Let me read you
some of what your own MP's have told me
about what's been going on.
"It's checkmate, we're stuffed."
"It's dire."
"We're all done for."
These are your own colleagues.
Well my message to my colleagues is: yes.
Do you feel humiliated?
That must feel humiliating
so early in office.
Look I understand it is very difficult
for families across the country.
And they're blaming you.
and if...
But do you accept that you have made it worse
But we've... well...
What you've done has made it worse for people.
It's made it harder for people to pay their bills.
Definitely.
Well it... yeah.
First of all...
I have said sorry.
Oh hello.
Welcome to System Fail,
the show that speaks truth to power.
It is my great pleasure to present you
with the chief's award for valour.
Congratulations, I'd like to give you an opportunity
to say a few words.
I'm very uncomfortable being here with you guys.
I do not walk with the police.
And I just want folks to know that they don't keep us safe.
We keep us safe.
Riots work.
Thank you.
♫ Blawww, how you like me now?
Appreciate it.
I am your host, Dee Dos,
and for months now
the drums of war have been growing louder.
84 missiles and 24 drones targeting at least 10 cities
From one end of Ukraine to the other
Revenge after a key bridge connecting Russia to Crimea
was blown up this weekend.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait...
The largest ever military maneuvers that China has done.
Are you willing, militarily, to defend Taiwan
if it comes to that?
Yes.
Taiwan is an inimitable part of Chinese territory.
Could we be heading toward World War 3?
You know, global thermonuclear war, end of days scenario.
Despite the focus of western media coverage,
today's most deadly war is being waged
in the territories ruled by the Ethiopian state.
In Amhara and Afar, recent fighting
has displaced tens of thousands of people from their homes,
mostly women and children,
while in Tigray,
millions of people are being systematically starved to death
under conditions of a government-imposed communications blackout,
regular shelling, air strikes,
mass rapes,
and other atrocities carried out by the Ethiopian
and Eritrean armed forces.
I'm starving. It's awful.
Hunger doesn't kill you in one hit,
it destroys you slowly.
Turkey continues to wage a vicious
and largely unreported war in Syria and Iraq,
bombing Kurdish villages
and repeatedly using chemical weapons
against guerrilla fighters
aligned with the Kurdish Worker's Party, or PKK.
And in Yemen, civilians are bracing themselves
for a fresh round of fighting,
following the collapse of a six month ceasefire
that had provided a temporary reprieve
from eight years of hell.
Meanwhile, Putin's invasion of Ukraine
and increased sabre-rattling over Taiwan,
have ramped up geopolitical tensions
between the world's so-called Great Powers
to levels not seen since the Cold War.
Geriatric politicians,
some of whom look like they could barely fight a cold,
have assumed the role of wartime leaders,
framing armed conflicts over energy markets,
trade routes and so-called spheres of influence
as epic clashes of moral, cultural and national values.
Democracy will and must prevail
against neo-nazis and extreme nationalists
The actual values in question have proven quite elastic.
In Ukraine, Western media outlets have gone to great lengths
to rehabilitate the neo-nazis of the Azov Battalion,
re-framing them as misunderstood patriots,
while RT and Sputnik have heaped praise
on the neo-nazis of the Wagner Group
for their efforts to “de-nazify”
the so-called Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Beneath all the misinformation and patriotic spin
lies the brutal reality of war:
working-class humans slaughtering one another
for the vanity of politicians
and the profits of their capitalist handlers.
When you look at the leadership that's come from the defence contractors
it's telling us that this conflict in Russia and Ukraine
will last longer than the consensus expects.
It's giving us the same message that, say, the energy stocks or oil here is.
So this idea of peak conflict or peak inflation or peak yields
I don't think the market is justifying any of those
and these defence contractors, I think, support that view.
But not everyone is going along with the plot.
I'm not afraid of anything
The most valuable thing that they can take from us
Is the lives of our children
I won't give them my child's life.
In Russia, a militant anti-war movement has risen up,
launching a sustained, multi-pronged attack
on the government's war effort.
The Russian state, for its part,
has arrested thousands of protesters for peacefully demonstrating
their moral objections to the war.
No to War!
Which leads to an obvious conclusion:
if all opposition is criminalized,
you might as well make it count.
Members of the Anarchist Communist Combat Organization,
known by its Russian acronym BOAK,
have carried out dozens of acts of sabotage against railways,
aimed at disrupting the transfer of military equipment and ammunition.
