Shielding.

        Getting away for a few moments from the savage brutality of the state, the inherent injustices in the system, the millions in dire poverty, and the callous bloodshed, all pouring from a system that is perpetrated by the greedy, wealthy, powerful few, who control the levers of power, my mind floats to the garden.

      Because of my age and my many underlying medical problems, I have been "shielding" for roughly three months. So this meant that I spend a lot of time in the house, in the garden, short walks in pubic parks and of course escapes on the bike, (very short runs). The garden has been a tremendous pleasure to me. I love roses, and have grown them for years. My memory tells me that my roses always come into bloom round about the middle of July, a month or so behind the south of England, though I wouldn't be surprised if I got that wrong, my ageing memory. However, this year I'm amazed that here we are in the middle of June and we have roses in full bloom. Just in case you might think that is all we have in the garden, those frivolous roses, in the back garden Stasia has an array of vegetables and some fruits.

     While sitting in the garden, more often than usual, I also notice small things, like the bees, they seem to be programed  to go for certain colours. For example, I have watched a couple flirting from purple flower to purple flower, ignoring other colours, while others go from yellow flower to yellow flower, and another that only seems to prefer white. If so, is this a evolved process of efficiency rather than them randomly chasing the same ground as others. Or does the hive have a regimental sergeant major, who barks out their orders as they leave the hive. I hope it is the former, as I believe that bees are much more intelligent than us.

   Another thing I discovered while sitting still in the garden, we have a bubble-bee hive. We watched the bees hover over a tiny hole in the grass and then disappear down, and others to come up from the hole and fly off. That wonderful discovery is thanks to my "shielding", so I suppose I should be grateful for that.

      In keeping with the old age and pottering about in the garden, a wee poem.

 

Mirror Mirror On The Wall.

I can’t help but watch him
that old man
as he staggers across the room
with that unusual gait
punctuated by the odd stumble
I hear his groans and feel his pain
sometimes with a few profane words
he drags himself from the couch or chair
pauses for a moment to regain his balance
I sense his reluctance to bend down
and pick things off the floor
I’m fascinated by those hands
light brown withered looking bony structures
with their pronounced veins
running along the back of them
and up his slim arms
I sense his annoyance
that they’re not as strong as they used to be
I feel his regret
that he can’t do the things he once did with ease
I often think
that to have lived that long
he must have a chest full
of memories and experiences
that should be worth something
but what puzzles me most
is when
I look in the mirror
I see him and not me.

 

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Man's Inhumanity.

       Pick your country, and you'll find that it has its prisons, and those incarcerated in those institutions of state repression, will be treated as if they had ceased to be human. What shocks me most is that the inhumane treatment heaped on the prison inmates is carried out by others who profess to be human. I know that their training, funding and implementation is by the state, but who picks a job that helps to lock other humans in cages and subjects them to arbitrary violence and degrading circumstances. No doubt they go home to their families, laugh and go to the pub, and somehow blend in with those who still hold onto those special characteristics that make us human. You'll stand beside them in the super market, sit beside them on the bus, and in our ignorance accept them as normal human beings, but are they? They belong to the far too large a group that put on uniforms, obey instructions and show little or no human feelings to those they ill treat and beat up. I feel it is glaringly obvious that there is something far wrong with a society that tolerates those humans who can show no compassion to another human being and also gives them positions of authority. The police, the prison guards, the military, the politicians who support and organise these groups and the corporate institutions that need these facilities most be removed if we want a decent, fair and just society.

The following, not unique but typical, is from It's Going Down:

       Statement from Indigenous prisoners in struggle in CERSS No. 5 in Chiapas denouncing prison authorities as COVID-19 continues to take its toll at the prison.

