Robert Newman- History of Oil.

     This is a few years old, but I still think it is worthwhile repeating.First published on Mar 6, 2012, Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years - but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, he places oil centre stage as the cause of all the commotion.

      As remembrance day approaches, this is one way of bring home the truth about the carnage of imperialist continuous wars for resources. Humour is a wonderful way of spreading truth. Well worth viewing the entire piece.

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Stand With The Protectors.

       More information on the struggle to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline from going through the reservation lands of the indigenous people of that area. This struggle has been going on for months, those struggling to stop this environmental disaster do not call themselves protesters, the call themselves, water protectors, as this corporate greed project risk damaging the water supply over a very wide area, all in the name of profit for the few. Like I have said before, as the protesters, protectors, gain support in publicity and support numbers, so the state will pull out all the stops with demonising propaganda, and savage militarised brutal physical repression. The state has no mercy when it comes to protecting the profits of its lords and masters, the corporate world, the financial Mafia. Victory for sanity and a sustainable world will only come if we all stand up and take part in the struggle to bring down this corporate tidal wave of destruction that is the capitalist system.

The following videos were  sent by Loam at arrezafe:

An Artists Palette.

 The main street in Killearn.

        I can't believe it, since the clock went back I have been out on the bike twice, it has been many, many years since that happened. Sunday's run was great, and yesterday, Wednesday, I decide to steal another day on the bike. It was cold, sunny intervals and a light wind, what more could I ask. However it was too cold for me, as my wee bronchial tubes started to complain, and I didn't have any answers, so I just continued to grind on my merry way. 

The top of the climb from the Aberfoyle/Drymen/Killearn roundabout.

        I ended up in Killearn, and enjoyed a lovely plate of thick mushroom soup. Killearn is a small village, where if you look hard enough, you will find a house under half  £1 million. It is at the top of a hill, so no matter how you approach it you have a fair climb. From Glasgow as you pass Glengoyne, the first right takes you up a long drag, or go further on to the Aberfoyle/Drymen/Killearn roundabout, my preferred route, you face an equally long drag up to the village. Come at it from the Stirling/Erskine Bridge road and you climb up through Balfron. There is always the route through Lennoxtown, climb the beast that is the Crow Road over the Campsies, through Fintry and join the tail end of the Balfron-Killearn climb. In spite of this, no matter how you approach it, it is a beautiful run, especially at this time of year. The unbelievable array of colours straight from an artists palette, all those rusts, golds, browns, reds, inter-spaced with the evergreens, is something to behold.

Decision time, right to Fintry, Left to Balfron?

        However, no matter how beautiful, I think I will have to admit defeat and lay the bike aside until the turn of the year. 

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Clean Drinking Water, Or Shareholders Bonuses?

        No you wont hear or see much of it in our babbling brook of bullshit that is the mainstream media, but there is a battle of resistance going on in Dakota that involves hundreds of people, has lasted for months and is still going on, in spite of a massive militarised police force doing its damnedest to break that resistance.  According to the indigenous people of the area and other experts, the Dakota Access Pipeline, apart from going through their sacred ground, will pollute the water supply of the area and further afield, as it crosses the Mississippi River. However, this is capitalism, and the welfare of the many must be sacrificed for the profit to the few. You can rest assured that the state will do the bidding of the corporate bodies who want this pipeline, and come down hard on those who will be harmed by its construction. As the resistance grows, so the state repression will morph into a brutal attack on their rights. Those resisting need all the support and solidarity that can be mustered, this is a battle for the rights of ordinary people against the juggernaut of the corporate world and its minders, the state.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

 

 Report Back from the Battle for Sacred Ground.

      For months, hundreds of people, including members of nearly a hundred different indigenous peoples, have mobilized to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. On October 27, police raiding the Sacred Ground camp encountered stiff resistance. We’ve just received the following first hand report from comrades who participated in the defense of the camp. Describing some of the fiercest clashes indigenous and environmental movements in the region have seen in many years, they pose important questions about solidarity struggles.

