Number 16



In this issue:

1. “The system has got to be destroyed”

“The most basic task ahead of us is to bring as many people as possible together around the conviction that the system has got to be destroyed”.

These words from an article called Where Are We Now? (¿Dónde Estamos? or Où en sommes-nous?) by Miguel Amorós remain as true today as when they were written some 15 years ago.

December’s Cop21 climate summit in Paris presents an excellent opportunity to vastly expand the numbers of people committed to the destruction of capitalism.

As we have already reported in The Acorn, the protests against this smug neoliberal showcase are bound to go a lot further than the A to B parades typical of mainstream UK “climate” campaigning.

There is a new spirit of defiance in the European anti-capitalist and radical degrowth movement, with rebels from ZAD autonomous zones all over France heading for the capital, Climate Games being advertised (see this video) and the international call-out (see below) talking of “an end to capitalism and productivism”.

It is now a year since the death of young eco-activist Rémi Fraisse at the hands of the French gendarmes on October 26 2014. Given the feisty nature of radical environmental protests both before and after his murder by the French state – in Nantes, Toulouse and elsewhere (see Acorn 3) – the French cops are going to very busy between November 28 and December 12. Indeed, French corporate media are already reporting that police are braced for a “Black Bloc” assault on the capitalist summit.

If there is anyone out there who still thinks of the menace of industrialism as an environmental side-show to the main class struggle against capitalism, they would do well to consider Amorós’s article.

He writes: “Technology is an instrument and a weapon because it benefits those who know best how to use it and how to be used by it. The bourgeoisie have used machines and the ‘scientific’ organisation of work against the proletariat. No revolt against domination can really represent the general interest unless it turns itself into a rebellion against technology, a Luddite revolt”.

Amorós muses on the disastrous own-goal scored by the 19th century anti-capitalist movement when it decided that industrial development offered the best route to liberation.

He writes: “Contrary to what Marx and Engels claim, the workers’ movement condemned itself to political and social immaturity when it abandoned Utopian socialism and chose science and progress (bourgeois science and bourgeois progress) instead of community and individual flowering”.

And it is no coincidence that Amorós’s text takes its name, and its opening quote, from the great 19th century English green-anarcho-socialist William Morris.

Morris wrote in his own Where Are We Now?: “What was it which we set out to accomplish? To change the system of society on which the stupendous fabric of civilisation is founded, and which has been built up by centuries of conflict with older and dying systems, and crowned by the victory of modern civilisation over the material surroundings of life.

“The shouts of triumph over the glories of civilisation which once drowned the moans of the miserable have now sunk into quavering apologies for the existence of the horrors and fatuities of our system; a system which is only defended as a thing to be endured for lack of a better, and until we can find some means of packing it off into limbo”.

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2. Resisting the prison industrial complex

Nothing better sums up the capitalist world than its prison system – where brutal oppression and cynical private profiteering combine to such lucrative effect.

Because fear of crime is one of the core anxieties instilled in the population to keep them obedient, few raise their voices in support of the victims of the prison industrial complex.

The week of action being organised from November 2 to 8 against the massive new jail being built in North Wales is therefore especially important.

Says the call-out: “A week of action has been called to encourage people of the UK & the world to take action against the construction of the North Wales Prison in Wrexham.

“The prison will be the second largest prison in Europe, holding more than 2,100 people and costing £250 million to build. Australian contractor Lend Lease was awarded the contract to build the Wrexham titan prison by the government in May 2014.

“Local people have resisted the prison for over half a decade; objecting to planning applications, lobbying, going to meetings. Full planning permission was eventually granted in November 2014 despite local resistance. It is now a construction site and this place of abuse and oppression is being built as we speak.

“Our aims are to resist it, slow it down and send a message to the state and the prison industry that it is not acceptable to profit from caging human beings. The Government wish to build more prisons in the UK, this is our opportunity to intervene and prevent this industry from expanding. We must take the offensive against prison expansion and the social control of our lives. We are fighting until all are free”.

During the week there will be demonstrations at the prison and also against its suppliers – collaborators in crime. Find your local prison profiteer at: www.cape-campaign.org/prison-profiteers

Solidarity demos at other prisons across the UK are also planned, along with information nights, workshops and film showings to ignite more resistance to the prison industrial complex.

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3. London Anarchist Bookfair



The 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair is being staged on Saturday October 24, from 10am to 7pm, and there is wealth of interesting workshops on offer, on top of all the stalls – and the socialising opportunities!

It’s at a new venue this year – Central Saint Martin’s, University of the Arts London, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London N1C 4AA. This is a huge building behind Kings Cross station – a lot easier to get to than Mile End.

The full list of workshops can be found on the bookfair website, but we’d thought we’d pick out a few that appeal to us.

