Callous, Cruel, Capitalism,

       An all too common aspect of capitalism is its continuing gentrification of our town and city centres, and the commercialisation of all open spaces within the towns and cities. This is not peculiar to any one country, it is the global design being forced on the ordinary people. The result being the eviction of those who can't afford to stay in the new up-market, tourist orientated commercial centres. They are horded out to the periphery, usually in large depressing housing estates, where they are left to see their surroundings deteriorate because of austerity and endemic poverty.

       Within the glossy town and city centres there is homelessness and rough sleeping, while property lies empty waiting for the lucrative offer that fits into their glitzy commercial plan, and makes its owners much richer. Any humane attempt to bring the homeless and empty property together, will be met with the full force of the state's minders, the police. People are away down the ladder of concern when compared with profit. This is the only way capitalism can functioning, amassing wealth for the few at the expense of the many, and it will defend this aspect of its purpose with lies, propaganda and brute force.

     However, across the globe people are resisting this frontal attack orchestrated by the commercial/financial Mafia aided and abetted by the state. 

This from Enough is Enough:

     Berlin, German territory: Today (April 6, Enough 14), after the #Mietenwahnsinn (rent madness) -demonstration, the empty Bizim Bakkal shop was squatted, which had been empty for 4 years. Berlin police evacuated without a valid eviction title, without contact to the owner and using massive force against activists, journalists and parliamentary observers.
Originally published by Besetzen. Edited machine translation by Enough 14. Imahe above byZecko Twitter account.
       Last year, we occupied several houses, apartments and shops, all of which were evicted by the Senate and the Berlin police except one apartment in Großbeerenstraße. We see ourselves as part of a movement that is defending itself against Berlin increasingly developing into a city for the rich. A city in which social participation and place of residence depend on income and in which every square centimetre is used. The city is losing its open spaces, and Berlin’s neighborhoods are increasingly shaped by tourism, consumption and property speculation. Despite many promises regarding housing policy, the Senate is only watching or even actively helping in this process of displacement.

pic.twitter.com/CpyWgnuwKW— andi.waffen (@lamda14) 6. April 2019

      Today, 40,000 people took to the streets in a demonstration against rent madness and displacement. How have the demands, which were also supported by parts of the Berlin Senate, been put into practice and how have we begun to get our neighbourhood back? Many demonstrators joined this project on the spot in Wrangelstraße.
      This made it all the more dramatic how the Senate dealt with such practical forms of action. After the police were first prevented from entering by demonstrators present, the police violently cleared blockades in front of the shop and smashed the door of Wrangelstr. 77. The people in the shop, as well as the demonstrators in front, were arrested and many activists and solidary neighbours present were injured by batons and pepper spray. Members of the House of Representatives as well as members of the Bundestag and journalists were also violently prevented from exercising their right of observation by the police. Senator of the Interior Andreas Geisel was informed about the police operation and is politically responsible for it.

pic.twitter.com/MRZf8GPNP8— andi.waffen (@lamda14) 6. April 2019
        Press spokeswoman Alisia Ney: “Today’s eviction without an eviction title is a new stage of escalation and shows that the state is not even abiding by its own rules. Yet every eviction, whether with an eviction title or without injustice, remains in a city where people live on the street while houses are empty.”
      Press spokeswoman Jona Sommer: “Since taking office, the red-red-green Senate has been claiming “The city belongs to you!” Obviously, it belongs to investors and the Berlin police. Either Senator Geisel does not have his riot squads under control or the SPD is now solving its internal government crisis by police. In Wrangelstraße 77 it became clear that a majority of the population supports our concern to set up a non-commercial neighbourhood centre in the shop which has been empty for years. ”
        Both conclude: “We will not let an arbitrary and insane police force, like fickle politicians, stop us from occupying more empty spaces and taking back the city actively and directly. We will continue to occupy until we no longer have to.”  

Besetzen, Berlin, April 6, 2019.

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Sadly We Have Still Not Joined The Dots.

       Over the years I spout something and think it is relatively obvious, and somehow I expect others also see it and change will come. Sadly if there is any change it is microscopic and unbelievably slow. Because of the many many years I have lived, to me, it seem the change is actually non-existent. The blood still flows, the mass shootings continue, the wars recur or are continuous, poverty increases, deprivation runs rampant and still the system continues to amass unimaginable wealth in the hands of the few, the few responsible for all the ills that plague this planet.

      To make my point I will repeat an article I wrote back in 1914, called "Can We Join The Dots", however I accept that so far we have failed to Join The Dots.

          We all know capitalism produces wars between countries, and has done so more or less, since the system crawled out of the slime to infest the globe. What most people don't seem to recognise, is, it also causes wars within countries, wars between the ruling elite and the ordinary people. As capitalism is global it is difficult to find a country where the people are not in open conflict with the powers that be. The Ferguson riots in America, though classed as racial, racism is an aspect of capitalism. Mexico, the recent disappearance of 43 students and teachers and the ongoing violent protests, is the capitalist state attempting to crush any resistance to its exploitation. Recently we have seen over 100 protests across Ireland against watercharges, as capitalism tries to squeeze more profit from the ordinary people. In Brussels, there have been violent clashes as more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets against that common aspect of capitalism, “austerity”. In London we have just had more than a thousand masked anti-capitalist protesters take to the city centre. Protests took place in towns and cities across the Republic, including Letterkenny in County Donegal
       It would be extremely difficult to find a country where the people are not at odds with the system, across the globe unrest, anger and disgust are the feelings of the people, all have a growing hatred of a system that ties them to poverty, while they produce an abundance of wealth, that invariably ends up in the hands of a small greed driven bunch of parasites. With so much anger and unrest, it seems strange that the system is still managing to bleed us dry, perhaps we just have to join the dots between these world wide protests and we will see the system collapse.

