Anarchic update news all over the world - 20.01.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  US, WSA, ideas and action: Across the Pond: Brighton
      Solidarity Federation in Action (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  awsm.nz: Anarchists You Should Know #5 Nicholas Lazarevitch
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  collective action au: Romper Stomper fails to understand the
      rising tide of racism in Australia -- Romper Stomper, it's even
      worse than the poster. BY LIAM (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Britain, Communist Anarchism: Abolish The Monarchy!
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Greece, Anti - Nazi Concentration 21 January 13:00 Kamara by
      Black & Red [APO] (gr) [machine translation] 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  alas barricadas: CGT calls a strike on February 9 in the
      Andalusian teaching (ca, it) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






Brighton SolFed has started 2018 with 6 ongoing housing struggles and, to meet increasing 
demand, our housing union is now holding a weekly drop-in at a city centre café. The idea 
is that we can collectivise housing issues by gathering in one place with the tenants who 
approach us, promote the principles of anarcho-syndicalism and direct action, before 
splitting into groups to discuss the specifics of each case and develop a plan of action 
with the tenants directly involved. Since we formed our housing union in 2017, we've had a 
number of successful disputes that have raised our profile in the city ---- We continue to 
hold weekly general union meetings, open to all, in which we concentrate on all matters 
that the local's involved in, including reports from our coordinators, propaganda and 
upcoming events, links with other groups, training and federal and international matters. 
Individual campaigns and industrial action strategies are discussed, with a view to 
coordinating these among the membership. These are also a way of introducing new contacts 
and potential members to our organising methods and principles.

We continue to be active in the city's hospitality sector and, following a campaign that 
began in December and included pickets and communications blockades, we've successfully 
supported a former worker at a café to win back £6,500 of £7,500 in stolen wages. We've 
been organising in the city's hospitality sector since 2013 and have had numerous 
successful campaigns, earning us a reputation among workers and bosses in this industry, 
which is highly exploitative and non-unionised.

The local engages in a range of activities that promote inclusivity, mutual aid and 
community involvement as an alternative to the sterile and corporate social activity 
offered by the city, one of the most expensive to live in in the UK. These include film 
screenings, benefit fundraisers, non-authoritarian soccer, an allotment project and social 
gatherings, as well as training sessions and talks and presentations on the class struggle 
and libertarian communism.

Brighton SolFed is a local of Solidarity Federation, the UK section of the International 
Workers Association, with locals in a number of UK cities. We now have 30 subs-paying 
members, many of whom joined as a result of our organising efforts, and a wide number of 
friends and contacts.

Our website is here: http://www.brightonsolfed.org.uk

Our Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/brighton.solfed/

For worker and tenant self-organisation & long live anarcho-syndicalism!

http://ideasandaction.info/2018/01/pond-brighton-solidarity-federation-action/

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Message: 2





Born in Belgium 17 August 1895 near Liege, Nicholas Lazarevitch was the son of Russian 
revolutionary émigrés. After working in a number of factories and mines in French-speaking 
Belgium he became an anarcho-syndicalist shortly before World War One. He worked in the 
mines of Germany's Ruhr in 1916, but in 1917 escaped to Holland. There he joined up with 
interned Russian POWs who had also escaped from Germany, and helped to set up a soviet to 
press for their repatriation to Russia. ---- In February 1919 he returned to Russia with 
these internees, and joined the Red Army. He was sent to South Russia to make propaganda 
in the French army ranks. He was arrested, and only saved from execution by the Red Army's 
recapture of Odessa. ---- At this point Lazarevitch was very close to the Bolsheviks "whom 
he believed to be only a political tendency very close to the anarchists but better 
organised". He fled the Denikinist capture of Odessa and entered Rumania where he was 
interned. He then made his way illegally into Yugoslavia and thence to Italy where he was 
in contact with the anarchists, and took part in street fighting against the fascists. He 
returned to Russia in March 1921, where he worked as a part-time translator for the 
Comintern refusing to become a full-time official. He requested factory work and spent 
1921-24 in various jobs in Russian factories. He was in touch with Boris Souvarine and 
Pierre Pascal. "In his view the solution to the conflict with the Party and the tame trade 
unions lay in the creation of workers' groups, the future nuclei of independent trade 
union organisations capable of standing up to the Party and any restoration of capitalism".

Driven underground by these activities, Lazarevitch was arrested by the GPU in the autumn 
of 1924. He refused to recognise the court and was held without trial until 1926, spending 
his time reading and learning several languages. He was freed after a campaign mounted by 
Anarcho-syndicalists and La Revolution Proletarienne. He was expelled from the USSR in 
1926, after which he settled in Paris and became a building worker. He helped to draft the 
Platform.

In 1926 he also started to campaign, to publicise working class reality in the USSR to 
French workers. He organized about fifty meetings in France, Belgium, Switzerland and 
Germany, often clashing with local communists. The French authorities expelled him in 
1928, after which he worked as a miner in Belgium, until he returned illegally to France, 
to work in construction.

In 1931 Lazarevitch and Ida Mett (his wife) travelled around Spain. He was already a good 
friend of Ascaso and Durruti, whom he had known as exiles in Belgium. He resumed to Paris, 
and then Belgium, in 1932, but continued to monitor events in Spain for La Revolution 
Proletarienne.

Back in Belgium, he was active in a series of anarcho-syndicalist led strikes, as well as 
an active supporter of anti-militarists. He campaigned on behalf of Victor Serge and 
Francesco Ghezzi in the USSR and on behalf of foreign anarchists expelled from Belgium. He 
was jailed for a year in 1935 for anti-militarist and trade union activity. In 1936 he 
re-entered France illegally to find work with the help of the Proof-readers Union. He was 
actively involved in gathering the documentation that was to form the basis of Ida Mett's 
The Kronstadt Commune published in 1938.

Arrested in 1940 as an illegal alien, he was interned in Vernet camp. He pretended to 
consent to repatriation to Belgium but escaped en route. He worked for a while as a farm 
labourer in Les Landes, before rejoining his wife and children in the Var department in 
1942. He returned to Paris in 1946 to work as a proof-reader.

In the 1950's Lazarevich published a review based on extract gleaned from official soviet 
publications. He taught Russian and used his student's contacts to try and gain 
information about the Russian situation. May 1968 saw him taking part in the open 
assemblies at the Sorbonne. He died in Paris on the 24th of December 1975.

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/fxppm7

http://www.awsm.nz/2018/01/16/anarchists-you-should-know5-nicholas-lazarevitch/

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Message: 3






In the lead up to its streaming debut Romper Stomper, a sequel to the 1992 film of the 
same name, has been heavily promoted and it has been impossible to escape its 
advertisements both online and on billboards. The show comes at the right time, at a 
moment when the recrudescence of the far-right in Australia has resulted in attacks on 
Muslims and a more confident neo-Nazi presence on our streets. ---- Unfortunately, the 
show itself is a dreadful, turgid, and poorly written affair that gets much wrong and is a 
terrible missed opportunity. There is much that anarchists should take away from this. 
---- Romper Stomper sets the conflict between the far right Patriot Blue and the 
anti-fascist Antifasc against the race to stop an immigration reform bill that would 
restrict immigration to Australia. The show portrays the rise of the far-right as the 
struggle of a small cell of loosely knit skinheads and extremists under the banner of 
‘Patriot Blue', modelled clearly on the now largely defunct United Patriots Front.

They carry out violent street patrols and hoard heavy weapons to gun down African ‘gangs' 
and plot to build an army to take back the country from ‘foreigners'. In a bizarre 
instance of life imitating art, the Melton based True Blue Crew have since launched a 
project (seemingly inspired by the Stan TV series) to recruit "concerned citizens" into 
"street patrols" targeting migrant youth. In the CBD, a local franchise inspired by the 
Finnish neo-Nazis group Soldiers of Odin, have been doing the same for nearly two years. 
These thuggish groups are a reality and present a real danger to the minority groups they 
detest.

They are opposed by ‘Antifasc'. Seemingly inspired by Herald Sun coverage more than 
reality, they are a small group of inner-city student activists led by a mysterious 
academic named Mckew, obviously intended to represent anarchist blogger Slackbastard. The 
group monitor the far-right, disrupt a rally outside a halal food festival (based on a 
similar event at the Halal Food Expo in April 2016), and carry out other agitprop actions, 
such as hacking into a billboard to display a pro-immigration message and trash the house 
of racist talk show pundit Jaygo

Nonetheless, their motivations are never explained and we are left with no real 
understanding of Antifasc's politics nor any realistic portrayal of why they organise the 
way they do. Given this, they too are an inexplicably violent group of misfits, and 
Antifasc and Patriot Blue are presented as being two sides of the same coin. This 
narrative that anti-fascists and the far right as ‘both as bad as one another' is 
misleading and draws a false moral equivalence between fascists and those trying to stop 
them. The one-dimensional portrayal of South Sudanese youth as wannabe gangsters and 
street thugs in the show feeds into the racist hysteria currently spreading across 
Victoria with a populace increasingly confident in demanding deportations for African 
teenagers. Given that Melton-based thugs True Blue Crew are holding public meetings to 
organise vigilante mob attacks on Africans this portrayal is particularly irresponsible.

The show's promotion boasts of it being confrontational and shocking. However, as one 
reviewer has already noted, to be truly confrontational it would have to interrogate the 
ideas and notions it depicts. As an audience we are never shown why people organise as 
anti-fascists nor why people join the far-right. Instead, they exist in a vacuum divorced 
from the racist political landscape that surrounds them. Patriot Blue are presented as 
extreme and dysfunctional outliers in an otherwise peaceful nation, not a group that has 
emerged on a political landscape where right-wing nationalist party One Nation has won 
seats in successive Federal and State elections and where there is a consensus by both 
major parties on the racist offshore detention program for asylum seekers.

As a result, Romper Stomper mistakenly presents the problem of racism in Australia as one 
of small groups of extremists bashing one another.

While extremist groups do pose an immediate physical threat to minorities within 
Australia, in particular Muslims, they are not the cause of racism in Australia.

That remains the capitalist state with its affiliated media and security apparatus. The 
Herald Sun and other Murdoch papers' round-the-clock fabrication and ‘reporting' on 
‘African youth gangs', is nauseating and must be combatted. The bi-partisan consensus of 
both Liberals and Labour on mandatory offshore detention still exists and signals a 
capitulation by the Labour movement to anti-refugee policy. This must be disrupted. 
Pauline Hanson's increasingly confident movement of the ‘silent majority' and its links to 
far-right figures also goes unnoticed.

Just as the problem of the far right is misrepresented so is the solution. Small cells of 
black-clad activists, no matter how devoted they are, cannot win political struggles. As 
anarchists we must work to build a large and militant movement of the oppressed classes to 
make far-right organising impossible. This is the most effective way to strangle the 
far-right and deprive it of the space it needs to organise physically. It is also the 
safest way. And given the audacious violence of the far right this is important.

It was large-scale mobilisations that smothered Reclaim Australia and have clamped down on 
other attempts right-wing groups to stage public protests. It is telling that this was not 
given any space or time in Romper Stomper since this galvanised display of popular 
counter-power is far more militant and radical than a small group of people launching 
fist-rights with skinheads. Popular shows of solidarity and strength allow for more 
diverse participation of people as well, which means anti-fascist activism is not limited 
to the able-bodied. Safety and political force is in the working class gathering in numbers.

http://www.collectiveaction.org.au/2018/01/15/romper-stomper-fails-to-understand-the-rising-tide-of-racism-in-australia/

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Message: 4






The approaching royal wedding in May reminds us of the need to abolish the monarchy. ---- 
The Queen is at the tip of class society in Britain. She is Head of State, and indeed 
Crown and State are interchangeable. The crown dominates the legislature- the system of 
law-making,- and the judicial system and is the employer of the civil service and the rest 
of State bureaucracy. It embodies the whole hierarchical and class system. The commentator 
Ben Pimlott talked about the "Queen in people's heads" meaning the important role she 
plays as the perceived head of society. The myth of "national unity" is built around the 
role of the Queen, with all that that entails like privilege and deference, and 
"continuity". ---- The monarchy itself feels under threat in the changing world. It has 
over the last few decades been forced to open Buckingham Palace to the public, 
decommission the royal yacht, and the Queen even had to submit to paying taxes. There is a 
growing awareness among its members, driven by fear, that the monarchy must "modernise" or 
perish. Both the Queen and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh are now in their nineties and 
must die within the next ten years. Whilst a myth has developed around the Queen as seen 
above, her successor Prince Charles is not so popular in British society and neither are 
other members of the royal family.

As the Queen said in 1997: "despite the huge constitutional difference between a 
hereditary monarchy and an elected government, in reality the gulf is not so wide. They 
are complementary institutions, each with its own role to play. And each, in its different 
way, exists only with the support and consent of the people.That consent, or the lack of 
it, is expressed for you, Prime Minister, through the ballot box. It is a tough, even 
brutal, system but at least the message is a clear one for all to read. For us, a Royal 
Family, however, the message is often harder to read, obscured as it can be by deference, 
rhetoric or the conflicting currents of public opinion. But read it we must."

