The Billionaire's Lament.

       A little article from the Freedom Socialist Party, that helps you understand the plight of the billionaire. I think we should take them up on the last statement in the article. Go on, I dare you.

 Paraisopólis shantytown next to its wealthy neighbor Morumbi, in São Paulo, Brazil. PHOTO: Tuca Vieira

       Most of you out there have no idea what it is like to be a billionaire. OK, none of you do. You may think it is easy to have a mansion or six on every continent, to own your own islands, to blow 10 grand a day on champagne, and to get down with Bono at the World Capitalist … er, I mean, Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
        What you just don’t understand is that the more mansions you have, the more “help” you employ, and the more they want to stay in the main house. Why is it my problem that they have to take five buses to get to work every day? All right, I do admit that “home” is a generous word for a shack made of scrap wood. But they wouldn’t have those issues if they’d made the same career choices I did!
        But here’s the thing that really chaps my ass: taxes. Finally, those clowns in Congress gave me some relief. It took them long enough! After countless dinners at my penthouse in Miami Beach with Marco Rubio, and what seems like millions of hours playing pool and drinking single malt with that boring Mitch McConnell, and even taking Bob Corker to strip clubs in Dubai — I’m exhausted. It costs me weeks of therapy to get over all this!
       Tax bill goodies. I may already have more money than I know what to do with, but this thing signed by Trump on December 22 is going to deliver some serious coin. I was flying on my G6 to Monte Carlo on Christmas Eve when I watched Trump on satellite say, “You just got a lot richer” to the crowd at his “winter White House” in Mar-a-Lago.
        Let me be brief, cutting the top corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 per cent is solid gold. Not to mention that we often don’t pay these taxes anyway. But the seismic change in the new tax plan is the 20 percent cut in “pass-through” income. Pass-through corporations are a special classification in the tax code. It turns one part of a huge corporation, like a single Trump hotel, into a separate “small business,” which only has to pay taxes on 80 percent of its income. And I won’t have to pay a battalion of lawyers to dodge the rules and sneak money into tax havens. That’s good business.
        Trump boasted about the new tax bill being good for workers and the “middle class.” Not that I care, but spare me! The cuts to individual taxes are mostly temporary, and the paltry $75 a year that working families earn from the increase in the child tax credit may just pay for part of a week’s worth of groceries. Some say it was cruel to halt deductions for teachers who pay for classroom supplies with their own money. But hey, they can always change jobs if they don’t like it. Anyway, this deduction was retained at the last minute.
       Trump plans to slash $2.5 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security over ten years in order to pay for tax cuts to the wealthiest. They say that at the end of ten years, people living in poverty in the U.S. will increase 10 or 20 million from the current 43 million, and the number of homeless may increase to two million from 550,000 today. But giving a tax break to people who already have nothing is condescending at best. It’s unfortunate, but someone’s got to pay for my way of life, and I guess that someone is you!
         A hustle here and a hustle there. Don’t tell anybody I said this, but in my most introspective moments, I admit I really don’t need tax relief. Like I said, I am really, really rich. But I have an economic system and my own comfort to uphold, so I have to take as much as I can. Besides, if I don’t, others will. It’s eat or be eaten, I always say.
         Let’s do some basic math. In 2017 alone, I personally earned $800 million. Even if the Feds taxed me at 90 percent, I would still have cleared $80 million. Yes, I said “Eighty Million.” I am no Bolshevik, but it seems to me the commies got it right. If you tax me to the hilt, those who work for us could get living wages, free healthcare instead of the private insurance charade, and free education. But you can’t have that. Where’s the profit?
       The Democrats didn’t mobilize against this great new tax plan, content to plead helplessness because they’re outnumbered in Congress.
      And neither did the official union heads. I’m not surprised. In business, we eat labor bureaucrats and politicians like this for lunch, and maybe you should do the same with these bozos. But you didn’t hear this from me.
         In the meantime, we businessmen make sure you’re swamped with propaganda about how we rich are “job creators” and you need to give us more money, so we can “invest in the economy and create growth,” and “raise all boats,” blah, blah, blah.
         In fact, I have never invested in anything, anyone, or anywhere that didn’t yield the maximum return for me and me alone, and I don’t plan to stop now.
         My sole aim is profit, whether I’m producing cookies or guns, and whether I get it from the United States, the Congo, China or anywhere else on the planet.
        Want a piece of my action? Gonna’ take a revolution to get it. Go ahead, I dare you.

Send feedback to FSnews@mindspring.com.

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Destitute In The Midst Of Wealth.

 

The Homeless.

Tenebrous spectres, they exist,    out there, 

on the crumbling edge of chaos.

A father, a son, a brother,

a daughter, a sister, a mother.

Fragments of some shattered family structure,

waste products

from a society being driven to destruction

by a hurricane of greed

living a life that wears out life,

dying,

the devious death of exhaustion from existence.

        The UK is the sixth richest country in the world, we can look about its cities and see opulence, indulgences in extravagant fetishes and in that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, we can read about individuals buying their latest £150 million yacht, or their latest £250,000 car. We are overflowing with the obscenity of individuals wallowing in lavish unimaginable wealth. But scratch the surface and we see poverty, deprivation and homelessness, the contradictions of capitalism.

