Postal workers strike – anarchist leaflets
22 October 2009Posted by AFed
SUPPORT YOUR POSTIES ON STRIKE! DON’T APPLY FOR ROYAL MAIL JOBS!
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Extremists hijacking our traditions?
21 October 2009Posted by AFed
There’s been a bit of a fuss in the media of late about the BNP’s use of military imagery. A letter’s been published signed by various prominent military figures warning of “extremists” trying to “hijack the good name of Britain’s military for their own advantage”. If you’re wondering who these “extremists” are, that’s understandable, since “extremist” is basically a meaningless political swearword that can be (and often is) thrown at anyone who feels strongly about anything, from Mussolini to Martin Luther King and from to the Pankhursts to Pol Pot. But then the letter goes on to explain that these people “are essentially racist”, which clears things up a bit, since no-one likes racism (although beware if you’re an anti-racist who feels extremely strongly about it, because that might make you one of those nasty extremists). So that’s alright then, isn’t it?
But if you take a moment to stop and think about it, it’s not hard to see the colossal irony here: this is the Armed Forces we’re talking about. Their entire purpose is to kill large numbers of foreigners. This isn’t overblown rhetoric or anything, it’s a simple fact that if, at various times over the last century, soldiers refused to kill Germans, Italians, Koreans, Egyptians, Kenyans, Yemenis, Argentinians, Iraqis and Afghans (among others), they were court-marshalled. For military leaders to complain about people who don’t like foreigners trying to steal their image is like Arsenal complaining about their proud traditions being hijacked by extremists who really like kicking footballs around in a field. They’re basically saying “we didn’t slaughter thousands and thousands of poorly-armed brown conscripts so you lot could go around being horrible to people from other races.”
The Anarchist Federation – annual report 2009
21 October 2009Posted by AFed
An abridged version of this report is published in Freedom to coincide with the London Anarchist Bookfair. The report covers a year’s activities up to October 2009.
Ten years later: Remember Björn Söderberg!
14 October 2009Posted by AFed
On the 12th October it has been ten years since the Syndicalist Björn Söderberg was attacked in his home and killed by Nazis in a suburb of Stockholm. The context in which the murder took place, was that Björn acted openly and consequently against racism and Nazism at his workplace.
One of the Nazis who participated in the killing of Björn Söderberg was Hampus Hellekant, notorious in surveying leftist activists, journalists and others that he perceived as his opponents. Since his release from prison he has changed his name and, according to himself also his politics. But, as the Research Group reveals in this weeks’ issue of Arbetaren, he has never stopped his activities, he has never stopped his monitoring.
The bomb-throwing anarchist: a relic of the past
12 October 2009Posted by AFed
A documentary on Channel 4 television tonight – The Enemy Within – made spurious connections between anarchist ideas and Islamic extremism, comparing the 7/7 London bombings with the activities of a minority of the ‘propaganda by deed’ anarchists, the type who threw bombs into cafés and crowds in the late-nineteenth century.
Venezuela: The murderers cannot make justice
9 October 2009Posted by AFed
Various anti-authoritarian and critical leftist groups and individuals in Venezuela converged in the Insurgentes social centre to prepare the following statement on the exhumation of victims of the Caracazo in Venezuela
After 19 years the Venezuelan government, through the Attorney General’s Office, has exhumed remains from the mass grave at La Peste in the Southern General Cemetery in Caracas for a second time, where some of the victims of the Caracazo, which happened during the 27th and 28th February 1989, are buried. Thus, the Venezuelan state complies with a ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which in November 1999 ruled to investigate the facts, to punish those responsible and to locate, exhume and identify the remains of the victims so that they could be delivered to their families, as well as to compensate those families for the violation of their relatives’ right to life.
Smash the English Defence League
16 September 2009Posted by AFed
A group calling themselves the English Defence League (EDL) have recently began a national tour of the UK, prancing around major cities declaring their opposition towards “Terrorists and Sharia”. Already they have visited Whitechapel, Wood Green, Luton and Birmingham City Centre (three times in fact). Where they have mobilised, it has been explicitly clear, that for all their rhetoric of being just a group of concerned, patriotic individuals, mobilising against Muslim extremism, they are an exclusively white mixture of football hooligans, drunken thugs and fascists. And when fascists feel confident enough to march through our streets, it is a hard-hitting realisation that the anti-fascist movement here in the UK is in a sorry state.
Victims of Torture: Victims of Society
9 September 2009Posted by AFed
A brutal attack on a 9 year old and his 11 year old uncle took place on 4th April, it was carried out by two brothers of only 12 and 10 years of age. The two victims were subjected to a “horrific, violent, sustained physical attack” said prosecutors, they were tortured, robbed and sexually abused, the attackers using bricks, sticks and a noose, one of the boys is suspected of having a sink smashed against his head and the father of the 9 year old suspects his son was forced to eat glass. No doubt these were a series of shocking events, it is rare to see such young children resort to such violence and this event has been compared to the murder to James Bulger in 1993 by two 10 year olds.
Undercover with the anarchist mob: paying a visit to one of the UK’s worst tabloids
7 September 2009Posted by AFed
An affinity group of anarchists who had been participating in Climate Camp and had been concerned about the tone and low impact of some of the mainstream camp actions decided to visit the Daily Mail head office in the hope of having a few words. The immediate trigger for this was the poor write up the Camp had received in that week’s paper which stereotyped those at camp as ‘young, posh idiots’, although all the activists involved had many other motivations for this action. Most of all, as working-class people with a sense of basic human solidarity, all those present detested the Mail for its sexist and racist overtones and long record of consistently scapegoating and demonising marginalised social groups such as immigrants, queers, transpeople, the unemployed, youth stigmatised as “chavs”, as well as specific instances like the incredibly inaccurate hack job of an article about anarchists in the run-up to the G20.
Climate Camp and Us – a perspective paper
30 August 2009Posted by AFed
A perspective paper produced by members of the Anarchist Federation within climate camp 2009.
At the 2008 Climate Camp in Kingsnorth an open letter was circulated by anti-capitalist campers raising concerns that the movement was increasingly being by influenced state-led approaches to tackling climate change. A more developed version was later published by Shift magazine. The original argued broadly that the camp should adopt anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian principles and objectives.
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