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Sunday, October 31, 2021
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Show HN: Weather data tile generator for Leaflet (and others using Web Mercator) https://ift.tt/3w3YnGn
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Show HN: Brutalist one. A growing collection of real brutalist websites https://ift.tt/3ErCp2O
Billionaires Are Not Morally Qualified To Shape Human Civilization
Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
Human civilization is being engineered in myriad ways by an unfathomably wealthy class who are so emotionally and psychologically stunted that they refuse to end world hunger despite having the ability to easily do so.
The United Nations has estimated that world hunger could be ended for an additional expenditure of $30 billion a year, with other estimates considerably lower. The other day Elon Musk became the first person ever to attain a net worth of over $300 billion. A year ago his net worth was $115 billion. According to Inequality.org, America’s billionaires have a combined net worth of $5.1 trillion, which is a 70 percent increase from their combined net worth of under $3 trillion at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
So we’re talking about a class which could easily put a complete halt to human beings dying of starvation on this planet by simply putting some of their vast fortunes toward making sure everyone gets enough to eat. But they don’t. This same class influences the policies, laws, and large-scale behavior of our species more than any other.
To get a sense of how insane this is, imagine if you had seen a video clip of me calmly watching a child drown to death in a swimming pool and doing nothing to help. After watching such footage, would it ever in a million years occur to you that I am someone who should be in charge of the entire world?
I’m going to guess no. I’m going to guess that, in the unlikely event that you ever decided anyone should rule the world, after watching me let a child drown I’d rank somewhere near the very bottom of possible candidates.
Now imagine if instead of letting one child drown, it was millions.
That’s how absolutely insane it is that we allow this class to shape our civilization.
David Beasley, the Director of the United Nations' World Food Program believes billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could feed 42 million hungry people with $6 Billion, roughly 2% of Musk's estimated wealth. pic.twitter.com/GWmqZkYz34
— IGN (@IGN) October 29, 2021
And we most certainly do allow them to shape our civilization.
Take Bill Gates. He spends a fortune on narrative control ranging from immense contributions to The Guardian to tens of billions of dollars in grants, and he’s committed hundreds of millions of dollars to shady political influence groups as well. He’s been influencing Covid policies around the world, from intervening against the waiving of vaccine patent restrictions to facilitating the worldwide rollout of digital vaccine passports; he’s been giving countless media interviews about Covid-19 and vaccines despite having no medical degree or indeed any qualifications at all apart from a net worth of $136 billion. This is after falsely pledging to give his immense fortune away over a decade ago; his net worth has more than doubled in that time.
Jeff Bezos has been a contractor with the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, and experts have claimed that Amazon is trying to control the underlying infrastructure of the economy. As sole owner of The Washington Post he ensures that a hugely influential news outlet will always be staffed by people who will help manufacture consent for the status quo upon which his empire is built, and his grand vision for humanity involves shipping us offworld to breed in giant rotating space cylinders.
Billionaires Reid Hoffman and George Soros have teamed up on a narrative control operation called Good Information Inc. with the stated goal of countering misinformation and disinformation in the news media, and the unstated goal of elevating empire-authorized narratives about what’s happening in the world and undermining unauthorized narratives.
The World Economic Forum has laid out an agenda for giant corporations to move beyond their unofficial and unacknowledged role as unelected rulers of our world and become open partners in the governance of world affairs alongside our official elected governments, with more power than ever before.
There are almost infinite examples I could highlight, but I think my point is clear. Billionaires and billionaire corporations own our media, influence our thinking, manipulate our economies, interfere in our politics, determine the fate of our ecosystem, and shape our world. And they are the very least qualified among us to be doing so.
Nobody who chooses day after day to let millions of people die of starvation has any business making decisions which affect other people, much less decisions which affect everyone. The fact that the billionaire class and its lackeys make this depraved decision day in and day out permanently disqualifies them from any legitimate claim to having the empathy and compassion that would be required for such a job. They are too narcissistic and dysfunctional to be permitted to have any power or influence whatsoever, much less the ungodly amount they wield today.
Billionaires should not exist. They should have their power and wealth taken from them, and the steering wheel of humanity should be given to the ordinary people who are infinitely more qualified to navigate us through the rough waters ahead for our species.
_________________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via UN Geneva (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/10/31/billionaires-are-not-morally-qualified-to-shape-human-civilization/
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Announcing UprisingSupport.org: A New Hub for Supporting Prisoners of the George Floyd Uprising
Announcing a new website that compiles info and resources about supporting defendants and prisoners from the George Floyd uprising of 2020. Check out Uprising Support, here.
Starting in May 2020 the U.S. was shaken by protests, uprisings, and riots following the police murder of George Floyd. Almost immediately the government moved in to repress those taking the streets against the police and racial violence. More than 350 people were arrested on federal charges while city and state level arrests topped 14,000 between May 28th and Nov 3rd. Some cities/regions already had established organizations and crews to help with both jail support and long-term prisoner support during and after the Uprising; in other places new groups formed as the need arose; yet other places still have little or no infrastructure to support the massive number of arrestees.
"This website is intended to be a clearinghouse of information about supporting people who are awaiting trial or currently serving prison sentences from the 2020 Uprisings." Please share far and wide! https://t.co/Rdvd7q7nBb pic.twitter.com/8pxFGUuRJD
— It's Going Down (@IGD_News) October 30, 2021
We are still working on building it out, and have intermediate goals of organizing/sorting the names, adding pictures of defendants/prisoners, and creating a comprehensive FAQ. To aid in this (since this is being run by just a few volunteers) we are asking people to email us at uprisingsupportsite(at)protonmail(dot)com with any additions, corrections, or updates including:
- Names and addresses and any website or social media pages of uprising defendants and prisoners we have not yet listed who have expressed a desire and have directly consented to public support during their case and/or imprisonment;
- Updated addresses of anyone we have not listed;
- Information or updates about specific mail restrictions for anyone we have already listed;
- Preferred name (if different from the government name) and pronouns, a short bio and case summary, a photo and birthday (day and month) for anyone we already have listed (we need all this information for those we have not listed as well);
- Links to support websites or social media pages, fundraisers, booklists or petitions for anyone we have already listed;
- Contact information for other groups doing support work for uprising prisoners and defendants;
- Anything else you think is important that we don’t have!
This site is run by a few people who have both interest in and experience with running support campaigns and doing anti-repression education and organizing. We are not ourselves an organization and we rely primarily on the work and support of those on the ground in each of these places who already have relationships with Uprising defendants and prisoners. We have done our best to communicate with defendants and inform them that since ours is a struggle for total collective liberation that we will not list people who stand for sexism, homophobia, racism, transphobia or other forms of domination. We also will not list or support people who cooperate with the government against others to better their own circumstances.