      Billions of pounds appear for war, likewise to refurbish the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, and millions appear to shore up the London home of the UK's largest benefit family, the  Lizzie Windsor brood.

      However, homelessness in this country has risen continuously, for the last seven years, but no millions appear to sort that problem. It falls on charities, friends and family to shoulder that burden, with cash strapped councils failing miserably to do their job.

       Immigrants and asylum seekers are particularly hard hit in this area and lots of them, because of the system find, themselves unable to work and are homeless. Again it falls to the good will and humanity of the ordinary people to attempt to alleviate that particular problem. Glasgow's Night Shelter, has for years been doing what it can for homeless, destitute immigrants, all run by volunteers. Here is an appeal to come and see what they are doing and perhaps contribute support in one way or the other.  

        This is an invitation to join us on Thursday 8th February from 5pm - 7pm for an Open Evening at the proposed site of Glasgow Night Shelter's new premises.

          The address is 24a Fairley Street Ibrox G51 2SN both the Ibrox and Cessnock subway stations are close by. It's also close to the bus stops on Paisley Road West. Please feel free to let anyone else you think may be interested know.
         You'll be able to look at our proposed plans and drawings of how we plan to convert the buildings, what facilities we'll be installing as well as what work is required and how you can get involved!
        It's even possible that some snacks and refreshments might also be available.
        Please let me know if you'd like to attend. We don't have any power in the building yet so please wrap up warm!
All the best
Phill Jones
GNS
07929852264
         Glasgow Night Shelter for Destitute Asylum Seekers* Scottish charity number 047169 providing somewhere safe and warm to stay overnight for people who because of their immigration status cannot access normal homeless services
*Run by volunteers 365 nights a year
Support our Hardship Fund Appeal - make a donation now! https://mydonate.bt.com/events/hardshipfund

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Cosy Relationships Between Repressive States.

              It is obvious that the repressive Germany government is in a cosy relationship with the war mongering Turkish dictator Erdogan, as he sends his blood machine in to crush the Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria. Turkey buys lots of weapons from Germany and the German state, like any other, can't let the blood of innocents interfere with the arms trade. Besides, Afrin, Rojava, Kobani are not the sort of ideas that the Germany state, or any other for that matter, would want to see expand. So pro-freedom demonstrations in favour of Afrin, and criticising the Turkish invasion will not be tolerated.

 Cops confiscated YPJ and YPG flags in Dortmund, Germany, Feb 3.

This from Enough is Enough:

          I arrived in Dortmund at 02:00pm and the first thing I saw were cops… everywhere. The gathering in solidarity with Afrin was completely surrounded by cops. After the authoritarian German police showed it’s face in Cologne last week, this time the cops decided to ban the march from the beginning. Only a stationary gathering was allowed.
       Cops also confiscated YPJ and YPG flags during a demo in Hamburg today and removed a banner and YPH and YPG flags from the Rote Flora earlier this week. The list is getting longer and longer. The German state exported many arms to Turkey and many of the tanks that are killing people in Rojava are therefore made in Germany. This seems to make the German government nervous (Apart from the growing tension between Turkish fascists and leftwing kurds and Turkish people that are living in Germany.)
       Many speakers on the gathering denounced the ban by police authorities of the march in Dortmund today. Where the cops don’t have a problem to clear German streets for German fascists, they stop or ban demonstrations in solidarity with Rojava because of a couple flags from the only groups that were effective against ISIS. Last week in Cologne the demo was stopped because of Öcalan flags, YPJ and YPG flags were allowed. This week the cops started to confiscate these flags as well. Where is this going to end? It was shocking that there were not many people from the autonomous movement last week. But today their numbers were even less. In Dortmund you could count them, there were maby 25 people from the anti-authoritarian autonomous movement among the 1500 people today.
        Repression is growing and the war against the revolutionary project in Rojava is a war against us all. Against our ideas and philosophy. While we take the streets against German nazis (which is good), it doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people that Turkish fascists are attacking people who take the streets in solidarity with Rojava. Today the cops kettled Turkish fascists who were on their way to the Afrin gathering in Dortmund.
         When the gathering ended a Turkish fascist waved with a Turkish flag, the cops sended him away but not after he got punched by an activist who was immediately arrested (Video above). This provocation by a fascist had no other consequences. No arrest, nothing. When the authoritarian police state is opressing activists who take the streets in solidarity with Rojava and doesn’t arrest fascists who want to attack them, we need to stand up, all!
         We always chant “no borders, no nations” but Rojava seems to be far away. We also shout: “An attack against one of us, is an attack against all!” Its about time that we start to live it. Join the resistance against the German export of German arms and take the streets for the anarchist and autonomous idea.

Defend Afrin!

War starts here!

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Imperialism's New Debt Colonies.

