Don't you just love Glasgow? Photos taken on a wee walk down Miller Street and Argyle Street.
views and poetry from an anarchist perspective.
Don't you just love Glasgow? Photos taken on a wee walk down Miller Street and Argyle Street.
The following is from Enough is Enough:
Lamia. Greece. A letter from anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis, who is on hunger strike since May 23, 2022.
Originally published by Anarchist News.
Since the anthropocentricity of the majority of our society attributes the above mental attributes exclusively to humans, I will probably be accused of anthropomorphism (you will tell me of all you have been accused of, did that bother you?). However, I do not attribute characteristics to scorpions that are not inferred from their behavior, such as rational thought. It is encouraging that newer neuroscientific research suggests that the architecture of neural circuits associated with the function of consciousness in humans and other mammals is even detectable in insect brains.
How does this relate to the current situation? A few hundred million years after the appearance of scorpions, a being walked the earth that constructed permanent enclosure structures for other living beings, including its own kind: cages and guardians.
Many intelligent animals in captivity stop eating and are driven to death (e.g. of the dolphins that are captured, few survive). Countless people in captivity, (since so long ago that the beginnings have been erased) have gone on hunger strikes in prisons to gain their freedom or dignity. This is the equivalent of self-centering by beings with enough intelligence to try to provide a way out of the impasse. That is why nowadays, the hunger strike is internationally recognized as a historically powerful means of struggle, especially for prisoners.
In Greek circumstances (where even the junta of the colonels backed down on hunger strikes) modern judges and prosecutors are governed by a different perspective. The majority are driven by ultra-conservative views and, having caused untold pain to tens of thousands of prisoners who have been deprived of their long-term freedom, they work for a torture industry entrenched behind obvious lies such as correctionalism. Like slaughterhouse workers, or like fighter pilots bombing the enemy’s cities, they have killed any trace of empathy in themselves and can eat their lunch by convincing themselves that they are doing something useful. That is why they see the hunger strike as a means of challenging their omnipotence and show zero tolerance.
How else to interpret, what judges and prosecutors write, up to the 46th day of my hunger strike, when the prosecutor’s proposal of the court of appeal for my release was issued?
I was preceded by two councils where I was tried for what the judges believe I will do and I was held on remand as a “risk of committing further offences”. In the second even theirs they didn’t ask me a single question, not even about the facts and just issued a predetermined decision after 40 days (30 of which already on hunger strike). Without even a rationale, it took them 40 days to write “in accordance with the prosecutor’s proposal, to avoid unnecessary repetition”. I was treated with defiant indifference.
In the face of this squalor, I started a hunger strike. And in the announcement of its opening, I listed both the arbitrary acts against me and numerous examples where the judges have opened wide the doors when it comes to children of the system (cops – murderers, prison guards – torturers, fascists, big capitalists).
Meanwhile, in the midst of my strike, Alexandros’ killer, one of Zack’s killers who did as much jail time as I do hunger strike time, and rapist Filippidis have been released early on the improbable grounds that the potential victims are not at risk because he is now known for his actions and will avoid him. And I who completed 3/5 of my sentence 7 months ago “have not yet been corrected as not enough time has passed” according to the prosecutorial reasoning! Unrepentant murderers are enjoying what I have been fighting to earn for 50 days risking my life, what I have been entitled to for 7 months, freedom.
Seemingly unrelated, and yet relevant, is the murder of the chimpanzee that escaped from Jean-Jacques Leshwar’s wild animal prison. I wonder if Greek ‘justice’ will deal with a serial killer and torturer of wildlife? Too much money…
Anyway at this moment, my own stinger has already pierced my body and is spreading poison destroying its vital organs, probably irreversibly. However, it will inevitably pierce, even if only temporarily, the murderous order that sustains this system of generalized enslavement and exploitation of nature (human and otherwise)…
THE ONLY DEFEATED STRUGGLE IS THE ONE NEVER GIVEN
FREEDOM OR DEATH
11/7/2022,
Giannis Michailidis
May all those who fund, plan, build and run prisons, rot in hell. They are the most barbaric institutions in any society. To treat humans as other than human is about as low as you can crawl, but the state defends these blots on civilisation, and builds a whole structure to run them and a system to fill them, and has no intentions of removing them.
