The Derry Anarchist Collective’s very own Barricade Bulletin No.26 is OUT NOW and available online!
Barricade Bulletin is now available from members locally or directly from the usual local outlets.
For those beyond the North West, you can download the online version with news and other information HERE
As ever Barricade Bulletin is free for prisoners, so please get in touch at our email address: derryanarchists@gmail.com
This blog has been created by anarchists in Derry. The aim is to help promote the politics of class struggle anarchism locally, as well as our activities, news and opinions from around the North West and across the country.
If you would like to get involved, then all you have to do is email us at: derryanarchists@gmail.com
Israel ordered the “Hannibal Directive” on October 7 by ordering the killing of captive Israeli soldiers and civilians. But the U.S. media continues to hide the truth. By James North, Mondoweiss, July 10, 202420 Israeli soldiers sit in a tank near the Israel-Gaza border after the end of a seven-day truce between Israel and Hamas, […]
KIT KLARENBERG At the start of June, Admiral Robert Bauer, head of NATO’s military committee, announced that the military alliance had finalised plans to recognise state-backed cyberattacks on its members as a dedicated pretext for activating Article 5. Reportedly “a joint decision of all allies,” from now on, foreign hacking blitzes can be countered with a collective NATO […]
15 Jul 2024 Source: The Guardian Listen By Al Mayadeen English Expressions of “there was no trace of my child,” “blood was the only thing you could hear, see and smell,” and “the street was a pool of blood” unravel the horrors of the Aabasan massacre. Dozens of residents of Aabasan al-Kabira, located on the […]
WHEN HOSPITAL PROFIT IS THE FIRST AND ONLY PRIORITY, WHAT HAPPENS TO ‘PROTOCOL’, INFORMED CONSENT, FULL DISCLOSURE, PATIENT CHOICE, PATIENTS RIGHTS? DISTURBING: End-Of-Life Drugs Used In UK Hospital COVID Protocol“… in the past, we would never have given sedatives and respiratory depressants to people who were struggling with respiratory distress because it’s just gonna ……
An undercover Spy Cop who went on to become the head of the Metropolitan police’s special branch has admitted he accused a blameless activist of planning to plant bombs at a military base.
Pearce as already been outed as sending people he knew to be innocent to long jail sentences, including the Italian student Patrizia Giambi, to further his ‘illustrious career’.
Roger Pearce, the undercover officer who infiltrated anarchist groups in the 1980s, had alleged to a public inquiry that he drove to Aldershot with a group of anarchists to “recce bomb sites”. He accused Dave Morris of being one of the anarchists..
On Tuesday Pearce withdrew his allegation after it was denied by Morris. Morris is a longtime radical campaigner who was one of the defendants in the 1990s McLibel case..
Dave Morris is a highly respected and hard working community based anarchist who has been active in London for nearly 50 years.
The retraction of the allegation against Morris was heard at the judge-led public inquiry which is examining the activities of about 139 undercover officers who spied on more than 1,000 political groups since 1968.
The current phase of the inquiry is looking at covert operations in the 1980s and 1990s.
Pearce pretended to be an anarchist between 1980 and 1984 using the fake name of Patrizia Giambi,
He was a member of the Metropolitan police’s special branch, the secretive division which was responsible for monitoring political groups. By 1999, he had been promoted to the head of special branch, a post he held until 2003.
In his witness statement, Pearce had claimed that during his deployment, he had been “drawn into helping to recce’ing bomb sites” at the Aldershot military barracks. He alleged that he drove a group of four or five anarchists in his car in a spontaneous trip to the town and named Morris as one of the group.
On Monday, Morris, giving evidence to the inquiry, said the claim was “a load of rubbish”, suggesting that Pearce had made it all up.
He added: “I don’t believe I’ve ever been to Aldershot and I certainly would never have been recceing a place for whatever he’s accusing me of.”
