Cronyism.

       In this video the the reporter gets it right, well almost. Pointing out the inherent cronyism and corruption built into our political system, but falls into the usual channel of a blind allay, by suggesting that we change things so that we hold our government to account. Centuries of history has proved to us that this is impossible. Governments govern, until we step outside that framework of forming governments of professional politicians, the rotten apples will continue to spread their obnoxious rotten stinking odour, and continue to shaft the public to protect their power and privileges. Capitalism is the problem dear friends.  Thanks Loam for the video link.

 

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

Anathema.

       The latest edition of Anathema, Volume 7, issue 3, is now available, to read on line or to download for free. As usual it makes for excellent reading, over a wide range of topics, all of interest to those who struggle for that better world for all. You also get a Margaret Atwood poem, Crow Song, thrown in, what more could you ask for. 

From Act For Freedom Now, Anathema:

Volume 7 Issue 3 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)
Volume 7 Issue 3 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)
 

In this issue:

Advances In State Repression
What Went Down
Local Repression Updates
Housing Struggle Questions
Dark Clothes Attract Heat
More Than A Three-Way Fight
Philthadelphia
To Attack Is Among My Instincts
325 Communique

“Crow Song”

In the arid sun, over the field
where the corn has rotted and then
dried up, you flock and squabble.
Not much here for you, my people,
but there would be
if
if

In my austere black uniform
I raised the banner
which decreed Hope
and which did not succeed
and which is not allowed.
Now I must confront the angel
who says Win,
who tells me to wave any banner
that you will follow

for you ignore me, my
baffled people, you have been through
too many theories
too many stray bullets
your eyes are gravel, skeptical,
in this hard field
you pay attention only
to the rhetoric of seed
fruit stomach elbow.

You have too many leaders
you have too many wars,
all of them pompous and small,
you resist only when you feel
like dressing up,
you forget the sane corpses…

I know you would like a god
to come down and feed you
and punish you. That overcoat
on sticks is not alive
there are no angels,
but the angels of hunger,
prehensile and soft as gullets
Watching you
my people, I become cynical,
you have defrauded me of hope
and left me alone with politics…

Margaret Atwood.

 

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Solidarity.

         All prisons are hell-holes, edifices to state repression and savagery, essential part of the states apparatus for creating a submissive population, of course they fail miserably. While they still stand, those enmeshed in its vile tentacles deserve our support and solidarity.
       The following is an opportunity to go all arty and at the same time support comrades caught up in the states loaded judicial system.

Image from Act For Freedom Now.

 From "Unoffensive Animal"

 

             As you all know, one of the main jobs we do is supporting comrades in prison and folks who have to cover fines after taking action. The reality of it is that we never make enough money in order to cover everything we would like to cover, even counting PayPal donations, patreon donations and merch.
         Luckily, many of you are super generous and want to help in any way possible. These time, we bring you something just a tad different thanks to @goaskforde, who has donated artwork to raise funds to support prisoners.
          We are going to run a little raffle for a couple of weeks. The tickets can be bought through our website for 7.50 GBP and you can get as many tickets as you want. If you win, @goaskforde will send:
– “Now” Framed original 10×12″ ink drawing of a wolf
– “Light a Match, Burn a Prison” signed 8×10″ fine art giclee print
– Large vinyl “Boltcuttter Birdie” sticker
– Large vinyl “Praying mantis” sticker
         In addition, we will send a hoodie of your choice (stock dependent!) and a bunch of stickers.
         So if you like art, or simply if you’d like to support us and help us keep helping folks, please grab yourself a ticket or two down below:
We will announce the winners on the 3rd of May, so you have 14 days to get as many tickets as you can and to share this around as much as possible!
         Also, please follow @goaskforde on instagram and support artists as much as possible. You can also find the artwork on www.goaskforde.com
Solidarity

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

Democracy??

         I find it mazing that a system can create an illusion, so far removed from reality as to be ridiculous, yet millions of ordinary people swallow it and even join groups and parties to support the illusion and in other cases take up arms to defend that phoney incredulous illusion. I am of course talking about "democracy". There is a whole apparatus of parties, states and armies all prepared to defend something we have never had, something that has yet to be experienced in this society. They are defending a lie, an illusion, a fabricated theatre of smoke and mirrors. We live in a society of illusions. It is said in certain places the Greece was the cradle of democracy, a nice story that helps to hold the illusion together, Greece in those golden days at the birth of "democracy" was a slave owning society. Ah, so much for the definition of "democracy".

