Anarkismo (en)

Blog about the demonstrations and riots which have swept Brazil in the wake of an increase in the price of public transport.
While the world has been watching Turkey, another country is experiencing revolt. That country is Brazil. Just like Turkey, it is relatively succesful, economically speaking. Just like Turkey, the results of economic growth are divided very unequally. Just like in Turkey, a relatively small provocation is setting off a much biggen chain reaction. Unlike in Turkey, that provocation is a direct attack on living standards. But the anger exploding goes much deeper than that.

The Ontario-based anarchist communist organization Common Cause has launched a new theoretical journal!

On February 1968 The antiauthoritarian anticapitalist Matzpen initiated in Jerusalem the first (18 strong) vigil again 1967 occupation. Two years later, the Israeli Black Panthers activist who were in intimate contact with Matzpen members (mostly in Jerusalem) initiated the first social struggle of immigrants from eastern countries. Many of the present social struggle activists regards themselves as successors of the Panthers - many others were in association with or participated in the joint struggle of the anarchists against the wall. The 2013 wave is still much smaller than the 2011 wave of struggle but is more radical and confrontational. The joint popular struggle in the occupied Palestinian west bank is still fluctuating - mainly because the holding back of the Palestinian authority. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25740]

On the fares struggle in Brazil
After spending the last few days in São Paulo, I return to Florianópolis with all my thoughts taken up by the subject that has monopolized conversations in the city: the demonstrations of the Free Pass Movement. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25729]

From "Zabalaza: a journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism" #7 (December 2006)
This year [2006] marks the 30th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa, which marked the start of the fall of apartheid, and inspired activists worldwide. African working youth played a leading role, and their sacrifices showed us that ordinary people can make a difference to the injustices of our world. Revolutionaries should commemorate this struggle, but also learn from its failings.

It is clear that the rights of the working class and poor people on the ground are not recognised by those in power, and will never be. After the 1994 elections, ordinary people thought that they will feel and enjoy real democracy. But to their surprise, things didn’t work the way they thought. People are being demoralised, threatened and killed when they stand up. It is now difficult for people to exercise their democratic rights.

It’s clear that voting won’t bring any change in people’s lives. The whole system is run by a small ruling class. Voting does not change the system. By voting we are just fooling ourselves about our rights. People voted in 1994 because they thought their votes will bring complete changes in their lives. No one thought of suffering after voting in the first elections. Promises were made by so-called leaders in order to be voted into power. Their promises were a big lie.

Schedule for Greek television channel 3 ( ERT3) for today! [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25722]

Following the arrest and detention this morning (Wednesday) of a member of the socialist republican party, éirígí, while putting up anti-G8 posters on Belfast’s Falls Road, the PSNI also seized similar posters from other members of the party in the Glen Road area of the city.

The people who see the turmoil in the region are losing their patience but we are still far from a general uprising both in the Israeli social struggle and in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli State increases its threats against activists on both sides and is contemplating in public to enhance its shooting policy qualitatively. Meanwhile, targeting the young kids they have started to arrest 7/8-year-olds too. The third intifada is gradually escalating from non-violent struggle to still unarmed but a stone-throwing one. The kids are throwing back tear gas canisters and the state forces often get to taste their own medicine. In Israel, the activists in the social struggle are not yet many, but the marching is not just a parade any more and the homes of the relevant ministers get frequent visits. It is still not sure if the masses will participate again as they did two years ago, but it may come sooner than later as the austerity measures are already being felt. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25714]

The State and police terror continues in Istanbul.
The police have attacked the people in Taksim Square and in Gezi Park. The resisters keep on fighting in Istanbul, our struggle goes on. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25700]

High levels of military spending played a key role in the unfolding European sovereign debt crisis — and continue to undermine efforts to resolve it.
A new report by the Transnational Institute — ‘Guns, Debt and Corruption: Military Spending and the EU Crisis’ — looks at the ways in which excessive militarization directly fed into the unfolding European debt crisis, and continues to undermine efforts to resolve it. Below the downlink links and infographic you can find the executive summary of the report.

