Misery.

   

      I found the article ‘The Rebellions of Misery’ by Gustavo Rodriguez extremely interesting and very informative. Taking history and portraying it like a long string with lots of knots along its length, which we have to untie. Though quite long, I consider it well worth a read in full. After all trying to understand what and why people will finally rebel, what is the trigger, what is the spark that will ignite the fire, and what direction will it burn, is always the enigma we have to solve.

 

 
The following is a short extract from Act For Freedom Now:

‘The Rebellions of Misery’ by Gustavo Rodriguez

The rebellions of misery.
      “All control systems are based on the punishment/award binomial. When punishments are disproportionate to rewards and when employers no longer have any rewards left, uprisings occur.”
Burroughs(1)
      In the second decade of this century, urban revolts are becoming more frequent throughout the global geography, with subtle variations in duration and intensity. Hong Kong, France, Algeria, Iraq, Haiti, Lebanon, Catalonia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Sudan, Chile, Belarus, and now the United States of America, have been the sites of massive protests widely reported in the means of mass domestication. As I have pointed out on other occasions, these demonstrations have very particular motivations that explain them; however, it is indisputable that they all possess an intangible link that serves as a common denominator of most of these mobilizations: the weariness and rage of despair.
        Far from the leftist rhetoric that insists against all evidence that “as long as there is misery there will be rebellion”, what has really motivated the recent rebellions has not been “misery” but the conjunction of weariness and despair. These two factors – which drive the nostalgia for the “devil you know” and yearn for the return to the welfare state, to industrial capitalism and to the society of labour – are the causes of the widespread unrest that has led to the global revolt of our days.
        It is increasingly axiomatic that “misery” only produces “misery”. That is to say, servitude, begging and even the loss of all dignity. As the proverb goes, “hunger is a bad counsellor”. She is the mother of all those specimens that hang a sign around their neck that says “I will do any work” (even for the SS, as George Steiner reminds us). Therefore, instead of creating rebels and refusers, misery breeds disease, malnutrition, mortality, fear, sexual exploitation, corruption, soldiers, police, informants and voters: human misery.
         This is why misery is exalted by the left, knowing that the future is fattened in its jaws, as that is where future votes are counted. All we have to do is to consign some “prizes” and, to state abracadabra: the corpse-like clientele will remain guaranteed for a relatively long period of time, until “there are no more prizes” (Burroughs dixit) and the uprisings return.

 Read the full article HERE:

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Buddies Or Enemies??

        Anarchist and leftists, buddies or enemies, in the final analysis, we are enemies. Anarchists stand against the forming of any state, leftists want to recreate the state, with them in control. History tells us that where leftists win, anarchists are murdered, we stand on different sides of the barricades. Anarchists fight for freedom, leftists fight for dictatorship, albeit, dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the illusion to disguise what is still an authoritarian institution. There can be no illusions, no matter who controls the state apparatus will control the people, and the basis of anarchist principles is the fact that we believe that people should not be controlled.

        There are those who say put our differences aside to fight the common enemy, capitalism, So who are our common enemies? Anarchists see the co-joined twins of capitalism and the state as the enemy. We wish to destroy the state and all its controlling and repressive apparatus, along with capitalism, the leftists want to reconstitute the state and shape it so that they are in control of all the institutions and repressive apparatus. But somehow we are to believe that it will be a kinder controlling apparatus. Rather than trying to come together in some sort of quasi friendship, we should be making clear our differences and where we stand on all issues. Only by highlighting our differences will we be able to convince anyone with a left leaning view, that our vision of the future is the only one that will free us from those co-joined twins, capitalism and the controlling and repressive institutions of the state, and lead to freedom.

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Some Things Never Change.

       Came across this rather grainy movie, listen to the reporter's use of words, hooligan element, brave police, they are still at the same propaganda ranting today.

     The 1932 Jarrow Hunger March was held to draw attention to the plight of the jobless. Its final event was a mass meeting in London's Hyde Park. Official concerns about the potential for public disturbance led to a high police presence and some clashes ensued.

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The Last Time Ukraine Was Free.

         Ukraine's history is a bit of a mystery to most people in the West. Like other states, it has morphed from one thing to another according to the powers surrounding it, but there was a short period when it was truly free.

This from Roads And Kingdoms:

       Like its present, Ukraine’s past is often seen in terms of split identity, torn between Europe and Russia, sitting along the fracture of different civilizations. For hundreds of years and for much of the 20th century, the country saw its fortunes determined by powerful outsiders. Russia claimed its birthplace in Kyiv. Those in the western portions, including the great nationalist hero Stepan Bandera—incidentally also a World War II-era Nazi collaborator—kept Ukraine pulled toward Europe. 

     But a less well-remembered historical figure offered a different vision, one opposed to both sides. Nestor Makhno wanted a radically independent, anarchist future in Ukraine, free from the pull of both east and west. For three years in the wake of World War I, he succeeded in constructing a free state along the banks of the Dnieper River, bridging the divide between Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking peoples. It was an audacious, improbable republic, and though it crested a century ago, Makhno’s country is worth remembering because it was perhaps the last time Ukraine was truly free.

Read the full article HERE:

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY.

       As I keep saying, workers, know your history. We are all aware, or should be, that those that sit in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, are not the state, but merely its public managers. The real power of the state sits else where, hidden in marble halls, long corridors and stately homes. That power is the same the world over, and by quiet meetings behind closed doors, that power can decide to change the managers from the keepers of the ballot box, to the men with guns. We have seen it happen in numerous countries across the globe, while we in Britain, because of the propaganda of the babbling brook of bullshit, the media, believe that it couldn't happen here. That my friends is an illusion, the same powers that sit behind the various governments across the world sit quietly behind our Oxbridge millionaire parasites. If it is deemed that they are not doing a good job for that hidden power, then they will be removed, one way or another.

An interesting from A World to Win:

      A plot by the state against a weak government of the day, unable to govern on its own, amidst a grave economic crisis. Sounds familiar? Well, this is not actually about “plebgate” and the Tories – though it could just as well be – but Harold Wilson and Labour.

     Wilson was prime minister from 1964-70 and again from 1974 to his sudden and dramatic resignation in 1976. Later he would claim that the spy agency MI5 had wanted him out. And that army officers had been plotting a takeover.

     Wilson was right on both counts.

In 1968, a period of mass upheavals in Britain and worldwide, senior army officers, together with press baron Lord Cecil King, Lord Mountbatten and intelligence agency figures, discussed staging a coup to overthrow a Labour government thought to be in the pockets of the trade unions.

     A global economic crisis followed America’s decision in 1971 to end the system of fixed currencies established at Bretton Woods after the Second World War. Inflation spiralled out of control. Oil prices tripled and miners took industrial action. Much of Britain was on a three-day week in 1973-4 as power supplies dwindled.
      The plans for a coup were dusted down when Labour was returned to office in 1974 after miners’ industrial action had brought down the Tory government of Edward Heath. Heath asked voters to say “who rules Britain?”. A minority Labour government took office.

      Out of the blue, a series of joint police/army exercises were held at Heathrow Airport. The first of these was held in January 1974, while Heath was still in power but the remaining three were held in June, July and September. They were labelled “anti-terror” operations.

Read the full article HERE: As I keep saying, workers, know your history.

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IMPERIALISM - WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY.

      For those interested in history as a map to where we are now, this from, Land Destroyer, is worth a read.

Part 1: Imperialism is Alive and Well

February 18, 2012 -

   The British Empire didn't just have a fleet that projected its hegemonic will across the planet, it possessed financial networks to consolidate global economic power, and system administrators to ensure the endless efficient flow of resources from distant lands back to London and into the pockets of England's monied elite. It was a well oiled machine, refined by centuries of experience.

     While every schoolchild learns about the British Empire, it seems a common modern-day political malady for adults to believe that reality is organized as their history books were in school - in neat well defined chapters. This leads to the common misconception that the age of imperialism is somehow a closed-chapter in human history. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Imperialism did not go extinct. It simply evolved.

Imperialism is alive & well.

     There are several pertinent examples illustrating how imperialism is still alive and well, and only cleverly disguised with updated nomenclatures. What we know today as "free trade" actually derives its origins from economic concessions the British frequently extorted from nations under its "gunboat diplomacy" strategy - that is, anchoring gunboats off the coast of a foreign capital, and threatening bombardment and military conquest if certain demands were not met.

continue READING:

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THE ROSE OF FIRE.

         As the "deficit reduction" and the "austerity cuts" bit ever deeper into the living standards of the ordinary people, what shape will the protests take? I always say, workers know your history, there are lessons to be learnt there.

This from Crimethinc.com

The History

“La rosa de foc ha tornat!” This was the expression of excitement on many people’s lips during the general strike throughout Spain on March 29, 2012. While the unions estimated an impressive 77% turnout, it was the fires blackening the skies over Barcelona that everyone talked about.

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when more anarchist attentats and bombings were carried out in Barcelona than in any other two countries combined and dozens of churches and police stations were burned to the ground, the city was affectionately known as la rosa de foc, “the rose of fire.” The period of“revolutionary gymnastics” in the ’20s and ’30s foregrounded the city as a laboratory of subversion for anarchist struggles worldwide, a role that was taken further with the revolution of July 1936. The struggle of Catalan maquis—guerrillas—during the Franco years was the precursor to the guerrilla struggles that blossomed in Europe and Latin America in the ’60s and ’70s; in some cases, it was the vector along which experience and materials were directly passed on. But this history has largely been lost, thanks to the rupture imposed by fascism and democracy, and Barcelona lost its significance on the revolutionary stage.

With the backing of the democratic powers, forty years of dictatorship and repression effectively suppressed the anarchist movement in Catalunya and the rest of the Spanish state. A great deal of pro-anarchist sentiment remained, but this was dissipated when the rebounding social revolution was sidetracked by the transition to democracy in the 1970s. Hundreds of thousands of people were taking the street, hoping to pick up the torch that had been dropped in ’36, but the government played its cards well, the returning CNT played its cards poorly, and democracy carried the day. Since then, the city has been tamed, if not outright pacified, and the rose of fire forgotten.

Read the full article.

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IMF, CREATING A REVOLUTIONARY SITUATION.

Those who are familiar with history, well Western history, will be looking at Greece and having visions of Germany after the first world war. What the winners in that imperialist war done to Germany in the form of reparations, as a punishment, drove the German people into a spiral of deprivation, creating a revolutionary situation in which the fascists took control, with a little help from their friends. What the winners in the world war of debt, in the shape of the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) and the others in the financial cartel, are doing to Greece is just the same as reparations, and will drive the Greek people into a spiral of deprivation, with no likelihood of a reversal for at least a generation. All this to protect the debt mountain of the winners club in this insane game of grow the debt, namely Germany and France.

It will not stop there, Portugal, Italy and possible Spain are all in the firing line in an attempt to save the mountainous debt bubble from bursting and hurting those at the top. The people of country after country will be sacrificed by having their living standards slashed at the dictate of the International Mankind Fuckers, at all costs, the billionaires at the top of the festering heap must be saved. The financial system most survive, even if it means the people have to live in rabbit warrens or sewers.

You lot will have to tighten your belt.

We are lead to believe that this is the only game in town and we the people must take our medicine to save the system. This message is of course, pumped out by those very people who created the fantasy world of growth and debt, the very people who will make sure that they will not suffer for their greed and believe that we the people have a duty to suffer so as to save their arses. Why do we accept such shit? We don't need them, they need us. We make and distribute everything on this planet, they do nothing but live off our backs. They could of course be creating their own demise, simply by creating a revolutionary situation in each country in turn could see their selfish self centred greed driven ideology go up in smoke.

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INTRODUCTION TO ANARKY, PAGE 4.

    With this, page 4, we continue with the wee booklet "Introduction to Anarky" by the teapot collective.

People with power don't want to give it up and the laws reflect that. But throughout history people have tried to do just that. to live freely. Sometimes on their own, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in great popular movements. From the peasants revolt to the Poll Tax people have come together in grass roots movements.

Brief History of Anarchy in Action.         History reflects the values of the people writing it, in the mainstream usually the ruling class. Looking at history with an anarchist perspective reveals something more interesting than the Kings and Queens we got bored by at school.
         "Has all this anarchy shit ever been tried at all?" you might ask. Actially about 99% of human existance has been shaped by tribal society, small collectives--- To be continued. It is a small book.

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - IRAQ.

  

        January 16 marks the twentieth anniversary of “Desert Storm”, a massive American bombardment against the Iraqi civilian population, mainly around Baghdad the Iraqi capital. The bombing consisted of more than 100,000 sorties dropping more than 85,500 tonnes of bombs. It was the precursor to the the first American lead invasion of Iraq. After this first invasion the people of Iraq suffered more than 10 years of American lead economic sanctions, during which it is estimated that over 500,000 Iraqi children died as a result of these sanctions. This was followed by Operation “Southern Watch” which began in August 1992, operation “Vigilant Warrior" began 1994, then “Desert Strike, 1996 which expanded the “no-fly zone over parts of Northern Iraq, then of course there was operation “Desert Fox” which was a 4 day bombing campaign that started on December 16 1998.