The Battle

     When we arrive on Wednesday, October 26, we can’t find our contacts, the friends and friends of friends who have been vouched into the secretive Red Warrior camp. Word around the camp is that eviction is imminent for Sacred Ground, the only camp in the direct path of the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline. The tribe claims this land is territory granted to them in the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, and that they were using their own “eminent domain” to take it back when they set up the camp. We decide to set up at Sacred Ground and to figure out how to make ourselves useful in stopping its eviction.

The Sacred Ground camp is located about two miles north of the main camp on highway 1806. The main camp itself is just north of the Standing Rock Reservation, where two more NoDAPL camps, Rosebud and Sacred Stone, are located. Before arriving, we had seen images of barricades blocking Highway 1806 to the north of the Sacred Ground camp.

         When we walk to that site, however, we find those barricades have been pushed to the sides of the road, the northernmost one turned into a kind of checkpoint. According to the people at the checkpoint, they were ordered to remove the blockade by the camp leaders, who plan on allowing the police to enter and evict the camp.

      The “camp leaders” are hired Nonviolent Direct Action consultants. They are utilizing a classic strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience: they hope that the images of police evicting people in prayer will win them the sympathy of the public. The people we speak with at the checkpoint are clearly not buying this. But what can they do? Their elders have hired these people to stage-manage the moment.

         After some conversation with the folks on the barricades and with the “camp leaders,” it is decided that we’ll leave the road open until the police actually arrive, and then we’ll build up the barricades quickly in order to slow their progress. This will hopefully buy time to allow the people who want to get arrested while in prayer to assemble and prepare themselves. For what its worth, this plan was crafted with the approval of the “proper channels.”

         As soon as this course of action is proposed, some new organism bursts into life, and thirty people we’ve never met are loading logs and tires and barbed wire onto trucks in the middle of the night. A plan comes together for when and how to start blocking the road. The energy is electric; the possibility of a real physical defense of this strategically decisive camp is in the air and in people’s conversations.

“I don’t know who those ‘leaders’ are,” a Native guy tells us as we throw tires on the side of the road. “They’re not my elders. I came here to defend this camp, and I’m going to do what I have to.” We still don’t know where the fabled Red Warrior folks are, but we feel that we’ve found people we want to support in this battle.

Continue reading:

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Africa In Motion.

       There is still time to catch some of this excellent event. Though it started on 28th. October, there is still four days  in which to immerse yourself in this interesting feast of thought.

       You may have missed this one, but there are still some gems to see.

Vroegherfs (Early Autumn)

        Based on a poem by the highly acclaimed Afrikaans poet NP Van Wyk Louw, Early Autumn uses the expression of dance to convey the message of the poem. The shedding of frivolity, pretence and naiveté of youth, like leaves in fall, to reveal a maturity and strength portrayed as an analogy of the turning of the seasons.

Africa in Motion Film Festival:

Time; 28th October to 6th November
Various locations across Glasgow and Edinburgh -
see http://www.africa-in-motion.org.uk/programme/glasgow/ for Glasgow events
       Welcome to the 11th edition of the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival! We are back and ready to present a packed programme of screenings, discussions, Q&A sessions with filmmakers, pop-up screenings, workshops, exhibitions, live performances and more, across Edinburgh and Glasgow. Artistically innovative and thought-provoking, the programme takes on bold narratives through a range of features, documentaries and shorts.
      This year we have taken a unique collaborative approach to curating the festival, with a number of different groups and organisations taking part in choosing what they want to see on screen. Residents from East Lothian and Paisley have programmed two pop-up film festivals taking place within their home regions. We have engaged young programmers to curate a package of events inspired by taking part in our ‘Reviving Scotland’s Black History’ summer school. Postgraduate students from the University of Glasgow made up the selection committee for the Short Film and Documentary Competitions.
        This year our festival theme is ‘Time’, through which we explore the past, present and future of Africa, looking at different eras of African history including slavery, colonisation, globalisation and future concepts of Africa. We will also look at cultural notions of time including a focus on Swahili time, the Amharic calendar, and the place of tradition in a modern world. By looking at different political, cultural and social epochs we aim to show how Africa has never been a place bound in past tradition separated from the rest of the world, but has always been influenced by and connected to global movements.
         Our festival theme of 'Time' is illustrated through our cover design and trailer created by South African artist, Diek Grobler, who in his own words, drew inspiration from ‘The way in which rock artists have been telling stories with pictures in the flickering light of fires on cave walls for centuries. Cinema in Africa is ancient!’