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Humans With No Basic Rights.

 

        Thousands of migrants are trapped in Greece because of the EU's policy. What the Greek state will do with this ever growing army of desperate people is the question that the state is not prepared to answer. The policy of treating them like cattle and hording them in camps will continue until something explodes and forces a change. These are human beings, old, young, infirm and ill, but once the label of migrant is attached to them, in the eyes of the state, they become other than human, and are treated in a brutal, savage and inhumane manner by the state. Once the state applies this label of migrant to these human beings, it means that the state can deny them the very basics of human rights. No right to freedom of movement, no right to decent food and shelter, no right to representation in society. The state takes the right to hold them in over crowded insanitary camps unfit for human habitation.

       This is Western democracy at work, the state holds the supreme right to treat you as it categorises you, stripping you of human rights, ignoring your needs, or if you are in that bunch of the chosen few, heaping privileges on you.    Only the total destruction of this unjust, exploitative, savage and inhumane system of state/capitalism will see an end to this savagery against desperate people, only then will all humans have the right to dignity and be treated as equals in a fair and humane manner.

       This from Enough is Enough, written by Riot Turtle. 

 

 

          Thousands of migrants and refugees gather and demand freedom of movement in Diavita , northern Greece near the city of Thessaloniki and in Larissa train station in Athens. Greek police attacked the protesters.
             The situation of refugees in Greece is getting worse and worse. After the announcement by the Greek state that recognized refugees would lose state benefits of 150€ per month and housing, migrants across started mobilizing for the ongoing protests.
Mainstream media reported that the protests are the result of rumours that the borders would open but although spreading this kind of rumours is irresponsible and counter productive, it seems that the ongoing protests for the freedom of movement have not that much to do with the “fake news” about open borders.
               Most migrants are aware of the fact that the member states of the European Union are not going to open the border, and certainly not voluntarily. Many people are fed up that they don’t have the right of freedom of movement and the hostile policies of marginalization and exclusion against refugees.
           In Diavate, near Thessaloniki, refugees were attacked by riot cops with tear gas and batons yesterday. After these acts of police violence, the cops sealed off the area. Refugees wrote me that the cops did not allow food supplies and water into the area where the protesting refugees are. Fortunately some people managed to get some supplies into the area anyway.
          The regional coordinator of the ministry of migration announced that all trains from Athens to Thessaloniki will not be operational until further notice. This is a clear attempt to try to prevent refugees from Athens to join the protests. Many refugees stranded at Larissa train station in Athens and now started to protest in the train station.
           Although the Greek authorities do anything they can to prevent people from joining the protest, the makeshift camp outside of the official Diavata refugee camp is still growing. After yesterdays police violence, cops attacked refugees again earlier today when a huge crowd tried to start marching towards the border.

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Just A Thought.

      Just a wee thought from an ageing mind.

Knowledge.

In learned books what do we gain,

argue Heidegger with Russell, Sartre, Berlin, 

quote Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein,

know all the answers

to a world we never live in.

So,   richer by far a labourer be

perhaps, never to read nor write

but with a glance, a smiling eye

name each tree, each bird in flight.

Who'll stand in awe at a burning sunrise,

enjoy the cool moisture of a summer shower,

wonder at life in a woodland paradise,

marvel at the changing colour in ever hour.

Glow at the warmth in a lover's embrace,

willingly give that gentle kiss,

lovingly touch a smiling face,

relish holding hands in silent bliss.

Experience magic through a child's sight,

know how to dry its tear,

when to lift it, hold it tight,

bringing comfort, chasing fear.

Desipient book worms may shake their head,

mock this untutored state, only see a fool,

but this bookless knowledge will stand them in greater stead,

they took their learning at a more erudite school.

 

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Solidarity With Anarchist Prisoners.

       Across the whole of the planet states are enacting a concerted attack on anarchists. Those who stand openly in dedicated opposition to the corrupt corporate capitalist economic system of inequality and injustices, are seen by the establishment as the greatest threat to the continuing control and exploitation of the people and the planet. They are seen as a threat to their power and privileges, so must be silenced. Russia, Italy, France, Greece, America are at the forefront of this ferocious clamp down, but they are not alone. This is a world wide war on dissent, an attempt to silence and stifle any call for a change to the economic system that burdens the people of this world.
       Those who find themselves incarcerated in the system's judicial crushing machine deserve our unstinting solidarity. Dissent must never be silenced, or we will forever by slaves to the power of the corporate juggernaut and at the mercy of the financial Mafia. June 11th. is international day of solidarity with all anarchist prisoners. Think of how you can get involved and show that those who have stood up against this destructive system are not forgotten. 

