I tend to go on about a presence on the street and in our communities by means of the paper, leaflet, sticker and poster. However there is another method of keeping you message on the street, and it doesn't cost a printer, ink cartridges and paper. I am of course talking about graffiti. It seems, like the paper on the street, to have gone out of fashion. Done in the right places it can last much longer than the paper, though it doesn't find its way into people's houses, but it can make its way into their minds. For some of us, a wee walk down memory lane.
Long before the days of social media and online petitions graffiti
has been used as an expressive display against the corporate and
political powers that be. When I say graffiti, I don’t mean the multi-coloured three
dimensional ‘tagging’ and artwork that you see aside canal towpaths and
scrapyards, I’m talking about early graffiti, hand written messages and
slogans written by anarchists and underdogs across the county.
I picked up a couple of books on this subject ‘The writing on the
wall’ by Roger Perry and ‘Graffiti’ by Richard Freeman. These books show
a number of early images of graffiti dating from the 1960s through to
the 1970s, a long time before the Bronx and subway inspired art reached
our shores. Amongst a number of nonsensical written messages and
slogans, there are pictures of graffiti which addresses racism,
capitalism, greed and inequality, all daubed across the walls and
bridges of our inner cities and suburbs.
These images got me intrigued and made me want to dig deeper and seek
out more images of this nature. A high number of the images I came
across were taken during the turbulent Thatcher years, where tensions
were high and the disenfranchised expressed their anger and feelings
towards the Tory government and authorities of the era.
There is something about the images below, a bold statement that
makes you think deeper about the message being put across and what
became of the people who wrote them.
There is a tendency to refer to people in this society being free or in prison, as if there was a clear demarcation between the two. It is all a matter of degree, in this so called free democratic society. Our society comprises of two types of prisons. The vast majority are confined to the open prison, with its illusions of freedom. However, you are still confined within the framework of controls, managed by CCTV cameras that record your every move and build a record of where you’ve been who you met and when. Then there is the confines of the wage slavery, binding you to a particular routine to earn the right to live a precarious half decent life. Your quality of live is inextricably link to your market value on any particular day. You are obliged to be subservient to the established order of inequality, laid down by the wealthy and powerful powers that be. Otherwise you could be transferred to the other prison, the closed prison. This is the one for those who cannot accept the stifling demeaning restrictions of the open prison, those who dare to challenge the system and its inequality and exploitation. In this prison surveillance is total, complete with bars, locked cages, guards, restricted movement and deprived of family and friends. It is where you end up if you can’t or won’t play by the rules laid down for the smooth running of this unjust and exploitative system. In the open prison your potential is limited to your market value, in the closed prison you potential is demeaned and destroyed by deliberate policies to turn you into a subservient citizen, so that you can be returned to the open prison to be a marketable asset to the system.
If we talk of tearing down the walls of prisons to create a free society, we will not only have to address the walls of the closed prison, but the walls of the open prison as part and parcel of the same struggle for freedom for all. The walls that prevent equality across the whole of society, the walls that prevent the freedom of unmonitored movement, the financial walls that prevent the full development of the potential of all in society, and governs and stifles the quality of each of our lives. Tearing down one prison’s walls without addressing the other, still leaves us imprisoned within the confines of an unequal and exploitative system.
Let us in unison start to tear down walls and re-imagine justice.
And again, one of my favourite quotes:
"Ah Love! could thou and I
with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things
entire, Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then Re-mould it
nearer to the Heart's Desire!"
Some years ago I read "The Coming Insurrection" by The Invisible Committee, and found it extremely interesting and informative, an excellent read. Since then I have plucked quotes from them every so often. I am now reading "Now" another of their renderings and again I find it fascinating. It is available as a free download from Libcom Library. The following is an extract from the first chapter, "Tomorrow Is Cancelled", I wonder if it resonates with you as it does with me?