To the Public
To the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion
To the National Indigenous Congress
To the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
To the National and International Sixth
To the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity
To the Media
To the Human Rights Defenders and Non-Governmental Organizations
To the Independent Organizations
To the Indigenous People of Mexico and the World
To the Civil Society of Mexico and the World
       We are Indigenous prisoners, Adrián Gómez Jiménez, of the organization, La Voz de Indígenas en Resistencia and Germán López Montejo and Abraham López Montejo, of the organization, La Voz Verdadera del Amate. Both organizations are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN. We are currently imprisoned in CERSS No. 5 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
      Compañerxs, brothers and sisters. We want to bring to light the situation we face as prisoners due to the health emergency brought by COVID-19, which has caused many people to lose their lives across the globe.
     The coronavirus outbreak was first known here on May 21, 2020. After the death of a prison official, Artemio Jiménez Estrada, two other workers from this prison have already died. José, who was in charge of the tortillas in this prison, died of COVID-19. Also, Manuel Cordero, who worked in the labor area has also died of COVID-19. We used to order our materials from him.
      Here in CERSS No. 5, there is an outbreak of COVID-19. Today, June 13, the inmate Mario A. has died. He was abandoned by the authorities who didn’t even realize he had died.
     Mario A. should have been released from prison because he had diabetes and other illnesses. He fought for house arrest but the unjust authorities denied him that. He should have been released. These are the injustices we face in this prison, injustices caused by government officials. We will never know if the cause of Mario’s death was COVID-19 because we know that he was never tested. What we do know is that he died in prison, from abandonment and negligence, on part of the prison authorities, who treat us like disposable objects who can die in total impunity.
     Previously, prison authorities denied the outbreak of COVID-19 here in CERSS No. 5. According to them, they had it under control with the safety measures they had in place. Let’s see what excuses and lies they come up with now regarding the death of this inmate.
      We want to mention that they did not even inform us of the death of Manuel Cordero or José. They never appeared on the radio news. They want to maintain the image that everything is under control.
     We will not remain quiet about what is happening in this prison where there is an outbreak of COVID-19. We don’t know who will be the next inmate to die victim of the coronavirus, but meanwhile we remain in danger. We continue denouncing that prison authorities have denied us our COVID-19 test results. We should be well-informed about this mortal pandemic, but it is quite the opposite.
       If they continue denying us our test results, we will carry out an action to demand that we receive our documents, because we have the right to know the results.
      Lastly, we invite the state, national and international independent organizations, the state, national and international human rights defenders, to continue demanding true justice and freedom for the political prisoners, prisoners of conscious and prisoners in struggle.
      Uniting the voices of the Mexican people, true justice will triumph.
Respectfully.

Adrián Gómez Jiménez
Germán López Montejo
Abraham López Montejo

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Kate Sharpley.

      I regularly receive emails from the Kate Sharpley Library, with their latest publications, all very interesting and informative. I consider the Kate Sharpley Library to be one of all too few archives of the anarchist movement, that are a necessary part of our history, and a wonderful resource to aid us in our struggles. In there you will find inspiration, knowledge and often hidden historical events. We at Spirit of Revolt do what we can to add to that rich history and resource.

    Who was Kate Sharpley? The following extract will give you a little insight to this remarkable woman:

Albert Meltzer
       One of our frequently asked questions is 'who was Kate Sharpley?' Many of our readers will know of her as 'One of the countless "unknown" members of our movement ignored by the official historians of anarchism.' We hope this tribute, written by Albert Meltzer in 1978 will help to fill that statement out a little. There are more details in Albert's autobiography I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels.
     Kate's Tinwear
    Sixty-five years ago Queen Mary was handing out medals in Greenwich, most of them for fallen heroes being presented to their womenfolk. One 22-year old girl, said by the local press to be under the influence of anarchist propaganda, having collected medals for her dead father, brother and boyfriend, then threw them in the Queen's face, saying, 'If you think so much of them, you can keep them.' The Queen's face was scratched and so was that of one of her attendant ladies. The police, not a little under the influence of patriotic propaganda, then grabbed the girl and beat her up. When she was released from the police station a few days later, no charges being brought, she was scarcely recognisable.
     The girl was Kate Sharpley, who had been active in the Woolwich anarchist group and helped keep it going through the difficult years of World War 1. After her clash with the police she was sacked from her job 'on suspicion of dishonesty' (there was nothing missing but a policeman had called checking up on her…) and, selling libertarian pamphlets in the street, she was recognised by the police and warned that if she appeared there again she would be charged with 'soliciting as a prostitute' (which in those days would have been a calamity, and even today a disaster, if once convicted). Isolated from her family, and with the group broken up, she moved out of activity, away from the neighbourhood, and married.
    I met her, by chance, last year in Lewisham. Twice widowed, she remembered the anarchist movement with nostalgia, and gave me a fascinating account of the local group in the years before World War 1. Unfortunately, she was already very ill, and a few weeks ago, she died, I was told by one of her neighbours.
     I had, though, asked her for a message to the Anarchist movement today. Her answer: 'Tell the kids they're doing all right, they don't need any advice from me.' Especially she praised the young women of today: 'I wouldn't have had to take cover like I did if women of my day had any guts' she said. But she did have guts. A few only in 1917 dared take any action in bereaved England.

