Profit From Illness.

        We keep hearing our prancing political ballerinas spouting about how the National Health Service is safe in their hands, and that there are no plans to privatise the NHS. What utter bullshit, the NHS has been getting privatised slice by slice for years and it is still continuing.

From Kings Fund:

         The Department of Health and Social Care’s accounts also show that NHS providers spent £1.3 billion2 on services from non-NHS organisations in 2018/19. Data from NHS Improvement shows that NHS providers spent £271 million on outsourcing services to other providers, including the private sector, in 2018/19 – up from £221 million in 2017/18. This includes outsourcing elective hospital treatment in order to deliver waiting times targets.
         If spending on primary care services – including GPs, pharmacy, optical and dental services – is included, some have estimated that approximately 25 per cent of NHS spending goes on the private sector.

        Anybody that holds any illusions that this creeping privatising of the NHS will some how be reversed under a capitalist system is naive in the extreme. With the engineered problems in the NHS it is likely to become a galloping privatisation, with governments seeing private capital as the white knight that will rescue our struggling NHS, but also making lots of money from people's health problems, for the financial Mafia. A system of profit governing your treatment, not your needs.

       Then there is this talk of opening up the NHS to the American market, which of course will lead to an American style Health Service. The following is just one example of how the American Health Service works.

This from the Guardian: 

 'I live on the street now': how Americans fall into medical bankruptcy 

        It’s been over a dozen years since Susanne LeClair of West Palm Beach, Florida was first diagnosed with cancer and she’s been fighting ever since. Now she, like many other Americans facing life-threatening illness, is bankrupt despite having health insurance.
       Before her first cancer-related surgery, LeClair was told by the hospital they accepted her employer-based health insurance.
      “I paid my $300 copay. After the surgery, I started receiving all these invoices and came to find out the only thing covered was my bed because the hospital was out of network,” said LeClair. “My bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I had no choice but to file bankruptcy.”
        LeClair is on the verge of having to file for bankruptcy a second time due to the mounting medical debt she has accrued for additional cancer-related surgeries, regular appointments, medications and supplies related to her recovery, despite having health insurance and paying as much as she can out of pocket for copays, deductibles and premiums to maintain insurance.
       “My medical bills are at $52,000. I’ve done everything from credit cards to consolidation loans, I just keep simply paying one credit card with another interest-free one until I can pay the next one,” LeClair added. “It’s the side of cancer most people don’t understand or know about and it’s never-ending. It just keeps adding up and adding up and before you know it you’re back in debt that you can’t believe again.”
       Bankruptcy can also make it difficult to find employment given that many employers will disqualify a candidate with a bankruptcy filing found from a background check.
        According to a study published in February 2019, about 530,000 bankruptcies filed annually are because of debt accrued due to a medical illness. The study found that even the Obama administration’s landmark Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) has failed to change the proportion of bankruptcies caused by medical debts, with poor health insurance cited as one of the main culprits.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Insanity Reigns.

        It is difficult to comment on the recent drone killing in Iraq by the irrational and impulsive action of Herr Trump, the possibilities for misery, carnage, chaos, death and destruction, involving millions of innocent people, is so multi-faceted that the mind draws back in horror and disbelief. However, it is a reality and must be faced and met with mass protests and direct action against all those who for whatever reason support this insanity. This is just the latest act of bloody imperialism by the US establishment, the latest in a long line that goes back more than a century. The blood of innocents drips from every dollar, countries become metropolises of misery and populations become an army of migrants, as a result of the US foreign policy, aided and abetted by its varies poodles dotted around the planet, including that previous blood soaked imperialist state of the UK.

     Sanity and humanity demands that we do our utmost to bring down this festering system of plundering the planet by the powerful for their own gain. As long as capitalism exists, power will dominate, wars will persist, death and destruction will be a daily occurrence for millions, and waves of displaced people will wash across the planet in search of safety and sanctuary. As always the rich and powerful will gain, the poor will always pay the price in sweat and blood. 

        Who can disagree with this extract from an article by Black Rose Anarchist Federation

In today's world, a daily occurrence for millions. 

        We share the view of fallen Black freedom fighter and Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. that “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government. I cannot be silent.” Much of the world has become a scorched battlefield for over two centuries as the dark shadow of U.S. imperialism, resource extraction, and capital accumulation first spanned the continent, then the globe. Through the colonization of indigenous peoples in the Americas to imperialist expansion around the world, this great purveyor of violence has displaced, imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, and killed untold millions. It is no surprise that in our time, through an endless “war on terror” that the darkest areas of this shadow have engulfed the broader Middle East.
        We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran and the Middle East who have suffered greatly from U.S. imperialism. The 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that ousted Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and brought the oppressive shah back to power made the ground fertile for the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Since then, the U.S. has been directly involved in destabilizing both Iran, and later, Iraq; first starting with the Iran-Iraq war (1980). The Gulf War of 1990-91, the intermittent bombings as well as the sanctions and blockade that lasted through the 90s, the 2003 invasion and ensuing occupation, and the battle against ISIS can more accurately be viewed as a three decade long war waged by the U.S. Intermittent threats of war against Iran, crippling economic sanctions and drone warfare have finally come to a tipping point. The world waits in horror as lines are drawn in the sand and Trump openly threatens to commit war crimes in Iran through the targeting of cultural sites. Millions of people who are desperately trying to escape the clutches of this endless war have fled their homes: the U.S. is guilty of creating the largest refugee and humanitarian crises since WWII. We demand: U.S. Out of the Middle East!

