Today's Topics:
1. London Anarchist Federation: Tommy Robinson - Enemy of the
Working Class (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. France, Manifesto of the Union Communist Libertaire UCL -
Break the racist mechanics (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Bangladesh Anarcho Syndicalist Federation BASF: Global
Warming: get rid of capitalism! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. France, Manifesto of the Union Communist Libertaire UCL - A
vital anticapitalism (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Anarchists' Union of Iranian and Afghan Anarchists: on
Political Prisoners and Prisoners of Labor Activists [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. Czech, afed: FNB Ostrava faces repression (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
Tommy Robinson is back in prison and his followers are claiming that he is some kind of
journalistic free speech martyr. Everyone else thinks he is a self promoting prat who
jeopardised the trial of a paedophile ring. I am going to leave the excellent 12 Rules For
What to fill in the details, because I am not going to be talk about that. ---- What I
want to talk about is what Tommy Robinson is actually offering the working class people he
pretends to care about, how it is all nonsense and how it prevents us from creating real
solutions to our problems. I want to show that Tommy Robinson is not some kind of brave
truth sayer standing up for the little guy, he is a liar and an enemy of the working
class. ---- Grooming Hate ---- Tommy Robinson's latest project has been pretending to care
about "Asian Grooming Gangs". He and his followers have been pushing the story, sometimes
openly and sometimes with a nudge and a wink, that Muslims are somehow far more likely to
commit acts of rape than anyone else.
But rape and paedophilia are problems that curse all parts of our society. Statistics show
that most sex offences are carried out by white men simply because most sex offenders are
men and most people in the UK are white. We only need to look to the constant sex scandals
of the Catholic Church to know that paedophilia and rape are not just an Islamic problem.
This is not to undersell the seriousness of rape. Eleven people an hour will face some
kind of sexual assault in England and Wales. But most of them will not be attacked by the
kind of "evil outsider" stereotype. 90% of them will have known their attacker before the
attack. They will have been a friend, a family member, or a colleague.
So what is the effect of Tommy Robinson's crusade to pin rape and paedophilia on Muslims?
To whip up hatred towards Muslims, the vast majority of which are not rapists or
paedophiles. To incite violence towards innocent people based on their religion or their
skin colour. This is not some brave act of truth telling, it is simply jumping on the
bigotry bandwagon and pandering to peoples existing prejudices.
This is an easy card to play. I could show you a list of 40 far right sex offenders, many
of them members or ex-members of Tommy Robinson's old mob, the English Defence League. I
could say that there is an epidemic of far right rapists, and that if we just got rid of
them, we would be safe from sexual assault. And it would serve my political interests
nicely... but it would not be true, or at least it would not be the whole story.
The whole story would be that that in the year ending in March 2017 there were 41,186
cases of rape recorded by the police and 80,001 other sexual offences, or which 6,129 were
against children, and that the one group I was choosing to target was tiny compared to the
vast sea of sexual violence that swamps our society.
Blaming rape and paedophilia on a group already distrusted and considered outsiders allows
us to ignore the problems which British culture in general. Like the fact that many people
don't even know what counts as rape. Like the fact the British state often acts like it
does not care about abuse, with only 1.5% of all rape cases even leading to anyone being
charged or summonsed, regardless of the ethnicity or religion of the perpetrator. It lets
us act like our shit doesn't stink and gives us an easy target to hate, but it stops us
from understanding the problem as it really exists and solving it.
Spreading Terror
Tommy Robinson has also been pushing the idea that Islam is uniquely violent or
terroristic, but that idea is instantly dispelled by looking at any set of statistics
relating to terrorism specifically or British death statistics in general. In terms of
terrorism alone, Islamist terrorism in the UK has never even come close to the sustained
death count caused by Irish terrorism. A graph I have straight up stolen from this paper
illustrates my point:
Even at its most deadly, Islamist terrorists have never surpassed what would have been a
peaceful year in most of the 70s and 80s. Islamist terrorism in the UK has also never
achieved the kind of single incident death toll of Lockerbie. If Muslims are uniquely
violent, then man they must suck at it, because they still don't hold a candle to the
level of violence deployed by groups originating from a "native" culture.
