Addiction.

          Time and time again we get government reports on addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addition, gambling addiction, but there is one addiction that the government never reports on. As a matter of fact they and their corporate buddies will do everything in their power to keep people hooked on this particular addiction, it is their life blood, it fills their coffers, they are the pushers and they grow fat on our addiction, it is the addiction to consumerism. Once again some wise words from Gregg Koep at Not Buying Anything:

 

         Most addictive drugs flood the brain with dopamine. Shopping does the same thing, but online shopping does it more, making it more addictive.
         Online shopping can stimulate as much or more dopamine production in our brains as in-store shopping. If shopping at the store is heroin, online shopping is heroin laced with fentanyl.
          In some cases digital consumerism can cause twice as much neurotransmitter as shopping bricks and mortar, making it twice as dangerous.
          Researchers are finding that attaining a reward is not the main thing that boosts the brain chemical that regulates our impulse to seek out pleasure.
          Anticipation of reward also releases a rush of feel good chemical.
         Ordering and waiting for a package builds anticipation. Anticipation causes dopamine release. Dopamine makes us feel good.
         But it is not all good.
         A dopamine rush can negatively affect our ability to control our impulses. This can be dangerous while spending money.
         The report entitled "Digital Dopamine," presented results from interviews and surveys of 1,680 shoppers from the US, UK, Brazil, and China in 2014.
From the report:
         "Seventy-six percent of people in the US, 72 percent in the UK, 73 percent in Brazil, and 82 percent in China say they are more excited when their online purchases arrive in the mail than when they buy things in store.”
         The bottom line is that online shopping is the crack cocaine of consumerism. That's the real reason they have been relentlessly pushing us toward it for decades.
         What isn't acknowledged enough is that consumerism on steroids comes with dangerous side effects for consumers, communities, and the entire planet. If we don't break free of the advertising/marketing-consumerism complex we will get stuck seeking selfish pleasures instead of helping others and developing our own creative gifts and moral character.

Only you can set yourself free.
Once you know more,
you'll say,
"No more!"

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info      

Rigaer 94.

           Pick your country and the state apparatus will be doing much the same things. Clamping down on autonomous spaces, self-organising groups, and all those that don't fit their model of existence for profit, and regimented control. The state has to know what you are up to, where you are, why are you there and should you be there. This report is from Berlin and it is not the first attack by the state on this autonomous space. The state has all the money time and resources to waste on these types of restrictive measures, after all we given them the money through our taxes, it's a shame we allow them to use our money to control us.

        The Germany state's minders in their usual heavy handed and over the top methods, attacked Rigaer 94, during July 2020.

 

 

          

 

      This report on the Germany state again planning to close this popular autonomous space is from Act For Freedom Now:

        The time to search the conflict and intensify it is long overdue. It’s time to go against the idea of property and the owners and take on the fight on our side, the side of the disposessed, the renters, the homeless. It is also time to resist against the occupation of our neighbourhoods, against the state and a society, that supports and contributes to its agenda and actions of systematically opressing and exploiting people based on racial ascriptions, drives away, displaces and excludes those that don’t fit or don’t want to fit in with the city of the rich. There is no reason to defend the existing and take the side of those profiting of the capitalist system. There are many reasons though to get organized together and rebel against state and capital, against authorities and its defenders and fight for the principles of selforganisation, mutual aid and a life in freedom and dignity. That is the context in
        To us, this house is a place where we chose to live and fight collectively. It is a place of organization of different local and international struggles in which we involved ourselves over the years. As a piece of the ongoing resistance in this city. Against the policestate and with it the transformation of parts of the city into so called “danger zones”, in which cops harass, control and hunt people. Against gentrification, rising rents, real estate projects, the destruction of public spaces and forced displacement. Against social isolation, egoism and the narrative of “everyone fending for themselves”.
         On the contrary we stand for selforganization, mutual aid and solidarity. For taking our lives into our own hands and defending ourselves against the omnipresent paternalism. For the experiments of selforganized spaces, spaces of the struggle and a life in a collective, without mechanisms of authoritarian and patriarchal oppression. Our open spaces Kadterschmiede and the youth space Keimzelle are meeting points that allow us to stay in exchange even when the social life is supposed to be frozen.
The attack on Rigaer94
         For the 17th and 18th of June, the self-proclaimed facility manager Luschnat, the “lawyers” Bernau and von Aretin and a so called fire security expert designated by them are getting ready to lead another attack against our house with the help of the police. They set out on the legal base of an ordinance by the district Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, that is supposed to force everyone to tolerate a “site inspection to examine the fire security” of all flats and rooms. It’s unlikely that this will be a “simple fire security inspection”, since everyone involved knows, that this house was turned into what is most likely the most fire safe house in the whole city, with the help of many friends in the past months. For a similar planned attack in march, that could be averted, 500.000€ for the Hundertschafts*-cops from different federal states were already spent. This fact points towards an action having been and being set up for a longer time period. We can imagine that the cops will again establish a “red zone” a few days prior to the 17th and 18th of june, to be able to take the house by assault on the 17th, occupy the neighbouring houses and destroy walls, the fire safe doors that we installed, and many more elementary facilities in the house. Maybe Bernau, Luschnat and co. want to then declare the house to be “uninhabitable”. By that they could evict with the help of cops and private security everything in the house they’d want to. Finally they want their hired lackeys to destroy what we have built up. This would be a scenario similar to the eviction attempt of the summer 2016.