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Phoney Justice And The Illusion Of Democracy.

         Name your country and people end up in cages on trumped up charges. The so called "rule of law" will be used to excuse violence, corruption, intimidation and repression. Phoney charges, planted evidence, false statements by the lackeys of the "judiciary", are all tools the system will use to silence opposition to its exploitation, prolong the illusion of democracy and protect the parasites who gorge on the sweat and blood of the people. Their control can only survive by these techniques, without them their whole stinking system would drown in a tidal wave of justice. That tidal wave of justice is rising, how high that tide will be, how soon will it arrive, that's up to us all. We are the waves that will wash the festering system to the sewers, where it belongs.

This from A-Radio Berlin, in English:   

       In May of 2016, two of our comrades in Azerbaijan, Qiyas Ibrahimov and Bayram Mammadov, were arrested for spray painting the monument of the former dictator Haydar Aliev. It was on the night before the so-called "Flower holiday“, a day made up in conmemoration of Haydar, the father of the current President of Azerbaijan. Nonetheless, as the charges for spray painting would not have been very high, more than 1 kilogram of heroin was planted in each of our comrades‘ homes.
      They were processed on different trials. Qiyas has already been sentenced to 10 years of prison, his friend Bayram Mammadov is still on trial.
       From Azerbaijani comrades we received the text of Qiyas‘ speech in front of the jury, him being interrupted regularly by the judge. In support of his case, we made an audio version of this speech and the judge’s comments.
You can find the speech in the attached document.

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Strange November.

      I can't believe this weather we are experiencing. Normally by this time of year we in Scotland are in the midst of cold, dull, wet and windy weather, but here we are, November and it is beautiful sunshine and virtually no wind. If this continues, I could see me stealing a few more days out on the bike. It is many, many a year since I cycled after the clock went back, it gets me quite excited, Yeeha.

View this morning from by back window.

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The State, The Management Tool Of Big Business.

 

      As is the custom of the state, it will tolerate protest until it appears that the protest is gaining support, or is likely to win, then the full savagery of the state apparatus will be unleashed on the protesters. Here in the UK the one that is in the news at the moment is Orgreave, planned and sanctioned brutality, unrestrained baton assaults, and horse charges running amok among protesters. Orchestrated state violence to break the miners strike, that was 32 years ago and the people viciously attacked are still waiting for justice. 

       In America, there is another struggle going on today, the Dakota pipeline, where corporate interests are riding roughshod over the interests of the indigenous people. A battle for clean water and respect for the land, or profit for the corporate world. There is no doubt which side the state will support. Out have come the big guns, the military style "policing" in an attempt to smash the will of the people, and give the corporate greed machine a free run at the destruction of this area. What we are witnessing here is the force of a militarised dictatorship savagely attacking the will of the people, in the interests of its lord and master, big business. It is sickeningly repeated year after year in country after country, and will continue until we finally destroy the state and its apparatus of repression. There is never any doubt which side the state is on, history tells us it is the management tool of the corporate world. Which side are you on?

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

A Country Of Daniel Blakes.

