anarcha adventures

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Originally uploaded by AnnaAniston.

Its not St Patrick’s day….its just pollution bubbling up from the drains in the Sydney CBD on Friday.

These pics are crap, and they’re late, and they’re from the shittest ‘protest’ ever, but what the hell.

Lorena Bobbit Liberation Army
Originally uploaded by AnnaAniston.

A concept poster I made up for an idea Fanny had - the “Lorena Bobbit Liberation Army”.

Reclaim the streets on Saturday was totally cool. We arrived a bit later than the 1pm kick-off, but found the tunnel pary just beginning. Some lovely ladies did a burlesque kinda dance to a train song, cross-dressed as they were as male “shitty rail” guards. Ladies, you’re the best!

While walking from the tunnel to Hyde Park, I was in the back. Just strolling and chatting to some friends. The police behind me (those riot specials) wanted us to move along more quickly. But you can only move as fast as the crowd is, so I went at my own pace. One of them pushed me in the back. I turned around and clearly said “keep your hands off me, you do not have permission to touch me!”. With immense immaturity, he responded by yelling “I’ll touch you as much as I want”, punctuating his speech with pushes. I again told him “keep your hands off my body!”, and he pushed me again.

It wasn’t an altogether violent experience, but when someone whos job it is to protect your rights violates them so wontonly, you’ve got to remark upon it.

The human world is made up of the relationships that people have with one another. These relationships play out every single day, in each of our dealings with another person. More insidiously, much behaviour isn’t consciously thought-out and chosen because it is the best, or most loving action. Most behaviour is chosen because it is ‘easiest’ or more logical. Logical because we’ve seen in played out before by parents and others who’ve dealt with those situations before.

There are some people who are overtly racist or sexist. But they aren’t usually a problem for anarchists, because anarchists know to reject overt racism and sexim. It just isn’t on to tell a woman to ‘get in the kitchen’ in anarchist circles. But there are more subtle forms of sexism that do make it into all relationships, no matter how vigilant. This is because sexism is ingrained in this society, and we learn it from the time we are born. This can be difficult to acknowledge, confront and accept, as Chris Crass documents in his article Going Places That Scare Me. Crass uncovers an important aspect of sexism: it is not about gender, it is about power and for some reason, men have it and women don’t. Though that power is often unconscious and unsought, it is no less tangible because of this.

Sexism is an action that is repeated and repeated without being caught by the actor. The only way to beat it is to be open to admitting it.

Here’s an idea, an (A)-ist mutual find for the defence of civial rights and civil disobedience of its members and petitioners …

Defence Fund

1. There is a formal board structure, with named directors and an AGM and everything. There are rules of procedure (probably adopted from the NSW Dept of Commerce Standard rules). Because we’re talking about $, everything should be above reproach (and it will be reproaced).
2. Money is collected from members. This is recorded, and if possible, 90% refundable on demand.
3. Not affiliated with any group, not a feeder organisation or a front. Open to any and all to subscribe.
4. Members and others can apply for funds to aid their defences, pay bails or fines.

I wonder if it’d be illegal to do this, as it is, or would it need to be really covert and shady? I bet the govt wouldn’t like it at all. Is it similar to a professional bailor? An anarchist bailor? Interesting.

I saw “Jarhead” last fortnight. I read the book in preparation. Actually my partner had got it about 18 months ago from a pulp bookshop, because he’s interested in war and the people who make it.

In the book, Anthony Swofford doesn’t glorify, and doesn’t condemn. He admits that he did the things he did, and tries to tell the truth of his experience. He’s critical, he’s analytical. He’s honest in a way that the film could have been, but isn’t. The book talks about young marines in training watching endless war movies, pumping themselves up, stroking their ‘dicks’ readying themselves for ‘the big fuck of war’, and each man taking a turn to go out into the hallway and cry to himself at the fear and excitement he felt. The film just shows the dick-stroking part, not the lonliness, soul-searching, questioning and fear. Just the excitation.

The film is a lie. In the book, there’s a discussion about the “Shame Wall” where marines post pics of their lovers who cheat on them back home, and how that makes them feel better, to bond as brothers on a frontier. But marine recruiters will use their exhaustive knowledge of the price of prostitutes at any point on the globe to entice young men into the corps. There’s a little contradiction there - a dialectic, even. One that might be too complex for cinema-goers to absorb. Our buff and sexy hero is shown to be a celibate and faithful boyfriend (as are all the marines) while he fantasises about his girlfriend’s dalliances with some “Jody” back home. (”Jody” is the mythic man who didn’t enlist and fucks everyone’s girlfriends). The book describes a complex relationship between women and their marine-men. Some of them get off on having a man away at war, some of them have affairs to ‘get even’ with the men for use and abuse of prostitutes. Real-life Swofford has his affairs, but eventually rejects his girlfriend when she does the same, pasting her onto the wall of shame and trying to sell his nudie pics of her. He can’t because an unfaithful woman just isn’t wank-material, even though all of the marines are unfaithful in thoguht and deed to their own women.

Our hero is a hard man, but the film doesn’t explore that he’s also a soft man who’s capable of laying out his contradictions for inspection. In his book, Swofford says that all war films, especially the “anti-war” ones are actually pro-war because they indulge and pamper the warring desire. Jarhead had the chance to rise above that, but didn’t. Why would you try to actually say something when you can just show Jake Gyllenhall’s buff body in the shower?