Continue reading HERE: 

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Anti-Social!!!

          In this society if you don't play by the rules of the pampered privileged class you will probably find yourself at the wrong end of their loaded judicial system and the attendant enforcement apparatus. Try to set up some sort of alternative way of living that doesn't tie you into the consumer cancer that is eating the planet and you you will be labelled anti-social, trouble maker, or criminal. The state and its capitalist consumer model of existence, demands total obedience, and subservience to its rigid rules, that are there to protect the privileged powerful parasite class. That of course should not deter us from always seeking that alternative way to live, free from the capitalist mode of existence, it should open our eyes wider to the destructive, repressive structure of this greed driven state/capitalist economic straight jacket that tries to bind us all to its crippling tutelage. 

The following from Act For Freedom Now.

 

           This is a statement from some squatters in Bristol, who had 4 squats, including 40a Space, Salvation Army mutual aid/social centres and Wonky Arrow Books, a radical library.
 

 

        In the past days, we’ve had our buildings forcibly closed with anti-social behaviour orders, and we’ve been raided by hundreds of riot police. We’ve been beaten, pepper-sprayed, arrested, and sectioned.
       This is an escalation– it hasn’t been like this in the UK in years. Not that this is new. No, we see this as part of a long and brutal history of the repression of marginalised communities, and anyone who shows resistance or alternatives.
        The police and state media will try and paint this as the result of us being ‘anti-social’ – but isn’t it the police who hurt and intimidate us? Who break down the doors; who criminalize and target poor people, people of colour, travelling communities, people who live differently? It is the state and the police that are truly anti-social, at the core of the troubles we face in our lives. 

 

        This is an attempt to intimidate us, to repress mobilization in Bristol (especially around Kill the Bill) and to break down a community that is challenging the police and what they represent. We know that real community makes police obsolete.

 

 Continue Reading HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

State Violence.

         Everyone knows, prisons are hell-holes of violence and repression, "correction centres", "reform centres" and other such labels are just state camouflage to conceal the true nature of their savagery and purpose. They are state sponsored institutions to crush dissent and protect the wealthy and powerful, Sadly some of the violence comes from those incarcerated not only the prison guards. The guards are quite happy to let the inmates do the violent repression, it can make their job easier. Before freedom can flourish, prison walls must fall. 

The following from Act For Freedom Now:

          On 24 May 2021, anarchist fighter G. Dimitrakis was murderously attacked with multiple blows to the head by a group of prisoners in Domokos prisons where he is currently being held. Following the attack, Giannis was transferred to the hospital of Lamia in a critical condition. Eight days on, although our comrade has escaped the danger to his life, the damage done is still very serious. Giannis’s strength and mental vigor make us optimistic that he will also come out of this battle victorious.
         The cause of the attack on Giannis was his refusal to accept and subordinate himself to the authoritarian and brutal laws that the prison mafia are trying to impose on the prisoners in full consensus with the prison services. The cause of the attack is that he has steadfastly defended his ethical, value ​​and political substance as anarchist, as an insurgent, as a social struggler. The cause of the attack was his refusal to kowtow to those who want to humiliate and violate the weaker prisoners to affirm their prestige in their sick “code of conduct”. It is his refusal to subject himself to the unfavourable correlations and mentalities that prevail nowadays in prisons and overall in social and class antagonism. So his refusal to accept prison as a life condition is ultimately his refusal to submit to the State and its mechanisms.