      In this brutal world of raw capitalism, our country, like most other countries has a multitude of "Daniel Blakes", from north to south, from town to city, honest decent people are being slowly and callously killed. It is not done by bullet or knife, it is done by ideology. Their potential life is being stunted and deliberately shortened. It is planned by faceless well heeled bureaucrats, who never enter the world of the ordinary people. A deliberate policy of demoralising and destroying those surplus to the requirements of capital. For how long will we tolerate seeing our friends, neighbours and family, being deliberately treated to this insidious slow death.

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Attack The Root Cause.

 

        We should never forget that the most efficient method of tackling a problem is to attack its root cause. We can try to control it, trim round its edges, but it will continue to grow. The root must be destroyed. I lifted this straight from arrezafe.

"Make no mistake with the moral questions"

        "In ecological ethic, the great moral question is not " what I do against the recycling bin " , but " what I do against the bank headquarters " . What is behind the devastating ecological crisis that is sweeping the biosphere is the self - expanding dynamics of capital. "

Jorge Riechmann

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Scotland's Coat Of Many Colours.

 

       Well the clock went back an hour last night, that is usually my sad event of putting the bike away until the turn of the year again. However, today was such a beautiful day, virtually no wind and plenty of sunshine, so I decided to to grasp the moment and head out. It was my usual haunt, taking in Lenzie, Kirkitilloch, Milton of Campsie, with stops for wee photos. A short run, I'm no longer a morning person, and I wanted to be off the road before dusk, felt great. Now the bike will get a lick of grease and oil and lie there until the new year, when it will be given a wee service, ready to start delivering its usual pleasures.

 Lenzie High street.

Kirkintilloch High Street, being pedestrianised, YEEHA.

Milton of Campsie High Street.

       I should add, that High Street in Scots, has nothing to do with height, it merely means Main Street.

      Scotland drops its mantle of lush green and dons its coat of many colours.

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Non Serviam - I Will Not Serve.

 

         Still the brutal struggle for justice continues, since September 9th. the slaves encapsulated within the American corporate prison system, have been in open struggle with their slave masters. There heroic effort demands our solidarity. Prisons on the one hand are the states refuse tips, where they dump individuals that are a nuisance factor to their system, where the dump those surplus to the requirements of the system, but in recent times they have morphed into something even more sinister, they have become large profit making corporate entities, slave camps to be utilised by capital. There is no place for prisons in a free and democratic society.

Warming the heart of freedom.

       A statement of support to all rebelling prison strikers from CCF in Greek prisons.
 

NON SERVIAM – I WILL NOT SERVE YOU
“Worse than enslavement is getting used to it…” 

       Life in the modern civilized world comprises false representations, false patterns, and false formalities. Formalities that determine our upbringing within a family, our education, our professional career, our relationships, our emotions, our smiles or tears. Patterns that castrate the scope of our perception so that our thoughts are directed onto a moving walkway going only one direction. Representations that disguise the system’s functions and pathogenies so that we see life unfold only on stage, and never wonder what’s hidden backstage. So, the thousands of suicides of desperate debtors is just another statistic among the unpleasant consequences of the economic crisis, the impoverishment of the so-called third world is just an unfortunate fact, and its wounds will heal by charity organizations, the countless dead of modern crusades, the unfortunate victims of the absurdity of war, and the convict slaves in American prisons are simply antisocial elements that provide social services to Democracy.
      Prison itself is exile from life; a non-place and non-time behind the screen of a decent society, to make the ugliness that bothers the eyes of reputable citizens unseeable. Prisons are a proof of the perverse intelligence of authoritarian minds. They’re built onto walls echoing the screaming and weeping of thousands of people who’ve learned to sleep with anguish and despair. Prison is the country of captivity, the country where one learns to kneel before the “Forbidden”, a landfill for the disposal of human waste, an industrial dump where the social machine’s hazardous waste ends up. For most people, however, for all those who never learned to doubt, to question, to look beyond the obvious, prison is a security wall necessary to protect their peaceful and quiet life.
      It’s certainly hypocritical on the part of a society to display the supremacy of its democratic civilization, its humanitarian values and social sensitivities so vulgarly, when those deemed unfit to exist within the same society are piled up in souls’ warehouses. But it’s infinitely more hypocritical, and infuriating at the same time, to turn these imprisoned existences, these living dead, into a marketable value through a modern and sophisticated slave trade.
      Yet this is the reality for nearly 2.5 million inmates in US prisons, whom the modern Empire has turned into slaves. These prisoners-slaves are the lowest caste of social margins. They don’t only experience the cruelty of captivity, but are condemned to lose their human beingness altogether; to become slaves in the modern galleys of American hellholes to the financial benefit of privatized prisons and multinationals that, using part of this dirty money, support election campaigns of various politicians who promise order and security to their voters. In turn, the voters—predefined coefficients in a rigged equation—fulfill their role, and the solution is always obedience. That’s exactly why the happiest slaves are the greatest enemies of freedom.
      But there are other slaves who aren’t so happy. They are the “fallen angels” in a society whose authoritarian perversion treats humans as cogs. But these human cogs are slowly turning against this very society. Throughout the US and the prisons in that territory, an increasingly growing whisper starts to spread. On September 9th, this whisper is transformed into an angry cry of freedom, screaming in the face of the almighty corrections system the ancient cry of rebellion: “Non serviam – I will not serve.”

