Paper.

       

     

    One of these libraries described below, in every city, town and village would go a long way to introducing our ideas and aims to the wider public. The nearest we have in Glasgow is probably Spirit of Revolt Archives of Dissent https://spiritofrevolt.info contact info@spiritofrevolt.info we have a very extensive range of serials, magazines leaflets and other documents relating to anarchist and libertarian socialist history of struggle. A lot of them available to read on line for free. Documents not yet on line can be accessed by appointment. 

 

Library

LIBRARY:  For reading! And discussing! Maybe even borrowing! (For most books and zines which we only have one copy there is the possiblity to give us an email or phone number and a small deposit to borrow )

DISTRO: a range of texts available for contribution – take a copy away with you or request more copies to be brought for you.

ARCHIVE: Forthcoming! Publications from the exhuberent heritage of the anarchist tension across the world, which will be catalogued on this site in the future, as well as for reading live and direct in the library.

Contact  touchpaper@riseup.net

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Caged.

 

          Those who voice their desire for a fair and free world without borders, and are prepared to take action to further their desires, very often will suffer the full ravages and vengeance of the state apparatus. Brutality, intimidation, and being caged like an animal are some of the state's methods of attempting to create a submissive population. Submission is necessary for control, freedom of expression, justice and fairness can never fit in a governed population. Rules and regulations formulated by those who wish to control the shape of the society we live in, are considered more important than the freedom of the individual. Woe betide those who transgress those rules and regulations in their desire for a free and equal world, they will require and deserve all the support and solidarity we can muster. To the abolition of the state and its prisons.

Words From Comrade Gabriel Pombo da Silva
July 16, 2023 

  

           Dear comrades: as incredible as it may seem to you, I have as yet had neither the desire, nor the ability, nor the will to sit down in front of a machine to (re)-announce my (re)-return to this frenetic world… in any case I have the will to share these brief words.
         Be that as it may, finally the truth prevails, and their gray state officials should have recognized that they have kept me KIDNAPPED for many more years than what their “democratic” laws and rights commonly and ordinarily announce.
        As life and death is a bureaucratic procedure for those who “conquer more than they convince”, when the release order reached its final rung, just like that, they put me suddenly before the doors of one of their prisons. They did not even take the trouble to warn the lawyers, comrades or family of this fact, forcing me to endure 40 interminable minutes standing there like an imbecile until a prisoner let me talk on the phone….
        Anyway, I did not expect the bride and groom of death to apologize, but neither did I expect them to be so vile… the fact is that in the last few months I have lost more than 15 kilos of muscle mass, I will spare you the lurid details of this last attack that has taken more than 3 and a half years to be resolved.
         My daughter and my partner have undoubtedly borne the brunt of this vile revenge, and now these weeks of reunion and healing are for them. To all of you, brother and sister, internationalist and solidarity comrades, goes my revolutionary love.
         Soon we will begin to build and (re)-build our projects and organizational bases to continue our struggle and commitment for all freedoms. Those who have died in action and those who continue to rot in prison for their militant and revolutionary ideas and commitments are always in my heart and mind.
         We will continue the struggle against the state, capital and its mercenaries on all fronts, again and again.
For anarchy and the end of domination!
Gabriel.”

https://informativoanarquista.noblogs.org/post/2023/07/16/espana-unas-palabras-por-parte-del-companero-gabriel-pombo-da-silva/
Translated by Act for freedom now!

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Haunted.

           The drowning recently of 500 or more migrants off the coast of Greece fades from the system's media, but the sorrow and anguish of the families and friends of those unnecessarily drowned will linger forever. The sad tragedy is that they were not the only ones to drown in this inhumane manner, it is practically a daily occurrence, murder by legislation, but the insane system that at present shackles us, will persist in this policy of borders and controls, while they create mayhem across the world. No borders, one race, the human race one world, our world.

Poster for the state murder of migrants in Pylos, which was posted up in the centre of Athens:

BASTARDS

(cops, judges, politicians, journalists, fascists)

sleep soundly!

The executioners are innocent.

The dead are guilty.

~

They will haunt you

forever,

THE EYES OF THE DROWNED

ANARCHISTS

———————————–

via: athens.indymedia
Translated by Act for freedom now!

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Act of War.

           In this crazy capitalist world of drive for domination, war is the main tool. In today's hi-tech world there are more than one way of waging war. Today we have U$A and NATO's proxy war in Ukraine, fought with Western weaponry but uses Ukrainian blood. However, the U$A's war against China takes a different shape, it is a sanctions war being fought to try to strangle China's further advances in the hi-tech world and so destroy its economy.

