Rebellion

             We are in the midst of a corporate greed crisis where live becomes increasingly difficult for most of us, having to make choices of what meals to cut and what bills to pay, this adds to daily stress and causes increase in health problems. Meanwhile, the state's response is to increase the powers of its minders, the police, and push through ever more draconian legislation restricting our rights. As life becomes more difficult the right to protest is becoming a criminal offence, a deliberate policy from the state to openly say, submit or face punishment. Under such burdening conditions the only road that seems open to us is to rebel, as the state has shut down all other means of meaningful objection to this nightmare of poverty and repression.
            The recent events in Cardiff should not come as a surprise to those living under these state imposed draconian conditions. The anger that has been simmering under the surface for years is about to explode, as the people stand up and say, enough is enough. It is time to stand up and state, the streets are ours and we will not surrender them without a bloody fight. 

The following from Act For Freedom Now.

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Fascism.

  

             I'm puzzled at the quiet streets here in the UK, lots of chatter about a bunch of of arrogant wealthy parasites having a party and spouting they don't know anything about it but insisting no rules were broken. When quietly and surreptitiously our cabal of those who believe they were born to rule, are moving us steadfastly into an authoritarian state. The legislation being passed to prevent any form of protest, with extra powers to the police that will massively restrict your right to protests, form groups, lock arms or make a noise. inconveniencing corporate business, annoying anybody by making a noise can now land you with a fine or imprisonment. These laws will be set in stone as far as the establishment is concerned. Your freedom of movement and freedom to protest at what you see as injustice could see you criminalised, all the true hallmarks of fascism, yet our streets are quiet. We are quietly walking into a prison cell and applying our own shackles and handcuffs. This is serious, once on the statute book, it is there for keeps, they have got you to accept the death of protesting, so whatever they throw at you, to protest could end any shred of freedom you had as an individual. Remember, fascism doesn't come with jackboots and street thugs, it comes with wealthy individuals in chauffeur driven limousines. 

Thanks Loam for the following link to this video:

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Fascism.

         Democracy is a fragile thing, slowly and silently it disappears if we don't exercise the freedoms it offers. That old statement about our world, "use it or lose it" applies to democracy as it does to other things in our life. Today we quietly see democracy being whittled down by an authoritarian cabal who hold sway over our lives, and our anger is just a ripple. The government's new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill is simply an over dose of anaesthetic to our freedoms and any semblance of democracy we might have had, yet still no real anger from the populace. By ignoring the vile authoritarian aspects of this bill we are quietly putting the states handcuffs on ourselves, putting their shackles on our own ankles. Taking these appendages off will be far more difficult than putting them on.

Image courtesy of The Canary.

The following article was written by George Monbiot:

        December 03, 202: Information Clearing House -- "The Guardian" - This is proper police state stuff. The last-minute amendments crowbarred by the government into the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill are a blatant attempt to stifle protest, of the kind you might expect in Russia or Egypt. Priti Patel, the home secretary, shoved 18 extra pages into the bill after it had passed through the Commons, and after the second reading in the House of Lords. It looks like a deliberate ploy to avoid effective parliamentary scrutiny. Yet in most of the media there’s a resounding silence.
       Among the new amendments are measures that would ban protesters from attaching themselves to another person, to an object, or to land. Not only would they make locking on – a crucial tool of protest the world over – illegal, but they are so loosely drafted that they could apply to anyone holding on to anything, on pain of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment.
       It would also become a criminal offence to obstruct in any way major transport works from being carried out, again with a maximum sentence of 51 weeks. This looks like an attempt to end meaningful protest against road-building and airport expansion. Other amendments would greatly expand police stop and search powers. The police would be entitled to stop and search people or vehicles if they suspect they might be carrying any article that could be used in the newly prohibited protests, presumably including placards, flyers and banners. Other new powers would grant police the right to stop and search people without suspicion, if they believe that protest will occur “in that area”. Anyone who resists being searched could be imprisoned for – you guessed it – up to 51 weeks.
      Existing stop and search powers are used disproportionately against Black and Brown people, who are six times as likely to be stopped as white people. The new powers would create an even greater disincentive for people of colour to protest. Then the media can continue to berate protest movements for being overwhelmingly white and unrepresentative.
      Perhaps most outrageously, the amendments contain new powers to ban named people from protesting. The grounds are extraordinary, in a nation that claims to be democratic. We can be banned if we have previously committed “protest-related offences”. Thanks to the draconian measures in the rest of the bill – many of which pre-date these amendments – it will now be difficult to attend a protest without committing an offence. Or we can be banned if we have attended or “contributed to” a protest that was “likely to result in serious disruption”. Serious disruption, as the bill stands, could mean almost anything, including being noisy. If you post something on social media that encourages people to turn up, you could find yourself on the list. Anyone subject to one of these orders, like a paroled prisoner, might be required to present themselves to the authorities at “particular times on particular days”. You can also be banned from associating with particular people or “using the internet to facilitate or encourage” a “protest-related offence”.
       These are dictators’ powers. The country should be in uproar over them, but we hear barely a squeak. The Kill the Bill protesters have tried valiantly to draw our attention to this tyrant’s gambit, and have been demonised for their pains. Otherwise, you would barely know it was happening.
       Protest is an essential corrective to the mistakes of government. Had it not been for the tactics Patel now seeks to ban, the pointless and destructive road-building programme the government began in the early 1990s would have continued: eventually John Major’s government conceded it was a mistake, and dropped it. Now governments are making the greatest mistake in human history – driving us towards systemic environmental collapse – and Boris Johnson’s administration is seeking to ensure that there is nothing we can do to stop it.
       The government knows the new powers are illegitimate, otherwise it would not have tried to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. These brutal amendments sit alongside Johnson’s other attacks on democracy, such as the proposed requirement for voter ID, which could deter 2 million potential electors, most of whom are poor and marginalised; the planned curtailment of the Electoral Commission; the assault on citizens’ rights to mount legal challenges to government policy; and the proposed “civil orders” that could see journalists treated as spies and banned from meeting certain people and visiting certain places.
       So where is everyone? Why isn’t this all over the front pages? Why aren’t we out on the streets in our millions, protesting while we still can? We use our freedoms or we lose them. And we are very close to losing them.

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Our Right.

 

         At the moment Glasgow is in lockdown, nothing to do with covid19, we are in a city under siege simply because the powerful and privileged have descended on our fair city to waffle their way through this period with their art of illusion weaving, and we all know that the powerful and privileged are so loved, they need a wall of armour wrapped around them. This military style police wall snaking its way throughout our city, has another purpose, to stifle and abort protests and intimidate protestors, they want to give the impression that we are all happy with this cop-out-26 carnival of illusions. However, all they are doing is increasing the ever growing public view of the police, that they can't be trusted, to one of a complete sense of loathing. Our right to protest is not a privilege, it is a basic human right, to openly protest at what you see as wrong, unjust, or manufactured lies, at policies and actions that you believe will damage your life or that of others in some way. To stifle this is raising the banner of fascism and confirming, we don't live in a democracy.

COPS & the Right to Protest 

 

Short Reports from NetPol & Scalp
        When the ‘Rail to the COP’ train arrived in Glasgow yesterday evening with young activists from all over Europe, some campaigners holding a ‘Welcome to Scotland’ were reportedly threatened with arrest.
         On the Pilgrims March police threatened all its stewards as "organisers" of an unauthorised procession. One was then picked, had their details taken and told they would be considered for possible prosecution.
        We have heard reports of police increasingly stopping & searching people in Glasgow. Officers are refusing to give a written receipt, even though everyone has a right to receive one.
        Abuse of power should come as no surprise, but now is a good time to memorise the info on our bust card around stop & search.

Police don't keep us safe, we keep us safe.

         One example yesterday involved Metropolitan Police officers, who often pull the excuse that they have "run out of forms" back in London – but how does this meet Police Scotland’s “commitment to upholding human rights”?
        Police are all over Glasgow filming campaigners and Forward Intelligence Team officers (deployed to identify and gather information on activists) have told individuals that “no protesters are allowed” in a number of pubs when there is no protest taking place. 

 

 

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UK Fascism.

 

       The state, any state moves inexorably towards fascism, it has no alternative as it seeks total control over its citizens. In the UK the state took a massive step towards fascism when on March 9th 2021 it introduced the The Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill. This single bill hands more power to the police, groups a raft of activities as crimes and introduces harsher sentencing. It is a vice clamp on our right to protest. Those who have the courage to stand up and oppose this curtailing of our democratic rights are being hit hard by the loaded judicial system that will defend and enact this step to fascism.
       In Bristol one such individual is facing a long prison sentence for openly protesting the injustice encapsulated in this legislation. He deserves and needs your support.

       Ryan Roberts’ trial for riot and arson is on the 25-27th October. If convicted he is facing a long sentence. He will be the first defendant to be brought to trial to have plead not guilty for charges relating to the 21st March Kill the Bill demonstration.
       Ryan is calling for solidarity and support
       We will hold a demonstration on October 25th at 8.30am outside Bristol Crown Court. We’d also like people to sit in court from the 25th-27th, to show that Ryan has support!
        On the final day of the trial we will hold a demo at 5pm outside the Crown Court.
        if you’re coming from elsewhere and need accommodation email bristoldefendantsolidarity@riseup.net
        We are also calling for you to do a solidarity banner drop or other action in your local area during October to show your support for Ryan
        Ryan is currently on remand in Bristol Prison. He’d welcome letters of support. Click here to find out how.

Solidarity is strength!
bristolabc 

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It's Illegal.

 

          It's legal, it's illegal, all according to the laws made by the rich and privileged, laws drafted to protect that wealth and those privileges, and a whole state apparatus to enforce it on those who would dare to say, not so, not fair.
           This from my friend and comrade, Bob at Citystrolls, look, listen, think and enjoy, then share with all and sundry, and the rest.

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Toothless Protest.

           A comedian once said that if the people you are protesting against are happy with your protest method, then you’re not protesting, you’re just having a shit day out. I’m inclined to agree with him. All the legislation brought in regarding protests is to make your protest acceptable to those you are protesting against. In other words, turning your protest into a shit afternoon out. The establishment would be happy with you quietly, in limited numbers, marching from A to B, of course you will achieve nothing. That is the aim of this new legislation being introduced by bumbling Boris’s gang. Giving you the right to protest as long as you don’t upset, inconvenience or annoy anybody, do it quietly, when and where the police tell you and in numbers decided by the police. Their vision of tomorrow’s protests is groups of six or so people walking quietly and sedately, saying excuse me to everybody they pass, this will be permitted for approximately 15 minutes, then you will be asked to disperse or face the heavy hand of the law. The new democracy fit for a fascist state.

 

 

             The following is an extract from an article by  Adrian Kreutz published in Roar Magazine.

London — 1936. In what we know today as the “Battle of Cable Street,” the Metropolitan Police protected Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists against almost 20,000 anti-fascist protesters, including socialist groups, Irish dockworkers, British Jewry and anarchist and trade unionist groups. That day, 3,000 paramilitary “Blackshirts” marched through a Jewish neighborhood. Mounted police charged at a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, and many of the arrested reported violent treatment at the hands of the police.
       Following the events on Cable Street, the Public Order Act of 1936 forced organizers of large protests to obtain prior police permission and gave the police broad powers to arrest people for “insulting or abusive” speech. The ambiguity of the word “insulting” meant that the Public Order Act could be applied in a range of cases.
       London — 2021. Social movements protesting for racial and environmental justice disrupt public transport, deface the statues of slave traders, spread banners over Westminster Bridge and block the entrance to parliament. In response, the Johnson administration proposes the “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill,” popularly know as the “Crackdown Bill” or “Protest Bill.” It fits the draconian script of recent years — the concentration of power, the limiting of government accountability and multi-pronged attacks on human rights.

Read the full article HERE:

 

 

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Shut Down!

        The blood stained hand of the police state ever tightens its grip, only strong united resistance and solidarity will stop its intended paralysis of freedom. This morning when I visited a site I often visit for information of what is happening across the world, Act For Freedom Now, I was greeted with this message:

       The server on which this website was hosted was confiscated by the Dutch police on March 29th, 2021 for reasons unknown so far. The website will be reconstructed as soon as possible. Please be patient.
nostate.net

       I suppose innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply any more. How many times have we seen sites and information shut down on the say-so of the rich and powerful, and it would be foolish to think it is done to protect the ordinary people.
That is why it is so important that we the ordinary people come together and join in the campaign, in which ever way we can, to "Kill the Bill" another draconian piece of legislation that strengthens the hands of the police and its attendant apparatus at the expense of the ordinary freedoms we sometimes take for granted.

Demonstrators during a ‘Kill The Bill’ protest in Finsbury Park Credit: Aaron Chown/PA

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Police State.

         In towns and cities across the country people are organising "Kill the Bill" protests. This is not about a few lefties protesting, this is about climate change, working conditions, wages, peace movements, equal rights, injustices, corruption, about your right to display your anger or dissatisfaction with the way our country is being run. This is the 2021 poll-tax, it affects everybody and it must be resisted with the same anger and determination that brought down the poll-tax. You and everybody else has the right to protest, it is protest that brought about wage increases, better working conditions, end to slavery, end to child labour in mines and other industries, all real change for the benefit of the ordinary people was brought about by protests, they were never given to the people in a benevolent manner by the system. This bill will kill the right to protests as and when we feel the need, in this society, without protests we are at the mercy of the state and its corporate buddies who will milk the situation for their benefit, all to the detriment of our freedoms and conditions.
      The importance of killing this bill can't be emphasised enough, it puts the public in a straight-jacket and gives free rein to the state, it is the rock solid foundation of the police state. Total control of where you can meet up, how many and what sort of noise you can make, if any, and for how long. Our freedoms in this society are limited enough without taking away the one that has in the past allowed us to make progress in our desire for a free and fair society. Lose that right at your peril. "Kill the Bill", think poll-tax.

 

Leeds: 

 

Manchester:

 

Newcastle:

 

Bristol:

        Let's grow this list, make it cover every city, town and village in the UK. This will be the most important protest in defence of your freedom and your right to public assembly and protest. Kill the Bill, kill the police state.

 

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Austerity Normal.

             That coterie of platitude producers known as MPs, who meet in their private club, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, have had 8 pay rises in 10 years, while NHS staff have seen their pay frozen. Now that same bunch of self interested careerists decide to give the NHS staff a 1% pay rise, at the same time the body that regulates the MP's salaries as stated that MPs will not receive a pay increase of more than £3,000. Compare that £3.000 increase with what 1% would amount to for NHS staff, some where around about £170 per year. At the moment The basic annual salary for an MP from 1 April 2020 is £81,932, plus expenses, whopping subsidised meals, and fancy foreign travel junkets. Those expenses are very generous, and come with a comfy pension scheme. Who do you think serves the country best, the NHS or the MPs. Parliament can close down for generous holidays, and the country merrily functions. Close down the NHS for generous holidays and see in what sort of mess society becomes. It is unthinkable.

 

          However this is the type of society we tolerate, we pay pompous privileged careerists generous salaries, we allow them to pile up obscene wealth through the contacts of their privileged position, and let them administer austerity to the rest of us. When do we get the will to tear down this edifice to inequality and corruption, we have the power? When do we decide that we want the fruits of our labour to come to us, the real wealth creators. There is a tidal wave of austerity coming our way, we accept it and stunt the futures of our kids and grand kids for generations, stand by and watch homelessness grow, food banks proliferate and poverty spread like a new pandemic. 

