Today's Topics:
1. Britain, freedom news - Liverpool Solfed: Case study: A
campaign over insecure work (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. anarkismo.net: Land, law and decades of devastating
douchebaggery by Jonathan Payn - ZACF (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. Britain, glasgow anarchists: Glasgow Events workers theatre
weekender and lots more (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. US, black rose fed: Capital's Destruction of the
Environment: Marx's Inadequate Response (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Czech, afed: On the anniversary of the Israeli Apartheid
[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. France, Alternative Libertaire - policy, What Macron is
preparing for us. What are we preparing for Macron ? In
Montreuil, on 13 June by AL Montreuil (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Liverpool Solfed writes about its campaign against as the firm attempts to ape companies
like Deliveroo and Uber in casualising jobs into a self-employed "gig economy" model ----
At Easter, Liverpool-SolFed made a call out to protest against working conditions at
Sandemans, a company which offers "Free Tours" in Liverpool and across Europe. ---- "Free
Tour" does not mean that guides are volunteers. In Sandeman's case they are ‘self-employed
workers' and their incomes are based on the tips that are given at the end of the tour.
Out of those tips workers have to pay a variable amount of money per tourist to the
company. This is, according to Sandemans, a "marketing fee." ---- Sandemans' business
model seems to be the new fashion among the many business. Some people call it the "Gig
Economy." Companies don´t have employees but "use the services" of self-employees, meaning
they have no responsibilities and don't have to give any rights like holidays, sick-pay,
pension, job security, etc
Liverpool SolFed, through the initiative of a former guide, called out for a campaign to
denounce the working conditions of Sandemans guides and to inform the users of the reality
behind the "Free Tours."
A group of supporters, went to the meeting point at St George's Hall, to distribute
information among the guides and the tourists. Actions also took place in other cities
that Sandemans operates like Madrid, Barcelona and Prague.
The management's answer was the expected - denying everything and threatening legal action
for defamation in case we kept the campaign. And given the gig economy context, it is true
that you can't use words like "dismissed" or say that your company "forces" you to do
anything when you are self-employed.
As we have done in other cases, we want to say loud and clear that the so-called "Gig
Economy" is an attack on workers' rights. The self-employed status, in this case, is
nothing but a trick which does not benefit the workers but puts them in a vulnerable
position. It is a joke to talk about "flexibility" or "free configuration of your working
time" when is your employer - customer in their language - decision to give you work or
not without any explanation.
In Sandemans the insecurity is even worse as the pay is tips-based (and the "Free Tour"
publicity does not help this). As even management acknowledge, it's not the job to have if
you want to make long-term plans like having children.
We wonder what is going to happen with long term-plans when any job-security definitively
disappears thanks to innovative companies like Sandemans?
Originally from liverpoolsf.org
https://freedomnews.org.uk/case-study-a-campaign-over-insecure-work/
------------------------------
Message: 2
On corruption, ‘violent' protest and the probably quite unexceptional case of Freedom Park
The struggle of the black working class majority of Freedom Park, South Africa, is not
just for land on which to build housing - although that is obviously a central issue and
key demand; nor is it just against the accompanying political and police violence and
intimidation. It is a struggle against the injustice, violence and corruption of a system
that puts the power, privileges and profits of a few before the lives and wellbeing of the
majority. ---- Women constructing a shelter on occupied land at Bush Koppies. Photo:
Lekhetho Mtetwa (ZACF) ---- Land, law and decades of devastating douchebaggery:
On corruption, ‘violent' protest and the probably quite unexceptional case of Freedom Park
by Jonathan Payn (ZACF)
I.
On the evening of Saturday 6 May - two days before the neighbouring communities of
Eldorado Park and Freedom Park made news headlines, again (with many more soon to follow),
for the so-called violent protests that had broken out there over lack of housing, service
delivery and employment - people living in backyards in Freedom Park camped out on a
vacant plot of municipal land standing idle adjacent to the township. The following
afternoon small, scattered groups of people - mostly women, notably - could be seen
peacefully and laboriously constructing makeshift shelters intended to shield themselves
and, presumably, later their families from the elements as winter approaches and
temperatures drop. Nearby, women and men of different ages were beginning to gather,
buzzing in anticipation of a meeting to discuss the occupation and how to make it succeed.
A few black-working-class-life-under-apartheid-capitalism-hardened older women, evidently
among those that had camped out the night before, sat by small fires outside makeshift
tents resembling teepees. Set against a backdrop of smoke caused by the smoldering remains
of veld fire it reminded one of a scene from a Wild West movie. One where a bunch of
douchebags - able-bodied, cisgendered, heterosexual, white, male, settler-colonist ones in
all likelihood - raid and pillage a settlement of unsuspecting (but also not to be
romanticised) black people; leaving behind them hitherto unimagined devastation and misery
- and precious few survivors to pick up the pieces. Only in this story the devastation and
misery is the result of 365 years of pillaging by the original douches plus over 20 years
- and counting - by the new improved ones (with others salivating on the sidelines at the
prospect of a turn to gorge at the trough).