Continue reading:

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Union of Anarchist Groups, Rare Pamphlet..

      Spirit of Revolt are delighted to be able to reproduce another rare anarchist pamphlet from their collection, thanks to comrade John Cooper. This is a pamphlet from the Congress of the Union of Anarchist Groups, held in Glasgow, December 2-3, 1945. 

       You can read this rare pamphlet on line HERE   The aim at Spirit of Revolt is to make the history of anarchism as easy accessible as possible, by digitising as much of the material in our collections as we can. This is a long term project with an ever growing array of interesting, important and rare material becoming available to us. Although we are all dedicated volunteers, sadly in this capitalist world, it requires that filthy stuff, money, there are costs involved, for web-hosting, equipment. etc. If you like what we are doing, and think it is a worth while project, perhaps some of you anarchists and like minded people would like to contribute to the preservation of anarchist material by making a small one of donation, no donation is too small, or perhaps you could see your way to making a steady monthly contribution. You can rest assured, any donation will be appreciated and well spent.

     You can donate HERE. Thank you.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Capitalism Made Easy To Understand.

       Anybody with two brain cells is aware that capitalism is exploitation, plundering the public purse, and generates inequality and poverty, is the root cause of wars, and the destruction of the environment. It can in a simplistic manner be explained as, someone expects to put in £1 and withdraw £1:50, without doing anything. However, I believe that sometimes a poem can express this clearer and with greater feeling than many a heavy thick volume, and an art work can do it with simplicity and with greater clarity.

Easy to understand:

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Man's Inhumanity To Man.

      We can never do enough to highlight the the atrocities that are the prisons of this world. How can freedom breathe when the prisons are overflowing, how can we listen to political posturing, when, across the world, human beings are incarcerated in appalling conditions as slaves feeding the capitalist system. Conditions under capitalism make it so easy to get lost in our own little world and turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, that's how the system survives, divide and rule, solidarity is the weapon to bring it down. A letter of support to the striking prisoners in America and elsewhere, from prisoners in Greece:

“Gentlemen, the dragon will fly out” is a saying attributed to prisoner George Jackson. On August 21st 1971, holding a pistol, he opened all the cells in an adjustment unit, taking jailers hostage. George Jackson was killed in his attempt to escape…

Since September 9th, prisoners in the United States have called for action against slavery.

       A multitude of “invisible” slaves (there are about 2.5 million prisoners in the United States) are condemned to forced labor, or as jailers of their own selves (internal work in prisons, cleaning, repairs, technical operations), or as cheap meat in the service of corporate behemoths (Honda, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, and many others). Besides, the 13th amendment to the US constitution clearly states: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” To put it simply, detainees are considered slaves as part of their punishment.