Showing support and care for those bearing the weight of state repression in the wake of the 2020 Uprising is an integral part of building our communities of resistance. We do this to keep the flame of rebellion lit, especially for those who have spent the last 1.5 years in a cage, and to show that our solidarity for each other is stronger than any prison.
photo: James Eades via Unsplash
by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
Introducing ‘Distroism Now!,’ a New Monthly Podcast
Distroism Now! is a new monthly podcast on It’s Going Down. Each episode is hosted by a different distro, and the style, length and content of each episode is whatever the hosts want it to be. At the end of each episode, the host nominates a new distro to do the next episode.
In this episode, Filler Distro tells a ghost story that Pittsburgh’s tried to bury beneath its bullshit progressive image, talks distroism with the Portland Litter Bloc, and bumps some of our favorite punk, hardcore, crust, and hip-hop tracks…among other things.
Smokey island is on the left.
TRACKLIST
– Ghost Town – The Specials (1981)
The Specials – Ghost Town [Official HD Remastered Video] – YouTube
– Blinded by Power – Cop Problem, “S-T” (2012)
Self-Titled E.P. | cop problem (bandcamp.com)
– Wolf Dancin’ – Savage Fam (2020)
SAVAGE FAM: WOLF DANCIN ((Official Video)) – YouTube
– Eternal War – Storm of Sedition, “Howl of Dynamite” (2019)
Music | Storm of Sedition (bandcamp.com)
– Four Teeth – True Widow, “Circumambulation” (2013)
Circumambulation | True Widow (bandcamp.com)
– 5.45 – Gang of Four, “Entertainment!” (1979)
– Extinction – Existence, “Out of Time” (2018)
Existence – Out of Time | Existence | Blown Out Media (bandcamp.com)
– Insurrection – Conspiracy of Denial, “S-T” (2013)
Self Titled LP | Conspiracy Of Denial (bandcamp.com)
– Violencia en las Calles – Muro, “La Masacre Continua” (2021)
An anarcho-punk benefit compilation album that Chaos-T Records released a few months back. not only does this shit rip but all the proceeds from the album directly support anarchists on the ground in Colombia, so support our troops and go pick up the album. you can find a link to the bandcamp in the shownotes for this episode
The massacre continues V/A | CHAOSTRECORDS (bandcamp.com)
– First In, First Out – The Suburbanists, “Eat From The Tree” (2021)
Eat From The Tree | The Suburbanists
– Run it Up – Atlas Telamon (2020)
https://www.instagram.com/iamtelamon/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKbWM9tFmvw
– alienate – flouride, “disentanglement” (2019)
disentanglement | fluoride (bandcamp.com)
– Exempt – no right (2021)
Exempt | no right (bandcamp.com)
Fight or Die – Arid, “S-T” (2021)
Further Reading / Sources in No Particular Order
- https://historicaldilettante.blogspot.com/2016/05/things-that-arent-there-any-more.html
- Legends & Lore of Western Pennsylvania By Thomas White
- Kilbuck and Killbuck Island by Margaret Pearson Bothwell
- Kleinberg, S. J. The Shadow of the Mills: Working-Class Families in Pittsburgh, 1870-1907. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.
- The Historical Record, Volumes 2-3. Edited by Frederick Charles Johnson, Press of the Wilkes-Barre. Record, 1888.
- Lubove. Twentieth-century Pittsburgh; Government, Business, and Environmental Change. New York: Wiley, 1969. 1-9.
- “Carnegie Museum of Art Collection of Photographs.” Historic Pittsburgh,
historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/search_collection/pitt:collection.36. - Krause, Paul L. “Patronage and Philanthropy in Industrial America: Andrew Carnegie and the Free Library in Braddock, Pa.” The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine , Apr. 1988.
- Pierce, Edward. Pitt the Elder. Google Books,
books.google.com/books?id=XfImNwMXDdoC&pg=PR7 - Ayling, Stanley Edward (1976). The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham. New York: D. McKay
- “Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets.” Amherst and Smallpox, https://ift.tt/2ZMrPov.
- “Case File Steelworker: Andrew (Henry) Striegel.” Labor Legacy Archive, University of Pittsburgh,
- How It Might Should Be Done – Idris Robinson
- The Devil’s Night:On the Ungovernable Spirit of Halloween
Just a Few Zine Distros/Archives we Print From, in No Order Whatsoever.
(Tor and vpn recommended, if your sketched by the content of an interesting PDF, you can try bypassing downloading the file straight from the site by preparing it for printing and then saving the print preview pdf.)
- https://ift.tt/3CxQjQz
- https://ift.tt/3msUnf5
- https://ift.tt/3nK3wPZ
- https://ift.tt/3jOXBIo
- https://ift.tt/3nN6BPl
- https://ift.tt/2Yyv3eO
- https://ift.tt/2XZmPfd
- https://ift.tt/3BwQvhF
- https://ift.tt/3w7PGdZ
- https://ift.tt/3pTPa2k
- https://ift.tt/3pSZyXZ
- https://ift.tt/2TAcaW8
- https://ift.tt/3CvB0I9
- https://ift.tt/3GvjohM
- https://ift.tt/3GC19re
- https://ift.tt/3CxUcVt
- https://ift.tt/3w09rUI
- https://ift.tt/2ZL2M51
- https://ift.tt/2qA2xpa
- https://ift.tt/3BxAkQW
- https://ift.tt/3mvpzKR
- https://crimethinc.com/
- https://ift.tt/2XGyuwW
- https://ift.tt/3jRFMIE
- https://ift.tt/3vZ20Nw
- https://ift.tt/3pPjN8Y
Format normal PDF for zine printing:
https://wieke.gitlab.io/bookletify/
by Distroism Now! via It's Going Down
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Saturday, October 30, 2021
Show HN: Everydayvirtualvacation (the coolest thing I ever made in 1 hour) https://ift.tt/3EqJDUK
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Call for Submissions to “The Anarchist Feminist Turn: Embodying Care, Engendering Love” Anthology
The following is a call for submissions for an upcoming anthology on anarchist feminist praxis, edited by Cindy Milstein.
The aspirations of anarchism have always, at their heart, revolved around what could be understood as “feminist” ethics—self-determination, voluntaristic and consensual association, egalitarian relationships, and loving freely as well as queerly, to mention a few. Moreover, the bulk of what we anarchists have actually done in practice, and still do, imperfectly and yet beautifully, falls under the banner of self-organized collective care, freely gifted—or again, what could be seen as feminist ethics.
