#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) France, UCL AL #323 - Culture, Essay: The Middle Ages of Game of Thrones (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]

 Here is a book to help us understand how series (and literature) feed clichés and

reinforce the conditioning to certain conceptions of society. ---- What is the
Middle Ages ? It is first of all a historical period running from the 5th to the
15th century, with rather arbitrary limits, fixed a posteriori by thinkers who
did not admire much at the time. It is also a multitude of imaginations drawing
from the many sources that irrigate our modern culture, carrying its share of
clichés and images of Épinal. ---- By writing the bestseller A song of Ice and
Fire, then adapted for television with the cult series Game of Thrones, George R.
R. Martin drew heavily on these sources of inspiration to build his fantasy
world. The author also prides himself on a form of realism in his description of
society, darker and more cruel than those usually portrayed in other works of
fantasy, and therefore supposedly closer to what our Middle Ages were like.

"A fantasized vision of a white and virile past"
In their book Une Histoire de feu et de sang, Justine Breton and Florian Besson
set out to put this assertion to the test of modern scientific knowledge on the
subject. Using the pretext of studying the saga and the television series (taking
care to clearly distinguish the two), they playfully juggle between questioning
our modern clichés about the Middle Ages, explanations of the practices and life
of the time as well as reflections on how this period may have been portrayed in
our culture. In doing so they never forget to do justice to the original
material, which of course never claimed to be a scientifically correct
description of a medieval society.

Their book ends with a reflection on the political discourse transmitted by the
saga. By choosing to present a Middle Ages where violence is omnipresent, and
where this violence serves as a guarantee of realism, the author and the
screenwriters are not neutral. They reinforce a discourse that aims to make
violence the primordial element of our social relations, depicting a world where
only authority and force are able to protect us from human barbarism.

This reduction of the complexity of human relations to sheer brute force makes it
possible both to reinforce (no doubt despite the will of the author) a fantasized
vision of a white and virile European past, and to discredit those who as we seek
to build a society rid of its relations of domination.

While saluting Martin's talent, the authors therefore call on us to open our
imaginations and to get out of a very partial and unfair vision of a period much
richer than we usually imagine. A must-read book.

Nicholas (UCL Grenoble)

Justine Breton and Florian Besson, A Story of Fire and Blood : The Middle Ages of
Game of Thrones, Presses Universitaires de France, 2020, 392 pages, 21 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Essai-Le-Moyen-Age-de-Game-of-Thrones
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#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #GREECE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Greece, APO:[Athens] Against the pandemic and modern totalitarianism of state and capital integration (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 While more than 22,000 people have lost their lives to pandemics across the

country as a result of the systematic abandonment and downsizing of the public
health system (with staff, equipment and hospital shortages), efforts are being
made to use it as a tool for antisocial enforcement of neoliberal management. in
order to implement more quickly and with harsher terms the overall restructurings
that plunder the vast majority of society and aim at securing and expanding the
privileges of the economic and political elites.
 From the complete dismantling of public health, the degradation of public
education, the enactment of the new anti-labor law to the murder of workers in
slavery, the further looting of the natural world, the racist exclusion regime
for refugees and migrants, the degenerate state and capitalism has nothing to
promise but barbarism, wars, exploitation and oppression.

IMMEDIATE STRENGTHENING OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM

SOLIDARITY IN THE HEALTH STRUGGLE AGAINST STATE PLANS FOR FURTHER DISSOLUTION OF
PUBLIC HEALTH

In essence, the protection of repressive mechanisms, which act as the reserve of
the state and help in the state rhetoric of spreading racist hatred, nationalism
and intolerance.

For all of us workers, unemployed, young people, locals and immigrants, it is
necessary to overcome all disappointments and defeats, it is necessary to
participate and organize in every social space, in every exploitation space. The
only real prospect of living with dignity as equals in a society of equals is to
fight with faith in the law of freedom against the shackles of organized state
power and capitalism, to organize the struggle from below for their overthrow
based on its values. . a new world we are fighting for, a world of Freedom,
Equality, Solidarity.

Meeting, Thursday 27/1, 18.00, Ministry of Health

Demonstration, Saturday 5/2, Syntagma, 13.00

EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE!

