Apology.

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday January 11, 2003 19:11 by ipsiphi barcelona

being a short reflection on the guilt that we still carry with ue.

No one who is active in today´s political, social or cultural issues today is free of guilt.

Firstly I would like to make known the apology offered by my political grouping for the wrong we have been associated with.
I have done so many times before, to individuals and groups, through many media, TV, Radio, print media, and now here Irish indymedia.

I am an anarchist.
I have worked with many others within a tradition that stretches back over a century in Europe and North America to uphold the Anarchist tradition.

To uphold the belief that
AUTONOMY BEGINS WITH SELF.

In upholding our beliefs we have sought for over a century to end speculation on property, be it residential, farming, intellectual, copyright, MP3 files, information, state owned, privately owned, clerically owned.
In upholding our beliefs we have sought over a century to end borders. We have assisted illegal immigration, we have married third world citizens, we have fought the arbitrary division of man against man.
In upholding our beliefs we have squated the homes of over seven million people in Europe today.
In upholding our beliefs that military service is immoral, that no state nor uniform may alter the wrong of killing another we have never accepted militarisation, and so our five ministers in the Spanish Republic 1936 might have contributed to the fascist victory by honouring their consciences before military expediency.

Though I do not write today to apologise for events of over sixty years ago.

No-one who is presently contributing to the WAR debate in Ireland today is free of guilt in the period of teh nineteen thirties.

In the last week I have left yet more memories of FG association with mob violence and racism during their blueshirt days.
IN the last week I have shown that there are still real conections between those FG then and now.
I do not seek to apologise for that.

In the last week we have seen the guilt that Irish Republicanism carries resurface.

In the last week some have surely muttered whilst approaching Dublin´s government builidings that the socialists too must face the guilt of association with Stalin´s genocide and oppression.

I do not seek to apologise for that.

TODAY
i repeat what i have often said to pàrents, friends and others.

Anarchy is a philosophy that believes "autonomy beigns with self".
I am associated with squatting activity in Europe, and the organisation of free parties.
(raves). There are many who are presently pouring over my involvement and those of my comrades in such activity as part of Reclaim the Streets, network23 and London´s "underground".

I wish to apologise for the damage our anarchist beliefs could not stop.
I wish to apologise for the helplessness many of us have felt seeing the self-destruction of countless people through drug misadventure in squats over the years.
I wish I could make it better, but I can not.

I´m sorry. I wrote last year that some day I might list my dead. THey will not be soldiers or fighters for freedom, they will be victims of family breakdown, abuse by clerics anmd society, those moulded into their autodestruction by prison systems that seek retribution over "rehabilitation".

No-one here is free of guilt.
but I thought maybe anarchists or one anarchist could tell you that guilt weighs heavily on the heart and mind.

There is now more than one generation that have been effected by drugs. There is now not a single community that has not been effected by drugs. It has long past the time when we need be honest about drugs. What they do, where they came from, where they come from, who invested heavily in their development distribution and promotion, and honestly about how we as a society can deal better with the reality drugs have given us.

It is most odd that in trying to fight the menace of hard drug use communities often unknowingly have adopted anarchist philosophies and solutions. Though it must also be pointed out that not a single victim of community action violence in Ireland was ever a source of hard drug production.

The people of Ireland and Europe and the world have consistently been lied to and misled as to the geopolitical nature of drug supply.

It is only a little more than 150 years since the British Empire gave us a global opium trade. It is a similar legth of time since Anarchy was first formulated within Europe´s political tradition.

Today Heroin and Cocaine are weapons of the global oligarchy as much now as during the Opium War.

When I lived in London and worked as both Chruch of England organist and anarchist squat activist, I saw enough deaths through heroin misuse. I took part in the discussion that led to selected "soft drug" tolerance in my borough of Lambeth. I knew that those 6000 "problem drug users" listed by the Metropolitan Police force were indeed problem drug users.
I apologise for the approach my political philosphy has taken to these issues. I apologise for the many times I have resuscitated those who would have otherwise died, I apologise for pressuring for needle exchange, a working policy treating problem drug users as those with health problems rather than criminal. I apologise for putting up parents of Italian squatters arrested under the myriad drug misues laws when they were arrested.
Anarchy has done little to help.

No-one presently invovled in Irish politics can tracewa tradition that has not involved increasing teh suffering of others. You are all as guilty as any other. The time span is the only thing that distinguishes you, and the nature of your tacit or overt support of the violence and increased suffering your political policies caused.

Anarchists have always had a nasty habit of saying things "just how they are".
That is why we are put up against the wall.

Ireland know how things are. You have been robbed of your cultural inheritance and cheated of your national future.