Ann Narkeh’s End of Year Message

I’m overdue a break, so I’m shutting down to recharge and scheme radical resolutions for a more productive rEVOLution in 2017.

This article by Gary Glass for Real Media perfectly sums up my feelings regarding CHRISTMAS AND THE REPRODUCTION OF CAPITALISM how Christmas fails to reconcile the social and ecological alienation of Capitalism, instead reinforcing it.

“Christmas is a kind of bourgeois leisure-time devoted to excessive shopping, making it a pivotal moment in the continued reproduction of consumer capitalism. Pagan and Christian customs have been recycled since the Victorian era into the 21st century as aesthetic props for this annual revelry in the power of mass production.”

“A wide enough cultural rejection of the debt servicing that the Christmas tradition necessitates would significantly disrupt business as usual. Meanwhile mulled wine, twinkling lights and a roast are possibly all that maintains the social order from deteriorating into a real winter of discontent. “

You can read the full article here.

I found it really uplifting to read somebody expressing so articulately that which I usually struggle with during the holiday season. Nobody wants to upset the one day of the year when we’re supposed to embrace our loving, generous nature…maybe I should just hibernate this year…

Massive thanks to all the Ann Narkeh Media supporters who’ve helped me keep it lit with contributions, collaborations and distributions in 2016. You know who you are. You’re the best, thankyou.

This will be the 173rd thing I have posted on this site since starting to document my doings at the start of the year. I’ve received about 600 odd quid in contributions from people who support these doings in that time. This has been reinvested in phone credit/livestreaming time, phone reconditioning, buying the domain name annnarkehmedia.com, tobacco, coffee and food while I was sanctioned by the DWP. I’ll update all the things I’m grateful to my subscribers and supporters for helping me with on my wishlist.

In addition to having been apparently ghost banned on fedbook, I received a report from a friend today that my paypal ‘contribute’ button isn’t working now… I last received a contribution of a tenner, 10 days ago. Prior to that another kind person contributed a fiver in late November. (thankyou both – very much appreciated)

If you’re able to try slinging me a quid or two to test it, please do and let me know if it’s broken or not. I am more skint than ever (as most people are…).

All this digital censorship mullarkey has been quite disheartening on one level, but I’m determined to take it as flattery and redouble my efforts. I’m an artivist, not a capitalist. I’m not doing this for contributions, (though they have definitely kept me healthier in mind and body).

I think my doings this year have been quite good even if the hyper paranoid, neo McCarthyist, militarised, corporate police state  1% don’t like it.

If ‘they’ don’t like it enough to censor it, then I (we) must be doing something right…

It’s not just ‘dissent’ which they are clamping down on. To my eyes and ears, there is a full blown war on people’s capacity to think and feel for ourselves. The corporate controlled culture is going hell for leather to destroy our confidence to express any true thoughts and feelings we might have. The 1% want absolute control over the popular narrative. Meme wars which have been going on since way before Orwell are being fought today. The internet offers us the means to democratise this control, but the battlefield is still not level.

At this juncture then, it is critical that we truly understand what is happening in order to develop new strategies.

We need to burst these filter bubbles, break the algos – we must reclaim the internetz, Seize the Memes of Production!

This article by Frank Barker, for medium – CANARY BASHING & WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT makes some good points and offers some good advice.

“Remember that when considering what news sources to use we are not standing apart from the reading public and observing it. We are the reading public. We are a group of people who are aware that old media sources are corrupt, cowardly, untrustworthy and compromised. We are large in number, growing in number and able to persuade others of our viewpoint both on Social media and in the real world.”

You can read the full article here.

This Rubber Bandits guide to #PostTruth is the first thing that’s really made me laugh about the state of it all.

And thank goodness for Angus Hervey who compiled this list of 99 Reasons 2016 Was a Good Year.

No matter how bad it gets, never forget that there is good in the world.

Keep it lit everybody. Be excellent to each other. Have a Christmas.