EDUCATION, HEALTH, FOOD, HOUSING

ORGANIZATION AND STRUGGLE FOR THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

ANARCHY AND FREEDOM COMMUNISM

Anarchist Political Organization - local coordination of Athens

http://apo.squathost.com/athina-apenanti-stin-pandimia-ke-ton-sigchrono-oloklirotismo-kratous-ke-kefaleou/
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#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #UK #UKRAINE #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #UK. #ACG: #Ukraine: neither #NATO nor #Moscow! (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]

 The Western media is pounding the drum for a conflict between Putin's Russia and

the Western powers over Ukraine. ---- Let us be clear. Vladimir Putin leads a
gangster regime in Russia, sometimes referred to as a kleptocracy (rule by
thieves). He runs an oppressive regime and as an ex-high up in the Russian secret
police, the KGB, he has extremely close relations with its latest incarnation,
the FSB (Federal Service Bureau of the Russian Federation). He has come down
heavily on any form of opposition, and the anarchist movement in Russia has
suffered, with anarchist militants, arrested tortured and given heavy prison
sentences. The Putin regime is massing large numbers of troops on Ukraine's
borders for a number of reasons. The domestic situation is far from healthy and
the Covid pandemic has aggravated this. Putin is wary of growing discontent and
hopes that his belligerent attitude will unite the Russian masses behind him and
make them forget their economic woes. This is a gamble, as the Russian masses are
in general not keen to engage in warfare with their fellow Slavs in Ukraine, and
remember the disastrous consequences of the war in Afghanistan, when Russian
troops sent in to save the pro-Russian regime there were bogged down for years
with massive casualties.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of republics emerged that
had separated from the Russian Federation. Among these was Ukraine, the largest
in terms of landmass and the most important in terms of industrial development,
an industrial development that had reached its climax under Stalin and his
successors.

The fall of the Soviet Union seriously weakened Russia but thanks to rising oil
prices coupled with the rise to power of Putin, it began to re-assert itself. It
was determined to control and influence the surrounding countries on its borders,
both for defence reasons and to re-affirm its control over those regions which it
had established after World War Two.

The political-military alliance it had established with its satellites, the
Warsaw Pact, was dissolved. However, the corresponding political-military
alliance developed by the United States and the Western European powers, NATO,
was not wound up and remains an instrument of both the USA and various component
Western countries. In fact, NATO sought to increase its influence and has
intervened in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya. Despite promising the Russian regime
that it would not expand its influence east of what was East Germany, it has
invested its forces in the countries surrounding Russia, including the Baltic States.

NATO is an aggressive military machine, not a body there to passively defend the
West. It has intervened in Libya, in Afghanistan and Iraq. It actively seeks to
recruit not just former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia into its
alliance, but also so called neutral countries like Finland and Sweden, both very
close to Russia. It demands that each component country of NATO spends at least
2% of its Gross Domestic Product on military expenditure.

At home here, Johnson and the Tories have attempted to divert attention away from
the whirlpool of scandals that is pulling them down. The British spook agency,
MI6, has claimed Russia is preparing to install a puppet regime in Ukraine. The
Labour Party of Keir Starmer have joined in with the sabre rattling.

However, NATO itself is unstable. The predominantly Slavic countries of Croatia
and Bulgaria, who have membership of NATO, have indicated that they would send no
troops into any possible conflict in Ukraine. Germany, and to a slightly lesser
extent France, have shown a reluctance to be involved in this.

As for the government in Ukraine, it contains several far right ministers keen on
reviving reactionary, fascistic and anti-Semitic sentiment in that region.

No taking sides in this conflict. Neither the Putin regime nor the NATO military
machine and the reactionary Ukrainian government. Mobilisation against any war
moves. Our real enemy is the class enemy, the ruling classes, whether in
Washington, Whitehall, Moscow or Kyiv.

P.S.

In an interview with The Commoner, the Ukrainian anarchist grouping, Assembly,
have stated that:

"It may surprise you, but we know almost no one here who is interested in such
news, and even fewer who take it seriously. For the most part, people are worried
about exorbitant energy bills that are leading to more and more houses having
their heating switched off, and enterprises to working or going into the shadow
sector precarising their workers. Ukrainian gas is mostly exported to Europe,
while energy carriers for power plants are bought from Russia and the occupied
part of Donbass. So you can imagine why we would be sceptical about these horror
forecasts from the Western press. It's true that we are on the verge of social
collapse, but it won't be caused by a military conflict... There is no doubt that
Putin's regime is now playing the same role of a continental gendarme as did
Russian Tsarism under Nicholas I. You are also absolutely right that before 1917
there was 1914, when all of Europe thought that a small victorious war would last
a couple of weeks, only to result in a world-revolutionary wave ending in 1923.
With this in mind, we can see why the imperialist politicians and corporations
are wary all the more that a military clash in the very centre of Europe will
again lead to a comparable social explosion in their countries (at least in the
USA - taking into account the rise of revolutionary struggle there during the
last years). So the world leaders intend to divide spheres of influence
peacefully and rattle their weapons just to facilitate their negotiations. The
pandemic has shown that the modern capitalist order is a Colossus with feet of
clay - and the very fact that the world has entered a new era of global
repartition confirms this with all clarity.