 

       The following video is an accurate depiction of modern day Greek "democracy". However, we know that all other states follow the same model and definition of "democracy". 

 

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Whose Tomorrow?

 

    Over the last year or so covid19 has allowed the state to impose on us a new “normal”, one of subservience, standing by waiting for our next set of instructions as to how we can live our lives. Though most people will say it was necessary under the circumstances, rationalism and evidence tells us that it could have been done differently, with more control at community level and with science, health and welfare as the guiding factor, taking the political/economical aspect out of the decision making equation entirely. It has been obvious from the beginning of this crisis, that the political and economic factors played a major role, in how it was handled, putting the science and the well-being of the people second.
Now the crisis is easing and the establishment is keen that we get back to their designated “normal”, spend, spend, spend, increase consumption, get their tills ringing madly, the economy once again takes centre stage. We would do well to remember that the state will do all it can to hold onto that subservient attitude of the population. Expect lots of new legislation defining how we can live our lives, the state never relinquishes control it has engineered.

      During this crisis the only group that comes out better off then they went into it are the billionaire class. Now that we are seeing the possible end to the covid19 disaster, that same class is keen to keep that ill-gotten booty growing. So we can look forward to new aspects to their deemed “normal”, slashing of working conditions. Thousands of workers are being forced to sign new contracts or leave their job, the new contracts of course benefit the corporate bodies at the expense of the workers. Unemployment will soar, giving the boss class another weapon to threaten your conditions, pointing to the queue at the door waiting to take your job.
 

     

  It doesn’t have to be like that, we can ignore their god, “the economy”, and structure our lives around mutual aid, community organising and swap-shops among many other means of self help and organising. During the covid19 crisis we have seen mutual aid grow, common sense tells us that it shouldn’t die because the billionaire class want you to increase their wealth power and privileges, at our expense Over the last year the state has had more or less a free hand at shaping our “normal” let’s now take that power into our own hands and come together to shape our desired normal, one that sees to the needs of all our people, not one that pays homage to the corrupt bloated and privileged pampered billionaire parasite class.

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

Re-born.

          A few weeks ago I posted an article about the Dutch police closing down several anarchist sites by seizing their server. One of the sites closed down was "Act For Freedom Now", you'll be delighted to hear that the site is up and running with a brighter cleaner look. 325 was another site closed down, but we should not point the finger at the Dutch authorities alone, these operations of stifling and trying to silence any voices that dare to speak up against the present economic system of capitalism with all its attendant miseries and corruptions, are done with international co-operation. We see it in Greece, France, Germany, America anywhere where the state reigns, authority will be brutal to any opposition to its power and privileges. At the moment Myanmar is probably the most open scene of state savagery and repression.
        The following statement is from 325, one of the sites the Dutch police, with the approval of other states, tried to silence. 

 

 Statement on the Repressive Attack upon International Counter-Information

         On 29.03.21 the Dutch police raided the data center that holds the nostate.net server, seizing the server itself as the part of a criminal investigation into 'terrorism'. Nostate.net is a collective that provided a platform for international movement websites from prisoner solidarity groups, multiple campaign collectives, anti-summit pages and international counter-information. Significant sites that used nostate.net as a platform that have been targeted by this repressive attack by the Dutch police are Anarchist Black Cross Berlin, Montreal Counter-Info, Northshore Counter-Info, Act For Freedom Now! (now re-activated on noblogs.org https://actforfree.noblogs.org/) and 325.
         We as a collective are aware that this was not just an attack by the Dutch police, but was done in coordination with the Counter Terrorism Unit of the United Kingdom in connection with their recent repressive attacks upon the anarchist circles in this country. Not only have they been threatening ourselves, but recently threatened nostate.net unless they shut down our site. Along with this they demanded information be given to them of the identity of anyone involved in 325. The extent that the authorities will go to attack us and anyone they suspect of aiding us is of no surprise to us, the examples through history of state forces repressing anyone who dares to stand and fight them are numerous.