          It is estimated that between 1992 and 2001, 2 years before the so called war on Iraq is supposed to have started, American and allied pilots flew over Southern Iraq some 153,000 times. The Americans have never stopped military operations in Iraqi over the last 20 years and have been meddling in Iraqi internal affairs since they helped put Saddam Hussein in power in 1963. That is 48 years of the Iraqi people have been suffering because of American Imperialism. So don't accept the myth that is peddled that the Iraq war is heading for its 8^th anniversary, it is 48 years of American meddling of which 20 years has been brutal military oppression.

         They are still there, still exerting their military might on the Iraqi people. Think of a generation growing up their entire lives spent under these conditions, will they have any love of the Western world? The people of Iraq must be allowed to determine the future of their own country without the interference of Western Imperialism lead by the American military machine. The Iraqi people have suffered a brutal hell because of US policy through four different US Presidents, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Obama. The Iraqi people have suffered more than enough, they have the right to SELF determination, not forced to live their lives according to some Western ideology.

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY-1911.

      

      The ordinary people of this country, (and all other countries for that matter) have had to struggle for every little improvement in their living standards. We in this the 21st century sometimes forget just how hard and brutal that struggle has been. There have been beatings, prison, blacklisting and death heaped on those involved in those struggles, and the enemy has always been the same. the employers with the back up of the state apparatus. One such long and hard struggle was the 1911 dock strike. Most of the cities in the UK were involved in this bitter dispute but in Liverpool it brought the city to a standstill, had the military on the streets and two strikers were shot.

        The following is a short extract from Mike Royden's Local History Pages.  

        "---With a general strike in the city, the introduction of permits to move goods and services across city, the deteriorating situation was viewed with alarm, both locally and at government level.14 The permit system was really a working class control of the means of distribution, and even authorities in the city accepted that this was the only way to move goods; this was highlighted when the Head Postmaster asked the strike committee for permission to move mail via permit around the city.15

        The City Council saw their authority in the city slipping into the hands of the strike committee and the Lord Mayor cabled the Home Office informing them that ‘a revolution was taking place in the city ….. and that anarchy prevailed’.

        Porcupine recognised ‘the crimson flag of anarchy’, rioting and looting persisted and targeted in areas bordering the sectarian enclave dividing lines to affect shops and property of opponents religion, when shops and property belonging to people’s own religion survived.16

       The government realised that the strike committee had taken the first step of organising the transport of goods for themselves; Hikins even suggests that if allowed to continue, it could have resulted in social revolution, civil war and an end to state authority, a scenario that forced the government to take the only option open to it; that of persuading the employers, and owners to agree to union demands.17 This course of action had been promoted by Dunning in a communication to the Home Office prior to10 August when the initial contingents of police and military units arrived. 18---"

     Though we have moved to the 21st. century we should never lose sight of the fact that the struggle still goes on, what we have gained from struggle can be taken away again, and the protagonists are still the same.

This time it is the government cuts but lets not forget that it is at the behest of the financial/corporate bosses and if we don't want to return to the conditions of the 1911 era then we had better be ready to fight just as hard and long as those of the 1911 dock strike. You can rest assured that the powers that be, the millionaire cabal, are prepared to fight hard and long to get their way and safe guard their billions floating around in the banking casinos of this corporate gambling world.  They will not hesitate to put the troops on the street and the would not hesitate to give the order to fire. They will fight to protect their pampered, privileged positions with every means at the disposal. So we have no alternative but to do likewise. The Victorian era poverty awaits the meek.
a look at some of Glasgow's working class history of struggle.

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KNOW YOUR HISTORY, THEY'RE STILL AFTER YOU.

       Since the word anarchism first appeared, the various states have been doing all they can to get rid of those who support the theory and practice of anarchism. It obviously worries them that the people should want to control their own affairs and remove power and wealth from the handful of parasites who have for far too long had an unearned  monopoly on on both. Their attacks will use whatever they have at their disposal, phony science, propaganda, indoctrination, (education) violence and intimidation. In spite of this it hasn't gone away, if anything, there are probably more anarchist now than there has ever been. The idea that people can manage their own affairs better than a privileged parasitical elite can, is now more obvious than ever. However, the state never gives up without a fight, so it will continue to intimidate, misrepresent and use overt and covert means to try to destroy the idea that people will benefit more from self-management, co-operation, free association and mutual aid, working in federated communities based on sustainability. Why so many people still fall for the states line that we are better off living in a system of power and privilege to the few, is a bit of a mystery to me.