Read the full article HERE:
       My only disagreement with the above statement is that it is not "Out of the Middle East", it is off the face of the planet for all imperialism, capitalism.

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

The Whole Barrel.

        Prisons, those large buildings planted firmly midst the population and sometimes in the countryside, though unwelcoming in appearance they sit quietly as part of the landscape. People walk and drive by and in most cases don't give them a second thought. Though in fact these edifices to state authority and control, house inhumanity in an organised and brutal fashion. Prison after prison in country after country, torment, cruelty, sadistic and deliberate violence and even death are part and parcel of their routine. All those who find themselves entangled in this state repression machine are damaged by it, some physically some psychologically, some both. This is not by accident, these institutions are doing the job of the state control and repression, suppressing dissent, attempting to create a subservient, passive population.
        The case below is not one of those isolated unfortunate happenings, it is part and parcel of a deliberate program of state control, carried out by the paid minions of the state, and those responsible do so with impunity, all under regimes that fly a false flag of "democracy". Like the article says "Not Rotten Apples" it is simply a rotten system and the whole barrel has to be destroyed. There is no place in a civilised society for prisons, in any shape or form.

This from Act For Freedom Now: 

Solidarity poster for anarchist comrade Pierloreto Fallanca (Paska)

 NOT ROTTEN APPLES

       September 17 saw the start of the trial against our comrade Paska, accused of resistance and grievous bodily harm towards some of his jailers during a transfer.
        A couple of pushes against a few of the escort screws was the least he could do after the treatment they had reserved for him on various occasions: the latest being the rally driving of the paddy wagon that caused him a strong blow to his head and ribs during the transfer of October 18, 2018.
      On the other hand, since his arrival at La Spezia the prison management had decided to arbitrarily reserve even more restrictive measures for him such as delaying mail, bans on meeting others, isolation up to the 14bis isolation regime level as well as being forbidden to go to the yard with the other prisoners.
       That doesn’t surprise us. In the year 2018-2019 alone La Spezia prison boasts no less than 5 deaths out of about 230 prisoners, added to the acts of self-harm and beatings as a daily occurrence: the normality of a prison considered to be among the most progressive in Italy. It is, therefore, within the normal execution of their functions that escort guards Luigi Viziello and Stefano Cenderelli covered our comrade in insults, kicks and punches.
      In a climate of constant fear and threats many prisoners avoid talking about their daily harassment for fear of repercussions. And when someone does decide not to stick to the rules of the game the medical staff take care of it – as in the case of Paska, Gouba Abdelatif and Giuseppe Landini – to complete the work of the thugs by liquidating what happened.
      When asked to report the signs of beatings and ascertain the physical consequences, the doctors deny the evidence and dish out psychotropic drugs: yet another weapon to bow the will of those who rebel.
      Unfortunately our comrade’s story is the normality of prison, a story of ordinary detention. The guards appearing as the injured party in this trial are not an exception, they are the most coherent and sincere representatives of every prison and its reason for being.

SOLIDARITY WITH PASKA

FIRE TO THE PRISONS

EVERYBODY FREE

Anarchists

Source: RoundRobin

via: Inferno Urbano

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

An Early Invite.

        Anarchist bookfairs, festivals, gatherings are always welcome events. A great opportunity to meet up with new contacts and old comrades, a chance spread ideas learn new ones. To generate that feeling of solidarity and comradeship, feel you are among people you wish to work with, and with whom you hold the same basic ideals.
        So why not mark your calendar, and if you can get yourself to Vienna around the end of April 2020, you could enjoy all of the above and more.

 Details:
Dear comrades!
        We want to invite you for the next ABC-Solidarity-Festival in Vienna starting at Thursday 23. to Sunday 26. April 2020.
          It would be great if you come to Vienna with your merch, books and info tables, workshops, bands, tattoo tools or other ideas how to participate at the festival. It is a great opportunity to get connected with comrades from all over Europe and to discuss several issues about our struggles, perspectives, projects and critics.
         If you want to offer a workshop or play with your band: Please contact us as soon as possible to fix the details – for the workshop you have normally two hours all in all. The workshops are on Friday or Saturday, starting at 1 in the afternoon. Have a look at the timetable of the last years: https://abcfestvienna.noblogs.org/program-2017
        It would be a pleasure to see you in Vienna (of course you are very welcome also during the year).

All the best and warm hugs from us,
ABC Vienna

https://abcfestvienna.noblogs.org

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

Remembering Our Own, Albert Meltzer.