For some of the people in this scene it would have been the third time that they had
attempted to occupy this plot of land and some were literally building their shacks on the
burned out remains of their last attempt to do so; which was violently evicted by the
South African Police Service (SAPS) and Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD)
- allegedly accompanied by members of the local ANC leadership - after they occupied the
land, for the second time, on 24 March. Seventeen people were reportedly injured and five
arrested in that attempt when it was broken by the state on 3 April. Building materials
and personal items belonging to those that had erected shelters on the vacant land were
confiscated by the police during the eviction. An urgent court interdict to have the
confiscated property returned was filed - although at the time of writing none of it had
been - and the following day hundreds of Freedom Park residents rallied outside the
Johannesburg High Court "demanding the return of all the property violently taken by the
Metro and SAPS from the people". This second attempt to occupy the plot of unused land in
question, known as Bush Koppies, came just days after a march of about 200 Freedom Park
residents, organised under the banner of the Freedom Park Backyard Dwellers Association,
to Luthuli House on 20 March "in an attempt to force[the]ANC government to return land to
the Black Majority" and to grant Freedom Park backyard dwellers the right to occupy vacant
land on the outskirts of the township.
The first attempt by the landless residents of Freedom Park to occupy Bush Koppies in
order to build housing was in July 2016. The Freedom Park residents that staged this
action were, then too, subjected to police harassment and intimidation and members of the
Public Order Policing unit - who were seen arriving with local leaders of the ANC Women's
League and were allegedly called in by them - threatened to use rubber bullets if people
did not disperse, which they reluctantly did, before proceeding to demolish their shelters
and, then too, confiscate their building materials.
One young man that participated in the occupation was physically attacked by a group of
what is believed to have been local ANC supporters while on his way back to his backyard
residence in Freedom Park after a meeting at Bush Koppies. He was taken to a local clinic
and fortunately did not sustain any serious injuries.
On 3 September, an estimated 5 000 people from Freedom Park marched "against police
harassment and for access to land" in response to the violence, intimidation and
harassment those involved in the occupation had been subjected to at the hands of the
police during the eviction of and in the weeks following the July occupation. Police
conduct which, a memorandum of demands intended for the Premier of Gauteng said,
"undermines the dignity and fundamental human rights of the black majority".
But the struggle of the black working class majority of Freedom Park goes back further
than the struggle for Bush Koppies. It is a struggle not just for land on which to build
housing - although that is obviously a central issue and key demand - nor just against the
accompanying political and police violence and intimidation; but against the injustice,
violence and corruption of a system and the parasitic elite it creates that put the power,
privileges and profits of a few before the lives and well-being of the majority. It is a
struggle against a system that - despite the lamentable and, hopefully, transitory general
lack of coordination, class solidarity and sense of common cause between struggling
communities - recognises no distinction of township, province or administration in its
insatiable drive to pillage and oppress for power and profit.
II.
Freedom Park, itself started as a land occupation by backyard dwellers from Soweto in
1994, is an attractive area for developers: it is close to Johannesburg and Southgate
Mall, to Soweto, the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital and Bara taxi rank; as well as having
easy access to the N1, N12, M1 and Golden Highway. Because of its strategic location the
developers contracted by the government initially wanted to have the people occupying the
land forcefully relocated to Vlakfontein - 12km away in the wrong direction (i.e. away
from Johannesburg and, like most other black townships, any semblance of commercial or
economic activity or prospect of development) - so that they could profit from potential
new residential developments in the area. Developments which would target significantly
higher income earners than the people that had occupied what was to become Freedom Park.
As history and the possibilities of class struggle would have it, however, the new
residents instead organised themselves and successfully resisted the proposed relocation
and were given permanent stands with toilets and running water in 2001. The settlement was
electrified in 2003 and the government started building RDP houses in 2004.
However, rather than going to the people that had occupied the land and won permanent
stands through struggle, the RDP houses seemingly began to be sold or allocated to people
from outside the community who were not on the waiting list. Residents suspected
corruption and that some officials and contractors were allocating houses to people who
had money to buy them, were card-carrying ANC members or in exchange for promises of votes
and political favours or support - not to those on the waiting list. Needless to say this
caused a good deal of discontent among many of the new township's residents.
Then, in July 2014, Freedom Park residents staged reportedly (by the mainstream media)
‘violent' protests against electricity cut-offs after the township had been without
electricity for about a week. Frustrated by a lack of response to their pleas for help
from either of the councillors of the two wards that Freedom Park straddles, residents
hoped that protest would attract the attention of higher up authorities and spur them to
intervene to resolve the community's energy crisis. Instead, leaders of the local ANC were
reportedly seen consorting with the police, who later shot at protesters with rubber
bullets, hospitalising one person. It was also alleged that local ANC leaders had gone
around the community telling people that the reason for the electricity cut-off was that
foreign shop owners were using big industrial refrigerators which were draining the
township's power supply - thereby inciting xenophobic attacks and looting of foreign-owned
stores (the reported ‘violent protest') in an attempt to deflect attention away from the
real issue.
Following this struggle, residents of Freedom Park developed a list of demands, through a
grassroots consultation process, which they submitted to the MEC of Human Settlements in
October 2014, giving him seven days to respond. Failure to do so would result in protest
action. As is to be expected, however - given the prevailing arrogance on the part of our
political elites and their general contempt and disregard for the black working class
majority outside election times - the MEC did not respond to the demands.