       The following is the latest I received from The Kate Sharpley Library:

Welcome!

Here's a link to NOT the bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library, No.2 June 2020
Contents:
New pieces on the Kate Sharpley Library website
Three articles by Albert Meltzer
Elsewhere (AK Press; Audio; Naples 1884; Bristol 2020)
Still going (Research on The 1945 split in British anarchism)
You can read the PDF at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/8933bb
  Image at the top of the page comes from Crimethinc’s ‘The Anarchists versus the Plague: Malatesta and the Cholera Epidemic of 1884’

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Anti-consumerism.

     Once again an interesting article for Not Buying Anything, an observation that I hope is true, my only fear is that when this over and some people find they have more money than usual, they may go out on a spending binge. I hope not, I hope they keep their sanity and take stock of the things they enjoyed without spending money. Time for reflection.

     This from Not Buying Anything:

       Recreational shopping has been a pastime for decades. Similarly, leisure, or non-essential, travel has also been popular. That just changed. We will not be going back to the way it was before the year 2020.
     Shopping and traveling were fun and entertaining for many in pre-pandemic times. When it was easy. We will not have the same zeal for spending when it is hard.
       If shoppers have to wear masks, get their temperature checked at the door, sanitize their hands, and social distance once they get in to the business, consumption won't be what it was in the spend freely days of pre-pandemic times.
      And if they continue to get infected, in-person shopping will remain a shadow of the peak consumerism days of the recent past, and likely will never come back in the same way.
       Evidence for this is the largest increase in the American savings rate ever, that happened recently. When spending money becomes less attractive, savings rates increase.
     What is good for your bank account, though, is bad for the overflowing vaults of the 1%ers.
      This is the capitalist nightmare - people deciding to do other more enjoyable things instead of spending their meagre funds to buy goods and services they don't need. But that is what is happening.
      All over the world humans are waking up every day and finding healthier, less expensive, and more meaningful, ways to occupy their time. Things that aren't shopping or traveling. Or traveling to go shopping.
      This could be the end of many familiar things and arrangements. Will it be the end of consumerism, and would that take down capitalism, too? That would be welcome, because either we take it down, or it will take us down. That decision will be ours to make.
      We have the power, that much is perfectly clear. If we won't work for them, and won't shop for their junk, what can they do? They need us more than we need them and their wasteful ways.
       Our predatory psychopathic-lead system is getting morphed into who knows exactly what as the people rediscover their power to make change. Some of those changes are that we will become savers rather than spenders, and will choose the familiar home range over frivolous foreign sojourns.
       After more than a decade of watching consumer behaviour closely, I am getting the feeling that many newly re-minted community participants are tiring of spending money on non-essential things, and going in debt to do so.
We are moving on to more important, more beautiful, more balanced concerns, and say to our former rulers and their soulless system, "Thank you for your service - we will take it from here".

 

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Opportunity.

      At the very start of this pandemic I stated that this was a golden opportunity for us to reshape society, I also said that it was a golden opportunity for the various states to push the boundaries of their control over the civilian population. It would give them a wonderful avenue to create that submissive population. I still believe that  and I know I am not alone in that line of thought. What we have to come to terms with is that the state has seized upon that opportunity with a determined single mindedness, but we seem to have fragmented our aims and therefore are failing to to make the most of our opportunity. This could be a disaster for  us all, as the few freedoms that we have will be drastically diminished, to regain them, let alone increase them, will be a monumental and brutal task. 