       What is the difference between a bag full of money and a gunboat? None, they are both weapons of imperialism. Capitalism shapes itself according to its needs, the gunboat was replaced by the more subtle bag of money, but when that fails it has no hesitation in going back to the gunboat. Though nowadays the gunboat is much larger and more powerful, as the Middle East has found out in recent times. Modern capitalism still uses blood, death and destruction to further its ends, but in recent years it has swung behind the bag of money model to dominate and subjugate nations, Greece obviously springs to mind as a country beaten into submission by the bag of money, in the form of debt.

        

           This is an excerpt published by ROAR Magazine from Jerome Roos’ essay, “The New Debt Colonies”, well worth a read, Marxist or not.

          Today we are witnessing the resurgence of an old phenomenon: the debt colony. A decade after the collapse the U.S. housing bubble and the onset of the worst capitalist crisis in living memory, governments around the world continue to bear the burden of historically unprecedented public debt loads. In some cases, most spectacularly in the peripheral countries of the Eurozone but also in a number of emerging markets, these mounting financial obligations have led to crippling sovereign debt crises – which have in turn impelled the dominant creditor powers to intervene aggressively on foreign bondholders’ behalf, imposing highly intrusive regimes of international financial supervision on distressed borrowers in order to ensure continued debt servicing. The fiscal autonomy of Greece and Puerto Rico, in particular, has now been abolished in all but name, although similar processes have long been afoot elsewhere as well.

        This contemporary experience in turn carries strong historical echoes. A century and a half ago, Karl Marx already observed how the emergence of the national debt in early-modern Europe constituted one of the “most powerful levers of primitive accumulation,” leading to the “alienation of the state” by private financiers and “giving rise to stock exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.” These dynamics intensified during the Age of Imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the export of European and U.S. capital to the newly independent countries of Latin America and the Mediterranean added an international dimension to this long-standing process of dispossession through debt. During this period, the dominant creditor powers regularly subjected distressed sovereign borrowers to external financial control – often under force of arms. The British invasion of Egypt in 1882, the German push to establish an International Financial Commission in Greece in 1898, and the appearance of European gunboats on the Venezuelan coast in 1902 are but some of the most prominent cases in point.

       Today, such long-standing processes of financial subjugation continue in a new form – through what has euphemistically come to be known as “international crisis management.” Ever since the Mexican debt crisis of 1982, banks and bondholders in the wealthy creditor countries have increasingly come to rely on their own governments and international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank to impose painful structural adjustment programs on crisis-stricken debtor countries in the developing world. Over the course of two decades, international creditors – private and official alike – went on to plunder the immense wealth of the Global South, from Argentina to Zaire, aggressively opening up local economies to foreign capital and restructuring them in line with the neoliberal prerogatives of the Washington Consensus. The result has been a vast flow of capital “upstream,” from public hands in the global periphery to private hands in the advanced capitalist core, with developing countries transferring an estimated $4.2 trillion in interest payments to their creditors in Europe and North America since 1982, far outstripping the official-sector development aid these countries received during the same period.¹

           In the wake of the global financial crisis, these same methods have now come to be applied on a massive scale in the capitalist heartland itself. The result has not just been a new wave of “accumulation by dispossession,” but in some cases also the effective abolition of national sovereignty. When Greece’s fledgling Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was forced into a humiliating capitulation to his European creditors in the summer of 2015, for instance, an anonymous diplomat from a Germany-allied country candidly described the terms of surrender as “akin to turning Greece into an economic protectorate.”² In his memoirs of his brief tenure as finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis repeatedly denounces the creditors’ financial intimidation tactics as an example of “latter-day gunboat diplomacy.” When Poland’s foreign minister was asked for the reason behind his country’s refusal to join the euro, all he had to do was point south: “Greece is de facto a colony,” he explained, “We don’t want to repeat this scenario.”

        These ongoing developments raise a number of important questions about the relationship between contemporary patterns in international crisis management and Europe and America’s long-standing history of financial imperialism. How different is our contemporary era really from the “era of gunboat diplomacy” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the dominant creditor powers also regularly intervened in the debtors’ sovereign affairs to defend bondholder interests? What are the continuities and discontinuities between the two periods? And can the hotly debated and polemical notion of imperialism still serve as a useful analytical tool to help us make sense of the current conjuncture? If so, how far can the classical Marxist theories of the phenomenon take us in elucidating the asymmetric power relations at the heart of the contemporary global political economy – and what, if anything, can be done to revamp existing theoretical frameworks to better reflect the enduring relevance of imperialism in our time?

           In what follows, I will argue that imperialism clearly remains an important factor in the early 21st century – even if the original Marxist accounts require extensive revision in light of the recent transformations of global capitalism. The lasting contribution of the classical theorists was to anchor their critiques of imperialism within a broader critique of political economy, highlighting the central role of finance in driving imperialist relations of domination. This, I argue, should remain the starting point for any contemporary analysis of imperialism. At the same time, however, the classical theories also suffered from a number of important limitations. Most consequentially, perhaps, they tended to emphasize the more overt manifestations of imperialist power (territorial conquest and military intervention) at the expense of its more subtle, structural dynamics (operating through the global financial system), which ended up blinding them to some of the underlying dependencies that later kept the asymmetric power relations between debtors and creditors in place even in the absence of territorial conquest or military intervention.

Read the full article HERE:

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The Syrian Revolution.

