Disappearing.

The Met Police has announced that it’s rolling out facial recognition cameras across the UK capital in the hopes of tackling ‘serious crime’ Mirror Jan. 24, 2020.

     There is no doubt that we live in the surveillance society, and the means of that surveillance is ever growing with the advances in technology, from face recognition technology to sophisticate drones, you are being watched. Greater detail of you and your movements are being gathered, whether you are aimlessly wandering around your city, on a peaceful protest, picnic or picket, it is all being logged and a profile of you is being built. Perhaps these details will find there way to some advertising agency, but most likely, onto some state register for further use.

     Obviously we would rather not be followed, logged and profiled, without our permission, by some corporate or state body. So disappearing from their myriad of prying eyes is a very desirable aim. So with the increase in drones what steps can we take?

You are being watched over from on-high!

    The following article is from The Conversation:

Law enforcement drone over demonstrators June, 5, 2020, Atlanta.

           Drones of all sizes are being used by environmental advocates to monitor deforestation, by conservationists to track poachers, and by journalists and activists to document large protests. As a political sociologist who studies social movements and drones, I document a wide range of nonviolent and pro-social drone uses in my new book, “The Good Drone.” I show that these efforts have the potential to democratize surveillance. But when the Department of Homeland Security redirects large, fixed-wing drones from the U.S.-Mexico border to monitor protests, and when towns experiment with using drones to test people for fevers, it’s time to think about how many eyes are in the sky and how to avoid unwanted aerial surveillance. One way that’s within reach of nearly everyone is learning how to simply disappear from view.
        Over the past decade there’s been an explosion in the public’s use of drones – everyday people with everyday tech doing interesting things. As drones enter already-crowded airspace, the Federal Aviation Administration is struggling to respond. The near future is likely to see even more of these devices in the sky, flown by an ever-growing cast of social, political and economic actors. Public opinion about the use and spread of drones is still up in the air, but burgeoning drone use has sparked numerous efforts to curtail drones. These responses range from public policies exerting community control over local airspace, to the development of sophisticated jamming equipment and tactics for knocking drones out of the sky. From startups to major defense contractors, there is a scramble to deny airspace to drones, to hijack drones digitally, to control drones physically and to shoot drones down. Anti-drone measures range from simple blunt force, 10-gauge shotguns, to the poetic: well-trained hawks. Many of these anti-drone measures are expensive and complicated. Some are illegal. The most affordable – and legal – way to avoid drone technology is hiding.
How to disappear
      The first thing you can do to hide from a drone is to take advantage of the natural and built environment. It’s possible to wait for bad weather, since smaller devices like those used by local police have a hard time flying in high winds, dense fogs and heavy rains. Trees, walls, alcoves and tunnels are more reliable than the weather, and they offer shelter from the high-flying drones used by the Department of Homeland Security.
      The second thing you can do is minimize your digital footprints. It’s smart to avoid using wireless devices like mobile phones or GPS systems, since they have digital signatures that can reveal your location. This is useful for evading drones, but is also important for avoiding other privacy-invading technologies.
     The third thing you can do is confuse a drone. Placing mirrors on the ground, standing over broken glass, and wearing elaborate headgear, machine-readable blankets or sensor-jamming jackets can break up and distort the image a drone sees. Mannequins and other forms of mimicry can confuse both on-board sensors and the analysts charged with monitoring the drone’s video and sensor feeds. Drones equipped with infrared sensors will see right through the mannequin trick, but are confused by tactics that mask the body’s temperature. For example, a space blanket will mask significant amounts of the body’s heat, as will simply hiding in an area that matches the body’s temperature, like a building or sidewalk exhaust vent.
       The fourth, and most practical, thing you can do to protect yourself from drone surveillance is to get a disguise. The growth of mass surveillance has led to an explosion in creative experiments meant to mask one’s identity. But some of the smartest ideas are decidedly old-school and low-tech. Clothing is the first choice, because hats, glasses, masks and scarves go a long way toward scrambling drone-based facial-recognition software. Your gait is as unique as your fingerprint. As gait-recognition software evolves, it will be important to also mask the key pivot points used in identifying the walker. It may be that the best response is affecting a limp, using a minor leg brace or wearing extremely loose clothing. Artists and scientists have taken these approaches a step further, developing a hoodie wrap that’s intended to shield the owner’s heat signature and to scramble facial recognition software, and glasses intended to foil facial recognition systems.
      These innovations are alluring, but umbrellas may prove to be the most ubiquitous and robust tactic in this list. They’re affordable, easy to carry, hard to see around and can be disposed of in a hurry. Plus you can build a high-tech one, if you want.

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

Psychopaths Rule.