Graffiti Revolt

      June 11th is an international day of solidarity with Marius Mason and all long-term anarchist prisoners. A spark in the eternal night of state repression. A day set aside for honoring those who have been stolen from us. On this day, we share in songs, events, and actions to celebrate our captured comrades and loved ones. In years past, June 11th celebrations have been international and wide-ranging – from potlucks with friends to various inspiring attacks; fundraising benefits and prisoner letter writing nights to all of the untold and unknown ways we keep the flame alive.
       Building up to this day, each year several of us come together to discuss and reflect on lessons from years past and to renew this call for continuous solidarity. This year we invite you to explore and ponder with us how maintaining support for long-term prisoners depends directly on sustaining the movements and struggles we all remain part of.

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The Prisons, Institutions For Creating Submissive Citizens.

        John Bowden was sentenced to 25 years in prison, 40 years later he is still there, even although all the criteria set by the parole board have been met, according to the prison professionals who asses these things, the parole board still hold on to their pig-head authoritarian mindset, and refuse him parole. The fact that he is an anarchist and stands firmly by his anarchist principles of resistance to injustice even within the confines of prison, is the main reason for his denial of parole. They demand total and submissive obedience to their idea of the perfect citizen, he must not resist the injustices that he sees all around him. After all that is the real reason for the existence of the prison system. You can forget all that crap about re-rehabilitation and protecting the public, that is the thin veneer they spread of this repressive tool of the state. 

This from 325:

        On the 22nd January 2019 after almost forty years in prison the Parole Board considered the case for either my release or continued imprisonment. In the case of life sentence or indeterminately sentenced prisoners once such prisoners have been detained for the length of time originally recommended by the judiciary or Secretary of State, in my case 25 years, then the Parole Board has a statuary and legal obligation and responsibility to review the case for either the release or the continued detention of such prisoners. At three previous parole hearings my release had been denied by the Parole Board on the grounds that I was a “difficult and anti-authoritarian” prisoner, and insufficiently obedient to prison authority; my actual risk or danger to the public, the prime official criteria for denying the release of life sentence prisoners, was never cited as a reason for my continued imprisonment.

        At my parole hearing on the 22nd January all of the professionals employed to assess the potential risk of prisoners the community, prison psychologists, probation officers, etc., all provided evidence stating that my actual risk to the community was either minimal or non-existent and that I could be ‘safely managed’ outside of prison. My lawyer informed the parole panel that the three chief criteria determining the ‘suitability of release’ of life sentence prisoners [has the prisoner served a sufficient length of time to satisfy the interest of retribution?; does the prisoner represent a minimal risk to the community?; can the prisoner be safely managed in the community?] were all confirmed in my case and therefore there was no real lawful justification for my continued imprisonment, especially as I remained still in prison almost fifteen years beyond the length of time originally recommended by the judiciary. The issues raised by the parole panel were not in fact my potential risk to the community or potential for violent behaviour, all of which had been assessed by the system professionals who gave evidence at the hearing and who unanimously attested that my risk of either violent behaviour or risk to the community was minimal; the main concern of the parole panel was my propensity to challenge prison authority and my association with radical political groups on the outside, specifically Anarchist Black Cross. Representatives from the London Probation Service informed the panel that all of the groups that I was associated with were lawful and none were associated with illegal activity, and in terms of my relationship with the prison system whilst I continued to question and challenge what I perceived as abuses of power, I had not been involved in violent protest actions against the system for over twenty years.

        At the conclusion of the parole hearing the panel announced that it would deliver its decision regarding my release within fourteen days. By law parole panels must deliver decisions within fourteen days of hearings.

On the fourteenth day following my hearing the Parole Board claimed that it had not in fact concluded the hearing on the 22nd January but had “adjourned” it and would conclude with a “paper hearing”, when I and my lawyer would not be present, on the 20th February. They also requested additional information from the probation officers responsible for my post-release supervision concerning the conditions and rules of that supervision. The probation officers subsequently provided the Board with the information, and reiterated that in their professional opinion I could be safely managed and supervised in the community.

On the 20th February the Parole Board then claimed that they had “deferred” the “paper hearing” because one of the Board members considering my release had decided to go on leave. In early March in response to inquiries from the Probation Service regarding a parole decision, the Parole Board said that they were in the process of “finalising” their decision. What was becoming increasingly apparent was that the Parole Board simply did not want to make a decision, or at least a decision authorising my release, which placed them in something of a quandary.

        Confronted by the evidence and recommendations of system professionals such as probation officers and prison-hired psychologists who had all stated that there was no public protection justification for my continued imprisonment, the Parole authorities were denied a legitimate legal cover for my continued detention, and obviously were extremely reluctant to openly declare the true reason for their desire to deny my release – a determination to continue my punishment for ever having dared to fight and challenge the prison system, and my refusal to compromise or surrender my political integrity and spirit. In reality, when considering the release of life sentence prisoners one criteria is given absolute priority over all others, and it certainly isn’t “public protection” or the propensity, or not, of the prisoner to criminally re-offend. The most fundamental criteria governing the release decision of life sentence prisoners is the absolute obedience of the prisoner to the authority of those enforcing that imprisonment? Essentially, prisons exist as instrument of social control to tame the rebellious poor and condition them into total obedience to the system; “rehabilitation” is simply a veneer used to legitimise an institution that is intrinsically brutal and inhuman.-------------

---------------Britain now currently has the highest population of life sentence prisoners in the whole of Europe and as the social and political climate here becomes increasingly more repressive and retributive that population of the civil dead will continue growing.