So, in February 2015, Freedom Park residents marched to the municipal offices in Eldorado
Park to deliver a memorandum of demands to the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements
demanding a forensic audit be conducted of all housing development and allocations in
Freedom Park; as well as demanding a moratorium on all development projects in the
township by the Department of Human Settlement until such a forensic investigation had
been completed. The memorandum was received by a representative of the Department who
promised a response within seven days.
Five months later, however, the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements had still not
dignified the community with a response and community organisers started collecting
signatures for a "group petition to the Gauteng Legislature". The petition concluded:
"There is no transparency with regards to beneficiaries and we suspect that some officials
and contractors are selling RDP houses. There is also no transparency on the awarding of
tenders for development projects and the poor quality of construction.
"We demand all the information, plans and designs with regards to our housing development
in Freedom Park.
"We demand that the community must be given the right to actively participate in and
control the decision-making process with regards to all community development in Freedom
Park."
On the way back from Eldorado Park the march was attacked by thugs allegedly associated
with or hired by the local political elite, leaving one person in intensive care. For
months thereafter residents were prevented from holding community meetings, community
organisers were threatened and harassed by people loyal to or in the pay of the local
elite and some were arrested on spurious grounds. Leaders of the local ANC and its civic
arm, the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), have been accused by residents
of paying criminal elements within the township or giving them drugs and alcohol to
disrupt community meetings with violence - or the threat of violence - in order to prevent
or discourage residents from organising to expose the alleged corruption and hold those
responsible to account.
In the face of this violence and intimidation residents agreed, at a meeting in November
2015, "on the need to use legal institutions to enforce the constitutional rights
guaranteed in the constitution to advance the struggle against corruption and community
exclusion in all housing development projects at Freedom Park. The community further
agreed to intensify community mobilisation, organisation and unity of our community across
party political lines in a fight for transparency, accountability, community ownership and
control of all developmental projects happening in Freedom Park and intensify the fight
against corruption."
To this end and in response to the oppressive, unsafe and unhealthy conditions of
overcrowding caused by an influx of people into the township - which has led to many
people renting shacks in others' backyards - the Freedom Park Backyard Dwellers
Association was later started to take forward the struggle for land on which to build
housing. On 27 April this year, in building toward the third attempt to occupy Bush
Koppies, the Freedom Park Backyard Dwellers Association held an "Unfreedom Day" rally to
promote and build support for their struggle for land and housing. A statement announcing
the event declared:
"As the country celebrates a freedom for which so many sacrificed, we want the country to
know that some of us continue to sacrifice - through pitiful wages and squalor-like living
conditions. During rain, heat and cold, we live in conditions that expose us to the
elements, diminish our well-being and put our children at risk. We have no privacy, no
dignity, no freedom.
We call on media, civil society, political parties to join us and heed the demands we have
peacefully made for so long. Our people are suffering - instead of celebrating a hollow
freedom we demand that they hear our pain."
III.
Despite having sent the invitation to literally hundreds of media contacts, however, no
journalists from the mainstream media were seen to be present on the day to cover the
event - maybe because it was expected to be peaceful, which would contradict the
mainstream media's narrative of disaffected black working class township residents as
violent and unreasonable. Or maybe because the association responsible for the rally
actively tries to expropriate land, not just rhetorically in populist politicking. (Not
exactly something the ruling class would like gaining traction.) No political parties
actively supported the rally, perhaps with the exception of a minor one to which many of
the community organisers are affiliated. So-called civil society also did not turn up in
any noticeable numbers. Presumably they were all too busy celebrating their hollow freedom.
And that, dear reader, is why Freedom Park, Eldorado Park, Joe Slovo, Ennerdale, Kliptown,
Orange Farm and a host of other townships south of Johannesburg recently went up in flames
(as they no doubt will again) and were shut down, for days in succession, gripped by
so-called violent protests. Because our people are suffering and no one hears their pain.
Because they have tried every other means at their disposal to get the government to
listen to and respect them and address their grievances and have either been sent from
pillar to post or their pleas have simply fallen on deaf, disinterested or self-interested
ears. Because they are frustrated and desperate and anything less than so-called violent
protest, having exhausted other purported channels, would amount to resigning themselves
to passively accepting a life of continued suffering and misery at the hands of a corrupt
self-serving parasitic elite. A life probably cut short by an easily preventable death,
like burning to death in a shack fire, in a backyard of some overcrowded, underdeveloped
township.
A township where the hope so many people had for a better life after apartheid has been
shat upon by the very people that had promised to provide it. A township where the black
working class is deliberately kept in a state of poverty and oppression, then labeled
‘violent' and threatened with rubber bullets (if not live ammunition), tear gas and prison
if they dare fight for their constitutional and human rights. A township where more and
more people are forced, against their will and well-being, to live in unsafe and unhealthy
conditions in informal settlements and backyard shacks despite there being vacant and
unused land standing idle nearby. A township where the majority of people are unemployed
and the wages of the lucky few who actually have a job are in decline due to anti-worker
policies designed to increase profit rates for the rich at the expense of the poor. A
township where many people do not have access to basic services or decent housing while
the government actively redirects money that could have been used for such services and
development upward, away from the black working class and to the ruling class (white and
now black capitalists, top state officials and the political elite), by taxing the black
working class through VAT and at the same time giving tax breaks to corporations. A
township where government spending on service delivery has either remained the same or
been in decline since the ANC came into power over 20 years ago.