       It's common knowledge, or should be, that prisons are institutions of brutality, where violence is arbitrary, justice is varied on a whim, human rights are removed at the will of an individual, physical and psychological health is of little concern to the authorities, control and authority is all that matters. It is the control and authority of individuals who interpret these in their own manner according to their own particular mood or disposition. All this goes on in our towns and cities and we calmly go about our daily business.

    Some prison have a more brutal reputation than others, but a recent report from America, puts Alabama prison system right there at the top of the festering heap of callous brutal savagery that stinks of psychopaths give free rein.

The Alabama Report:

 

      Alabama prisons have used ”cruel and unusual punishment” on inmates by allowing correctional officers to perform routine beatings, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said following an investigation.
      “Our investigation found reasonable cause to believe that there is a pattern or practice of using excessive force against prisoners in Alabama’s prisons for men,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the department’s Civil Rights Division said.
     An investigation of 13 Alabama prisons found that 12 of them had correctional officers using excessive, and sometimes deadly, force on inmates that violated their Constitutional rights.
       Excessive force by corrections officers included the use of batons, chemical spray, and physical beatings involving kicking prisoners, which often resulted in serious injuries. Two Alabama prisoners died from excessive force incidents in the last months of 2019 alone.
       In one fatal incident in October 2019, “the level of force used caused the prisoner to sustain multiple fractures to his skull, including near his nose, both eye sockets, left ear, left cheekbone, and the base of his skull, many of which caused extensive bleeding in multiple parts of his brain,” according to the DOJ.
       The 28-page report released on Thursday highlighted multiple instances of officers using excessive force on inmates, with some of those times including when there was no physical threat to the employees' safety. The report also found officers would “use force as a form of retribution and for the sole purpose of inflicting pain".
     One instance stated how an officer “brutally hit, kicked and struck a handcuffed prisoner” in a medical unit while calling himself the “reaper of death”. The prisoner reportedly “begged for the officer to kill him”, according to four nurses who witnessed the incident.
      Low staffing and overcrowding in Alabama prisons was credited in the report as a trigger for officers to become “tired, stressed, overworked and angry”.
     “After carefully reviewing the evidence, we conclude that there is reasonable cause to believe that conditions in Alabama’s prisons violate the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution and that these violations are pursuant to a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of rights protected by the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, we have reasonable cause to believe that the correctional officers within the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) frequently use excessive force on prisoners housed in Alabama’s prisons for men. Such violations are pursuant to a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of rights secured by the Eighth Amendment,” the DOJ said Thursday in a letter to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey.
       This report comes as the DOJ first started looking into the Alabama prison system starting in 2016. The department already found that the prison system was “deliberately indifferent” to prisoner-on-prisoner attacks on sexual abuse. Investigations also found officials failed to maintain facilities that were “sanitary, safe, or secure”.
    “Ultimately, Alabama does not properly prevent and address unconstitutional uses of force in its prisons, fostering a culture where unlawful uses of force are common,” the most recent report stated.
     Ms Ivey said in a statement that her administration was hopeful they could reach a resolution to all the department’s allegations.
      “I am as committed as ever to improving prison safety through necessary infrastructure investment, increased correctional staffing, comprehensive mental-health care services, and effective rehabilitation programs, among other items,” the governor said.

      So the governor said, and we heard Bla bla bla bla! Prisons must crumble to dust for freedom and justice to flower.

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Same Again?

        Capitalism, fascism, it's an easy switch for any capitalist government, they are just slight variations on the same theme. 2008, the capitalist system had blown its lot on a mad gambling spree, suddenly the state is the corporate banker and starts to throw money at the corporate gamblers to help them survive their losses. All of this of course comes from the public purse, so we pick up the tab in the shape of years of austerity. Move forward to 2020, and we have Covid19 bringing havoc to the capitalist world of shareholders, once again the state becomes the corporate banker and throws billions to shore up the shareholders empire. Once again, we the public will pick up the tab, with the cash bonus to the corporate club being much larger than the previous, the austerity when it hits, will be even more brutal than the last time round. 

      The so called "welfare state" is just a temporary measure, a sort of paracetamol for the public, to make them feel a little bit better. It can, of course, and has been, quickly dismantled, if the corporate world needs a hand out. As has been proven in the past, and will be again, when the bills start arriving for all those billions that the state flung at the corporate shareholders.
We should note, fascism doesn't need to arrive with jackboots, it can arrive in expensive suits and limousines.

      The following is a short extract from an article in Acorn Winter Oak, about the rise of Mussolini in Italy, Nothing has really changed, we have allowed history to repeat and repeat itself, and we, the general public, bear the brunt each time. Perhaps this time round we will get the picture and bring this stinking system crashing down.

