HUNDREDS ARRESTED IN A MASS KETTLE OF MARCH CLOSING ACTION CAMP AGAINST THE ARMS INDUSTRY ~ Gabriel Fonten ~ Police in Cologne, Germany used heavy handed tactics on Saturday (30 August) against a peaceful mass march concluding an anti-militarist camp in the city. The 3,000-strong parade had set out from the “Rheinmetall Entwaffen” antimilitarist camp to meet the yearly rally of the Cologne Peace Forum. One participant described the event as “a historic moment when the few hundred, mostly older participants of this rally watched hundreds, mostly younger people from the camp, who had travelled from both near and far”. Yet the march was not allowed to continue uninterrupted, as marchers were set upon by around 1,600 police in full riot gear, backed by water cannons and armed with pepper spray. The demonstrators quickly reconfigured into a protective block formation (using banners to separate and protect participants from police) taking “3 hours to move one kilometre” under consistent harassment by the police. After dividing and kettling the parade, around 600 participants were arrested over the next five hours. Medical non-profit “Demosanitäter” reported treating 147 injured participants and at least 216 were treated at the “Rheinmetall Entwaffen” camp. Justifications for this brutal crackdown were manufactured by both the police and the establishment media, with the Tageschau news program running headlines including “Riots at anti-war demonstration in Cologne”—presenting protesters, rather than the police, as the instigators of violence. In fact, of the 600 people arrested only one was charged with “resisting arrest”. Cologne police had previously prohibited both the camp and parade citing risks of “radicalisation”, but this was overturned in court. While it stood, the ban seems to have only increased participation with organisers reporting growing mobilisation as well as the creation of an “anarchist neighbourhood” at the camp. The post Germany: Heavy repression at Rhinemetall anti-militarist demonstration appeared first on Freedom News.

DESPITE POLICE BAN, PREPARATIONS CONTINUE FOR RHEINMETALL PROTEST CAMP IN COLOGNE AT THE END OF AUGUST ~ Cristina Sykes ~ The camp, running between 26-31 August, combines workshops, discussions and cultural events with protests targeting arms companies across the Rhein-Ruhr region. The Rheinmetall Entwaffnen (“Disarm Rheinmetall”) alliance, formed in 2018, is organising the week-long gathering to oppose Germany’s leading arms manufacturer and the wider militarisation drive. Cologne police prohibited both the camp and a planned “parade” to the nearby Konrad-Adenauer barracks, citing risks of “radicalisation”. A court upheld the ban on 15 August, even pointing to the century-old anti-war slogan Krieg dem Krieg (“war on war”) as supposed evidence of violent intent. Organisers reject the reasoning as political repression. “The camp will take place – we are very optimistic,” said Mila, a spokesperson for the alliance. “We will resist the ban legally and politically. The authorities may want to silence the anti-militarist movement, but we will go ahead”. The camp is expected to draw hundreds of participants from Germany and abroad, including anarchist collectives, feminist groups, anti-fascists and internationalist networks. A dedicated anarchist barrio has been announced, with organisers reporting growing mobilisation since the ban was declared. Workshops will cover topics such as the reintroduction of conscription, weapons exports, the impact of militarisation on women, and new technologies like AI in warfare. International guests are also invited to share their struggles. “We want to build a global network against war and militarisation”, said Mila. “People come to share experiences so we can act together”. The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to Rheinmetall’s Düsseldorf headquarters, has become a focal point for opposition to the arms industry. Facilities in Cologne-Mülheim, Neuss and Weeze are all linked to the production of tanks, artillery and fighter jets. In recent days, activists marked a Siemens site in Munich with graffiti and banners denouncing its role in Bundeswehr automation. Another alliance, Rheinmetall Enteignen, has called for a demonstration outside Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger’s villa near Düsseldorf. The Clown Army is also mobilising While police and media point to clashes at past camps, organisers maintain that repression itself fuels confrontation. Die Linke MP Lea Reisner also criticised the Cologne ban as “a massive and unacceptable encroachment on the constitutional right of assembly”. For the organisers, the outcome is clear. “We will make the camp happen, with or without permission”, Mila said. “The repression only shows why our struggle against militarisation is necessary”. The post Germany: Anti-militarist camp to go ahead “with or without permission” appeared first on Freedom News.