 

 

An interesting article from Struggle-La-Lucha.

         

  The July 12 New York Times Magazine headlined: “‘An Act of War’: Inside America’s Silicon Blockade Against China.”
          The report is about the October 2022 “export controls” against China:
           “Last October, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security issued a document that — underneath its 139 pages of dense bureaucratic jargon and minute technical detail — amounted to a declaration of economic war on China. …
           “The Oct. 7 controls essentially seek to eradicate, root and branch, China’s entire ecosystem of advanced technology. ‘The new policy embodied in Oct. 7 is: Not only are we not going to allow China to progress any further technologically, we are going to actively reverse their current state of the art,’ [Gregory] Allen [of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington] says. C.J. Muse, a senior semiconductor analyst at Evercore ISI, put it this way: ‘If you’d told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war — we’d have to be at war.’”
          The U.S. export controls (the act of war) on computer chips aim to cripple China’s ability to produce or purchase high-end chips, which are crucial for the development of advanced technologies such as supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI). Some call this a Silicon Curtain in the New Cold War against China. The U.S. controls (again, an act of war) are not narrowly targeted at curbing Chinese military development, as claimed by the Biden administration. On her recent visit to China, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seemed openly insincere when she tried to say the controls were not aimed at the broader economy. China’s Premier Li Qiang, who met Yellen, told her that she was “overstretching.”
       The export controls are broad. As the New York Times reports, they seek to undermine China’s entire ecosystem of advanced technology, including its AI industry. The semiconductor industry is seen as a means to achieve this goal.
       The semiconductor industry is a global industry that the U.S. has dominated and controlled, as U.S. Big Oil has dominated the global energy industry.
The Pentagon’s semiconductor project
       The semiconductor industry began as a project of the Pentagon’s Semiconductor Technology Advanced Research Network (STARnet), part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The industry in the U.S. was and is, to this day, heavily financed by the Pentagon and the U.S. government.
         The CHIPS Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in August 2022, pumped an additional $280 billion in new funding for the research and manufacture of semiconductors in the U.S. That was followed by a DARPA announcement in January 2023 that it was putting almost half a billion dollars into a project to help advance the semiconductor industry in the U.S. None of this, by the way, was created or developed by any capitalist entrepreneur. Capitalism does not create anything on its own; it just finds a way to exploit new technology to make a profit. And many of the biggest, highest profit-making capitalist industries were created and funded by the government in various ways, including most of the technology industry, the internet, the pharmaceutical industry, the automobile industry, and even Big Oil.
          The semiconductor industry is a knowledge-intensive industry. It is built on shared knowledge and resources. Initially, semiconductor companies were built on open innovation. Because of its complexity, development, and production required the collaboration of research centers, universities, scientists, engineers, and many others to develop the techniques and methodologies required. The pace of innovation in the semiconductor industry has been incredibly rapid. New chip designs are constantly being developed, and the capabilities of chips are constantly increasing. This is due to a number of factors, including:

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Unstable.

 

Image courtesy of Refinery 29.

          We live in a very unequal society, a world of inequality that stretches across the planet with its ensuing misery and deprivation for the majority. What our plunderers and pillagers of the corporate parasite class and their state bed companions should do well to remember is that an unequal world is an unstable world. Fractures are already appearing and the anger is simmering just beneath the surface, occasionally bursting forth in riots, insurrection and resistance, built on a shared burden of struggle. As the capitalist system is utterly incapable of creating an equal society as it is based on profit from exploitation, it is also incapable of creating a stable and fair society. It becomes ever more obvious that if we want a fair and just society we will have to dismantle the present economic system of profit which is driven by greed and self interest. There is no magic wand, nor will the change come from above with a bunch of roses. The change we want will have to be wrestled from the hands of the plundering capitalist system we must replace. Banners and polite marches with snap slogans will not force the plunderers to relinquish their opulent lifestyles in favour of equality and fairness. It will take the mass of the population to rise up and in solidarity state that enough is enough, we will be free and live in a fair society that sees to the needs of all our people.

 The Invisible.

We live there— yes— there
A little bit above the dead
But quite a bit below the living
Where poverty is a dream
Deprivation a reality
Our daily bread an illusion
We sigh--we weep—
As ruthless poverty
With its cold claws
Tears the heart from our children
We ask—WHY?
Surrounded by opulence
Invisible to arrogant greed
Anger simmers beneath the surface
We seek equality
We will have justice
If blood is the price
So be it. 

