For The World To Live, Europe Must Die.

      We are all human, and in the sea of sorrow at the suffering that occurred in Paris on Friday 13th. November, it is difficult to focus on the bigger picture, we are overwhelmed by the pain and suffering of the dead, wounded and traumatised.  We feel it greater because of the close proximity, we feel less for similar suffering far away, Iraq for example, but it is a small world. The traumatised, weeping parents, family and friends is repeated across the Middle East on a daily basis, but our mainstream media doesn't cover it in the same manner.

       I don't believe "evil",( a word I detest) pops out of a bottle from nowhere, it usually has a history, a birth somewhere in the past. Short term memory will never solve the problem, we have to look a lot deeper into the past, the seeds were sown somewhere at some point. 

     I found the article, For the World to Live, "Europe" Must Die. by Russell Means, brings clarity to this whole question of violence, placing it firmly in an historical context. 

      “The only possible opening for a statement like this is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate thinking": what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.” -- Russell Means (in a 1980 speech)

       The following are two rather large quotes from his article, however, the whole article is well worth the time it takes to read.

       The deaths of hundreds of people in a third world country evidently do not send the world’s press into high alert. In fact, while 500,000 Iraq children died [UNICEF figure] as a result of U.S. bombing of Iraq’s power generation, water purification and sewage processing infrastructure compounded by U.S.-led U.N. sanctions/embargoes of essential food and medical supplies to Iraq, it was given coverage but not the sort of frantic coverage given by ‘terrorist attacks’ in the U.S., Britain, Spain and most recently France. It is hard NOT to compare this lack of empathy to third world citizens to the cultural genocide inflicted on indigenous peoples of North America by European colonizers.
       The attention given to terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States, that Means and Churchill refer to as; ... ‘some people pushing back’, and, ... ‘chickens coming home to roost’, .. are treated as one-offs, and are not viewed by the Western press or Western leaders as part of a ongoing conflict that began with 15th century European colonization. Instead, they are portrayed as coming out of nowhere for 'no reason' [why would anyone attack innocent others?] as if they are pre-shocks that warn of an imminent Armageddon.
        In the wake of the attacks in France, yesterday, Barack Obama’s comment was;
      Once again we’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians. This is an attack, not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and universal values that we share.”
     ‘Once again’, ... we see Western world leaders pull out the binary ‘good versus evil’ framing, characterizing the colonizing powers and their supporters as ‘good’ and ‘innocent’ and as ‘victims’, ... while those people ‘pushing back’ are characterized in this binary framing, as ‘evil’ and ‘guilty’ and as ‘offenders’.
      Few people can help but think about themselves and their own families undergoing such horror, whether watching helplessly as their children die in the terrible conditions in Iraq arising from infrastructure bombings and embargoes, or whether slaughtered quickly and suddenly in shootings and bombings in Paris restaurants and concert halls.
       Strife is inevitable and war is hell, but pulling out this logical and moral reference framing, which Nietzsche euphemistically terms ‘a great stupidity’, amounts to such blatantly obvious denial that it can only amplify the radicalizing of some increasing fraction of the millions of those who ‘dream of pushing back’ but who, in the larger fraction, remain committed to less violent remedial paths.
     Western leaders are ‘scientific thinkers’ and their discursive reasoning is based on logical assumptions adopted by science, such as;
      “Instead of embracing in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, we simply try to connect each moment with the one immediately preceding. We admit that the present state of the world only depends on the immediate past, without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the recollection of a more distant past.” — Poincare, ‘Origin of Mathematical Physics’
     Such simplification, termed ‘economy of thought’ by philosophers of science, is very convenient when one has gained the position one now has through a program of global domination via colonization [military appropriation of the lands of indigenous peoples] and cultural genocide. It is a scientific concept reinforced by the Enlightenment European view of man as an ‘independent reason-driven being’, a ‘human being’ that is fully and solely responsible for his own behaviour.
      So, look out, push back people, because the statute of limitations on prosecuting colonizer and sovereigntist atrocities expires before it starts, and where there is push-back, those who push back violently will be judged fully and solely responsible for ‘their evil and offensive behaviour’ against the ‘innocent colonizing powers and their innocent, victimized constituents’.
      This essay is NOT aimed at justifying push-back retribution in Paris, New York, London, Madrid and elsewhere. There is no support in it for Western moral judgement based retributive justice. This essay is a commentary on the hypocrisy of Western leadership and the pathetic façade of holier-than-thou innocence coupled with sternly self-righteous commitments to ‘rid the world of evil’. The physical reality of our natural experience is NOT binary; i.e. if we are to be honest we must “embrace in its entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon” and thus connect the authorship of the push-back to colonizing powers who have been spring-loading the pushers-back for a long, long while.--------