Recent signs of a further modernisation of  the monarchy have been the giving up of all 
major duties in May 2017 by Prince Phillip (he will still, however, receive a £395,000 
year annuity!). Prince Harry took over from him the important symbolic role of Captain 
General of the Royal Marines, a reminder that the monarchy is intimately linked with that 
other pillar of British class society, the military. Other signs of modernisation have 
been the handing over of Remembrance Sunday commemoration ceremonies to Prince Charles, 
and the dressing down of the State Opening of Parliament in June 2017 with the Queen no 
longer wearing her Imperial State Crown and robes and travelling by car rather than by 
carriage.

More importantly than that have been the pronouncements of Prince Harry on the monarchy. 
He is at the head of the moves within the monarchy to modernise. He went on record to say: 
"We are involved in modernising the British monarchy. We are not doing this for ourselves 
but for the greater good of the people. Is there any one of the royal family who wants to 
be king or queen? I don't think so, but we will carry out our duties at the right time." 
Of course, the future and fortunes of the royals is at stake and Harry is desperately 
trying to position himself as an advocate of a "people's monarchy".

Remember £30 million is paid out to the royal family and none of its members wish to see 
these benefits disappear in a cash strapped economy. The recent revelations in the 
Paradise Papers revealed that the Queen and Charles were tax dodging, with their money 
ending up in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. So now the Prince who once dressed up as a 
Nazi is putting himself forward as a popular icon. The forthcoming marriage to a commoner, 
(even though she has a personal fortune of £5 million) an American and a woman of colour 
are all part of this strategy.

However, despite these moves at modernisation the monarchy is increasingly seen for what 
it is, a supreme symbol of privilege, reaction, snobbery, elitism and ridiculous ceremony. 
The monarchy as a major bulwark of the British class system must be swept away. We cannot 
rely on any incoming Labour government to carry this out. Corbyn, up until his election as 
Labour leader, was a staunch monarchist. Now he congratulates Prince Philip on his "clear 
sense of public duty" that had inspired people for more than sixty years. He told Jeremy 
Paxman that the abolition of the monarchy was "not on anybody's agenda, it's certainly not 
on my agenda."

No, the ending of the monarchy depends on mass distaste for a parasitic institution. The 
forthcoming media circus around the royal wedding, with all the lickspittle toadying that 
will involve, should not distract from that.

https://communistanarchism.blogspot.co.il/2018/01/abolish-monarchy_16.html

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Message: 5





Comrades, fighters, agonists, ---- anti-fascists - anti-nationalists from Thessaloniki and 
northern Greece and the surrounding countries, internationalist duty and the nationalist 
threat call us: Against hatred, racism, intolerance of nationalism and fascism to counter 
coexistence , peace, solidarity and international co-operation. Those who do not want our 
city to be transformed even for a day into a hospitable place for the neo-Nazis who want 
to be grafted into the mass of the priests and macedonian patriots, who will try to 
restore the hun- tic terminology and aesthetics, those who stand against are called to 
give present in the international concentration of Kamara. Do not pass the fascists. To 
build a barrier to nationalism that generates poverty, hatred, violence and death.

[...]So, if we do not joke, if the cultural clubs want to showcase the "cultural heritage 
of Macedonia", let us organize an international festival with the Macedonian music and 
dance clubs to exchange cultural narratives and stimuli and leave the gatherings with the 
Nazis. If the various Macedonians want to "fight for the Macedonian land against the 
foreign conqueror" they could fight against El Dorado Gold that destroys land and nature 
in Halkidiki and leave the gatherings with the neo-Nazis. If the advocates of history want 
and other "good-natured" progressive people to say something about the Macedonian, let us 
find anti-nationalist progressive people on the Slavonic side of Macedonia and speak 
together. But they will not do it because they are hypocritical and nationalist, and so 
they will simply lay back on fascism by fooling with him. Fascism is the only one who 
knows what he wants from this gathering. To organize new people in the lines of hatred to 
reproach them with their intolerant racist stupidity and to slander them against the poor, 
the weak, the refugees, the immigrants, the aliens, the anti-fascists and the anarchists. 
This must not be allowed.[...]refugees, immigrants, aliens, fighters, anti-fascists and 
anarchists. This must not be allowed.[...]refugees, immigrants, aliens, fighters, 
anti-fascists and anarchists. This must not be allowed.[...]

