Newspeak.

 

       I have always thought that George Orwell was much underestimated and not read by enough people. His words have predicted where we are now, and what the future holds if we don't stand up and protect our individual freedoms. As he points out in all his works, truth is truth no matter the ideological line handed out by the powers that be. A freethinker is the enemy of ideology and dogma, and is the road we should always try to walk.

     The following is a short extract from an article in Acorn on George Orwell, it is well worth reading the complete article HERE:

Extract:

 

       Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense… If both the past and external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?” (24)
      Winston Smith’s struggle to keep a grip on objective reality, to know that two plus two makes four whatever the ideological demands of the Party, is a central theme of Orwell’s novel.
      The character tells himself: “Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre”. (25)
      The Big Brother system has invented a new language which controls people’s minds by making heretical ideas impossible to even formulate.
       One of the Party members developing Newspeak tells Smith: “You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them, every day”. (26)
        He explains: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it… By 2050 – earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed”. (27)
      In the face of this truth-denying dogmatism, Orwell insisted that any authentic radical should always remain free to reject the dominant official ideology: “He should never turn back from a train of thought because it may lead to a heresy, and he should not mind very much if his unorthodoxy is smelt out, as it probably will be”.
      While co-operating with others to some extent, a free-thinking radical had to fight the capitalist system “as an individual, an outsider, at the most an unwelcome guerilla on the flank of a regular army”. (28)
      In Woodcock’s words, Orwell was “a good and angry man who sought for the truth because he knew that only in its air would freedom and justice survive”. (29)

Read the complete article HERE: 
      

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

Kill The Drivers.

      It is difficult to get through the day without thinking, talking or reading about "climate Change". Facts keep pouring over us, extreme weather conditions, desertification, flooding, etc. but still there are doubters. However, among those who say they accept climate change is happening and accept that it is our way of life, spout, change your personal life style to an earth friendly lifestyle. We can go vegan, live frugally and plant a tree, but nothing will change, as the real culprit of our disaster impending future, is the economic system that rules this world. While you live frugally in you humble abode, the system is still spending millions on advertising  exotic holidays in far away places that you can fly to in a greedy fossil burning jumbo jet or sail to on a massive pollution distributing luxury liner. The corporate world is still hellbent on growth of their particular enterprise, continue mining the earth's resources at an ever increasing rate and transforming them into must have "luxury items" that will, according to the label, enrich your life, they are spending millions on trying to get you to consume more. its millionaires and billionaires will continue to have their private jets, their super luxury yachts and massive personal estates and mansions.

       Your changes in your personal life style may make a micro difference in this impending disaster, but the real culprit is capitalism, as it can't survive without continual growth and it couldn't survive without the authority of the state, they are co-joined twins dragging us over a precipice, they are the architects of our planet's death, they are leading humanity on a suicide drive, and the crash is close at hand. To appeal to the psychopathic corporate self-seeking greed driven drivers of this car crash is futile, we have to take direct action and stand up and destroy the entire capitalist/state economic model or crash with them. Remember, spaceship earth has no escape capsule.

This from 325:

Table of Contents

A concern of ‘each and every one’
Green capitalism
Forecasts and the misery of the political world
Smart cities
        In the past weeks we could experience relatively high temperatures again. So one heat record year beats the next. British climate researchers recently presented a model to calculate the temperature rise in the metropolises until 2050. Vienna is one of the cities most affected, with a temperature rise of 7.6 degrees Celsius compared to 1850, the year that is more or less considered the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
       The consequences of global warming are melting of sea ice and glaciers, sea level rise, thawing of permafrost soils (which will release even more CO2), growing drought zones and desertification, increasing weather extremes, extinction of species, etc.
     In addition, there would be further social, political and economic aggravations. Like famines and water shortages, deaths and illnesses caused by the enormous heat and epidemics, wars over dwindling resources and usable territories and a global migration movement. Just to name a few.
       To pick out just one aspect here: If we remember how the political classes and European politicians reacted to the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015. When we saw how borders were militarized, plans of action developed and powers for the military and police expanded. Not to mention the agitation of the mass media and the general racism, nationalism and panic that has been fostered by politicians, media and other opinion makers. And this was about a more or less still calculable number of people, in relation to what will happen if more and more parts of the earth become uninhabitable. Depending on how fast and drastically these developments will take place, we are talking about the largest migration movement in the history of the human race!
      The fascists and conservatives have already spoken of mass migration in 2015/2016 in order to propagate their policy of isolation. Concepts such as the “great exchange” have come up since then and various horror scenarios have been fantasized in order to achieve a racist and nationalist mobilization. Thus it is not foreseeable what reactions a migration movement of several 100 million people would trigger.