    ---After 1925, in the face of economic crisis, the pure economic liberalism of the Manchester School went out of the window, in favour of state intervention.
       But this was intervention in the interests of business and Capital, not in the interests of the Italian people whom fascism mendaciously claimed to represent!
      ‘Development’ was at the forefront of fascist plans, as is the case with all industrial capitalists. More land was cultivated and an infrastructure of roads, new towns and industrial estates was built.
       “A vast programme of public works was undertaken, carried out by private firms, who were offered lucrative contracts by the State. Electrification of the rail system began, with the construction of tunnels on the Rome-Naples and Bologna-Florence lines. A massive road building programme was entrusted to ANAS (Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strade), created in 1928, which oversaw the showcase construction of big toll motorways, the first in Europe”.  This was nothing other than a bailing-out of the capitalist economy by the pro-business fascist state, for which the cost would ultimately have to be borne by the public.
Ring any bells in 2020?
       Banks were also treated to fascist largesse, notably BCI, saved by the Italian state with a massive influx of money.
        Note the authors: “There was neither socialisation nor nationalisation. The State became capitalist; it guaranteed the property of most of the shareholders and their future dividends. The only socialisation was that of the losses, assumed by the public purse”.---

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Open Prison.

      We should have learned by now that in this manipulative system the state doesn’t always need physical constraints, a conditioned mind is prison bars enough, to make the individual feel they are free and part of a free and normal society. To the conditioned mind the prison walls are invisible, the illusion of freedom appears so real it is accepted. To keep the illusion alive, the system has its prison warders in the shape of the education system, the media, corporate advertising and state propaganda, that is usually enough to keep the majority of the population reasonably content in their illusion of freedom, and to shape their needs and desires. For those who don't accept this illusion of freedom, then there is always the more brutal loaded judicial system and prison cages of repression.
     We have in most cases willingly assisted in our own enslavement by the embracing modern technology. Not that the technology itself is inherently enslaving, but our acceptance of the belief that the corporate world’s control and development of such technology is progress. Progress, an ambiguous word that can conceal an illusion. Technology has bound us to the owners and developers of that technology. One example, in the not too distant past, games were usually very simple and also very enjoyable. All they required was a ball, a couple of sticks, something to throw, a bat etc. nothing complicated, but enjoyed my millions across the planet. Today games are complicated apparatus that we could never make on our own, to enjoy the new “games” we have to put ourselves in the hands of the corporate bodies that own and control that technology, and with their dictate of progress they will be outdated and you will need to buy into the new and much more sophisticated model. You are on the technology gravy train, not as an enjoyer of the gravy, but as the producer of the gravy, for the few in control to lap up.
     As long as growth is seen as progress, increase in consumption will be necessary, and the powers that be will devise, through their usual conditioning endeavours, ways and means to put new and costly products as symbols of happiness, success and status. A quote from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, encapsulates that line of thought. When asked why are the works of William Shakespeare are banned, the controller replies, ‘Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use for old things here’. ‘Even when they’re beautiful?’. ‘Particularly when they’re beautiful. Beauty’s attractive, and we don’t want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones’”. I think Huxley has thrown us a warning there, as did Orwell, we ignore them at our peril.

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Every Lidl Helps.

          Those large sprawling supermarkets, are they as innocent as the seem? Where ever they open their mammoth consumer machines, local businesses close and local producers suffer. Food is grown in massive agribusinesses usually useing cheap labour, it is packaged and transported thousands of miles, polluting the planet, for no other reason than to monopolise the food chain and create massive profits for the parasite class. They are part and parcel of the corporate capitalist movement to turn our towns and cities into money making consumer munching plots. 

         Following article from Act For Freedom Now:

Received on 23/7/20
     In the night of July 23rd we spayed slogans in solidarity to the squats Liebig34 and Rigaer94 in Berlin on the LIDL supermarket in Neos Cosmos / Athens. After we destroyed all windows with hammers.
     Every eviction has its price. This is a message do all responsibles for the aggressive gentrification of many european cities, which allways goes on with the eviction of squats, the state terror against the radical movement and the rising of rents. We noticed the eviction thread against Liebig34 in Berlin and the attack by so called owners and their companies together with the cops against Rigaer94. With the eviction of Dervenion56 in Exarchia the government of ND continious its operations against the combative and solidarity resistance, which we allways will be – with squats or without.
     One of many answers to an evicted squat is the destrucion of a consuming symbol the capitalist system offers to the inmates of the prisons called Metropolis. To support the struggle of our comrades in Berlin we found a german company, but it can be also real estate agencies or luxury cars or tourism.
    The LIDL supermarkt chain was targeted allready some time ago in Germany because of its bad working conditions for their employees. This action is a solidarity offer to this aggressive campain against the working contitions in LIDL WORLDWIDE. 8 to 10 hours per day with a fake smile for pity money, sitting in front of hundreds of products, in a cashier, becoming a robot which just counts and counts. Or lifting big weights destroying your back. Why all these? Which is the role of supermarkets ?
      Supermarket are big financial mechanisms which seem very innocent to the majority of the people. The truth is, they are not.
Colonilization
      Supermarket are colonilizing the economies of local societies in all the earth. All the small markets, grocery stores and other kind of shops are shutting down whenever a new supermarket is opening. There is no need for a new supermarket in most of the areas, its just matter of expanding and absorbing. Also, is reducing the use of local products and producers. Slowly slowly, the residents of an area are becoming workers, mainly women, of this industry, losing all their indepentace (even in liberal terms)
Anti-ecological
     The opening of chain supermarkets, local or multinational, is also increasing importing of products. This is happening because the production companies are exploiting people in a cheaper way in other countries, or because they make better offers to a multinational company because of the massive consumation. What is happening at the end is a big consumption of petroil by the ships to transfer products all around the world. The paradox of capitalism, the fact that a product from 2000 miles far is cheaper than the local, is killing faster the nature.
Food Control
     All these brings us to the bigger problem. Supermarkets are the greatest tool for multinational food companies to takeover all of our nutrition process. We eat shit, we don‘t produce anything, we need money to buy everything, we need to work for them for ever to be able to buy them and cure our selves from the sickness their food is creating
Do we smash supermarket?
    Yes we do. But we have to know that most of the people will not understand why. So we must do more propaganda against this mechanism. And for sure it is better to smash without people being inside. Our target is to spread fear to the side of the bosses not to the side of the random population. But if somebody break a supermarket with people inside without putting someone in danger, its okay, we can overpass it.
       Solidarity to Liebig34 and Rigaer 94
We hit the german interests in solidarity with the resistance in the german controlled territory
       Solidarity to Dervenion 56 and all the evicted and the still resisting squats in Greece
Support to the workers that suffer in the food and product industry worldwide

source Greek original text: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1606472/

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

Another Lie.

        Look at the image carefully, look closely at the names and the business empires that they are associated with and ask yourself, "Are these the people and bodies that we can trust to take care of the planet?". The very same group that has and is destroying the planet for nothing more than greed for profit. The same corporate bodies that are ever looking for new ways and means of increasing their wealth and power irrespective of the cost to planet and people.

        These are the groups that are tasked with creating "Protected Areas" and the "New Deal For Nature". Surely history tells us something, and the history of this gang of ruthless thugs are hardly likely to in any way jeopardise their flow of greed driven profits. The very fact that this bunch of robbing vandals are collected in one organisation should have us running to join protest groups across the planet. New Deal For Nature is just another one of those big fat lies dressed up in a green disguise, capitalists are not planet savers, they are planet destroyers.

The following is an extract from another interesting article in ACORN:

     Protecting the environment has surely got to be A Good Thing.
     Creating “protected areas” for nature in various parts of the world might therefore seem to be a positive move.
     However, when these areas are being promoted by the same capitalist system which brought nature to her knees in the first place, the alarm lights start flashing!
       Protected Areas” are in fact one aspect of the global capitalist scam being sold to us under the label of the ‘New Deal for Nature’.
     Because, in typical capitalist style, this scam has been wrapped up in shiny green packaging and promoted by the well-known WWF, the New Deal for Nature initially attracted little opposition.
      But in recent weeks, thanks to the truth-spreading efforts of the No Deal for Nature campaign and its supporters, support has been slipping away.
     The human rights charity Survival International has been doing a great job of blowing the whistle on what is nothing other than a new phase of industrial capitalist imperialism, aiming to displace indigenous peoples and further exploit Mother Nature for the profit of the usual tiny and greedy elite.
   Warns Survival director Stephen Corry: “The latest idea to be heavily promoted by big conservation NGOs is doubling the world’s so-called ‘Protected Areas’ (PAs) so that they cover thirty percent of the globe’s lands and oceans.
    “This is now their main rallying cry and response to two of the world’s biggest problems — climate chaos and loss of biodiversity.
     “It’s a marketing gimmick designed to funnel even more money to those who have for decades demonstrated their failure to mitigate either climate change or biodiversity loss.
    “Many PAs aren’t really protected at all. They include industrial exploitation — mining, logging, plantations, trophy hunting concessions, or extensive, usually high-end, tourist infrastructure.
      “The locals are thrown out as the land is grabbed by one or other industry, partnering with one or other big conservation NGO.
     “It’s a new colonialism, the world’s biggest land grab, supposedly ‘green’ and supposedly to save the world — a really big lie. As Odette, a Baka woman from Congo, says of such imposed conservation projects which don’t work, ‘We’ve had enough of this talk of ‘boundaries’ in the forest. The forest is ours’.”
     The alert is also being sounded via the World Rainforest Movement, notably in a statement entitled “Protected Areas feed corporate profiting and destruction”.