--------Hope. Now there's at least one disease this civilization has not infected us with. We're not despairing for all that. No one has ever acted out of hope. Hope is of a piece with waiting, with the refusal to see what is there, with the fear of breaking into the present-in short, with the fear of living. To hope is to declare oneself in advance to be without any hold on that from which something is expected nonetheless. It's to remove oneself from the process so as to avoid any connection with its outcome. It's wanting things to be different without embracing the means for this to come about. It's a kind of cowardice. One has to know what to commit to and then commit to it. Even if it means making enemies. Or making friends. Once we know what we want, we're no longer alone, the world repopulates. Everywhere there are allies, closenesses, and an infinite gradation of possible friendships. Nothing is close for someone who floats. Hope, that very slight but constant impetus toward tomorrow that is communicated to us day by day, is the best agent of the maintenance of order. We're daily informed of problems we can do nothing about, but to which there will surely be solutions tomorrow. The whole oppressive feeling of powerlessness that this social organization cultivates in everyone is only an immense pedagogy of waiting. It's an avoidance of now. But there isn't, there's never been, and there never will be anything but now. And even if the past can act upon the now, this is because it has itself never been anything but a now. Just as our tomorrow will be. The only way to understand something in the past is to understand that it too used to be a now. It's to feel the faint breath of the air in which the human beings of yesterday lived their lives. If we are so much inclined to flee from now, it's because now is the time of decision. It's the locus of the "I accept" or the "I refuse," of ''I'll pass on that" or ''I'll go with that." It's the locus of the logical act that immediately follows the perception. It is the present, and hence the locus of presence. It is the moment, endlessly renewed, of the taking of sides. Thinking in distant terms is always more comfortable. "In the end," things will change; "in the end," beings will be transfigured. Meanwhile, let's go on this way, let's remain what we are. A mind that thinks in terms of the future is incapable of acting in the present. It doesn't seek transformation; it avoids it. The current disaster is like a monstrous accumulation of all the deferrals of the past, to which are added those of each day and each moment, in a continuous time slide. But life is always decided now, and now, and now.------
What is it that people see when there is a military parade? What is it that they are cheering? Why such joy at the sight of trained killers and weapons of mass destruction? Can't they see the blood stained rubble, the maimed kids and body parts, the fear, anguish and pain of a population? A population that has no other desired than to get on with their lives, struggling to care for their family and friends, just like you and I. All states do it, glorify their military and try to sell war as some sort of heroic stance against evil, what ever evil is. They always keep war as some sort of moral answer to their problems, concealing the facts that, as well as being the largest environmental polluter on Earth, it is also one of the largest money making businesses, for the few, on the planet. There is something sick at the heart of a society that revels in its ability to inflict mass killings on civilian populations.
This is a wee bit late, almost a week after the event, but still well worth the read.
President Trump’s order to the
Pentagon to have an aerial parade of military aircraft over Washington,
DC on July 4 provided a history lesson of America’s war mongering in the
past two decades, and a terrifying view of what might appear in the
skies of Iran if John Bolton gets his way. "With the U.S.
political and media dogs of war howling again for blood in Iran, Trump’s
decision to showcase America’s aerial firepower must have been cheered
by the war hawks in the administration and Congress, and their friends
in the weapons industry." The combat aircraft that were
cheered by Trump’s supporters as they flew low over the monuments in the
nation’s capital have not been cheered by people in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Palestine as the same type of planes
fly over their homes—terrifying and killing their children and wreaking
havoc on their lives. Over those countries, Air Force B-2 Spirit, Air Force F-22 Raptor, Navy F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and F/A-18 Hornet
stealth fighters and bombers fly so high they are not seen or
heard—until the massive explosions from their 500- to 2,000-pound bombs
hit and obliterate everything and everyone in their radius. The blast radius
of a 2,000-pound bomb is 82 feet, but the lethal fragmentation reaches
1,200 feet. In 2017, the Trump administration dropped the most massive
non-nuclear bomb in its inventory—the 21,000 pound “mother of all bombs”—on a cave tunnel complex in Afghanistan. While most Americans have probably forgotten we are still at war in Afghanistan, the Trump administration “eased”
the rules of engagement, allowing the military to drop more bombs in
2018 than in any other year since the war began in 2001. The 7,632 bombs
dropped byAmerican aircraft in 2018 made U.S. weapons makers rich, but hit 1,015 Afghan civilians.