THE UK STRATEGIC DEFENCE REVIEW WILL ONLY DELIVER SECURITY FOR ARMS COMANIES—NOT ANYONE USING A FOOD BANK ~ Tablitha Troughton ~ Sometimes you do have to love people in Britain. Consider the almost universal reaction to the current prime minister announcing that we’re all now on a war footing: Fuck off. These are the people who voted for Boaty McBoatface. These are the people who sent Rage Against the Machine to the top of the Christmas charts. Last month they marched again, in vast, mainly unreported numbers, half a million, in London for Palestine; this week they surrounded Parliament with a Red Line. They are increasingly taking direct action against the war machine; they have, nationwide, from the start, overwhelmingly backed an immediate ceasefire; they support, moreover, a full arms embargo on Israel, and sanctions. But in front of them parade a little troop of war enthusiasts. Their faces are stern, their phrases heavy clunks of measured doom. “We are being directly targeted by states with advanced military forces” the voice of Starmer intoned, on a now-deleted promo video, as AI strings in the background played ascending horror-movie scales. It was replaced by this Labour war promo video, where the music producer has instead typed “give me a 1980’s DJ on ketamine getting excited about 12 new attack submarines. Start with drums”. “It seems mad”, begins veteran BBC commentator Andrew Marr, now on LBC, briefly raising hope. “But of course, it’s not mad”, Marr continued, with the air of a man who’s said this to his own reflection several times that morning. “Britain’s defence review has grand ambition. Now it needs the money”, the BBC agreed. “The UK must raise defence spending” agitated the Telegraph. Who is the enemy? Who are these “states”? Russia, of course. And China. Russia and China? What will they do to us, precisely? No-one is asking, which is presumably why the Russian embassy sent out a little tweet confiding that Russia had no desire to attack the UK. “We are not interested in doing so, nor do we need to” it explained, as if to a two year old. And yet, here we are, forced to contemplate perpetual blackmail and extortion (£15 billion a year? £30 billion?) to pay arms corporations to create more abominable weapons, for no given reason, other than soundbites. “The first duty of government is to keep the British people safe and secure at home”, we are told, which will come as a surprise to the millions using food banks, but on the other hand sounds like a perfect description of a prison population. The “world has changed”. More weapons will give us “peace through strength”; we will be “secure at home and strong abroad”. Despite studies showing that spending public money on just about anything other than military industries produces more jobs and more general economic benefit, there will be, we are assured, “a defence dividend”. Because the ambition does not stop there. Labour are also going to “create a British Army which is 10x more lethal”, to “deter from the land”. Ten times more lethal? And deter whom, you may ask. Whatever, the British public is being lined up to pay for this “more lethal” army, and to live with its “land drone swarms”—and, subsequently, with its amputees and corpses. Perhaps this is all, or at least partly, a con; a desperate attempt by a flailing prime minister to sound important; a recycling of existing commitments with a huge dose of flannel. Cynics will point to the UK’s recent track record in just about everything, so that visions of glorious defiance fade away, and we’re left looking at a half-built sub, and a couple of crumbling arms factories re-purposed as pig sheds. Still, taking the Labour administration at its word (and really, it has been quite solid on the authoritarian, death-dealing side of things), the UK is heading enthusiastically towards a militaristic state, with hundreds of thousands of school children in cadet forces, youth unemployment ‘solved’ by army recruitment, and an economy increasingly based on increasing subsidies for the multinational arms industry. Meanwhile it will ensure that nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, while the inherent apocalyptic threat, once recognised and addressed, will continue unquestioned. Whether this vision will be fulfilled during this administration’s gig, or is handed over to the next, equally disposable, administration, is open to question. Meanwhile, the leader of the world’s most dangerous country is acting out, in public, an impression of unbridled, virulent instability, even as his Security Council veto is used against a resolution demanding an Israeli ceasefire. Since the UK is, and plans to remain, dependent on US weapon delivery systems, it must at least appear to placate him. As Trump and Starmer continue, in their separate ways, to demonstrate exactly why having leaders is an appalling idea, we appear to be faced with no choice. We are being treated like powerless fools, or credulous cowards. It may be useful to start asking exactly what this small island gets out of doubling as a US military base, and to remember that we are neither. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: Number 10 on Flickr The post Starmer’s Big Idea: A militarised, impoverished Britain appeared first on Freedom News.