 

        Syria is just one quagmire in the swamp of raw brutal capitalism, the blood soak tentacles of capitalism are exposed for all to see in the area known as the Middle East. Countless thousands of innocent people maimed and killed, millions displaced, villages, towns and cities, destroyed beyond recognition, all under the guise of "bring democracy to the people". War is just one strategy for prolonging the life of capitalism, calling for the end to war will only be successful when we act together in solidarity to destroy its root cause, capitalism. Peace and capitalism are incompatible, without its ability to crush and plunder with impunity, capitalism dies.

       The 2016 publication by anarchists in Koridallos Prison, on the Syrian Revolution is well worth a read, and is available in PDF form to download free from Act For Freedom Now:

 

 

SYRIAN REVOLUTION :
ANARCHIST INITIATIVE FROM KORIDALLOS PRISON

         As events as such write the modern world history, all revolutionary movements need to process the information available, discuss and come to conclusions and eventually choose sides and fight without failing to take the context of this historical reality into account.

         The text on hand does not set out to provide an exhaustive historical narrative. Yet, it does set out to open a discussion that will look into all the critical issues raised. Also, our aim is to turn our ideas into action, thus we choose to go against the widespread inertia that surrounds the subject matter.
         A historical period as such requires much more than a mere theoretical analysis. As the hotbed of war keeps spreading and is now reaching Europe, it is urgent that we create an anti-war movement which will fight for and demand an end to the international military interventions, put forward ideas on horizontal self-organization, empower the oppressed and ultimately stand up against the rise of totalitarianism.
           We know well that we can achieve nothing and nothing will be spared for us unless we fight at all levels and to all directions in order to intensify and expand our horizontal, grass-roots self- organization.
For the war against state and capitalism.
Korudallos prison, November 2016

Download the PDF free HERE:

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The State IS The Terrorist.

        In this Alice in Wonderland world, in the eyes of the state, those who fight the injustice and repression, are classified as terrorist, the fact is, the state is the terrorist. Its so called freedom is a prison fenced by total surveillance, guarded by armed militarised police, and managed by a loaded judicial system, all to protect the privileges, wealth and power of those who control the capitalist juggernaut. The freedom the state offers you is an illusion, a world of smoke and mirrors, of lies and deception, an empty life of submission to the will of capital, what resistance to this mirage offers you, is freedom and justice.

       This video was made one month after the disappearance of Santiago Maldonado in the hands of Gendarmerie. The lifeless body of Santiago was "found" on October 17 -78 days after his disappearance-in the Chubut River 300 meters upstream from the place where he was seen captured by Gendarmerie, and in an area that had been raked in different occasions by those who carried out their search. Facundo Jones Huala is still detained awaiting trial for extradition to Chile. The persecution and repression of Mapuche communities in resistance continue to grow, while in the region dominated by the Chilean state the political prisoners reach thirty. On November 25, 2017, in the territorial recovery of the Lafken Winkul Mapu community, in the vicinity of Villa Mascardi, Río Negro, Rafael Nahuel was shot dead in the back in an attempt to evict by the Argentine Naval Prefecture. Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel live in the struggle! Freedom to Facundo Jones Huala! Terrorist is the State!

 The Rebel

Rebel rebel break the rule,

What does it matter that a “wise” man sees a fool.

Not for you the herd’s dull beat

Making tomorrow, yesterday’s repeat,

Living out the life of a clone

Marching with the crowd but always alone.

Shaping your life from some dusty tome

Playing it safe, staying at home.

Rebel rebel break the rule

Swim in the sea, never the pool.

Live your emotions, feel the surge

Follow your dreams, chase the urge.

Make life though short, an exciting game

Not a mad march for fortune or fame.

Capture the moment, live it now

Being alive your only vow.

Rebel rebel break the rule

In the end, you’re humanity’s jewel.

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

If The State Is Alive, So Is Slavery.

         A rose by any other name smells as sweet, likewise, slavery by any other name stinks as rotten. Modern states while falsely flying banner of "democracy" have no qualms about useing, authorizing and condoning slavery. One form goes by the name of the prison service. Those confined withing the state's cages of repression are obliged to carry out work for no or practical no financial gain to themselves. In the UK and USA, thousands of prisoners are employed in doing work for commercial corporations and military institutions and get nothing or a financial pittance, under the threat of repercussions if they refuse or are deemed not to working hard enough. Apart from this being blatant state sanctioned slavery, it also soaks up jobs that would have to done by those on the outside who companies would be obliged to pay a legal wage, saving the corporate juggernaut a fortune.

       Of course the UK and USA are not alone in this state created slavery department, it is practically par for the course across the planet. Where we have a state, we have slavery, in one form or another.

