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Movement
| Many have wondered if there is a fundamental contradiction between day to day work demanding services like public housing and heath care, and the anarchist goal of overthrowing government and/or capitalism.
I will posit that no such contradiction exists, as "government" can be bifurcated into the law enforcement/military/corporate support primary component, and the social service components the capitalists have allowed to exist since the last Depression in an effort to buy peace from the lower and working classes. I will posit later in this essay that in supporting these programs we are demanding restitution for capitalism's crimes, so there is no contradiction in supporting any and all social services.
Years ago, GOP scumbags of the Ronald Reagan era proposed to "starve the beast" in an effort to destroy social programs. the plan was to use combined increases in military spending with huge tax cuts to make social spending unaffordable. The plan fell apart at the end of the Cold War-and because at the Federal level the government can literally create money out of thin air with changes in banking "reserve ratios," by borrowing, or just plain printing more. |
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| From the Arctic Circle Collective.
At 4:15 PM today, a Seattle cop shot to death a man whose identity has not yet been released.
According to mainstream media, the cop claims he confronted a man who was sitting and whittling with a knife on the corner of Howell and Boren. The cop claims the man stood up and refused to drop the knife; the cop then fired three to five shots, killing the man. The only witness quoted other than the killer cop says the victim had no knife.
Cops are liars and do plant evidence—we see no reason to believe the cops’ claim that the victim was holding a knife. But we would be missing the point to focus so narrowly. After all, we know all know well that cops are experts at using violence to escalate simple situations—like whittling or jaywalking. Cops believe, often correctly, that they will ultimately get away with any attack—even murder. And so they pepper spray, taser, beat, stomp, and shoot, wielding violence to maintain the systematic order of misery in which we find ourselves—to keep us under control. But as their attacks become more apparent to more people, even mainstream news internet comments (typically rather conservative) have begun to question their authority to do so. Here is a selection of comments from the PI coverage: |
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| From Ideas and Action - by Deric Shannon
Over the summer I had the pleasure of staying in Madrid with my brother. Most of my time was spent relaxing and recovering from work, but I did take some time to meet up with local comrades while I was there.
The second time I got together with the CNT folks there, they were doing roving pickets of Hotel Vincci. As a result of an unfair firing (Is there ever a “fair” one?), they were exerting pressure on the hotel by paying a visit to its Madrid locations. My compa, Abbey, and I tagged along for three of the locations where we stood outside the hotel and fliered, informed patrons and prospective patrons about the hotel’s bad labor practices, stickered the outside of the hotels, and got the cops called on us once (they never showed). |
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| From Occupy Everything
Michael Wilson: Earlier this year, you were a part of a group of artists, students, educators, writers and theorists who came together at The Public School in an attempt to understand the crisis and to formulate radical responses. Were your recent pieces on this site conceived in light of that project?
Brian Holmes: Of course. The students’ movement in California and around the US is a real opening for radical politics. It raises basic questions about what society has become and where it is going. I am a long-term critic of neoliberalism, I am convinced that this form of capitalism is totally unsustainable and unlivable. Since, however, it is squarely installed in the realms of knowledge, culture and information — since it is cognitive capitalism — it seems there is no more strategic point for opposition than the universities. That doesn’t mean that every point of opposition is not important, just that this one could become crucial if enough people would raise the basic questions of value, what’s society good for, how am I participating, which consequences does that have on others, etc. Those kinds of questions form the basis of the practical philosophy that interests me. The work at the Public School is one expression of this practical philosophy that comes to grips with the currently existing forms of society and asks how do these social forms make us who we are? How could we transform ourselves and the world we share? As the economy tanks and the basic insanity of the current mode of development reveals itself in the social unconscious, I guess there may well be increasing chances to get involved in this kind of thing.
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| From Carrboro Anarchist Bookfair!
Building on the momentum of last spring and this fall’s NC Rising conferences, we are hosting an anarchist bookfair in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area on Saturday, November 13th.
So once again—calling all North Carolina anarchists, autonomists, and anti-authoritarians! Are you part of a radical bookshop, community organizing group, or publishing project? You should reserve a table! Are you a book lover, activist, firebrand, or just plain curious? Come check out what other people in North Carolina are doing and thinking!