Yet for a host of reasons—including patriarchy and heteronormativity within our own circles—such aspirations and practices of communal care have long been devalued, demeaned, or destroyed, or made invisible. The tide is turning, though.
As The Anarchist Feminist Turn: Embodying Care, Engendering Love will contend, it is not only anarchist feminists’ long-overdue turn to be seen, heard, and taken seriously, as many feministic anarchists are themselves asserting in praxis, without or with the label of “anarcho/a/x-feminist.”[1] Moreover, the contemporary turn of world events—from the global phenomena of pandemics, fascistic regimes, and collapsing infrastructure for social well-being, to capitalist-fueled climate disasters and displacement—has compelled a turn within anarchism toward prioritizing, first and foremost, do-it-ourselves forms of mutual aid. That is, taking good care of each other.
This edited anthology aims to portray what anarchist feminist ethics look like “on the ground” in this current era: how collective care is embodied, and thus how expansive forms of love are engendered, in the ways that we put anarchism into this imperiled world so as to mend it. The collection will offer not so much a definition, definitive or otherwise, of “anarchist feminism.” It instead hopes to create an intricate portrait of the many ways that it can be understood in and through present-day experiments.
Specifically, I’m looking for written pieces and illustrations that:
- speak bravely from the heart
- are gorgeously crafted in terms of their prose/art and insights
- bring various lens to bear, including various genders, cultures, geographies, and more
- explore the messy beauty of “anarchist feminism” in practice, especially as a participant
- emphasize the anarchist feminist possibilities we ourselves are creating
- and draw out the power of anarchist feminist sensibilities within everything from collectives, spaces, and bookfairs, to media and the arts, to uprisings, social movements, and direct actions, to organizing efforts and projects (eviction defense, mutual aid, emotional aid, solidarity work, transformative justice, harm reduction—the list is endless), to rituals and healing arts, and more
Anthologies, to me, are containers: of possibility, intervention, dialogue, inspiration, and more—all attempting to hold onto the fullness of who we are and could be. If you’ve read some of my previous curated anthologies, you know I lean into pieces that are able to gracefully wrestle with generative tensions. I look for writers and artists who doesn’t shy away from bittersweet honesty and tender vulnerability, and through compelling narrative arcs or artworks that avoid tidy or happy endings, offer much-needed complexity, rebellious empathy, and cracks in the walls that divide us.
Please check out some or all of my previous curated collections for a sense: There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists; Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy; Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief; and Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism (all on AK Press at http://www.akpress.org), and the collaborative book I did with Erik Ruin, Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism (PM Press).
DETAILS:
Contact: Please get in touch with ideas or questions via email at cbmilstein [at] yahoo [dot] com.
Submissions: Before you dive into writing, please submit ideas for stories to me first. That said, if you have something on hand that you’ve already written, but not published, and feel it might be a good fit, you can run that by me (if so, send me a .doc or .docx file if possible). It’s preferable if you have a relationship to the story—for instance, as a collective member of a space, participant in a social movement, or someone actively engaged in a mutual aid project. While I’m happy to consider previously published works, I’m mostly seeking new material for this anthology.
You can also submit pieces of artwork, or ideas for them, based on samples of your prior work. They must be reproducible at a high quality in black and white, or gray scale. It’s preferable if your art is politically (not electorally) engaged—whether or not you sell it—such as street art, say, or in protests, organizing, or solidarity efforts. If a piece(s) of your art ends up being a good match for the anthology, I’ll also ask you to write a substantive “caption” based on a few questions, and will work with you to polish that short writing into a polished form.
The finished book will be published in English, and thus all pieces will need to be written in English. It’s fine, though, to propose collaborations whereby one person serves as translator for a story by someone who writes in a language other than English, as long as the translator is willing to be in communication with me and be part of the editing process too.
Please note: All contributors to this anthology will get one copy of the finished book, and hopefully discounts on additional copies. Depending on the publisher, there may be a small honorarium for each piece, but more likely, this will be a labor of love, including for me.
Deadline: Ideas and/or drafts on or before January 15, 2022.
Questions: Email me with any and all questions.
Sharing is caring: Definitely feel free to circulate, post, text, or email this “call for contributions” to anyone, or any project/group, you think might be intrigued and/or be would be a good fit for a potential submission!
[1] The book title is tentative. More important, while it should go without saying, by “anarchist feminist,” I mean “queer and trans” too, regardless of how one individually identifies.
(Photo of in-progress mural by Zola on the stolen lands of Tio’tia:ke/Montreal)
by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
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Billionaire Reveals Virtual Reality Experience Called ‘Mainstream Media’
Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
At a hotly anticipated remote keynote presentation on Friday, billionaire Jeff Bezos revealed the details of an exciting new virtual reality experience which he says will allow consumers to log on to an artificial fantasy world completely unlike our existing reality.
“We’re calling it Mainstream Media, or MSM for short,” Bezos told viewers. “MSM will allow users to interface with an alternate world of the imagination where capitalism is working fine for everyone, constant military expansionism is normal and desirable, Washington’s enemies are all bloodthirsty monsters, and billionaires are just harmless job creators. Let’s check it out.”
Bezos explained that his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post ensured that consumers will remain psychologically plugged in to a virtual reality in which the sociopolitical status quo upon which his Amazon empire is built looks totally fine and not at all insane or dystopian.
“Unlike the virtual reality enterprises of certain other billionaires, the Mainstream Media universe operates continually and without the need for fancy headsets or equipment,” Bezos said. “In fact, the psychological technology is so immersive that users aren’t generally even aware that they’re not experiencing actual reality.”
Bezos was soon joined in his presentation by fellow billionaires Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim Helú.
“Warren! Mike! Carlos! Rupert! What are you guys doing here?” Bezos recited in scripted surprise.
“We wanted in on the Mainstream Media universe too,” Bloomberg answered. “Can’t let you have all the fun, Jeff.”
“With my vast media empire I’ve been able alter the outcomes of elections, shape policies and political agendas, start wars and kill social progress in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres,” Murdoch boasted.
“My position as chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway has given me control over dozens of daily newspapers throughout the United States,” Buffett added.
“My holdings in the New York Times give me leverage over the hiring and publishing practices of the most influential paper in the most powerful nation on earth,” said Slim.
“By buying up media influence and controlling the public’s perception of reality, we ensure that all the systems which have been funnelling wealth and power toward us remain intact,” explained Bloomberg.