 Read the full article HERE:

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

Their Rules.

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

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

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

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

Scream!

        This pandemic has slowed down our work at Spirit of Revolt, but we are still doing what we can, We have just completed our first virtual Show and Tell outreach event, and it proved to be a success. We were privileged in having anarchist, writer, historian, Máirtín Ó Catháin, as speaker followed by a discussion, question and answer session. The subject matter was Belfast, Glasgow anarchism. The video of this event will soon be available on our website, so keep popping in to have a look.

     We are also still able to post our "Read of the Month". So, July "Read of the Month" is a little known news-sheet from our Bratach Dubh Collection called Scream!: A voice of the youth movement. Youth Information Network. issue 1.   

      Today more than ever we need to communicate with youth in our society, there has to be a dialogue between the generations, each learning form the other and adding to our sum total of knowledge and desires, to take on the struggles that we are facing in the coming months and beyond.  The young will probably be he hardest hit in the new “normal” that we are about to face. Solidarity between the generations is the only weapon that can bring us success.

Read on line and other options:

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Health Or Profit.

      We are all aware that in this capitalist economic system, profit will always be worth more than human health and well being. This has been the pattern through the years, industries come with dreadful health problems for the workers and in lots of cases for the public living around those industries, it should be labelled, murder for profit. The fight to clean them up and protect workers and the public at large is always long, and is not always successful. Today we are still suffering dreadful health problems because the system still puts profit before the health and well-being of the people. To remedy this situation for once and for all, we have to remove the source of the problem, the capitalist system and its never ending greed for profit at any cost.

Industrial diseases 1:
The following from Act For Freedom Now: 

     Mpeos AGET and government officials, all the bastards are working together
    For years now the city of Volos stinks of melted plastic. The percentage of cancer and cardio-respiratory problems keeps rising. The people of Volos have demanded a stop to the burning of garbage and the degradation of our lives in mass demonstrations and protests.
      Local authorities (municipal & regional) not only do not share the citizens’ demands but try by all means to increase profitability for the multinationals to the detriment of society and nature.
       On June 13 the authorities using their dogs tried to suppress the movement against the burning/processing of garbage with brutal violence, gases and beatings while already set-up prosecutions followed, non-typical investigations in homes and workplaces. The culmination of their repressive attack was the extreme lynching and torture of our friend and comrade Vassilis Maggos. Following the untimely death of Vassilis, our limits have long been surpassed!
In the early hours of Thursday and Friday 17/07/2020 we attacked the building of the Regional Centre of Magnesia with axe and fire, lighting up a little the dark summer night and disrupting the peace of uniformed -or not- State dogs. It was a sample, a minimal form of counter-violence against the policies practiced by municipal and regional authorities, a small reminder that we are moving around at night ready for everything!
An answer to police and judicial arbitrariness!

Even if we may never win, we will always fight!

Vassilis Maggos Presente!

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The Awakening.

         Portland USA is not on our mainstream media news very much at all. The media have a habit of reporting rioting in places our lords and masters call "enemies" but seldom report much when it is happening on the streets of our "friends". So continuous riots being brutally attack in a "friendly" nation is just not news.  
        However, Portland USA has seen it citizens on the street in violent clashes with the authorities and the police since the daylight, public execution, by a police officer, of George Floyd, and it is still going on, getting met with ever greater military style police violence. This is surely worthy of reporting.

The following report from It's Going Down:

 A report from the front lines of Portland from Defend PDX.