Read the full article HERE: 

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The Curse Of Those Imaginary Lines.

       Day in and day out, within this so called bastion of peace and democracy, the EU, immigrants are used as animals to be exploited and abused to further the riches of the profiteers of the system. The fantasy veil that is held up to convey the illusion of a civilised society is gossamer thin, and stained with the blood and suffering of the vulnerable, immigrants usually find themselves in that group.
       The following article is a story that can be repeated across Europe, probably the world, where the system creates second class citizens by the power mongers claim to territory, and drawing imaginary lines across the planet, then confining you to your allotted spot.

This from 325:

       Our friend Radek, has been held in custody, in the Netherlands, for 5 months now. He was charged with attempted arson at the Polish embassy, which carries a sentence of up to 12 years in jail. Radek – just as many other workers on emigration – had dealt with exploitation by the employers, on a daily basis. Exploitation, unfair pay, unpaid overtime, atrocious living conditions – the realities of work in the West. Radek had tried to solve those problems in a less radical matter. He had given a shot by going public with it, informing the media, executing his rights. None of it helped. Eventually, he took a brave step forward. He went to the Polish embassy in The Hague, with a can full of gas and a lighter. He then informed, that he would burn the place and asked for people inside the building to be evacuated. In reality: springs from the lighter were taken out, so as to make sure, that starting a fire wouldn’t be possible.
        By drawing attention onto himself, his goal was to make people aware, of what kind of conditions do employment agencies ‘serve’ Polish workers in the Netherlands. He did it in his own name and in the name of everyone, who are just as him – oppressed by this whole machine of exploitation.
        We’ll keep you updated with more details about the incident, after we get Radek’s letter, in which he describes his actions and labour conditions in the Netherlands.
       Our friend wanted to spread awareness about the problem, which hurts helpless people, in need for money, with families they need to take care after. He wanted to show, what kind of shit is being condoned. Meanwhile – his cry has been silenced and the case is being kept quiet… So as to close him up as soon as possible.
      He has still two trials left ahead of him; the sentence is set to be announced in July. As for this moment, Radek needs our total support: he needs to know, that people – have in fact – heard about the things he tried to convey. That’s why we encourage all of you, to write him letters (when locked down in a single-cell for months, reading those letters, will be one of few entertaining things to do).

Radoslaw Bogacki RB number 08445474 Pl Alphen aan den Rijn locatie

Eikenlaan 36 PO BOX 762 2400 AT ALPHEN AAN DEN RIJN HOLLAND
       If you’re willing to give financial support, please do – we’d be grateful (please contact us about the account number by private message).
       We also encourage you to take solidarity actions. As for us, we invite you to join our SOLIDARITY PICKET UNDER THE DUTCH EMBASSY IN WARSAW, which will take place on 07-04-19 (DD-MM-YY), at Noon (12 AM), on Kawalerii st 10.
        If anyone of you knows any press or places we could contact, to make this thing go wide – please contact us by private message or by e-mailing us: FASlask@protonmail.com (our e-mail address).
Federacja Anarachistyczna Śląsk/Anarchist Federation Silesia

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Trying To See Through The Lies And Misinformation.

 

       Just a little more information on the web of US lead Western media lies and misinformation being woven around Venezuela.

From Information Clearing House by Eva Bartlett

         March 30, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - Venezuela is America's current target for mass destabilization in the hope of installing a puppet government.

        America has for years been waging an economic war against Venezuela, including debilitating sanctions which have dramatically affected the state's ability to purchase medicines, and even mundane replacement parts needed in buses, ambulances, etc. Alongside the economic war there has been a steady propaganda war, but in recent months, the propaganda has escalated dramatically, from corporate media to US political figures.

        Venezuela is described as “the country pilots are refusing to fly to,” as per a March 18, 2019, AP article on American Airlines cancelling all flights to Venezuela, containing scary phrases like “safety concerns” and “civil unrest.”

        On March 9, American cancelled my Miami-Caracas flight on the basis that there wasn't enough electricity to land at Caracas airport. Strangely enough, the Copa flight I took the following day after an overnight in Panama had no problem landing, nor did Copa flights on the day of my own cancelled flight, according to Copa staff.

        The cancellation of flights to Venezuela then lends legitimacy to the shrill tweets of Marco Rubio, Mike Pence, John Bolton, and the previously unknown non-president, Juan Guaido.

        I've been in various areas of Caracas since March 10, and I've seen none of this “civil unrest” that corporate media are talking about. I've walked around Caracas, usually on my own, and haven't experienced the worry for my safety corporate media is telling Westerners they should suddenly feel more than normal in Venezuela.

         In fact, I see little difference from the Venezuela I knew in 2010 when I spent half a year here, except the hyperinflation is absurdly worse and in my absence I missed the years of extreme right-wing opposition supporters street violence – a benign term for the guarimbas which saw opposition supporters burning people alive, among other violence against people and security.

         So it strikes me that the decision of American Airlines to stop flying to Venezuela is not about safety and security issues, but is political, in line with increasingly hollow rhetoric about a humanitarian crisis that does not exist, even according to former UN Special Rapporteur, Alfred de Zayas.