Tommy Robinson's obsession with Islamist terrorism is even more ridiculous when compared
to other causes of death. To demonstrate this I am going to take all the deaths from
Islamic terror in the UK and add them up. This would be four people at Westminster, 22 in
Manchester, and eight at London Bridge, for a total of 34 in 2017, the killing of Lee
Rigby in 2013, and the 2005 7/7 tube bombing which killed 52 people. This totals 87 killed
over the course of 12 years. All these deaths are a tragedy, but all deaths are a tragedy,
so let's get some perspective on how bad 87 deaths in 12 years really is.
There were 389 deaths dues to alcohol poisoning in England and Wales in 2017. We were more
than four times as likely to literally drink ourselves to death in 2017 than die in an
Islamist terror attack over a twelve year period. Hypothermia killed the same number
people in 2017 as have been killed by Islamist terror between 2005 and 2017. But even more
people, 5,821, committed suicide in the UK as a whole that year. You were more than 60
times as likely to kill yourself in 2017 than to be killed by an Islamic terrorist over
the 2005-2017 period.
Why am I rattling off all these morbid stats? To make the point that the number of people
who have died to it are a rounding error in Britain's death statistics. That this in no
way justifies the dehumanisation and incitement of hate and violence against millions of
innocent people who have not done anything wrong. That it does not justify the denial of
aid to refugees fleeing from war and poverty in other countries. The Islamic terror scare
is pure nonsense, and your local pub is more likely to kill you than your Muslim neighbours.
We also ignore many other problems of a similar magnitude. The Grenfell fire alone is
responsible for almost as many deaths by state incompetence and capitalist greed in a
single event as the combined toll of Islamic terror in the UK, but the problems that lead
to that tragedy have mostly been ignored.
Police failure to protect women from stalkers and abusers has probably resulted in far
more deaths since Islamist terror became a thing in the UK, with at least 60 women
murdered by people they had already reported to the police in the 2015-2017 period alone.
This a problem than we care so little about that a third of police forces did not even
bother to provide information to that study.
Of course, in many parts of the world Islamist terror is a real problem, but in this
context Tommy's self-promoting hate mongering is even more disgusting. This is because the
most likely victims of terror attacks globally are themselves Muslim. Many of the refugees
he attempts to cast as potential Islamist terrorists are fleeing from Islamist terror.
Tommy's accusation that all Muslims will always support Islamist terror is also an insult
to the many Muslims who have fought and died combating that terror. As just one example,
more than 11,000 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces have died fighting the Islamic
State only to be largely abandoned by the West. Tommy Robinson spits on the memory of each
one of those dead men and women, and many others Muslims who have who have paid the
ultimate price fighting Islamic terror, while he lives large off of slandering them.
Not that Tommy actually cares about terrorism. He is strangely silent when people take his
rhetoric that Muslims are the enemy seriously and commit acts of terror against them. If
the Islamophobic rhetoric of Tommy and the like keeps up, we may soon find ourselves in a
situation like that of America, where far-right terrorism now kills more people than
Islamist terrorism.
The fact that Tommy inspires terrorism instead of preventing it should be no surprise, as
he and his followers are the mirror image of the radical Islamist preachers they oppose.
Both push an idealised vision of a traditional culture laid low by outsiders. Both draw on
and manipulate disillusioned young men with promises of meaning. Both promote an
absolutist us verses them narrative. Both promote authoritarian leadership and a violent
idea of what it is to be a man. Both treat women like shit. Both hate gay and trans
people. If Tommy Robinson was a Muslim, he probably would have joined ISIS by now.