by Misanthrophile
      In the beginning, we were many. We were thousands. Exploding into the street after watching a video of horror both strange and all-too-familiar: a video of a nine-minute murder, of a killer indifferent to the pleas of the bound man he choked and crushed to death. Broad daylight, on film, unprosecuted. Another police murder. Another black person dead.
     As the video circulated, things began to shatter. Hearts. Trust. Restraint. Patience.
     We marched through these streets–our streets–to the sound of shattered windows. We screamed the names of the dead to the heavens as though they might be able to hear, as though we might rouse them and reverse the brutality that ended their lives. From above: silence. Some crimes are unforgivable, irreversible. But the future is not yet written: we could stop this from happening again, we must stop it by any means necessary. Voices united in a pledge, a pact: “No Justice, No Peace.”
     There was no justice, and so there was no peace. The police quickly set aside their PR platitudes and came for us in force. The cacophony of flash bang grenades rattled windows, nerves, teeth. Thick, sputtering clouds of tear gas choked downtown and incapacitated passersby as the protesters scattered, terrified by this sudden brutality. The pain is unbearable. Your eyes swell and burn: you become blind. Fire in your lungs, your mouth, your stomach. You retch and spit. Every instinct screams that you are dying, panic fills you: you flee.
     We could not withstand it, at first. Mass protests disintegrated into terrified individuals, scattered to the winds.
     “We have to do better,” we told each other, clothes rank with mace and sweat. Sheltering with a friend, a stranger, a new comrade. Sharing a beer, watching Hong Kong YouTube videos. Thinking. Learning.
     Not all the protesters returned, but the ones who did learned quickly. With one voice we sang our lessons. “Slow in the front, protect the back!,” we chanted as we learned to march at a steady pace. “Walk, don’t run!” we called out as we learned to fight back panic and remain calm in the face of fire. “Stay together, stay tight!”: a song we knew from the start, soon augmented with a second line: “We learned to ride the terror. “Be Water,” we said to each other as we regrouped after the police broke the group with gas and fear. We learned painfully that debates on direction had to be conducted carefully to avoid splitting and quickly to avoid police attention. Hand signals I had learned in the Army discovered again by an army of Gen-Z warriors: stop, regroup, left, right, quiet down.
     After a week of this, the city passed an ordinance against tear gas. The cops now needed new tools to hurt us and so we learned the brutality of the police line. Of charging cops with batons. Of an entire canister of crowd control mace emptied into the faces of protesters. We learned that cameras save lives and so every phone became a weapon. The police knew this too. They began to target journalists.
      The police made the mistake all authoritarians and cowards make: because they are driven by fear, they believe others are too. We learned to ride the fear, live with it, transmute it into rage and commitment. We learned in lock step, we learned together.
     As we became accustomed to their tactics, the police tried new ones. Every time they escalated, we learned to become more resilient, creative, unpredictable. We went to their police union. They instantly declared a riot and drove us away with batons and thick clouds of gas. We went to the North precinct. They drove us into the residential streets and claimed we tried to burn them alive. Lies and lies and lies, mainstream media eating it up; we existed in a world no one seemed to know about or believe, we were alone but we had each other. We did not stop
    And then the feds arrived.
    We do this every night.” Same shit, different day. Nothing to be afraid of.

Read the full article with videos HERE:

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Arbitary "Justice"!

       The state will always show retribution when an act it sees as an attack on its power and control. Though that retribution will not necessarily be heaped on the "guilty" person, that matters little to the state, what matters is that it is seen to be in control, in a attempt to intimidate others from doing similar acts. The judicial system and its attendant hell-hole prisons, are not there to dispense justice, but to protect the power of the state, and the wealth and privileges of its parasite class, to hold the system together and keep the status-quo. To those who desire freedom and justice, prisons are an obvious target, but to be free of prisons we have to demolish the institution that deems them necessary, the state.

      It is not unusual for an individual to find themselves being sentenced to a term in prison with no direct evidence  linking them to the event in question. It happens day and daily in country after country, it is just the state apparatus defending its power over the population.

The following from AMW:

On July 15, 2020, anarchist Marco Bolognino was sentenced to four years for the fire that broke out at the Vallette prison in Turin on February 11, 2019, following a greeting to the many comrades detained following the eviction of the Asilo Occupato.

Aggravated fire and dangerous ignitions and explosions: these are the crimes alleged against Marco Bolognino, anarcho-insurrectionist arrested in Turin by Digos [General Investigations and Special Operations Division, anti-terrorism law enforcement in Italy]. The disputed facts date back to February 10, when anarchists organized a procession against the eviction of the Asilo Occupato in via Alessandria and the arrest of six anarchists who ended up in the Vallette prison. On that occasion, paper bombs and fireworks exploded. A nautical signal rocket ended up on the roof of a prison shed, where there was a kitchen workshop, causing a fire and the explosion of some gas cylinders. The laboratory was completely destroyed.

Once again the tribunal rite was an end in itself, deaf to the evidence of the facts, which not only questioned the disputed facts, but also the identification of a responsible person: the sentence is typical, 4 years for arson .

A warning to all those in solidarity that often find themselves outside those damned walls, an attack on solidarity!

Fire to all the prisons

Freedom for all

Western Alps antirepression

From: https://ilrovescio.info/2020/07/15/condanna-per-lincendio-alle-vallette-nel-febbraio-2019/

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

We Pay.