For example, Ukraine also conducts military exercises on the Polish border and
Ukrainian officials glorify those who carried out the genocide of the Poles
during the Second World War. So what - do you really think that Ukraine is
preparing to attack Poland? Neither do we..."

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2022/01/29/ukraine-neither-nato-nor-moscow/
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#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ARGENTINA #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Argentina, federacion anarquista de rosario: 2022 year to resist the adjustment of the IMF and the advance of those above FAR position (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 A new year begins and despite expectations nothing has changed. Last December was

lived in the framework of the social, economic and health crisis that has
engulfed our country for a long time. However, in addition to the heat and
humidity, this January did not let up. As we have already pointed out, we arrived
at this beginning of the year with a social context marked by a poverty rate that
reaches almost 50% of the population. Hunger and infrastructural deficiencies in
popular neighborhoods throughout the country are the order of the day.
Underemployment and informal employment have been gaining ground by leaps and
bounds over regular employment, while wages are losing in the face of inflation
that does not fall below 50% year-on-year. In addition, living conditions worsen
due to the lack of light and the difficulty of access to drinking water, all
accentuated by the extreme weather, in a context of global warming, extractivism
and capitalist depredation of the environment.

In this sense, it seems opportune not so much to analyze the situations that have
been happening in recent years, which allow us to understand the current state of
affairs, but rather to think about what the struggles that will open up in our
country in the coming months will be. Of course, always paying special attention
to those spaces where the militancy of the Anarchist Federation of Rosario is
promoting organization and struggle, and where our conjunctural reading will give
us clues to intervene.

As the covers of all the newspapers indicate, the agenda for the first quarter
will be marked by negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Regardless
of whether the government manages to get its proposal accepted or if it finally
reformulates it to form the Fund, the reality is that we will be the ones from
below who will pay the consequences of the multi-year adjustment plan that will
end up being imposed.

In this context we can identify some axes in the agenda of struggles that will
have to pay special attention:

-Resistance to the adjustment, from neighborhood, union and student
organizations: we must be in a constant state of alert and mobilize against any
measure that is detrimental to our rights and living conditions. Only by fighting
in the streets will we be able to preserve our gains.

-Defense of wages: many working sectors will shortly begin joint negotiation, we
will have to fight not to lose against inflation and increases. We have already
closed a year where the vast majority of sectors lost purchasing power in wages.
It will also be necessary to fight for working conditions that protect health and
defend workers at this stage of the pandemic, where the urgency of employers to
"decree the end" of the pandemic is strongly felt.

-Combating job insecurity: In the agenda of the fight against the neoliberal
adjustment, it cannot be lacking to confront job insecurity, the outsourcing of
certain functions and informal employment. Understanding that labor
precariousness crosses all sectors of work to a greater or lesser extent, the
fight must be for labor regularization and recognition within the corresponding
collective labor agreement and their defense, always betting on unity among all.
the workers.

-Right to protest: as the previous points indicate, without a doubt 2022 will be
a year to fight and resist the advance of the adjustment. Beyond certain
bureaucratic sectors that aim at conciliation, the unions will have to be
protagonists of the resistance, as a historic tool of struggle for the workers.
Then it will also be necessary to surround all attempts at repression,
persecution of protest and discipline with solidarity (as we have seen in recent
months, for example, in Chubut or the province of Buenos Aires). Completely stop
any advance that limits our right to mobilize. Here we cannot fail to point out
the moves of the Santa Fe government in discounting the days of unemployment in
the last month of December, as an intimidation to the workers who did not accept
a totally insufficient salary offer. We must also keep in mind the judicial
persecution to which the UNC students brought to trial for taking over the
faculty are being subjected.

-Defense of public education: after two years of the coronavirus pandemic, it
seems that governments are now agreeing to return to full attendance at all
levels of education. This will make us see what conditions our places of study
and work are in after two years of intermittence and provisional measures. We
will be the students and education workers who defend and will defend public
education and we will have to fight to make it accessible and of quality for all.