A Legacy of Grift
But what about all the other problems facing the working class? Has Tommy done anything to
combat the more than 100,000 deaths linked to government austerity policies? Has he done
anything about the 320,000 people who are homeless and the 73% increase in foodbank use in
the last five years? What is Tommy's stance on the fact that the poor pay far more of
their income in tax than the rich, who get to hide their wealth in tax havens? What about
the way wages have stagnated, even before bosses try and steal some of it back? What is
the Tommy Robinson plan on global warming?
He does not care about any of that. The only thing to benefit from Tommy's "activism" has
been his wallet. He has made a lot of money and he has gotten pretty famous. Tommy has
become a household name and may have made £2 million in donations from playing the martyr,
and his old gig at rebel media was paying him up to £8,000 a month. If only helping people
instead of spreading hate was so profitable.
Tommy Robinson is a political snake oil salesman, offering answers that are simple, easy,
and wrong that promote his own fame and keep the money flowing in. But he does far more
damage to the working class than simply conning some of us out of our spare change. To
understand why I need to talk about what the term "working class" really means.
There is a habit of thinking about class as a cultural thing. As something to do with your
accent, what you like to do with your spare time, your fashion sense, or what kind of work
you do, or where you live. But this idea of class is clearly wrong if you think about who
counts as "working class" under that kind of understanding.
For example, someone who owns a string of properties that they rent or a large business
would count as working class if they spoke and dressed the right way. But they would not
have to worry about any of the things I listed as problems affecting the working class
earlier. They would not have to worry about the cost of living, or having their benefits
cut, or homelessness. They do not have to worry about the boss stealing their wages. They
are the boss. On the other side of this, someone who worked hard all their life just to
survive, who had to give half their income to their landlord, who put up with all the shit
ladled on them by their job and the benefits office, might not count as working class if
they did not, for example, like football.
A better way of thinking about class is to think about a person's position in society. Do
they have to work for someone else in order to survive? When they cannot work are they
dependent on benefits or charity to survive? Are their lives controlled by capitalists,
landlords, or bureaucrats because they control access to the work, housing, and benefits
that workers need to live? These things are the defining experience of being working
class, regardless of your culture or where you are from.
And these are ultimately the cause of the problems faced by the working class. We are
owned people who cannot live our lives on our own terms. We work only on the terms of
capitalists, we have a home only on the terms of landlords, and we survive hardship on the
terms of the benefit office. When they mistreat us we have no option but to swallow it, or
at best try to find a new boss or landlord who might treat us slightly better.
And they probably won't treat us any better, because capitalists need profits to survive
and governments need obedience in order to function, so our wages and our freedom are
always going to be sacrificed when they get in the way of that. The perfect worker and
citizen, from the point of view of our leaders, is someone who has no life, gives
everything to the job or their country, accepts the bare minimum they need to survive, and
accepts their death if demanded by those above them. This is what is in their interest,
and it is what they will try to make us unless we resist.
This situation can look hopeless. We do not have the economic power of the capitalists and
we also have very little say in how the government is run. We supposedly live in a
democracy, but everyone knows that this is a joke. Workers get a formal vote on a handful
of political positions every five years, but no government can function without the
support of capitalists and the civil service, who have far more say in the day to day
running of this country than our occasional vote.
But while we have very little formal power when we act within the rules set for us by
business and government, if we ignore those rules we have the ability to fight back. We
outnumber those above us many times over, and their control over us only holds as long as
we accept it. Also, without us to do all the grunt work, society would grind to a halt,
and capitalists could make no profits and politicians would have no power.
But can only use our power if we work together. One worker who resists their boss gets
fired. When every worker in a business disobeys their boss in a coordinated way, it is
often more expensive for their boss to fire them all than it is to give in to their
demands. If the entire working class could cooperate across a country, we could run it if
we chose to. The global working class could run the entire world. But this is only
possible if we organise.