        We have all accepted that our lords and masters who are in the UK cabinet lead by bumbling Boris, are a bunch of inept, ideologically driven, fundamentalist right-wing, self serving, privatisation worshippers, Brexiteers, callous and ruthless to a pathological level.  We also know that their handling of the Covid19 pandemic was never based on the welfare of the people but more to suit their own profit motivated privatisation ideals and for the benefit of their  corporate buddies.

     However, it is always good to see it in print and explained in detail for all to see.

The following article is from The New York Review of Books: 

      London—“There are plenty of things people will say we got wrong,” Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, said of the nation’s coronavirus response in a recent speech. In one of the world’s worst affected countries, much of the focus has been on government mismanagement. Johnson’s inexperienced cabinet, selected for fealty to Brexit over anything else, has proved inept and out of its depth. With the Downing Street inner circle dominated by hardliners of the Vote Leave campaign, the response to the crisis was botched and negligently slow—the Brexit preoccupation diverting resources from pandemic planning. Before even any official inquiry is under way, many regard Johnson himself as ultimately responsible: quoted in a damning investigation by the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper in April, a senior adviser to the government condemned the prime minister’s fecklessness: “He didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.” 

      Britain’s official toll of Covid-19 deaths has passed 44,000. Going into lockdown late may have cost thousands of lives. Releasing potentially infected hospital patients into elderly care homes exposed the most vulnerable to risk—more than one in twenty of nursing home residents are believed to have died from Covid-19, a figure roughly thirteen times higher than for the same population in Germany. But the serial mismanagement of the crisis, as disastrous as it’s been, conceals a deeper failing, one driven by ideology.

Read the full article HERE: 

       Of course we pay for this ideological blundering and ineptitude. When will we ever learn?

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

Righteous Rebellion.

        You don't have to have the grand plan of the future before your rebel against the present, you don't have to lay the foundations for that future Utopia before you decide the present situation is unacceptable. However you have to take steps to bring to an end the injustice, the inequality, the corruption and the endless wars and slaughter that goes hand in hand with the present economic system that blights so many lives. You do have to rebel against a system that panders to the few to the detriment of the many. To rebel in this society is more a duty to your conscience, a necessary part of common humanity. You don't need a label, a manifesto, or a union rule book, common decency says this must end, but it will only end by your action of rebellion, your act of rebellion should be an act of love for humanity, all humanity.

         Chile: Spreading Ideas Against Power and Their Society  the following from July 20, 2020 by actforfreedom:

         Actforfree received by email: Introduction to Estallido Antisocial / Antisocial Outburst, a new anarchist publication from Chile. Translation: anarchistsworldwide.noblogs.org  

      SPREADING IDEAS AGAINST POWER AND THEIR SOCIETY
       From autonomous initiative as ungovernable individuals we spread anarchy without expecting the progress of the “social struggles” that leads to an illusory future state of “welfare and progress.” The images and feelings of thousands of people fighting in the streets of Chile before the COVID-19 pandemic are still fresh in our memories. Also fresh is the conviction that our lives have been in revolt since long before October 18, 2019, and that in our wild journey we have wielded a theoretical and practical arsenal that has long since ceased to be determined by levels of social and citizen acceptance of violent protest.
      We are no longer lost in the absurd idea of considering any person just for the fact of living in society and we are always happy that more people are rebelling against normality by vandalizing buildings state and corporate, looting or attacking the police. However, this does not mean that we are willing to let the revolts, our ideas and practices mingle in the midst of mass discourses, humanitarians or reformists who do not represent us. 

       This is why we deny all typecasting: we are not the people, we are not a class, we are not a vanguard, we do not proclaim ourselves part of a “glorious front line” or any other fictitious social or idealized category to homogenize individuals in the midst of the revolt.
       We rebel against all social norms and impositions, aiming at the formation of associations that are free and consistent with our essence: individuals in struggle living the revolt as a continuous present that forges its own evolution in the destruction of the existent, in constant conflict with authority and hierarchical ways of relating, and for the permanent construction of anarchic links of autonomy and horizontality in the here and now.
Nothing more, but also nothing less.
      We open this space of communication and dissemination to connect with other like-minded people, collectivizing ideas, tensions and proposals that move us away from comfort and stagnation. For the permanent tension against the State, power and the society that gives it life.
       Against all forms of authority, we constantly strive to bring Anarchy to life.

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

Green Illusion.

       I like visiting Not Buying Anything site, I usually get some calmly delivered, topical, rational information, built on commonsense. Today I detect a little hint of frustration and anger in his words, that's great by me, we will never sort out this insanity we live in with smiles and polite dialogue alone.