A concern of ‘each and every one’
        The ‘Point of no Return’ is crossed! Climate change is a reality, the changes are already happening, they can be felt. And these developments cannot be stopped by individual waste separation, energy saving, veganism, etc. Many appeals are directed at consumer behaviour. So the problem is made an individual problem of each of us. You can do something about it yourself’, ’10 things you can do to stop climate change’.
         They’re supposed to tell us: We humans are all in the same boat. We are all responsible for this. So change your lifestyle… Repent and become better people!
       This equates the responsibility of business, industry and the political sector with the responsibility of all of us. Every question of class and ownership is thus eliminated. But are we really all responsible to the same extent as those who actively earn money from the fact that our whole world is going down the drain? I don’t think so!

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Surveillance Epidemic.

       There is a lot of concern by several states over the coronavirus in China, with fear that it could become an epidemic, and rightly so, but there is another epidemic that most states are willing and trying to spread, it's called surveillance. This particular virus is spread by authoritarian states and seeps into ever aspect of our lives. From a few CCTV cameras it has now spread to every pub, shop, street, public transport, hospital, bank and a multitude of other places we frequent. This particular epidemic has morphed from a simple camera to an extremely complex system among its tentacles are number plate recognition, monitoring and profiling individuals as they do what ordinary people do. The latest development in this particular epidemic is "facial recognition". This new phase has been silently developing in cities across the UK, waithing for the moment it can be set among the people, and we now learn that London will be hit with a full blown version of this anti-human rights virus.

       The Met in London have just announced that they will unleash this new phase on the general public in that city. This despite the fact that EU lawmakers are mulling over a temporary ban on this part of the epidemic, to safeguard individuals rights, as part of their risk assessment to regulate AI

      When it comes to the abuse of human rights we can always rely on the UK government to go it alone.
     This technology is lurking in cities across the UK all waiting to flip the switch and and get a good look at your face as you go about your daily chores.
     I don't know if it would work, but perhaps before we go out we could all wear very large sunglasses, a large nose from a joke shop, plus very large ear muffs and paint our face various colours, and finish off with a large floppy hat. Might be worth a try, at least it would brighten up our cities and towns.
The following From TecCrunch 

       The Met says its hope for the AI-powered tech is that it will help it tackle serious crime, including serious violence, gun and knife crime and child sexual exploitation, and that it will “help protect the vulnerable.”
     However, its phrasing is not a little ironic, given that facial recognition systems can be prone to racial bias, for example, owing to factors such as bias in data sets used to train AI algorithms.
       So in fact there’s a risk that police use of facial recognition could further harm vulnerable groups who already face a disproportionate risk of inequality and discrimination.

         Yet the Met’s PR doesn’t mention the risk of the AI tech automating bias.
Instead it makes pains to couch the technology as an “additional tool” to assist its officers.
       “This is not a case of technology taking over from traditional policing; this is a system which simply gives police officers a ‘prompt’, suggesting ‘that person over there may be the person you’re looking for’, it is always the decision of an officer whether or not to engage with someone,” it adds.
        While the use of a new tech tool may start with small deployments, as is being touted here, the history of software development underlines how potential to scale is readily baked in.
       A “targeted” small-scale launch also prepares the ground for London’s police force to push for wider public acceptance of a highly controversial and rights-hostile technology via a gradual building out process… AKA surveillance creep.

Read the full article HERE: 

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

Resistance An Obligation.

       Pick your country, Greece, Spain, Italy and any other capitalist swamp and the patterns the same. Capitalism's minders, the state, battle hard and ceaselessly to extinguish any form of self organising among the people. Capitalism needs a subservient population, it can't permit people to look for alternatives, or their system would collapse, though that's on the cards in any case. This is where the state steps in to try and crush any form of dissent or resistance to the economic train crash that we are riding towards climate disaster. The state simply puts a stamp of legitimacy on their own violence against the people in an attempt to prop up this suicidal economic system.  When tyranny is the norm, resistance is an obligation.

From Anarchists Worldwide:

Milan: Branca Still Holds Out. Two Comrades on the Roof

       21.01.2020: The operation to clear the Brancaleone squat at 1 Piazza Alfieri began this morning. Despite the cold and the now 12 hours on the roof thanks to being pissed off and the determination to resist, 2 comrades are still on the roof and intend to stay there as long as possible.
      There are solidaritarians in the square at the front of the building who are stubbornly refusing to leave the comrades on the roof alone. The night will be long and cold, but together we will warm it with the flame of our anger that burns to the sound of good music.
       Herbal teas and good food await us here and all are welcome.
Some angry and cold comrades. 