 Read the full article HERE:

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Libertarian.

        We are still locked out of our archive because of this covid19 beast, though things are looking brighter. However we at Spirit of Revolt still manage to keep things moving, as best we can under the circumstances. One thing we can still do is bring you our monthly gem in the form of our "Read of the Month".

        For this month's “Read of the Month”, April, we have chosen a small booklet from our John Cooper Collection, “Libertarian Communist Review”, from away back in 1974. Though written back then, it is still as relevant today as the day it was written, so is well worth a wee read. While on our website, why not browse the many artefacts, leaflets, booklets, posters and thousands of other parts of our anarchist/libertarian socialist history. It is a wealth of information all relevant to today’s struggles for that better world for all.

Read on line HERE:

 

 

 

 

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

Insurrection.

Issue No.4.   

 

       For those who may not know of it, "Insurrection" was a first class magazine produced by Elephant Editions. A gem of information, ideas, reports, theory, tactics and strategies. Sadly, Spirit of Revolt only has two of these magazines in its collections, No.4 and No.5, both in our Dek Keenan Collection. The good news is you can now read both of these issues on  Spirit of Revolt website Just click on HERE and then scroll down to Dek Keenan Collection -1-60, there you will also find a link to other issues which you can read courtesy of Elephant Editions Archive. sadly we don't have these other issues in our collection. Any body having any other issues of Insurrection and would like to give them a good home please get in touch HERE.

 

Issue No.5

 

          ‘Insurrection’ is an anarchist magazine of the 1980’s which was edited by Jean Weir of Elephant Editions, UK. Amongst agitational news reports of rebellion and repression, the publication carried some of the first English language translations of the work of Italian anarchist insurrectionist, Alfredo M. Bonanno, and remains an example of a high-quality revolutionary anarchist publication which has a confrontational analysis coupled with lasting insight.
         ‘Insurrection’ is the first publication to carry the key basic perspectives of anarchist insurrectional theory and methodology emerging at that time. Texts such as ‘Affinity Group’, ‘Why Insurrection’, ‘Beyond Workerism, Beyond Syndicalism’, ‘Informal Organisation’, ‘Beyond the Structure of Synthesis’, ‘Towards A New Projectuality’ and ‘Autonomous Base Nucleus’, all back to back with action reports informing and illuminating these theoretical ideas which have developed and spread around the world, becoming ‘dangerous’ tools in the hands of uncontrollables everywhere.

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Toothless Protest.

           A comedian once said that if the people you are protesting against are happy with your protest method, then you’re not protesting, you’re just having a shit day out. I’m inclined to agree with him. All the legislation brought in regarding protests is to make your protest acceptable to those you are protesting against. In other words, turning your protest into a shit afternoon out. The establishment would be happy with you quietly, in limited numbers, marching from A to B, of course you will achieve nothing. That is the aim of this new legislation being introduced by bumbling Boris’s gang. Giving you the right to protest as long as you don’t upset, inconvenience or annoy anybody, do it quietly, when and where the police tell you and in numbers decided by the police. Their vision of tomorrow’s protests is groups of six or so people walking quietly and sedately, saying excuse me to everybody they pass, this will be permitted for approximately 15 minutes, then you will be asked to disperse or face the heavy hand of the law. The new democracy fit for a fascist state.

 

 

             The following is an extract from an article by  Adrian Kreutz published in Roar Magazine.

London — 1936. In what we know today as the “Battle of Cable Street,” the Metropolitan Police protected Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists against almost 20,000 anti-fascist protesters, including socialist groups, Irish dockworkers, British Jewry and anarchist and trade unionist groups. That day, 3,000 paramilitary “Blackshirts” marched through a Jewish neighborhood. Mounted police charged at a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, and many of the arrested reported violent treatment at the hands of the police.
       Following the events on Cable Street, the Public Order Act of 1936 forced organizers of large protests to obtain prior police permission and gave the police broad powers to arrest people for “insulting or abusive” speech. The ambiguity of the word “insulting” meant that the Public Order Act could be applied in a range of cases.
       London — 2021. Social movements protesting for racial and environmental justice disrupt public transport, deface the statues of slave traders, spread banners over Westminster Bridge and block the entrance to parliament. In response, the Johnson administration proposes the “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill,” popularly know as the “Crackdown Bill” or “Protest Bill.” It fits the draconian script of recent years — the concentration of power, the limiting of government accountability and multi-pronged attacks on human rights.