The following from 325:
By Gianfranco Sanguinetti

        We are sharing, with many thanks to the author, this English translation of an important article written in April 2020.
      The conversion of the Western representative democracies to a completely new form of despotism has, on account of the virus, assumed the juridical features of a force majeure (in jurisprudence, as is well known, force majeure is a case of exonerated responsibility). And so the new virus is at the same time both a catalyst for the event and a distraction for the masses through fear. (1)
      For all the hypotheses I have put forth, since my book On Terrorism and the State (1979), regarding the manner in which this conversion (ineluctable, in my eyes) from formal democracy to despotism would be made, I must confess that I never imagined it would happen on the pretense of a virus. But the ways of the Lord are truly infinite. As are those of Hegel’s cunning of reason.
     The sole reference, it can truly be said, as prophetic as it is disturbing, is one I found in an article by Jacques Attali, former boss of EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development], written for L’Express during the epidemic of 2009: (2)
     If the epidemic becomes a little more serious, which is possible, since it is transmittable by humans, it will have truly planetary consequences, both economic (the models suggest a loss of three trillion dollars, that is a 5% drop in global GDP) and political (due to risks of contagion). It would therefore be necessary to establish a global police force, a global stockpile, and therefore a global fiscal policy. We would then—much sooner than economic reasons alone would have allowed—come to establish the basis for an actual global government.

     The pandemic was thus already envisioned: how many simulations were run by the major insurance companies! And by the protective services of the states. Just few days ago former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown again returned to the need for global government: “Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.” (3)

Continue reading:

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Statues.

      We can take it that around 90% of the statues that punctuate our squares and city streets, will be of slave traders, merchants that made a fortune from the slave trade, corporate big wigs that got fat on exploiting workers, military men who created rivers of blood from indigenous peoples in their ruthless pursuit of wealth for their imperial masters, then there will be a swath of pompous parasitic royals and some political ballerinas who advocated policies that were to the disadvantage of the people in favour of the rich and wealthy.

    So where do we start? My personal view is that this prancing around destroying, defacing and protecting, these lifeless chunks of marble, bronze and stone is diverting energy down an avenue that leaves the system to carry on with its plunder and exploitation. Let's devote our energies  to the living, the power mongers that sit in their marble halls of power, dividing up the planet to the advantage of the few.

     While we feed the statues into the grinding and pulping machines, children are still going to bed hungry, or imperial masters are still slaughtering the innocent in countries across the globe. Disease and famine still ravishes the poor, while the wealthy and powerful billionaire class grow fatter by the minute. I suppose when we have rid all our cities of statues that offend our particular sensitivity we can pat ourselves on the back, and think how life has changed and the world is a better place.

    I suppose it suits the establishment to have the police running around beating the shit out of people, that are making a mess of symbols, it gives the media something to shout about and takes the spotlight of what our "betters" are devising on their trip to the extinction of our planet.

    If you wish to attack the symbols of this system then I think you should look at the real symbols, banks, corporate offices, political parties, police stations, military bass, etc. Once the statues have all gone, these symbols will still be there.

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Syria.

     With the pandemic taking up all the media's attention, the horror that is Syria is no longer news. However, the suffering of the Syrian people goes on and is deepening, thanks to America's vicious "no bullets war" of inhumane sanctions. Nine years of a devastating war has reduced Syria to a battle torn remnant of a country, Now the brutal savagery of a modern war has more or less subsided, Syria is unable to rebuild its infra structure  due to the inhumane raft of sanctions inflicted by the US.

    Sanctions against a country are a war crime, as what they do is kill the civilian population, and it is intentional, as the enforcer of these sanctions is well aware of their result. The people of Syria having come through, what was nothing short of a world war, involving most of the world's major powers fought on their soil, are now seeing their civilian population slowly dying from hunger. They are unable to rebuild their schools, hospitals, homes and workplaces, all due to that one deliberate action of the US, sanctions. 

     Economic sanctions are a vicious tool of the powerful capitalist countries to try to enforce their will on other nations, and in most cases for control of resources. They are a war against a civilian population, in the full knowledge that young, old and infirm, as well as the health, will slowly suffer and large numbers will, in all probability, not make it. 