Milan – A Reflection from Solidarity (Resistance to Eviction Continues)

       22.01.2020: Despite unsuccessful attempts by the so-called law enforcement agencies to end the resistance on the roof, it has now been 24 hours for the two people that are determined not to give in to yet another eviction, right in this city of luxury apartments and profiteers.
         The fake social peace that Beppe Sala [Giuseppe Sala – the Mayor of Milan] would like to establish in his showcase city, a metropolis of fashion design and gentrification (especially in a neighborhood like Bovisa where this same fact is evident) will never be completely possible as long there are people not willing to bend to social compromise.
         Yesterday as today, always above the roofs, always against the monopoly of the exercise of state force, against capitalists and exploiters.
Brancaleone resists!

Milan – And We’re Still Here…Of Course

       22.01.2020: For 30 hours they’ve been standing on the roof of the Brankaleone house. The comrades are well fed and are determined to stay where they are, do you want to hear about the beauty of Piazza Emilio Alfieri from above?!
          Let’s re-launch for tonite a date at 8:30pm in Piazza Alfieri, under Branka house. Updates on the situation, proposals, music, beer and good food.
         In any case, we’ll be here all day, so come by whenever you want.
        (all updates via Round Robin, freely translated into English by Anarchists Worldwide. All photos stolen from various Italian corporate media sources)

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

The Great Illusion.

          So we have a new government lead by Boris the dangerous buffoon, and they are promising to make our lives better, they claim they are there to serve the people. They claim to be a “one nation party”, all fair and square. However a wee look at some of their personal data, tells you they live in a different world from you and I.

         The Rt Hon Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson estimated personal wealth £1.3 million. Johnson sold his marital home for £3.7million and bought a £1.3 million mansion with girlfriend Carrie Symonds.

         The Rt Hon Sajid Javid Investor, Banker and Former Managing Director of Deutsche Bank. The estimated net worth of Sajid Javid is approx £8.5 Million

         The Rt Hon Dominic Raab approximate personal wealth £1.5 million

         The Rt Hon Priti Patel approximate personal wealth £2.2 million

         The Rt Hon Michael Gove approximate personal wealth £2 million

       Then there is The Rt Hon Ben Wallace, who faced criticism from his local constituency after it was revealed he had the fourth highest expenses claim of any MP in the UK in 2008, claiming £175,523 on top of his £63,000 salary.

Their idea of a fair and equal society.

        Most of this bunch of wealthy leeches have been processed through the Oxbridge sausage factory for the rich, that by itself separates them from us. No doubt that personal wealth will not be sitting in a box under the bed, it will earning more money by investments in the capitalist system. Do you expect them to do anything that might hinder that growth of their personal wealth by creating a fair and equal society? I wouldn’t hold my breath, they are not on your side, they are part and parcel of the corporate world of greed and exploitation, defenders of a corrupt economic system. If we want that better world, a fair and just society, then we have to get rid of the whole bunch of wealthy, self gratifying leeches and parasites.

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

Profit Versus People.

        Gentrification is not a new phenomenon, nor is it confined to any one town or city. It is just one of the methods used by the financial Mafia to increase their wealth at the expense of the ordinary local people.
      At the moment there is a battle raging in the district of Exarcheia in Athens. The newly elected government, New Democracy is brutally trying to "cleanse" the district by removing people who wish to live together in co-operation mutual aid and a community of common interests, to allow property investors a free reign in filling the area with luxury apartments, expensive restaurants and high priced fashion shops, to syphon money from tourists to the property developers bank accounts. Tourism is their current milking-cow, their goose that lays the golden egg.
      In our world of high finance, the "economy" profit and growth, outweigh any human values, the poor will continually be pushed to the margins until they decide that enough is enough.
       This extract from an excellent article by Molly Crabapple. It is well worth reading the article in full.