Of particular relevance to this edition of The Acorn is a talk called “Red Lines in Paris: mobilising for the UN climate talks this December” from Reclaim the Power, which asks: “How can we use the international mobilisation in Paris to popularise the use of direct action against polluter interests and to strengthen our movements for climate justice back home?”

Corporate Watch are leading an important session discussing ways forward for the anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian climate movement in the UK. They say: “Much of the climate/environmental movement lacks a serious political analysis, and at the same time anarchists can have a blind spot about climate change and ecological crises, sometimes adopting a misanthropic or fatalist attitude. This workshop will explore ways to communicate and organise around climate change that place it as an important part of the struggles against capitalism and other systems of oppression”.

Earth First! will also be holding a workshop, encouraging people to become more involved in exciting direct action projects planned for coming months or to set up their own local group.

One of many other highlights promises to be a session on Women and Armed Struggle, which declares: “From bomb throwing suffragettes to Female Urban Guerrillas to the thousands of Women who participate in the Armed Struggle of the Zapatistas and the Kurds, there is a rich history of Women’s Armed Struggle. But much of this history is forgotten or deliberately ignored by Liberal Feminists who wish to ‘clean up’ our history.”

It’s good to see a healthy emphasis on the core philosophy behind the event, with an illustrated talk by Kevin Eady on the history and theory of the anarchist movement and Iain McKay (author of An Anarchist FAQ) exploding some of the common myths about anarchism and anarchists.

Kurdistan features prominently this year, as you might expect, with one workshop on The Rojava Revolution and another, from Corporate Watch, focusing on how to build effective solidarity with Kurdistan.



There are also two different workshops on current developments in Greece and two on Cuba.

The Undercover Research Group will introduce its work on mapping out the activities of the British state’s undercover units, those responsible and the networks between them, while the Radical Anthropology Group will be hosting a session on primitive communism: “We evolved under egalitarianism, not class despotism”.

There are also workshops on Militant Anti-Fascism, Art and Anarchism, No Borders Morocco and on social centres and co-ops – among many others!

Winter Oak titles are available via our friends at Active Distribution, who will, as ever, have a stall at the bookfair.

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4. Erdogan’s dirty war against the Kurds



The appalling bomb attack in Ankara on October 10 has helped focus more attention on the deeply unpleasant nature of the Turkish state (see Acorn 12).

Although corporate media shy away from criticising a key NATO ally, an understanding is spreading that the Erdogan regime is heavily implicated in so-called ISIS terrorism, with the re-emergence of a “deep state” linked both to mafia figures like Sedat Peker and to right-wing terrorist groups.

A useful analysis of the situation is provided in an article from the French-language journal CQFD on The Turkish State’s Dirty War Against the Kurdish Movement, which describes how the regime pays only lip service to opposing ISIS.

“In fact, since July 20, the exclusive targets of repression by the Turkish authorities are the PKK and the Kurdish population in the south-east of the country, the pro-Kurdish and far-left legal opposition movements and certain media outlets and social networks which have been subject to censorship.

“The ‘double or quits’ poker gamble that Erdogan is making has two aims – on the one hand to halt the Kurdish moves towards autonomy bolstered by the system in Rojava (where YPG and YPJ guerrillas are the only ground resistance to ISIS) and, on the other hand, to counter opposition from the HDP, a pro-Kurdish party which won 13% of the vote in the last legislative elections and which got in the way of the Turkish president’s autocratic drift by costing him his absolute majority.

“After the elections in June, Erdogan decided, without the prior consent of parliament, to rerun the vote. By provoking confrontations and by tarring the PKK with the same ‘terrorist’ brush as ISIS, he is hoping for a nationalistic reaction that will lead to him regaining his absolute majority in November’s elections. For Engin Sustam the desire to ‘divide and rule’ is obvious – ‘The AKP offensive against the Kurds is a way of polarising Turkish society in order to try and prop up the crumbling power of the nationalistic and authoritarian state’. ”

The “strategy of tension” has long been a favourite ploy of states to reassert their authority by means of covert state terrorism. Observers may well wonder if the Ankara bombing of 2015 will prove to come from the same textbook as the Bologna bombing of 1980, now widely believed to have been carried out by a NATO state with close links to the mafia and fascist terrorists.

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5. Paint-daubing, egg-throwing and shirt-ripping!

A spirit of lively physical resistance seems to have been reborn of late, which augurs well for the months and years to come.

Class War’s anti-gentrification Fuck Parade in Shoreditch managed to grab national and even international headlines when participants dared to daub paint on the outside of a hipster “cereal cafe” – unleashing a great vomiting of self-righteous hypocritical outrage from London’s smuggest.

In case anyone missed it, there are videos here, here and here.

Protests against the Conservative party conference in Manchester also proved lively, with the stand-out moment being the dead-eyed egging of a ridiculously pompous young Tory (video here).

An excellent round-up of all the action in the Salford Star concludes: “Most people on the protests who the Salford Star spoke to were furious that the Tories had dared to come to Manchester, one of the cities most hard hit by Government attacks on people who have the least.

“As delegates filed out of the Conference Centre for the final time yesterday, they were pointed in the direction of the city’s must-see food banks and homeless camps, as they were serenaded to the tune of the Ugly Duckling… `Oink Oink! Get out!… Oink Oink! Get out of town!’…”

The French have been getting in on the physical comedy protest-genre as well, with angry trade unionists literally ripping the shirt from the back of an Air France executive announcing job losses (video here).

Back in London, the next excitement may well come on Thursday November 5, with the Million Mask March gathering in Trafalgar Square from 6pm. “We call to arms our many brothers and sisters. The war crimes can no longer go unnoticed, the people can no longer pay the price of the corrupt politicians, the bankers can no longer profit, the bloodshed must stop… Liberty must be reinstated”.

Similar events are planned internationally.

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6. Acorninfo



Authorities in Western Australia are clearing the way for a motorway to be driven across an Aboriginal heritage site that is “older than the pyramids”. The sacred area between Bibra and North lakes – in Noongar culture the birthplace of the creation spirit Waugyl – has been removed from the Aboriginal heritage register because it inconveniently stands in the way of the proposed Roe 8 freeway extension, scheduled to be built next year as part of the first leg of the $1.6m Perth Freight Link.

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A warning against US imperialism targeting Africa, via its military organisation Africom, has been issued by the Pan African Alliance. It says: “Instead of helping Africa, the United States is currently engaged in secret missions to keep African Nations destabilized. Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, and Mali are primed to be the sites of the next major genocides. For 400 years, our ancestral homeland has been bled dry, and with the rise of China as a new colonial competitor, things are about to get much worse for our people and our motherland.”

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Four people were killed in massive protests against a mining project at Las Bambas in the Apurímac region of Peru at the end of September. Troops were sent to the area to put down popular opposition to industrial capitalist destruction and a state of emergency was declared. The blood-stained $10 billion project will involve the extraction of 400,000 tons of copper every year.

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George Orwell’s nightmare is coming true in the town of Saint Denis in Réunion, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. Not only are there CCTV cameras to spy on people in the streets, but they are now also being equipped with loudspeakers to bark orders at those being monitored.

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Resistance continues against the destruction of the Hambach Forest in Germany by lignite mining. There have been numerous arrests as activists block access roads and sabotage work. On October 8 the local police station was sprayed with paint and shit in protest at heavy-handed repression. For latest info see the blog at http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

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Sussex Anarchists are hosting a talk by anarchist writer Scott Crow on Sunday October 25, from 7.30pm at The Cowley Club, 12 London Road, Brighton. It is part of a UK/Ireland tour presenting the new book Black Flags and Windmills, from PM Press. Sussex Anarchists, which are part of the Anarchist Action Network, can be followed on Twitter via @sussexanarchist. The author is also talking at Freedom Bookshop in London (Oct 21), Hydra Bookstore, Bristol (Oct 22), Sumac Centre, Nottingham (Oct 23), the London Anarchist Bookfair (Oct 24), CCEA, Derry (Oct 24), Wharf Street Chambers, Leeds (Oct 26), Loughborough University (Oct 27), The Annexe Cafe, Glasgow (Oct 28) and the Independent Radical Book Fair, Edinburgh (Oct 28).

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A new activist website has been launched for southern France – Marseille Infos Autonomes features local and global news and analysis. The site is at http://mars-infos.org/

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Only degrowth – the abandonment of industrial capitalism – can be a credible answer to Europe’s current refugee situation, argues Dennis Eversberg of the Research Group on Post-Growth Societies at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. He writes on the degrowth.de site: “The knowledge that European lifestyles cannot be made available to everyone logically implies that people will have to be repelled at Europe’s borders and sent back to poverty and war – unless we accept that it is our own societies that cannot go on with business as usual”.

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Acorn quote: “Let us consider things for a moment from the standpoint of those whose ideal is material ‘welfare’, and who therefore rejoice at all the improvements to life furnished by modern ‘progress’; are they quite sure they are not being duped? Is it true that, because they dispose of swifter means of communication and other things of the kind, and because of their more agitated and complicated manner of life, men are happier today than they were formerly? The very opposite seems to us to be true: disequilibrium cannot be a condition of real happiness. Moreover, the more needs has, the greater the likelihood that he will lack something, and thereby be unhappy; modern civilization aims at creating more and more artificial needs, and as we have already said, it will always create more needs than it can satisfy, for once one has started on this path, it is very hard to stop…”.

René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

(For many more like this, see the Winter Oak quotes for the day blog)



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