Today's Topics:
1. anarkismo.net: Why anarchism isn't a popular idea? by Zaher
Baher (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. cgt galicia: JULY 17 - CONCENTRATION IN SOLIDARITY WITH
PALESTINE - AUTHOR: PONTEVEDRA (ca) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: Chocolate fish, red
herrings and billionaires (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. Belarus, pramen: Belarusian society builds muscles -
comments on the protests 14 July (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Anarchist Communist Group (ACG): Covid-19 Whistleblowing at
Ridge Crest Cleaning (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
This is a very tiny contribution about the factors that caused the weakness of anarchism and the anarchist movement. Once we establish our
weakness perhaps it won't be difficult to overcome our problems. This article covers only three of our weak areas. ---- I am sure that many
people have written about this subject before. However, this is one of the major questions where the more we write about it, the more
clarification and explanation is needed. ---- To start, we need to ask a couple of questions: What kind of system do we live under? What
does the system actually want? ---- We live under the most powerful and brutal system that recent history has seen, and it is a global
system too. It does not miss any opportunity to strengthen and renew itself, anytime and anywhere. Neither the systems of feudalism and
slavery had this strength, or a global reach, so they both remained local systems.
The capitalist system does not just create different laws and tools to maintain its survival, it manages to contain and control anything
that has ever been built or made. Its tools are used to serve the system in one way or another, and if it can't co-opt an idea or movement,
it can defuse and distort it easily through its mainstream media and social media.
Capitalism has developed all kinds of bodies, such as the parliamentary system, media, markets, political parties, spy networks, military,
police, banks and other financial institutions, many hierarchical institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities,
businesses, nationalism, religion, media and sports. In addition, the state encourages useless demonstrations and protests to continue,
although with much restriction: watching, photographing and monitoring the participants. In doing so, the state can at least benefit in a
couple of ways: it knows that it is a good way for people to take out their anger and frustrations with no result. Through these
demonstrations and protests, the state can discover the identities of these activists, leading them to be watched, monitored and put on a
blacklist.
The capitalist system is not just an economic system, it is an entire system that includes all of these bodies I mentioned above. All of
them serve the system in different ways, while also operating to reject any serious and effective ideas or activities which might undermine
capitalism.
All of these institutions have been built on a hierarchical system. The job of these institutions is not just to allow the people at the top
to make all the decisions, but to make the individuals at the bottom voiceless, and completely dependent on those at the top. The purpose of
these institutions is to make people forget their individual minds, their ideas and interests, their creativity, and finally their agency to
change society.
In short, the system uses its media to persuade people to do more shopping and to consume unnecessary goods through bombarding people with
adverts, while also putting them in debt. It tries to convince people that this is the best and only type of life, and that exploitation,
poverty, homelessness and unemployment have always existed throughout history.
This is the system we live under. It forces us to do whatever it wants and imposes on us whatever conditions suit itself.
Anarchism does not just totally reject all of these conditions and restrictions, it rejects the system itself that created all of these.
Anarchism is the only real enemy of the system, and it struggles and fights it in different ways. The state, the politicians, and the
liberal and neo-liberal economists all know this reality.
While the theories and strategies of anarchism, are very well known by the state, the majority of the general population does not recognise
or understand what anarchism actually is. Those who are familiar with the idea find it strange and unworkable. They do not believe that
society can be organised by the people themselves, nor do they believe that a classless and non-hierarchical society can be achieved.
People have difficulty understanding that it's possible for them to run an entire society and make their own decisions for themselves. But
this is not just possible, it has happened throughout history. People don't think that without managers and directors, they themselves could
do all the work in every department:- from the NHS, to education, transport, construction work, agriculture, shops and supermarkets,
municipalities, and other services in the society.
We are the people who create the capital and the capitalists in the first place, not the opposite. If you put all of the world's
billionaires in a house for a year, along with all of their money, they couldn't make a penny.
The politicians and media always remind us that it's the rich who maintain society, creating work that brings prosperity to all of us, so we
must be grateful to them. In fact, these bodies are hiding the truth from us that work and the workforce came first, and money and capitals
came second. In other words, it is the work and the workforce that creates the wealth that maintains the state and capitalists. The history
of human beings has shown that people have lived without the state and capitalism.
There is another factor as to why anarchism is not popular. We are not as active as we need to be. We are divided between ourselves, instead
of having solidarity and support for one another, we criticise each other and write about each other. Although, we call ourselves the real
fighters against the system, many of us have probably adapted a capitalist mentality, or are under great influences of it. We do not
communicate often, even with our comrades. We are individualist, cutting ourselves off from our communities. We do not share our
communities' problems and we do not participate when they are fighting for their demands. We believe in mass or social revolution, yet we
marginalise ourselves by staying in a corner, either doing nothing or very little, but still calling ourselves active anarchists.