      From New York to Berlin, gentrification is consuming cities, and any enchantment a neighborhood offers is a harbinger of its eventual doom. Hoping to boost low real-estate prices after years of economic crisis, Greece began granting the so-called golden visa, a five-year E.U.-residency permit in exchange for a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-euro investment in real estate, in 2013. Wealthy citizens of autocracies took up the offer. Chinese investors bought up blocks of buildings; one purchased a hundred apartments in Exarchia alone. Many of these apartments were converted into Airbnbs (the Web site has more than three hundred listings for Exarchia), which drove up the rents, drove out residents, and brought in tour guides, who attempt to repackage the neighborhood’s insurrectionary spirit as vapid, marketable cool.
       “They want gentrification, to promote this as a historic neighborhood while destroying its history of artists, struggles, intellectuals, and anarchists.” Anna told me. “They want to do what Berlin did, to sell the neighborhood’s past while killing its identity.” In the last decade, Berlin rents have risen more than a hundred per cent, and for Athenians like Anna, the city is a cautionary tale. Graffiti offered a succinct rejoinder: “Airbnb TOURISTS FUCK OFF REFUGEES WELCOME.” Neither refugees nor anarchists would fit into the city that had been dreamed by the world’s wealthy. That Athens would be a series of clean, glass-walled, interchangeable rooms, through which capital could frictionlessly glide.
        Throughout the winter, police repeatedly attacked Exarchia Square with tear gas and flash-bang grenades. Sometimes the pretext was a protest; other times, it was an attack by anarchists on the police. One night, police trapped residents inside a café for hours. On November 17th, after a march commemorating the 1973 uprising, social media lit up with photos of protesters left bloody by police violence. Three days later, the Ministry of Citizen Protection issued an ultimatum: squatters had fifteen days to evacuate every squat in Greece. By late December, only a handful of squats remained, the last survivors of a network that had once given thousands of refugees a home.
        I thought of the words of an activist from Exarchia, when I asked him whether the government would succeed in fundamentally changing the neighborhood. “Exarchia is not just territory,” he answered. “Territory without people is nothing. I don’t care about losing Exarchia. I care about losing the people.”

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

Battling To Freedom.

 

       The people of Chile continue their struggle to be free from the control and corruption of this capitalist system of greed. Of course those with the wealth and power have a lot to lose, so they hit back with brutal savagery, the people struggle on despite the militarised police and all the other parts of the state apparatus being launched against them.  
Video from arrezafe.

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

A New World.

       It would appear that the great apolitical apathetic hordes are rising, and with eyes wide open they are enraged at what they see. Across the planet they are exploding onto the streets, attacking the system that favours the rich and corrupt. They are enraged at their poverty midst mountains of wealth, at the wars for profit and domination, at the destruction of their planet. Their humanity demands that we destroy the system before it destroys us. We must be part of them, swelling these numbers of enraged people and join with them on the streets whenever we can, if not now, when, if not us, who? We can see the door of the new world, all we have to do is go forward and open that door, for our kids and grandkids, by whatever means possible.

From Inhabit:

        Historic wildfires ravage an entire continent, scorching the land in a preview of what’s to come. Trigger-happy politicians prove eager to kickstart another war, just in time for election season. Scandals pile up, indifference mounts. The global economy churns on, stupidly and without remorse. With its latest products, Silicon Valley upgrades the emptiness. Meanwhile, each new scientific report draws the scheduled date of collapse closer.
        While the architects of disaster hope to preside over the future, people everywhere have already begun charting their own course. 2019 saw the explosion of a new revolutionary sequence, with massive protests around the world demonstrating our collective ability to decide for ourselves what life could be, beyond the familiar catastrophe. Fiery nights lit by the rebuke of indignities, the refusal of the economy’s hold over our lives, utter contempt for the elites and the police, all suffused by generalized rage at the oblivion to which they consign us.
        But if the present ruptures remind us that the future remains open, so too do they attest to the challenges before us. They are a lesson in what we’re up against, how far we still have to go. Power must be overthrown, and ecological destruction must be halted and healed. Technology must be freed from the grip of governance, and we must learn to live on a forever-altered earth. Old beliefs must be painfully shed, and new myths invented for a damaged epoch.
       What happens in the next decade will be decisive. We are at the end of one world, and the beginning of the next. 

Continue reading HERE:

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

In Our Times.

      What the poster says is so very true, we who make the fighter bombers and manufacture the bombs, don't get bombed. We also sell these things to others to go and bomb other places, far away from us, depravity at its deepest level.
     The following poster has started to appear on walls in the city of Lecce in Italy, below is a translation:

OUR TIMES

Infamy is the hallmark of our times
         That is not hard to see: just raise your eyes from your smartphone and look around, throwing a glance at the reality around us and which we are immersed in. Remaining indifferent to the conflicts that flare up in the world, with all their load of thousands of dead and millions of displaced people, believing that the matter does not concern us, because we live in the “non belligerent” part of the planet, for example, is a sign of infamy.
        Because the ongoing war has involved the whole planet for many years, and the part not being hit by bombs is the one in which they are they manufactured, armies train to massacre or to teach other armies the same, and they train the pilots of the bombers of those wars in the airports nearby … Not to see the suffering of the millions of refugees forced to wander around the planet in search of survival, willing to risk their lives in crossing deserts and seas, at the mercy of those who speculate on that suffering, is also a sign of infamy.
        Because the conditions of this suffering have been created in the West we are living in, and the barriers that apparently far-off States – like Libya or Turkey – have erected were financed by the rulers we elected. Rejoicing when people die in the seas or deserts, or when they arrive in Europe but are expelled for not having the right documents due to their condition of poverty -, as well as when they are locked up in Italian camps called CPR, is also a sign of infamy, infamous like all the reactionary and xenophobic speeches on the lips of many of those respectable Italians, reflecting the infamous ideas of their rulers and their policies of exclusion and discrimination towards foreigners, the poor, homosexuals, women and “different” people in general.
         That is why it is no wonder that a rat like the deceased Monsignor Ruppi, for two decades archbishop of Lecce and, through his worthy henchman don Cesare Lodeserto, manager of one of the most infamous concentration camps for poor foreigners in Italy, the CPT “Regina Pacis”, has been buried in Lecce Cathedral as he had asked before his late death in 2011, and his remains have just been transferred to Lecce cathedral.
       The unfolding of History in an increasingly Orwellian sense would like to erase the wickedness, the violence, the abuse and the beatings carried out in “Regina Pacis” for years, and transform a villain into a saint.