We hope this bookfair will consolidate local connections in the Triangle area and strengthen connections around the state, as well as offer a starting place for anyone who wants to learn. We’re planning a whole weekend of activity—if there’s something you’d like to see, let us know! |
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| In this update:
1. August 23: Pre-trial Hearing for Scott in Davenport, IA
2. August 19-August 26: One More Week of the Conspiracy Tour
3: September 13: Trial Call Starts for Scott
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1. August 23: Pre-trial Hearing for Scott in Davenport, IA
Scott's final pre-trial hearing is happening next Monday! It's currently scheduled to be in court in Davenport, although there's a possibility that it could just be a phone conference. If you're in the Quad Cities area and want to join us in court, come on out! Here's what you need to know:
* When: Monday, 8/23, 11am
* Where: Federal Courthouse, 131 E. Fourth St. |
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| From RNC 8
It is with great disappointment that we share the news that our co-defendant, Erik Oseland, has decided to take a plea agreement as early as Monday, August 23rd. He has informed us that he will plead guilty to one count of gross misdemeanor conspiracy to commit riot, which is riot "without a dangerous weapon," a charge which bears a maximum 1-year sentence. We will send out the exact date and time of the hearing as soon as we know it, for those who wish to attend.
Erik has told us that this is a non-cooperating plea agreement, and we want to make absolutely clear that *we ARE NOT treating Erik as a cooperator*, and *we ARE NOT asking people to withdraw their support from him.* We do fear that any plea agreement offered by the State has the potential to hurt the rest of us, but we are reserving further comment on the matter until the hearing has taken place and we've been able to review the final resolution of Erik's case. |
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| The Midnight Special Law Collective released a letter several weeks ago explaining our reasons for disbanding. Since then there have been a number of responses to this letter. Responses have included gratitude for our years of service, anger over our decision to disband and a strangely congratulatory stance towards our statement on gender dynamics within the collective. It is this last set of responses that I personally wanted to respond to.
Midnight Special did not disband simply because we we weren't, as one response put it, ”a perfect oppression free bubble.”. The collective broke up after a six month process where one member felt so uncomfortable with our process that she ceased coming to meetings. We broke up after years of being a mostly male collective, where woman after woman left after expressing some level of displeasure with our meeting dynamics. We've done some amazing work over the last ten years, but, in my experience, we also grew lazy. We grew to depend on meeting processes from many years ago, processes that didn't give room to adapt as our collective changed. We also became dependent on maintaining our reputation among the movement, often at the expense of interpersonal relationships within the collective. Ending the collective wasn't a lazy act, nor was it an act that we thought would hurt the radical legal community. Rather, it was an act of necessity, an important move before the collective collapsed under its own weight. |
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| From Occupied London
Resist, strike, occupy! (or, some notes on the unwillingness of the social antagonist movement to support some resisting parts of society)
What has been happening in Greece in the past few months (and in a way, extending from December 2008 to present) is simply phenomenal: deep changes, one after the other, in the social backbone come at breakneck speed. This fluid landscape has found us, the wider social antagonist movement (anarchists, anti-authoritarians, the libertarian left) numb – and worse even stuck with our conceptualisations, our beliefs and readings of social reality as it stood only a little while ago.
But so much has changed, so fast. |
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From April 2009 until July 2010, two undercover police officers infiltrated activist groups in Guelph, Kitchener and Toronto, Ontario. They are members of the “Joint Intelligence Group (JIG)” that focuses on extremism and terrorism. Its specific mandate has been for the Vancouver Olympics and Torch Relay, and the G8/G20 summits. It is an RCMP (National Police) led group that includes police forces collaborating from across Southern Ontario including Guelph, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, Barrie, Kitchener/Waterloo and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
The names the two undercover intelligence police officers used were “Brenda Dougherty” and “Khalid Mohammad”*.
Brenda Dougherty = Filthy Rat Goof Pig
“Brenda” is in her early 40’s, white, 5’3” tall, with short white and blonde hair, glasses, and an English accent and a Canadian flag tattoo (on her back?). Her story was that she had a job with flexible hours as a home caretaker. She said she was born in Victoria, Canada and lived in England for most of her childhood and adult life. She said that she moved back because she was in an abusive relationship/marriage. She said she moved to Guelph because she had a friend who could get her a job here. She also said that she got accepted to the university of Guelph and began doing part time courses. She said she didn’t talk to her family. Her apartment appeared pre-furnished, and didn’t really look lived-in. She occasionally appeared at events with her “boyfriend”, “John”, a 5’7 or 5’8 beefy native dude with brown hair who wore sunglasses and a hat. He had a US Marine Corps tattoo on one of his biceps that read USMC and had numbers under it. |
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