A township where the local government has adopted aggressive cost recovery measures that
have put access to basic services like electricity and water out of reach for increasingly
many residents - cutting those who can't pay for such services off altogether. A township
where the frenzied outsourcing of basic services and development has led to the
establishment of networks of political patronage and clientelism ready to resort to
violence - be it a legalised monopoly on violence in the form of the state, criminal
violence or paramilitary violence - to defend the corrupt ill-gotten interests of a
parasitic elite and suppress any challenges both to their political dominance and the
access this provides them for the looting of state resources. A township where, on a clear
day, one can maybe even see the uninterrupted, unbridled building and maintenance of
infrastructure in the historically white suburbs and for corporations. A township where
black working class residents are subjected daily to a class war from above through
attacks on their rights and well-being by capitalists, top state officials and local
political elites. A township all too common in South Africa.
And therein lies the real violence. In a system that actively and deliberately centralises
wealth and power in the hands of an increasingly small and unaccountable minority and
makes the rich richer by making the poor poorer; in the laws that legalise this crime
against humanity and perpetuate the colonial dispossession of the black working class
majority of their land, and; in the state that upholds and enforces both these laws and
the criminal system they are designed to legalise and protect.
First published on Pambazuka.org
Related Link: http://zabalaza.net
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30323
------------------------------
Message: 3
Whilst the pantomime of representative democracy proceeds, don't let that distract you
from real politics, and the only ways we can truly effect meaningful change - by
organising with the wider class, direct action, solidarity and mutual aid. Vote how you
like on Thursday if that's your thing, but get yourselves along afterwards to A-Chat in
the evening at Glasgow Autonomous Space for informal chat and no-pressure discussion with
anarchists about what we believe and how we see society could be organised for the benefit
of all and the planet, rather than the profits of the few, authoritarian Maybot's control
freakery and destruction of our planet. ---- Workers Theatre is a new project to "liberate
art" and is having a weekend of events 9-11th June. Read more about it at
https://workerstheatre.wordpress.com/manifesto-for-a-workers-theatre/ and see below for
full listings of the weekender.
And we at AFed are super happy to be once again collaborating with one of the many other
great projects in Glasgow. WestGap and AFed are co-hosting a presentation and discussion
on benefits, disability, and the capitalist state on 22nd June, as part of week of action
around austerity and assaults on the benefits system and those unable to work.
Plus plenty more coming up over the next month. As always, email any events you want us to
promote to
glasgowautonomyupdates@lists.riseup.net for inclusion in future mailings.
Take care of yourselves and those around you.
x
***
David Rovics // MacSorleys // June 6th
9pm. Free admission
David Rovics grew up in a family of classical musicians in Wilton, Connecticut, and became
a fan of populist regimes early on. By the early 90's he was a full-time busker in the
Boston subways and by the mid-90's he was traveling the world as a professional
flat-picking rabble-rouser. These days David lives in Portland, Oregon and tours regularly
on four continents, playing for audiences large and small at cafes, pubs, universities,
churches, union halls and protest rallies. He has shared the stage with a veritable who's
who of the left in two dozen countries, and has had his music featured on Democracy Now!,
BBC, Al-Jazeera and other networks. His essays are published regularly on CounterPunch and
elsewhere, and the 200+ songs he makes available for free on the web have been downloaded
more than a million times. Most importantly, he's really good. He will make you laugh, he
will make you cry, he will make the revolution irresistible.
***
Anarchist Social - A-Chat
June 8th. 6-9pm
Many of you who've previously attended A-Fed public discussions will agree the best bit is
the opportunity to have a chat, whether it's about the discussion topic, some current
affairs or your dreams of an anarchist future. This is why we're presenting A-Chat: an
open, unstructured evening full of the finest anarchist chit-chat Glasgow has to offer!
Glasgow Autonomous Space. Tradeston.
http://glasgowautonomous.weebly.com/find-us.html
***
Workers Theatre Weekender
9th -11th of June - Glad Café - Tickets from £3!
http://www.workerstheatre.co.uk/
This is the first ever weekend festival from the Workers Theatre, Scotland's new arts
co-operative, featuring the most exciting new theatre, spoken word, music and strangeness
from Scotland and further afield. With children's events and evening entertainment, social
breakfasts and community workshops, games and plays, the weekender has something for
everyone and welcomes all.
BUY DAY AND WEEKEND PASSES NOW
- Day passes: £10/12 (unwaged / waged)
- Weekend passes: £18/22/30 (unwaged / waged / solidarity price)
BUY TICKETS TO INDIVIDUAL EVENTS
- £3 / £5 / £7 per event (unwaged / waged / solidarity price)
All events at the Glad Cafe, Glasgow, unless otherwise stated.
All venues have step-free access and wheelchair-accessible toilets.
As this event is unfunded, we have not been able to arrange BSL interpretation or
captioning for events, but are committed to doing so whenever we receive public funds.