 

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Revolting Art.

 

             I posted this piece back on the 7th July, but thought it worth while to remind people of this exhibition by Eaun Sutherland, a long time active comrade.

          We live in a world of chaos, pillage and plunder, all managed and manipulated by powerful and rich individuals and corporations, aided and abetted by the various states. All to their advantage at the expense of the lives of ordinary people, the ones who actually produce all that wealth. Wars, ecological disasters, mass poverty, gross injustice and inequality is the norm produced by this economic system of insanity and greed.
          However, below the surface there is always a rumbling of anger and an army of people working hard at trying to change this mayhem to a fairer and sustainable system, a system freed from the profit motive, that sees to the needs of all our people built on mutual aid and co-operation.
          That underground army must use every means at its disposal from literature on the streets, autonomous spaces, community based mutual aid groups, workplace organisations that build solidarity, mass protests, direct action, strikes and reminding everybody of the history of this economic system of greed and exploitation.
         We also should never forget the part art and poetry can make to this struggle for justice. Both these mediums can inspire, point a direction, awaken those feelings of desire for freedom and explain the basic injustices of the present economic system. 

          So, not to be missed is an exhibition of art works by Euan Sutherland, Portraits of Power. This will run from Tuesday 1st to Saturday 12th. August and will be held in The Deep End 21 Nithsdale Street G41 2PZ This exhibition will be part of the Govanhill International Festival here is a copy of the festival program

 

 

Between Dignity and Poverty

In this metropolis of wealth with its fountains of opulence
We are the excluded army that walks that tightrope
Between dignity and poverty.
The excluded, the marginalised, the forgotten,
Regulated by mercenaries, some with guns, others with pens.
They know not, we are their brothers and sisters.
Nor do they know,
Our strength is forged in the humiliation of the bread line
Our daily question, will there be food,
Or will the pangs of hunger stay.
We exist in a system of numbers and balance sheets,
Our lives, dehumanised statistics,
Catalogued and filed by a blind accountant.
When asked to count our dead, do we count the living dead?
Will this tightrope be the inheritance to our children
Or shall our tortured journey lead us from anxiety to revolt
Will the anguish of our children feed our righteous anger
Causing us to tear asunder this fabricated web of injustice 

 

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Shafted.

Image courtesy of 124News.

 

            This government seems to find it easy to come up with money for any of its pet schemes. Take our Monarch Charles III at present he gets a present annually of tax payers money to the tune of £86.3 million, obviously struggle to keep up his standard of living, the state steps in and for 2025 he will receive an wee boost of tax payers money to the tune of £38.5 million, bring his tax payers gift to a tidy £124.8 million annually. Does he need it? Is he struggle to get by on a taxpayers gift of £86.3 million? Recent research shows that Charles III's personal wealth is in the £2 billion region. Who else in this country has a personal fortune in the region of £2 billion and receives a tax payers annual gift of £124.8 million? Obviously there is no shortage of tax payers money to help out billionaires, but not any for struggling health workers, teachers homelessness, child poverty, and others struggling to maintain some standard of living.

Image courtesy of Amnesty International.

 

 

         In another field where the government is extremely generous with your money is in what they call the "defence" budget, in actual fact it is a "war" budget. I can't think of a country on the planet that has any plans to invade the UK, except perhaps America, if we don't do as we are told in supporting U$A's endless wars.
         Our war budget for 2021/22 was £45.9 billion and our £800 million Prime Minister has stated we will "ramp up" "defence investment" (war preparation). Of course he doesn't mean with his money, but with yours. The war budget has in 2020 received a £24 billion "cash boost", again, your cash, and they want to feed it more of your money.
         When do we wake up to the fact that we are day and daily being continually shafted by the rich and privileged parasite class. While in public they shed crocodile tears about our dire situation, and privately laugh at us as they sip their champagne doing deals of pillage and plunder.

Image courtesy of Big Issue.

 

         That better life for all means we have to bring this whole stinking edifice to greed, corruption and self indulgence, this capitalism and state, joined at the hip, insanity, to an end.

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St. Imier.