       We should always remember our own, those who stood up and fought on the side of the ordinary people against the injustices and inequalities of this repugnant capitalist system.

     January 7th. marks the 100th. anniversary of the birth of staunch anarcho-communist, conscientious objector, Albert Meltzer who died almost five years ago on the 7th. May 1996.

      This extract is from the Kate Sharpley Library and is by his friend and comrade Stuart Christie:

 Albert Meltzer with Stuart Christie

Albert Meltzer, anarchist

Stuart Christie

         Albert Meltzer was one of the most enduring and respected torchbearers of the international anarchist movement in the second half of the twentieth century. His sixty-year commitment to the vision and practice of anarchism survived both the collapse of the Revolution and Civil War in Spain and the Second World War; he helped fuel the libertarian impetus of the 1960s and 1970s and steer it through the reactionary challenges of the Thatcherite 1980s and post-Cold War 1990s.
      Fortunately, before he died, Albert managed to finish his autobiography, I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels, a pungent, no-punches pulled, Schvejkian account of a radical twentieth century enemy of humbug and injustice. A life-long trade union activist, he fought Mosley's Blackshirts in the battle of Cable Street, played an active role in supporting the anarchist communes and militias in the Spanish Revolution and the pre-war German anti-Nazi resistance, was a key player in the Cairo Mutiny [after] the Second World War, helped rebuild the post-war anti-Franco resistance in Spain and the international anarchist movement. His achievements include Cuddon's Cosmopolitan Review, an occasional satirical review first published in 1965 and named after Ambrose Cuddon, possibly the first consciously anarchist publisher in the modern sense, the founding of the Anarchist Black Cross, a prisoners' aid and ginger group and the paper which grew out of it - Black Flag.
        However, perhaps Albert's most enduring legacy is the Kate Sharpley Library, probably the most comprehensive anarchist archive in Britain. 

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Governed And Controled.

        For those who still believe we have democracy in Europe, they should open their eyes to the constant rise in police brutality, and the growing resistance to this aspect of authoritarian states. From Athens to Prague, from Paris to Leipzig, The police act with brutality and impunity against peaceful protests, gatherings of ordinary people and large celebrations by the public. Also the open attack on migrants and their mass detention in appalling conditions. None of these procedures equate with democracy, they are more akin to fascism. 

      Pick your territory and you will find these conditions in greater or lesser form, but they are always there. To be governed you must first be controlled and then subservient. Freedom, justice and equality don't fit with that formula.

       The following is a short extract from an article on police brutality in Leipzig which you can say mirrors what is happening in Exarcheia in Athens and elsewhere in today's world. 

From Enough is Enough:

 

        ------ In view of the increasing police violence, it would nevertheless be wrong to portray oneself as a victim. One should not complain about people being harassed, beaten, insulted by cops. Because we know that the police will always be on the side of the rich and powerful, and also on the side of fascism. This is shown sometimes more, sometimes less clearly.⁵ All people who fight for a better world, free from exploitation and oppression, are logically in conflict with the state power and its allies. And must therefore expect attacks by cops. We have no expectations and no demands on these pigs! We reject dialogue with them as long as they wear their uniforms and defend a system of injustice with brutality! Nevertheless, the increasing police violence should be addressed and we, as a movement, must think about how we can face it collectively and in solidarity.
      What was also to be seen on New Year’s Eve was that many people reacted in solidarity against the brutality and aggressiveness of the cops. Some of those who were arrested were liberated again, cops were put in their place when they tried to drag people out of the crowd and beat them up, even though unfortunately this was not always successful. In addition, many people took part in the attacks on the pigs. All this illustrates the increasing anger caused by the constant provocations of state authorities.-----

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Tories, Party Of Welfare State.

  

        Anybody with half a brain cell knows that "austerity" was an ideological decision and not a necessity. It was a determined policy of plundering the public purse to feed the corporate tax havens. Though I have always been aware of the fact that the state feeds and supports the corporate beast with the false platitude that it helps the "economy" (the rich) and brings jobs. Although the facts were there, Somehow I never however thought of the Tory party as the party of a welfare state!!
      The article in "The Canary" explains it very clearly, well worth a read just to sort the facts out in your mind.

 

 

      An extract from The Canary article:

           The Tories run a secret welfare state for rich people that costs taxpayers up to £180bn a year

The long con

       The idea was never to shrink the welfare state. It was always to divert government investment from the human-welfare state for the many to the corporate-welfare state for the few. Imagine it like a long con.
       You create a sense of scarcity, like there just isn’t enough to go around. The coalition government did this with austerity; the Thatcher government did it with previous economic crises. Despite the 2007/8 financial crisis being caused exclusively by the private sector, and the private sector being bailed out by the government, it was reframed as a public spending crisis. And the very debt accumulated in rescuing the economy from casino banking became the excuse to rapidly cut funding for the welfare state.
       Then you begin pitting different needs against each other. Young people’s services versus elderly people’s security. People who were born here versus people who arrived here. People with jobs versus people without jobs. And thanks to the primal fear that people with little have when faced with having even less, a fight ensues. While that fight is happening, you merrily divert as much spending as possible to you and your friends. The best bit? When the scarcity you just created hits and things stop working in the human-welfare state, it just makes your case seem stronger. ‘See, we told you things were bad. This service needs more private-sector involvement to boost efficiency.’
       And so you go on. Every publicly-funded service is up for grabs – a means of siphoning taxpayer cash away from meeting public needs, and towards filling private pockets. In return, you’ve assured your post-parliament career in the revolving door of political and corporate life.