Read the full article HERE:

 

 

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Obituary.

 

          Pompous, pampered, privileged parasite prince, who gave nothing and took all he could get, lived a life of self indulgence at taxpayers expense, totally ignorant of his own uselessness. Existed in a bubble of opulence and splendour, part of the plundering imperialist establishment. unaware of the lives around him, he cared even less. Lover of killing wild life, collector of guns, his life and that of those in his gang exists in a bubble of luxury, that sadly the ordinary people supplied the air to keep it afloat. When will we refuse to keeping their luxurious useless bubble afloat?

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H.R.H.

         So Prince Philip has died, no doubt there will be thousands eager to get in the picture by outpourings of adulation. Adulation for a man who was recognised as from a family well connected to the Nazi regime. His many public remarks were at best rude, but often seen as upper class snobbery with hints of racism. Of course never having been in his company who am I to judge, but I can form the opinion that he was a pompous pampered, privileged, parasite. who done very well for himself at the expense of the tax payer. Those with a grain of intelligence and some rationale, realise that the picture created of the whole royal entourage is an illusion. They are a ruthless family of very rich people who have never done a days work in their lives yet wallow in unimaginable splendour and opulence, none of it earned. Their wealth is gleaned from the spoils of imperialism and the enslavement of millions of indigenous peoples. Even today, if you die without a will, your estate goes to the Queen, unless you lived in the land commandeered under the Duchy of Cornwall, then your estate goes to Prince Charles. A nice little earn over the years.

The Duke at one of his favourite pastimes, killing wild life. He bagged a lot.

         The following film is not new, and is a bit on the long side, but is well worth sitting through, especially at this time of media wall to wall coverage of what a wonderful a man was the Duke of Edinburgh. 

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Legacy.

          Sunny Florida, still in the grip of covid19 has now been hit with another emergency. It appears that a 77 acre reservoir holding millions of gallons of water containing phosphorous and nitrogen from an old phosphate plant is leaking into the surrounding neighbourhood, mainly agricultural land. A state of emergency has been declared, more than 300 homes have been evacuated and a highway closed.
         The Governor's statement saying that it was mainly salt water, mixed with "legacy process water and storm water run off", was I suppose meant to calm the residents. However, that is only part of the truth, The area where the leak was found is in a stack of phosphate-gypsum, a radioactive waste from the manufacture of fertiliser. That to me is not just salt water. Once again the mass corporate production leaves behind it a legacy of destruction, pollution and poison and little regard to the consequences of their profit seeking process.

The leak was discovered at the reservoir at Piney Point.  Reuters photo.                               
 

         This capitalist system seems to be excellent at coming up with processes that are supposed to enhance our lives but leave a trail of pollution and poisons that will destroy the life of the planet. Our world is awash with chemical dumps, arms dumps, nuclear dumps and other waste dumps, all growing by the day, and all in the name of profit. The corporate bodies reap the rewards, the public reap the whirlwind of ever occurring disasters. To clean up these "waiting in the wings" disasters, we need to clean up our economic system.
          We need to move away from the profit motive for everything, to a mode of production that is controlled by the people and for the needs of all the people in a sustainable manner. We need to remember that capitalism is just a man made economic system, that fails to meet the needs of all our people and can easily be replaced with another man made economic system that puts fairness and the needs of all our people as its aim, but based on the fact the planet is our only home and we must preserve and nurture it for our survival and that of the coming generations. 

 

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.
Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.
Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.
Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.
In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know its got to be good.
Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit’s what its all about.

 

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Korea.

      I don't post this as an admiration of North Korea, but as a reminder as to how it came to pass that there are two Korea's. It was a Western imperialist engineered creation, all to suit the West's fear of anything resembling a people's movement within a country. Today most people see Korea as two countries, a North Korea and a South Korea, and just accept it as that is the way it has always been. However, that is far from the truth, for centuries it was one country, one Korea, one culture, traditions and history. As usual it was Western imperialism that changed the geography and created this long running fault line that sits on a hair trigger and could escalate into a full blown war.
         It is Seventy-three years ago, April 1948, the people of the Korean island of Jeju rose up against the dividing of their country into two opposing sides, it ended in a blood bath of the people wishing to remain a one Korea. Nothing would get in the way of the Western imperialists to grab half the country for their own ends, and so it has remained. The resistance of the people of Jeju deserves to be remembered.