 

150 years on, St Imier is thriving

             

          July 19th sees the first sessions of a five-day celebration of anarchist thought in the Swiss border town that hosted the visionaries of a definitive, and historic, break with Marxism.
         St Imier is as far as history tells, one of those legendary events which would mark the moment in which anarchism finally nailed itself to the extra-Parliamentary path. In the years since Proudhon famously asked What is Property? and declared himself an anarchist in 1840 the movement had, for the most part, been travelling alongside and debating with more statist positions, most famously through the First International, to which famous libertarian intellectuals such as Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin belonged.
         But in the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, amid increasing political rancour between Bakunin and the more authoritarian tendencies rallied around Marx, both Bakunin and a second leading anarchist, James Guillaume, were expelled causing an irrevocable split.
        The following year two organisations, the Italian Federation and Swiss Jura Federation, went on to organise an alternative international congress – St Imier. A veritable who’s who of the time’s famous anarchist organisers from Errico Malatesta to Jean-Louis Pindy were part of delegations from Spain, Italy, France, the US and Switzerland, which passed four key resolutions:

1. A rejection of the increasingly authoritarian and centralised nature of the First International,
2. A pact of friendship to stand against such authoritarian behaviour in future,
3. A declaration that the proletariat’s first duty was to destroy all political power, including the party form,
4. That the task of emancipation could only be carried out through the free federation of all producer groups, based upon solidarity and equality.

          That declaration, spread across the continent in the following weeks, months, and years, would go on to form a core of anarchist thought in Europe.

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Survival.

 

          Everybody surely knows that there is something dangerously wrong with our present economic system. It has in the past, present and will in the future fail miserable to see to the basic needs of all of humanity and the survival of humanity itself. If you are a member of that strata of people at the receiving end of the economic system’s free hand out of poverty and deprivation, you’ll understand what I’m saying. 

                                              Image courtesy of The Communist.

          Why does this system persist despite in vicious disregard for the vast majority of humanity? It spawns wars across the globe from South America to Africa, the Middle East to Europe, wars that only the privileged few gain from, but the vast majority suffer the consequences the deaths, injuries and devastation. We are prisoners of a system owned and controlled by a small number of very rich individuals and massive international monopoly corporations. The only result from such plundering and pillaging the Earth’s resources is to deny the vast majority of humanity a decent standard of living. 

Image courtesy of MR online

         This system persists because of our subservience to the illusions peddled by its propaganda machine and the control by the various states that manges the population with laws, rules and regulations that perpetuate the existing status-quo. Change will only come when we start to see through the illusions and help others to join us in dispelling myth and replacing it with facts. Awakening to the fact that our acceptance of this system of injustice and savage brutality is not laid down in tablets of stone from some immutable design, it is human designed system and can be changed only by human intervention on a massive scale. We have to abolish borders, erase racism, grow our solidarity for all repressed people and build on co-operation, sustainability and justice for all. We accept the inequality and injustice and hand it down to our children and grandchildren or we stand up, join hands, get organised on a massive scale and make the changes we need and are due, as we are the creators of all the wealth on this planet. Organised solidarity is our winning weapon.

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Misery.

            It always amazes me how our government has money to throw around at making people's lives miserable or unbearable, but can't find any money to make people's lives better. There's no money to improve the quality of life for our health workers, our kids suffer because there is no money to improve the education system. It can however find money to higher a floating prison to house immigrants. The Bibby Stockholm, named after the founder of the company John Bibby, who made his money in the slave trade, is a barge designed to hold 200 and will be used by the UK government to house 500 migrants. Barge is a misnomer, prison is the correct name, as the inhabitants of this hellhole will not be allowed to walk about on the port. The government flags this up as money saving but are paying this private company a sum of £1.6 billion of our tax money, to manage this arrangement. Money to create misery

Image courtesy of Ripples.

 

         Then there is our "defence" budget, the UK government has announced it will spend an "EXTRA" £2.5 billion on army munitions, this comes on top of the £5 billion boost to our war spending. All that money will have no other purpose than to destroy other people's towns and cities and kill thousands of people we don't even know. More money to create misery.

Image courtesy of Middle East Institute.

 

         Where is the pouring of vast sums of our tax money on making the lives of the ordinary people better? We are continually faced with austerity, poverty shadows our children, our elderly, and our most vulnerable. wages stagnate or fall, living standards are continually eroded, and we are told by the wealth privileged, to "hold our nerve"
         We know there is a better way to shape our society, to one that sees to the needs of all our people. A society not based on war, exploitation and profiteering, but built on mutual aid, co-operation and sustainability. That change will not come from the wealthy and very comfortable privileged parasite class, but will only come from the people themselves. We are the ones that create all the wealth on the planet, we are the rightful beneficiaries of that produce, but we will have to stand up and take it, it will not be gifted to us. 