We, for our part, are not prepared to forget.

       But in the end his burial in the Lecce Cathedral does not even bother us. On the contrary.

        It will be easier for us to spit on his grave.

Disordine Anarchist Library
disordine@riseup.net

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

EU Democracy.

 

         States work very hard with a ceaseless effort and unfailing determination to control the population and create a flock of subservient citizens. From continuous monitoring and profiling and for those more persistent citizens who stubbornly refuse to be part of the subservient flock they have other methods, entangling them in the loaded judicial system and prison.
       From Spain to Greece and across the EU, that so called bastion of peace, freedom and wealth, the pattern is the same.
       Two cases both with the same aim subservience, one from Spain and one from Greece, both members of the EU financial Mafia club.

Spanish democracy.

From Spain:

        Since June 2018, the anarchist prisoner Amadeu Casellas is back in prison, accused of stealing 300,000 euros in Sabadell, Catalonia. As told by Amadeu, at the time of arrest, he was working at his home; they found absolutely nothing and also the victim did not recognize him at first, the judge took no consideration of these details when decreeing detention. He is currently imprisoned in Brians I prison in Catalonia. The following interview comes from the revolutionary website La Haine.
        I first send my solidarity and that of La Haine to you in this new prison in which you’ve been suffering for months. How do you feel?
Very good.
        How was your arrest and this new accusation?
       At about 5 am they blew open the door where I lived. I was sleeping. I heard the noise and at first thought it was a neighbor, did not even think it was for me. Hooded police entered, threw themselves on me. I was hurt in the fifth and sixth vertebrae and I had to be taken to Granollers hospital. I had to wear a collar for about 20 days and was prescribed an anti-inflammatory. I was accused of armed robbery. Some 20 policemen checked, and found nothing.
       After spending years in prison, you came out in 2010 and now, 9 years later, you’ve been taken back to prison. Have you seen any change in the prison reality between these days?
        Yes, the conditions have fallen between 30 and 40 years ago and now, in all aspects. You cannot even maintain a hygienic value; they do not provide prisoners with any free products, so whoever cannot afford to buy it does not have access to them. Those that do not have hygiene are more likely to have scabies (which has already appeared in some prisons), tuberculosis, etc … Also the food has gotten worse, is less in quality, and cold; menus are repetitive and also they cheat with the portions: for example, in the menu it indicates that there are 4 patties per person and they distribute 3, and so on with everything. The commissary prices have doubled; if it was already expensive before, it is now much more; a liter of milk, which in a store costs about 60⁄70 cents, here costs € 1.60. Not only that, the laundry machine is broken and there is no money to fix it. The other day, a light bulb melted and they had no money to change it at that time. Where is that money? Where is that percentage of profit they get from the commissary going?
        You have participated in numerous protests in prison in the different stages that you have been imprisoned. How is the current struggle in prisons?
          I tried to collect signatures on the subject of food, I got very few, about 20 and 30, people are afraid and some came to say that they pulled back from the protest…
         In the years you were out of prison, you witnessed the fascistization (even more, if possible) of the state and the expansion of repression in large parts of society. How have you experienced this process?
        It is also something that is experienced inside, even as some officials carry the flag.
        From the outside, how can we help your situation to denounce injustice and fight for your freedom?
        Go pestering the court of Instruction No. 3 of Sabadell and especially create a lot of publicity, especially with those releases that come out.
         From your perspective as an anarchist, how do you describe the present political situation in the Spanish state?
        Currently, there is no talk of politics, but of parties; people are leaving things as important as the social aspects (health, evictions, maintenance of forests to prevent fires, maintenance of infrastructure to prevent flooding) and are devoted only to discussing and accusing the opposing parties without contributing anything.
       Finally, what message do you want to say to move all people struggling against repression and against prisons?
        Much strength to you all, the struggle continues. Even though we are few, do not be discouraged; it is a matter of desire and not quantity. Often one person or few can move a crowd. It is a struggle for social inequalities, against sexism, racism; if we do not fight, it will finish worse than in the Franco era.