           I asked Paul Dobson, a journalist who has lived in Venezuela the last 14 years, if anything like this had happened before. Turns out it has, also at a very timely moment.

          “At the time of the National Constituent Assembly elections, July 30, 2017, the major airlines – including Air France, United, American, pretty much all of the European airlines – suspended their flights one day before the elections, citing “security reasons.” Most of the services were reopened about four days after the elections, some of them two weeks after the elections.”

       So were there 'security concerns? I asked Paul.

       “This was towards the end of street violence (guarimbas) that had been going on for six months in the country. Why didn't they suspend their activity six months before, two months before? They did it the day before the elections, clearly trying to influence votes and the way that people see their country internationally. There were no extra security concerns that day than any day over the last 6 months. So, there was really no justification for it. And it caused massive problems on the ground, around elections.”

         I spent most of afternoon in Petare, one of poorest areas of Caracas & the most sprawling series of barrios in Latin America. Ppl I met there spoke about Imperialist & economic war against them, & how they will continue defending their country. Night & day fr these howling idiots pic.twitter.com/hQxutY6vhR

— Eva Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) March 27, 2019

Continue Reading:

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Export Then Import The Same Stuff, And Make Lots Of Money.

      Is there any rational person on this planet that can't see the insanity of capitalism. We are always told to encourage "trade" that's the savior of the country, increase trade and we get rich. Of course the "we" doesn't include you and I. The idea seems to be we grow lots of food and then export it, so we need to import food to survive, makes perfect sense if you make you money from trading, but blasts the atmosphere with tons of CO2 and other poisonous emissions, but what the hell, it gets you a private jet and a £150 million yacht.

      For those who haven't yet quite grasped the insanity of capitalism, this article from Roar Magazine, should clarify the total greed driven insanity of this destructive economic system that destroys the planet and only benefits the few.

          The way trade works in the global economy is often absurd. Food routinely gets shipped halfway across the world to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Mexican calves — fed imported American corn — are exported to the United States to be butchered, and then the meat is exported back to Mexico for sale. More than half of the seafood caught in Alaska gets processed in China, and much of it is sent right back to American grocery store shelves.
         Compounding the insanity of this “re-importation” is the equally head-scratching phenomenon of “redundant trade”. This is a common practice whereby countries both import and export identical quantities of identical products in a given year. For instance, in 2007, Britain imported 15,000 tons of chocolate-covered waffles, while exporting 14,000 tons. In 2017, the US both imported and exported nearly 1.5 million tons of beef and nearly half a million tons of potatoes.
        On the face of it, this kind of trade makes no economic sense. Why would it be worth the immense cost — in money as well as fuel — of sending perfectly good food abroad only to bring it right back again?
        The answer lies in the way the global economy is structured. Direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels, on the order of $5 trillion per year worldwide, allow the costs of shipping to be largely borne by taxpayers and the environment instead of the businesses that actually engage in it. This allows transnational corporations to take advantage of differences in labor and environmental laws between countries, not to mention tax loopholes, in service of making a bigger profit.
         The consequences of this bad behavior are already severe, and set to become worse in the coming decades. Small farmers, particularly in the Global South, have seen their livelihoods undermined by influxes of cheap food from abroad. Trade agreements have made it impossible for companies to compete in the global economy unless they base their operations in places with the weakest protections for workers and the environment. And all the while, the share of global carbon emissions produced by commercial shipping is set to rise to 17 percent by 2050, if action isn’t taken to curb our addiction to trade.  But policymakers currently have little incentive to reduce unnecessary trade: bizarrely, emissions from global trade do not appear in any nation’s carbon accounting.
        The action will therefore have to begin with peoples’ movements around the world. We must call for an end to subsidies that only benefit giant corporations, as well as an end to tax policies that encourage things like re-importation and redundant trade. Perhaps the most critical step towards sanity would be the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels. Without governments covering the cost of their emissions, transnational corporations would have to radically reconsider the way they operate.
          Making these changes will not be easy. Generating momentum for trade policies that promote community health, small farmers, and ecological stability will not happen overnight. But the first step is raising awareness of trade as an issue, and overcoming the unwillingness of most major media outlets, politicians and think-tanks to discuss it critically.
         To that end, Local Futures has released a tongue-in-cheek short film and an accompanying factsheet, highlighting the absurdity of the current global trade system and pointing to some ways out. The film and factsheet have been launched as part of #InsaneTrade Week, a social media campaign Local Futures is running from March 25 to April 1.

Author: Local Futures.

             Local Futures is an international NGO that raises awareness about the need to shift away from dependence on global monopolies, and towards decentralized, regional economies.

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Wars Make Money, But Not For The People.

      Just look around, speak your mind, then do something about it.

From Information Clearing House, The American War Machine:

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Poisoning The Wells.

        A couple of years before the "referendum", 2014, Dmitry Orlov wrote an article called The Imperial Collapse Playbook. It gives his take on the "big picture" on the various conflicts across the globe, orchestrated by the Anglo-imperialists, UK and US. It makes for interesting reading, below is just an extract from the article. When reading the piece reflect on the dates, written in 2014, and our "referendum" 2016.

This from Information Clearing House.