AS EUROPE’S RULING CLASS RESPONDS TO THE POST-PAX AMERICANA WORLD WITH ANGUISH AND ARMAMENTS, HERE ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES AND THREATS FACING BRITISH ANARCHISTS ~ Rob Ray ~ Part one of this article, covering strengths and weaknesses, is here. OPPORTUNITIES Putting a cynical hat on, in many ways there has never been a more opportune time to be an anarchist. We are watching the collapse of the liberal capitalist dream happen in real time as Starmerism discards any semblance of velvet glove for the working class. The cobweb left is in utter disarray and even the new wave left of Corbynism has zero ideas. Re-capture Labour? Dead. New/radical party? Don’t make me laugh. Capture the Greens? You’ll kill them by trying—the project is already an uncomfortable balance of red-greens and liberal shire Tories talking round their very different reasons for being there. The need for a confident, radical base building its own resources towards the goal of acquiring leverage that can actually threaten government policy once in a while, could not be clearer to see. We have an ample example both from our own recent history and from across the pond of what happens to a progressive movement that puts all its eggs in the basket of electoralism and then loses. It’s also important to consider that both the current Labour squeeze on working class life and the oncoming wave of nationalistic, military first, sod-the-environment politics set to dominate the 2020s sits in both the Threats and Opportunities column. Watching this happen will be a focussing, radicalising factor for a great many people. We have not had a serious military drive in this country for quite some time, and it will be a culture shock. On top of all the other economic beefs the working class have right now, many leaning leftwards but with nowhere to express it, we do have some open doors to push at, if we’re canny about doing so and avoid alienating potential allies. Reform’s dangerous position too will have elements of both threat and opportunity. The former will see the usual There Is No Alternative merchants telling us the only way to stop fascism is to get out and vote, keep things nice and calm and disciplined, the usual twaddle that’s manifestly provided not protection against but breathing room for fascism to develop Europe-wide. The latter is our ability to say this. That the post-Thatcher consensus, with its flood-upwards economics and retreat of State support is the problem. That the solution is not tying ourselves to that disintegrating status quo, giving up our agency and confidence to suited corporate goons, but taking personal responsibility and action. One of our strengths being mutual aid fits perfectly into this grim scenario. Our politics encourage self-starting, do it yourself solidarity which is often undercut by State assumption of welfare mediation, the smothering apolitical liberal kindnesses of Big Charity and economic alienation. But the State is in retreat from these zones, charity is not going to pick up all that slack and the days of cheap goods are coming to an end. Community solidarity is what’s left, structured as solidarity rather than the often-mistaken process of a half-dozen worthies providing a service with radical trappings  to people who still think and act like consumers. THREATS There’s almost too many to list, but to pluck from the more obvious … I was having a drink with Phil Ruff once, talking about direct action campaigns of the 1970s—the Angry Brigade, bank robberies to raise funds and such. He, as with several people from the time, was in forgiving mood about the modern movement’s lack of similarly forceful street-level activism, in part because the situation then was so different. As he noted, CCTV was not a thing. And it’s not just CCTV. Vast, automated, easily-searched databasing and biometrics were not a thing. Social media and sousveillance were not a thing. And increasingly we don’t just have ever-present eyes watching us. It’s AI-fed, and can steal wholesale from every corner of the internet. If you walk through the centre of London on a rally today you will be filed away and in the event that you forget to mask up for an action, years later, it’ll be used. For the careful—those who know to mask up early and often, and stay out of reach of cops looking to expose faces, this may be manageable. For those less experienced it will be a potent means for the State to identify, categorise, and heavily repress those it deems troublemakers, present or future. A pre-crime punishment system arresting people simply for having public meetings, bolstered by an experienced (and now, shamefully, legally-immune) undercover policing operation and an extraordinarily powerful media machine gives the ruling class more powers than ever before to disrupt and destroy putative movements. Our preferred methods thus become more dangerous and difficult in a situation of rising military culture, allied with such potent tools of police and State repression. With laws now tightened around even basic protest to the point where we need police permission just to have one in the first place, our options can look limited. The city centres are increasingly zones where we cannot be effective in the absence of massive crowds and operational security that’s considerably more serious than that of the US military. Which is not to say activities can’t take place, but our strategies will have to change to reflect this reality. One great saving grace of the Tories’ fall last year was the collapse of a bill banning masks, but we can’t rely on that even under Starmer, let alone whatever comes next. Another is that it seems unlikely Labour will have much better luck with fixing prison