Shafted.

Image courtesy of 124News.

 

            This government seems to find it easy to come up with money for any of its pet schemes. Take our Monarch Charles III at present he gets a present annually of tax payers money to the tune of £86.3 million, obviously struggle to keep up his standard of living, the state steps in and for 2025 he will receive an wee boost of tax payers money to the tune of £38.5 million, bring his tax payers gift to a tidy £124.8 million annually. Does he need it? Is he struggle to get by on a taxpayers gift of £86.3 million? Recent research shows that Charles III's personal wealth is in the £2 billion region. Who else in this country has a personal fortune in the region of £2 billion and receives a tax payers annual gift of £124.8 million? Obviously there is no shortage of tax payers money to help out billionaires, but not any for struggling health workers, teachers homelessness, child poverty, and others struggling to maintain some standard of living.

Image courtesy of Amnesty International.

 

 

         In another field where the government is extremely generous with your money is in what they call the "defence" budget, in actual fact it is a "war" budget. I can't think of a country on the planet that has any plans to invade the UK, except perhaps America, if we don't do as we are told in supporting U$A's endless wars.
         Our war budget for 2021/22 was £45.9 billion and our £800 million Prime Minister has stated we will "ramp up" "defence investment" (war preparation). Of course he doesn't mean with his money, but with yours. The war budget has in 2020 received a £24 billion "cash boost", again, your cash, and they want to feed it more of your money.
         When do we wake up to the fact that we are day and daily being continually shafted by the rich and privileged parasite class. While in public they shed crocodile tears about our dire situation, and privately laugh at us as they sip their champagne doing deals of pillage and plunder.

Image courtesy of Big Issue.

 

         That better life for all means we have to bring this whole stinking edifice to greed, corruption and self indulgence, this capitalism and state, joined at the hip, insanity, to an end.

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St. Imier.

 

150 years on, St Imier is thriving

             

          July 19th sees the first sessions of a five-day celebration of anarchist thought in the Swiss border town that hosted the visionaries of a definitive, and historic, break with Marxism.
         St Imier is as far as history tells, one of those legendary events which would mark the moment in which anarchism finally nailed itself to the extra-Parliamentary path. In the years since Proudhon famously asked What is Property? and declared himself an anarchist in 1840 the movement had, for the most part, been travelling alongside and debating with more statist positions, most famously through the First International, to which famous libertarian intellectuals such as Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin belonged.
         But in the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871, amid increasing political rancour between Bakunin and the more authoritarian tendencies rallied around Marx, both Bakunin and a second leading anarchist, James Guillaume, were expelled causing an irrevocable split.
        The following year two organisations, the Italian Federation and Swiss Jura Federation, went on to organise an alternative international congress – St Imier. A veritable who’s who of the time’s famous anarchist organisers from Errico Malatesta to Jean-Louis Pindy were part of delegations from Spain, Italy, France, the US and Switzerland, which passed four key resolutions:

1. A rejection of the increasingly authoritarian and centralised nature of the First International,
2. A pact of friendship to stand against such authoritarian behaviour in future,
3. A declaration that the proletariat’s first duty was to destroy all political power, including the party form,
4. That the task of emancipation could only be carried out through the free federation of all producer groups, based upon solidarity and equality.

          That declaration, spread across the continent in the following weeks, months, and years, would go on to form a core of anarchist thought in Europe.

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Survival.

 

          Everybody surely knows that there is something dangerously wrong with our present economic system. It has in the past, present and will in the future fail miserable to see to the basic needs of all of humanity and the survival of humanity itself. If you are a member of that strata of people at the receiving end of the economic system’s free hand out of poverty and deprivation, you’ll understand what I’m saying. 

                                              Image courtesy of The Communist.