The following case is not the first nor unique, such treatment of individuals by the states across the globe, is all to common and shown to be acceptable to those in power. Only the mass movement of people can bring an end to this savagery and build a society that treats all humans as human.Lamia. Greece. The health condition of hunger striker Giannis Michailidis, who has been on hunger strike for 44 days and is monitored at Lamia General Hospital, is extremely critical.Originally published by Barrikade Info. Translated by Riot Turtle.
First of all, I would like to emphasize and point out that although the law allows each prisoner to appoint his personal doctor to examine and supervise him, in this case I was not allowed to examine him personally, despite having been authorized to do so, but our communication took place between the staffs and in the presence of a police officer right next to me, thus suspending medical confidentiality, since he heard and observed all our communication.
Giannis’ white blood cells number has fallen so far below the lower normal limit that it now poses a danger to the hunger striker. Leukopenia leads to severe immune deficiency. Platelets are also very low, and thrombocytopenia can cause severe and threatening bleeding. He has worsening anemia, liver dysfunction, and hypocalcemia.
Clinically, the hunger striker now reports experiencing acute precordial pain with the slightest exertion (signs of myocardial ischemia) and severe pain in his left kidney. The physicians treating him have informed him that he is now at risk of severe osteoporosis.
Gianni’s extremely difficult situation and struggle are exacerbated by the conditions of his incarceration. Completely isolated in a four-walled cell. No window, except for a small skylight at one side, and no television (although the psychiatric examination he underwent when he was admitted to the hospital did not reveal any pathological findings). In other words, he is physically and sensory isolated, without the slightest constant support, supervision and care from his family, his lawyer and his doctor.
All of this harms the hunger striker, causes additional stress and contributes to the destabilization of his body, as it is a kind of torture.
And the paradox is that all this has to happen in this torturous way in a hospital, where the ethical and moral rules of the hospital should not be violated and all patients must be treated in decent conditions.
For my part, I will once again emphasize the seriousness of the health condition of hunger striker Giannis Michailides, and call on all responsible authorities to find an immediate solution to prevent a fatal outcome of the hunger strike.
The personal physician of Giannis Michailides Pantelia Vergopoulou – NHS director.
FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ANARCHIST GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
Ten arrogant individuals all extremely comfortable, all tainted by their complicity in the actions and defence of their previous Messiah, Bojo, now coming with smiles to hide their utter arrogance and disrespect for the lives of the majority. Why do we even listen to them, we know their track record, we know their background and we know or should know, we gain nothing from their actions, but shackle ourselves to a life of struggle. Let's change our ways, let's bring this whole stinking cesspool of arrogance, sleaze, duplicity and corruption down, let's think for ourselves, take control of our communities and our workplaces and make our own decisions that shape our lives, and shape society to see to the needs of all our people. We are many, they are few, they need us, we don't need them.
Without Us.
You, yes you in your Armani suit and Gucci watch,
don't judge me by the label on my shirt.
I've no need for labels,
my worth is etched on my face,
engraved on my hands.
I'm the power that tore roads through mountains
dragged logs across the earth.
Brick by brick
these hands built your "DESIRABLE RESIDENCE",
your "EXCLUSIVE RESTAURANTS".
My sister made you fancy suit.
What we create we can destroy
and recreate for ourselves.
Don't you know,
without us,
you stand cold, hungry, naked?
Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info
Everybody agrees that we are heading for the harshest attack on our living standards in a generation or more, and most will appeal to our local lords and masters to sort it out. Of course to get your vote they will make all sorts of promises, but the truth is there is nothing they can do to avert this tsunami of poverty that is going to hit the ordinary people. The reason being is that it is not a local event, it is a world wide catastrophe, also it is not an unavoidable event some accident of fate, nor is it an act of God. It is a well thought out and planned set of circumstances, laid out at the last Davos gathering and engineered by the big boys in the financial Mafia. A world wide design to recapitalise the insane system of global capitalism. For years now the financial Mafia has been flooding the system with phony money at very low interest rates, Quantitative Easing, and the big business world jumped at the bonanza building up massive debts. Too much junk money floating around and too many over valued shares. To over come this problems for the Financial Mafia in this greed fest, the only answer they know is to raise interest rates.
What will follow is mass defaults, bankruptcies, evictions and repossessions and raging inflation as business try to stay afloat. In the global corporate business world only the biggest and strongest will survive. What this translates into in our world of ordinary people, is unemployment, a slashing of social services, cost of living nightmare and the vicious claws of poverty visiting each and every home of the ordinary people. A tidal wave of physical and mental health problems, our kids potential stunted, a collapsing health service and failed education system, our elderly dying much earlier than they would normally.
Appealing to the puppets of this system, our local governments is pissing in the wind, they are part and parcel of this nightmare as they are the managers of the system at our level, the puppets of the financial mobsters that control the global money system. Our only hope is solidarity of the ordinary people, across all borders of on this planet. To organise in bringing down this system of greed and profit for the few. Coming together to create that better world based on mutual aid, sustainability, respect for all humanity, freed from the profit motive and based on seeing to the needs of all our people. Time is running out, if the present set of circumstance does not get you angry and on the streets, your kids and grand-kids can look forward to a heritage of abject poverty in the midst of opulence. The choice is our, it is their world or it is our world, we are on opposing sides, there is no in between fence sitting, you fight or your surrender, you struggle for that better world or you capitulate to abject poverty, the life of a serf.
With the Fed now imposing a Quantitative Tightening, withdrawing tens of billions in bonds and other assets monthly, as well as raising key interest rates, financial markets have begun a deleveraging. It will likely be jerky, as key players like BlackRock and Fidelity seek to control the meltdown for their purposes. But the direction is clear.Visit ann arky's home at http://strugglepedia.co.uk
By late last year investors had borrowed almost $1 trillion in margin debt to buy stocks. That was in a rising market. Now the opposite holds, and margin borrowers are forced to give more collateral or sell their stocks to avoid default. That feeds the coming meltdown. With collapse of both stocks and bonds in coming months, go the private retirement savings of tens of millions of Americans in programs like 401-k. Credit card auto loans and other consumer debt in the USA has ballooned in the past decade to a record $4.3 trillion at end of 2021. Now interest rates on that debt, especially credit card, will jump from an already high 16%. Defaults on those credit loans will skyrocket.
Outside the US what we will see now, as the Swiss National Bank, Bank of England and even ECB are forced to follow the Fed raising rates, is the global snowballing of defaults, bankruptcies, amid a soaring inflation which the central bank interest rates have no power to control. About 27% of global nonfinancial corporate debt is held by Chinese companies, estimated at $23 trillion. Another $32 trillion corporate debt is held by US and EU companies. Now China is in the midst of its worst economic crisis since 30 years and little sign of recovery. With the USA, China’s largest customer, going into an economic depression, China’s crisis can only worsen. That will not be good for the world economy.
Italy, with a national debt of $3.2 trillion, has a debt-to-GDP of 150%. Only ECB negative interest rates have kept that from exploding in a new banking crisis. Now that explosion is pre-programmed despite soothing words from Lagarde of the ECB. Japan, with a 260% debt level is the worst of all industrial nations, and is in a trap of zero rates with more than $7.5 trillion public debt. The yen is now falling seriously, and destabilizing all of Asia.
The heart of the world financial system, contrary to popular belief, is not stock markets. It is bond markets—government, corporate and agency bonds. This bond market has been losing value as inflation has soared and interest rates have risen since 2021 in the USA and EU. Globally this comprises some $250 trillion in asset value a sum that, with every fed interest rise , loses more value. The last time we had such a major reverse in bond values was forty years ago in the Paul Volcker era with 20% interest rates to “squeeze out inflation.”