-For better living conditions: the extreme heat also exposed the aggravation of
the energy crisis in Argentina. But beyond that, the infrastructural conditions
in general are increasingly unbearable in many neighborhoods. As we have already
mentioned, access to drinking water, electricity, pavement, public transport are
just some of the axes on which we must fight in our neighborhoods. Added to this
is also access to land, where the scenarios of repression continue in different
provinces, without substantive solutions to the needs of populations that live
overcrowded and in extremely precarious conditions.

-Defense of common goods and against extractivism: Another axis where major
measures of struggle were seen in recent years was the environmental one.
Currently, after the example given in Chubut at the end of 2021, we are in full
conflict against new extractivist projects (marine oil, lithium) whose
consequences and risks are far from being analyzed and consulted with the
population, and whose millionaire profits will only be distributed   among the
big transnationals. The advance of extractivism and the depredation of the
environment will continue to grow and resistance will be taken over by the agenda
of popular organizations.

-Against sexist violence and for effective access to abortion: For years the
fight against sexist violence has been gaining strength in the street and
increasingly widespread rejection, however this does not have an impact on a real
decrease in situations of violence experienced by women and dissidents.   It will
then be part of the struggle agenda to continue the anti-patriarchal agitation as
well as to watch over and fight for the real implementation of the gains
achieved, as is the case of the abortion law that continues to find limits in its
implementation, still far from being a tangible reality throughout the country.

These are some of the possible axes of struggle for this 2022, a year that has
just started but already gives us a clue to think about the challenges that those
from below will have to go through so as not to lose even more in the framework
of the social and health crisis. . From organized anarchism we believe that
keeping this agenda in mind will give us tools to strengthen resistance from the
organizations where we are active, to also surround the struggles of different
sectors with solidarity and unity. Betting on collective construction, in the
long term with a strategy that allows us to resist the advance of those from
above but without stopping looking on the horizon for the socialist and
libertarian society that we yearn for.

Up those who fight!

Anarchist Federation of Rosario

http://federacionanarquistaderosario.blogspot.com/2022/01/2022-ano-para-resistir-el-ajuste-del.html
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#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #SPAIN #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Spain, cnt #429 Editorial| - Let's imagine a good world Garlic Antonio Carter - In memory of comrade José Manuel Lara (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 Slippery, obtuse, generic, old, strange, complex, philosophical, interpretable,

controversial, useless, utopian... these are common adjectives when someone who
claims to be on the left is asked what the word emancipation means... Diagnosis
of a problem. A serious problem, because it is about imagination: political
imagination on the one hand, and utopian imagination on the other. Politics, as
modes of collective action that question the existing social and political order.
Utopian, in terms of the ability to create and build coexistence-fair and free
alternatives.
In its verbal form «emancipate», the RAE proposes 2 meanings, concise but dense
in its meaning, although somewhat «old» in its statements: 1. Release of parental
authority, guardianship or servitude. 2. Free yourself from any type of
subordination or dependency.

If we look closely, the first meaning is strictly legal or institutional and,
therefore, essentially paternalistic: something or someone liberates whoever
from... The second meaning, fortunately, calls for action, it is not known
whether it is individual or collective. or both. , which is freed "from any type
of subordination or dependency". The first speaks of a "superior" instance that
defines and regulates the act and fact of "emancipating oneself". The second
invites autonomous, individual or collective action.

The double definition of the Academy has the virtue of placing the act of
emancipating oneself in the context of what one must "free" oneself from. Hence
the problematic character of the term, since it necessarily appeals to the prior
reflection of what each one thinks, feels or wishes to emancipate. The vices of
the definition are, however, correlative to the two meanings. On the one hand,
there is the intrinsic ambiguity of who is the subject of emancipation: an
individual or a collective subject. And, on the other hand, if such a subject is
passive ("emancipated") or active ("emancipated").

Therefore, the questions are diverse: What is there to be emancipated from? Do
you set me free or do I set myself free? Is it basically an individual or
essentially collective act?

But more worrying, if not important, is to ask: why should one be emancipated?
The "what for" places us in the always uncomfortable position of thinking,
creating and inventing an emancipated horizon. An exercise that seems more
literary than sociopolitical, since it is assumed that the population is "cured"
of the disease of utopias, and therefore it is necessary to be realistic,
pragmatic and possible, without the need to appeal to maximum horizons of social
equality. and full freedom Well, whoever, in their right mind, dares to define,
in an intelligible and useful way, another type of society that is not the
existing one, improved perhaps with a little more freedom and with a little less
inequality. We have been inoculated with the fear of imagining ourselves as free
and equal beings, in a self-organized society by free and equal people, because
so much imagination becomes counterproductive: it is not that without realizing
it we are opening the algorithm of dystopias, which of course we do . they do not
want to.