Zaherbaher.com
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31980
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Message: 2
The CGT of Pontevedra appeals to all the organizations, groups and personalities of the protest social movement and to all the society of
Pontevedra to come and participate in the concentration, convened by CGT in solidarity with the Palestinian people , which will take
place this Friday, 17 of July , at 8:00 p.m. in the Plaza de la Peregrina . ---- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu announced for
this July the annexation of a third more of the Palestinian West Bank, already occupied by the Israeli army. Dozens of Jewish settlements
are located in that invaded region under the protection of the Israeli army, even though they have been declared illegal by international
law and the UN itself.
For it is a matter that concerns all human beings, let us recognize the legitimate right and duty of the Palestinian people to defend their
freedom, their land and their dignity, against those who threaten and rob them, those who kill and confine them in the largest prison in the
world ever to exist: besieged Gaza and the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
http://www.cgtgalicia.org/2020/07/17julio-concentracion-en-solidaridad-con-palestina/
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Message: 3
Article from our comrades in the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement. ---- The rich become that way because they work hard to provide the
everyday things that our nation needs. So runs the story that underpins the economic system we live under. It's something that is so taken
for granted, it often goes uncommented upon. It seems as natural and obvious as sun in summer or chocolate fish tasting like chocolate
rather than fish. Other times you will see the corporate media actively propagating this idea somewhere in the business section of your
paper. By the way, that's the bit you often skip over to get to the crossword at the back, in case you weren't sure what that was. Overall,
it feels like there's not much to be said about it, right? Wrong.
The National Business Review (https://www.nbr.co.nz/ )is one of the key information organs of those who run capitalism here. Its worth
reading now and then. It tells you what our masters think is important. The NBR publishes an annual list of the local richest individuals.
At present the top person on that list is Graeme Hart, with a fortune of approximately $10 billion. However, the news of the moment is that
he may be eclipsed by somebody called Peter Thiel. If you know who he is, that's great, but chances are most of us don't. Stop and think
about that for a second. Here is nearly the richest individual on these islands and you probably don't know his name, what exactly he does
or what he looks like.
So who is Thiel? He was born in Germany but mostly grew up in the United States and was living in California when he first came to attention
here. That's because it was discovered in 2017 that he had been granted fast-tracked New Zealand citizenship in 2011 despite only having
spent 12 days here! (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11883554). The reason was not that he had escaped
a war torn country and desperately needed asylum, but simply he had put lots of money into some businesses here.
There are some aspects of his investment history that (if you wanted to be very generous), you could argue have been relatively benign and
possibly even useful, such as PayPal. In other cases he got in on the ground floor of things and did well for himself, such as an early
stake in Facebook. On the other hand, there are some downright dodgy aspects to how he accumulated his wealth.
In 2004 Thiel co-founded an outfit called Palantir. This is a software company that could best be described as handmaidens to the
totalitarian surveilance society. That's because they work closely with an alphabet soup of nice organisations like the CIA, NSA, ICE and
the FBI to mine huge amounts of online data from electronic surveilance. As for a connection to local spies, according to media sources
here, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) will neither confirm or deny if they are
clients of Palantir. However, they have an office in Wellington and the GCSB have advertised for staff that know Palantir's software. That's
about as close to a smoking gun as you can get! Other research has exposed that the NZ Defence Force has spent millions of dollars with
Palantir (Daily Post 9/7/20). At this point its not exactly clear how much of Palantir Thiel owns but part of the reason he may overtake
Hart as the richest person here is that there is talk of listing the company on the stock exchange.
Thiel was also an early financial backer of Clearview AI. This is a company involved in facial recognition technology. It can match faces to
billions of images scraped from the internet. Clearview AI has been controversial since its inception due to its links to neo-Nazis, data
leaks, lawsuits, questions about its accuracy, bans and strong opposition from various organisations. The American Civil Liberties Union for
example labelled its technology a "dangerous and untested surveillance product". Interest locally comes from the fact that the police here
contacted the company and conducted an unauthorised trial of the technology earlier this year
(https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/416483/police-trialled-facial-recognition-tech-without-clearance).
Apart from his delightful business involvements, Thiel has also taken an active interest in the formal political arena. He has long been a
supporter of the Republican Party in the USA and contributed financially to a range of conservative and right-wing activists and politicians
from Ann Coulter, Ron Paul, Ted Cruz and Trump. What he has done in this regard in Aotearoa is not known.
So thats the soon-to-be richest person here.
What does Thiel's biography tell us about how things really are? Firstly, in 2020 you don't actually have to make tangible, useful stuff
that exists in the real world like tables or bread, in order to be mega-rich. Secondly, despite rhetorical claims to be interested in social
‘freedom' and the economic ‘free-market', business and government often work together to control those who actually do produce real stuff,
that is, the vast majority of us. Surveillance technology is only the latest in a long line of tools used to keep us under the thumb of the
rich and powerful. Thirdly, the behaviour of our rulers gives the lie to their own myths. They want us to believe that being born or living
long-term in a particular geographical space separates those people from others elsewhere. There's a nation called New Zealand, ‘we' are
kiwis and ‘they' aren't. It's a useful way to divide and rule. Clearly however, if you can spend less than a fortnight in that place and
magically be included among ‘the nation' on the basis of having lots of money, it shows the whole thing to be the nonsense that it is.