       Prisons in America—and not just there–aren’t only bars, walls, surveillance cameras or lockdowns. They’re also an enormous lucrative business. Prisons are a dirty dealing for continuously supplied shackled labor force without name and without voice. They represent a modern slave trade, making billion-dollar profit, that not only supplies the companies-caretakers but also the industry of lawyers, judges, cops, corrections officers, private prisons.

       Not long ago yet another judicial scandal, the “kids for cash” case, was revealed. President Judge Mark Ciavarella convicted juveniles (from 10 to 18 years of age) for the slightest offense, taking million-dollar kickbacks from the owners of private prisons Powell and Mericle with the purpose of supplying them with thousands of children prison slaves.

      In Greece, incarceration is much more “velvet”, but it doesn’t cease to be incarceration. Greek prisons may not supply multinational companies with slaves, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a well-staged business operation. Not only do prisons fund an army of leeches (lawyers, cops, corrections officers, judges), but they make big business with construction companies (through overpriced contracts), pharmaceutical companies (after Greek hospitals, Greek prisons are the second best customer of the pharmaceutical industry, since handfuls of psychiatric drugs are administered to prisoners to keep them asleep), and large supermarket chains (always making sure to overprice items sold to prisoners).

Continue reading:

Let's Roar.

The problem's too big

the perpetrators unknown

you can't beat the system

all on your own.

So it's easy to withdraw

find your own little cage

turn a blind eye to the suffering

stifle your rage,

but the greed goes on

the poverty's still there,

you can't just leave it

for your children to bear.

Others feel as you do

eager to put things right

but locked in isolation

it's a hopeless fight,

so don't sit in silence

behind a closed door,

your voice can help raise

a whisper to a roar.

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Rebelling Against Slavery.

        The prisoners strike in America is still on-going, again the silence of the babbling brook of bullshit that is our mainstream media is its way of treating any resistance to this festering system. However, support across the world is there, but needs to grow, it needs the widest publicity possible. Posters, blogs, protests outside prisons, letters of support to the prisoners and any other form of support that will help shine a light on this courageous struggle by those trapped in the slavery of the prison system. For freedom to live, prisons must die.

A poster from Austria:

     The poster „Against Prison! Against Slavery!“ is a small contribution from anarchists in Austria to the global Week of Action from 15th to 22nd October.

We send our solidarity to all prison rebels!
Strength to the striking prisoners in the US and beyond!

Text from the poster:

THE BEST SLAVES ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE FREE

      Every institution that tries to turn us into oppressed or handcuffed slaves are our enemy: fascism, patriarchy, authority, borders, the state and the capital!

Against Prison! Against Slavery!

     Prison was created by a social order based on domination and exploitation. The aim is to create a structure to segregate, repress and confine all undesirables. Until today the bosses make capital with forced labor in prisons, and control is increasing with little difficulty, while the politicians speak about liberty, equality and democracy.

Oppression, subtle and violent, is always inherent in a capitalist society. Acceptance of a miserable life among the exploited and oppressed makes capitalist production possible. An anti-nationalist consciousness, the rejection of democratic dictatorship and the fight against every polluted aspect of life is therefore vital.

     The starting point for truly explosive struggles is taking position, attacking the exploitation machinery, exposing cannibalistic governments, destroying militarized borders, intensifying social conflicts and building fertile structures for anarchist and non-anarchist people with common enemies and common targets on a global scale.

      Given that it is not a revolutionary tactic to spread fairy tales, we can’t just talk about getting away from it all. We must position ourselves along lines of various anarchist tendencies. The struggle we want to intensify includes revolutionary attacks and armed resistance.  Above all we express our solidarity with anarchist and rebellious prisoners through attacks for the total destruction of prisons and the prison society!

SUPPORT PRISON REBELS!
FIRE TO THE PRISONS!
LONG LIVE ANARCHY!
ANARCHISTS IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PRISON STRIKE AGAINST SLAVERY

in German

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk