State

Guilty of being foreign

Monday, 26 October 2009 09:49

In a case that clearly exposes the vicious cruelty and insanity of borders and nationalism, a trainee radiologist has been jailed for 19 months for the "crime" of not being from England. Felista Peters, a 28-year-old resident of Bristol, was close to graduating when she was arrested after it was found that she had false documents and was actually from Kenya. If she'd been born in this country, she could now be working as a radiologist and helping to save lives, but because she committed the crime of being born elsewhere, she's been imprisoned, so her skills are of no use to anyone. She will be deported on completion of her jail term. Even viewed from the narrowly selfish perspective of the "national interest", whatever that is, it's impossible to see how our society benefits more from locking this woman up and then flying her out of the country than it does from allowing her to practice medicine; from any vaguely humanist viewpoint, the punishment for this victimless offence is even more inexplicable.

Extremists hijacking our traditions?

Wednesday, 21 October 2009 19:51

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."

Undercover with the anarchist mob: paying a visit to one of the UK's worst tabloids

Monday, 07 September 2009 09:05

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

Sunday, 30 August 2009 19:23

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.

The Struggle Against Fascism Begins With The Struggle Against Labourism or, Hope Not Self-Defeating Liberal Stupidity

Thursday, 25 June 2009 10:41

So, how is it that the recent European elections returned two BNP candidates to "represent" the people of Yorkshire and the North-West? The most obvious explanation is quite simply that no-one wanted to vote for the mainstream parties, and it's hard to blame them - the efforts of the most dedicated BNP activists pale in comparison to the antics of corrupt MPs like Douglas Hogg or Hazel Blears when it comes to discrediting the BNP's rivals. As anarchists, we certainly don't see the widespread "apathy" (contempt would be a better way of putting it) towards the big three parties as a bad thing - a turnout of around 34% means that about 66% of the electorate have seen through the hollow promises of politicians and could potentially be won over to genuinely effective methods of grassroots organising.1 But first we need a real alternative to put forward - otherwise, as we've seen, it's all too easy for disillusioned voters to be persuaded by the "anti-establishment" image of the BNP.