     ------What's more, it's starting to look like they are about to get kicked out of Eurasia altogether. Most of the major Eurasian players—China, Russia, India, Iran, much of Central Asia—are cementing their ties around the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to which the United States isn't even admitted as an observer. As for the European Union, the current crop of EU politicians is very much bought and will be paid for upon retirement by the Anglo-imperialists, but the only reason they are still in power is that there are lots of older voters in Western Europe, and older people tend to cling to what they know even after it stops working—for them or, especially, for their kids. If it was up to the young people, the Anglo-imperialists would face open rebellion. In fact, the trends in voting patterns show that their departure from the region is a matter of time.
        Here is a preview of possible coming attractions. On their way out, the Anglo-imperialists will of course try to set up an anti-Europe, and the obvious choice for that is Britain. Of all the European nations, it is the most heavily manipulated by their Anglo cousins from across the pond. It would take minimal effort for them to hurt Britain economically, then launch a propaganda campaign to redirect the blame for the bad economy toward the continent. They wouldn't even have to hire translators for their propaganda—a simple “spelling-chequer” (or whatever) would suffice. And so, to make sure that their efforts to provoke a large-scale, hugely destructive, festering conflict between Britain and Europe fail, Europe would do well to set up an anti-Britain within Britain.
        And the obvious choice for an anti-Britain is of course Scotland, where the recent independence referendum failed because of... the recalcitrance of older voters. A dividing line between the Anglo empire and Eurasia running through the English Channel/La Manche would be a disaster for Europe and moving it somewhere west of Bermuda would pose a formidable challenge. On the other hand, suppose that line ran along Hadrian's Wall, with the traditionally combative and ornery Scots, armed with the remnants of North Sea oil and gas, aligning themselves with the Continent, while England remains an ever-so-obedient vassal of the Anglo-imperialists? That would reduce the intercontinental conflict to what Americans like to call a “pissing contest”: not worth the high price of admission. Yes, there would be some strong words between the two sides, and some shoving and shouting outside of pubs, and even some black eyes and loose teeth should diplomacy fail, but that should be the extent of the damage. That I see as the best-case outcome.
         So that's the big picture I see heading into 2015, which I am sure will be a most tumultuous year. Not to make a prediction as to timing (don't worry, you won't ever get one out of me!) but 2015 could be the year the Anglo-imperialist franchise finally starts shutting down in obvious ways. We know it will have to shut down eventually, because failing all the time is not conducive to its survival. The bonus question is, what sort of anti-America will these parasites set up inside America before they abandon their host and scatter to their fortified compounds in undisclosed locations around the world? Or will they not even bother, and just provoke a war of all against all?-------

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Voltairine de Cleyre.

          I have always enjoyed the poems of Voltairine de Cleyre, (November 17, 1866–June 20, 1912) and admired the woman. What some Glaswegians may not know is that she visited Glasgow and thanks to Glasgow anarchist comrades she got to see some parts of Scotland outside Glasgow, and stated she loved the highlands. Though I think it was mainly around the Loch Lomond area that she visited.
           I particularly like this poem by Voltairine;

 

The Road Builders

(“Who built the beautiful roads?” queried a friend of the present order, as we walked one day along the macadamized driveway of Fairmount Park.)

I saw them toiling in the blistering sun,
Their dull, dark faces leaning toward the stone,
Their knotted fingers grasping the rude tools,
Their rounded shoulders narrowing in their chest,
The sweat dro’s dripping in great painful beads.
I saw one fall, his forehead on the rock,
The helpless hand still cluthcing at the spade,
The slack mouth full of earth.
And he was dead.
His comrades getnly turned his face, until
The fierce sun glittered hard upon his eyes,
Wide open, staring at the cruel sky.
The blood yet ran upon the jagged stone;
But it was ended. He was quite, quite dead:
Driven to death beneath the burning sun,
Driven to death upon the road he built.
He was no “hero”, he; a poor, black man,
Taking “the will of God” and asking naught;
Think of him thus, when next your horse’s feet
Strike out the flint spark from the gleaming road;
Think that for this, this common thing, The Road,
A human creature died; ‘tis a blood gift,
To an o’erreaching world that does not thank.
Ignorant, mean and soulless was he? Well —
Still human; and you drive upon his corpse.

Philadelphia, 24 July 1900

This from Anarchist News: 

Voltairine de Cleyre:

American Radical

        Born in Michigan in 1866, Voltairine de Cleyre was named after Voltaire. By the time she died forty-five years later, she had lived up to the free-thinking and trouble-making reputation of her namesake. The famous activist Emma Goldman called de Cleyre “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced.”

De Cleyre wrote:

        The first act of our life was to kick against an unjust decree of our parents, and we have unflinchingly stood for the kicking principle ever since. Now, if the word kicking is in bad repute with you, substitute non-submission, insubordination, rebellion, revolt, revolution, whatever name you please which expresses non-acquiescence to injustice.

       Her own father was a working-class French immigrant who earned his American citizenship fighting in the Civil War. Her mother was the child of abolitionists. Her parents sent young Voltairine to a convent school, where she learned how to be a debater and an atheist. She was writing poetry at six. At nineteen, she was writing and lecturing on Free Thought, the philosophical idea that truth should be based on reason and empiricism rather than authority and dogma.

De Cleyre’s radicalism was above all “a rhetoric of self-decolonization aimed at disrupting the ideological configuration of her readers’ interior lives, freeing them to rearticulate those lives.”

