Sharing your house with asylum seekers

Maria Albrecht has only hazy memories of the first homeless person she and her husband, Scott, invited into their home to stay. But he was almost certainly an alcoholic, in his 50s or 60s, and he wouldn't have had a shower in a long time. He slept on a camp bed in the couple's sitting room: the family, with two small children at the time, were living in a two-bedroom semi.

That was about 20 years ago: since then, the Albrechts have welcomed approximately 300 homeless people into their home – some straight off the streets, others referred by the British Red Cross. "I know people think it sounds impossible, to just take in homeless people," says Maria, "but the motivating factor for me is this: if I was sleeping on a park bench, I would hope someone would do this for me. So I do it for others.

Further reading (Guardian).

Even if we did mention it before (it probably happened but I cannot find where) it should be a pleasure to point again to the Catholic Worker Farm in Watford.

The shocking truth about the British general election...

..and perhaps elections in general in the hard core of Empire.
The opinion of the voters did not matter.

It is hard to believe for someone from one of the many countries in Europe where coalition governments are the rule and not the exception that anyone would consider that a party representing 36% of the electorate would be more entitled to govern than two parties, together representing more than fifty per cent of the voters. "Gordon Brown has been voted out." Oh no, he has not. If the Liberal Democrats would honestly believe Labour would work on proportional representation, then Gordon Brown stays as prime minister. He will have a bigger mandate than the other man. Get used to the idea of coalitions, in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland (in reality) they are the rule too.

But all this belongs to the spheres where the United Kingdom would be no longer an annex of some of its former colonies in North America. Much more telling than all the talk about the voting system is the panicky media noise about what really matters about the election.
How will the markets react, that is the most prominent question.

Either "the markets" are a natural phenomenon, like a volcano that is getting angry and will explode since its special god is not pleased with the outcome. The Market as an idol that wants reconciliation.

Or "the markets" have got something to do with human beings. What kind of human beings, and where do they reside?

Answer to the latter question: not particularly or mainly in the UK.
Just like in Greece, probably Spain, Portugal and whichever country is next, the voting public does not matter.
"The markets" matter. They are demanding stable government.
The kind of government that deals with welfare, schools and war, lots of war. War is healthy for markets.

Oh, and police. The Most Important Selling Point of all the main parties is that they are bringing out so many cops into the streets. Markets seem to like that too.

You see, I am not particularly the anti-voting kind of anarchist, and I am sincerely pleased about the first Green MP. I was a member of the Green Party in NL until they took a turn to the right after which they disappeared altogether. (And I am a bit infatuated with Caroline Lucas, I confess). PR, which will give the Greens and others more opportunities, can stop the rot for a short while - and yes, the racists too will have more opportunities, but why only think of them when considering PR?

However, the story of the Importance of Markets rather than the voting public is the final démasqué of what only can be called now parliamentary democracy on its dying bed.

Considering the alternative to parliament is no longer something for some vague future beyond a horizon that inevitably keeps fading. Rather than talking about voting or not or propagating voter apathy it is time to seriously consider the alternative(s).
It may already be too late.

Brought to you by Real Anarchists

As far as I know there is only one report covering the London Anarchist Conference of June 6th. It sounds even more depressing than the photo - especially the comments.

Some years ago a trotskyite wrote a dissertation about the role of anarchists during the occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans (you are supposed to call them "nazis" now, that sounds more polite and pro-European - Britons may ask about this on the Channel Islands).
The conclusion of this trotskyite was: there was no anarchist resistance. No, there was not. There were some individual anarchists reasoning along the lines "government is government, no matter who does it". And the others worked together with whomever they could work with. It simply just is not anarchist to claim action of any kind, even under less severe circumstances. You just do what you think is right. (Of course, this applies even more to those who identify with Christian anarchism).

It took us two issues of the anarchist journal of which I am one of the editors to explain this. It gave me the opportunity to make the sad discovery that Felix Ortt, namesake and son of the most influential Dutch Christian anarchist, was auf der Flucht erschossen in a concentration camp in Poland, where he had been detained as a member of the resistance. In which his ageing father played a modest role - according to his age - too. Never boasting, never even showing sadness.

Sadness I can feel about the comments on the Indymedia-article mentioned above.
When will they ever learn, indeed?

To brighten up this posting: tents of participants of the yearly anarchist gathering at Whitsun/-monday in the Netherlands.