People’s Republic of Korea

The Jeju uprising, remembered in Korea as “The April 3rd Uprising and Massacre.” 

             Immediately after Japan’s defeat and retreat, while Kim Il Sung and other socialist leaders were beginning to reorganize society in the north, a provisional government was formed by movement leaders in the south. The People’s Republic of Korea (PRK), as it was called, set up People’s Committees all over the south.
         They called for land held by Japanese owners and collaborators to be seized and redistributed to peasants. They set out to establish equality for women, strong labor laws, an end to child labor, an eight-hour workday, and above all, independence and self-determination.
          But the U.S. refused to acknowledge the PRK, and set up a U.S. military government, whose true goal was to crush the Korean people’s movement. Within a couple of months the U.S. had banned and forcibly dissolved the PRK. But that didn’t slow down resistance or quell the hunger for self-determination throughout the south.
        Widespread and constant rebellions and strikes by workers, peasants and students were a huge challenge to the U.S. occupation government. As months and then years wore on, they were barely — and only through terrible, brutal repression — holding back a revolution that inevitably would have led to the reunification of Korea and an end to capitalist ownership and exploitation
         While trying to contain the movement, the U.S. military began to cobble together repressive forces made up of those Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese — right-wing paramilitaries — and began to put together a South Korean army and put in place a pro-U.S. South Korean government.
         Under cover of the United Nations, they set up an election that resulted in Syngman Rhee being “elected” in 1948. Rhee had lived in the U.S. for years and was selected as figurehead of the Korean government.

The Jeju Rebellion

           It was this sham of an election that was the tinder for the Jeju Rebellion. The island was populated by about 300,000 people and was known to be a stronghold of communist and socialist sentiment. The organization and ideas put forth by the progressive PRK government had taken root on Jeju more than any place.
           People’s movement leaders knew months before the scheduled election that a Rhee victory was inevitable and that it would mean the division of north and south. In April 1948, a series of events, in which protesters on Jeju Island were attacked and killed by police aligned with the U.S. occupation forces, led to an island-wide insurrection.
          With hunting rifles and sometimes bows and arrows, the Jeju islanders’ insurrection lasted more than a year. Police buildings and other government institutions were all attacked and burned. Even though they were outgunned, the revolutionary side shook the U.S.-backed Korean forces.
            It took the combined fire power of right-wing Korean gangs called the Northwest Youth League that had been recruited by U.S. operatives, and an army quickly cobbled together by the United States Army Military Government of Korea with Syngman Rhee as the nominal head, primarily made up of forces from Japan.
           Though the U.S. occupation troops refrained from frontline battles, the occupiers provided aerial surveillance and were in fact the organizers of the counter-insurrection.
           In early 1949, a division of the new U.S.-backed Republic of Korea army was ordered by Syngman Rhee and the U.S. military to attack the Jeju guerillas, but they mutinied instead. Mutineers fought against Syngman Rhee’s forces on the mainland and killed most of their commanders. Many were believed to have fought their way all the way to the north and remained there.
          The Jeju insurrection was ultimately drowned in blood. The death toll was terrible — at least 10% of the island’s population, that is, some 30,000 people, were killed, according to Columbia University professor Bruce Cumings, who has written and spoken widely about it.
         Jeju was not the last of Korean resistance to U.S. occupation. The Korean people’s struggle for self-determination and reunification is long, inspired and heroic. Like many chapters of Korean history, Jeju is seared in the memories of Koreans everywhere.
        The entire history of the role of U.S. imperialism in dividing Korea, the grave threat that the presence of U.S. troops and weapons are to all Korean people, the deaths of millions of North Korean people at the hands of the U.S. military during the war — all of it flies in the face of the phony U.S. narrative of the Pentagon being needed to protect South Korea from North Korea.
Long live the heroic memory of Jeju! Korea is one!

Read the full article HERE: 

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