        In her short life, she would publish “hundreds of works—poems, sketches, essays, lectures, pamphlets, translations, and short stories,” writes scholar Eugenia DeLamotte. And yet de Cleyre would be largely excluded from history for the next century because of her radical stance. DeLamotte describes de Cleyre’s radicalism as above all “a rhetoric of self-decolonization aimed at disrupting the ideological configuration of her readers’ interior lives, freeing them to rearticulate those lives” and imagine change.

         De Cleyre made a precarious living in Philadelphia teaching English to the Jewish immigrant community. She also tirelessly wrote, edited, lecture, and organized. The events of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886—which led to four anarchists being executed after a dubious trial, as part of the struggle for the eight-hour work day—turned her into an anarchist.

        In her essay on de Cleyre, communications scholar Catherine Helen Palczewski explores de Cleyre’s radical critique of the “sex question” in such writings as “The Gates of Freedom,” “Sex Slavery,” “They Who Marry Do Ill,” and “Why I Am an Anarchist.”

According to Palczewski, contemporary reformers like Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Crystal Eastman, Helen Gurley Flynn, and Louise Bryant likened marriage to prostitution. “De Cleyre, by contrast, developed a general critique of social roles and institutions by rejecting the institution of marriage, arguing that women are raped in marriage, not prostituted by it.” In de Cleyre’s own words, “And that is rape, where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the agony of bearing children that she does not want.”

De Cleyre also rejected the social purity movement of the day and the suppression of obscenity that went along with it. Birth control information, for example, was then considered obscene.

       Palczewski calls de Cleyre “an important rhetorical and feminist figure because her anarchist feminism is an early precursor to many of the radical critiques of women’s sexual status that came out of the ‘second wave’ of feminism.”

        Intellectually fierce, de Cleyre had a short and difficult life. She wrote her own epitaph: “I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.”

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

Once Upon A Time------

       Due to various pressures, Spirit of Revolt's   "Read of the Month" has missed a couple of months, but we have managed to get one in for March, just in time. It is from our John Cooper collection-T SOR 3-52-62. It is called Once Upon A Time There Was A Place Called Nothing Hill Gate----.

      It is a fascinating and informative history of the Notting Hill area and the Notting Hill Carnival. Well worth a read. Hopefully we will be back up to speed and get these little gems from our archive up on a regular monthly basis. We have thousands of documents and reports of actions and people already digitised so you can read them on line and we add to this wealth of information on a regular basis. So why not visit our archive regularly and dip into the wealth of documents and writings of historical events, people and their actions for that better world. Our main focus is the Glasgow/Clydeside area, though as you can see by our March "Read of the Month", we do travel much further afield. 

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

Feminism, To Be Or Not To Be, That Is The Question!

 

         I'm sure, that within the anarchist groupings this article will annoy some, irritate more, and raise others to fury. I'm also sure that there will be others in the anarchist groupings who will agree wholeheartedly with Anna. All the more reason to share it and and see what transpires.
From 325:

Words from anarchist comrade Anna Beniamino

Anna, Women’s prison of Rebibbia

Degenerations – Between pride and gender victimhood
(An article Degenerazioni – Tra orgoglio e vittimismo di genere
Published in issue 3 of the anarchist paper Vetriolo)

       I am anarchist, I am not feminist because I see feminism as a sectorial and victimist withdrawal, I have never made any gender discrimination although I don’t use gender-friendly linguistic conventions, on the contrary I often use dirty politically incorrect language. I think that the annulment of gender privilege and similar oppression is already contained in the search for anarchy, that is to say in the practice of antiauthoritarian relations, and should be cultivated there. Ah, I forgot, I loathe consciousness-raising in public meetings and I also consider assemblies to be blunt instruments. I understand and also have the will to meet. But I see how all too often the assembly degenerates into sterile self-representation.

        You see nowadays you risk having to start off with such a preamble in order to enter the thicket of clichés on gender and feminism, disentangling yourself in the intricate incapacity to relate to the anarchist galaxy, with a range of behaviours going from hyper-emotiveness to the bureaucratic calculation of what stand (and degree of negotiable compromise) to take in a struggle. I don’t think that authoritarian and sexist behaviour can be fought by trying to spread new linguistic conventions or by cooking up shreds of mainstream indignant rhetoric (among which #nonunadimeno [enough is enough], the feminicide count on TV, pride, red shoes and rainbow ribbons) in an alternative sauce.

          Rather these should be recognized as signs of yet another operation of the deconstruction of real meaning and recuperation in act. Convinced that one is opposing them, in actual fact one is adapting to the very behavioural and normative codes conceded by dominion as ways of releasing tension.

It’s nothing new that economic and political power is tending to swallow up and redigest everything, faster and faster; consider for example the pearls of anti-sexist, antiracist or whatever it might be neo-conservatism and conformism that are being dispensed by the media every day.

          I believe that the first misunderstanding is the inability to put certain kinds of behaviour into context, within what should be a wider critique of relations and communication and interaction between individuals in the antiauthoritarian sense, reducing them to the level of questions of gender.

Gender categorization, in LGBTI (XYZ…) style, should be left to those who need to feel themselves a protected category, in pigeonholes more suited to a Linnaean categorization of individuals than free bodies and minds. Instead, we find such pigeonholes in antiauthoritarian milieus, which should already have internalized their refusal.