Strength to the anarchist fighter Giannis Dimitrakis

Giannis stay strong, until freedom!

comrades from act for freedom now!

        Urgent updated information 3 and 5 of june – Comrade Giannis Dimitrakis is in solitary confinement in Domokou prison, an isolation that in the situation of the comrade is obvious torture. Giannis survived the danger that his life was in the first hours, but the blows he received caused multiple haematomas in the head, affecting the basic functioning of his brain.
         Wednesday, June 9 at Exarcheia Square at 7pm: 

 

       Gathering – Microphone of solidarity with the Anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis (followed by a march in the neighborhood of Exarcheia)

 Visit ann arky's home at:

http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page   

All Change.

          For months because of covid19, Glasgow has been in lockdown, level 3, which meant that we were not allowed to travel outside the city. These restrictions were lowered to level two this weekend, meaning we could now travel outside our city. Stasia had some business to do in Drymen, one of the routes of my cycling outings. So I went with her, but by car this time. It hadn't changed much, still the quiet little village, a few shops a couple of tearooms and a grassy square with a couple of pubs/hotels. However, a two tearooms had gone and there seem to be quite a few very large and expensive looking cars dotted around the square. We had lunch in the garden of the Winnock Hotel on the square, very nice indeed.
       A part from cycling that area many times, it was one of our walking routes in the days before my cycling era. So we decided to go on and visit Balmaha, four miles further on, and Rowardennan, the end of the road there. Back then Balmaha was a quiet little place on the shore of Loch Lomond, a tearoom, a hotel, a small pier and a few boats bobbing about. We could sit on the shore where mallard ducks usually came by to see what you had to offer. So quiet the tearoom eventually closed. Rowardennan was about 5-6 miles further on, a dead end place with a small hotel that always seem to be closed when you wanted something to eat, and a youth hostel. It was the common starting point for climbing Ben Lomond, which was our only reason for going to Rowardennan.
         As we arrived at Balmaha I went into a state of shock, the place was packed with people, two car parks were full, and cars were parked in odd places along the road. You couldn't see the shore for people, the quiet hotel was festooned with sun umbrellas, all full with people eating. Balmaha is on the famous walk, "the West Highland Way" and there was a steady stream of walkers in groups of 2, 3 and 6's making their way along the route. We didn't stop and decide just to go on to quiet Rowardennan.
      It is still a beautiful route as it twists and turns through a lot of untouched forest, dotted with the odd cottage and farm. We stopped at one point just to listen to the birds, amazing. However, the route has changed, every so often there is an entrance and caravan park, some with lodges, camper vans and "glamping", all busy. This meant the the quiet twisting road was very busy with cars. On reaching Rowardennan, again, shock. The dark old quiet hotel was now a large white building with lots of facilities, a car park which you have to pay to stop there. We pulled into the car park and watched about 25 or more walkers in a long straggling line make there way into the hotel. Of course we didn't pay at the car park, we just turned round and head back home. I'm still in shock at the change and massive commercialisation of that wild and beautiful part of our land that I once walked for solitude and to escape from the buzz of city life. I suppose, one of the outcomes of living so long.

A few photos on route:

The blueish haze are bluebells, a beautiful little woodland flower.

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

Angry Time!

 