 

        At the moment the state has in place, due to pandemic legislation, population controls sufficient to stop wide spread protests, which it will try to cement into some sort of permanent legislation, while its propaganda wing preaches that we will soon be back to "normal". There is no "normal", there is only deeper austerity, and unless we take back control of the streets, austerity will be our continuing "normal". We must have the right to vent our anger at gross injustice, inequality and blatant corruption, and the only places we can do that are on the streets, in our workplaces, and in our communities. Their plan is already set, where is ours, in defence of our freedoms and conditions?

 

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Smoke & Mirrors.

       As everybody who has been involved in trying to curtail the ravages of corporate capitalism knows, the judicial system is an institution to defend those plundering actions of the corporate world against any resistance from the public at large. The system always portrays these actions of protest against the corporate juggernaut's exploits, as polite lines of police officers facing baying crowds of savage destructive trouble makers, followed by the reluctant police having to use force against this dangerous baying mob. Of course on examination you find out that the baying mob are just ordinary people with a conscience, a little courage and who are prepare to make a stand to right some injustice.

      Examples abound, day and daily in the theatrical halls of this loaded judicial illusion, from country to country, it is part of the life blood of this system of capital dominance over the health and welfare of planet and people. 

The following example is from Lecce in Italy.

 

         In the bunker courtroom of the prison of Lecce in the morning of Friday, January 15, the prosecutor submitted requests for sentencing 90 No TAP accused, on trial for a number of episodes of struggle which took place between 2017 and 2018. The charges range from violence and resistance against public officials to breaching expulsion orders from Lecce and Melendugno, where the struggle against the gas multinational was most intense. In the first instance trial the sentences requested ranged from a minimum of 2 months to a maximum of 2 years and 3 months.
        During the hearing a comrade made a declaration concerning the charges against her, here is the text:
        In this trial I am accused of having repeatedly breached an order prohibiting me from being present in the territory of Lecce and Melendugno. Some policemen, in the role of witnesses, stated that I would have deliberately and in contempt of their job of observation, neglected to hide or change my appearance. The many photographs that portray me confirm this observation. In fact I always took part in the demonstrations and the various protests without caring about the prohibition and without concealing myself. And I often spoke out, as did many others, to repeat the reasons for those mobilizations, which have involved a great number of people over two years.
         I hope the gentlemen of the police station won’t mind, but I’d say the reasons that led me to the prohibited areas, risking the charges made against me here, were quite other than contempt for the digos of Lecce. I won’t expose these reasons in all their length and breadth, also because I think that a courtroom is the least suitable place for such a purpose. Suffice it to say that it is not by chance that the reasons I am referring to are all in the missing link of the statements given by the police here in the role of witnesses, statements that sketch a rather simplified, flat, let’s say bi-dimensional scenario where the police are facing a group of rioters against a backdrop of yards, gates, country roads, olive orchards. Instead, my reasons are all in the third dimension, that of the background. These are places that have suffered the indelible scar of an aberrant operation, the TAP gas pipeline. An operation imposed from above and always rejected by the inhabitants because it upturns delicate ecosystems, puts human health at risk, upsets the local economy. Ultimately, that work represents the voracity of transnational capital to which local communities are being forced to succumb. The impressive mobilization of men in uniform in defence of the TAP Consortium and against the opponents of the works showed everyone the State’s subjugation to those superior reasons. The militarization of a vast territory and the suspension of freedom of movement within it in contempt of the population, these yes, are only some of the reasons that convinced me to take part rather than desist, to go to the prohibited areas instead of complying with the prohibitions imposed on me. I thus decided to respond to my own personal ethical imperative, ignore the injunction of authority and be present in the prohibited places.
If anything, my only regret is effectively not having done enough.

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The Coming Pain.