And this is where people like Tommy get in the way. They might argue that Muslims or
whoever they are trying to stir up hate against are too culturally different to work with
European or Caribbean workers, but if you ask a Muslim about how work treats them, how
their landlord treats them, or how the government treats them, you will find they are
suffering under the same boot as you. Across the world all workers are united by the fact
we want better pay, more free time, and less bullshit from our "superiors". Tommy's
scapegoating keeps us disunited and fighting each other instead of our real enemies. His
idea of working class "liberation" is for us to beg our leaders to be harder on Muslim
workers so that they can throw us more table scraps. If we organised as a class we could
have so much more than those scraps, but we can't do that as long as bigotry and hatred
keep us divided.
Tommy is also dangerous because of his attempts to position himself as a leader of the
working class. Such leadership puts the majority of us back in the same position as we are
at work and in politics; passive followers and obedient tools. This allows the same kind
mistreatment and exploitation to happen. If we have to organise in order to push our joint
interests, we have to organise as equals to make sure that no one working voice can
dominate the others, otherwise we will end up with new bosses, same as the old bosses, as
has happened so many times before.
So, to sum up; we don't need people spreading hate between us, we don't need leaders, and
we really don't need Tommy fucking Robinson. We need to be putting the blame for our
problems on the people who really run the world, and we need to get organised so we can
oppose them.
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2019/08/01/tommy-robinson-enemy-of-the-working-class/
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Message: 2
The fight against racism is an essential issue for all those who fight for equality. It is
of particular importance to enable solidarity among all those exploited in the face of the
state and employers. ---- Demonstration of the families of police victims, March 19, 2017,
in Paris. ---- Vincent Nakash / UCL Saint-Denis ---- Whether it takes the form of hate
speech or discrimination, whether it is conveyed by the state, the bourgeoisie or the
proletariat, racism is a multiform system of domination that creates divisions within
populations between a majority group and oppressed minority groups, based on an origin,
physical or cultural criteria to which stereotypes are attached.
A product of nationalism and colonialism
European states, in their desire to standardize controlled territories and centralize
power, have politically and artificially constructed a "national body" around an identity
defined as "white and Christian" from a truncated history - what is called the "national
novel" - excluding and oppressing minorities who do not meet these criteria.
Yesterday as today, the minorities living inside the territory and excluded from this
"national body" undergo the racist domination. It is in this context that anti-Semitism
and rhomophobia have developed in Europe, with Jews, Jews and Roma being defined as the
anti-national, racist figure, designated as external to the "national body".
In parallel, the American colonization, then, from the XIX thcentury, the expansion of
colonial imperialism to the entire non-Western world, were based on a racist definition of
non-European peoples. To justify their enslavement, and the grabbing of the territories
they inhabit and their wealth, the colonized peoples were designated as inferior in order
to authorize the massive recourse to slavery, deportation and forced labor for millions of
millions. 'people.
Racism against the descendants of colonized peoples, in France and other countries that
participated in colonization, is also an extension of this story. Islamophobia, understood
as a racism affecting Muslims or considered as such, is also born of these two dynamics.
A bulwark for the possessing classes
Periods of economic crisis and social regressions are conducive to the reinforcement of
racism. The political powers and the bourgeoisie can then rely on racism to divide those
who have an interest in uniting to counter the devastating effects of capitalism.
Designating scapegoats as responsible for unemployment, precariousness and misery, allows
the bourgeoisie to divert the lower classes from the demands of economic and social
equality. Border closure policies put in place by the state, laws aimed at stigmatizing a
part of the population or the concrete practices of political institutions (police,
justice, schools, etc.) tend to participate in France in the implementation of of state
racism.
Anti-Semitism, for its part, protects the national bourgeoisie from popular anger by
designating Jews and Jews as dominant pseudo-classes by mobilizing racist stereotypes
around the so-called domination of "Jewish finance". Antisocial policies are thus
presented as the result of a "conspiracy" and not for what they are: the effects of
capitalism.
For the self-organization of the fight
The fight against racism is an essential issue for all those who fight for equality. It is
particularly important in the class struggle to allow solidarity among all the exploited
against the state and employers. Thus, our solidarity goes first and foremost to the
movements which, to the anti-racist struggles, associate a democratic project of social
emancipation by relying on the action of the popular classes.
The representations constructed by the colonial Republic are maintained and allow the
racist hierarchy to continue to practice. In the territories still occupied by France,
colonialism continues to be a deep vector of racism.
It is also up to us to fight against racism within our organization with all the tools at
our fingertips.
The revolutionary movement must take into account the transformations of the system of
racist domination, with a progressive marginalization of "biological" racism in favor of
"cultural" racism . This is at work with a very real contemporary anti-Semitism where
stigmatization, violence against people considered Jewish spawn with conspiracy.
This has also led to the success of the "clash of civilizations" theory, of which
Islamophobic violence and discrimination in almost all Western countries is one of the
main consequences. Denying the reality of this Islamophobia, some and some instrumentalize
the necessary criticism of religions to, in reality, disseminate racist speech. On the
contrary, we must defend a clear, lucid anti-racism based on an analysis of social reality
free from fantasies and essentialisms.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Briser-la-mecanique-raciste
------------------------------
Message: 3
As the climate warms, it changes the nature of global rainfall, evaporation, snow, stream
flow and other factors that affect water supply and quality. Specific impacts include:
Warmer water temperatures affect water quality and accelerate water pollution. ---- A
World Bank report released a few months ago, "Shock Waves: Managing the Impact of Climate
Change on Poverty," predicts that global warming will push 100 million more people into
extreme poverty over the next decade and a half. This means that 100 million more people
will see their incomes drop to under 1.90 dollars per day. This would add a hundred
million to the roughly 700 million people earning 1.90 dollars a day or less, or what the
World Bank defines as "extreme poverty."
The people of the poorest countries are the most threatened, especially the people of
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. According to the report, climate change will have
terrible consequences for agriculture and health of the poor parts of the world. Crop
yields will be reduced by five percent by 2030. This will cause food costs to rise for the
poorest people. Natural disasters, like flooding, will become more frequent. And diseases
will become more widespread among the poorest parts of the world.
In 2015 195 countries signed up to The Paris Agreement, a non-binding treaty aiming to
keep the global average temperature rise to "well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels".
The signatories commissioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to
produce a report comparing the probable impacts of a 1.5°C global warming with 2°C and
assessing what it would take to keep to the lower level. The report came out in October
and synthesises all published research to 15th May 2018. However, the official version is
not as written by the scientists who authored it. The final wording is the outcome of
political negotiations and is heavily redacted. We know from leaks that the US was one of
the governments intent on watering it down.
The full report makes it clear that the consequences will be severe even if the 1.5°C
target is met. It also states that, "there is a very high likelihood that under current
emission trajectories and current national pledges the Earth will warm more than 1.5
degrees above targets set in Paris ..." This was cut from the final report. Also omitted
was the verdict that if countries make the cuts they say they will then the world is on
course for a 3°C warming by 2100. And if they don't, global warming could go as high as 7°C!
This latest IPCC report only confirms the complete inadequacy of the Paris Agreement and
the huge gap between words and necessary action if the planet is going to be able to
sustain human civilisation or any life at all. That Agreement fails on all four counts
that scientists and environmental groups agree need to be met, namely:
-Catalyse immediate, urgent and drastic emission reductions
These cuts, or "Intended Nationally Determined Contributions" (INDCs) were drawn up by
governments, based on what they were prepared to deliver, not on what scientists think is
needed. They go nowhere near far enough. For instance, aviation and shipping emissions,
which are as large as the emissions of Britain and Germany combined, were not even
included. Meanwhile, Australia's blatant refusal to phase out coal by 2050 to keep
emissions within the Paris target highlights the absurdity of expecting each capitalist
power to put the survival of the globe before its own national (profit-making) interest.
The world's biggest coal exporter said it would be "irresponsible" to comply with the IPCC
recommendation to stop using coal to generate electricity. Instead the government's
priority is to cut domestic electricity prices, not greenhouse gas emissions, which have
risen for four consecutive years! Coal generates two-thirds of Australia's electricity and
earned it a record A$61bn in exports in the 2017-18 financial year. In China, slowing
‘economic growth' has led the government to withdraw emission curbs on heavy industries
only recently introduced to reduce disastrous levels of air pollution. Can't let
difficulty breathing affect profit-making.
-Provide adequate support to "developing nations" for transformation
According to the International Energy Agency, transformation to a fossil-free world will
require $1,000bn per year by 2020. Around two-thirds of this, $670bn, will need to be
spent in "developing nations", requiring a significant transfer of finance from North to
South. The big capitalist countries hold just 10% of the world's population but produce
around 60% of the greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere.
However, the Paris Agreement only commits to "mobilising" $100bn per year by 2020, to
cover not just emission cuts but also adaptation (see 3, below). The definition of
"mobilise" is deliberately broad, to include loans, private finance, grants with strings
attached, and re-allocation of aid budgets. There is even talk of calling money sent home
by migrants working in richer countries a form of climate finance, and counting it in the
total "mobilised" by the US, France, Germany, etc. In short, the proposed funding is
totally inadequate, when it's not a complete fiction. It is totally dwarfed by the
estimated $5,300bn a year governments spend on direct and indirect subsidies to fossil fuels.
-Deliver justice for impacted people
According to the UN Environment Programme, on top of an annual $670bn needed for emissions
cuts by 2020, vulnerable countries will need another $150bn per year for adaptation
measures to protect them from the worst impact of climate change. The UN's $100 billion
put forward represents less than 15% of what is formally needed!
The large capitalist powers are the biggest polluters but the idea that they should make a
commensurate contribution to a solution has been watered down at the behest of the US and
others. The Paris deal just says that "developed countries" should "take the lead" on
providing finance, as part of a "shared effort" by all parties.
-Focus on genuine, effective action rather than false solutions
The Paris agreement aims to reduce anthropogenic emissions by the second half of this
century, yet a 1.5° target requires a definitive end to fossil fuel use by 2050! Plus, the
deal allows for continued fossil-fuel burning "offset" by "removals" via dubious carbon
capture, geo-engineering or forestry schemes. Regulations to rein in destructive
industries, halt deforestation and stop mining fossil fuels are not even hinted at. And
the agreement has no precedence over existing or new trade agreements, allowing firms to
overturn environmental regulations when profits are threatened. In short, it is more a PR
exercise than a serious plan to reduce emissions. When Trump withdrew the United States
from the ‘deal' just over a year ago, it was of little consequence. Its goals are far too
little too late.
Capitalism is killing the planet. Even where a price might be put on it, the cost of
cleaning up the environment is greater than the value of economic growth as measured by
GDP. (Hence the agreement's blurring over how to pay for its feeble recommendations.) The
disappearance of species, toxins in food, water, air, land, indicate capitalism's ravaging
of the planet. The profits capitalism makes from exploiting the working class would be
negated if they had to include environmental cost in their production. No amount of
climate accords, spurious recycling schemes, or whatever can reconcile capitalism's
pursuit of profit with Marx's insight on the need to hand the globe down to succeeding
generations in an improved condition. The answer should be staring every environmentalist
in the face: get rid of capitalism!
Interestingly, a recent poll showed that concern about climate change reflects the global
class structure. The poorer countries, with Africa and Latin America leading the pack, say
climate change is of "grave concern." By contrast, even though climate change is recognize
as a real problem by international institutions of Empire, less than half of the people
polled in the United States see climate change as a serious problem.
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx famously stated:
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in
a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on
an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes."