FRIDAY
5pm: Fat Kid Running by Katherine McMahon, spoken word theatre about radical body love.
Buy tickets!
7pm: Workers Theatre Cabaret, featuring Jenny Lindsay, Juana Adcock, Lewis Sherlock,
Declan Welsh and more. Buy tickets!
SATURDAY
11am: Eaten by Mamoru Iriguchi. A family show about talking to our food. (Venue TBC) Buy
tickets!
1-4pm: Forum Theatre Workshop, Active Enquiry. A participatory session looking at
transformative political theatre. (Venue: Govanhill Baths.)
5pm: The Fair-Ground, Forum Theatre Performance, Active Enquiry
7pm: MEGAPHONE: Two works in progress from our Kickstarter-funded artists-in-residence
9pm: Workers Theatre Cabaret, featuring Beth Frieden, Calum Rodger, Chrissy Barnacle and
more. Buy tickets!
SUNDAY
11am: Brunch Social in a secret location near the Glad Café, all weekender ticket-holders,
artists and Megaphone supporters welcome.
3pm: Panel discussion on the politics of Scottish theatre, details TBC.
5pm: Bambiland, directed by Peter Lorenz.
7pm: MEGAPHONE: Two works in progress from our Kickstarter-funded artists-in-residence
9pm: Farewell toast from the Workers Theatre team
http://www.workerstheatre.co.uk/
***
Girls Rock Glasgow Fundraiser 10th June / 2pm-11pm
Kinning Park Complex. 43 Cornwall Street, G41 1BA
Join GRG for our summer school FUNDRAISER PARTY! All dayer for all ages with bis, Marble
Gods and Breakfast MUFF!
Bored out of your kaftan at the summer pool party? Escape Stepford.
Join us for feminist fun in 3: all ages afternoon of music, make your own lapdog & most
disgusting buffet food competition (meal for 2 prize at The Hug and Pint for that), baked
goods/clothes sale, a licensed early eve karaoke/cocktail hour and a night of noise.
We need funds to make our July Rock School for Girls go fantastically. Proceeds go towards
volunteer's expenses, equipment and venue hire.
Read more about Girls Rock Glasgow here:
https://www.facebook.com/girlsrockglasgow/
***
PeaceCore - 12 hour rave - raising money for Faslane Peace Camp
Biscuit Factory - Edinburgh
June 10th 3pm - 3am
12 hours of rave 3pm-3am!! MASSIVE HARDCORE PARTY IN CELEBRATION OF 35 YEARS OF RESISTANCE
AT FASLANE PEACE CAMP raising money and awarness for the Faslane Peace Camp and calling
for the demilitarisation of the earth, featuring an incredible international line-up!
Pretty version > http://terrorstate.co.uk/peacecore1.html
PeaceCore; to struggle for peace, directly and militantly.
***
Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation
June 18th 7-9pm
Glasgow Autonomous Space.
http://glasgowautonomous.weebly.com/find-us.html
Peter Gelderloos discusses his new book, Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early
State Formation.
According to Worshiping Power, we need to stop thinking of the State as a potential
vehicle for emancipation. From its origins, the State has never been anything other than a
tool to accumulate power. This innovative and partisan study of human social complexity
cuts through inadequate theories of early state formation to uncover social practices and
institutions that have stifled egalitarian forms of self-organization throughout history.
Just as importantly, it shows that the difficulties and consequences of state formation
are not relegated to prehistory. Despite a ubiquity that renders them almost invisible
today, states are constantly trying to augment their power, and all are closer to the
brink of collapse than they would like to let on.
Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist writer originally from Virginia. He is the author of How
Nonviolence Protects the State, Consensus, and Anarchy Works.
________________
"An insightful, sweeping analysis of how and why states have arisen (or haven't),
delivered in sparklingly clear prose. It is everything that an anarchist history should
be: heretical, tentative, and provocative, as well as deeply researched, persuasive, and
above all, relevant." -Kenyon Zimmer, author of Immigrants Against the State
"A work of ethnographic theory that suggests stimulating new avenues of empirical research
and theoretical inquiry. The book is also an excellent read!" -Andrej Grubacic, author of
Living at the Edges of Capitalism
"Gelderloos dares to do what most contemporary thinkers blindly refuse. For far too long
we've been gripped by an unshakable faith in statist politics.... Worshiping Power is not
just a reclamation of our history, it offers a glimpse into the reconvening of our
humanity." -Simon Springer, author of The Anarchist Roots of Geography
"Contemporary radical state theory owes much to an anarchistic ethos. Gelderloos's
important little book surveys and reinterprets this literature, and then gives it a
coherent anarchist politics." -Alex Prichard, University of Exeter
***
Benefits, Disability, and the Capitalist State.
WestGAP and Glasgow Anarchist Federation.
Talk and discussion.
Kinning Park Complex 43 Cornwall St, Glasgow, G41 1BA Glasgow.