          Why does this system persist despite in vicious disregard for the vast majority of humanity? It spawns wars across the globe from South America to Africa, the Middle East to Europe, wars that only the privileged few gain from, but the vast majority suffer the consequences the deaths, injuries and devastation. We are prisoners of a system owned and controlled by a small number of very rich individuals and massive international monopoly corporations. The only result from such plundering and pillaging the Earth’s resources is to deny the vast majority of humanity a decent standard of living. 

Image courtesy of MR online

         This system persists because of our subservience to the illusions peddled by its propaganda machine and the control by the various states that manges the population with laws, rules and regulations that perpetuate the existing status-quo. Change will only come when we start to see through the illusions and help others to join us in dispelling myth and replacing it with facts. Awakening to the fact that our acceptance of this system of injustice and savage brutality is not laid down in tablets of stone from some immutable design, it is human designed system and can be changed only by human intervention on a massive scale. We have to abolish borders, erase racism, grow our solidarity for all repressed people and build on co-operation, sustainability and justice for all. We accept the inequality and injustice and hand it down to our children and grandchildren or we stand up, join hands, get organised on a massive scale and make the changes we need and are due, as we are the creators of all the wealth on this planet. Organised solidarity is our winning weapon.

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Misery.

            It always amazes me how our government has money to throw around at making people's lives miserable or unbearable, but can't find any money to make people's lives better. There's no money to improve the quality of life for our health workers, our kids suffer because there is no money to improve the education system. It can however find money to higher a floating prison to house immigrants. The Bibby Stockholm, named after the founder of the company John Bibby, who made his money in the slave trade, is a barge designed to hold 200 and will be used by the UK government to house 500 migrants. Barge is a misnomer, prison is the correct name, as the inhabitants of this hellhole will not be allowed to walk about on the port. The government flags this up as money saving but are paying this private company a sum of £1.6 billion of our tax money, to manage this arrangement. Money to create misery

Image courtesy of Ripples.

 

         Then there is our "defence" budget, the UK government has announced it will spend an "EXTRA" £2.5 billion on army munitions, this comes on top of the £5 billion boost to our war spending. All that money will have no other purpose than to destroy other people's towns and cities and kill thousands of people we don't even know. More money to create misery.

Image courtesy of Middle East Institute.

 

         Where is the pouring of vast sums of our tax money on making the lives of the ordinary people better? We are continually faced with austerity, poverty shadows our children, our elderly, and our most vulnerable. wages stagnate or fall, living standards are continually eroded, and we are told by the wealth privileged, to "hold our nerve"
         We know there is a better way to shape our society, to one that sees to the needs of all our people. A society not based on war, exploitation and profiteering, but built on mutual aid, co-operation and sustainability. That change will not come from the wealthy and very comfortable privileged parasite class, but will only come from the people themselves. We are the ones that create all the wealth on the planet, we are the rightful beneficiaries of that produce, but we will have to stand up and take it, it will not be gifted to us. 

 

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Dark Times.

Image courtesy of UN News. 

 

TODAY

In these mad times where cluster bombs are OK
where shattered limbs an acceptable price to pay
crumpled buildings cratered streets where people stay
cities of weeping children who forgot how to play
Our modern power driven world in rapid decay
we can but hope that soon sanity will have its say

 

Image courtesy of Hi.Org.

 

        In these dark days when pimps of war seem to hold the upper hand and bosses of the capitalist juggernaut grow fat on the bloody proceeds of those wars, I thought it world be fitting to post one of  Theodore Roethke poems, In A Dark Time.

 

IN A DARK TIME

 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

  

 By Theodore Roethke

 

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Bastille.

            Here in the UK, millions are facing dramatic hikes in their mortgage payments, due to the ever increasing interest rates, and landlords are increasing rents. Millions of ordinary people here are also being hit with an unbearable 18.3% inflation rate in basic food prices, while trying to manage astronomical energy prices. Poverty is rampant with little hope of it easing any time soon. Meanwhile we have the wealthy and privileged telling us to "hold our nerve", while other wealth parasites are urging the Bank of England to increase interest rates to bring about a recession to bring down inflation, and to hell with the effects a recession would have on the lives of the ordinary people of this country. 