And from Greece:

Greek democracy

SOLIDARITY TO THE COMRADES OF THE KOUKAKI SQUATTING COMMUNITY
      Since the end of August 2019, the state has launched a wide-scale crackdown on self-organized structures, occupations of the anti-authoritarian space and against squats, which also housed refugees and immigrants, mainly families with children. The present ND (Νέα Δημοκρατία / New Democracy) government is attempting to level everything left standing by the previous SYRIZA government, which had made more selective progress, with the goal of evicting squats of either immigrants or self-organized spaces of struggle.
      The Koukaki Squatting Community is one of these self-organized structures of struggle, which was evicted some time ago, but their comrades in arms recaptured it yesterday which led to a second intervention by the police which resulted in the arrests and beatings of the comrades and those acting in solidarity. The dynamic resistance of the Koukaki Squatting Community who fought against the MAT (Riot Police) and the EKAM (Special Anti-Terrorist Unit) twice during eviction operations for the first time in such cases in Greece, is an exemplary stance to defend the options and practices of struggle that we should never abandon.
SOLIDARITY TO THE COMRADES OF THE KOUKAKI SQUATTING COMMUNITY

SOLIDARITY TO EVERYONE WHO DEFENDS THE CHOICE TO STRUGGLE

Pola Roupa – Nikos Maziotis, members of Revolutionary Struggle

12/01/2020, Korydallos Prison

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

Our Helping Hand.

       Have you received you “thank-you” letter from big business yet, no, me neither. Well I feel our generousity should at least by acknowledged. Figures are a bit out of date referring to 1012-13, but I don’t imagine much has changed since then.
       In year 2012-13 the government received from big business £41.3 billion in corporation tax receipts, but handed out £58.2 billion in grants, subsides and corporate tax benefits. Taxpayers, you and I, are handing out approximately £93 billion a year, that amounts to around more than £3.500 from each and every household in the UK, just to help big business along and swell their bank accounts. Figures from Guardian. 

       

Extracts from Guardian: 

 

Big business and government.

       -------Many of the companies receiving the largest public grants over the past few years previously paid little or zero corporation tax, the analysis shows. They include some of the best-known names in Britain, such as Amazon, Ford and Nissan. The figures intensify the pressure on George Osborne, the chancellor, just as he puts the finishing touches to his budget. At the heart of Wednesday’s announcement will be his plans to cut £12bn more from the social welfare bill.
       Yet that sum is less than the £14.5bn given to companies in direct subsidies and grants alone.------
And-
--------In 2012, Amazon was attacked by MPs on parliament’s public accounts committee for avoiding UK tax. Yet in the same period, the online retailer was awarded £16.5m in grants by the administrations of Scotland and Wales to help build distribution centres. To link the Wales plant to the transport network, the Welsh assembly built the mile-long “Ffordd Amazon road” at an additional cost of £3m------

        We all know we are being shafted by big business, aided and abetted by the state’s business orientated ideology and the state’s stamp of legitimacy, so that makes it alright!! How many MPs have shares in these companies, how many have friends in high places in big business?The real question is not, do we know this, but why do we put up with it and when are we going to get rid of this systematic plundering of the poor. When the cupboard is bare!!

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American Dream.

        America, the richest country in the world, though that might not be too accurate when you consider it massive debt. Never the less, in capitalist terms, it is the richest country in the world. The image it portrays to the rest of the world  is America is the land of plenty, opportunity, and of course the "American dream". Unemployment at a record low, stock market ever rising, money, money everywhere. Often we are shown how poverty thrives in "third world" countries, but America, it is the shining example of good living, and prosperity. Of course, it is a capitalist country, and anyone who knows how the system works will be well aware, that is an illusion. 

         40 million plus, Americans live below the poverty line, homelessness is mushrooming, medical care is not for everybody.

A couple of videos and extracts from Peak Prosperity: 

At least, it has been.
        Recently, it’s become impossible not to see the signs that more and more people are falling into poverty. They just can’t afford the rising cost of living, even if they have a job.
       Here where I live, nowhere is this more apparent than the Joe Rodota trail connecting my small town of Sebastopol with the nearby city of Santa Rosa. Over the past year, this previously quiet, clean, bike & pedestrian route has exploded into a sprawling homeless encampment for hundreds of dispossessed people.
        Here’s a 2-minute video I took of the encampment this afternoon (h/t to my daughter Charlotte for manning the camera as I drove):

And:

      If you have the time, I recommend watching this 45-minute documentary on US poverty produced by a German public broadcast service. Currently more than 40 million Americans live beneath the poverty line — that’s twice as many as in 1970.
       Viewing our country through their outsider’s eye is a stark warning that we ignore this metastasizing social epidemic at our peril:       Back to my question at the start of this post: What’s it going to take? How many more millions will fall into poverty? How much more abuse will continue until of those of us paying attention, with growing fear at the social implications and perhaps at our own financial vulnerability, actively revolt against the elite-centric status quo?
       For thousands of years, history has warned us that such social imbalance will not stand:

Read the full article HERE:

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Thieving Employers.