The Boeing-made combat attack Apache helicopters, a crowd pleaser on
July 4, have been used by the U.S. Army to blow up homes and cars filled
with civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Israeli military uses them
to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the Saudi military has killed
children in Yemen with these death machines. Billions of
dollars worth of U.S. planes and bombs sold to Saudi Arabia raked in
record profits for weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon and Lockheed
Martin. But they pummeled Yemeni civilians since the air war started in
2015, killing people in marketplaces, weddings, funerals, and 40
children on a summer outing in a school bus. Radhya al-Mutawakel,
chairwoman of the Yemeni human rights organization Mwatana, says
the U.S. has legal and moral responsibility for selling weapons to the
Saudi-led coalition. “Yemeni civilians are dying every day because of
this war and you (America) are fueling this war,” al-Mutawakel said. “It
is a shame that financial interests are worth more than the blood of
innocent people.” One notorious vehicle of death that was not
flown above Washington was America’s assassin drone. Perhaps it was too
dangerous for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to be flown close to the
President of the United States and a crowd of American citizens with
its history of numerous inexplicable crashes and intelligence failures
that have caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq. John Bolton, who has the ear of the president every day, wrote in an op-edin
2015 saying that in order to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,
the U.S. should bomb Iran. Now that he has goaded Iran into stepping up
its enrichment of uranium as a result of the U.S. reneging on the
nuclear deal and European signatories bailing out on their
responsibilities in the agreement, Bolton is itching to start the
bombing. So are Bibi Netanyahu and Mohammad Bin Salman. Both Israel and
Saudi Arabia have been trying for years to drag the U.S. into a war with
Iran. Colleagues in the humanitarian and refugee arenas in the Middle
East tell us a war is coming and are preparing for its nightmarish
consequences throughout the region. With the U.S. political
and media dogs of war howling again for blood in Iran, Trump’s decision
to showcase America’s aerial firepower must have been cheered by the war
hawks in the administration and Congress, and their friends in the
weapons industry. But to those of us who want peaceful resolutions to
international disputes, the Fourth of July display was a chilling
reminder of the horrific deaths caused by successive Administrations’
propensity for war and the terror that might soon be raining down on the
people of Iran if John Bolton gets his way.
I'm in agreement with the London Anarchist Federation critique of this years Pride in London parade. It is so easy to go for the big event that requires money and then you draw in the backbone of the exploitative system that stands for anything but equality and freedom.
Biarritz,(BasqueCountry): INTERTERRITORIAL DIRECT ACTION WEEK, 8 – 14 JULY AGAINST G7
CALL FOR AN INTERTERRITORIAL DIRECT ACTION WEEK AGAINST G7
It had been called an Interterritorial Direct Action Week from the
8th of july to the 14th against the G7 summit that it would take place
in Biarritz (Basque Country). It’s a call to extend the fight that from
some months ago has started to organize against this G7 summit from the
Basque Country to other places, to respond through the direct action
against it and the system that it represents.
When it comes to what I call the "Crooks and Liars Competition", electing your new master, anarchists usually abstain, some might make their way to the ballot box and destroy the ballot paper. However you have to hand it to our Greek comrades, they do things a little bit different in that neck of the capitalist swamp. I like the way the article refers to the "perpetrators" as "self-styled anarchists"!! Does that mean that their anarchism was not imposed on them?
A group of ten self-styled anarchists stormed a polling station in
Exarcheia, the infamous neighborhood of Athens, stole a ballot box and
set it on fire a few minutes before the voting ended for the general
elections.
The perpetrators used a sledgehammer to threaten electoral clerks before grabbing the ballot box and making off with it. According to Greek electoral law, the voting at the polling station will be repeated next Sunday.
Any state's judicial system is a ruthless, inhuman, destroyer, devoid of empathy, that functions solely for the protection of the status-quo, the safeguarding of the power and privileges of those who hold the reins of power. Some states are worse than others, but it is all a matter of degree. The case below is not an exception but just one of the many cases of the degradation of a human being at the hands of the state.
Solidarity with Andreas Krebs – A summary (Situation July 2019) July 7, 2019.
There is also an German and Italian version of this text!
Our friend and companion Andreas is currently imprisoned in Naples
(Italy). Since his imprisonment in Germany Andreas has been known as a
rebellious prisoner. In April 2019 he was sentenced in Italy to 24 years
in jail. In addition, Andreas has recently been diagnosed with kidney
cancer. His health is deteriorating and we fear for his life. Actually,
he should undergo surgery months ago, but the Italian authorities refuse
to transfer him to a hospital. Andreas was in the clutches of
the German judicial machinery for years and he was in jail for a total
of 16 years. He is a rebellious prisoner, participated in building the
prisoners’ union (GGBO) behind bars, he went on hunger strike several
times against the prison conditions and also participated in a
solidarity hunger strike for the prisoners in Greece. To date he
repeatedly publishes texts against the prison society, in which he
describes everyday life in captivity. In autumn 2014,
after his release, he met his current wife Jutta. Both decided to spend a
quiet retirement in the south of Italy. At the end of December 2016
there was a dispute with his former employer, who attacked Andreas and
strangled him. Andreas stabbed him in self-defense with a penknife.