Image courtesy of Wikidata.

 

            Instead of listening to these wealth, pampered parasites, with their own self seeking agendas, we should perhaps reflect on the date. July 14th. back in 1789 on July 14th. the poor and the marginalised of France decided that they could no longer put up with the injustice of poverty in the midst of obscene wealth. Their anger took them on to the streets and in Paris they stormed the Bastille. This marked the start of the French revolution. We don't have to repeat the results of the French revolution, which, in fact ushered in capitalism as a dominant force. We could however change society for the better of all, but only if we direct our anger and disgust at the repeating injustice of the present system and are are determined to bring an end to this gross injustice that shackles millions to poverty in the midst of obscene opulence. 

 

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Fires.

Image courtesy of Euro News.

FIRES OF THE FUTURE.

 
I am fire,
I surge, I hiss,
sometimes bursting forth in a flame
that lights up the world
illuminating unimagined dreams.
Then the black cloak
blankets out the glow.
Again all is dark,
but, still
beneath the surface
I surge, I hiss,
I endure, waiting, seeking,
building up pressure.
One day I will explode
destroying forever
the Tartarean crust of oppression.
I am fire,
I am the people.

           The foundations of the capitalist society are built on bricks made of the work and exploitation of the ordinary people. These foundations are very weak, as pillage and plunder rampages across humanity and injustice roars with laughter. There is always a simmering anger just below the surface, and sometimes it explodes through the chimera of stability and lets the dream of freedom and justice run free scattering the seeds of hope. It always takes the state's full exercise of power and brutality to quell and control this explosion, but it can never extinguish that simmering anger and desire for justice and freedom.
          One such explosion was recently plainly visible in France, where anger burst forth and claimed the streets and displayed what it thought of this subservient exploitative and brutal system. The anger was plain to see as the state's brutal apparatus tried to stem the flow of that desire for freedom and justice. 

           The following extract is from an article that documents the physical result of the explosion of anger but can't detail the feelings that started it and the feelings that it has lit in the hearts and minds of so many. Long live anarchy, which will blow like a breath of fresh air through the decaying pungent smell of exploitation and injustice. 

Image courtesy of Daily Mail.

Today’s Figures on the Riots

 In total, between the night of June 27 to 28 and July 2 to 3, there were officially 12 031 vehicles burned, 2 508 buildings burned down or damaged, including 273 police and gendarmerie premises, 105 town halls burnt or damaged, 168 schools were attacked. 722 law enforcement personnel were injured.

3,625 people were taken into custody throughout the territory (1,124 of whom are minors). Among all those arrested, « the average age is between 17 and 18 (…) the youngest is 11 years old and the oldest 59 years old, one third are minors”, “60% of the total have no criminal record”, «10% of the people arrested are non-French and there have been 40 placements in administrative detention centres» according to the Minister of Interior. Of the detained persons, 990 of the age of majority and 253 minors were referred to the prosecutor’s office, and 480 of the age of majority were referred to the court for immediate appearance. To date, 380 people have been sent to prison, whether they have been sentenced or placed in pre-trial detention pending trial.

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Class War.

 

          An interesting pamphlet from Trindni Valka free to download. Anarchist literature always welcome, spread far and wide, if you can, download and print and distribute, spread our ideas.
        

         In Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the UK, Italy, Syria, France etc… All over the world there is a voice against capitalist wars and also against capitalist peace. Only class war can end this terror and that is what we mean when we say No War but the Class War!

       The new pamphlet contains 14 texts by various groups and individuals. The aim is to explain and affirm the meaning of antimilitarism, internationalism and revolutionary defeatism. The publication will be presented for the first time at the Balkan Anarchist Bookfair in Ljubljana. The pamphlet is also available for download in PDF.

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Keelie 42.