         If you know anything about your working class history you will be aware of all those long and hard struggles to wrestle some concessions from the employer class to improve our quality of life, The 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, paid holidays, sick pay etc.. They were long and hard struggles, and the progress was slow. Some people paid dearly in those struggle from being blacklisted by employers, arrested by the state and on occasions some paid with their life.
        A short period and people took these conditions as normal, only to find that bit by bit they were being dismantled by the employer class, all under the banner of efficiency, profit and the illusion of "freedom of choice". All these changes stripping away at workers conditions were always given the stamp of legitimacy by the state, the corporate bosses minders.
        From this we should all realise that conditions won from employers are not ours to keep, they will be taken back bit by bit by the employer class. Their battle for ever increasing profit and low production costs will always drive them to chip away at your conditions. This is done in various ways, today its methods include zero hours contracts, pushing workers to be "self employed" etc. freeing the employer from national insurance, holiday pay, etc. Also freeing the employer from any responsibility concerning the employee and their conditions.
        The only sure way to improve our working conditions on an ever improving scale, is to remove the employer, in other words bring down capitalism and its co-joined partner, the state.
       This extract may sound very familiar to lots of you, the total disregard by the employer, of the employee as a human being.

This extract from Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement

 Published on Anarchist News:

     WORKER: Well yes, my terms and conditions leave a lot to be desired. For example, I was on a contract for a maximum of 20 hours, but if I had no students I had no pay. So in reality because of the vagaries of the people we teach, who often have chaotic lifestyles, my hours could vary anywhere between 10 and 20 in a given week, so obviously my pay reflected this. Also we have to take leave around the school holidays. So effectively, because you can't earn enough annual leave to cover this amount you are without pay for around 8-10 weeks a year.
     AWSM: Is the pay good?
    WORKER: On paper it looks ok. I won't go into the exact figures, but it is $30+ an hour and seems generous. The reality however is very different. I get paid what is known as an inclusive rate. This means I get deductions for my holiday pay, which I know isn't that unusual, but also I have to pay the kiwisaver employer contributions out of my pay, which was a new thing for me and totally surprised me as I didn't even know that was a thing. Also we don't get paid for any time we spend preparing lessons or marking, and it is expected we are in the building at least half an hour before any class that we are teaching starts. Another thing that winds me up is once a month we are expected to attend staff meetings, without pay, that can drag on for over 2 hours, thanks to two managers who will talk and talk interminably about nothing much - of course they will be getting paid as they enjoy the luxury of 40 hour contracts.
      AWSM: In the previous question you said you were on a contract with a maximum of 20 hours, did this change?
      WORKER: Yes, at the end of Term 2 last year I was asked if I would like to take on a new course that involved 40 hours per week teaching. I accepted and they put me on a salaried contract which actually saw my pay drop by about $8 per hour. The course actually involved a lot more than 40 hours a week with gathering resources and marking, and of course, such is the lot of a salaried worker, you don't get overtime - but of course if you ever leave early then it is seen as theft of time. I got reprimanded once for leaving an hour early for a doctors appointment - this having worked for the previous 4 saturdays above my 40 hours to catch up with my workload.
      AWSM: Things like that must drive you mad?
     WORKER: Honestly, I have been in the workforce for a long time now and I have no expectation of being treated differently. I really don't think I have ever had a boss who I had any respect for and would treat you decently.
      AWSM: Are you still on that contract now?
    WORKER: No. As soon as my course finished they put me back on a 20 hour/Zero hour contract. Presumably so they don't have to pay me fully for public holidays. When I return at the beginning of next term I will be offered the 40 hour contract again.
      AWSM: How do your colleagues view their working conditions?
    WORKER: No-one really talks about it. I try and get others involved in conversations but they really don't want to rock the boat at all.

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Cut Root And Branch.