Press release from the Coordination of Anarchist Groups, France, on the assassination of anti-fascist activist, Clément Méric
This is no time for polemics but instead to unify the militant antifascist forces while acknowledging the change to be made in the organisation/management of society. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25659]

Download Issue #1of Tokologo
The first issue of Tokologo, the newsletter of the South Africa-based Tokologo African Anarchist Collective is now available for download in PDF.

“This is a revolt, not (yet) a revolution!” A reference to the famous conversation during the outbreak of the French Revolution between King Louis XVI and one of his advisors.
On May Day 2013, the police poured tonnes of tear gas on tens of thousands of workers and youth in different quarters of Istanbul, Turkey in order to stop them from approaching Taksim Square. The government had decided that this square, the traditional venue for May Day celebrations and home to daily political actions big and small, was to be shut to demonstrations this year because development work was being done on a massive scale involving huge excavated pits making it dangerous for crowds. In a ludicrous act, the governor of Istanbul stood atop a mound at the edge of one of those pits to hold a press conference in a desperate attempt to drive home the threat that these pits represented for people.

On 22 August 2012, communities from in, and out, of Gauteng had a meeting at Khanya College, Johannesburg, on the Marikana massacre. More than half of the 50 people who participated, most of the delegates, came from the mine areas affected by the situation in the North West Province.

Besides being a highly respected professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and the author of several involved volumes such as the Humanities Press publication In the Shadow of Powers: Dantѐs Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought, Dr. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith has yet another mark to distinguish him. He is the grandson of noted intellectual, author, diplomat, Haitian militant Dantes Bellegarde and the grand nephew of Argentine Bellegarde, one of Haiti’s most influential educators of the nineteenth century.

Bellegarde-Smith is a sought-after lecturer and expert, in addition to being regarded as one of the foremost experts in the field of African diasporic social thought, religion, and philosophy (he is the editor of the bookFragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World).

Born in Haiti, Bellegarde-Smith lives and teaches in the United States, but it’s almost as if he never left. The bulk of his published books center on Haiti, and his title Haiti: The Breached Citadel, which the professor and thought tank reissued in the early 1990s, is one of the most referred-to books written about Haiti.

In 2004, the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was kidnapped by US marines and flown to the Central African Republic. It was a coup of the kind tried unsuccessfully in Venezuela two years earlier and successfully in Honduras in 2009. The institutional structures put in place by the coup regime, including the UN troops occupying the country, still remain despite several elections.

For already more than two years the rebellion against the sharp intensification of global neo-liberalism is fermenting. The struggle against the local processes is overcoming efforts by the local elite to use intensifying conflicts with the Palestinians to "soften the resistance". The more dramatic wave of two years ago has passed but not without permanent ferment that is just waiting for a local or international trigger. There are very few who have persisted in the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall initiative throughout the 10 years of struggle, but new activists are taking the place of those who lost the energy and will to continue at the same level of activity - or have just left the country. The weekly persistent demos in Bil'in, Ma'sara, Ni'lin, Nabi Saleh, Qaddum, and Sheikh Jarrah hold the flag high. This week the uprising in Turkey is only the the freshest one of the new mode. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25715]

For Ongoing Public Revolt Against State Terrorism
Last week a group of protesters started guarding action after some trees were taken down illegally in the name of urban gentrification projects. In the second day of the protest, very early in the morning, the police attacked the protesters heavily with gas bombs, presssured water and plastic bullets and wounded many protesteds. A spark began against this event of state terrorism and spread accross the country turning into a massive action and organized the big revolt. The public organized against increasing attacks, state terrorism and police violence and have been turning the streets into the area of resistance. This public revolt has been streaming for four days and is constantly spreading. [http://www.anarkismo.net/article/25646]

Autonomous Action member, anarchist Alexey Sutuga, has been on remand for more than a year. The police have intentionally delayed the investigation: they only worked on the case for the first 2-3 months after his arrest but since then the investigation has stalled.