And a little further on:

       Meanwhile, global media rushes to support the bald-faced political pitch of ‘good and evil’ on each eruption of push-back violence. Nevertheless, in the intervals, even mainstream media opinion-shapers such as BBC’s Adam Curtis are making documentaries such as ‘Bitter Lake’, advertised quote/unquote as; “How Western leaders' simplistic "good" vs. "evil" narrative has failed”, and how Western political leaders have come to recognize that the source of their power has shifted from rallying people onward and upward towards a Utopian society, to defending people against a global decline and free-fall towards a horrific Dystopia.
       What is unfolding is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s predictions. Nietzsche, in the 1890s, suggested that it would take two centuries for ‘Europe to die’ in the very same sense that Russell Means intends it; to suspend this ridiculous pretense of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’ as binary realities; i.e. to restore intuition and harmony-seeking to their natural precedence over reason and morality.
      He didn’t say how it would play out, exactly, other than that there would be “devaluation of the highest values”; i.e. ‘good and evil’ ‘truth and falsehood’, morality and reason.
      Both are already looking pretty shabby on Friday, November 13th, 2015.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Anarchism.

Quote for the day:

       While the popular understanding of anarchism is of a violent, anti-State movement, anarchism is a much more subtle and nuanced tradition then a simple opposition to government power. Anarchists oppose the idea that power and domination are necessary for society, and instead advocate more co-operative, anti-hierarchical forms of social, political and economic organisation.

— L. Susan Brown

The Politics of Individualism

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

We Never Know The Spark That Ignites The Fire.

      The mechanisms of capitalism are always confrontational, the capitalists always want more from the workers, the workers always want more of what they produce, and rightly so, it is all ours. As well as exploitation, struggle is the fault line that runs through the capitalist system, it is devoid of the basic elements of human justice and liberty, namely mutual aid, free association and voluntary co-operation. It is a system of imbalance, the capitalists growing ever richer, and the workers growing ever poorer. Is it any wonder that from time to time the fault line flashes from passive resistance to violent confrontation. Just as it is a myth that anarchism is chaos and violence, likewise it is a myth that capitalism is order. Our past is littered with those flashes of bitter violent struggle, which, by the powers that be, are written into history as criminal disruptions, anomalies, blips in a perfect system, when in fact they are inherent within the system. They are however, flashes that illuminate our dream of a fair and just system. Whether it be large strikes that turn violent as the state tries to suppress the organised workers, or a "spontaneous" riot, that explodes in some city, town or country, it is the same expression of dissatisfaction with a system that doesn't and can't, deliver what we want. The reason I use "spontaneous" is that there is no such thing as a spontaneous riot. Spontaneous would imply that everything was fine and then suddenly out of nowhere came the riot. Every riot has underlying causes, and with the glaring imbalance of wealth and lifestyles and of daily struggles to survive in the midst of unbelievable wealth, that this system breeds, the tinder for an explosion is all around us, all it needs is a spark.