       Questions used to be asked, would the state system collapse, would capitalism collapse, now the questions are when will the state system collapse and when will capitalism collapse. A look around you and it seems perfectly obvious that both the state system and capitalism are on the crumbling edge of decay. The system that is destroying the planet and human life on it, along with millions of other species, isn't sustainable. In state after state people are taking to the streets to display their righteous anger at the greed driven plunder and destruction of our only home. Inequality is so wide and glaringly obvious, it is no longer accepted, misery and destruction spawned by continuous wars for resources for the rich is now seen for with it is, the destruction and plunder of the planet for power and wealth for the few. A love of humanity and empathy with all other species demands that we hurry the collapsing process of this cancerous system as much and as quickly as we can. Time is not on our side as the planet's changing weather system is already causing unimaginable death and misery across the planet, fires, floods, poverty for countless millions, mass migration, are all on the increase. Can this deliberate destruction be halted? Certainly not if we appeal to the system that caused it to put it right. No use pruning a rotten and collapsing tree, it has to brought down and destroyed.

       As I have said before, trying to build a "Left" political party is just giving the people a paracetamol to ease their pain, but it will  never cure their problems.

       January 17, 2020 by actforfreedom

Athens, Greece: Obsidian: Against Nations, all out on the 18th January against the state
        Anarchy if anything is total opposition to the nation state. Anarchists don’t just critique or hold a strong suspicion of states, our movement was founded on their negation. This new decade is a new era for nations, one that will likely break them from their historical model. Within this vaccuum our ideals will be increasingly relevant and thrive if able to adapt. The opposite is true for the left wing of capital, those Marxists and liberals who already look like caricatures from the past. For this reason we must vigorously oppose any compromise with old ideas. Our world is moving too fast to look back.
      Our current moment is a train crash of climate emergency, forced migration, mass information, war and growing population. To say the old system is only breaking is an understatement. It broke long ago and is now collapsing under it’s own weight like the many empires before it. Unfortunately the same common history still applies, new beginnings come after violent, unpredictable ends.
       As anarchists in this climate of increasing social instability we should not only say the things only we can say. But take action that makes our antistate position clear. Reminding all that compromise has never ended authority, no matter how comfortable a fantasy. Leaving traditional opposition to wither and watch their own states break apart and lash out with dictatorships.
      In Athens, Europe and the world so many ask when the desperation will end. This question fuels uncontrollable rage directed at the parasite latched onto our collective body. Individuals are sick of asking obvious questions, losing the little ground gained over past decades. As the light at the end of the tunnel dims, a vicious fire lights the way.

Support anarchy against nations
Destabilize the repressive machine
Retake and expand space that pains dominant society.
All out on the 18th January against the state. Kaniggos Square. 6:30pm Athens

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France Mass Protests.

The heads of Britain's richest benefit family out for a walk.

       Not much on mass protests and police brutality happening in France, from our bubble gum and popcorn media outlets, but they continue to spew out the drivel from the family squabbles of Britain's richest benefit family, the Windsors, as if it was earth shattering news about to alter our whole way life. While we, in our under heated homes with our underfed children, sit and wait with bated breath to see which road Harry and Meghan will take. Only when we know this will we be able to relax and get back to our subservient life.

      Meanwhile, in France a general strike has been in progress for 7 weeks. Started by transport workers it is now being joined by a wide spectrum of French society including lawyers and judges; and the dancers at the Paris Opera, among other professions. They have now joined up with the Yellow Vests, who have been on the streets protesting since December 5th. 2018.

       Naturally this has not been happening in a conciliatory manner, the state has unleashed it dogs onto the street, and they have treated the protestors with a brutal savagery typical of any authoritarian state. Beatings, tear gas, rubber bullets, random arrests and more, has been part of the state's response to the demands of the people. Obviously all this is not worth mentioning by our bubble gum and popcorn media with the people gasping for more on the gripping story of the Windsors. 

This from Roar Magazine:

         "-----On one side, the Macron government has staked its legitimacy on pushing through this key “reform” intact, as a matter of principle, regardless of how unpopular it is. On the other side stand the striking railroad and transit workers, who are bearing the brunt of this conflict and have already sacrificed thousands of euros in lost pay since the strike began on December 5. After six weeks, they cannot accept the prospect of returning to work empty-handed, and they have set their sights high: withdrawal of the whole government project.
        This looks like a “now or never” situation. Moreover, it seems clear that the transport workers mean business. When the government — and the union leaders — proposed a “truce” in the transport strike during the sacred Christmas/New Year holiday period, the rank-and-file voted to continue the struggle, and their leaders were obliged to eat their words.
        Nor are the transport workers on their own, despite the inconvenience to commuters and other travelers. They have been joined by emergency-room nurses and doctors angered over lack of beds, personnel and materials; public school teachers protesting undemocratic and incomprehensible reforms to the national curriculum; lawyers and judges; and the dancers at the Paris Opera, among the other professions joining the strike.-----"

Read the full article HERE: 

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