 This from Contra Info:

         If there’s somebody forced to work for somebody else under the threat of violence, it’s something that we usually call enslavement or exploitation. However, if Czech police and courts use this practice, they call it differently: preparation of the convicted for their jobs and helping the state. There’s no point in arguing about appropriate words, where it’s obvious that the state institutions are committing organized crime on the prisoners. The point is to make these crimes stop.
         To make clear what crimes I’m talking about, I’ll first give the word to the officials of Všehrdy prison. On the prison website they write:
         With the end of the year approaching, we would like to inform our fellow citizens about the fact, that the prisoners from Všehrdy prison have participated in recovery of the property of different state and municipal institutions in our region during the whole year completely free of charge, in the form of the so-called extramural working activities. …(…)… They, for example, painted the administrative building of shooting range for the Police of Czech Republic, fixed the terrain around the shooting range, removed the invasive trees, repaired and built new target equipment and pruned trees around the driveway. They facilitated moving of the police school and moving and assembling the furniture for the Police of Teplice. And, like in the last year, they painted the area of the District court in Chomutov and moved the furniture.
       They taught us in school that slavery was abolished. However, when we look at the conditions of imprisoned people, we can see that slavery only changed its face. The prisoners from Všehrdy may not be a trading commodity like the slaves in the past. But they are still subjected to violent enslavement. They are forced to work hard without any claims for wage and somebody else profits from their work. They are punished if they refuse to work in that conditions. And they are also held behind the walls in iron chains by their slavers. And their enslavement is also hypocritically advocated by talking about that they offended the morals of Christian civilization by their living, and so it’s right to treat them this way.
       Everybody who is not blind must clearly see, that resistance against slave practices must not stop, until all prisons and institutions, which have their interest in preserving them, are abolished. Lukáš Borl
lukasborl.noblogs

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Learning To Resist.

         On this, the 50th anniversary of the global uprisings of 1968, subMedia pays homage to the insurgent youth who helped kick things off a half-century ago by taking a look at some contemporary student-led movements that are still tearing things up around the world. In this month’s episode of Trouble, the first of a two-part series on radical student movements, sub.Media talks to a number of current and former student organizers from so-called Puerto Rico, Quebec and Chile as they share their experiences from the high-points of past struggles and provide hard-fought lessons that can help prepare a new generation for the battles to come.

Originally published by Submedia:

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On The Streets Of 2017 America.

        Just released, a video of some of the 2017 street events by anarchists in America. By reading that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, you would get the impression that none of this took place, but all these events could muster  reasonable numbers, a welcome sight.

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Imperialists Trying To Extinguish The Flame Of Freedom.

        The region of the Middle East seems doomed to be the battle ground of the world's imperialists as the carve up the region and crush any attempt by the people to foster freedom and democracy. This latest imperialist plundering adventure by Turkish dictator, Erdogan is nothing less than a savage attack on people trying to create a society freed from the capitalist authoritarian system, our imperialist masters will not tolerate areas where people act and think for themselves in the interests of all.

       The following is an extract from an article by Dilar Dirik, from Roar Magazine, calling for active support for the people of the region around Afrin, a call to come together and stop this imperialist slaughter of the ideals of freedom and justice for all.

         As I write, the Turkish army is engaged in an illegal cross-border invasion of the Syrian-Kurdish region of Afrin. Claiming to fight “terrorists,” the Turkish state — an EU candidate, ally of the West and second-largest NATO army — launched an act of aggression against the same people who earned the world’s respect for defeating ISIS with their courageous sacrifices and historic resistance. The military campaign includes pro-Erdogan Free Syrian Army (FSA) troops and poses a threat to 800,000 civilians, half of whom are internally displaced people who sought refuge in Afrin from regions like Idlib and Aleppo.
       The targeting of Afrin exposes every letter in the ABC of imperialism. The attack could not have been launched without the approval of Russia, which controls the airspace over Afrin, as well as the consent of Iran and Assad. According to officials in Afrin, Russia proposed to protect Afrin in return for handing over control to the Assad regime. But as the offer was rejected, Russia gave green light to Turkey’s invasion.
      The United States, meanwhile, which conveniently used the Kurds as “reliable boots on the ground” in Syria for the last years in the international anti-ISIS coalition, stays quiet over their NATO ally’s ambitions to sacrifice the heroes of the ISIS war, merely warning Turkey to “avoid civilian casualties.” European governments, especially Germany, have their own stakes in the game, as mostly European weapons and tanks are used by the Turkish army; weapons in the hands of fascists, which drive millions of people to leave their homes and risk death to become refugees in Europe.
       Seven years into the war, Syria is destroyed; ISIS came, killed and left; genocide and massacres have been committed; the region’s demography and ecology have changed; Assad seems to be here to stay. The legitimate demands of all Syrians who took to the streets and risked their lives to call for dignity, freedom and justice against the Assad regime have been betrayed bitterly. Meanwhile, the powerful state actors in the region and beyond seem to have come full circle, as more than half a million people died and around 6 million have been displaced. Activists speak of the Third World War taking place in this region.
        It is within this context that Turkey launches its war on Afrin, far exceeding the historical hostility of the Turkish state towards the Kurdish people. The battle symbolizes the two options that the peoples and communities of the Middle East face today: between militarist, patriarchal, fascist dictatorships on the one hand, controlled by foreign imperialist interests and capital, or the solidarity between autonomous, self-determined, free and equal communities on the other. The defense of Afrin is an opportunity for the left to unite against fascism and mobilize against militarism, occupation and war.