Sadly, the victim died in the hospital three days later under mysterious
circumstances, although it was said shortly after the act that he would
survive. What followed was an unprecedented hunt against
Andreas and Jutta. Jutta received death threats via Facebook while in
the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison he was maltreated and tortured by
the family members of the deceased, who are still working in that jail.
Since the surveillance video confirmed Andreas’ statement to have
defended himself, he came after several days in custody in house arrest.
There they were exposed to constant “visits” by the police and hatred
from large parts of the population. The family of the victim besieged
their home, so that Andreas and Jutta could not go out for weeks.
Finally, they felt forced to flee and went back to Germany. There,
Andreas was arrested less than half a year later on the basis of a
European arrest warrant with the help of the anti-terror unit of the
German police. Andreas was back in jail in September 2017.
In December 2017, he was then completely unexpectedly relocated to the
jail in Burg with the participation of masked cops of another
anti-terrorist police unit. Andreas repeatedly wrote in letters about
the intolerable conditions in the jails in Volkstädt and Burg. In April
2018, Andreas was finally totally overhasty handed over to extradition
custody in the jail in Berlin Moabit, finally to be delivered in May
2018 as a German citizen to Italy. Andreas is since then in the prison of Secondigliano, one of the largest high security prisons in Naples (Open Street Map).
Since May 30, 2018 the trial against him was conducted there. In
November 2018, some hearing dates took place, which Andreas’ wife Jutta
also attended. In the courtroom, the relatives of the victim tried to
assault Jutta and threatened her again massively. On
April 1st, 2019, the trial ended in the first instance with a sentence
of intentional murder of 24 years imprisonment. Andreas was already
visibly physically and mentally marked by the conditions of detention in
the jails of Volkstedt, Burg and most recently in Berlin-Moabit.
Andreas’ critical state of health was systematically ignored and denied.
He was repeatedly refused medication, clinical investigations and
operations. In addition, his detention conditions were aggravated, since
the German police pretends that he has a close relationship to (former)
RAF members. In Italy, Andreas’s health has improved by
no means. On the contrary: Andreas was recently diagnosed with kidney
cancer. In recent weeks he had to cope with acute kidney failure. He
suffers from very heavy water retention throughout his body, especially
in his legs and at times he can not walk anymore. He is still refused a
transfer to a hospital and an operation, necessary for months and also
promised by the prison management. Andreas is rebellious as usual, is
committed to other prisoners and reports repeatedly about the violent
everyday life in the jail of Secondigliano, the arbitrariness of the
guards, the neglect and undersupply of all prisoners and the racism
against African fellow prisoners. Andreas is happy about support of every kind! For medicine and reasonably edible food he has to pay himself. If you want to donate money: Payee: Krebs IBAN: DE 90 1005 0000 1067 1474 26 BIC: BELADE BEXXX Reference: Spende/Andreas Krebs
Write Andreas in jail, he is happy about every little postcard. You
also can send books, newspapers, magazines or colorful paper, it all
will come through. He is very interested in motorcycles and
philosophical issues. Andreas Krebs Sez. 1 Stz.1 Sez. Mediterraneo (CASA CIRCONDARIALE SECONDIGLIANO) Via Roma Verso Scampia, 250, Cap 80144 Napoli (NA), Italy If you want to know more about Andreas, then go to https://andreaskrebs.blackblogs.org/ (in German)
Call numerously in the German embassy in Italy and demand medical care
for the prisoner Andreas Krebs! Anything else is a failure to render
assistance! Mr. Besken (Ambassador) +39649213285 Let us show to Andreas that he is not forgotten. Solidarity actions of any kind are welcome! Freedom for all prisoners! Down with all the prisons! Freedom and luck for Andreas Krebs!