“And it keeps the guillotine blades away from our necks!” Slim interjected.
“That’s right Carlos,” Bezos said. “By psychologically helping the public to perceive a different reality than the one that actually exists, we can prevent prevent social uprisings which might prove hazardous to our wealth and vital organs.”
“So we give the riff raff a virtual reality to live in,” said Murdoch. “Because actual reality belongs to us.”
________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/10/30/billionaire-reveals-virtual-reality-experience-called-mainstream-media/
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Friday, October 29, 2021
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This Is America #151: The Fight Against Line 5, Brenton Lengel on New Durruti Comic Book
Welcome, to This Is America, October 29th, 2021.
On today’s episode, we speak with several Water Protectors involved in the ongoing struggle against the Line 5 pipeline. We discuss the history of the fight against the Embridge project, how the company has worked with the police to attack grassroots organizing, a recent action which shut down oil production, and much more.
Here is their communique from a recent action on October 19th which shut down oil flow on Line 5:
Mni Wiconi. Water is life. We are here to protect the water, land, and air that support all life, including our own. Line 5 poses an immediate threat to our lives and these actions are taken out of necessity and in self-defense.
The sacredness of mother earth is understood in indigenous communities. For generations, water protectors across Turtle Island and the world have led the fight to ensure a livable planet for future generations. Tribes in Bad River and Bay Mills have both taken legal action against Enbridge who continues to illegally operate line 5 on sovereign land.
The urgent need to protect mother earth’s natural resources is recognized in settler colonial society as well. Governor Whitmer and Attorney General Nessel acted as true public servants by filing case number 19-474-CE revoking the 1953 easement that allows Enbridge to operate line 5 under the straits of Mackinaw. I quote Attorney General Nessel, “Simply put, Michigan law requires that the pipelines be shut down.”
Line 5 is a 68-year pipeline with a planned lifetime of 50 years and Enbridge violates the public trust every second that Line 5 continues to operate. Enbridge repeatedly and knowingly violated the terms of the 1953 Easement and failed to correct structural shortcomings in the Line 5 pipeline. Furthermore, Line 5 has already spilled 33 different times totaling over 1.1 million gallons of oil and it is only sheer luck that the multiple anchor-strikes in recent years have not led to a spill in the straits.
A broader look at the history of Enbridge reveals the extremely high likelihood of a massive imminent spill. Consider this: Enbridge is responsible for the two largest inland oil spills in history. Spilling 1.7 million gallons in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and more recently spilling 1.2 million gallons in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is still being cleaned up to this day. Enbridge repeatedly dismissed alarms for over 17 hours during the Kalamazoo spill, instead opting to increase the pressure in the pipeline multiple times up until the public discovered and reported the spill.
BREAKING: a water protector in Michigan took action to stop oil flow on Line 5, an @Enbridge pipeline, while the band Only Lucky Once played a show nearby.
From the valve turner: “I know my life is in danger from the risk of a spill and from the contributions to climate change.” pic.twitter.com/xXCi5yl4HY
— Resist Line 3 (@ResistLine3) October 19, 2021
Additionally, Enbridge is responsible for digging deeper than permitted and breaching a groundwater aquifer in Minnesota this January resulting in 24 million gallons of groundwater leakage. Although aware of the breach they failed to report it and it was only discovered by an independent investigation by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in June, six months later.
This list is incomplete but should make clear that Enbridge holds no respect for the sacredness of human life, the rule of law, or mother earth. The environmental impacts listed above overlook the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels and the tragic consequences of climate change that result from this suicidal industry. This characterization is not a metaphor, the impact of Enbridge and other capitalist fossil fuel titans threaten the viability of all human life on earth.
I know my life is in danger because of the risk of a spill and because of the contributions of Enbridge to climate change. In Detroit we saw record flooding leave cars strewn across the city and upend lives, elsewhere people have died in wildfires and hurricanes, or from starvation as unpredictable weather patterns destroy food production.
Shutting down oil pipelines and overcoming our addiction to fossil fuels is an imperative first step in addressing the threat of climate change and ecological collapse. Restoring healthy balance and harmony among life on earth is the responsibility of all people and will require a radical restructuring of our society. This fight for our future is not just in our psyches but in the material conditions that surround us, any reasonable person can see the threats, it’s time we start acting to protect ourselves and each other.
Enbridge has no legal right to operate this pipeline and the continued operation of Line 5 is an imminent threat to my life, and the lives of an untold number of other people and living beings. All other routes have been exhausted, Enbridge has been operating the pipeline illegally since May 12th and direct action must be taken to enforce the governor’s order and begin healing the mother earth.
We then switch gears and speak with Brenton Lengel, a playwright and comic book creator, who is currently working on a new series centered around the Spanish anarchist revolutionary, Buenaventura Durruti, who took part in the Spanish Revolution of 1936. Check out the project here.
We then switch to our discussion, where we dissect and analyze the news.
It’s Going Down
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by It's Going Down via It's Going Down
From Press Freedom To Prison Systems, Everything Assange Touches Gets Illuminated
Listen to a reading of this article:
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The US appeal of a British court ruling on the Assange extradition case has concluded, and the judges will probably not have a decision ready until at least January—a full year after the extradition was denied by a lower court. Assange, despite being convicted of no crime, will have remained in Belmarsh Prison the entire time.
During that time the judges will be weighing arguments they’d heard about the cruel nature of the US prison system, which formed a major part of the reasoning behind Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s rejection of the US extradition request. They’ll be considering the draconian policy of Special Administrative Measures, whose victims are cut off from human contact and from the outside world. They’ll be considering the brutality of the supermax ADX facility in Florence, Colorado whose inmates are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and where Assange could easily wind up imprisoned despite the prosecution’s flimsy assurances.
Assange probably never set out on this journey with the goal of calling attention to the abuses of the US prison system as his foremost priority, but, as is so often the case with anything his journey touches, those abuses keep getting pulled into the light of public awareness anyway. His case is now no longer just about press freedom, US war crimes, corrupt governments collaborating to stomp out inconvenient truth tellers, and the malfeasance of US alphabet agencies, but about the abusive nature of the US prison system as well.
Chris Hedges: The Most Important Battle for Press Freedom in Our Time https://t.co/VD82NOdOLf
— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) October 29, 2021
And this is a big part of what I find so endlessly captivating about the life of this extraordinary individual. No matter what he’s doing, no matter where he is, no matter how beaten down and silenced and immobilized they may appear to have him, his life keeps exposing things. Keeps bringing things into the light.