         By the way I’m far from believing that so-called liberated spaces really are such, in fact they often become parking lots for various forms of malaise and instead of enhancing the quality of life and relationships they risk lowering it even more. For example it’s not possible to see every inability to interact in a meeting as sexism, authoritarian imposition or gender violence: I read in a pamphlet [1] that was around last year stigmatizing the latent violence in relations between comrades ‘the oldest exercises power over the youngest, those with more experience impose themselves on those who have less, whoever is stronger on the not so strong, mirroring the relations of the existent we say we want subvert.’

      This is supposed to be a critique of authoritarian attitudes in antiauthoritarian milieus and it would be valid, were it not that it banalises and flattens everything: there is a fundamental difference between imposition of strength and the expression of experience. The inability to express oneself or to act is neither authoritarian nor antiauthoritarian, and can only be solved individually… otherwise we come to the idiocy of praising inability and inaction.

The concept of emotive violence or the violation of emotional integrity is even more ephemeral, because it promotes this analytical junk amongst antiauthoritarian individuals who should have far sharper critical weapons and practical capacity of intervention. As well as emptying of meaning the inflicted and brutal violence it is being compared to.

        How can we claim to engage in an unrelenting struggle against authority and dissertate on revolutionary and liberatory violence if we cannot even react individually to some ‘undesired comment in the street’ (by taking it for what it is, and dealing with it accordingly with the person who spat it out) or keep up an animated discussion during a meeting without having recourse to the shield of violated sensitivity? Why do we find ourselves reading the disarming and obvious idiocy that advises making love with a woman in order to avoid an unwanted abortion? [2] Why codify, even in the field of gender, only for “female gangs”, like conquest, self-defence from aggression and harassment? Isn’t this a problem common to all genders among liberated beings?

      Why should we revisit the most outworn products in the wardrobe of 1970s feminism, such as separatist meetings… maybe calling them workshops (a really ugly term that combines work and shop, borrowed from business conventions and unworthy of free discussions)?

       I read the spectre of the same reductive and banalising mechanism in another recent publication, the Italian edition of the Rote Zora claims [3], i.e. the intention to sensitize only a female audience about a group of women who carried out armed struggle in the 1980s and 90s in Germany, insisting on the choice of gender, of very great interest on some feminist topics, as a privileged discriminating factor for taking them out of oblivion… given that one doesn’t want it ‘to belong to official history. It is written by men’ [4]… What?!? Is it not that official historiography tends to not talk about them because they were angry, not angry feminists? Just as it doesn’t deal with – or distorts – the history, actions and writings of so many other angry men and women? The partial vision is not that of Rote Zora who experimented their own path of individual and collective struggle and liberation in the context of wider anti-imperialist and anti-capitalistic action, but of those who try to make a flag out of it in order to give more credibility and specific weight to their own theorizing, to then reduce themselves to looking for ‘paths of self-defence’.

      Why entrench oneself in a ‘feminist and lesbian’ discourse [5]? Why yet another protective cage, rather than develop the beauty and infinity of more advanced ideas of the critique of domination (not only gender), put forward and tested?

        ‘Sisterhood’ has always seemed to me to be a form of allusive alienation of transversal political alliances between oppressed and oppressors, between ‘inter-classist’ as it has become fashionable to say again… adverse parties. I also happened to see a booklet [6] recently containing an Italian feminist’s interviews of some female veterans of the Spanish revolution in 1936, aimed at finding a questionable ‘sisterhood’ between women anarchists engaged on the frontline (and in the background with Mujeres Libres), the POUM and Stalinist women.

       It was quite significant that almost centenarian anarchist revolutionary women were far more lucid and open in their critique about the limitations of feminism than their interviewer imbued with 1970s’ clichés was: in the extreme calm of a life lived to the full, they were able to explain simply the equal relations between male and female comrades, and how they managed to ridicule and neutralize the machismos that emerged among the most retrograde and stupid of their comrades. In short the practices and theoretical contribution of these women are far more advanced along the path of liberation of the individual and the negation of authoritarian dynamics than those of feminists who glean from their experiences, defending simulacra of struggle instead of the struggle itself. The need for auto-da-fé, the ‘deconstruction of one’s male privileges’, the search for separate places for discussions, self-awareness and self-analysis in public seem a little too much like signs of these times of over-exposition and woolly thinking, parading ‘struggles’ by category and interior struggles, to end up not struggling at all.

Anna,
Women’s prison of Rebibbia
October 2018

[1] Violenza di genere in ambienti antiautoritari ed in spazi liberati [Gender violence in antiauthoritarian milieus and in liberated spaces], Italian edition translated from Spanish in 2017

[2] Critica all’aborto [Critique of abortion], Jauria – Trans-feminist publication for animal liberation, issue 1, Summer/Autumn 2015

[3] Rote Zora – guerriglia urbana femminista [Rote Zora – Feminist urban guerrilla], Autoproduzione Femminista, 2018

[4] From the introduction to the same book

[5] Which the Rote Zora women themselves didn’t think relevant. From a 1984 interview with Rote Zora: ‘Some of us have children, many others don’t. Some are lesbian, others love men’, page 51, ibidem

[6] Donne contro [Women against], Isabella Lorusso, ed. CSA editrice, 2013

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