         I have always maintained that this pandemic was a wonderful opportunity for the state to shovel billions of pounds into the belly of the corporate beast, money that you and I will be told we must pay back to the international money lenders. Before this pandemic, the capitalists system was well on the way to a massive recession and here was the golden opportunity to bail it out in so many different ways. The corporate overlords were given the opportunity to shed labour, grab taxpayers money, and start to dismantle working conditions to make labour cheaper for them. Of course some businesses will go to the wall, but in a recession that would have happened anyway, the big boys don't mind that, they have sufficient reserves to take up the slack, should business start to improve, as it probably will with cheaper labour costs, and employees spread more thinly on the shop floor, and a fat injection of tax payers money.

     The other golden opportunity went to the state, aware that recessions tend to bring unrest and anger to the streets, and this pandemic accelerating the unemployment, they had to prepare for that eventuality. So the introduction of a draconian range of population controls. Some obviously make sense under the conditions of a pandemic, but some will be in place much longer than the pandemic, some people will start to accept some of these conditions as the "new" normal, this will make it all that easier for the state to control that unrest and anger that will inevitable surface as the pain starts to hit the standard of living of millions in this country. The pain is coming, all that money thrown at maintaining businesses and keeping people of the streets by paying them not to work, will be a massive bill that will land at the feet of the taxpayer.

   Some governments have taken the precautions to smother public protests further than others, the others will follow suit as the conditions change. The Greek state for example has introduced a ban on protests that are not sanctioned by the police, you can be arrested for attending a protest if the police haven't given it the nod of approval. Of course the citizens of that patch on the earth controlled by the Greek state are not taking it lying down, I love the people of Greece. The other day there was a massive protest outside the parliament building in Athens. As expected, the police moved in with brutal force, batons swing and gas canisters flying, resulting in a riot situation, with lots of arrests.

The following report from Act For Freedom Now:

          9 July 2020, Athens, Greece: Proposed by a self-proclaimed socialist Minister of Public Order (Michalis Chrisohoidis), taking part in a right wing government (News Democracy), assisted by the votes of the self-proclaimed socialist party (KINAL), the greek Parliament approved a junta-inspired bill on Thursday imposing new restrictions to quash and destroy the right to protest, a right integral to the so-called democracies, eg. under the provisions of the new law you will be arrested for joining a protest that hasn’t been authorized by the police. For dozens of years across the world, this has been called a Police State or a Dictatorship but then again the greek governing party’s name is “New Democracy”, which probably means the same, when someone feels the need to affix the word “New” to the political theory of “Democracy” that has been solidified for more than 2.500 years.
       As a result, thousands of people marched through central Athens denouncing the new law, and managed to approach in great numbers the greek parliament at Syntagma Square, during the discussion of the bill. The sight of hundreds of policemen that flooded the area around the parliament, during such a sensitive topic of protest, aggravated things and soon the protest turned in to a riot, making the atmosphere unbearable to breath, while the riot police “bombarded” the area with asphyxiating gas grenades.
       After a decade long financial crisis, Greece is expected to suffer a new major recession this year due to the impact of the pandemic. The new law that was passed yesterday seems to aim exactly towards what’s coming. The strong reaction of the greek society, for all the money that were thrown away by the greek government and Athens mayor (Kostas Mpakogiannis) during the quarantine and what followed. It’s no wonder that the greek government chose to hire thousands of new policemen, rather than nurses and doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic. But, then again, as it was aforementioned the governing party’s name is “New Democracy”…

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The Usual Police Brutality.

 

      Police brutality is a fact of the state system, there is no other way that the state can keep control of the population. What the people want and what the state want are irreconcilable. People want freedom to choose their way of life, to enjoy the fruits of their labour and to share in an equal and civilised manner. The state wants total control to keep the wealth flowing to the few wealthy power mongers at the top. The moment people challenge that position out comes the iron fist, Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador, Haiti, Bolivia, Iran, Iraq, France, Spain, Hong Kong and lots of places elsewhere.

   Let's not forget Greece, a short video of Greek democracy at work today:

αλλού τον βρίσκει αλλά δεν έχει σημασία που θα σε βρει ο πυροσβεστηρας ...

— Konos (@Kon0s) December 6, 2019

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