It’s been a constant throughout his life as near as I can tell, from when he was a young man using his technical prowess to help Australian police bring down distributors of online child pornography in the mid-nineties. This curious impulse to bring what is hidden in the dark out into the light where it can be seen is what gave birth to WikiLeaks and all the major revelations about the criminality and corruption of the powerful which resulted from its publications.
And as paradigm-shattering as those many bombshell revelations were, they were arguably small potatoes compared to the criminality Assange exposed by simply standing his ground until the most powerful institutions in the world conspired to drag him from the Ecuadorian embassy and lock him in Belmarsh Prison for telling the truth.
Assange created an innovative publishing platform which allowed whistleblowers to upload files anonymously on the premise that corrupt power needs to be able to communicate secretly in order to operate efficiently. Corrupt power responded by silencing, immobilizing, isolating, imprisoning and torturing him. In so doing, corrupt power exposed itself and its true nature far more than any WikiLeaks drop ever could.
Since Assange’s imprisonment there’s been a jaw-dropping deluge of revelations about the malfeasance of the power structures which rule over us which could not have been exposed to such an extent in any other way.
It was revealed that the US power alliance will openly jail journalists for telling the truth with as much brazenness and despotism as any other tyrannical regime, giving US-targeted nations the ability to rightly call out the hypocrisy of Washington’s concern trolling about human rights.
If the #US truly defends freedom, why won't they allow others to tell the truth when they are making up lies? Why has Mr. #Assange been thrown in prison after being forced to shelter in the #Ecuadorian Embassy in London for 7 years? pic.twitter.com/TR698pdpXX
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) May 10, 2021
It was revealed that because he inconvenienced the most powerful government in the world, Assange has been subjected to abuses which amount to psychological torture according to a UN special rapporteur on torture.
It was revealed that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Assange, an earth-shaking discovery we wouldn’t have been able to confirm for decades under normal circumstances, but due to a miraculous combination of partisan feuding and their frantic compulsion to silence him it was confirmed just a few short years after the fact.
It was revealed that CIA proxies spied on Assange and his lawyers at the Ecuadorian embassy and conspired to collect the DNA of his child from a soiled diaper.
It was revealed that the US prosecution relied on false testimony from a diagnosed sociopath and convicted child molester who collaborated with the FBI.
It was revealed that the western news media are so propagandistic and morally bankrupt that they will viciously smear a dissident journalist for years to manufacture consent for his arrest and imprisonment, and then act completely guiltless when the most powerful government on earth works to extradite him into its dungeons.
And now we’re seeing the same US government which has been plotting this man’s destruction and even death for many years humiliating itself by hilariously trying to argue that he would be safe under their care, just so they can get their claws into him. Like Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events taking on whatever disguise might allow him to nab the Baudelaire orphans.
The Assange Persecution Is Western Savagery At Its Most Transparent
"So the prosecution's legal argument here is essentially 'We promise we won't treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to.'"https://t.co/L4Udz6xru9
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) October 28, 2021
The more they come after him, the more damage they do to themselves. It’s like Assange is standing in a beam of sunlight surrounded by vampires, and every time they reach in to grab him they wind up disintegrating their own limbs.
Their old tactics never seem to have the intended effect. The harder they struggle to keep him from being able to expose their crimes, the more of their own criminality they reveal.
It always reminds me of the lyrics to that Johnny Cash song: “Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand, workin’ in the dark against your fellow man/ But as sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.”
And the struggles of our world today really do seem to come down to a battle between light and darkness. I say this not in any kind of mystical or metaphysical sense, but in the sense that there are on all levels forces which wish to bring the unseen out of hiddenness and forces which have a vested interest in keeping things hidden.
On the global level there are vast power structures which have a vested interest in keeping their misdeeds out of public attention and making sure we all remain confused and misinformed about what’s really going on in the world. On a sociological level there are individuals who have a vested interest in keeping their personal actions out of the light and preventing anyone from clearly seeing what they’re really up to. On an internal level we’ve all got subconscious forces at play within ourselves whose existence depends on avoiding the light of conscious perception.
And on every level there’s a struggle to bring those things into the light. On a global level there are forces working to expose the corruption and tyranny of ruling power structures. On a sociological level there are forces working to expose liars, manipulators, abusers, crooks and psychopaths. On an internal level there are always forces working to bring the endarkened aspects of ourselves into consciousness.
It’s a struggle that’s happening on every level of our species, and Julian Assange seems to be one of the very brightest points in that struggle.
It appears to be a very reliable principle of the human condition that if you firmly and sincerely resolve deep within yourself to desire truth above all else and to seek it at all cost, it causes everything your life touches to move into the light: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Hidden psychological tendencies become seen, understood and resolved. Abusive family dynamics, manipulative behavior patterns and everything untruthful around you and in you all starts to move into the spotlight. Some relationships end, others deepen. It upends your world while grounding you in something far more meaningful than the sources in which you’d formerly sought stability.
This movement into truth can be devastating, humbling, humiliating or downright terrifying, and sometimes all of them at once, because it’s a relinquishing of control and a surrendering to whatever’s true, no matter what that turns out to be, no matter how insecure or embarrassed or inadequate it might make you feel at first. But looking back there’s an immediate understanding that you wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I don’t know Julian Assange personally, but I suspect he may have signed an internal contract like this at some point in his life. The desire for truth, come what may, whatever the cost, whatever the consequences. Whether he did or did not, that has been the result of the luminescent path his journey has blazed through humanity during his time on this planet. And the world is a much better place for it.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/10/29/from-press-freedom-to-prison-systems-everything-assange-touches-gets-illuminated/
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Thursday, October 28, 2021
GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Suspended from Twitter after Posting Bounty on a Critic
A failed candidate for governor of California was suspended from Twitter for making “violent threats” after posting a $2,500 bounty; specifically asking for the name and address of a critic from Twitter. Anthony Trimino ran a failed campaign for governor of California during the recall special election this year. As a Republican candidate, he campaigned from the right of front-runner Larry Elder with a focus on anti-masker/anti-vaccine issues. He frequently calls vaccine mandates the greatest attack on “freedom” in US history. Many of his rallies featured Proud Boys and Three Percenters and other far-Right militants in attendance, and several of these rallies resulted in violent clashes.
Anthony Trimino with Three Percenter and gym owner Louis Uridel, (who has a III%ers tattoo on his hand).
Gavin Newsom won the recall election, and out of the candidates voted on: Trimino received 0.4% of the vote. (28,101 votes).