      Could there be a better symbol of the futility of a mandatory car-based transportation system than the latest "big idea" out of the vehicle industrial complex? How desperate, or out of touch are they?
      Yes, here is their answer to the ongoing ecocide brought on partly by powerful interests limiting our transportation alternatives in order to sell more of their killer product.
     No, there will not be a resurgence of trains, or improved public transportation, or more bicycles, or staying home more often, or working closer to where you live. Or working from home permanently.
     Those are all bad, dumb ideas that will "wreck our economy", which by the way, is more important than the climate, and recently, even more important than people's lives.
      The manufactured for profit mandatory car culture will try to push the inevitable implementation of those ideas down the road another few decades, because the real solution is almost here.
     Yes, the real solution coming from the private mobility/ego-stroking industry is... wait for it...

- an electric Hummer!

       It will have a 1000 horsepower motor, and goes from 0 to stupid in 3 seconds.
      Buyers will be able to choose a one, two, or three motor unit, because you can't have too many motors on hand when you go to pick up your groceries, or the kids from school (if the kids ever go back to school).
      You can even take the roof panels off to "let the world in".
     "Look kids, it's the world!"
    The coal-stained air is stinging my eyes, daddy, please put the panels back on."
     Wow! The world is crumbling before our very eyes - but roof panels on an electric hummer! I'm forgetting about pollution and the pandemic already.
    But the best part is yet to come. This electrified hunk of wastefulness on steroids starts at "only" $70,000 dollars. A bargain!
       Who doesn't have 70 grand to throw around these days, speaking of waste?
       Where I live, that kind of money, if anyone actually had it, could buy a piece of land and old house. I guess one could live in the truck, but where would you put the garden?
     I wouldn't be surprised if a halo and green monks robe was included with each electric big truck purchase because the more you drive your new glorified shopping cart, the more you're saving the Earth.
     Because it's green!
    Like baby poop, except green baby poop isn't a sign that anything is wrong, and a hummer definitely is, electric or not.

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

Righteous Robber.

 

      You work away diligently and relentlessly and then you  read about someone else's life, and you suddenly feel you haven't done enough. While you might think you're a bright spark, there is always someone who is a shining beacon, an inspiration.

       The following Published by Enough is Enough:

         Social rebel, counterfeiter, bandit, modern Robin Hood – the list of titles with which our anarchist comrade Lucio Urtubia was honoured is long. His life, which sounds like an adventure novel, is a mirror of the revolutionary movements in Europe in the second half of the 20th century. Lucio Urtuba passed away today. Rest In Power Lucio! 

     

       Lucio Urtubia was born in 1931 in a small village in Navarre and grew up in poor conditions. When he was called up for military service, he deserted to France shortly afterwards, where he worked as a bricklayer from then on. He came into contact with anarchist groups and met his political foster father: the legendary Sabaté, who organized the armed resistance against the Franco dictatorship from France. Forging documents, hiding underground fighters and illegal fundraising activities play a major role in his life from then on. Numerous resistance organisations, which have a base of operations in France or are looking for a place to retreat, benefit from his skills: Black Panthers, Tupamaros, European guerrillas. Lucio’s solidarity is with every act of revolt aimed at a more just social order.
      In 1962, he proposed to Che Guevara, then head of the National Bank of Cuba, to flood the world market with counterfeit dollar bills in order to destabilize the US economy. The proposal meets little approval on the Cuban side, but the idea remains alive in Lucio. In 1980 he succeeds in his greatest coup: by printing traveller’s cheques from Citibank with a value of several million dollars he brings the then most powerful bank in the world on its knees.
     But the list of his activities is not completed. Lucio is also a master of conspiracy, however, who manages to spend only a few months in prison in his not exactly law-abiding life. He breaks the silence at the age of well over 70. There is a book and also a movie (Watch here) about Lucio Urtubia.

Lucio, The Good Bandit: Reflections of an Anarchist

       Outspoken and charismatic, Lucio speaks like a true anarchist. When asked what it means to be an anarchist, Lucio refutes the misperception of the terrorist, “The anarchist is a person who is good at heart, responsible.” Yet he makes no apologies for the need to destroy the current social order, “it’s good to destroy certain things, because you build things to replace them.”

Lucio has old friends in the Southern Cone. Funds from the forgery operatives helped hundreds from revolutionary organizations exile and finance clandestine actions against the bloody dictatorships which disappeared ten thousands of activists, students and workers during the 1970’s throughout Latin America. In Uruguay, funds from falsified Citibank travelers’ checks funded the guerilla group Tupamaros, in the US the Black Panthers and other revolutionary groups throughout Europe.

Read the full article HERE:

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