On Tuesday, Pearce backed down after he was challenged by David Barr, the inquiry’s barrister. “Yes, Mr Morris, I am convinced, was not involved in the reconnoitre of the Aldershot barracks, so this is a mistake,” Pearce said.
Pearce still maintained he made the trip with anarchists who were not named at the inquiry. He added that “nothing came of the reconnaissance”.
Morris is best known for his involvement in the long-running McLibel trial. In that David v Goliath case, he and another environmental campaigner, Helen Steel were finally victorious, after being sued for libel by the US fast food giant McDonald’s who paid infiltrators to spy on them, over a leaflet they had distributed criticising the company’s practices.
A couple weeks ago, I was talking to my friends who run the podcast It Could Happen Here. “Summer is coming, and an awful lot of people are newly radicalized. You all should put out an episode about what the next steps are,” I told them..
“Perfect,” someone replied. “Write it and record it by May 20th.”
So I wrote a short and incomplete guide for new activists. You can hear me present it in audio format if you’d like.
I’m coming with my own biases which I want to get out right up front: I’m an anarchist, and it’s also been decades since I broke into the movement, because I’ve been doing this stuff since 2002, when I dropped out of college to join the alter-globalization movement.
So my direct experience is not recent, and I have biases against authoritarian organizing and electoral organizing, biases towards direct action and autonomy.
I believe that the way that you build a freer and better world is by practicing freedom along the way.
That’s not to say I have any interest in guiding people towards specific paths, specific actions, specific issues and movements.
Exactly the opposite.
Right now, the world is in serious trouble. It’s always in serious trouble, sure, but it’s extra in serious trouble right now.
We are in desperate need of people who dedicate their time–part of it or all of it–to trying to stop the terrible things that are happening and to trying to build beautiful things, beautiful alternatives.
So how do you get started?
To start, I want you to think about a few separate things. First, what do you care about? Second, what do you want to do? Third, what risks are you willing to take? If you have a sense of those before you throw yourself into the fight, you’ll start off strong.
What Do You Care About?
What movements and projects speak loudest to you? A ton of causes are interconnected–the fight for Palestinian liberation is not, at its core, a separate project than the fight against policing in the United States, for example.
The rise of a global police state is everyone’s problem, and so is the US and Zionist imperial project. Causes are interconnected, but you can rarely start by just trying to fix, well, everything.
You don’t climb a mountain by just willing yourself atop the mountain. You climb it by picking a place and then starting to climb.
Maybe you’re concerned about the police state, or surveillance, or the erosion of abortion rights.
Maybe you’re looking to fight for Palestinian liberation, or for prisoners in the US to have access to books, or for LGBT rights, or for the safety of migrants at the border, or for the protection of the remaining natural ecosystems.
Maybe your concern something hyper-local, like the destruction of a park or the sweeping of homeless encampments.
Maybe it’s something a bit broader or more abstract, like you want to get involved in explaining the need for police abolition.
There’s something, though. Something you want to change. Everything is interconnected, but you still want to pick a place to start.
What Do You Want To Do?
What is your skillset, or what skillsets do you wish you had? What do you have to offer the revolution, or what do you wish you had to offer?
Are you in med school or have other first aid and medical experience? Maybe you want to plug in with your local street medics.
Are you studying law? Movement lawyers need paralegal help and there are groups that can use volunteers to get people out of jail or through difficult court cases.
Is graphic design your passion? Basically every group that exists needs help with their flyers or instagram slideshows or whatever.
Spend all day on twitter? Well, a lot of activist groups can’t find someone to run their social media.
Sometimes just being an extrovert is a super power… building strong movements means building strong communities, and every meeting and party needs someone willing to introduce themselves to the new people and help them figure out where to go.
The best activist meetings I’ve ever been part of have someone who sits next to the new people and explains what’s going on.
If you can plan a party, you can plan a benefit party to raise money for bail funds.
The quickest way to sum all of this up is to say “think about what’s wrong and think about what you’re good at, then get together with other people and apply what you’re good at to stopping what’s wrong.”
The Free 