          Glasgow folks are getting pissed off with the council, having watched them close so many amenities due to Covid are now being informed of a list of those that will not open again. Public libraries among some of those permanent closures. The well loved and much used People's Palace Winter Gardens, now has a shadow of permanent closure hanging over this gem of a Glasgow public owned asset. As myself and others have repeated on a regular basis, that all those billions of pounds paid to keep very rich corporate business with a tidy bank balance would have to be paid back by you and I in the form of austerity. The loss of public services and amenities is just the start, there will be a whole raft of measures to pay back the financial Mafia for that load the state borrowed to keep their corporate friends happy during the pandemic. You ain't seen nothing yet, cuts to education, NHS starved of proper funding, stricter control over benefits and cuts to social services, that will be there plan for starters. Of course we can sit back and moan to each other about hard things are, or we can get organised in our communities and work places, and take our anger and discontent on to the street. Together we can forge a new normal, a fairer society based on mutual aid and sustainability, freed from the poison that is the economy of profit and ever expanding consumption, a society that sees to the needs of all our people. That choice is up to us, don't expect the billionaire parasite class and their minders the state to do that for us. Let your righteous anger flood the streets and change the world we live in.
       Saturday afternoon, 5th. June, saw some of those angry Glasgow citizens form up in George Square to voice their determination to fight to hold onto all our public assets, public services and amenities, join them, our wall of anger, determined solidarity and organisation can push back that tide of austerity that is coming our way. 

Join them here;

 https://www.friendsofppwggg.org.uk/  

https://www.livingrent.org/contact_us

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Socialist Gaza.

           It is great to hear the word "socialist" coming out of the struggle in Gaza. So often the mainstream media portray the Gaza situation as poor little Israel being attacked by that nasty Hamas, an organisation on which the Zionist state has managed to get most of the world to stick the "terrorists" label. Always causing a distortion of what is actually happening on the ground, in Zionist Israel's favour of course.

This report from Struggle la Lucha:

 

  

        The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Palestine’s largest socialist movement, held a large rally in Gaza City on Wednesday, June 2. The rally was held under the banner of celebrating the victory of the Resistance in the latest Israeli war on the besieged Strip, which started on May 10 and lasted for 11 days.
       The rally was also motivated by another objective, asserting the centrality of the socialist movement in Palestinian resistance and political discourse. Thousands of Palestinians, mostly PFLP supporters, turned out to the massive rally, where hundreds of men and women fighters marched in the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City.
      “From the top of the ruins of our homes, leveled to the ground by our enemy to break the will of our people and our Resistance, we insist that Palestine is one and that we do not accept compromises, backdoor dealings or divisions,” Jamil Muzher, a top PFLP official in Gaza, said.
       “We bring to you greetings from the Secretary-General (of the PFLP) Ahmad Sa’adat to the Arab and Palestinian people and to the free people of the world as we celebrate the victory of our people everywhere,” Muzher said in reference to the imprisoned leader of the PFLP. Sa’adat has been a prisoner in Israel since 2002. 
        Muzher also commended the “tough resisters” of the PFLP’s armed wing, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, along with the armed wings of all Palestinian political groups, including Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and other movements.
        “Our people have fought for over 73 years and resisted in every possible form including popular and armed resistance,” Muzher said, vowing to continue on the same path.
       The rally, which was joined by the Palestine Chronicle correspondent in the Gaza Strip, featured men and women fighters, Che Guevara banners, and posters of Palestinian prisoners from the socialist movement.
        The rally is considered the largest of its kind in Gaza in many years. 

 

 Gallery of photos HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info      

Rethink.

 

         Last year 2020, apparently, there was a survey done by the marketing and public relations firm Edelman, the result of that survey was that 57% of people worldwide said that "capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world". We the ordinary people of the world didn’t need a survey to tell us the capitalist system is crap, millions live with this “harm” day and daily, we are well aware of and living with, the monstrous ecological damage the system of capitalism spews across the planet. Of course the result of the survey doesn’t mean that the powers that be and their survey merchants have decide to call a halt to their sacred greed driven exploitative system of capitalism. No, what they want to convince us of is that capitalism can move to a new stage, a fair and sustainable system, it just needs a little adjustment here and there. This new adjusted capitalism will of course not see the end to £150 million private yachts, private jets, personal luxurious mansions dotted around paradise islands, tax havens, where billions of £s are salted away for personal use. These plundered “privileges” will still be reserved for the masters of the system and their backside licking cronies. It will mean that the exploitation of the many, to maintain this imbalance, will be painted “green” and in all possibility jobs will be more precarious as the capitalist beast writhes and slithers to survive. 

           So it appears that 57% of the world’s population now accept capitalism is a harm to the people and the planet, will that be the tipping point where we, the ordinary people come together and start to dismantle this cancer that is eating our very existence. A realisation that it can’t be adjusted, reshaped or re-modelled into a fair and just system, it can be nothing but an exploitative system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. The answer is to abandon and destroy capitalism in all its various guises and start with a community based system of free association, mutual aid, fair and just distribution of the fruits of our labour, a system of sustainability that sees to the needs of all our people, free from the cancerous force of profit.

