Today's Topics:
1. macg: The Anvil Vol 9 No 1 Jan-Feb 2019 Newsletter of the
Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. Manchester SolFed organised our fourth picket in support of
six Brighton tenants Tue, 22/01/2019 - 21:22
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. London Anarchist Federation: Reading group - Mexico
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group: Anvil Vol 8 No 1 -
INVASION DAY 2019 by ablokeimet (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Fascist aggression in
protest: let's fight back together on February 2nd ! (fr, it,
pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: Neither Maduro,
Guaido or the USA! The Situation in Venezuela
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Dear Comrades,
The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group is pleased to announce the publication of the
first issue of The Anvil for 2019:
https://melbacg.wordpress.com/the-anvil/
Vol 9 No 1 is the last link on the page. Note that 26 January is officially "Australia
Day", which is celebrated as Australia's national day. The Left's counter-narrative is
that the correct name is Invasion Day.
In Solidarity,
Ablokeimet for MACG
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Message: 2
On Saturday 19th January Manchester SolFed organised our fourth picket in support of six
Brighton tenants. We picketed the Skipton Building society branch on Market Street in the
centre of Manchester. Brighton SolFed's public campaign against Fox & Sons has now been
extended to their parent company, Skipton Building Society. With Fox & Sons still refusing
to compensate the six tenants whose tenancy they cancelled five days after it was supposed
to start, leaving them with nowhere to live, Brighton SF contacted David Cutter, the chief
executive of Skipton, and Gary Morton of their lettings branch Connells, to demand that
they resolve the issue. Both Mr Cutter and Mr Morton refused to do so, meaning that
Brighton SF on Saturday 19th January extended the campaign to pickets of Skipton branches
across the country.
According to their latest financial accounts, Skipton Building Society made a profit of
£200.1 million in 2017, and they have a total asset portfolio worth a staggering £21
billion. They boast that in 2017 they "enabled more people to save for their future and
finance their own home than we ever have before", and their estate agency team, Connells,
made profits of £104.2 million in the same period. Their chief executive David Cutter was
paid £1,012,000 last year, and is in line for a pension worth around £90,000 annually.
Notably, some of Skipton's profits have come from their specialist off-shore bank, Skipton
International, set up to make it easier for off-shore, buy-to-let landlords to purchase
properties in the UK and rent them out to tenants.
Given this clear commitment to helping landlords fleece tenants, it is no surprise that
Skipton have also refused to compensate the tenants affected. Indeed, Gary Morton informed
us that the £720 compensation paid by the landlord to Fox & Sons, which was originally
intended for the tenants, has now been returned to the landlord, rather than passed on to
the six people left homeless by Fox & Sons' ineptitude. It is clearly apparent that
Skipton care far more about the profits of property owners than the wellbeing of tenants.
While £2280 may seem like small change to an organisation with £200 million in the bank
and billions of pounds of assets, it is a significant amount of money to tenants forced to
rent a property at short notice in one of the most expensive cities in the UK. We demand
that one of Skipton, Connell or Fox & Sons compensate these six tenants for the additional
rent they were forced to pay when finding a new property after their planned move fell
through with no warning from Fox & Sons.
Until they do so, the public campaign will continue, extended to pickets of Skipton
Building Society and their letting agency subsidiary Connells.
An injury to one is an injury to all!
http://www.solfed.org.uk/manchester/manchester-solfed-organised-our-fourth-picket-in-support-of-six-brighton-tenants
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Message: 3
We're back in Febuary and we're going to be looking at the history of the Mexican
revolution (1910 edition). As ever it will be on the third Tuesday (19th) Feb at Freedom
Bookshop, 7pm. ---- The reading will be: ---- Mexican revolution
1910:https://libcom.org/history/mexican-revolution-0 ----
https://anarchyinaction.org/index.php?title=Mexican_Revolution_and_Anarchy ----
http://www.struggle.ws/mexico/history/anarchism_1910.html ---- Volume 1 Chapter 16:
https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-documentary-history-libertarian-ideas-volume-1-2 ----
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-m-hart-revolutionary-syndicalism-in-mexico
---- Questions to consider:What circumstances lead to the Mexican Revolution and how do
they compare to circumstances now? What can be identified as the main mechanisms that lead
to successes of the revolution? In hindsight, which mistakes were made? What role did
women play before and during the revolution?