The enablers

        Perhaps the greatest enablers of the corporate-welfare-state long con are UK newspapers and media outlets. Just three corporations dominate 83% of newspaper reach in the UK. That’s just a handful of billionaires dominating the UK press. And they cannot be trusted to play fair when it comes to policies that invest in regular people rather than providing them with government subsidies or tax cuts.

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Refuse and Resist.

         The latest Spirit of Revolt,  “Read of the Month", since it is coming at the beginning of a new year, its only fitting that it should come from one of our new collections the John Frew Collection, it is a news sheet of the anti-polltax movement Refuse and Resist. That period when the Thatcher government tried to impose the poll tax on the people of this country was one of mass protests and open rebellion, as the people stood firm against this grossly unjust tax. Their resolve, solidarity and organisation eventually won the day and the poll tax was scrapped.

     Why not dip into the John Frew Collection and enjoy some of your own fascinating history. While there you could go on to explore the multitude of local history from the Glasgow/Clydeside area and further afield, from the numerous other collections held in Spirit of Revolt.

 REFUSE AND RESIST: Read on line. 

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

Fascism, The State's Natural Home.

      As the capitalist system of neo-liberalism lurches from crisis to crisis, its blatant dangers to all life and the very planet itself become more obvious, the various states response is to march firmly towards fascism. This is an attempt to stop the rapidly rising protests and insurrections that are flaring up across the planet, as people become more aware and more determined to call a halt to this greed driven insanity.
      Populations awash with poverty and deprivation because of this system, are now aware of the cause and are venting their anger with a strong desire to end this engineered injustice.
     The following article is from Greece, where since the election of the new government of the "New Democracy" party their has been a military style brutal attempt to crush any and all dissent. Migrants and any group that supports them, have come in for some savage treatment from the "New Democracy" facade. Autonomous spaces, long standing squats which have been hubs for local communities, groups who openly oppose the authoritarian rule and individuals who stand against the injustice, inequality and corruption of this exploitative system, have all felt the wrath of the Greek state as it strides further into the fascist mode, the states' answer to the rising fight for freedom and justice.

     From Act For Freedom Now, Just one case of many:

Financial support for the persecuted antifascists
firefund.net/persecutedantifa

       On 1.11.2019 there was an arson attack against neo-nazis Golden Dawn’s head offices in Diligianni street, resulting in the destruction of the building’s second floor where N. Michaloliakos’ office (the secretary general of the party) is located. According to the file of the case, while the perpetrators were trying to escape, police cars belonging to the “counter”-terrorist agency pursued a car. The pursuit resulted in a car collision and to the policemen’s injury, with the perpetrators managing to get away.
     This incident was used as an excuse to start a targeting and persecution campaign against anarchists, which reached its peak with the arrest of two anarchist militants and the manipulative police tactics that aimed to put them in provisional custody.
      The bill of indictment’s upgrade by the “counter”-terrorist agency and the leaks to the media created the anticipation that the two comrades would be put in custody. In this climate of terror, the comrades and their lawyers were called to fight an unequal battle.
      More specifically, the state’s repressive mechanisms, with the CT agency in the lead role, fabricated according to the provisions of article 187A (anti-terrorist law) a “terrorist” group named “Taxiarchia” (Brigade) which first appeared in March 2017 with the attack against the (then) HQ of the neonazi party Golden Dawn in Mesogeion Avenue, under the name of “Pavlos Fyssas Brigade”. According to the court file, the group executed 6 attacks against structures and members of the fascist party up to its last hit against the head offices in Diligianni str. in November 2019.
      In that way, the authorities made an attempt to isolate certain claims of responsibility within a plethora of antifascist-anticapitalist actions which led, together with other things, to a significant weakening of the fascist movement in the last few years. Among dozens of attacks and claims of responsibility, they chose a few which, by having the noun “Taxiarchia” as a first component, could be presented to the investigative judge as persuasive evidence of “joining and participating in a terrorist organization”. The law enforcement authorities in their attempt to patch a case together, fabricated the existence of a terrorist group in order to sentence the two comrades to dozens of years in prison. And all this for the CT agency to restore its damaged public profile after the fiasco it suffered in Exarheia.
       More specifically, the court document, apart from the attack to the -then- party HQ in Mesogeion str, alludes to three more attacks against party members and the Local Organization in Aspropyrgos which led to the final shutting down of their offices. For these attacks, responsibility was taken using three different signatures, namely “Sahzat Lukman Brigade”, “Petrit Zifle Brigade” and “Abd Elsalam Brigade”. The arson against the Local Organization of Golden Dawn in the area of Menidi, which led to its shutting down for an indeterminate period of time, under the signature “Durruti Brigade”, is also referred in the court file. The same goes for the destruction of the Führer’s office in Diligianni street, an action for which no one yet has claimed responsibility.
        The expanded and unfounded indictment has been composed, among others, based on anonymous calls to the “counter”-terrorist agency which has no caller ID (!!!). The indictment is full of lies and exaggerations which can easily be demolished just by reading the file. The two comrades who were arrested about two months after the Diligiani incident, are prosecuted for two attacks against the Golden Dawn offices, the one at Menidi and the one at Diligiani str. The “evidence” in the authorities’ possession is that on the dates of the attacks, the comrades happened to rent cars for personal use, a fact that was considered suspicious by the CT agency.
        All this is happening in a conjuncture when the Golden Dawn trial is coming to an end and the state prosecutor (Adamantia Economou)has suggested the charges against the members of the neonazi party be dismissed. In this way, the murderous violence of the criminal organization is downgraded and legitimized.
       All this is happening in a conjuncture when the New Democracy government introduces bills which repress the right to strike, to protest and to the university asylum. In just a few months it attempts to take back everything the society has won in decades of struggles at a great cost and sacrifices. It launches an all-out attack on the social conquests using a policy of social genocide against refugees and migrants, while building an Orwellian racist and authoritarian police state which spies on militants and political spaces, fabricates prosecutions and indictments, aims to eradicate the resistance and to spread fear and conservatism in the society.
        It’s in this conjuncture that our comrades were taken to the state prosecutors on a flimsy indictment for their “crime” of continuing to struggle. The two comrades were released under strict conditions: they have to report to the police four times a month and deposit a 15,000 euro bail (per person) in order to avoid custody, until 17-1-2020. It becomes evident that way that the financial bleeding of the movement is an everlasting goal of the system and a primary instrument aiming at its eradication.
     It should be clear at this point that regardless of the blatant manipulation of the case, the defense of the militant antifascism and the movement’s anti-violence against the system cannot be confined in dilemmas of guilt or innocence. The movement’s self-defense against the authoritarian and market-based neoliberalism, which uses the fascism in order to crush social and class resistance, is the existential position of the struggle for a better world. It is the combat position of the oppressed all over the world and one of their principal means to assert their claims. Because the organized manifestation of the class anti-violence is our only chance against capitalism and state repression. Because the anti-fascist anti-violence may not be tried in civil courts, nor is legal or illegal. It is historically imposed and fair.
       Under these circumstances, we make a call to the movement as a whole to support the efforts of collecting the bail money till the set date, so that comrades will not be remanded in custody; to show again to the state and its mechanisms that the solidarity of the oppressed is the foundation stone for the formation of a revolutionary movement. This is the next fight we are called to give against the repressive mechanisms that attempt to put the comrades in provisional custody.

Solidarity is our weapon

Contact with the assembly:

antifa-initiative@riseup.net – protov2free@protonmail.com

Antifacist Initiative

Αρχεία:

af-en.pdf

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

A Review Of Angry People.

       This past year has seen more mass protests in more countries  than before, and most have lasted much longer than the usual bursts of anger that this capitalist system evokes. With the help of the internet other countries become aware much sooner of what is happening around the planet, this in turns leads to support and solidarity, and perhaps an encouragement to those where the anger is still bubbling just under the surface. So it is always good to review these protests that have been exploding across the planet. We can always learn from others, and it is also necessary to find that common ground with others who have given vent to their righteous anger. 

This review of some of these events comes from Anarchist Agency:

       Just when you thought it was over, they were back: France’s gillets jaunes, the direct-action protest movement that arose in opposition to the Macron government’s pro-capitalist, anti-worker policies, was supposed to be all done in 2019, neutralized by police repression and the government’s token gestures at public “consultations.” Then, in December, the yellow vests appeared again as Macron moved to “reform”—i.e. slash—French old-age pension provisions. Once again, thousands of working people were back in the streets, saying enough is enough to the global elite’s efforts to impose neoliberal policies on an increasingly angry populace.
       That’s just one example from an amazing surge of resistance in 2019. The year was full of reaction and repression all over the globe, and as the months wore on, resistance grew: in Egypt,Colombia, Chile,Ecuador, post-coup Bolivia, Haiti, Lebanon, Russia, Catalunya, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. In the U.S., Native American resistance focused on Standing Rock intensified, and antifascists made clear that they will continue to oppose the resurgent, racist far right as long as it gains strength. The specific causes were not always the same, but in every case, state repression and backing of capitalism and the right were the catalysts and direct action was the most dynamic part of the response.
      Direct action is also beginning to infuse the fight for the survival of our planet in the face of climate change, as activists everywhere become bolder at confronting a system bent on either ignoring the crisis or slow-walking its response to the point of irrelevancy.
      At Agency, throughout 2019 we highlighted the role of anarchists and the anarchist movement in this global resurgence of opposition to state repression and capitalism. Anarchists provided much of the presence in the streets against the neo-Klan, neo-Nazi shock troops of Trumpism in the U.S. In July, a Willem Van Spronson, an anarchist, was fatally shot by police after attacking an ICE immigration detention center in Washington state. Predictably, the right-wing response was to demand that antifa be declared a “terrorist” group. Anarchists continued to play a growing role in the opposition to repression of Palestinians in Israel, to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies in America, and the resistance to xenophobia and neoliberal “reforms” in Greece, Denmark, and other countries. We’ve told this important story through the Agency newswire, syndicated articles, commentaries, press briefs, podcasts, and the harvest of stories from other media that we gather in our Critical Voices section.
      At the same time, anarchists were building a culture of freedom and mutual aid in 2019. In Athens, Exarchia continues to be the center not just of support and assistance for migrants, but of a vibrant anarchist community. The multiethnic, antiauthoritarian community of Rojava was decimated by a Turkish invasion of northern Syria, launched with the tacit approval of Washington, but not before it carried out one of the most creative experiments in self-government without the State since the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) launched in Mexico 25 years ago.
      Anarchism is about expanding our imaginations to include new forms of resistance and new ways to define ourselves as creative individuals and communities. Agency strives to tell this story as well, and we did so in 2019 by bringing together news about anticapitalist bike activism, farming as a tool against climate change, and the work of anti-fascist metal and neo-folk bands to counter the far-right in the music scene.
        All of which goes to show that the struggle against the State, capitalism and authority, against racism, colonialism, sexism and gendered intolerance, plays out in every corner of our lives, all the time. As anarchists, we work to bring these struggles closer together and highlight the many ways we are creating a new society in the process of resistance. Here are some of the stories Agency followed in 2019, and will continue to follow.

Read the full review HERE:

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

Rationalism Or Insanity?

       What have we become, here we are almost a quarter way through the 21st. century and we, the supposed pinnacle of evolution, have a man sitting on the throne of the most powerful military power on earth, who is wrapped in the ignorant babble of fundamental religious nutters, who still believe in that invisible man in the sky, watch their faces and get worried. What's more in there stupidity, they are asking their supposed fair and just loving god, who is supposed to love all humanity, to make America the greatest nation on earth. Talk about twisted brains. If that wee man in the sky is up there, then I am asking him to deliver Trump and his band of deluded nutters to the nearest psychiatric hospital, as soon as possible.

      It isn't funny anymore, this is the man with his finger on the nuclear button  who doesn't take any advice but acts on impulse and on prods from people like Pompeo, who is a Christian fundamentalist who believes passionately in the "Rapture". What have we become, and what will we do?

Pinnacle of Evolution

There’s a crazy ape, who

by means of incredible intransigence

has mastered the art of carnage;

through dogged determination

in a ruthless rampage

raised the body-count beyond belief.

This crazy ape

creates the human chronicles

as a cruel callous calendar,

transforms our indulgent earth

into a primitive barbaric abattoir.

He struts across the land

with bumptious pride;

he’s destructive, he’s devious,

demands dominion

planet wide.

His claim to fame,

history immortalised in rivers of blood.

Even so,

this crazy ape called man, believes

he’s the GODS’ sublime solution,

progress’s perfection,

the pinnacle of evolution.

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No Borders, No Prisons

       Detention centres, prisons, call them what you will, they are all state tools of repression, symbols of inhumanity, an abomination in any civilised society. Those who work in them are usually contaminated with the same DNA of the institutions that pays their wages. Who with a shred of humanity would want to be a guard over another human in a cage.

     This article is from Greece, but Greece is not alone in treating humans in this manner, we can all look a lot closer to home and find mirror situations. Migrants are one of the many state scapegoats, tools in the state's propaganda machine.

This From Enough is Enough:

       Athens, Greek territory. On December 19, 2019, was our last visit to Petrou Ralli Detention Center. Once more the number of detainees had increased and reached no50 50 women from 15 different countries. Indonesia, Ethiopia, Albania, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iran, Italy, Cameroon, China, Tibet, Belarus, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Turkey. In our effort to talk with them, some police officers were in such close proximity that prevented women to express themselves freely about situations they experience. The behavior of some officers was also provoking towards us.

Originally published by Athens Indymedia.

