planned protests around the Nato and G8 summits. By early 2012, the legislation had been made permanent. Later that same year, tumultuous uprising of students against increased tuition fees led to emergency legislation named Bill 78. With the support of the state’s employers, it imposed severe restrictions on the ability to protest. The “public safety” legislation proposed in Spain has an essentially similar basis. Demonstrating near parliament without permission will result in steep fines, while participation in “violent” protests can result in a minimum two-year jail sentence. In each case, the logic is to put a chill on protest. It is not just that it is a protest deterrent; it has a domesticating effect on such protests as do occur. To understand why this is happening, it is necessary to grasp the relationship between neoliberal austerity and popular democracy.

 

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