What is at stake

        Within the context of the war on ISIS, the same states that are known to have fueled jihadist forces inside Syria — especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — became part of a coalition led by the same powers which invaded the Middle East for imperial interests, committed war crimes in the name of “fighting terrorism,” and thus established the ground on which ISIS would eventually flourish. The forces that represent systems of capitalism, authoritarian statism, religious fundamentalism and in some cases pure fascism, were put in charge of establishing democracy and peace.
       Meanwhile, as ISIS captured the attention of the international community, the initial issue of Assad’s dictatorial and bloodthirsty rule was side-lined, as were any notions of a lasting and just peace for Syria. With the entrance of Russia on the Syrian war scene and the role of Iran, the false binary of Sunni-Shiite animosity — a commonly used trope to disable just solutions in the Middle East — was reinforced. Regardless of all the conflicting interests of the involved powers, their common practice was the suppression of meaningful dissent, grassroots resistance and projects for genuine democratic alternatives. On the ground, this led to the mobilization of fascist and sectarian ideologies for which people were willing to die and kill.
      By default, any attempts at popular self-determination and self-defense against colonialism and capitalist exploitation would need to be annihilated for this concept to work. That explains all the hostility campaigns towards the liberationist Rojava revolution, including the attempts of big powers such as the US to use Rojava militarily and try to empty its politics of its revolutionary principles. Taking advantage of the contradictions emerging within the imperialist power games, the Kurds, trying to stay true to revolutionary ideals while being literally surrounded by fire and in temporary tactical alliances with some actors, have constantly been accused of being puppets of imperialism in their attempt to establish radical democratic systems of self-governance, while defending millions of lives from certain death by ISIS fascists.
      Sadly, the sectarian and dogmatic sections of the international left were unable to read these emancipatory politics and act accordingly, allowing imperialism to go ahead by refusing to extend vital solidarity to the Kurds when it was most needed. There is still time to correct this mistake.

Continue reading: 

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Naughty Words And Daft Opinions.

 

         To some it might seem a trivial affair, someone puts a poster up in their window, the state's minders the police, run in and demand they take it down, the individual refuses and is arrested and a date set for their court appearance. The offending poster stated, "FUCK OFF YOU TORY CUNTS" However this is far from trivial, but typical of the state of repression that exists in this country. Any excuse to glean information, intimidate and subdue the people from freely expressing their political view will be seized upon and the full force of the biased judicial system will enmesh the individual. Glasgow has recently had this denial of freedom of expression foisted on an individual, and the case is still on going. Perhaps all those Class War supporters should display this poster in their windows, and see the country festooned with the offending words, which are really an expression from the heart of a lot of people across the UK.

       To some people some words may be offensive, but that is all they are, just words, they are just an expression of an opinion, nobody gets hurt. I was born  in the Glasgow slum of Gangad, my father was a miner all his working life, I started my working life in the Clyde shipyards. The language was, to say the least, varied and colourful, but over time the political correct have tried to cleanse our language of a range of words, they deem offensive. My advice to them is to Fuck Off and leave us alone.  

       This from Freedom News:

         Last year during the national elections campaign, Class War Scotland member David McHarg was arrested twice because of a poster that was displayed on his window. The poster read: “Fuck off you Tory cunts”.
         The first time the police had visited David McHarg in May 2017. Upon David’s absence, the cops demanded that his wife remove the offending poster. She refused, explaining that the poster is her husband’s property and it is not for her to decide what to do with it. The polce conducted two more visits at David’s, during which he refused to remove the sign, or to give any personal details. Eventually David was arrested for ’threatening or abusive behaviour’ under Section 38, The Criminal Justice and Licencing (Scotland) Act 2012 and for ‘failure to give details as a witness’ under the Court Section 13–14, The Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. However, initially David wasn’t even charged: instead, he was taken to the police station, where he was made to wait for 9 hours, and was subjected to anal cavity search.
         David is a member of Class War Scotland. He says that ‘It was done to humiliate me, because they were obviously aware of my political standing which is anarchist’.
         David’s trial took place mid- January at Glasgow Sheriff Court and the case has been adjourned till June. If David is found guilty, he plans to seek the help of Amnesty International and to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
         David McHarg is invoking his Article 10 right to ‘freedom of expression’ under the Human Rights Act 1998. Article 10 protects the right to hold ones own opinions and to express them freely ‘without government interference’ This includes the right to express your views in public (for example through public protest and demonstrations) or through published articles, books, leaflets, television or radio broadcasting works of art, and the internet and social media.
          It isn’t the first time the cops interfere with Article 10. Another similar case occurred in 2010 during the Parliamentary Elections, when officers invaded David Hoffman’s home in East London and insisted on the removal of a poster displayed on his front window showing the face of David Cameron with the word “WANKER” printed underneath. The civil case took place in the High Court. David Hoffman claimed that this treatment amounted to an unlawful interference with his Article 10 right to ‘freedom of expression’ under the Human Rights Act 1998. The Metropolitan Police accepted Hoffman’s claim and provided him a letter of apology.
       According to NETPOL (The Network for Police Monitoring), “Powers given to the police to deal with anti-social behaviour are increasingly being used to gather information on participants in political protest.” In the same article it is also stated that over the years the police have misconstrued a wide variety of protest activity, including demonstrations, handing out leaflets and sit-down protests, as ‘anti-social behaviour’. This operation is constantly used to obtain the names and addresses of those taking part, and David McHarg is yet another victim of such policy.