    Just another example of the ruthlessness of the economic capitalist system that controls our lives and devastates the planet, for no other reason than to enrich a pampered, privileged bunch of parasites, what do we, the ordinary people, gain from the suffering of the Syrian people? How much longer will we tolerate this vicious injustice, how much longer will we struggle for a half decent life while watching our fellow humans suffer, all for a pot of gold for the greedy billionaire class. Our silence makes us complicit in the suffering and death of every Syrian child.

    The following extract is from an article in Mideast Discourse by Steven Sahiounie

        The US sanctions have been unsuccessful in their goal of ‘regime change’ in Damascus, but have been hugely successful in making the Syrian people suffer, even though they have survived 9 years of terrorist attacks, occupations, deaths, injuries, and destruction they continue to suffer from economic-warfare.
       A school teacher in Latakia, said, “We thought if we resisted the terrorists, and defeated them, we would rebuild the lost homes, schools, hospitals and farms and start a new post-war-life. Now, the war is over, and we can’t rebuild anything and our life is even worse now that we are in peace-time. Where is our victory over terrorism? Why is America punishing us for defeating the terrorists?”
     The latest US sanctions are designed to prevent any reconstruction of infrastructure damaged in the war, which includes homes, shops, businesses, factories, and infrastructures such as schools and hospitals.
     US sanctions have exemptions for ‘humanitarian aid’, which include food, supplies, and bank transfers for humanitarian purposes. However, those exemptions are in theory only and have never been applied, as the paperwork and time to secure a waiver from the US government makes the exemption useless.
     The Trump administration, US Congress, and many Syrian-American groups have praised the new extreme sanctions against Syria. While the people living today in Syria suffer under the sanctions, those Syrians living inside the US and Europe are prospering and unaffected by the sanctions.
     Azhdar Kurtov, of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, explained in an interview with RT, “Syria has become an unpleasant ‘splinter’ in American politics in the Middle East. Moreover, this is not only a local defeat; it is evidence of the collapse of, above all, the global ambitions of the United States. 

Read the full article HERE:

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Churchill.

      So Churchill's statue is to be protected in case someone takes umbrage, and defaces it in some way, well what would you expect the white racist, imperialists of our establishment to do? Churchill was a true follower of their faith, arrogant, racists and little regard for humanity. His arrogance was backed up by his ineptitude, probably the best display of these qualities was his Gallipoli disaster, a pointless, sacrifice of thousands of troops lives based on his total ignorance of the situation. His catalogue of brutal and inhumane treatment of those who dared to stand in the way of the British Empire's exploitation of native people's is difficult to surpass.

    The recent flap over Winston Churchill — with Labour politician John McDonnell calling Britain’s most revered prime minister a “villain” and prompting a rebuke from the latter’s grandson — will astonish many Indians. That’s not because the label itself is a misnomer, but because McDonnell was exercised by the death of one Welsh miner in 1910. In fact, Churchill has the blood of millions on his hands whom the British prefer to forget.  

From Jacobin, the Real Winston Churchill:

    ----In addition to being motivated by a profoundly antisemitic “good Jew-bad Jew” dichotomy, the colonial underpinnings of Churchill’s support for Zionism were later made clear when he addressed the Palestine Royal Commission on the subject of Palestinian self-determination. Resorting to bestiary for his imagery, he compared self-rule to the dog running its own manger, a right he did not acknowledge. “I do not admit,” he went on, “that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia . . . by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race . . . has come in and taken its place.”
       As an imperial tactician, Churchill recommended fighting the insurgency in British Mandate Iraq by gassing them. Indeed, he had already pioneered such deadly weapons in Russia, against the Bolsheviks. It is important to recognize that, as with his support for aerial combat, he tended to justify this as a humane, high-tech alternative to more brutal methods. “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes,” he wrote, before explaining: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.”------

      So why wouldn't our white racist imperialist, lords and masters wish to protect one of their heroes, he is truly one of them. 

 

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Choices.

  A new slogan suitable for our capitalist parasites ideology.

Photo courtesy of Erik R. Rishoff /flickr.

    

    By now it should be clear to everybody that crunch time is fast approaching and capitalism doesn't work for the benefit of the ordinary people. Everywhere you turn companies are laying off employees, the list is staggering.

   All the figures point to a massive increase in poverty, homelessness and deprivation, no blue horizon for the ordinary people of this country.