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/reading-group-mexico/
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Message: 4
Invasion Day, 26 January, is now the largest day of Left wing mobilisation in Australia.
Attendances are much greater than those at May Day and are only exceeded by set piece
events organised by the unions. Increasing numbers of both indigenous and non-indigenous
people are turning out on this day and their demands are increasingly radical. These are
welcome indicators of the growth of a movement which rejects the racism on which Australia
is founded. ---- The capitalist media in Australia have been campaigning for over thirty
years to generate Australian nationalism and focus it on an officially designated
"Australia Day". Indigenous people have never accepted this and have pushed back. In the
face of this resistance, it has become increasingly difficult for the capitalist class to
maintain their myth of a happy and united society that celebrates its nationhood. Constant
reminders from indigenous people about the invasion of this land and the genocide and
dispossession which followed have been causing more people to listen. The voices of
indigenous people are amplified. A discordant note has been introduced.
"Change the Date"
In response to this problem, some progressive elements inside the capitalist class of
Australia have started pushing the argument to "Change the Date" of Australia Day.
Recognising the appalling insult to indigenous people of celebrating the start of
genocide, dispossession and racism, they have begun arguing that Australia's national day
should be moved to a different date in the year.
This suggestion has run into two problems, besides the predictable opposition from the
racist establishment. Firstly, there is the matter of an alternative day. The obvious
date, in terms of its appeal to nationalistic sentiment, is Anzac Day. That is
controversial, both because of the strict militarists who want to retain Anzac Day as it
is, and progressives who are reluctant to boost a celebration of militarism even more.
Other, less obvious, dates have failed to gain either recognition or traction. Some are
proposing shifting the date at some time in the future when a treaty is negotiated.
The second problem, more substantive, is that a growing number of indigenous people in
Australia are opposed to "Australia Day" being celebrated at all. Not only is Australia's
history a shameful litany of crimes against indigenous people - genocide, dispossession,
wage theft, discrimination, child removal, police brutality and more - but the crimes
continue today. There can be no pride in genocide, no matter what date it is celebrated.
Now that the Invasion Day rallies have taken up this call, the "Change the Date" campaign
is exposed as not being about justice for indigenous people, but about allowing the
settler population to celebrate nationalism without having Australia's institutional
racism rubbed in their faces while they do it.
Abolish Australia Day
The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group endorses the demands of the Melbourne Invasion Day
rally for 2019: Aboriginal Sovereignty, not Constitutional Recognition; Stop Taking Our
Kids; Abolish Australia Day; Stop Deaths in Custody; Shut Down Prisons. All strike at the
racist foundations of the Australian State. Some, though, are only achievable through a
workers' revolution that abolishes capitalism. It is only libertarian communism, the
Workers' Commonwealth, and not the racist Australian capitalist State, that can negotiate
just treaties with the indigenous peoples and nations that have never ceded their
sovereignty. It is only the Workers' Commonwealth that can shut down the prisons. It is
only the Workers' Commonwealth that can end deaths in custody by abolishing the police.
So, this year and every year, the MACG joins the call to abolish Australia Day. Our vision
is of a stateless communist society, a Workers' Commonwealth worldwide and operating on
the basis of consistent federalism. Here, in the land that is currently called Australia,
the Workers' Commonwealth will be the vehicle through which non-indigenous people work
with, and learn from, indigenous people how to live sustainably in the land, as they did
so successfully for over 60,000 years before the First Fleet brought British colonialism
to these shores.