It is often forgotten that Marx did not see revolution as the only consequence of class
struggle. There is another possibility: our common ruin. This is the reality that humanity
faces. Global capitalism is pushing our planet, our common home, to its limits. The First
World culture of consumption and waste is pushing the environment to a breaking point. The
majority of humanity, the global poor, the proletariat suffers. A minority, the global
rich, the bourgeoisie consume more and more, waste more and more. If we are to avoid our
common ruin, if there is to be a future for our children and their children, we must
awaken. We are the vast majority. We are the only ones who can stop this madness. Time is
running out. Now is the time to raise the banner of the Global People's Struggle of the
Anarcho-Syndicalism. Ruin or revolution?
https://bangladeshasf.org/global-warming-get-rid-of-capitalism/
------------------------------
Message: 4
We are resolutely anti-capitalist. We do not oppose only the abuses of the system that
dominates the world today. We are radically opposed to its foundations: the exploitation
of human labor for the benefit of ruling and privileged minorities ; the exploitation of
natural resources leading to their destruction ; unequal global development and
imperialism ; the alienation of the individual ; state and employer domination over
society. ---- Anticapitalist, we reject the race for profits, the logic of enterprise, the
model of productivist development, hierarchy and social inequalities, which are the creeds
of a society dominated by the capitalist mode of production. ---- We are anti-capitalist
for social reasons, by our engagement in the class struggle. We are so for ethical
reasons, by our attachment to egalitarian values, libertarians, social justice and respect
for the specificities of each individual. We are also for vital reasons, since capitalism
is based on an ever-increasing overexploitation of environmental resources that threatens
the survival of humanity.
There is no capitalism "with a human face"
We are opposed to capitalism regardless of the historical form in which it occurs: liberal
capitalism or state capitalism. We are opposed to liberal capitalism, based on an
"autonomous" regulation of the market, which claims to be "democratic". It is based on an
essentially undemocratic mode of production and is entirely geared towards achieving the
profits of the ruling classes.
We are opposed to state capitalism, even when it claims to be "socialist" or even
"communist". It is based on a mode of exploitation and tyrannical domination of the
workers, and on the authoritarian determination of the market, in favor of a privileged
and all-powerful class. These two faces of capitalism create a bureaucratic and
technocratic structure. We therefore support neither a partial or total state of liberal
capitalism, nor a partial or total privatization of state capitalism. Whether in the
public or the private sector, the rule that capitalism operates has always been the
collectivization of losses and the privatization of profits.
"Protectionism" and "free trade," national capitalism and global capitalism are two sides
of the same coin. At the mercy of their interests, the possessing classes plead for one or
the other. We must not look for ideological coherence. Their only dogma is that of private
ownership of the means of production and distribution. Everything else is adaptable to the
circumstances.
Our anticapitalism is part of daily struggles and the class struggle to achieve
self-management and libertarian socialism.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Un-anticapitalisme-vital
------------------------------
Message: 5
Over the past year, the Islamic State of Iran has carried out most of its attacks on
workers, students, and journalists. People who are now in prisons to defend freedom,
justice and equality. More than fifty people were arrested and jailed during the May 11
International Labor Day celebrations. Among those arrested are documentary student Nada
Nagy and actress Emma Goldman (as I live) in the role of Valentina - Russian anarchist,
Atefeh Rangriz, Marzieh Amiri, Anisha Asadollahi. ---- Officials of the Qaramak Varamin
Women's Non-Political Prison Saturday, July 9, beat Neda Naji and Atefeh Rangriz, two
political prisoners, for not wearing a tent, as a result of a violent confrontation other
than Neda Naji's head injury. The scapegoat, scapegoat and leg painter also suffered
injuries and were transferred to "health". Another political prisoner of Sepideh Ghaliyan
is one of the defendants in the Haft Tapeh protests, who were held in Qarchak Varamin
prison on Sunday, July 29, protesting the beating of political prisoners, the inflamed
prison environment, the lack of water and the lack of cooler. .
Anisha Asadollahi is another detainee in connection with the Labor Day demonstration,
which was initially provisionally released, but was arrested again on June 5 and
transferred to prison.