But there is no better antidote to dystopia than a good dose of utopia. In the
plural, since utopian horizons are and must always be open, not unique, but
multiple and diverse, since there are no more reliable, credible and effective
horizons of freedom and equality than those built by people who think, feel and
want to emancipate themselves , from below, in a concrete context and social reality.

Imagination is the spring to articulate new ways of coexisting, living and
relating. Putting emancipation at the center of the debate is to open the daily
trade union and social struggles to the reflection of its ultimate consequences.
It is to question our own ideas to glimpse the possible alternatives of how to
build ourselves individually and socially with parameters that are not those of
exploitation, oppression, manipulation and prevailing authoritarianism.

Although perplexity assails us, there are so many stubborn reasons to speak of
emancipation, that by doing so we are carrying out an emancipatory act in itself.

https://www.cnt.es/noticias/imaginemos-un-mundo-bueno/
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#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #BRAZIL #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Brazil. Rio De Janeiro: Grassroots Organization Movement - CALL FOR ACT AGAINST INCREASE IN TICKET (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]

 Year after year, workers have to face the terrible conditions of public transport

in Rio de Janeiro. Amid megalomaniacal projects and broken promises, the
situation does not improve. ---- Even so, year after year, the month of January
is marked by announcements of price adjustments, always increasing the passage to
inexplicable figures. ---- 2022 started no different! Supervia announced that, as
of February 2, the ticket increase to ABSURDOS R$7 will come into effect! ---- In
February 2021, this same concessionaire announced an increase in the ticket to
R$5.90, which ended up not being put into practice due to popular mobilization
that managed to reduce the readjustment to R$5. Even so, an absurd and
inexplicable price, given the situation of unemployment and reduced purchasing
power of the working class.

Every year we pay more for a service that does not receive maintenance, which has
a precarious infrastructure, especially in stations far from the Center, and
where we face overcrowded trips every day!

Therefore, as we did in February of last year, we need to be on the streets
denouncing the abusive prices and the terrible condition of public transport. We
need to be on the streets to stop this increase and fight for quality public
transport!

January 25th at 4 pm at Central!

https://www.facebook.com/organizacaodebaserio/photos/a.372677349981716/1040652709850840
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#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, USI-CIT ROMA PINELLI: RIDERS. NOT ONLY EXPLOITED (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 During the pandemic, riders, bicycle and scooter delivery drivers are doing an

important job in delivering food, especially food, and are allowing many
businesses to survive. A real subordinate job, even if not recognized, governed
by an algorithm that decides who to call and who not by creating a ranking based
on the amount of responses to calls through an app. Hard, tiring and poorly paid
work often paid with atypical contracts almost completely devoid of protection
regarding the health and safety of the worker.
The supplementary contract signed by CGIL CISL Uil on 29/3/21 must be modified
mainly in these terms:

Confirmation of application of art. 14 of the supplementary contract, with
reference above all to the commencement of the salary increase according to the
dictates of the national collective labor agreement "logistics, transport, goods
and shipments" with an essential promise that at the expiry of the supplement,
scheduled for 31/3/24, can no longer derogate from the contractual pay of the
aforementioned ccnl
Flat rate reimbursement for use of your mobile phone
Flat rate reimbursement for use of own vehicle, in addition to the mileage
reimbursement already paid
Elimination of the concept of starting point (departure from home or macro area)
and the detection of the current presence (verification through a colleague
hierarchically superior) with the possibility of using multimedia equipment as
indicated in the agreement 18/7/18 of the national collective labor agreement
Elimination of the rules inherent in the company regulation which are in contrast
with the aforementioned national collective bargaining agreement
Forecast of a rain bonus
Forecast of the use of the car (now prohibited) to deliver to the total economic
detriment of the worker but by virtue of greater safety at work
Inserting the meal voucher
Recognition of subordinate work also to accrue the right to a pension and any
period of paid illness
No to corporate welfare but real increases in paychecks or spendable money.
No to supplementary pensions
If the requests are not accepted

Appeal for the full application of the national collective labor agreement
"Logistics, Transport, Goods and Shipping" as the supplement of 29/3/21 was
signed by trade unions and movements that did not have significant representation
among the riders.

USES CIT ROMA PINELLI

usicitromapinelli@gmail.com

Agreement of the confederal unions and the government on the legal recognition of
the work of riders: only smoke and mirrors:

https://usi-cit.org/riders-non-solo-sfruttati/
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