ALWAYS WAS, ALWAYS WILL BE
ABORIGINAL LAND
https://melbacg.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/invasion-day-2019/
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Message: 5
On Saturday, January 26, during Act XI of the Yellow Vests, a procession gathering
activists of the NPA was taken part by a band of fascists armed with American knuckles and
stones. ---- While our NPA comrades are fighting each day against social inequalities, the
fascists who attacked them are only spreading their anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic
discourses in the yellow vests movement. ---- As we have already said, and we repeat it,
the extreme right has no place anywhere: neither in the street nor in the movement of
yellow vests. The extreme right has never defended the popular classes and has always
stood alongside the bosses. ---- Libertarian Alternative expresses all its solidarity with
the comrades of the NPA and in particular with the activists wounded following this
attack. We will continue to resolutely oppose infiltration attempts by fascists. We will
not give in to intimidation. We call on all progressive forces to take to the streets on
Saturday, February 2 to reaffirm the strength of our common struggles.
Libertarian Alternative, January 26, 2019
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Agression-fasciste-en-manifestation-ripostons-ensemble-le-2-fevrier
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Message: 6
President Trump faces a crisis situation at home, with his cave-in over the shutdown that
has led to government workers, 700,000 of them, facing day after day without pay. What
better way to divert attention from the domestic crisis than a military intervention in
Venezuela. Of course, there's more to this than that, as the USA has always regarded
Latin America as its backyard and regularly intervenes in the region- the military coup
against Allende in Chile, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, the support for every
murderous military dictatorship from Somoza in Nicaragua to the overthrow of Juan Bosch in
the Dominican Republic to enthusiastic support for the bloody regime of Videla in
Argentina, it's all cut from the same cloth. To be clear, it is both Republicans and
Democrats who have supported these policies, and they always have done. If Trump does
intervene, expect no opposition from the majority of the Democrats. In addition, the
entirety of the US mainstream media has been consistent in its support for the right wing
opposition in Venezuela led by Juan Guaido. Guiaido's Voluntad Popular (Popular Will)
party has been funded to the tune of millions of dollars by US institutions like USAID and
National Endowment For Democracy.
The regime in Venezuela led by Nicolas Maduro bases itself on left populism and describes
itself as Bolivarian, after Simon Bolivar, one of those instrumental in freeing Latin
America from Spanish rule. It talks in the language of self-determination and nationalism
and "Bolivarian socialism", and thanks to its oil exports, has forged alliances with
China, Russia and Cuba, and more recently, the Erdogan regime in Turkey. All of these
powers will veto any moves to condone US military intervention in Venezuela and all of
them to a lesser or greater extent support Maduro. The regime is very much anchored in the
"progressive" military leadership as can be seen by a televised mass turnout of generals
and admirals declaring support for Maduro. It supported Maduro's predecessor, the late
Hugo Chavez, and helped him to come to power.
In actual fact behind the progressive rhetoric of both Chavez and Maduro lies a regime
that protects private property and has inflicted harsh austerity measures on the
Venezuelan masses. Private control of the economy actually increased under both Chavez and
Maduro. Chavez developed a bourgeoisie based around the state, running a state capitalist
economy, built on the earnings from oil. This newly developed state bourgeoisie consisting
of military leaders, bankers, government ministers and speculators enriched itself with
the oil revenues whilst small reforms were doled out to the Venezuelan masses. At the same
time there was little industrial development.
With the fall in oil prices, economic crisis hit Venezuela. Inflation soared by 80, 0000
per cent(!) and unemployment is set to rise above 44% by 2020. There are chronic food
shortages. This brought forth protests around the country, protests that were answered
with severe repression by the regime, which responded violently to strikes and demonstrations.
Now the old bourgeoisie, organised around Guaido and his party, is attempting to overthrow
the Maduro regime of the state bourgeoisie, with the backing of the USA. The Americans are
eying up the rich resources of Venezuela, not just oil but other raw materials, diamonds,
gold, natural gas, gold, bauxite, iron ore, and hydroelectric power.
Trump's henchmen, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, have indicated US support for Guaido and
look towards the overthrow of Maduro. Neither Maduro nor Guaido have an answer to the
severe economic crisis hitting Venezuela. The masses there have to begin to organise
against both these wings of the ruling class. This will be a difficult task but is the
only real solution. In the meantime a mass movement against military intervention has to
develop in the USA and around the world.
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2019/01/27/neither-maduro-guaido-or-the-usa-the-situation-in-venezuela/
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