They have been joined by partisan counterparts in Belarus,
whose sabotage of railways has disrupted Russian troop movements,
and played an important role in thwarting its initial invasion of Kyiv.
Meanwhile, within Russia,
more than 50 military recruitment offices
have been attacked since the war began,
many of them set alight in brazen, night-time, molotov attacks.
Government buildings, and police vehicles
have also been put to the torch.
The pace of these attacks has intensified since
Putin issued a decree on September 21st,
mobilizing 300,000 reservists for active duty on the front lines.
That's it!
The games are over.
You re all military!
We're here to take you to the army.
What army?
I m 52 years old.
The conscription age has been raised to 60 years old.
Raised by who?
What do you mean by who? The President.
On September 26th, a 25 year old man
named Ruslan Zinin shot a military officer in a conscription office
in the Siberian city of Ust-Ilimsk,
after his friend had been called up for service.
In Primorye, near the country's border with North Korea,
the commissar in charge of regional mobilization
and enlistment was found dead on October 14th.
Numerous protests have broken out in the country's far east,
as well as the Caucasus regions of Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria
and Chechnya, where the region's Putin-obsessed strongman,
Ramzan Kadyrov,
♫ I can't hide the way I feel
about you
anymore
I can’t hold the hurt inside
keep the pain out of...
responded to protests by threatening
to forcibly conscript participants and their families.
Why are you taking the boy from us?
Don t allow them to take the men!
On the other side of the increasingly fluid border,
a number of Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian anarchists
have joined the Ukranian war effort,
integrating themselves within the national army
in order to fight against what they see
as the greater evil of Russian occupation.
Other anarchists have maintained an active antagonism
to Russia, NATO, and the Ukrainian state,
which has enacted authoritarian war-time measures criminalizing dissent,
limiting freedom of movement for refugees,
and enforcing military conscription on all men
and trans women between the ages of 18 and 60.
On October 5th, the Ukrainian embassy in Prague was vandalized,
and a communique was released blasting Zelensky for forcibly
confining Ukrainian civilians who want to flee.
It goes without saying,
but Ukraine's oligarchs are not fighting on the front lines.
Most of them fled the country for the safety of Western Europe
as soon as the first bombs started falling.
Meanwhile, in France, Germany, Italy and Greece,
anarchists have carried out a number of clandestine attacks
against NATO military contractors, and disrupted weapons shipments.
Despite all the death, devastation and divisions
sparked by Russia's invasion,
new solidarities are being formed
between those fighting to end the war.
Peoples of Russia have been oppressed by the Russian state for a long time
and all have reasons to fight it.
Radical ideas have surfaced in the political environment.
We don't think Putin can win this war
and losing the was could be followed
by anything from change of power
to the collapse of the Russian Federation
which is a scenario that is becoming more and more believable
by the day.
It's worth noting that Russia's defeat in World War One,
hastened by widespread defections and military sabotage,
served as a primary catalyst for the February Revolution,
and the overthrow of the Tsar.
History, as they say, doesn't repeat itself
but it sometimes rhymes.
When the dust settles from this
there's going to be hell to pay in Moscow.
Well perhaps.
Maybe some good will come from it.
A little revolution, now and then,
is a healthy thing.
And in other news,
in so-called Chile, on Tuesday, October 18th,
nearly 200 people were arrested in protests
marking the third anniversary of the revolts that shook loose
the government's control in 2019.
Coordinated actions took place in cities across the country,
including Santiago,
Valparaiso,
Concepcíon
and the heart of indigenous Mapuche territory in Temuco
Fiery attacks destroyed three city busses in Santiago
and logging equipment used to colonize the Mapuche homelands
of Wallmapu.
The Chilean Pacos were again caught on film trying to run over protestors
and firing rocket propelled teargas canisters at eye level
24 police and dozens of protesters were injured in the clashes.
The day also witnessed calls of support and solidarity
with the hundreds of prisoners
who have remained caged since the 2019 revolts,
as well as Mapuche political prisoners, like Héctor Llaitul.
With love and rebelliousness,
I continue fighting for the comrades who are not here anymore.
For the comrades who lost eyes.
And for the comrades who ended up prostrate in their houses.
One day we will raise our fists,
we will cut our chains,
and we will smash those who took our liberty.
We have now reached the end of this episode of System Fail.
To support anarchist and anti-war prisoners
in Russia and Belarus,
consider following and donating to Anarchist Black Cross chapters
in Belarus, Moscow and Irkutsk.
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Godspeed, humans.