     

       The following article was taken from Redpepper

       "The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defence Against Anarchists, which took place between 24 November and 21 December 1898, agreed to a series of measures to clamp down on anarchist activities and propaganda.

      These included the establishment of new surveillance agencies; arrangements for the exchange of intelligence among participating countries; new laws on the possession and use of explosives; bans on membership of anarchist organisations and the distribution of anarchist publications; a prohibition on rendering assistance to anarchists; limits on press coverage of anarchist activities; and mandatory capital punishment for assassination of heads of state.

      The conference was convened in response to a wave of anarchist violence, including the assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria at Lake Geneva on 10 September 1898. It also agreed to an early version of suspect ‘profiling’ – the ‘portrait parlé’ method of criminal identification, based on Alphonse Bertillon’s system of classifying criminal suspects according to physical characteristics of parts of their head and body.

Britain was the only participating country that refused to sign the conference’s final protocol."

 

 

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WHO ARE WE?

Who are we if we don't know our past?

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY, 16th.AUGUST.

     

        Workers should know their history, it tells you which side the the state is on no matter the government of the day. Every occasion when the ordinary people come together to try to improve their lives, whether it be to fight a closure, oppose a war or push for reform, the state always answers with force. It can be the heavy hand of the police or the bullets or sabres of the military and afterwards the state will peddle the usual lie about it being justified force. In this so called democracy the will of the people must be stifled at all costs.

        The 16th August is the anniversary of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, the outcome of a demonstration of 60,000/80,000 people in Manchester calling for parliamentary reform. A cavalry charge, 15 killed and estimates of 400 to 700 injured. Not an isolated incident by any manner of means. Prior to this in Glasgow 1787 the Calton weavers on strike for an increase in wages marched to the Cathedral in support of their claim only to be met by the military, 6 weavers were killed by gun shot. We can move forward to the violence that the poll tax demonstrators met, the striking miners, the G20, and so it goes on. All this should tell us the the state is never on the side of the people.

      We owe it to those who have suffered and died in the people's struggle for liberty and justice to keep alive that history, our history, the workers history.

Weaver's memorial at Abercromby St cemetary Calton Glasgow. 

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THE BRITISH IMPERIAL STATE, A BENEFACTOR??

      It is always good to know your history, it smashes so many myths.

      Britain’s Imperial history is always portrayed as a force for good, a paternal approach. Taking care of the colonies for their own good, a civilising process until they were able to look after themselves. Of course those who know their history are fully aware that the reality is a far different scenario.

     Mike Davis’s book, Late Victorian Holocausts, published in 2001, details famines that killed between 12 million and 29 million inhabitants of the Indian continent. He clearly shows that these people were murdered by the British state. When the drought of 1876 impoverished the farmers of the Deccan plateau India had a net surplus of rice and wheat. The then viceroy, Lord Lytton, insisted that nothing should stand in its way as it was exported to England. In 1877 and 1878, at the height of the famine, grain merchants exported a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. As the peasants began to starve, officials were ordered "to discourage relief works in every possible way". The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 prohibited "at the pain of imprisonment private relief donations that potentially interfered with the market fixing of grain prices". The only relief permitted in most districts was hard labour, from which anyone in an advanced state of starvation was turned away. In the labour camps, the workers were given less food than inmates of the Nazi concentration camps. In 1877, monthly mortality in the camps equated to an annual death rate of 94%.

     As millions died, the imperial government launched "a militarised campaign to collect the tax arrears accumulated during the drought". This collected tax, which ruined those who might otherwise have survived the famine, was used by Lytton to fund his war in Afghanistan. Even in places that had produced a crop surplus, the government's export policies manufactured hunger. In the north-western provinces, Oud and the Punjab, in spite of the fact that they had brought in record harvests in the preceding three years, at least 1.25m people died.

      The same type of imperialist policies are still employed today by the western corporate world. The continents of Africa and South America can bear witness to the poverty inflicted on millions of people to feed the corporate greed machine. Only when we as ordinary people come together and organise at community level and co-operate with each other on a global scale creating societies based on mutual aid and sustainability, undermining the festering marriage of state and corporate greed and so consigning it and its wars, exploitation and greed, that is part and parcel of that system, to the dust bin of history and perhaps remembering it as man’s darkest hour will we see a world fit for all our children and grandchildren.

 

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