        A characteristic testimony: “When we came here they forbade us to wear our headscarves and told us:” Out of here you can be Muslim, here NO! Here you are Christians… “
        Another testimony: “A police officer invaded into the shower room, while a prisoner was bathing, and made her pull the towel…” At the time, the health of several of them was very bad. Despite our own pressure for two women to be transferred to a hospital as emergency cases, nothing really changed. Τhese women are still very sick. Also, there are no doctors during weekends and during the night time, at Petrou Ralli. On Christmas day we were informed by relatives of prisoners for possible initiation of a few women on hunger strike. The day after our visit they started writing their experiences in the following denunciation letter, where they describe them with their own voices. Experiences that we can simply only imagine. Women from six different countries asked their will for their letter to be publicized. When you have lost everything you do not fear anything.
        Their voices should be heard in the whole world. You can discuss it in your assemblies. The organizations and institutions that talk about human rights should stop fooling us and playing with the plight of migrants and refugees, who are led to extermination.
        We stand by and admire these women for their bravery and solidarity they show to each other…

No person illegal, no person invisible

     Our Rebel sisters are right for the abolition of detention centers and opening of Borders, for stopping illegal racist & misogynist behaviors, for smashing verbal, physical and mental torture

The passion for freedom is stronger than all kinds of prisons

In streets, in squares and prison cells, migrant women you are not alone

The House of Women, for the Empowerment & Emancipation

spiti.gynaikon@gmail.com

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

Death Throes Of A Psychopathic Fantasy.

      Quite a long article, but it does feel good to get it off your chest, this piece by Paul Edwards, rolls out a lot of my own thoughts over the years. Not that the rest of the capitalist countries of oligarchs, dictators and  representative democracies are not corrupt, just that America leads the world on brutality, greed, corruption and fabricating illusions. I also believe that the end of American savage self destructive imperialism will happen sooner rather than later, and boy, will that leave a mess, that we the people will have to clean up to survive, and attempt salvage the disaster and turn it into that better world. We should be preparing for it now.

 America bring democracy to Iraq.

       From The Greanville Post, by Paul Edwards:

      Back in the days when the Deep State’s diktats commanded a modicum of credibility, its stated goal was worldwide military “full spectrum dominance”. Twenty years of grossly humiliating failure in its murderously ineffectual floundering has rendered that idea null, even to doctrinaire NeoCon wanks.
       Instead, the WWII term for total situational dysfunction and chaos is now so perfectly descriptive of our national Goon Show that it seems made for it. Back then, when a major planned operation went tits up, GIs described it as “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition” and the acronym stuck. Consider:
       America raped and bludgeoned half a dozen countries that never harmed it while financing two that injured it materially. That monumental destruction, and the funneling of billions to whore states Isreal and Saudi Arabia (much of it earmarked for death merchants Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing) gorged the War Machine at the price of tens of thousands of young American’s lives, bodies, and sanity. Americans mostly don’t care, of course, but that, too, is a fubar indicator.
       In America’s chief industry and source of psychotic pride--making weapons of war--the genius of Capitalism has diligently devised ways to gouge more and more money for less and less quality in extravagantly non-performing turkeys. The motive, Putin observed, is that while Russia makes arms for defense, America does so to maximize War Machine profits. This is why America puts billions into endless iterations of gold-plated F-35s that break down and don’t work, and aircraft carriers that were gangbusters at Midway against Zeroes but are now just lumbering, gigantic pinatas Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles will blow the jujus out of in a Moscow minute.
       Russia’s hypersonic, non-ballistic missiles--its phenomenal Avangard inter-continental system (Mach 27) and the Kinzhal and Zircon land and sea-based missiles that operate above Mach 9 (6000 mph)--are untrackable and indestructable by US defenses, and are generations ahead of anything America is even testing. This data isn’t secret; it’s openly available and the US Military has it. Regarding the old days of bitter US/Russian weapons rivalry, Mr. Putin said, “They didn’t listen to us then; they’ll listen to us now.”
     America has lately performed the exquisitely difficult geopolitical maneuver of alienating all nations it considers friends while simultaneously actively provoking those it considers enemies. That extraordinary diplomatic Quadruple Axel had never yet been attempted, much less accomplished.
      America has undermined, abrogated, or withdrawn from the entire web of international nuclear arms control treaties, in addition to unilaterally and dishonestly sabotaging the nuclear JCPOA with Iran to the dismay of our “partners”. It did this at a time when it’s futile mayhem in the Arab world has made it the butt of the world’s derision, its Imperial hubris has alienated even its European vassals, and when Russia and China, which have been moderate and restrained in absorbing US rants and tantrums--knowing the mortal risk of brinksmanship as America can’t--have the resolve, if forced, to go all in and show this deluded Empire what real war is all about.
         In addition to its military and diplomatic faceplants, the US has appalled and estranged most of the world with its oafish, braindead denial of rapidly accelerating climate change, and is leading the omnicidal charge of gross polluting nations against all science and sanity toward a blistering, toxic, inundated, and perhaps even humanly uninhabitable earth.
        So much for our status in the world; America is the active definition of fubar at home. A blundering Capitalist Fascist tyranny burlesquing shamelessly as a democracy, run as a Mafia Family for its vicious oligarchs and owners, with a Kshatriya class of Deep State Security thugs managing its clownish Punch-and-Judy politics to mesmerize the rubes, it has baldly stolen every benefit, every right, every security, and every source of pride from its dull people and left them with porn, dope, toons, and cage fighting in place of hopes, dreams or aspirations beyond becoming one of their own exploiters.
       Our Capitalist ruling class, entrenched in absolute power behind a symbolic Potemkin Government of flunkies comprised of a contemptible claque of hicks, clods, whores, and sleazy, Cracker hypocrites--our Congress--that stages infantile foodfights to cozen the gullible, rapes and robs us with the blessing of a justice system that is the black embodiment of corruption. Pathologically greedy, Capitalists have abandoned production as a less efficient way to plunder the public good than financial chicanery, bank fraud, and tax crime. Poisoned by their disease, they lack even the foresight to alter their sick voracity in the face of the climate catastrophe that is driving mass extinction and may portend the end of humanity itself.
        After half a century producing nothing of benefit to the American people, our Congress, fiercely divided for melodrama’s sake on fairytale principles neither gang respects or adheres to, focused only on doling trillions in fiat money to its masters, is fully engaged in an exercise so ridiculous and debased that a rational nation would summarily dissolve and eliminate it.
        A criminal sociopathic President, impeached by a criminal, sociopathic Congress, not for high crimes in which they have been deeply complicit, but on two empty, trivial, puny premises, with the charade locked in insoluble stasis while the clueless country hurtles toward catastrophe: this is what is laughingly referred to as government in this sad, stupid, criminal nation.
        QED, Fubar is indisputably the term that applies. Perceptive cynics will take issue, saying that because great Capitalist thieves have both hands deeper into the national till than they ever have proves that the system is working as intended. On a superficial level the argument is defensible but behind the heavy protective armor of Imperial propaganda lurks the broad insider economic awareness that the day of dollar hegemony is at sunset.
          Russia and China are dumping treasuries by the hundreds of billions and buying gold in unprecedented quantities. Money cognoscenti are deeply troubled by enslavement to a currency supported only by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S.A., in which they now have no faith whatever. Decoupling from the dollar as the world reserve currency and adoption of a basket of currencies in its place will bring a devaluation jolt that will disintegrate our massive debt-disabled national financial junkyard and bankrupt us all.
           Back in the days of Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe, GIs not under fire at the Front could laugh at Army disasters and joke about the fubar. We don’t have that space: our Front is everywhere and we can’t escape it. The plain fact is it is terrifying to live in an evil, dying, decomposing Empire. There is no joy in exposing systemic failure of ones own. There is only a profound and wounding sadness in the awareness that your country is a horror, a criminal monster, and the source of so much misery and pain to so much of the world. It is pure grief to find that all you have believed, likely loved, and certainly identified with, is false and rotten at its core. Yet life and beauty have always survived the deaths of empires, and love never dies. History, as well as Dylan Thomas, assures us that “Death shall have no Dominion.