In addition, four members, Amir Amirgholi, Amir Hossein Mohammadi Farf and Sanaz Elahiari,
three members of the editorial staff of Gham Magazine, are also being held in December and
December of last year for covering the protests of the Haft Tapeh and steel workers of
Ahvaz. Soheil Arab, an anarchist political prisoner, has also been on hunger strike for
several weeks in a boycott of jail shop and non-jail food.
Ismail, part of the Haft Tapeh Syndicate and Sepah Khalijan Syndicate, has been detained
again to protest their torture, and Sepah Khalijan has been on hunger strike since August,
protesting the prison's deteriorating relationship.
Farangis, the victim's mother, has also no information about her whereabouts since her
abduction by eight security forces on July 9.
Branch 1 of the Tehran Court of Appeal also upheld the sentence of two years in prison and
two lashes of Sepideh Farhan, a civil activist who was arrested in connection with the
January protests and released on bail.
May the Islamic State of Iran
Union of Iranian and Afghan Anarchists
https://asranarshism.com/1398/05/03/political-prisoner-216/
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Message: 6
The Food not Bombs Ostrava team is exposed to official bullying, which fully manifested
itself on 7 July during the regular distribution of food to the needy. ---- Already on
Sunday, the town official Vladimíra Plechácková, who presented herself as the "Secretary
of the Vítkovice Town Hall", came to the place of distribution, although she is actually
from the Finance, Budget and Education Department at the Ostrava-Vítkovice District
Office. Members of the team commented on her visit: "She wanted to arrange a permit with
us so that we could continue this initiative, only under the patronage of the landowner
and the town hall. We said we were working and that we hardly had time to give out on our
own day off every Sunday, let alone go to a town hall. "
The next Sunday, dear Mrs. Plechácková, accompanied by about ten gendarmes from the
municipal police, who surrounded the car with food, prevented the distribution of food and
claimed that the local people complain and that those present do not have permission. In
their official constraints, none of them could understand that the FNB was not an
organization and that it had no leader. Eventually one of the hungry called the state
police. The naivety of that step became apparent as the uniformed characters greeted each
other, chatted, and embarked on an even more fuss. FNB activists present forced them to
show their citizens. In the spirit of solidarity, the homeless people of the Ostrava FNB
have also stood up, chewing on cops and wishing them to live on the street and experience
homelessness.
The FNB Ostrava team subsequently issued a public statement on the incident, describing
the principles of its operation and, among other things, stating: "We are convinced that
food is a right, not a privilege, and it is the right of all, without distinction. We want
to exercise this right in an environment that is safe not only for us, but especially for
homeless people who come to us with confidence every week. We believe that our activity
does not correspond to an activity that requires occupation and that we do nothing
contrary to the local ordinance. We are determined to persevere in our actions and believe
that we are doing the right thing. We call on the Municipality of Ostrava not to repress
citizens' initiative and freedom. At the same time, we urge the Ostrava-Vítkovice district
not to criminalize our informal solidarity with homeless people and not to label our
activities as undesirable. "
But the challenge was obviously not answered. On Sunday, July 28, there was another
repressive fuss, on which members of the team commented: "Although last week the City
Police officers told us that until the offense had passed, none of us would have the
legitimacy, the opposite was true. Verbally aggressive police officers forced a member of
our team to legitimize by placing a pub on the wall occupying a public space. " .
If you are annoyed by bullying activities to help homeless and resourceless people, you
can take a number of steps: disseminating information about ongoing buzz (on your site, on
social networks, improving leaflets...), writing emails and letters to the Ostrava
Municipality and the city part of Ostrava-Vítkovice, sending to the team of the FNB
Ostrava manifestations of solidarity (eg demonstrative collective photographs...), to
implement some form of public protest, to hold a lecture on Food not Bombs and repression
against this initiative,
Update: Monday 5.8. Benefit Burgers will be held at the Salé Information Center in Prague.
On-site photo, petition to sign and screen short documentary about FNB.
https://www.afed.cz/text/7009/fnb-ostrava-celi-represim
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