    Figures announced this morning state that the UK economy shrank by 20.4% in April, the largest monthly contraction on record, and it is all just beginning. In the coming months job loses will be on a scale not seen since the twenties and before. Here is a short list of what is known at the moment:

The Telegraph states that 250,00 business will be laying off employees.

Frankie and Benny's is closing 120 restaurants,

Roll Royce laying off 3,000,

UK car industry laying off 2,000

British Gas laying off 5,000

J Mathey laying off 2,500,

Airlines expected to lay off 70,000

BP world wide, laying off 10,000

Mulberry laying off 25% of workforce, 

Bentley cars laying of 25% of its workforce,

Airbus stated it will make job cuts. 

This list is by no means complete and comprehensive, and this as the cheery part of the picture. 

    And so the dark clouds continue to gather, and we haven't even sorted out Brexit and the mayhem that it will cause. Another factor, and I suppose we can blame the Thacher gang for this, most experts agree that UK will be hit hardest of the rich nations as 75% of its economy is in the service industry, and that will be devastated.

      Meanwhile the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been pouring billions of money he doesn't have into the coffers of the corporate world, to "save jobs" which translates into saving the corporate world from losing too much of their loot, and keeping them "afloat", you have to keep the shareholders happy. Money that the money lenders will shortly be knocking on the Chancellor's door to sort out a repayment method. Which will include cutting government spending, which means cutting social spending, much tighter and deeper austerity, a cap or cut to public sector wages, and of course selling off public assets to raise cash to pay for that bailout of the corporate parasites, for example, parts of NHS etc.

     So what should we the ordinary people do? Just grin and bear it, start thinking of charity shops, food banks and hand-outs, tighten our belts and get on with it? Remember, bringing your kids up under such conditions will stunt their potential, blight their general physical and mental health, scar them for life, and in all probability, also scar their children. 

     A lot of people during this pandemic learnt about mutual aid and found it worked and was enjoyable. We need to expand that feeling of community and and continue and expand mutual aid in our lives. Refuse to fall back into the consumer mode that the corporate world desire, buying crap and that endless supply of stuff that is out dated  forcing you to buy another. Start to organise to take control of our workplaces, and distribution centres, to produce what we want and need and distributing them in a fair and just manner.  Our lords and masters are already organising to get you back on the treadmill of ever increasing consumption and growth, all to the detriment of the planet and the the benefit of that pampered, privileged bunch of wealthy parasites. You follow them to your detriment or you resist and follow the path that will benefit us all in an equal and fair manner. The choice is simple, more and bleaker austerity, poverty and deprivation, or a chance to build that better world for all.

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Up Yours!

      Bristol, is a city with a large content of two  fingers "up yours" attitude to the establishment. I always read with interest and sometimes with a smile on my face, at some of what comes out of that fair city. Long may that spirit flourish and grow. Hopefully it could become infectious and be the next pandemic.

      This latest rendering from that part of our island may not be to everybody's liking, but it does continue that spirit of "up yours", which can be so endearing.

The following from 325

 

PDF: Engaged Combatant (Cover)

PDF: Engaged Combatant (Contents)

This is a collection of poetic ramblings by an anarcho-nihilist hooligan in Bristol, UK.

     Forging some kind of weapon by merger metaphors and poetry from lived experiences, an alternative from quick-fix solutions in the fast lane of instant gratification, stolen and twisted out of meaning, into some spiritual sloganeering which hopefully challenges a life of just material band-aid.

    The author feels like they are tidying up the loose ends in their mind!

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A Dream.

      Just Imagine a little corner in Glasgow city centre where traditionally all shades of the left gather with stalls on a weekly basis, leaflets, pamphlets, badges T-shirts, etc and lots of banter. There is one simple rule, only left stalls allowed, a dream of some over fertile imagination. Well perhaps in Glasgow it is a dream, however some cities can do this, where did we go wrong Glasgow?

    I'm sure where I lifted this video from won't complain, it's from,

https://www.facebook.com/puestostirsodemolina/ 

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Who Shapes?