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

Mega Prisons.

          The UK state has announced a new building program of four super-mega prisons, one at Wellingborough will cost approximately £253 million, add the cost of the others and you have a fat load of taxpayers money to lock up its citizens. Prisons, new or old, large or small, or mega-prison, they are all brutal places of repression and intimidation, a legacy from a bye-gone era, they are the states front line defence of power and privilege, a warning to those who would dare to make any attempt to alter this system of exploitation, injustice and inequality. There is no place in any civilised society for locking people up in cages under duress and intimidation. All of us will only be free when we finally pull down the last few bricks of the last prison. 

The following from Act Fro Freedom Now:

(UK) National Demonstration:
Saturday 5th June 2021, 2pm
at HMP prison Full Sutton, Moor Lane, York

 

What: National Demonstration
When: Saturday 5th June 2021, 2pm
Where: HMP Full Sutton, Moor Lane, York, YO41 1PS
What to bring: PPE, food and drink
Transport: The prison has NO public transport links available, for prisoner families taxis can cost £25 each way from York City Centre.
CAPE is therefore organising transport from across the UK, as well as collections from York Train Station.

GET YOUR TICKETS VIA EVENTBRITE HERE
        Please let us know any other access needs you have by emailing info@cape-campaign.org The demonstration will start at 2pm to allow people to travel there from across the UK. There will be speeches from campaigns fighting police violence, prisons and detention.
Why:
       The Government are planning to build a 1440 bed mega-prison at the site of HMP Full Sutton. It will lock up thousands of people for years to come if built.
MP Full Sutton has a long legacy of violence and racism. Officers act with impunity in the rural prison with beatings, racist abuse and violence as common occurrences.
       Prison officers recently attacked Dwayne, a Black Muslim man held in the segregation unit. Dwayne was severely beaten by 4 white officers in a racist attack. He was left vomiting and dizzy in a cell covered in blood, denied medical treatment and access to a lawyer. His applications to have photos taken of his injuries have been refused by officers. It was three days until the prison staff cleaned the blood from his cell.
       The prison is holding Kevan Thakrar in solitary confinement in the prison’s segregation unit. Kevan is a long term prisoner who has been campaigning for his freedom since 2008 when he was wrongly convicted due to systemic racism, ID parades and police corruption. Kevan was convicted under the racist Joint Enterprise Doctrine and the prison has repeatedly acted with violent retribution where he has tried to defend himself. Learn more about his case here: justiceforkevan.org
        Kevan has been held in a dirty punishment cell with no electricity since the middle of April 2021. This demonstration is a demand to get him transferred out of the prison.
        HMP Full Sutton is also the site of one of the country’s Close Supervision Centres. These are ‘prisons within prisons’, the UK equivalent of the USA’s ‘Supermax’ prisons. They are the highest security and most repressive prison units within the country, where prisoners are held in solitary confinement in an extremely controlled environment for long periods of time. Kevan Thakrar was placed in the CSC system after he defended himself against a racist attack by prison guards in 2010.
        Kevan’s case and the broader CSC system have recently been the focus of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. They wrote: “…we express our grave concern at the indefinite and prolonged detention of Mr. Thakrar in what appears to be conditions of solitary confinement. Both in this individual case and in terms of general policy, we are particularly concerned at the reported use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement in Close Supervision Centres, thus predictably inflicting severe pain or suffering amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, or even torture.”

source

 

Visit ann arky's home at
 http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page

Keelie 19.

           Yes, it's that time again,the latest Glasgow Keelie is out for your perusal. Glasgow Keelie19, like the previous issues is jammed packed with info on what is happening, with coverage of the "Battle of Kenmure Street", Glasgow residents' stand against immigration authorities with their snatch van, and the release of two humans who were about to be carted off like livestock to some detention centre. The authorities sneaky raid was foiled by the mass support of locals and other supporters form around Glasgow. This and much more all there, free, for your info and pleasure. Spread far and wide.

 Read the Glasgow Keelie 19 HERE

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info