As bond prices fall, the value of bank capital falls. The most exposed to such a loss of value are major French banks along with Deutsche Bank in the EU, along with the largest Japanese banks. US banks like JP MorganChase are believed to be only slightly less exposed to a major bond crash. Much of their risk is hidden in off-balance sheet derivatives and such. However, unlike in 2008, today central banks can’t rerun another decade of zero interest rates and QE. This time, as insiders like ex-Bank of England head Mark Carney noted three years ago, the crisis will be used to force the world to accept a new Central Bank Digital Currency, a world where all money will be centrally issued and controlled. This is also what Davos WEF people mean by their Great Reset. It will not be good. A Global Planned Financial Tsunami Has Just Begun.
The following is from Athens, but can be witnessed in cities, towns and villages across the planet. Anywhere when the people challenge the established power structure.
Suddenly 6 police bikes provocatively pass from Exarcheia Square attempting to intimidate and scare those that have already gathered there. Apart from the shouts against them, warning the cops about the response they will receive the next time they may try to provoke the people about to protest the police repression in the neighborhood, there is no aggressive action against the police.Visit ann arky's home at http://strugglepedia.co.uk
What do the cops do following that? They leave and return with greater reinforcements, about 15-20 bikes, 2 cops on each bike. The result is what has been recorded in the video.
Despite the chaos created in the area by the police with asphyxiating gas grenades and flash bang grenades, the protest in Exarchia took place dynamically, with the participation of approximately 1.000 protesters.
The call for the protest follows:
JUNE 25 – DAY OF GREEK AND INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT OF EXARCHIA.
To defend the neighborhood of the world that fits many worlds.
A neighborhood where people of all genders, ages and backgrounds can coexist with respect.
Where the history of yesterday’s struggles meets the resistances of today.
Against gentrification, evictions, political annihilation, State repression.
To fight for the Exarcheia of social self-organization, of class solidarity, of insurrection
– No Metro station in Exarcheia Square
– No to the handing over of Strefi hill to private companies
– The Polytechnic School of Athens should remain a place of meeting and struggle
– Reduction in rental prices
– No evictions
As usual Spirit of Revolt tries to bring you a variety of interesting papers from our archive in the hope that it will stir an interest in our history. A history of struggle by the ordinary people, who in fact are extraordinary, against the repression and injustices of this society. For July Read of the Month we have chosen a Class War paper, Angry, from our Bratach Dubh Collection, TSoR5-6-12. Read, enjoy, learn, be inspired, and delve deeper into our vast collection at https://spiritofrevolt.info.
Image courtesy of Wallpaper Access:
Viisit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info
While every ordinary person in this country is feeling the effects of this massive drop in living standards and are crying out for some sort of relief, our lords and masters tell us there is no money tree and we will just have to suffer until the economy grows. No money for hospitals, social services, education, no money for the homeless, but it can find money to support the war in Ukraine. The UK is giving £2.5 billion in military aid and £1.5 billion in economic aid to Ukraine. Where is that money coming from? Most of it is coming from government departments "under-spend", no questions of why so much money was not spent by government departments when everybody in the country is calling out for support. This flow of money to Ukraine was also supplemented by robbing the Scottish and Welsh governments budgets to the tune of £95 million. Complaints by those two governments were met with, "these are exceptional times". They are also exceptional times for every ordinary person in this country, but that can be ignored as the UK try hard to look like a big imperial power, in this imperialist struggle for the survival of the supremacy of the Western imperialist world domination. Make no mistake, the Western powers will keep this fight going until the last Ukraine is dead, and if it looks like they might lose, then they will eagerly sacrifice the European population in their desire for world dominance.
They are trying to create the illusion that it is Ukraine that is fighting this war, utter bullshit. Ukraine may be supplying the cannon fodder, but the West is supplying the fire power and backing it up with more and more, highly destructive weapons.