Paisley was a famous weavers centre producing intricate patterns that became world famous. Like all workers, the bosses tried to get as much profit out of them as they could, and pay them as little as possible. In Paisley this came to a head with a long and bitter strike in 1856, in which the strikers won their battle. Each year now the strike is celebrated on the first Saturday of July with a march and a celebration of the burning of the "Cork".
In
the 19th century the intricate patterns of the Paisley weavers work
was held together by an unseen strong thread called the Sma' Shot.
This secret stitch held together Paisley's famous shawls and without
the stitch the patterns would come apart. The weavers had to pay for
the thread but the fact that it was unseen meant that the
manufacturers who purchased the patterns would not pay for the cotton
in the sma' shot.
CONFRONTATION.
By
the middle of the century the Paisley weavers were fed up with the
bosses tight-fistedness and decided to take strike action. In 1856
after a long and bitter dispute the bosses caved in and the weavers
won their claim to be paid for the hidden thread.
CHARLESTON
DRUM.
The original Charleston, (a
district in Paisley) drum which historically was used to rally
weavers in times of disputes, is now in the Paisley Museum, a copy of
the original drum is now used to rally the masses on Sma' Shot Day.
The climax of the celebrations on Sma' Shot Day is the burning of an
effigy, in top hat and tails, representing “the Cork” who was the
despised boss in the days of the dispute.
LONGEST
RUNNING CLASS WAR CELEBRATION.
From 1856 the first Saturday in July, a traditional Paisley
holiday was named “Sma' Shot Day. This celebration of the weavers
victory continued until 1975. For a few years it seems to have been
dropped but in 1986 the tradition was revived and continues today.
The loom that drove the weavers from cottages to factories.
How would you put the anarchist dream into words, so that anybody would understand? In all probability you would consider some large volume packed with inspiring words and deeds. Rather than pressuring our simple minds to getting that volume out and circulated, how about we just borrow these few lines from the past.
"Ah Love! could thou and I
with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things
entire, Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then Re-mould it
nearer to the Heart's Desire!"
When worker kills worker under some coloured rag or other, called “the national flag” it is seldom, if ever, because that worker hates the other worker. It is usually they have been conscripted, (forced) or because of the mainstream media, the propaganda mouth piece of the state, has convinced them that it is their patriotic duty. That we as morally superior beings have to sort out the evil of the other. An so shop keeper goes to kill bus driver, and school teacher goes to kill mother of four. Factory worker goes to kill office worker. We have had mass protests across the globe in an attempt to stop this madness, this exploitation of people for power and wealth of the few. However a simple glance at the world to day and it is obvious we have failed miserably. State sponsored carnage continues to turn vast swaths of our planet into abattoirs, the devastation of countries is total, its people, bus drivers, office workers, school teachers, factory workers and innocent parents and children, die in fiery graves with tons of rumble heaped on them as grave stones. In days gone by, in military conflict the casualties were mainly the military. Now with aid of our wonderful technology, the civilian population are, by far, the main victims in any war.
Four years ago I wrote the following little piece and today it is more relevant than ever, wars are still portrayed as a moral answer to problems, despite the flagrant slaughter of the innocent.
On most occasions, war, in
our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is portrayed as
something heroic, with our side standing tall on the moral high ground,
and the enemy crawling from the sewers with mean and nasty tactics. How
else could they keep recruiting fresh young blood. We can be thankful
for that band of heroes the poets, who experience war in all its
brutality and record it, as viewed through the eyes of a human being,
seeing the destruction and death of another human being. One
such poet was the Gaelic poet George Campbell Hay, 1915-1984, born in
Elderslie and brought up in Kintyre. Due to his pacifist values, for
more than a year during WWII, he had tried to avoid conscription. Faced
with prison, he opted for non-violent service in the army. George was
sent to North Africa and given the job as night watchman. The events of
the night May 7th. 1943 traumatised him, and he was never the same
again. The event he witnessed was the allied saturation bombing of the
German occupied town of Bizerta.
What is
their name tonight,
the poor streets where every window
spews
its flame and smoke,
its sparks and screaming of its
inmates,
while house upon house is rent
and collapses in a
gust of smoke?
And who tonight are beseeching
Death to come
quickly in all their tongues,
or are struggling among stones and
beams,
crying in frenzy for help, and are not heard?
Who
to-night is paying
the old accustomed tax of common blood?
Of course we
have to ask ourselves, why in Gaza and many, many more places on this
planet, can these words still be applied.