 

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Dark Times.

Image courtesy of UN News. 

 

TODAY

In these mad times where cluster bombs are OK
where shattered limbs an acceptable price to pay
crumpled buildings cratered streets where people stay
cities of weeping children who forgot how to play
Our modern power driven world in rapid decay
we can but hope that soon sanity will have its say

 

Image courtesy of Hi.Org.

 

        In these dark days when pimps of war seem to hold the upper hand and bosses of the capitalist juggernaut grow fat on the bloody proceeds of those wars, I thought it world be fitting to post one of  Theodore Roethke poems, In A Dark Time.

 

IN A DARK TIME

 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

  

 By Theodore Roethke

 

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Bastille.

            Here in the UK, millions are facing dramatic hikes in their mortgage payments, due to the ever increasing interest rates, and landlords are increasing rents. Millions of ordinary people here are also being hit with an unbearable 18.3% inflation rate in basic food prices, while trying to manage astronomical energy prices. Poverty is rampant with little hope of it easing any time soon. Meanwhile we have the wealthy and privileged telling us to "hold our nerve", while other wealth parasites are urging the Bank of England to increase interest rates to bring about a recession to bring down inflation, and to hell with the effects a recession would have on the lives of the ordinary people of this country. 

Image courtesy of Wikidata.

 

            Instead of listening to these wealth, pampered parasites, with their own self seeking agendas, we should perhaps reflect on the date. July 14th. back in 1789 on July 14th. the poor and the marginalised of France decided that they could no longer put up with the injustice of poverty in the midst of obscene wealth. Their anger took them on to the streets and in Paris they stormed the Bastille. This marked the start of the French revolution. We don't have to repeat the results of the French revolution, which, in fact ushered in capitalism as a dominant force. We could however change society for the better of all, but only if we direct our anger and disgust at the repeating injustice of the present system and are are determined to bring an end to this gross injustice that shackles millions to poverty in the midst of obscene opulence. 

 

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Fires.

Image courtesy of Euro News.

FIRES OF THE FUTURE.

 
I am fire,
I surge, I hiss,
sometimes bursting forth in a flame
that lights up the world
illuminating unimagined dreams.
Then the black cloak
blankets out the glow.
Again all is dark,
but, still
beneath the surface
I surge, I hiss,
I endure, waiting, seeking,
building up pressure.
One day I will explode
destroying forever
the Tartarean crust of oppression.
I am fire,
I am the people.

           The foundations of the capitalist society are built on bricks made of the work and exploitation of the ordinary people. These foundations are very weak, as pillage and plunder rampages across humanity and injustice roars with laughter. There is always a simmering anger just below the surface, and sometimes it explodes through the chimera of stability and lets the dream of freedom and justice run free scattering the seeds of hope. It always takes the state's full exercise of power and brutality to quell and control this explosion, but it can never extinguish that simmering anger and desire for justice and freedom.
          One such explosion was recently plainly visible in France, where anger burst forth and claimed the streets and displayed what it thought of this subservient exploitative and brutal system. The anger was plain to see as the state's brutal apparatus tried to stem the flow of that desire for freedom and justice. 

           The following extract is from an article that documents the physical result of the explosion of anger but can't detail the feelings that started it and the feelings that it has lit in the hearts and minds of so many. Long live anarchy, which will blow like a breath of fresh air through the decaying pungent smell of exploitation and injustice. 

Image courtesy of Daily Mail.

Today’s Figures on the Riots

 In total, between the night of June 27 to 28 and July 2 to 3, there were officially 12 031 vehicles burned, 2 508 buildings burned down or damaged, including 273 police and gendarmerie premises, 105 town halls burnt or damaged, 168 schools were attacked. 722 law enforcement personnel were injured.

3,625 people were taken into custody throughout the territory (1,124 of whom are minors). Among all those arrested, « the average age is between 17 and 18 (…) the youngest is 11 years old and the oldest 59 years old, one third are minors”, “60% of the total have no criminal record”, «10% of the people arrested are non-French and there have been 40 placements in administrative detention centres» according to the Minister of Interior. Of the detained persons, 990 of the age of majority and 253 minors were referred to the prosecutor’s office, and 480 of the age of majority were referred to the court for immediate appearance. To date, 380 people have been sent to prison, whether they have been sentenced or placed in pre-trial detention pending trial.

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