Another interesting article from The Commune:

     Violent riots have been an aspect of capitalism and class struggle against it throughout history. Eric Hobsbawn described the Luddites or machine breakers’ actions as collective bargaining by riot. (11) In contemporary history there are many examples. In Los Angeles’ Watts district in 1965 and in Detroit in 1967 there was mass looting on an industrial scale : Buildings were burnt to the ground. In the student riots in Paris in 1968, which sparked one of the greatest general strikes in history, many cars were torched for barricades. In Bristol in 1980 and Toxteth and Brixton in 1981, bricks and bottles were thrown at police, sometimes inadvertently injuring bystanders. There was also the famous Poll Tax riot which helped to bring down Thatcher and her tax. Now that was a positive result.
      Militant trade unionism has seen violence on the picket line and rioting during strikes. In the great unrest in Britain 1910-14 there was violence, looting and burning. (12) In Llanelli in 1911, rank and file miners trying to make their strike effective, in the face of scabbing organised by the pit owners, police and government, stoned scabs from railway embankments and placed obstacles on the railway line to stop the transport of black legs. Troops were dispatched to Llanelli,and two young men were shot dead. In the riot that followed, 96 Railway wagons were torched, and three tons of bacon and other things disappeared, as goods wagons were looted. A building was blown up, and four people were left dead. (13) In Tonypandy in 1910, striking miners driven away from a pit by the police and army, attacked shops in the village. One man Samuel Rays was shot dead by troops. Trade union officials and government ministers denounced the strikers as mindless hooligans. (14)

Read the full article HERE:

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

THE DISEASE OF RAPE.

       Reading about a recent survey on violence I found the statistics frightening. You start to wonder what would it be like to live in such a country. The survey found that approximately 20% of the women suffered rape, 25% suffered domestic violence. The survey also found that there are 24 reported cases a minute of rape, violence or stalking. In the year prior to the survey there were 1 million reported cases of rape, 6 million reports of men and women victims of violence and or stalking, and more than 12 million men and women reported rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner.

      It also found that 80% of rape victims were raped before the age of 25, and 35% of those raped before the age of 18 were also raped as adults. This survey also found the 1 in 71 men had been raped at some point in their lives with 25% being raped at the age of 10 or younger.

     Where could this land of rape and violence be? No Western civilised country could come up with such horrifying figures and the brutal scenario that they paint. Sadly it is the free democratic peace loving West, the figures are in fact from America. With such dreadful statistics it is difficult to see how we can consider our selves as a role model for any our part of the world.

       These figures are from the Centers for Disease Control's first year of their National Intimate Partners and Sexual Violence study.

ann arky's home.

THERE IS NO LAW AGAINST SELF DEFENCE.

  

     Interesting to here David Cameron condemn the "violence" of the students the other day, "unacceptable" they should feel the "full force of the law" and all said with a solemn face, no hint of a snigger. Perhaps he should have remembered another quote he made.

We're all in this together!!

    "Things got a bit out of hand. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets"

D Cameron,Oxford,1986.

     We should remind David Cameron that his -smashing the place up- was just for fun, a jolly good time, the violence he condemns is self defence.

    When we hear those Oxbridge millionaires condemn violence we have to remind them that self defence is not a crime. What they and the media never mention is the violence that is being perpetrated on the working class by them, at the behest of the corporate greed machine, to safeguard their millions. What greater violence is there than trapping people in poverty, depriving them of the social services that are meant to provide those essentials of civilised life, dignity and opportunity. When one group savage the living standards of another group while they themselves live in the lap of unearned luxury, that is violence. When one group forces hardships on another knowing that they themselves will in no way suffer from those measures, that is violence. We have no intention of allowing that violence to ruin the lives of our children and threaten the dignity of our pensioners. Are we expected to lie down and take what the millionaire club throw at us? Most certainly not, we have the right to self defence, we are fighting for our dignity, the future opportunities for our children, the well being of our elderly. To threaten them is violence of the worst degree, we have duty to fight back, we have a right to self defence. The more savage the violence inflicted on us, the more violent our self defence. I am against violence, but just remember,- you started it, with the violence of your vicious “austerity cuts”.

 

 

ann arky's home.