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Trees Or Tarmac And The Power Of Resistance.

 

        The only way to stop the capitalist system from turning the planet into a tarmac ball is to resit it at every turn. When money is the driving force all other values sink into the swamp of greed, If tarmac and concrete can create more wealth and power for those who already control most of the wealth on the planet, then that is what you will get, more treeless landscapes, more high-rise real estate. Their greed sustains them, and they are blinded by their own illusions of greatness, they fail to see that they are the creators of their own destruction, as well as that of humanity.

      It might seem a daunting task to stop the capitalist juggernaut of greed, but resistance is growing, along with determination. More and more people see the looming disaster, the glaring inequality, the savage injustice of the system, and are venting their anger and joining in the that resistance. We can all play our part, by joining and/or supporting the resistance wherever it appears, or creating our own pressure point on the system. 

      An on going struggle of resistance that is coming under ever increasing pressure is the struggle to save the Hambach forest. The brutish forces of the state are increasing their attempts at eviction, they can only be defeated by solidarity and increased support for the resistance.

   This call for support from Contra Info:

9 activists in pre-trial detention, after being arrested during a barricade-eviction in the occupied Hambach Forest, Germany.
        The activists are accused of ‘obstructing the work of police officers’, during the barricade eviction on Monday the 22. of January.

Arriving early in the morning, the cops were met with activists occupying blockading-infrastructure, including 2 tripods, 3 monopods, a skypod, and a 3 meter deep tunnel.

         The cutting of the Hambacher Forest was officially stopped early this season, on a court-decision, postponing cutting until October 1st 2018, however the risk of eviction of the occupation is as great as ever.

        The ‘Hambi 9’ would love to get mail! Exact information, including adresses and languages, can be found on the blog of ABC Rhineland.

 More photos HERE

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Claimants And Two Way Mirrors.

        Still on the insidious subject of state surveillance of the population, the more you dig the more reprehensible the state's actions become. What is more, we pay for all this surveillance on our movements with taxpayers money, all this surveillance pours tax payers money into the pockets of private companies, who no doubt will use the information for their own commercial ends.

        The following extract shows another devious low and duplicitous aspect of the state's desire to manufacture compliance and subservience, with this particular form being targeted at vulnerable claimants. When you troll the cesspit of state surveillance you find it has no end to its depth of depravity, it is a bottomless pit of duplicity aimed at control of the population.

Politics an Insights, by Kitty Jones: 

Two Way Mirrors.

         I regularly write to raise concerns about the current government’s misuse of psychology in public policies and research. There has been a shift towards the formulation of targeted, prejudiced, class contingent policies which have the central aim of “changing behaviours”  and enforcing “compliance” and conformity. This behaviourist approach has some profound implications for democracy. It constrains autonomy and curtails the basic liberties of targeted citizens, whilst excluding them from any political consideration of their human rights. 
      On the government website, a contract finder notice for the “Provision of Research Laboratory Facilities” for the Department for Work and Pensions says:
        “The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) requires research to be undertaken, in a research laboratory environment, with recipients of the Carers Allowance and recipients of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
In a typical lab situation DWP shall have one DWP researcher in a room with the participant and other DWP researchers (if appropriate) and invited observers behind a two way mirror evaluating what is happening. As well as viewing the interview they can also see the activity on the web screen via monitors in their room.
The proceedings are currently recorded on MP4 for subsequent use when research findings are being reported. The participants cannot see the people in the viewing facility though they know they are there. There needs to be flexibility to be able to undertake the research in the North West and Leeds and be able to recruit for participants to attend a Government Lab set up at Aviation House in London WC2B 6NH.” 
       Northern Voices T/A The Talking Shop is a Manchester based market research and public opinion polling company that has been awarded the contract in June this year. This company will be paid up to £60,000 for experimenting on sick and disabled claimants, using covert observation from behind a two-way mirror, studying eye movements, facial expressions and body language. 
       Eye movement measurements are frequently used, though controversially, in criminal psychology, too, as a somewhat unreliable method of “lie detection.” Questions arise regarding precisely how eye movements, perception and cognition are related, and to date, this question hasn’t been answered by academics. 
           It struck me that the experimental set up is very reminiscent of the social psychology experiments conducted in the 60s and early 70s to study social conformity and obedience to authority. However, the welfare “reforms” were specifically designed to coerce people claiming welfare into conformity – “to do the ‘right thing'”-  and compliance with a harsh “conditionality” regime and ever-shrinking eligibility criteria. It’s hardly a secret that the New Right Conservatives and neoliberals have always loathed the welfare state, and along with the other social gains of our post-war settlement, it is being systematically dismantled.
          The wider context is significant, both in terms of its impact on individual citizen’s experiences and behaviours, and on the way that theory is formulated to conflate  and align citizen’s needs with neoliberal outcomes, and this is also reflected in how research is being designed and used.