             Glasgow Keelie No. 42 is out, wanti kno wit yir cooncil is upta, get yir Keelie, don't know whit a Keelie is, GET YIR Keelie, it tells yi oan th'back page. The Keelie is Glasgow's best pocket rocket free newspaper, packed with info on what is going on in our city and further afield. Shouts loud an clear on what is wrong with the system that runs our lives, the dubious dealings of YOUR council in which you have no say. Find out where workers are in conflict and struggle defending their wages and conditions, and how to support them. Where to find the Keelie, at pickets, protests, demonstrations on the streets, cafes and pubs or contacts us for a free bundle to distribute among your friends and work mates. CONTACT us HERE: Read it free on line HERE:

 

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Anti-war.

            How low will the U$A war pimps stoop to prolong the blood bath in Ukraine? The latest statement of insanity from the prince of death Biden, is that he is considering sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, despite these weapons being banned by well over 100 countries, due to their extremely high risk of causing civilian injuries and deaths, years after the conflict has stopped. This is just another step in the U$A's desire to weaken the Russian military and ruin its economy to try and prolong Americas dollar dominance in the world. 

                                                       Image courtesy of Al Jazeera

             Day and daily we hear about the billions U$A is giving to Ukraine to prop up its dictator and his fascist regime. What is not made clear is that the money doesn't go to Ukraine. The way the system works is that U$A send Ukraine its old munitions and military hardware, the money then goes to the U$A military to hand over to the American military industrial complex to deliver new and more advanced weaponry to replace their dated weaponry that has been shipped to Ukraine. The con trick of getting tax payers money straight to the arms industry without touching the ballooning arms budget. So the arms industry gets two bites at the cherry and prays that the war continues, and it will, since most of those in power in the U$A are in love with the arms industry as it makes them millions.
         The blood shed in Ukraine could have been avoided if the U$A and NATO had wished so, and it could end likewise by negotiation. However that road doesn't suit the U$A's desire for world domination with the dollar the weapon, backed up by military might. 

Image courtesy of Tridni Valka

 

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Revolting Art

          We live in a world of chaos, pillage and plunder, all managed and manipulated by powerful and rich individuals and corporations, aided and abetted by the various states. All to their advantage at the expense of the lives of ordinary people, the ones who actually produce all that wealth. Wars, ecological disasters, mass poverty, gross injustice and inequality is the norm produced by this economic system of insanity and greed.
          However, below the surface there is always a rumbling of anger and an army of people working hard at trying to change this mayhem to a fairer and sustainable system, a system freed from the profit motive, that sees to the needs of all our people built on mutual aid and co-operation.
          That underground army must use every means at its disposal from literature on the streets, autonomous spaces, community based mutual aid groups, workplace organisations that build solidarity, mass protests, direct action, strikes and reminding everybody of the history of this economic system of greed and exploitation.
         We also should never forget the part art and poetry can make to this struggle for justice. Both these mediums can inspire, point a direction, awaken those feelings of desire for freedom and explain the basic injustices of the present economic system. 

          So, not to be missed is an exhibition of art works by Euan Sutherland, Portraits of Power. This will run from Tuesday 1st to Saturday 12th. August and will be held in The Deep End 21 Nithsdale Street G41 2PZ This exhibition will be part of the Govanhill International Festival here is a copy of the festival program

 

 

Between Dignity and Poverty

In this metropolis of wealth with its fountains of opulence
We are the excluded army that walks that tightrope
Between dignity and poverty.
The excluded, the marginalised, the forgotten,
Regulated by mercenaries, some with guns, others with pens.
They know not, we are their brothers and sisters.
Nor do they know,
Our strength is forged in the humiliation of the bread line
Our daily question, will there be food,
Or will the pangs of hunger stay.
We exist in a system of numbers and balance sheets,
Our lives, dehumanised statistics,
Catalogued and filed by a blind accountant.
When asked to count our dead, do we count the living dead?
Will this tightrope be the inheritance to our children
Or shall our tortured journey lead us from anxiety to revolt
Will the anguish of our children feed our righteous anger
Causing us to tear asunder this fabricated web of injustice 

 

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Fail 24.