       Today, across the world, we are certainly in the process of seismic changes, we could let them unfold without any input from us to shape those changes and accept the world that forms. Or we could be the driving force to shape those changes to the benefit of all. You can rest assured that the rich and powerful are already doing their best to shape those changes to the benefit of their parasitical class. We should be grateful for those millions across the world that have taken to the streets with a concerted effort to grasp control of those changes and drive them in the direction of the better world for all.
       Anti-police brutality needs to be looked at from the point of view of why the police are there in the first place, who needs them most and why. The police are not an entity that exists in a vacuum, they are part and parcel of a system. A system that shaped them the way that they seen best to fit their purpose, a system that needs that reserve of violence for its existence. We don’t have a racist brutal police force, we have a racist brutal system, of which the police are an integral and necessary part. We should never lose sight of the fact that we will never be rid of police brutality as long as we tolerate this brutal capitalist system.
     Perhaps we should all carry with us, to shape our actions, a few lines from Adrian Mitchell’s book, Heart At The Left.

My brain socialist
My heart anarchist
My eyes pacifist
My blood revolutionary.

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Dystopian Adventure.

      Right at the very start of this pandemic I stated that it couldn't have come at a better time for the "establishment". No matter who why and where it started, it was a blessing to the big corporations, the world economy was sliding down to recession, the bond market (where the states go to borrow money) had been dying for at least the previous 4 years, the big crash was coming, and the corporate world and the financial Mafia would be looking for a big bailout of public funds.
      After 12 years of severe "austerity", (transferring public funds to the private sector), there might have been a bit of resistance from the public. Low and behold, they are getting billions perhaps trillions of money, that will eventually have to be paid back from public funds, being thrown into their coffers. What's more, because of fear the public are sitting back and in lots of case supporting this plundering public funds.There's no money for social services, but big business needs it, it gets it.
     To exacerbate that fear, and take advantage of it, the various states are introducing draconian measures on our civil liberties without any pretense of parliamentary scrutiny. It is legislation by dictate, from a small group of pampered privileged parasites who are firmly on the side of and in the pocket of, big business, the economy is sacred.
     Emergency is a wonderful excuse to bypass any form of democratic dialogue or scrutiny, and it would be naive to imagine that all those measures of gathering personal data, limiting numbers of who you can meet, and dictated instructions with threats, will all some how dissolve when the pandemic is over. Sorry, I doubt the emergency will never disappear, there will be another, and another, to make sure that the fear never really goes away, fear is a wonderful weapon to create a submissive population. We are witnessing a monumental structural change in the we we will be forced to live. That is unless we get as organised as they are, and start to create our ideas of the new normal.
     The following might be a rather long article, but I consider that it would be negligent not to make it as easy as possible to read the full article, it is from Acorn Winter Oak:

       Once terrorism, which (one will agree) had been somewhat overly abused, had used up most of its potential, so well deployed for the first fifteen years of the new century, the moment had come to move on to the next phase, as I announced in 2011 in my text From Terrorism to Despotism.
     Moreover, the counterinsurgency approach adopted immediately and everywhere in what is improperly called the “war on the virus” confirms the intentions underlying “humanitarian” operations in this war, which is being fought not against the virus, but against the rules, rights, guarantees, institutions, and peoples of the old world. I am speaking here of the world and institutions that have been established ever since the French Revolution and are now disappearing before our very eyes in the span of a few months, just as quickly in fact as the Soviet Union disappeared. The epidemic will end, but not the measures, possibilities, and consequences it has unleashed, which we are now only beginning to experience. These are the birth pangs of a new world.
      We are witnessing the decomposition and end of a world and a civilization, that of bourgeois democracy with its parliaments, its rights and powers and counter-powers. These are now completely useless, since laws and coercive measures are dictated by the executive branch without being immediately ratified by parliaments, where judicial power, and thus the power of free opinion, loses all semblance of independence and hence its function as counterbalance.
     Peoples are thus brusquely and traumatically conditioned (as Machiavelli established: “injuries should be inflicted all at once, that they be less savored.”). The citizen having long ago disappeared in favor of the consumer, the latter now finds himself reduced to the role of simple patient, over whom one has the power of life and death, upon whom one can administer any kind of treatment or withhold it, depending on age (productive or unproductive) or any other criterion, arbitrarily decided and without the right of appeal, at the discretion of the caregiver or of others. Once imprisoned at home or in the hospital, what can he do about coercion, abuse, arbitrariness?
     The Constitutional Charter has been suspended, in Italy for example, without raising the slightest objection, not even from the supposed “guarantor” of its institutions, President Mattarella. Having become mere monads, anonymous and isolated, subjects no longer have any “equality” to claim or rights to assert. Law itself will no longer be normative, but is already becoming discretionary, like life and death. We have seen that, on the pretext of the coronavirus, 13 or 14 prisoners can be killed with impunity and at the drop of a hat in Italy without so much as their names being given, or their crimes, or the circumstances, and no one seems to care. They are doing an even better job than the Germans at Stammheim Prison. They should admire us, at least for our crimes!
     The only thing people talk about any more is money. And a state like Italy is reduced to begging the necessary capital for the transition from democratic to despotic forms at the hands of the sinister and illegitimate Eurogroup 16. The same Eurogroup that in 2015 ferociously wanted to expropriate the entire public patrimony of Greece, including the Parthenon, and transfer it to a fund situated in Luxembourg under German control. Even Der Spiegel described the Eurogroup diktats as “a catalog of atrocities” for the humiliation of Greece, and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote in The Telegraph that, if you wanted to assign a date to the end of the European project, this was it. So behold, the deed is done. All that remains is the Euro, and even that is highly provisional.