In the lead up to the election, he performed multiple interviews across right-wing social media. He was interviewed by a deputy from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department on her social media influencer page where the two of them discussed making Critical Race Theory, gender studies, and sexual education illegal.
Deputy Perico also interviewed far right gubernatorial recall candidate Anthony Trimino— where they talked about making it illegal to teach CRT, gender issues, and sexual education.
pic.twitter.com/xlpYA2iPtB— Vishal P. Singh (they/he) (@VPS_Reports) September 8, 2021
Outside of his political career, Trimino is the CEO of a digital advertising agency called Traffik. In October, his company ran an anti-vaccine ad campaign called “We Are Still Heroes” in major newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle and the Orange County Register.
It appears the mastermind behind the campaign is failed California Governor candidate Anthony Trimino, who is the CEO at TRAFFIK, an advertising agency based out of Orange County.
The agency has many clients including Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Apria Healthcare, Anthem, and UCI. / pic.twitter.com/Z6ygpXGi88
— InMinivanHell (@inminivanhell) October 18, 2021
Both papers received heavy criticisms for posting anti-scientific advertisements next to actual news stories. One critic, who goes by @inminivanhell on Twitter, exposed and outlined the connections to Trimino and Traffik and proved they were the ones in charge of the “We Are Still Heroes” ad campaign. The resulting thread about this connection went viral.
In response to this, Anthony Trimino made a direct and public threat to this Twitter user, offering $2,500 to anyone who could give the name and address of the user. Soon after, Trimino’s account was suspended from Twitter, though the corporate account for Traffik is still up.
On a personal note:
After I posted this thread, I was tagged in this tweet.
Anthony Trimino, failed gubernatorial candidate and public figure, put a $2,500 bounty on a private citizen.https://t.co/JtIKrPhYUr pic.twitter.com/KqHvvTkEhf
— InMinivanHell (@inminivanhell) October 25, 2021
Trimino doubled down on his threats. He posted a screenshot of his suspended Twitter account on Instagram and wrote: “This happened today. Small price to pay for standing up and speaking out against social trolls that spread misinformation. We will not back down. We will call them out by name. We will educate, litigate and push back against the noise. We are rewriting the art of war and it requires more than 280 characters anyway.”
Anthony Trimino is emblematic of the mainstreaming of far-Right tactics in conservative circles. We are in an age in which CEO gubernatorial candidates can post public bounties against their critics, with little consequences beyond a Twitter suspension. This is a direct result of deepening ties between mainstream conservatives and far-Right fascists. It’s no accident that Trimino has started utilizing the tactics of his more extreme supporters. Our political landscape incentivizes him to do so.
by Vishal P. Singh via It's Going Down
The Democratic Party Will ALWAYS Be This Way: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Chevron—the actual corporation—just sent a lawyer to prison for standing up to the fossil fuel industry, and now British judges are weighing whether or not to send a journalist to a US jail cell for practicing journalism. Western nations need to shut the fuck up about human rights in other parts of the world.
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It’s important to remember that before Assange was dragged out of the embassy on a Trump administration arrest warrant in 2019, liberal journalists would mock and smear him relentlessly any time he was in the news. They are silent now, but they helped pave the way for what’s happening now.
Never forget that liberal journos participated in a nonstop smear campaign of shocking aggression and astonishing scale against Assange from 2016-2019, and that their smears helped manufacture consent for his imprisonment. Not until they were confronted with the cold hard reality of a journalist being arrested and charged under the Espionage Act for publishing did they realize this isn’t a fucking game and shut up.
Now he’s in prison, for practicing journalism, and his health is fading, and they are silent. I hope they’re silent and ashamed. I hope one day they look in the mirror and see someone who helped torture an autistic man for doing their job better than them.
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So are we all just supposed to pretend it’s fine and normal that the most important press freedom case of the century is proceeding without the presence of the defendant?
Reports that #Assange didn't attend court in person due to medication are incorrect.
He asked to appear in person. The request was rejected.
The medication interfering with his ability to follow has nothing to do with the fact he wasn't permitted to attend court. #AssangeCase
— Stella Moris #FreeAssangeNOW (@StellaMoris1) October 27, 2021
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The worst atrocities in history have all been legal. All the worst examples of genocide, slavery, tyranny and bloodshed have been allowed or actively facilitated by the state. The persecution of Assange is geared toward entering the imprisonment of journalists into this category.
A regime which legally extradites and imprisons journalists right out in the open for reporting on its crimes is more evil and more tyrannical than a regime which disappears journalists in secret, because its entire system supports such acts of tyranny and publicly asserts that it is fine. At least the ones who hide it are tacitly acknowledging that it is immoral by hiding it instead of proudly demonstrating its fascism in broad daylight.
Obviously journalists who expose severe malfeasance in the US war machine will always be at risk for being targeted, but establishing such journalism as actually illegal and capable of being prosecuted legally, right out in the open, would be a huge victory for the war machine.
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The Democratic Party is doing exactly what anyone who knows anything predicted it would do when they reclaimed the White House and the Senate and it’s going to be rad watching American liberals learn exactly zero lessons from it.
Right after Biden was sworn in I wrote that the next two years are going to be the Democratic Party at its most transparent, because the Democratic Party exists to kill all leftward movement in the most powerful government on earth.
“Unable to blame their refusal to advance progressive policies and basic human decency on Trump and Vladimir Putin these next two years, they’ll be forced to kill any leftward movement all on their own,” I said. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now. It’s not about Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema or the Parliamentarian, it’s the Democratic Party doing the thing it is built to do. The only thing it ever will do. If it wasn’t Machin and Sinema it would be someone else.
But watch the mental gymnastics people do to claim that the problem is not electing the right kind of Democrats.
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Exclusive: Foxes back new hen house design to promote chicken safety https://t.co/Kw7ezoKLEe
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) October 26, 2021
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It’s crazy how easy it is to brand yourself an up-punching anti-fascist without ever actually opposing the most fascistic agendas of the most powerful government on earth.
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Facebook changing its name to Meta feels the same as when one of my spiritual friends would change their name to Ramana or Moksha or some grandiose bullshit. It’s like shut the fuck up Darryl, you’re a white asshole from the suburbs like the rest of us and you work in IT.
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Notice how none of the Australians who oppose their government are asking the US for crushing economic sanctions like US puppets in nations like Venezuela do? That’s because they’re not being paid to ask for those things by CIA fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy. No normal person asks to be starved.
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The best argument against the current world order is the world order itself. We’re destroying our biosphere while flirting with nuclear armageddon and waging endless wars, and those who shape global policies are focusing on censoring the internet and giving everyone a digital ID.