 

           System Fail 24 just released, again it covers a wide range of subjects from around the world. This episode covers the attacks on Pride events and community, Wagner's march on Moscow, a statement from Russian anarchists and the people of Argentina's fight against the lithium mining. Always well worth watching.

 

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History.

         Spirit of Revolt for our July “Read of the Month” bring you a magazine from our KM Collection T SOR 4-1-138, Revolutionary Perspectives, No.21. Other issues of this magazine are also available to read on line at the same catalogue number, T SOR 4-1-138. While there take a wee while to browse through our extensive collection of anarchist and libertarian socialist history. Thousands of documents, magazines, photos, posters, letters, banners, memorabilia and lots more. If you enjoy what you find and think our history is worth preserving why not buy us a pint a month, by donating on our DONATE PAGE. Spirit of Revolt is run by a group of unpaid volunteers who give up precious time to keep, preserve and make easily available on line, a rich history that would otherwise be lost, our history of struggle.

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Debt.

         While we struggle with the cost of capitalist greed, re-named, "cost of living crisis" have trouble paying bills, getting sufficient decent food to the table and can't afford to cook some of the food we buy, our lords and masters tasked, by default, with looking after our welfare, keep telling us to hold our nerve and other hypocritical platitudes, there's pie in the sky- - - - SOON! Our government can still find millions to prolong the war in Ukraine by supporting a dictator. Yes Zelensky with his motley crew is a dictator. There will be no Presidential elections until the end of the war, he has banned opposition political parties, arrested political opponents, banned all unfriendly media, and he shut down Orthodox churches, so what else can you call him.
       It seems that this is standard behaviour for the capitalist system, whether it is at home or abroad. Here at home our poverty is created and managed by the political ballerinas who follow the dictate of the higher echelons of the capitalist system, IMF (International Mankind Fuckers), World Bank (Wayward Bandits) and others of that ilk, we have no say in that, a dictatorship?.

Image courtesy of Bangladesh Info

 

 

       According to the latest research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). UK households are about to be savaged by yet another capitalist manoeuvre as a result of the Bank Rate rising to 5 per cent, by the end of 2023 more than a million households (4 per cent of all UK households) will run out of savings because of higher mortgage repayments, taking the total proportion of insolvent households to nearly 30 per cent (around 7.8 million), 

        The IMF does not only tie Western countries to its debt ridden policies, It traps any developing country in its debt web and demands control of how that country will manage its affairs, never to the advantage of the recipient country. 

         In the early months of the pandemic in 2020, the IMF offered to open up new windows for borrowing that they said would come without conditionalities. The G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative and other such offers to pause debt payments suggested that the poorer nations would receive assistance to prevent total economic collapse and to gain access to vaccines. However, Oxfam found that thirteen of the fifteen IMF loan programmes during the second year of the pandemic (2021) required ‘new austerity measures such as taxes on food and fuel or spending cuts that could put vital public services at risk’. The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index reveals that fourteen out of the sixteen countries in West Africa planned to cut their budgets by a total of $26.8 billion in 2021 to contain haemorrhaging national debt crises and that these policies have been encouraged by the IMF’s COVID-19 loans.
The evidence is clear: the IMF not only engineers austerity-driven debt crises, but its policies are designed to ensure and manage a permanent debt crisis, not to erase debt.

Image courtesy of Gauri Lankesh news

 

          Does it have to be this way, are we so dumb we can't think of a fairer system on which to build our society. Are we condemned to give our children and grandchildren an ever increasing debt laden country and an ever decreasing standard of living? That's what the present capitalist economics of insanity are constructing for our future generations. Only us the ordinary people can change this, don't expect those who gain so many privileges so much wealth and power from the present insanity to ever dream of changing to a fairer system.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info