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

Proto-Fascism.

 

      Well that's that over with. I have never been one for ritual, ceremony, tradition, I've always felt they got in the way of freedom of self expression. I'm not one for things should be done this way at this time of year, and if you don't conform you're some sort of oddity. I'll continue to wear my oddity as a badge of honour.

The goal of neo-liberalism ideology.

       And so for something completely different, not new, but it might help shock the party mood back to reality. Prophesy, or reflection of the present and possible future. 

The same can be said for most countries.

Extract from;

AGAINST THE NEW AUTHORITARIANISM 

by HENRY GIROUX 1-894037-23-5

PROTO-FASCISM.
Page 94/95;

        Neoliberalism is not only an economic policy designed to cut government spending, pursue free trade policies, and liberate market forces from government regulations. It is also a political philosophy and ideology that affects every dimension of social life. Neoliberalism has heralded a radical shift that defines the citizen as consumer, disbands the social contract in the interests of privatized considerations, and separates capital from the context of place.Within this discourse, as Jean and John Comaroff have argued, "the personal is the only politics there is, the only politics with a tangible referent or emotional valence. It is in these privatized terms that action is organised, that the experience of inequity and antagonism takes meaningful shape." Unnder such circumstances, neoliberalism portends the death of politics as we know it, strips the social of its democratic values, and reconstructs agency in terms that are utterly privatized. It provides the conditions for an emerging form of proto-fascism that must be resisted at all costs. Neoliberalism not only enshrines unbridled individualism as a central feature of proto-fascism, as Herbert Marcuse reminds us, it also destroys any vestige of democratic society by undercutting its "moral material and regulatory moorings," and in doing so, offers no language for understanding how the future might be grasped outside the narrow logic of the market. But there is even more at stake here than the obliteration of public concerns, the death of the social, the emergence of a market-based fundamentalism that undercuts our ability to understand how to translate privately experienced misery into collective action, and the elimination of the gains of the welfare state. There is also the growing threat of displacing "political sovereignty with the sovereignty of the market, as if the latter has a mind and morality of its own.'" As democracy becomes a burden under the reign of neoliberalism, civic discourse disappears and the reign of unfetered social Darwnism, with its survival-of-the-slickest philosophy, emerges as the template for a new form of proto-fascism. None of this will happen in the face of sufficient resistance, nor is the increasing move toward proto-fascism inevitable, but the conditions exist for democracy to lose all semblance of meaning----

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