overcrowding than the Tories did, meaning they are unlikely to deepen the use of imprisonment against protesters (though it seems equally unlikely, short of a major crisis, that they’ll dial it back to previous norms). Culturally, Britain seems to be headed at full speed into a dark place. On the one hand we have, similarly to elsewhere, the rejuvenation of old misogynistic ideals as part of the marrying of hustle culture to alienation in young men. On another, we will have the next great military recruitment drive promoting the nationalistic impulse. While the rampant individualism of the former does not necessarily gel all that well with the die-for-your-country ethos of the latter, machismo and guns certainly do, leading to the dangerous likelihood of a new generation of far-right young men entering the services en masse. What that might mean for the future of fascist street thuggery is anyone’s guess. What had seemed the far-removed possibility of a Reform-led government meanwhile, stymied for many years by first past the post, is increasingly looming. Their prospects seem much improved in recent months (largely through Labour’s efforts) but the conversion of this into real power is perhaps a way off yet. It’s pretty certain their direction of travel will focus more on courting the “anyone but” vote alongside anti-migrant sentiment but from an anarchist perspective their positioning and message is at its most potent in changing the tenor of the national conversation. With the likes of GB News, social media, and increasingly the right-wing broadsheets behind them they are performing in like fashion to other groups of their type on the continent such as National Rally in France and AfD in Germany.  In the nationalist sense it’s hard to see whether Reform’s isolationism with Atlanticist aspects or Labour and Conservative tendencies of European rapprochement in the cause of solidifying the EU-Russian borderline will be more influential, but neither of them herald much good for the anarchist cause. In either direction expanded defence spending is certain (either to appease the US or fall in with European norms) and nothing in Reform’s policy slate suggests any interest in rolling back the neoliberalism that Labour and the Tories are so hopelessly addicted to. As noted above, this ties into both opportunity and threat, with an economy already in hoc to more powerful blocs leading to impoverishment but not necessarily the mobilisation of counter-power. IN SUM Anarchism has for some time acted as a fringe of the broader left, albeit one which regularly denounces and rejects that role, thanks to our lack of size and in-house resources. Suffering from both our lack of a solid class base and a public view of our activities as poorly-organised teenage rebellion at best, mindless destroyers at worst, we’ve struggled to grow beyond the role for many reasons. Some factors I’ve already mentioned, another might be the perennial problem that we’ve been poor at converting rapid growth into an improved long-term position. We have repeatedly failed to deal with the “crisis of success” where an influx of people leads to challenges to the status quo, arguments, burnout and splits.  These are things we will need to consider how to work past (in the former case) or through (in the latter) if we are to take best advantage of the opportunities to come and, perhaps more importantly, work out ways to counter the threats. We know we absolutely cannot count on politicians be they centrist or “radical”, and the left seems barely aware of what’s coming let alone preparing to aggressively fight it. The response to far-right mass demonstrations has been to call out the same doughty anoraks as ever, increasingly outnumbered outside a few heartland zones, while few ideas have been forthcoming to counter Reform or even Andrew Tate. Changes to the law are met with the same trade union and NGO faces writing columns as ever with precisely the same minimal impact on government policy. Small as we are, if the anarchist movement can build something of that energy and creativity we’ve seen rise to the surface repeatedly over the last couple of decades we have every opportunity, like Reform with the Tories, to grab the flag of resistance that a large section of the population still hopes to see raised. But we then have to hold it, knowing the State will be rather more interested in us than it would ever be in the amblings of loyal oppositions. Which requires discipline, forward thinking and structures that are rather more robust than we have at the moment. We’ve relied for a long time on a churn of young people coming in, burning themselves out, then heading off to have families and make homes which has left us with precious little of what State and corporations love to call “institutional memory”. We need to find a way to break that cycle, to not just encourage youth action but give it tangible links and knowledge and a sense of continuity, rather than having 20-somethings, a bunch of people in their 50s-plus, and a gap between. And that requires a struggle to reverse the alienation we’ve fallen prey to. An expansion of physical interaction within communities and in our own spaces. A break with social media and a re-engagement with anarchist led, anarchist-controlled media which doesn’t simply get siloed within directly-engaged circles and then disappear when the campaign is done. A re-establishing of the principle of human engagement at workshops, festivals and co-ops.  The field is, in fact, wide open for those anarchist seeds beneath the snow to start growing. And there is no more important a time to get gardening. The post Anarchism and the New Military Wave (pt. 2) appeared first on Freedom News.