Thursday 22nd June, 7-9pm (after the community meal)
As part of the Week of Action organised by Action Against Austerity which this year looks
at the impact of Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Personal Independent Payment (PIP),
WestGAP and the Anarchist Federation will hold a joint event exploring DLA and PIP and the
problems with the changes to these benefits: we will describe what these changes are and
why the government says its implementing them. We will also present our own analysis of
why a capitalist state governing over a capitalist economy would implement these changes,
looking at the logic of austerity and at the way the state defines and redefines
disability for its own, and capitalism's, purposes.
*Please note * This is Not a benefits advice session, for more info on WestGAP and the
support they offer please go to: http://westgap.co.uk/
***
No to militarism stall on Armed Forces Day
June 24th 11-1pm
George Square
https://www.facebook.com/events/620742864791795/
Armed Forces day is seen as fantastic time to promote militarism, this can clearly be seen
with the army organising festivals on the day all around the country. Scotland Against
Militarism seeks to oppose this - join us on the day for a stall showing an alternative
message.
***
Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle + Q&A
24th June. 6-8pm GFT
http://glasgowfilm.org/shows/dispossession-the-great-social-housing-swindle-qanda-nc-12
? SCOTLAND PREMIERE ?
DISPOSSESSION: THE GREAT SOCIAL HOUSING SWINDLE
**PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL START PROMPTLY AT THE ADVERTISED TIME**
For some people, a housing crisis means not getting planning permission for a loft
conversion. For others it means, quite simply, losing their home. Dispossession: The Great
Social Housing Swindle is a feature documentary directed by Paul Sng (Sleaford Mods -
Invisible Britain) and narrated by Maxine Peake, exploring the catastrophic failures that
have led to a chronic shortage of social housing in Britain.
The film focuses on the neglect, demolition and regeneration of council estates across the
UK and investigates how the state works with the private sector to demolish council
estates to build on the land they stand on, making properties that are unaffordable to the
majority of people.
Dispossession is the story of people fighting for their communities, of people who know
the difference between a house and a home, and who believe that housing is a human right,
not an expensive luxury.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Paul Sng (Director), Dr Lisa McKenzie (author
of Getting By), Chris Leslie (Disappearing Glasgow), Jade Murphy (Govanhill Community
Campaign), Rab Harling (artist and filmmaker, Balfron Social Club) and host Dr Kirsteen
Paton (author of Gentrification: A Working-Class Perspective).
* * *
"The housing crisis is one of our nation's biggest scandals and this film shows us it's
deliberate. A must see independent film."
- Michael Sheen
"Perhaps the most important British film since I, Daniel Blake."
- Adrian Lobb, The Big Issue
**********
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------------------------------
Message: 4
All art by William Morris (1834-1896) ---- Kohei Saito, writing in Monthly Review in
2/2016 on Marx's "Ecological Notebooks" (1868), distinguishes between "first-stage" and
"second-stage" eco-socialists, with the former, an earlier wave, recognizing Karl Marx's
passing references to environmentalism but considering him overall to be a Promethean, and
the latter instead claiming Marx to have been a profound ecological thinker. The main
theorist presenting this alternative reading has been John Bellamy Foster, author of
Marx's Ecology (2000) and The Ecological Revolution (2009), co-author of The Ecological
Rift (2010) and Marx and the Earth (2016/7), and editor of Monthly Review. ---- Foster
bases his argumentation for second-stage ecosocialism on Marx's statement at the end of
"Machinery and Large-Scale Industry" in Capital, vol. 1, in the section on
industrial-capitalist agriculture, where Marx states that, besides "concentrat[ing]" the
proletariat-the "historical motive power of society"-in the cities through the enclosure
of the commons and the dispossession of the peasantry, capitalism "disturbs the metabolic
interaction between man and the Earth" in the sense that it exhausts the soil by demanding
unsustainable extraction from it (637-8).
Capitalism thus proceeds by "undermining the original sources of all wealth-the soil and
the worker" (638). Marx even states that "[t]he more a country proceeds from large-scale
industry as the background of its development, as in[...]the United States, the more rapid
is this process of destruction" (638, emphasis added). Yet he views such environmental
degradation as dynamically "compel[ling the]systematic restoration[of the metabolic
interaction]as a regulative law of social production."
Marx isn't very specific here about what a movement to restore the "natural metabolic
interaction" between humanity and the rest of nature would look like, and he doesn't
clarify whether environmental sustainability would be assured in a post-capitalist
society, or whether the question of the domination of nature goes beyond the humanistic
struggle for the liberation of the proletariat. Initially, it must be said that a passing
comment on the capitalist degradation of the soil does not make Marx a radical ecologist,
especially when juxtaposed with many of his more Promethean statements. In this sense, the
first-stage ecosocialists make a convincing argument. Let's not forget that this famous
statement on the soil comes in the same volume wherein Marx effectively endorses the very
dispossession of the peasantry for "dialectically" giving rise to capitalism and
thereafter socialism/communism, per stages theory of history. In "Machinery and
Large-Scale Industry," Marx explicitly calls large-scale industrial-capitalist agriculture
revolutionary, "for the reason that it annihilates the bulwark of the old society, the
‘peasant,' and substitutes for him the wage-labourer" (637), while in "Communist
Manifesto," Marx and Engels deploy similar reasoning in lauding the bourgeoisie for having
destroyed the putative "idiocy of rural life."