It could be argued that Thiel is just one guy, that not everyone among the ruling class likes him and that he has provided money that has
helped provide people with jobs. Well, obviously he is an individual and yes sometimes there is contestation and squabbling among differing
factions among our rulers. The undisputable truth is however, that if the economic and political system had a fundamental problem with an
individual like him, he wouldn't be in the position he is in. As for the money he has, this has come from the collective efforts of other
people, since no single person could literally do everything him/herself. The jobs this money has in turn created are either not really
conducive to social freedom or in the few cases that they are, could be arrived at without the intervention of a billionaire autocrat.
We read about the amazing feats of the rich and powerful and are encouraged to accept them. Their existence is seen as natural and
beneficial. Thiel's story shows we don't need to buy into this and shouldn't, whether you like chocolate fish or not.
Original article at AWSM website
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2020/07/14/chocolate-fish-red-herrings-and-billionaires/
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Message: 4
Thousands of Belarusians protested after the authorities prevented several politicians from fighting for presidency. Video and photo from
the Internet shows dozens of cases in which protesters attack OMON and release their previously detained comrades. The "valiant" OMON riot
police have not seen this attitude of the people for a long time. This can explain their bravery when they break into a crowd of protesters
in a small group and are dumbfounded by the pressure. That's how the cops were last seen in the 90s. Those who served then are now retired
or working in offices. Cheeky young men from OMON, who live on the shoulders of the working population, have until recently felt powerful in
the country.
A few days ago I read another news in support of the myth of a "peaceful" Belarusian, who is always reasonable and calm, and somewhere
coward. This myth is spread not only by the authorities, in whose interests the culture of "peaceful" Belarusians, but also by their
opponents. Amazingly, over the last 20 years the opposition has been fixated on peaceful protest, and the most radical method of fighting
the dictatorship is still the legendary "Square". Contrary to all expectations, the dictatorship survived both 2006 and 2010, and in 2015
everything went relatively peacefully under the tacit slogan "no war" (sic!).
The absence of leaders on the streets can play a positive role in this situation. No more politicians are calling for peaceful protest and
dialogue with the authorities. The landing of the candidates, profitable at first sight, turned out to be a mistake for Lukashenka - he has
no partners for a dialogue, and it is not politicians who stand against him, but the self-organization of the people who cannot and do not
plan a dialogue with "Batka" (nickname for Lukashenko, that means "father").
Belarusian society, like any other society, is capable of changes only when it has confidence in its own forces. That is why authoritarian
regimes try to destroy social connections within society and thus to prevent some radical transformations. In Belarus, this process
continued throughout the whole existence of the dictatorship. A short pause after the Soviet Union managed to give enough energy for
protests and revolts in the 90s, but then it went into decline. Large spontaneous post-election protests in 2010 were mainly against
economic problems and led to the first retreat of the Belarusian dictatorship from its own plans in 2017. Let us leave behind the fact that
the law on "social parasites" was signed, but the very fact of Lukashenka's retreat deserves respect.
It is hard to say what served as the main catalyst for protests in the country today. Of course, the absolute failure of the authorities in
the fight against the coronavirus and the economic problems of recent months (which will only grow) played their role. The political crisis
with Russia has also had a negative impact on the stability of the regime.
In this regard, weakening the state's position may become one of the catalysts for the formation of a social force. People are beginning to
believe not only in their own strength, but also in the success of collective action, which is one of the key factors in radical
transformation. Success in clashes with OMON shows that state is not defended by superheroes, who can break you in half at first desire.
This state is defended by people like you and I, who have fear and the desire to preserve their own health. Each video and photo of a man
ripped out of the hands of the authorities is a symbol of the power of the Belarusian people in the struggle against Lukashenko's dictatorship.
Alexey Stoev for pramen
https://pramen.io/en/2020/07/belarusian-society-builds-muscles-comments-on-the-protests-14-july/
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Message: 5
"I can pick you some masks up from the office and drop them into you. If you guys feel safer with masks and it means everybody goes back and
gets rid of the union and we go back to being a nice, civil environment and everything's OK, then yeah, OK, I can get some masks there for
you, Tuesday at the latest." ---- Emma McNabola, Ridge Crest Cleaning regional manager ---- This comment came after Ridge Crest cleaners,
members of the union United Voices of the World (UVW), walked off the job at Ark Globe Academy on 4th and 5th June. ---- Shocking both for
Ridge Crest's flagrant couldn't-give-a-shit attitude to the Covid-19 pandemic and its union-busting manipulation, the ACG is nevertheless
not surprised to hear such stories. Many of you reading this may have, or know someone who has, experienced this kind of behaviour from
employers.
The only rational response is to organise (as indeed UVW members are doing at Ridge Crest) and fight.
Read the full article here: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/v7g3wj/cleaning-company-suggests-it-may-only-provide-ppe-if-workers-ditch-union
Get involved in the No Safety, No Work campaign!
If you know of any similar stories of shitty bosses, drop us a line at safereturn@anarchistcommunism.org
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2020/07/15/covid-19-whistleblowing-at-ridge-crest-cleaning/
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