Continue Reading: 

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Imperialism Is Imperialism,Is Imperialism.

 

         The Turkish state under the grip of dictator Erdogan is doing what all dictators and  imperialists do, attempting to build his strength at home by conjuring up the "enemy" across the border. He also, like all his breed, craves expansion of his power and territory, and blood will flow to fulfill his messianic dream. He is just another slither of the capitalist imperialist cancer that is soaking our planet in the blood of ordinary people.

        Two extracts from articles at opposite ends of the political spectrum, Insurrection News and The Washington Post. Both are a call for solidarity.

          First from Insurrection News:

            The Erdoganist army and its barbarian allies (namely the Turkish backed Free Syrian Army /TFSA & the so-called Syrian National Army /SNA) invaded 4 outer villages and 4 defensive points in the Afrin region. They are moving really very slow. They have air power and more superior weapons than us but our defense line fuck Erdoganists and their Syrian terrorists’ moral. Erdogan’s fighter jets are bombing blank points. His special operations units are fearful of moving into the Afrin city center. Our last stand defense line can survive at least 4 months. Yes unfortunately, without international support, Erdoganists can invade Afrin. But it will be a great chaos for them. Erdoganist army will be sad!
        Comrades, we need your help more than everything. Its a life or death situation. This invasion isnt only about Afrin nor Rojava/Assyria/N. Syria but Erdogan wants to invade also the whole border territory, including Iraq’s Ezidistan (Zoroaster Kurdish lands /Sinjar), Ninewah (Iraqi Assyria), Turkmeneli (Iraqi Shia Turkomans) and Iraqi Kurdistan’s Qandil mountains area (PKK’s HQ and dissidents and opressed people’s refugee villages and camps). Its clearly IMPERIALISM and he wants to destroy everything and massacre every people he just hate.
          Another important thing is Turkish and Bakur (Turkish Kurdistan) Kurdish comrades situation. Before the invasion, Erdogan first invaded Turkish Kurdistan and Eastern Turkey to eliminate PKK and her Turkish Marxists allies. Not only guerrillas but also autonomous municipalities were invaded. Erdogan and his fake opposition (Kemalists and Nationalists) are all fascists, they even arrested members of parliament from HDP (pro-Kurdish and Turkish Marxist alliance, 3rd biggest party in parliament). Our comrades in Turkey and Turkish Kurdistan are in HELL.

Read the full article HERE:
                This from a source that I don't often quote, as I see them as part of that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, but sometimes we can glean some information from their usual biased propaganda.

        From The Washington Post:  (April 28th. 2017) 

 

          On Tuesday, Turkey bombed the headquarters of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, killing 20 of our soldiers. Immediately after the strike, the leaders of our forces — known as the People’s Protection Groups, or YPG — rushed from their operations center near Raqqa, where they’ve been working with the U.S. military to push the Islamic State out of its Syrian stronghold, to view the site of the attack. The American colonel and other officers who accompanied the YPG leaders were met by tens of thousands of protesters, including the mothers of soldiers who have died fighting the Islamic State. They asked the Americans a simple question: “How is it possible that our soldiers are fighting with you against ISIS while your ally Turkey is attacking us here?”
         This is not the first time that Turkey has attacked us. Turkish planes and artillery have been bombing northern Syria for more than a year, and Turkish forces invaded the country last year. In each case, the Turks have acted under false pretenses. They claim to have invaded Syria to fight terrorism, and yet the groups they support on the ground (Ahrar Al Sham and Nour Eddin Al Zanki) share the same jihadist ideology that the United States has been fighting since 9/11.
         The Turks said they bombed our headquarters because they claimed our territory is being used to launch attacks against Turkey, but those accusations are unfounded. Let me be as clear as can be: We have never used northern Syria to launch any attack against Turkey. If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn’t trust us when we say this, fine. But why can’t he trust the U.S. personnel in our area who assure him of the same?
        Erdogan justifies these illegal attacks with the same baseless claim: that the YPG is the same as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is currently fighting the government inside Turkey. This claim is based on the fact that we share a founder and many intellectual values with the PKK — but this is equally true of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a legal political party in Turkey with 58 members in the Turkish parliament. They are no more PKK than we are, and any attempt to equate us with the PKK is disingenuous.
       Erdogan knows this. He knows that our political and military leadership is completely separate from that of the PKK. He knows that any attempt to combine YPG with PKK would run contrary to our core value of decentralization of power. He knows we are not using northern Syria to launch attacks on Turkey. He knows all this. He just doesn’t care. Erdogan is trying to force the United States to choose between us and Turkey. We don’t think such a choice is necessary, but it is worth considering what that choice entails. We, the Democratic Council of Syria, are an alliance of progressive, democratic parties that govern the Northern Syria Federation. Though we are besieged from all sides (by the Islamic State, the Assad regime and Erdogan’s Turkey), our region is more stable than any other part of the country. So much so, in fact, that in addition to our population of 3 million, we have taken in an additional 500,000 refugees (Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, Armenians and Yazidis) from across Syria.

Read the full article HERE:

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