    Neo-liberalism has had nothing to do with antiquated class struggles, it does not even remember them, thinks it has expunged them from the dictionary itself. It believes itself to be all-powerful, which does not mean that it is not afraid of them, since it knows very well what it is preparing to inflict on the people. It is obvious that people will soon be hungry, obvious that there will be mobs of unemployed, obvious that people working under the table (4 million in Italy) will have no support at all. And those whose work is tenuous, who have nothing to lose, will start to engage in struggle and sabotage. This explains why the strategy in response to the pandemic has above all been a strategy of preventive counterinsurgency. We will see some nice examples of that in America. The FEMA camps will soon be full.
      There are thus at least two powerful reasons to impose the new despotism in the West: one is to contend with the domestic subversion it provokes and expects; the other is to prepare for foreign war with a designated enemy, which is the oldest form of despotism in history. Nothing new has been learned on that score since The Book of Lord Shang (Fourth century B.C.)—a book all strategists of the Occident should hasten to read with the greatest attention. If they have decided to attack Chinese despotism, they should begin by proving they are better on its own terrain, that is to say more effective, less costly, and better performing. In short, a superior form of despotism. But that remains to be proven.
     Thanks to the virus, the fragility of our world appears in the full light of day. The game now being played is infinitely more dangerous than the virus and will cause far more deaths. Yet contemporaries seem not to be afraid of anything but the virus …
     It would seem that the present age has been given the task of contradicting what Hegel said apropos the history of philosophy: “World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom.” But freedom itself exists only insofar is it is in conflict with its opposite—he adds. Where is it today? While in France and Italy people denounce those who do not obey?
     If a mere microbe sufficed to plunge our world into obedience to the most repugnant of all despotisms, this can only mean that our world was already so ready for this despotism that a mere microbe sufficed.
    Historians will call the time that is now beginning the age of Occidental Despotism.

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Out Again.

       Managed out on the bike yesterday, June 7th. just a wee spin round the Lowmoss area, wee runs are all I do nowadays, circumstances dictate. Gone are the days when I could get up in the morning and decide is it Loch Ard, Arrochar, Callander, Lake of Menteith, Loch Venachar, Strathyre, or Dunoon, then set off with a smile on my face. Now I usually start with a wee cruise around the Cadder Cemetery before heading out onto the road. At that point I lose my camera assistant Stasia, hence the view of so many tombstones. It was a pleasant enough day but I picked the wrong thin cycling shirt, so the temperature was just that wee bit lower that I find comfortable. Of course there is something that most cyclists will be aware of, some of the road surfaces are downright dangerous. There is a bit of the road on the Lowmoss to Lenzie road, though not the only road, that is really a killer lying in wait. The road isn't that wide and you have to go wide from the edge to avoid craters rather than potholes, and with cars doing their usual 50mph minimum it can sometimes be a wee bit nerve racking, especially to an old crater like yours truly.

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