________________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/10/29/the-democratic-party-will-always-be-this-way-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
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Chief Dtsa’hyl Arrested Following Growing Blockades; Machinery Shut Down on Wet’suwet’en Territory
photo: Michael Toledano
In a video statement posted late Wednesday, Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ reported that Chief Dtsa’Hyl of the Likhts’amisyu and Kolin Sutherland-Wilson of the Gitxsan fireweed clan were arrested by RCMP forces, following growing tensions at the presence of so-called Canadian authorities on Wet’suwet’en territory. Over the last few days, blockades against RCMP and Coastal Gaslink (CGL) personal have been erected and machinery has been “decommissioned” and shut down. Sleydo’ also stated that more law enforcement were on their way to make potentially further arrests, and support was drastically needed. “We need everybody to get your boots on the ground. Please come to camp. We need support for Likhts’amisyu. Support the Wet’suwet’en in the struggle that we’ve been on for ten years now. We need everybody to just shut shit down. Wherever you are, whatever you can do. If you can’t get here, you need to start making noise, start making a fuss. Get things going wherever you are.”
"We need everybody to just, shut shit down"
-Sleydo#AllOutForWedzinKwa pic.twitter.com/z6BuowFW5j— Gidimt’en Checkpoint (@Gidimten) October 28, 2021
Journalist Michael Toledano, who was been reporting on the ongoing struggle against the RCMP invasion and CGL resource extraction, reported earlier in the day:
After Coastal Gaslink pipeline workers used heavy machines to block Wet’suwet’en chiefs from their own land,Likhtsamisyuchief Dsta’hyl disabled the equipment – turning CGL’s blockade against them. The Likht’samisyu have now decommissioned 10 pieces of heavy equipment
We’re more than a month into the 3rd wave of blockades against the Coastal Gaslink pipeline. Gidimten has blocked the site where CGL plans to drill beneath Wet’suwet’en headwaters since late September. Likhtsamisyu has used heavy equipment to control access to a man camp.
After Coastal Gaslink pipeline workers used heavy machines to block Wet'suwet'en chiefs from their own land, @Likhtsamisyu chief Dsta'hyl disabled the equipment – turning CGL's blockade against them.
The Likht'samisyu have now decommissioned 10 pieces of heavy equipment. pic.twitter.com/xiE4HZKDOn
— Michael Toledano (@M_Tol) October 27, 2021
“Justice Must Be Served! We are Dealing with Snakes with No Head.” ~ Dtsa’hyl pic.twitter.com/JU65ofe1Ti
— Likhts’amisyu (Fireweed) Clan (@Likhtsamisyu) October 28, 2021
The Likhts’amisyu clan then posted:
This is #LandBack. There’s no framing this in any Western #colonial lens because colonialism has no idea as to how LandBack can be implemented. They only know that if they relabel it within their own framework it might mean something else. We won’t let you do that.
Yesterday, Toledano reported that indigenous blockades had even shut down access to a “man-camp,” or encampment containing a high concentration of pipeline workers:
After pushing through a Coastal Gaslink barricade of heavy machinery, Likhtsamisyu chiefs and supporters have occupied the far reaches of Wet’suwet’en territory. They are controlling vehicle traffic into a man camp. CGL equipment is blocking Wet’suwet’en from pushing further.
5/ A massive man camp has also been installed and occupied. Workers here will likely have to be flown out, because Coastal Gaslink security has barricaded the road. pic.twitter.com/DD0ONQiKVk
— Michael Toledano (@M_Tol) October 25, 2021
This blockade was put in place after Likhts’amisyu Chiefs and supporters were stopped from entering their own territory on Sunday, Oct 24th, 2021, and worked quickly to establish a camp on the road where they were stopped.
From a post on Instagram:
This weekend I got to witness Wet’suwet’en law in action. New life breathed into the ancient alliance between Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en neighbours. And a total culture clash with police and pipeline contractors who choose not to understand or respect very simple concepts. Here’s what I saw: Coastal Gaslink pipeline crews are trespassing. They never got permission to access land belonging to the Wet’suwet’en clans. Worse, they’re doing irreversible damage – punching through forests, rivers and mountains that never even had a road before this year.
These are serious crimes. In the old days they’d be dealt with very harshly. But as Likhts’amisyu (Fireweed clan) enforcement officer Dtsa’hyl (Adam Gagnon) explained, the Wet’suwet’en are willing to accommodate the ignorance of their colonizers. So for now they’re simply collecting evidence of the destruction, and recording serial numbers on equipment. If CGL doesn’t remove its machines after repeat warnings, they are subject to seizure by the clans. In our legal system we might call it asset forfeiture. Like if someone parks their car on your lawn – you get them towed. If CGL wants the equipment back, they can file for an appeal. All of this was explained very patiently to CGL personnel.
In response, CGL crews took it upon themselves to block the road with a rock truck, preventing Tse’besa (Lillian Wilson) from accessing her own territory at Loox Kwa (Clore River). She couldn’t even bear witness to the destruction of her own land, let alone enjoy it with her family. This is totally illegal under Wet’suwet’en law, and a grave human rights violation in Western law too.
This blockade follows Dinï ze’ Woos officially opening a cabin at the Coyote Camp:
[O]n the drillpad site and invites the ancestors to come and stand with us. Before contact, hundreds of thousands of us were here. We coexisted with the animals and protected the Wedzin Kwa since time immemorial. We will always defend Wedzin Kwa River. Dinï ze’ Woos delivers a resolute message to CGL investors, “[CGL] said they were going to drill under this river…And that won’t happen. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Two weeks ago, scenes of Native land defenders pushing RCMP officers out of the territory to cries of, “You are on the land of Chief Woos!,” went viral, as mass wooden blockades were defended from ongoing police harassment and entrance into the territory.
1/ “You can’t push the Wet’suwet’en around!” and “This is Chief Woos’ territory!” can be heard as our #Haudenosaunee relatives send the RCMP retreating from their daily harassment patrol at Coyote Camp. #AllOutforWedzinKwa#WeAreAllOne pic.twitter.com/QOJNCls7eT
— Gidimt’en Checkpoint (@Gidimten) October 12, 2021
For future updates, follow @Likhtsamisyu, @Gidimten, @M_Tol, and Yintah Access.
by It's Going Down via It's Going Down
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
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RIP Former Political Prisoner Rita ‘Bo’ Brown
The Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABC-F) marks the passing of former political prisoner, Rita ‘Bo’ Brown. Donate to Brown’s funeral fund here.