(from the announcement of Black & Red for the Macedonian)

NONE AND NONE IN THE 21st GENERAL WAREHOUSE THAT SUPPORTS AND CO-ORGANIZES THE NEONAYS AND 
THE PHASES

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH PITCHS AND
PRESSES IN TURKEY, SLAVO / MACEDONIA AND OVER THE WORLD

PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING
HIS HISTORIES LOVE IN CONFIRMATION AND NOT IN MISCELLANEOUS

NO LOST CONVENTION IN PHYSISM

NO RIGHT TO NATO-EU PLANS - INCIDENTAL

INTERNATIONAL - ANTENNICIST CONCENTRATION
SUNDAY 21 GENARI 13.00 KAMARA

MOTORCYCLE SATURDAY 20 GENARI 18.00 KAMARA

MICROPHONE THURSDAY 18 GENARI 12.00 KAMARA

http://apo.squathost.com/

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Message: 6






CGT calls a strike on February 9 and assemblies to decide on a plan for continued struggle 
to avoid the foreseeable dismissal of thousands of Andalusian interim teachers. ---- The 
agreement signed by the Ministry with the majority unions for the "improvement of public 
employment" and with the aim of reducing the temporary employment rate to 8% can lead to 
the dismissal of thousands of interim teachers. Given the high rate of long-term teaching 
staff in teaching, the agreement threatens to become a massive ERE for teachers who have 
been working in these jobs for years. ---- In this way, the right to stability in 
employment is violated, a fundamental component of the protection of workers. The figure 
of the interim teaching staff in Andalusia in particular, and in general, throughout the 
State has become a paradoxical figure. And this is because the abusive use by the 
Administration of temporary hiring due only partly to the cuts in the General Budgets, has 
caused that it begins to speak of permanent interim or interim long term. An authentic 
contradiction in terms. In these conditions, the legal nature of the interim official is 
perverted and, from there, it is explained that in recent years we have seen how the 
interim teacher began to enjoy three years, six years and supplements.

CGT considers that the unions of the Andalusian sectorial board abandon their fate to the 
interim faculty in the face of this serious situation, by raising mobilizations to claim 
objectives that do not guarantee the stability of the interim Andalusian teaching staff.

One of the measures that the so-called union majority of the Sector Board defends is the 
non-eliminatory nature of the selective tests in the transitional phase (the three calls). 
It seems that they will not achieve this goal because the Minister of Education has become 
strong in his refusal in this regard and argues, not without lack of empathy, that you 
have to bet on the "excellence of Spanish teachers and opt for the best candidates " In 
any case, this objective does not guarantee that those who are staying.

Against this, from CGT we propose as a more effective objective that the previous call 
notes are saved. Most of the interim teachers have approved the opposition phase in more 
than one call; in many cases, they are not civil servants due to the insufficient and 
precarious offer of places of the past calls: why not demand the non-expiration, 
retroactively, of the notes of the opposition phase? Why not consider as candidates in the 
selective test all and all those candidates who had passed the tests in other previous 
calls? And more taking into account, that in many cases the first and fundamental reason 
why they did not reach the civil service is the inappropriate use of the Administration of 
temporary contracts for too many years. In fact, all the places,

On the other hand, the interim faculty that has not approved any selective test, has not 
already shown in a clear and evident manner their professionalism and aptitudes for the 
performance of the teaching function during their many years of service to the 
Administration? The interim temporary teaching contract is only justified in an 
exceptional way and in a situation of short duration. Otherwise, we are faced with an 
inadequate use of temporary hiring by the Administration. Arrived here, it seems that the 
only essential difference between the interim faculty and the career officer in what 
concerns their work and their rights - although there is still a way to go - is that for 
the interim civil servant dismissal is very cheap.

The greater choice in the choice of topics in the opposition is not relevant in the 
reduction of precariousness. In any case, and to maintain the eliminatory nature of the 
evidence of the opposition phase, it can end up favoring, once again, the whims of chance 
and not the experience and training of the candidates for the civil service.

The purported increase in the weight of seniority in the contest phase is misleading, 
since if the total that can be contributed increases, the value of each year worked 
decreases, from 1 point to only 0.7. It also divides the interim, since it favors those 
who have more time and harms those who have less years of experience. That is to say, it 
has the perverse effect of devaluing the value of the experience and ending up dividing 
the interim collective according to the accumulated experience.

Faced with this serious situation in which thousands of interim professors, some 20,000 
people, are facing the threat of being on the street, CGT requires the Ministry of 
Education of the Junta de Andalucía a stability agreement of interim teachers to ensure 
that these workers / as do not lose your job.

For this we have called a strike on February 9th we call to attend the next assemblies, to 
be held this week, to all the teachers affected to decide a sustained mobilization 
calendar - the call for an indefinite strike is not ruled out - until the objective is 
achieved unrenounceable of WHO ARE REMAINING!

For more information: Ignacio Casado Galván

Secretary of Organization of PHASE

http://alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/39510