In general, if we consider the amount of text dedicated to environmental issues in Marx's
oeuvre as a whole, we see that communist humanism greatly outweighs concern for ecology in
Marx's philosophy, particularly when the two concerns clash, as they do in bourgeois and
Marxist analyses alike ("jobs-versus-nature").[1]Yet in his youth, Marx does favorably
cite Thomas Münzer's declaration that, under capitalist dominion, "all creatures have been
turned into property," whereas they must "become free." He even argues that the capitalist
"view of nature" implies "real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature." In
addition, Marx defines communism in the 1844 Manuscripts as "the genuine resolution of the
conflict between[humanity]and nature" as well as among humans, and in Capital, he cites a
report lamenting the invasion and colonization of the Scottish wilderness by rabbits,
squirrels, and rats following the enclosure of the commons, which had previously
maintained much richer biodiversity (894n33). However, we should likely make a distinction
between the young Marx and his dominant older self in these terms, for quite soon after
his youthful humanist phase, Marx came to uncritically endorse industrialism in order to
accommodate his deterministic theory of history. For example, in "The Communist
Manifesto," Marx and Engels enthusiastically praise the bourgeoisie for having
"[s]ubject[ed]nature's forces to man[sic]" and developed "machinery, application of
chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric
telegraphs,[the]clear[cutting]of whole continents for cultivation,[and the]canalisation of
rivers"! The pair thus celebrate the bourgeoisie for having created the "material base"
that these theorists think is supposedly necessary for the achievement of socialism. Yet
this very bias, which permeates Marx's Capital,[2]is itself very questionable: it goes
back to Marx's conflict with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847),
where the German claims, against his French counterpart, that socialism can follow only
after the full development of capitalism. In Capital, he declares that the goal of
associated labor "requires that society possess a material foundation[...]which
in[its]turn[is]the natural and spontaneous product of a long and tormented historical
development" (173). He goes further to claim the technical basis of industrial
manufacturing as "revolutionary, whereas all earlier modes of production were essentially
conservative" and to define the "social control and regulation of the forces of nature" as
a central part of the anti-capitalist alternative (601-2, 617, 927). Capital's
revolutionism is ultimately revealed for Marx in that it expands, "trains, unites, and
organizes" the proletariat (449, 929).
But this approach begs the question: why could communism not instead develop historically
in an egalitarian fashion through cooperative labor and the collective advancement of
technology, or agrarian socialism? Why is it necessary to have capitalism as a
precondition to liberation? Marx's mechanical reasoning here is not convincing, and
frankly, it is anti-ecological, oppressive, and racist: see Engels' comments (1848)
praising the U.S. settler-colonial state for having appropriated California and the U.S.
Southwest through war from "the lazy Mexicans[sic], who could not do anything with it."
Engels is effusive on this imperial dispossession:
"[T]he energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase
the means of circulation,[and]in a few years will concentrate a dense population and
extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create
large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to
San Francisco,[and]for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization[...]."
While this is Engels writing, such productivist reasoning is not absent from Marx, whose
early journalistic articles on India condemn the "brutalizing worship of nature" he
claimed as being evident in traditional village life there before British colonialism: he
was clearly offended that in Hindu society, "man, the sovereign of nature" would "f[a]ll
down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow."[3]Marx also
chauvinistically and misleadingly claims the commons to have been a Teutonic invention
(Capital, vol. 1, 885). In his discussion of labor and the valorization process in
Capital, furthermore, the German Communist reiterates his view of humanity as a "sovereign
power" over the rest of nature, and would seem to endorse a typically bourgeois view of
nature as a source of extraction, stating that "[a]ll raw material is an object of
labour." He moreover uncritically cites James Steuart's observation that the Earth's
natural resources "appear[...]to be furnished[...]in the same way as a small sum is given
to a young man, in order to put him in a way of industry, and of making his fortune"
(283-4). In parallel, Marx projects bourgeois competition onto the natural world, as in
his characterization of evolution as the "war of all against all" (477), and exaggerates
the distinction between human and non-human in his discussion of consciousness,
self-consciousness, and tool use (284-6). Additionally, Marx's privileging of the
industrial proletariat as the revolutionary subject leads him to disparage the
peasantry-which, if we look to history (the French, Mexican, and Russian Revolutions), in
fact can be highly militant-and even to celebrate its coercive transformation into the
working class in Capital as a "revolutionary" historical advance to fit his deterministic
presentation. Yet late in life, Marx in turn rethinks this callous illogic in a series of
letters with the Russian leftist Vera Zasulich (1881), wherein the German envisions an
alternative path to communism in Russia that would obviate the "pre-existing need" for
capitalism, as based on the mir or obshchina system (the Russian Commune)-as long as such
a movement were aided by proletarian revolutions in Western Europe.[4]This was clearly not
the approach taken after 1917 by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, who oppressed so many
millions and greatly devastated the environment (e.g. the Aral Sea, Chernobyl) through
their imposition of state capitalism, a project they advanced in Marx's name.
Yet Saito, writing about Marx's "ecological notebooks" from 1868, has a different
interpretation, one in line with second-wave ecosocialism and Foster's analysis. Saito
hypothesizes that, had Marx been able to integrate his scientific
investigations-especially his investigations into Carl Fraas' work on deforestation-into
Capital vol. 2, the result would have been "a much stronger emphasis on the dist
https://blackrosefed.org/wp-content/cache/page_enhanced/blackrosefed.org//capitals-destruction-environment-marxs-inadequate-response//_index.html_gzip
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Message: 5
This June expires fifty years of occupation and the establishment of a military regime in
the West Bank. ---- Several generations of Palestinian Arabs living in a military regime.
They are millions of people. The Palestinian Authority (in the media erroneously referred
to as "autonomy") controls only 18 to 20 percent of the territory. In fact dominates the
rest of the Israeli army. But even for those 18 to 20 percent may enter the IDF. ---- The
anniversary was opened to the public for the first time in Israel State Archives, which
houses materials from the time of the Six Day trains. In 1967 bigwigs "Tank Republic"
quite seriously suggested that it was the Arab population of the occupied West Bank
displaced to Brazil. And they express clearly what will be the consequences for the
planned apartheid Israel in the future.
Judge for yourself:
"15th June begins a series of meetings devoted to the fate of Judea and Samaria (the West
Bank).[Prime Minister]Levi Eškol warns ministers that it should focus more quickly,
because the world soon will start asking questions. ' "
"Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir and head of the Department of Foreign Affairs Abba Eban
pointed to the impossibility of creating a single state with two levels of life in the
contemporary world. , The world will be on the side of the movement for the liberation of
one and a half million besieged ten million. ' Pinchas Sapir, agrees: "It is naive to
think that we can keep the Arabs in Israel, without giving them rights. If you take upon
ourselves the responsibility for Judea and Samaria, to suffocate. ' "
"Justice Minister Ya'akov Shimshon Shapira proposes to hand over Judea and Samaria to
Jordan, because otherwise the Zionist movement ends - find ourselves ghetto. '"
"Even[the Minister]Menachem Begin proposes to put the Arabs in Judea and Samaria temporary
status for seven years and in the meantime to increasing fertility levels and the pace of
repatriation."
But those are just cherries. Look further:
"Trade Minister Ze'ev SERF proposes to turn to the Arab and other countries with a request
for admission of refugees from the Israeli occupied territories. Specifically SERF
proposes to go to Brazil: 'They are Catholics but accept tens of thousands of Japanese
Shinto. Why would not accept Arabs? ' "
"[The minister]Jigal Alon proposed to send as many (Arabs) to Canada, Australia and other
countries and settle part of the Sinai Peninsula."
"Eshkol announced: 'If it depended on us, we all sent to Brazil.' Eventually, however, he
proposes to promote the idea of population exchange. Minister of Justice opposes, 'You can
not evict Arabs who were born here, to Iraq.' '
What can you say? The Navigators' Tank Republic "were idiots and understand that the
occupation is not option. This means that either the proposed annexation to perform (and
recognize Arabs as full citizens of Israel), or return the occupied territories to Jordan.
Or send Arabs to Brazil.
Think about it - move Arabs to Brazil! It is important to realize that it was the '60s,
when everyone still smell the smoke of the crematoria and those who survived the
Holocaust, a very well remember the 30s and 40s.
Whether he knows that Israel is still a lot of things and most state secret archives is
inaccessible. For the first time began to open up in the 80s. Those who started these
documents to examine and revise the official history of Israel, they say "new historians".
Traditionally stand against the official state historians. And they are considered traitors.
The government of Israel fifty years ago knew that the apartheid regime will be
destructive for Israel. Today we see how Israel is slowly but surely sinking into the
abyss and fifty years of occupation is one of the reasons for this situation. Falling
because fifty years keeps millions of people under military occupation. It promotes hatred
and terror of the Arab population. Sooner or later, Israel for all will have to answer.
How can yet recall the prophetic words of the philosopher and physician Ješajahua
Leibowitz about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967:
"Arabs will become the working nation, caste workers, while the Jews are the bosses,
directors, government officials, policemen and soldiers. The state controlling hostile
multimillion population will unconditionally become a police state, a state secret
services. And all this will have a disastrous impact on the education system, freedom of
speech, and even the very idea of what a democratic system. "
Yigal Levin
Zdroj: http://www.nihilist.li/2017/05/18/raskry-tie-arhivy-shestidnevnoj-vojny-v-izraile/
Preklad -dm-
http://www.afed.cz/text/6689/k-vyroci-izraelskeho-apartheidu
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Message: 6
Apero-debate at the Café La Service Station, 27, bd Rouget-de-Lisle, Montreuil (metro
Croix-de-Chavaux), June 13 at 8:30 pm. ---- Apéro-debate of Alternative libertarian
Montreuil ! ---- Macron is quite clear about his social and economic intentions. ---- As a
good liberal, he wants to go much further than Holland with his Labor law. ---- In spite
of the simulacrum of "social dialogue" currently under way, the Labor 2 law promises to be
even more bloody for workers. ---- Let us take stock of the situation, and discuss what
can be done. ---- Facebook event ---- https://www.facebook.com/events/1627388873937880/
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Ce-que-Macron-nous-prepare-Que-preparons-nous-a-Macron-A-Montreuil-le-13-juin
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