Former political prisoner Rita ‘Bo’ Brown passed away this week after a long and horrible battle with Lewy Body Dementia. For those not lucky enough to have met Bo, here is her bio from Matt Meyer’s Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners (Kersplebedeb & PM Press):
Bo (rita d. brown) is a 74-year-old white working class butch dyke lesbian anti-authoritarian anti-imperialist ex-political prisoner who has done 9 years in federal prison. The first one was as a social prisoner in 1971 and the other 8 as a political prisoner in the l980s for several bank robberies in Oregon claimed by the George Jackson Brigade, an independent underground cell operating out of Seattle, Washington.
RIP to Bo Brown, a working-class militant, former political prisoner, and member of the George Jackson Brigade in the Pacific Northwest. After prison, Brown remained deeply involved in supporting prisoners and speaking at various events. https://t.co/cn85cKFm2C pic.twitter.com/LwMGFjJBhQ
— It's Going Down (@IGD_News) October 26, 2021
She has been a prison abolitionist for more than 30 years. Bo is also a founding mother of Out of Control: Lesbian Committee to Support Women Political Prisoners and also works regularly with the All of Us or None as well as the Prison Activist Resource Center in Oakland, California where she lives and spends a lot of time on the phone talking with prisoners’ families. All of this grass roots work is volunteer and solely motivated by the need to create real change and real community where children will matter and prisons will not seem to be so damn necessary and will not be such an incredible source of income for the ruling class.
Please donate to her funeral fund at:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/pfspu-show-up-for-bo-brown
by Anarchist Black Cross Federation via It's Going Down
The Assange Persecution Is Western Savagery At Its Most Transparent
The first day of the US appeal of the Julian Assange extradition case saw grown adults arguing in a court of law that the US government could guarantee that it would not treat the WikiLeaks founder as cruelly as it treats its other prisoners.
I wish I was kidding.
In their write-up on Wednesday’s proceedings, The Dissenter’s Kevin Gosztola and Mohamed Elmaazi report that the prosecution argued that “the High Court should accept the appeal on the basis that the U.S. government offered ‘assurances’ that Assange won’t be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) or incarcerated in ADX Florence, a super-maximum prison in Colorado.”
What this means is that in order to overturn the January extradition ruling which judge Vanessa Baraitser denied on the basis that the notoriously draconian US prison system is too cruel to guarantee Assange’s health and safety, the prosecution has established as one of their grounds for appeal the claim that they can offer “assurances” that they would not inflict some of their most brutal measures upon him. These would include the aforementioned Special Administrative Measures, wherein prisoners are so isolated that they effectively disappear off the face of the earth, or sending him to ADX Florence, where all prisoners are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.
Prosecution bashes judge for blocking Julian Assange’s extradition
My latest w/ @kgosztola via The Dissenterhttps://t.co/aQHZ4dVTyO
— Mohamed Elmaazi (@MElmaazi) October 27, 2021
What’s ridiculous about these “assurances”, apart from the obvious, is that within its own legal argument the US government reserves the right to reverse those assurances at any time and impose SAMs or maximum security imprisonment upon Assange if it deems them necessary. As Amnesty International explains:
“They say: we guarantee that he won’t be held in a maximum security facility and he will not be subjected to Special Administrative Measures and he will get healthcare. But if he does something that we don’t like, we reserve the right to not guarantee him, we reserve the right to put him in a maximum security facility, we reserve the right to offer him Special Administrative Measures. Those are not assurances at all. It is not that difficult to look at those assurances and say: these are inherently unreliable, it promises to do something and then reserves the right to break the promise.”
So the prosecution’s legal argument here is essentially “We promise we won’t treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to.”
This is not just a reflection on the weakness of the extradition appeal, it’s a reflection on the savagery of all the so-called free democracies that have involved themselves in this case.
This argument made minutes after Assange had to excuse himself from his own hearing due to ill health. https://t.co/V4Z9z19n9b
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) October 27, 2021
This same prosecution argued that Assange should not be denied US extradition from the UK on humanitarian grounds as in the case of activist Lauri Love because Love suffered from both physical and psychological ailments while Assange’s ailments are only psychological. They stood before the court and made this argument even as Assange was visibly pained and unwell in his video appearance from Belmarsh, which he was only able to attend intermittently due to his frail condition.
“For my newspaper, I have worked as media partner of WikiLeaks since 2009,” tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi who attended the hearing via video link. “I have seen Julian Assange in all sorts of situations, but I have never ever seen him so unwell and so dangerously thin.”
So they’re just openly brutalizing a journalist for exposing US war crimes, while arguing that they can be trusted to treat him humanely and give him a fair trial if granted extradition. This after it has already been confirmed that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him during the Trump administration, after we learned that the prosecution relied on false testimony from a convicted child molester and diagnosed sociopath, after it was revealed that the CIA spied on Assange and his lawyers in the Ecuadorian embassy, and after intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein famously died under highly suspicious circumstances in a US prison cell.
#Assange Lawyer in Fiery Rebuttal at Day’s Conclusion https://t.co/YnDrm8JQsm
— Consortium News (@Consortiumnews) October 27, 2021
The worst atrocities in history have all been legal. All the worst examples of genocide, slavery, tyranny and bloodshed have been allowed or actively facilitated by the state. The persecution of Assange is geared toward entering the imprisonment of journalists into this category.
The goal is to set a legal precedent which allows journalists who expose the crimes of the powerful to be persecuted not covertly as is normally done in “free democracies”, but right out in the open. To tell journalists “We’ll just throw you in prison if you cross us.”
What makes this precedent uniquely dangerous is that it is not just threatening to imprison American journalists who expose US crimes, but any journalist anywhere in the world. This is an Australian journalist in the process of being extradited from the UK for publishing facts about US war crimes in the nations it has invaded. The aim is to set up a system where anyone in the US-aligned world can be funneled into its prison system for publishing inconvenient facts.
This is the savagery of the western world at its most transparent. It’s not the greatest evil the US-centralized empire has perpetrated; that distinction would certainly be reserved for its acts of mass military slaughter that it has been inflicting upon our species with impunity for generations. But it’s the most brazen. The most overt. It’s the most powerful part of the most depraved power structure on earth looking us all right in the eyes and telling us exactly what it is.
And if we can really look at this beast and what it is doing right now, really see it with eyes wide open, it reveals far more about those who rule over us than anything any journalist has ever exposed.
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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/10/28/the-assange-persecution-is-western-savagery-at-its-most-transparent/