DISCUSSING THE NEWS OF THE WEEK, WHICH CONTINUES MOMENTOUS NOT JUST IN THE US. GIVEN THE EU’S PLANS TO DROP 800 BILLION EUROS ON DEFENCE, WE SAVE A PARTICULAR FOCUS FOR THE ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS With money flowing towards production and the need to drag the next generation of youth into patriotic camoflage, what threats are ahead? The post Anarchist News Review: Peckham rallies, Teslas torched and EU remilitarises appeared first on Freedom News.

IN AN INTERVIEW, KSUSHA LOOKS FORWARD TO “DRONE COOPERATIVES, REHABILITATION OF THE WAR INJURED, CULTURAL PROJECTS, SQUATS FOR REFUGEES” ~ Cristina Sykes ~ An anarchist based in Kyiv has responded to questions from Kapinatyöläinen magazine in Finland about the activities of anti-authoritarian networks in Ukraine today. Ksusha described anarchists’ networked presence in the military units and involvement in civil support for the front line and their . In terms of future projects, she looks forward to “drone cooperatives, rehabilitation of the war injured, cultural projects, squats for refugees”. To “comrades in Finland, the Baltics or Poland” she recommended “first aid skills and attending public defense courses, building drones, as well as many other civilian hobbies”. According to the interview, the anti-authoritarian volunteer unit sponsored by Yuri Samoilenko “got stuck due to the attitude of the higher army management” and anarchists now “have people at different levels of the army, connections, understanding of war operations and how to work with people in the army. An understanding has been formed about what kind of things can be developed and what can be dangerous”. With this combination of understanding and experience, anarchists are developing practices that are “viable under wartime conditions”, while starting “small projects, sowing the seeds of anti-authoritarian cooperation methods in their own locations”. Previously in Kharkiv, Ksusha related she had been involved with renovations of a squat for war refugees and “joined an eco-anarchist group that worked against construction projects and deforestation, took action to stop fur production and organized free markets”. When the full-scale war started in 2022, she joined Operation Solidarity, described as a civic action platform organised to support comrades from the anti-authoritarian left who went to the front lines. “We supported socialists, anarchists, punks, hard core subculturers, anti-fascists, feminists – anyone united by some kind of progressive leftist views”. Later reorganising as the Solidarity Collectives, this “mutual aid network” now supports 80-100 “anarchists, anti-fascists, punks, eco-anarchists, feminists, squatters, LGBT+ people and union activists” with clothes and first aid equipment as well as “walkie-talkies and night vision devices, as well as tablets, laptops, cars, and even expensive airplanes and drones”. Organised as a decentralised network, the Collectives also aid those affected by the war, in house repairing projects and by supplying laptops for teaching use, while their media group works to make these activities visible and “be in contact with our comrades”. They emphasise work with unions which are “in danger of being suppressed” in order to help them “influence workers’ rights and disrupt the neoliberal reforms that are now so popular in Ukraine”. She emphasised that anarchist activity in Ukraine had only stared in the last decades, against a distrust of anything labelled as “Leftist” because of the Soviet past. “Everything had to be started from a scratch, and it was not possible to lean on any background, institutions that would have already been in operation for a long time.When we start projects in the military or in the civil society, we face demonization of our ideas”. The full interview is has been translated into English on Takku.net The post Ukraine: Solidarity Collectives & anarchists in the ranks appeared first on Freedom News.