Probably one of the most shocking videos I have ever watched. Borders kill, deaths crossing Africa, deaths crossing Europe, deaths crossing the English channel, deaths crossing from South America to North America and in all these cases it is the borders that are the cause of the deaths. The various states and their desire for power, wealth and resources create these borders. Imaginary lines drawn in blood by the duped population drunk on the poisonous wine of patriotism and all at the dictate of the rich and powerful parasites who brew that wine and hold the whip. Reading of, and viewing these deaths, surely we must ask why have these borders, who gains most from these blood soak imaginary lines, certainly not the ordinary people. They are the ones that flee the various states and their brutal regimes, they are the ones fleeing the turmoil of powerful nations foreign policies. When do we cry, in a loud and anguish voice, "enough is enough" and bring down this whole stinking brutality known as states.
This Edition:
Artificial intelligence reaches a new and unexpected milestone while the human condition continues to worsen.
As supply chains are pushed to the brink, working people around the globe struggle with new realities of stagnated wages and out of control inflation. While oil corporations celebrate record profits, the people of Ecuador are fighting back with work stoppages, road blocks, and riots across the country.
Meanwhile, in Tanzania, tensions have flared as the government tries to displace many indigenous Maasai people from their ancestral homelands for yet another playground for capitalist elites.
Finally, we follow up with our coverage of Giannis Michailidis, anarchist prisoner in Greece, who has now been on hunger strike for over a month.
The United States and European Union frequently claim that they are acting on behalf of the “international community,” but events like this demonstrate that when Washington and Brussels say international community, they actually just mean the roughly 15% of the global population in the West and their loyal allies in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.
Multipolarista detailed in a report in March how the vast majority of the world’s population, which resides in the Global South, has remained neutral over the Western proxy war in Ukraine.
Countries with some of the largest populations on Earth, such as China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Vietnam, have remained neutral.
Many more nations in the Global South, such as South Africa, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Eritrea, have openly blamed NATO and the United States for causing the war in Ukraine.
In every tragic war situation in which the West is involved, there is always the blame game, and we in the West always claim it was the other guy that started it. We immediately take the moral high ground, the other is evil, undemocratic, we are good and democratic. Basically that is all bullshit, wars are the result of powerful factions trying to gain or defend their perceived supremacy. It is a brutal and tragic game of bullying and brinkmanship and all for power, resources, markets and wealth, for that small class of powerful parasites that control the various corporate empires. The state will always be there to support their particular corporate empire, and be prepared to cajole the population into the roll of cannon fodder. The Ukraine situation is no different U$ and its puppets see Russia as a threat to their perceived supremacy and will work tirelessly to undermine and destroy that threat. Meanwhile ordinary people will die and the powers that be will sit back and enjoy any spoils that result from this bloodshed. In today's world, war and states are co-joined twins spawned by corporate capitalism.
One of the old intel codgers, Graham E. Fuller, who was Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council at CIA back when I was an analyst, has it figured out. He wrote a piece sure to get him removed from woke Washington, DC parties:
The war in Ukraine has dragged on long enough now to reveal certain clear trajectories. First, two fundamental realities: Putin is to be condemned for launching this war– as is virtually any leader who launches any war. Putin can be termed a war criminal–in good company with George W. Bush who has killed vastly greater numbers than Putin.
Secondary condemnation belongs to the US (NATO) in deliberately provoking a war with Russia by implacably pushing its hostile military organization, despite Moscow’s repeated notifications about crossing red lines, right up to the gates of Russia. This war did not have to be if Ukranian neutrality, á la Finland and Austria, had been accepted. Instead Washington has called for clear Russian defeat.
Contrary to Washington’s triumphalist pronouncements, Russia is winning the war, Ukraine has lost the war. Any longer-term damage to Russia is open to debate.Sadly for Washington, nearly every single one of its expectations about this war are turning out to be incorrect. Indeed the West may come to look back at this moment as the final argument against following Washington’s quest for global dominance into ever newer and more dangerous and damaging confrontations with Eurasia. And most of the rest of the world–Latin America, India, the Middle East and Africa– find few national interests in this fundamentally American war against Russia
Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info