Thursday, June 30, 2022

Ukraine Is The Most Aggressively Trolled War Of All Time: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

There’s a lot going on in America and the people are very stressed out and frightened, but don’t worry, there’s nothing the US government won’t do to make sure more High Mobility Artillery Rocket systems get to Ukraine.

Rest assured Americans: no matter how dark things may seem right now, no matter how insecure and uncertain you may feel, you can sleep soundly knowing your government is moving mountains around the clock to make sure the Ukraine war becomes a strategic quagmire for Moscow.

The Ukraine war is the single most aggressively trolled issue I’ve ever witnessed. As soon as it started, Twitter was full of brand new accounts swarming anyone who uttered wrongthink about Ukraine, and now there are entire extremely coordinated troll factions working to scare people away from criticizing the imperial line. It’s plainly very inorganic, so it’s good to recall what we know about the trolling operations of western militaries.

So the western empire is responding to a war that was caused by NATO expansion by greatly expanding NATO, at the same time we learn that the Biden administration doesn’t even believe Ukraine has any chance of winning that war. This is going great, guys. Good job everyone.

Sure the worst case scenario of all this brinkmanship with Russia is nuclear war, but on the other hand the best case scenario is securing planetary domination for an empire that has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression for power and profit. Totally worth the risk!

When you realize the US only has one party, you cease seeing it as a good party protecting people from a bad party and start seeing one giant party threatening to take away people’s civil rights if they don’t obey and submit. You suddenly understand that saying one party is a “lesser evil” is like saying a boxer should want to get hit by his opponent’s left hand because his right cross hurts more. It’s two arms on the same boxer, and they’re both working together to knock you out.

A boxer doesn’t go into a match planning to get punched in the face by his opponent’s left hand while avoiding the right, he goes in planning to defeat his opponent. The opponent is the uniparty and the oligarchic empire which controls it.

It is true that each hand is used differently in boxing, with the lead used mostly for jabs and hooks and the rear hand mostly for crosses, but they’re both used together to set up a knockout blow. The fact that the parties are used differently doesn’t mean they’re not working together.

Most good boxers will tell you they’d rather fight someone with a solid cross than someone with a solid jab. Sure the jab does less damage at first, but it’s such an effective strike that it can nullify your entire offense and grind you down until you can’t continue. In exactly the same way, the Democratic Party is far more effective in shutting down revolutionary movements and stagnating progress than the Republicans, and, just like a jab-cross combination in boxing, is used to set up the Republicans to deliver the knockout blow.

What is the correct response to this? Is it to say “Hmm, I’d better let him punch me with his left hand, because if I don’t he’ll hit me with his right and it’ll hurt more”? Or is it to bite down on your mouthpiece and start throwing heavy leather until you knock his ass out?

It’s just a cold hard fact that no matter how strong and independent a woman you think you are, your quality of life will be severely affected by the quality of the person you have babies with. Abortion is the final safeguard against giving birth to the child of an unworthy man. And no matter who you are reading this, you personally know women who’ve been temporarily deceived into thinking they were having sex with a worthy man.

Forced birthers in the US are like, “We’ll adopt your baby! Okay actually we’ll probably just let them fall through the cracks of a grossly inadequate foster care system leading to a childhood of trauma and neglect, but after that we’ve got a very well-funded prison system that can take care of them.”

One thing we learned from Covid is that being stuck inside sucks. Space colonization would be like being in permanent lockdown with no windows, no Uber Eats, no birdsong or rain on the roof and no chance of ever going home. Even if it somehow became possible, it’s a dumb idea and I hate it.

And there’s no reason to believe it will ever become possible. Science is nowhere near finished learning about all the countless ways the human organism is inseparably intertwined with Earth. The belief that we can solve our problems with space colonization is unscientific. We’re just going to have to change how we function as a species.

The biggest obstacle remains the fact that science has no idea how to sustain human life in a way that is separate from earth’s ecosystem. We don’t even have any evidence that it’s possible. We’re no closer to being able to do it than we were a thousand years ago; today’s space stations are not independent of Earth’s ecosystem in even the tiniest way. They’re still 100 percent dependent on terrestrial supplies, which is an unsustainable model if you’re talking about actual colonization.

The idea of space colonization appeals to the capitalist mentality because it means we can keep expanding our population and keep expanding the economy and keep harvesting and consuming resources in the way we have been. But there’s literally zero scientific evidence that it’s feasible.

A future of space colonization is a fairy tale we tell ourselves so that we won’t have to change. So we can keep up our egocentric way of functioning without adapting and transcending our self-destructive patterns. We’re like a slacker who refuses to get off their parents’ couch and get their shit together who babbles made-up nonsense about NFT get-rich-quick schemes when asked about their plans for the future.

Collective extinction is easier to imagine than collective ego death.

 

____________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/07/01/ukraine-is-the-most-aggressively-trolled-war-of-all-time-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Denver Justice Project Hosts Community Meeting to Reimagine Policing
Via Christian Gasper

Jason Walker in Danger at Connally Unit, Requesting Urgent Support

Prison rebel, organizer and incarcerated journalist Jason Walker calls for support. For more background on Walker, see here and here.

From Jason:

I’ve been moved to another prison.

Normally, moving from one prison to the next is like a lottery. But in my situation, each move is far worse than the last. And I’m strategically being sent where the SCC (State Classification Committee) is well aware danger is present.

My move from Hughes was a result of a prisoner notifying staff that inmates at Connally Unit and Robertson Unit sent a message to Hughes Unit about getting me killed. I assume cell phones were used.

The prisoner gave them the handwritten note given to him, along with some newspaper clip I wrote about K2 in prison. It was passed to him for circulating to slander me but he turned it in. The note clearly listed Connally and Robertson as units where the word came from.

Staff at Hughes did investigate everything and determined that I should be moved from Hughes because the threat is valid.

But strangely enough, out of Texas having over 100 units, I’m quickly sent to Connally in a matter of days after the investigation.

So basically, what just occurred is that Hughes Unit investigated a threat sent from Connally and Robertson, determined the threat is real, and then I’m sent to the point of origin where the threat came from.

Does that make any sense? I assume if I manage to get moved from here I’ll be sent to Robertson.

If possible, please find someone willing to help me get transferred via complaints to Ombudsman and this prison. Here’s the Connally Unit phone:

(830) 583-4003 (Warden J. Rayford)

The complaint should list the underlining facts:

I was moved from Hughes due to threats sent there from Connally and Robertson Unit.
The threats concerned an article I wrote about K2 problems at Telford Unit.
Hughes Unit staff determined that the threat is valid and had me transferred.
The SCC moved me to a unit that the investigation and the handwritten hit note showed inmates at Connally and Robertson are involved.
Inmates at Connally 12 Building A-Pod reinforced my fear I was sent here on purpose as one mentioned that I’d be dead or in the hospital in a matter of days, the same day I arrived.
This particular threat is because I publish journalism on prison conditions, and am facing statewide retaliation because of it.
This is my 9th unit transfer since 2019 for threats of violence, assault, extortion and retaliation because of my publishing.
Moving me from prison to prison isn’t working. The proposed remedy to satisfy the complaint should be another unit transfer, away from Connally and to a unit that is designed to accommodate high-profile prisoners that are known journalists and authors who require isolation from the general population. And in no way sent to Robertson or any Region 5 unit.
I don’t qualify for safe-keeping so another measure needs to be taken.

Be mindful that TDCJ is purposefully sending me to places that contradict the reason for these transfers. The reason I’m still safe is because I’m staying aware and making sacrifices to keep me away from certain people and places. And I’m not letting my ego convince me that I can’t be killed, and the reason for my death covered up.

In solidarity,

Jason

Write to Jason:

Jason Walker #1532092

Connally Unit

899 FM 632
Kenedy, TX 78119

Contacts:

TDCJ Ombudsman: ombudsman@tdcj.texas.gov TDCJ Executive Director:

Bryan.Collier@tdcj.texas.gov, (936) 437-2101 Region IV Director’s Office:

David.Blackwell@tdcj.texas.gov, John.Werner@tdcj.texas.gov, (361) 362-6328 Connally Unit:
Phonso.Rayford@tdcj.texas.gov, (830) 583-4003

Suggested Script:

Hello,

I am contacting you on behalf of inmate Jason Walker #1532092.

Mr. Walker was recently moved from Hughes due to threats sent there from Connally and Robertson Unit. The threats concerned an article he wrote about K2 problems at Telford Unit. Hughes Unit staff determined that the threat is valid and had him transferred.
The Hughes Unit investigation, and the handwritten hit note, showed that inmates at Connally and Robertson were involved in this threat, and yet Mr. Walker was moved to Connally Unit.
Inmates at Connally 12 Building A-Pod reinforced Mr. Walker’s fears, as one mentioned that he’d be dead or in the hospital in a matter of days, the same day he arrived.

This particular threat is because he publishes journalism on prison conditions, and is facing statewide retaliation because of it. This is his 9th unit transfer since 2019 for threats of violence, assault, extortion and retaliation because of his publishing.
Moving him from prison to prison isn’t working. The proposed remedy to satisfy the complaint should be another unit transfer, away from Connally and to a unit that is designed to accommodate high-profile prisoners that are known journalists and authors who require isolation from the general population.

Under no circumstances should Mr. Walker be sent to Robertson or any Region 5 unit. He does not qualify for safe-keeping so another measure needs to be taken.

I wish to remind you that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice can be held legally responsible for any harm that comes to Mr. Walker as a result of negligence or deliberate retaliation from staff, and I look forward to hearing that this matter has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion.


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down

Mike Pompeo’s Revealing Hudson Institute Speech

Listen to a reading of this article:

Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that’s probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies.

Pompeo is serving as a “Distinguished Fellow” at the Hudson Institute while he waits for the revolving door of the DC swamp to rotate him back into a federal government position. The Hudson Institute is a neoconservative think tank which has a high degree of overlap with the infamous Project for the New American Century and its lineup of Iraq war architects, and spends a lot of its time manufacturing Beltway support for hawkish agendas against Iran. It was founded in 1961 with the help of a cold warrior named Herman Kahn, whose enthusiastic support for the idea that the US can win a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was reportedly an inspiration for the movie Dr Strangelove.

A think tank is an institution where academics are paid by the worst people in the world to come up with explanations for why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid, which are then pitched at key points of influence in the media and the government. “Think tank” is a good and accurate label for these institutions, because they are dedicated to controlling what people think, and because they are artificial enclosures for slimy creatures.

Pompeo’s speech is one long rimjob for the military-industrial complex which indirectly employs him. He repeatedly sings the praises of the weapons that are being poured into Ukraine, two of them by name: the Patriot missile built by Raytheon and the Javelin missile built jointly by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, both of whom happen to be major funders of the Hudson Institute. He repeatedly decries the “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan,” and excoriates the Biden administration for failing to control the world’s fossil fuel resources aggressively enough in its efforts to “prostrate itself to radicals.”

Pompeo, easily ranked among the most fanatical imperialists on the entire planet, hilariously says that “China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a form of imperialism.” He decries a “genocide” in Xinjiang and repeatedly implies that China deliberately unleashed Covid-19 upon the world, calling it “the global pandemic induced by China.” He repeatedly claims that Vladimir Putin is trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union.

Along with praise for NATO and for the various anti-China alliances in the Indo-Pacific, Pompeo names “Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan” as “the three lighthouses for liberty” which those alliances must work to support militarily. You will notice that those three “lighthouses” just so happen to be the hottest points of geostrategic conflict with the top three opponents of the US empire: Russia, Iran, and China.

But there are a couple of things Pompeo says which have some real meat on them.

“By aiding Ukraine, we undermined the creation of a Russian-Chinese axis bent on exerting military and economic hegemony in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East,” Pompeo says.

“We must prevent the formation of a Pan-Eurasian colossus incorporating Russia, but led by China,” he later adds. “To do that, we have to strengthen NATO, and we see that nothing hinders Finland and Sweden’s entry into that organization.”

That’s all the major international news stories of today are ultimately about, right there. Underlying all the smaller news stories about conflicts with nations like Russia, China and Iran, there’s one continuous story about the US power alliance trying to secure planetary domination by relentlessly working to subvert any nation which refuses to align with it, and about the nations who oppose that campaign working against it with steadily increasing intimacy.

This is all the Russia hysteria from 2016 onward has been about. This is all the phony, hypocritical hand-wringing about Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been about. This is all the staged histrionics about human rights in Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba have been about. It’s all been about manufacturing international consent for an increasingly dangerous campaign to secure unipolar global hegemony at any cost.

It’s worth calling this to mind, as NATO for the first time designates China a threat due to its alignment with Russia and as NATO’s secretary-general admits that NATO has been preparing for a conflict with Russia since 2014. It is worth calling to mind the fact that the US has had a policy in place since the fall of the Soviet Union to prevent the rise of any rival superpower to deny any serious challenge to its planetary domination. It is worth calling to mind that in 1997 the precursor to the US Space Force committed to working toward “full spectrum dominance,” meaning military control over land, sea, air, and space.

People like to talk about secret conspiracies by shadowy cabals to establish a one-world government, but what is by far the most tangible and imminent global domination agenda has been orchestrated right out in the open. The US government has long sought to unite the world under a single power structure, no matter how much violence and devastation it needs to inflict upon humanity and no matter how much world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship it needs to engage in to do so.

This is the US empire which corrupt psychopaths like Mike Pompeo support. A power structure which wages nonstop wars in order to keep the peace, which continually oppresses populations around the world in order to protect freedom, and which risks nuclear war with increasingly reckless aggression to in order save the world.

_________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2



source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/06/30/mike-pompeos-revealing-hudson-institute-speech/

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Spark the Artist Revolution by Alley Angel Artist Aphropic
Via Christian Gasper

Atlanta, GA: More Tree-Sits Erected on Juneteenth as Construction Continues to be Blocked

Report on new wave of tree-sits erected in the fight to stop ‘Cop City’ in Atlanta, Georgia. Originally posted to Scenes from the Atlanta Forest.

For more background on the fight to defend the Atlanta forest, read here and listen here. Report reads:

Over the last 2 weeks, actions both inside the forest and out have managed to stop construction and keep it at bay! On Juneteenth (June 19th), a very important day commemorating the freeing of slaves in the so-called U.S. from slavery, we erected a new tree-sit named Tower 7 in solidarity with youth prisoners currently being held in the juvenile detention center on Constitution Rd.

Gilligan’s Island is another new tree-sit that is connected to the infamously named and effective, “Haha Lol. Fuck You,” tree-sit (rightfully named because the kkkops destroyed the first platform and cut part of a tree that was tied together in hopes of injuring forest defenders). Gilligan’s Island, Tower Seven, and many other trees have been connected together with ropes which has successfully deterred cops and workers from chainsawing down trees when they arrived in the forest with that intention. No more trees have been cut in this area since then! We plan to keep it that way and greatly appreciate your ongoing support!

The flood of support pouring into the forest has meant a lot to those who are here defending the woods with our lives, both materially and emotionally as we get the sense of how many people are cheering us on. Much love and thank you all!

We believe all the tools for defending the forest and stopping cop city are important and that a diversity of tactics is most valuable!
Occupy the trees! Stop the Machines!
Defend the Forest with your heart!
Fight back against the oppressive arm of the law & police!


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down

North Carolina Prisoners Organize Rolling Protests and Hunger Strikes for Juneteenth, Ask for Phone Zap

Report from prisoners in North Carolina on various protest actions and a call for support.

Comrades in both North Carolina and Georgia have received word of a series of rolling protests and hunger strike actions at Granville CI in North Carolina, both to commemorate George Floyd Day as well as Juneteenth. A report-back and summary of those actions is below; at this moment prisoners at Granville are urgently asking for a mass phone zap to pressure NC DPS and the administration into granting their demands. You can find details on the phone zap in the shareable images below!

Brief Report on ‘George Floyd Day’

On “George Floyd Day’ on May 25th at Granville Correctional Institution, on HCAV (high-risk security) over 30 prisoners protested over their harsh conditions of captivity.

There have been routine hunger strikes, staff sit-ins for SIB (“self-injury behavior”) watch, fires, prisoners attempting to fight off a half dozen or more storm troopers single-handedly, and other means of protest, over issues like police brutality, not having access to tablets on HCAV, the new text behind mail service, extremely long long-term sentencing, and other random issues such as laundry and raw eggs served for breakfast.

We are planning on a state-wide petition campaign to the DPS to address the long-term sentencing structure. In the meantime, we’d like to demonstrate what happens to corrupt officials when we have the “power of the people.”

We will be protesting throughout Juneteenth in small and major ways. On June 23rd, I will be on my fifth day of hunger strike.

We did not choose to have the phone zap on Juneteenth, because that falls on a Sunday and so the administration and the warden will not be here. There warden is more likely to be here on Thursdays. (June 23rd is my birthday! And though I suffer from bone marrow cancer, the people will always come first).

Thank you for providing the 2019 phone zap to Scotland CI for “Shine White” and those hunger strikers…The admin went crazy and demands were met. May you be blessed many times.

On the inside we will handle everything else (paper work, other demands, etc). As you apply pressure and provide help from the outside. Thanks in advance.

In struggle we stand in solidarity, ‘til every cage is empty.

XXXXXXXX
The United Front (TRUCE) of the Peoples Army
(TRUCE – Teams of Revolutionaries Uniting to Combat the Enemy)

Phone Zap


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down

Thousands Take to Streets in Boise, Idaho; Push Back Against the far-Right

Report from so-called Boise, Idaho on recent protests and mobilizations against the Supreme Court ruling against Roe V Wade.

In the heat of summer, on June 27th, 2022, roughly 4,000 people showed up to a demonstration at Cherie Buckner-Webb park in so-called downtown Boise, Idaho. The crowd was mixed with many attendees that had never engaged in a large demonstration before, but were recently disillusioned by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which was announced the day prior. Many people who had never challenged spoon fed lies about the legitimacy of the system were now beginning to recognize that the State is not meant to protect us but to control us and extract all it can – from the creation of the next generation of the working class, to our own bodies and the Earth itself.

The fash turnout was more minimal than usual, though this may be due to the far-Right experimenting with different methods. There were fash individually identified throughout the crowd, but they were not taking the usual stance of surrounding the protest with automatic rifles, handguns, and body armor in tow (could this be because of the mass arrest of Patriot Front members who were planning to attack a Pride march in Idaho just several days prior?)

Some teenage boys circled the demo in a big truck, with an assault rifle held by the driver, and the plates removed from the front and back of the truck. Also in attendance was a white-supremacist groyper from Vancouver, Washington, “Woozuh” aka Jared Nobel. He touted a bright blue hat that read, “America First,” and snuck into the demo livestreaming and doxxing the speakers, until someone recognized him, stated who he was, and he was booed out of the area. He stayed on the perimeter attempting to interview people for the remainder of the event.

Organizers of the demo had originally planned a march but reported it wasn’t safe and stated in closing comments that people are autonomous and can march/do whatever they want – but that it wouldn’t be an official part of the demo. The group began to disperse into different directions as a huge uproar of applause occurred in an area where a flag was being burned in the street. Shortly after about half the crowd, 2,000 – 2,500 people began to autonomously march through the streets of downtown Boise.

The context here is that Idaho is an ultra-conservative state, and though Boise is less conservative than all other cities in Idaho, the farthest left that most folks go is into the category of liberal/neoliberal. There is always, in most movements, a leader and the “followers” don’t act autonomously outside of what the “leader” deems as the thing to do in that particular moment, so paving a way out of that is a welcomed and celebrated breath of fresh air.

Additionally, there’s a huge challenge for people to “march in the streets” and almost all marches are policed into “staying on the sidewalks” in fear of police response to “breaking the law.” This local cultural expectation was broken at the initial march after the murder of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in 2016 when attendees were asked whether they would like to march in the streets or stay on the sidewalks and the mixture of rage and tenacity of those in attendance resulted in a collective agreement to take the streets. After that, most marches went back into the habit of taking the sidewalks, which is just sad and pathetic and just ensures that the State and its enforcers that they have nothing to worry about because you are incredibly under their control and that all you need is a quick pressure release valve of holding a sign and walking a few blocks on the sidewalk until you peacefully go back to your day to day life.

Because of the sudden change of plans by organizers there was no route planned, no direction, no control – people simply poured into the streets and began chanting and marching. Chants were also not planned and it resulted in people screaming and chanting, “This is Bullshit,” “Fuck the Courts,” “My Body, My Choice,” among other things. There was a magic and beauty to the organic nature of the people in the absence of a leader. First people marched to the capitol, which is commonly what people do in the area. There were too many people to fit into the space, but everyone stopped and chanted for awhile, and then poured back into the streets and began marching again.

The march lasted for a couple of hours and snaked its way through the streets, blocking traffic in every direction for long periods of time. There was minimal to no security planned, but skills/modeling have been shared enough that folks organically started marshaling in intersections (blocking intersections and talking with drivers to prevent drivers from becoming irate and driving into the march). After marching around downtown a few times and disrupting the flow of traffic for a couple of hours marchers made their way back to the park and dispersed.

The big takeaway from this was witnessing the power of autonomy in action, even when it comes from thousands of freshly disillusioned liberals who are now going to be questioning everything and figuring out where to go next. Additionally, when we’re able to act as a community and make collective decisions – we’re unstoppable and powerful as fuck.

It’s incredibly wild that there still needs to be discourse about leadership in 2022. Leaders get arrested, leaders get killed, leaders get corrupted by their own power hunger, leaders burn out, leaders don’t have what it takes to get the job done. Leaders will not save us. Each of us are powerful and capable of engaging in changing our conditions and initiating action. We can never do it solo, it is in our shared struggle for our collective liberation that we can heave what destroys us off our backs and create new ways of being. So, let’s go fucking get it.


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down

July 25 – The International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners

Call for an international day of solidarity with antifascist prisoners. Originally posted here.

If you’re wondering what you can do to help support antifa comrades in prison on July 25th – The International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners,  here are some ideas:

Do a Banner Hang

Wanna know how to make a kick-ass banner?  Click here!

Put up Posters and Stickers Around your Neighbourhood or School

Here’s PDFs you can print from here and here.

Raise Money to Support Antifascist Prisoners and their Families

Putting on a fundraising event for July 25th and donating the proceeds to support antifascist prisoners and their families is a very good way to show appreciation & solidarity. Every year for #j25antifa, Antifa International does an online sale of “Support Antifa Prisoners” t-shirts (designed by a former antifa prisoner!), and donates the proceeds to the antifascists currently locked up (you’ll find a list of them and information about how to contact their support groups here!). We also run a standing fund that provides support to antifascist prisoners and their families throughout the year, which you can make a contribution to here.

Take a Solidarity Photo

See below for some awesome examples & be sure to send us any photos you take!

Write to Antifascist Prisoners

Nothing is better when you’re locked up than receiving mail! You can send letters or postcards to the antifascist prisoners on our list or participate in Rose City Antifa’s Postcards to Prisoners campaign or hold a letter-writing party with your friends! Here’s some tips for writing to prisoners.

Dedicate an Action to these Comrades

The only limit to what you can pull off on July 25th is your imagination!

Remember that together, we can create a flow of solidarity that strengthens our ties to one another and creates a culture of resistance that can withstand the inevitable tides of repression. These comrades are in there for us, so we are out here for them!


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down

Orlando, FL: Dozens March for Abortion Rights

Report back from rally for reproductive freedom in so-called Orlando, Florida. Originally posted to Tequesta Black Star.

Dozens of protesters in Orlando took part in an autonomous demonstration for abortion rights, waving anarchist flags and marching with banners stating “Rioting > Voting” and “Abortions For All” in repudiation of ineffective rallies in the city and elsewhere in the United States promoting voting and petitions as an alternative to direct action.


by Tequesta Black Star via It's Going Down

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Empire To Expand NATO In Response To War Caused By NATO Expansion

Listen to a reading of this article:

Turkey’s President Erdoğan has officially withdrawn Ankara’s objection to the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, with the three countries signing a trilateral memorandum at a NATO summit in Madrid.

The removal of Erdoğan’s objection was reportedly obtained via significant natsec concessions from the other two nations largely geared toward facilitating Turkey’s ongoing conflict with regional Kurdish factions, and it removes the final obstacle to Finland and Sweden beginning the process of becoming NATO members. Finland’s addition will more than double the size of NATO’s direct border with Russia, a major national security concern for Moscow.

“Sweden and Finland moved rapidly to apply to NATO in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reversing decades of security policy and opening the door to the alliance’s ninth expansion since 1949,” Axios reports.

So the western empire will be expanding NATO again in response to a war that was predominantly caused by NATO expansion. Brilliant.

At the same NATO summit, President Biden announced plans to ramp up US military presence in Europe in response to the Ukraine war.

“Speaking with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Biden said the US will increase the number of US Navy Destroyers stationed at a naval base in Rota, Spain, from four to six,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports. “The president said that this was the first of multiple announcements the US and NATO will make at the summit on increasing their forces in Europe, steps being taken in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

This news comes out as a new CNN report tells us that the Biden administration does not believe Ukraine has any chance of winning this war, yet still won’t encourage any kind of negotiated settlement to end the bloodshed.

From CNN:

White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will ever be able to take back all of the land it has lost to Russia over the past four months of war, US officials told CNN, even with the heavier and more sophisticated weaponry the US and its allies plan to send.

 

Advisers to President Joe Biden have begun debating internally how and whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should shift his definition of a Ukrainian “victory” — adjusting for the possibility that his country has shrunk irreversibly. US officials emphasized to CNN that this more pessimistic assessment does not mean the US plans to pressure Ukraine into making any formal territorial concessions to Russia in order to end the war.

This would confirm what I and many others have been saying since Russia invaded: that this proxy war is being waged not with the intention of saving Ukrainian lives by delivering a swift defeat to Moscow but with the intention of creating a costly, gruelling military quagmire to weaken Russia on the world stage.

This is further confirmed by a new Politico report that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has discouraged France’s President Macron from facilitating a negotiated peace settlement between Moscow and Kyiv, which would support an earlier Ukrainian media report that Johnson had discouraged President Zelensky from such a settlement during his visit to Kyiv in April.

These revelations emerge in the wake of western officials admitting that Ukraine is crawling with CIA personnel and special forces operatives from the US and other NATO countries.

“As usual it appears that the administration wants to have it both ways: assure the American people that it is being ‘restrained’ and that we are not ‘at war’ with the Russians, but doing everything but planting a U.S. soldier and a flag inside Ukraine,” writes Responsible Statecraft’s Kelley Beaucar Vlahos of this admission. “The Russians may not see the distinction and consider this news as further evidence that their war is more with Washington and NATO than with Ukraine.”

The empire is guided by so little wisdom in its escalations against Russia that the US congress is now pushing expensive ship-launched nuclear cruise missiles on its naval forces even as the US Navy tells them it doesn’t want those weapons and has no use for them.

Like hey, just take the nukes anyway. What’s the worst that could happen?

We need to really start taking seriously the possibility that a nuclear weapon could detonate as a result of misunderstanding or malfunction amid the chaos and confusion of all these frenzied, foolish escalations and lead to an exchange which ends our entire world. This nearly happened on multiple occasions in the last cold war, and there’s no rational reason to believe we’ll get lucky again.

The only sane course of action here is de-escalation and detente, and all the major players in these escalations are pointed in the exact opposite direction.

This is so much more dangerous than most people are letting themselves consider. It’s being sustained by psychological compartmentalization, emotional avoidance, and a profound lack of wisdom.

As David S. D’Amato recently remarked, “If our species does find a way to survive into the distant future, our descendants will look at right now as the near miss; they’ll think, ‘Wow, that was close.’ How do we convince people in power to preserve that future?”

_________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/06/29/empire-to-expand-nato-in-response-to-war-caused-by-nato-expansion/

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Refugees March Against Relocations to Closed Detention Camps in Greece
Via Christian Gasper

Holding Hands On The Precipice

Listen to a reading of this poem:

From our perch here on the edge of armageddon
we are safe to gush out our love over everything,
because we’ve got nothing left to save it for
and nothing left to lose.

I place slippery wet YES kisses on the black crows in your stomach
and on the glowing red cardinal birds who fill the night sky.
I hold your precious heart in my hands and my eyeballs grow vines into it
and I weep round sloppy joy while telling you that you are perfect.

There is great beauty to be found in the oceans choked with garbage,
in the coughing poverty streets filled with schizophrenic prophets and opioid eyes,
in the Sauron eye of Google,
and in the pounding of the war drums as the ICBMs are readied.
It is not hard to see.
It is not even hidden.
We hold hands on the precipice and pour YES into the madness,
the majestic, orgasmic, omnicide angel madness.

Come what may.
Come, what may.
Come on, whatever may come.
We beckon forward the inevitable.
We collaborate with the chaos.
We ride as passengers with ancient earthworms and DMT gods
on the back of an infinite sea turtle
holding hands in excitement
for whatever is to come.

I love you so, so much.
I embrace you deep into my feathers
so you can hear the heartbeat of the galaxies.
Whatever happens,
whether we pass the great test or not,
whether we adapt or go extinct,
whether we make the jump or fall,
in the big picture
—the really, really big picture—
it will all be okay.

Let’s smoke cigarettes here on the edge of the abyss
as the air begins to crackle with an alien potentiality
and just gush our love out over everything
while it is there to be loved,
because it is there to be loved,
for however long it lasts,
come what may.

____________________

____________________

____________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/06/28/holding-hands-on-the-precipice/

System Fail #14: Feeling the Squeeze

Sub.Media returns with a new episode of System Fail.

Artificial intelligence reaches a new and unexpected milestone while the human condition continues to worsen.

As supply chains are pushed to the brink, working people around the globe struggle with new realities of stagnated wages and out of control inflation. While oil corporations celebrate record profits, the people of Ecuador are fighting back with work stoppages, road blocks, and riots across the country.

Meanwhile, in Tanzania, tensions have flared as the government tries to displace many indigenous Maasai people from their ancestral homelands for yet another playground for capitalist elites.

Finally, we follow up with our coverage of Giannis Michailidis, anarchist prisoner in Greece, who has now been on hunger strike for over a month.

Download [ 1080p * 720p * 480p * 360p ] Subtitles [ English * Portuguese * Spanish ]


by submedia.tv via It's Going Down

New video by Unicorn Riot on YouTube - go check it out ;-)


Watch on YouTube here: Unhoused in Minneapolis: Encampment Resident Speaks About Evictions
Via Christian Gasper

Monday, June 27, 2022

Indigenous Community of Puente Madera Mobilize in Defense of Their Common Lands

The Indigenous Binnizá community of Puente Madera mobilize in defense of their common lands against the construction of an industrial park, one of the ten industrial parks being proposed as part of the Interoceanic Corridor Megaproject in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Puente Madera, San Blas Atempa, Oaxaca

June 27, 2022

To the Communities and Inhabitants of the Municipality of San Blas Atempa

To the Indigenous Peoples, Organizations, and Collectives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, and the World

To the Media

To the Public

Today, once again, inhabitants of Puente Madera are mobilizing. It has been a year since members of our community found out that the installation of an industrial park in our common-use hill, El Pitayal, was being considered.

It has been a year since the first assembly of comuneros was convoked by Antonio Morales Toledo who in that moment was the municipal president of San Blas Atempa. Today he is the right-hand man of Salomón Jara Cruz, the governor-elect of Oaxaca who recently won in a state-wide election marked by widespread abstentionism.

It has been one year since the government who tried to sell us the promise of not repeating the masters of the past, endorsed the dispossession of our common-use lands using a supposed “previous, free, and informed consultation.” This consultation violated the principles of good faith, and was far from fulfilling the “prior, informed, and culturally adequate” requirements demanded by the law. Rather it was characterized by the falsification of signatures of more then 80% of the comuneros, and the use of signatures from two comuneros who were already deceased. It was also carried out according to the temporalities of the market and not of the community. In only four hours during two days they processed all the information and endorsed the industrialization of our common lands.

Today, one year since the dispossession of our lands began, along with the violations of our rights as Indigenous peoples, as the Binnizá community of Puente Madera, we reiterate that we will remain firm in our resistance. We will remain firm in spite of the municipality of San Blas Atempa denying the recognition of our authorities. We will not take one step back in spite of the municipality denying us the economic resources designated to our community, and refusing to pay the services of our health clinic. These are tactics used by the municipality to apply pressure on us. It is a form of intimidation and criminalization being used against our community. These tactics are being used against us due to our resounding rejection of the industrialization of our lands, which is a consequence brought by the Interoceanic Corridor Megaproject of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The current government has offered us this industrialization under the disguise of well-being and development. Yet, this industrialization will only bring us water scarcity and contamination, land grabbing, and the contamination of our soil and air. In exchange they offer us precarious working conditions and labor exploitation. Furthermore, the Interoceanic Corridor is expected to serve as a containment barrier for the Central American migrant population. The project offers us agroindustry so that we forget the zapolote chico, our native corn, the base for totopos, our traditional tostadas from the Isthmus. They offer us metallurgy and textile industries so we abandon the countryside and our land. In just a few years this industrialization will lead us to critical levels of water scarcity like that of which is being experienced now in Monterey.

In our hill of El Pitayal, the seek to install one of the ten industrial parks that make up part of the Interoceanic Corridor. This megaproject has offered our lands, springs, wind, forests, jungles, oceans, hills, and all that they can commercialize to private capital of the United States and Asia. They have also announced that our region will be the new border with Central American, and it will be surveilled and guarded by the United States military. The same military that will provide security for the businessmen who arrive to industrialize our territory.

As the community of Puente Madera, we will continue in resistance against the installation of this industrial park. We will continue in resistance until the last consequence in defense of our common lands and our forms of life which allow us to continue existing as Binnizá. We know that the criminalization, repression, and harassment against those of us who defend life and oppose this megaproject will begin to intensify in the coming months.

We call on the people of this region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to raise your voices against the industrialization and surrender of our territories brought about by this megaproject. It is the moment to decide if we are going to defend our resources and lands on which our lives depend, or if we are going to allow the handing over of them to private interests.

The Community Assembly of Puente Madera calls on the individuals and collectives, Indigenous, social, student, teacher’s, women’s, and dissident organizations of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the world, to show solidarity with our struggle in defense of territory, against the industrialization brought by the Interoceanic Corridor Megaproject. We call on everyone to carry out dislocated actions, according to your own modes, forms, locations, and times, to demonstrate that solidarity is not just a written word.

We will not allow machines to enter El Pitayal.

Nor will we allow any work to be done that threatens our common lands.

No to the Industrial Park of the Interoceanic Corridor.

We demand the revision and cancellation of possession titles of common use lands.

If they attack one of us, they attack us all. If there is repression, there will be mobilization.

 

Community Assembly of Puente Madera

Assembly of Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down

Ten Thoughts On Abortion

Listen to a reading of this article:

One

It sure is mighty convenient timing for all political and electoral energy in the United States to suddenly get sucked up into a single issue which affects the powerful in no way, shape or form. I wouldn’t have thought it would be possible for everyone’s attention to get diverted away from inflation and the looming likelihood of wage reductions and soaring unemployment or the economic war with Russia that’s making everything worse for everyone while pouring vast fortunes into the proxy war in Ukraine, but by golly, the empire found a way.

Two

Easy access to safe abortions helps prevent women from being trapped in abusive relationships, because childbirth is a great way to keep a woman tied to you and submissive to you. Financial abuse plays a role in virtually all abusive relationships, and if a woman has been made dependent upon an abusive partner to feed her children she’s far more likely to submit to his demands and far less likely to try to leave for fear of being unable to provide for them.

Most women who’ve escaped from a long-term abusive relationship with a man can tell you about the horror of a missed period and how much more terrifying that experience would have been if they hadn’t known that abortion is an option. Being forced to birth an abuser’s child often means being forced into enslavement to him.

The way to prevent this from happening is to ensure women easy access to safe abortions if they want them, and ideally to guarantee mothers financial support so they aren’t dependent on the charitable inclinations of some man who may or may not be a good person.

Three

For me the issue of abortion comes down to bodily sovereignty, not only in that the state has no business forcing unevidenced beliefs about metaphysical personhood upon people’s reproductive systems, but also in that it’s immoral to force anyone to let their body be used by anybody else.

Leaving aside philosophical debates about whether a fetus is a person and all the faith-based mental contortions you need to pull off to make a small cluster of cells seem the same as you or me, bodily sovereignty means abortion should be a right even if we concede that the fetus is a person. No person of any age, whether six weeks in utero or sixty years out utero, has a right to use my body without my permission.

If I needed to be hooked up to your kidneys for my survival, the fact that I would die without the use of your kidneys wouldn’t legitimize the state forcing you to let me use them against your will. In exactly the same way, it’s illegitimate for the state to force a woman to let a fetus use her body to gestate just because it can’t live outside her. Even if we grant both the woman and the fetus full bodily autonomy, a woman refusing to let a fetus use her body is not a violation of the fetus’s bodily autonomy because the woman isn’t at fault for the fetus’s inability to survive outside the womb anymore than you’d be at fault for my inability to survive without the use of your kidneys.

Some may argue “Well, the woman had sex! Therefore it’s her moral responsibility to carry the life to term.” This is wrong, and it says a lot about how entitled people feel to the use of women’s bodies. A woman gets to have sex with whoever she wants, whenever she wants, however she wants. That’s how bodily autonomy works. If she gets pregnant and the fetus gets to live ten weeks as a result of that before she evicts it from her person, then that’s ten more weeks of life than it otherwise would have gotten. You’re welcome, fetus. Now time’s up, out you go.

Four

While we’re on the subject of bodily sovereignty, I’ve seen a lot of people arguing that the whole “My body, my choice” position was invalidated by the way people were forced to take Covid vaccines in order to participate in society.

This is an entirely logical argument, in my opinion. It’s not logically consistent to say that bodily autonomy needs to take a back seat in one area and then claim it’s of utmost importance in another. Proponents of vaccine mandates are responsible for the fact that this argument is being used, and that it is being used effectively.

It’s very disconcerting that the law has come down on the side of subverting bodily autonomy in both of these major debates recently. As humanity gets more and more complicated, we may see the dominance of the notion that our bodies are not our own yield greater and greater consequences going forward.

Five

I was talking on Twitter yesterday about how I’d have to give up my career if I got pregnant and couldn’t have an abortion, and some guy told me something like “Yes but raising a child is so much more noble and lasting than what you are doing here!”

It is true that motherhood is certainly noble, and I myself am much more impressed with my achievements in that field than in this one. But have you ever heard anyone say such a thing to a man? Have you ever even once heard anyone tell a man that he’ll have to give up his successful writing career or any other successful creative career if he becomes a father, because the labor of fatherhood is so demanding and intensive it will require all his focus?

Of course you haven’t, because the burdens of parenthood overwhelmingly fall to the mother. It’s almost impossible to do a good job raising a child while maintaining a steady and high-quality creative output, and those who do often wind up like Sylvia Plath.

Men are never forced to sacrifice successful careers to raise children. Women shouldn’t be either. Silently picking up the slack of a society that expects people to work unpaid doing the most important job in the world is what women have always done, and it’s unjust. Our society was built over thousands of years during which both men and women were trained to believe that women’s lives don’t belong to them. That indoctrination still reverberates through our society today.

Six

Abortion rights affect not just mothers but grandmothers as well. If women are forced to give birth when they’re young and not ready to be mothers, who do you think that responsibility is going to fall to most of the time? Forced birth isn’t just an imposition on pregnant women, it’s an imposition on the grandmothers who will get stuck raising an unwanted child, probably just as they were getting excited about beginning the empty nest phase of their life.

If my daughter was forced to have a baby right now, so much of the work would fall to me that I would have to put my career on hold again. Supporting her education would be my priority. This would be an intrusive and immoral imposition on both of us.

Seven

Whenever I talk about abortion I always get a bunch of guys in my comments calling me fat and saying nobody wants to fuck me, which is always funny because I know with absolute certainty that I have way more sex than any of them.

Eight

There is a very robust argument to be made that all unwanted pregnancies, and therefore all abortions, are the fault of men. A man who chooses to ejaculate his reproductive fluids into a woman’s reproductive system without her explicit verbal invitation to do exactly that is at fault if she gets pregnant, because consent to sex isn’t consent to someone ejaculating inside your vagina.

Everyone is responsible for what they do with their own bodily fluids. We’re supposed to learn this as small children. But if you suggest that men are at fault if they choose to ejaculate inside a woman’s vagina instead of literally anywhere else, it gets an outraged response from a certain type of man. It’s just taken as a given that a woman who consents to vaginal penetration has consented to vaginal insemination, and therefore both parties are equally responsible for any ensuing pregnancy. This is wrong and stupid.

Women don’t get anything out of you cumming inside her, fellas. You’re putting her at tremendous risk just so that you can get a tiny bit more pleasure than you would by pulling out and/or wearing a condom. It’s something you do for yourself, not for her. If this is news to you, please revise your understanding of what sex is and start paying way more attention to the clitoris.

Nine

The overwhelming majority of the idiotic vitriol I get whenever I talk about abortion always comes from men. The ones I’ve interacted with are powered by a kind of invincible ignorance, where they simply talk at women about what pregnancy and motherhood are like with this know-it-all attitude that refuses to even consider the possibility that there may be some aspects of those experiences they don’t fully understand. I’ve had men not just argue with me about my own experience of my own body, but actually lecture me.

And it’s obvious that their ignorance remains invincible all the time, because someone with that much certainty and that little curiosity about what it’s like to be a woman and a mother isn’t the sort of man who the women in their lives will tell things to. They will remain in their impervious know-it-all bubbles for the rest of their lives, partly because they don’t let any new information in and partly because they repulse anyone from trying to give them any. Make sure that that’s not you.

Ten

There’s this fuzzbrained notion in Trumpian circles that holding antediluvian positions on social justice issues like abortion is somehow fighting establishment power structures, because politicians and the media tend to give lip service to those causes. This is based on sloppy thinking.

As humanity becomes more conscious, people increasingly value egalitarianism and personal sovereignty. Powerful spinmeisters simply understand that you need to be aligned with the collective consensus, and ideally even a bit ahead of the curve, if you want to manipulate everyone.

Manipulation depends on sympathy. Propaganda and advertising don’t work if you don’t have the sympathy of your audience. If you’re saying something that makes people unsympathetic, they’ll simply reject whatever you’re saying. So manipulators say whatever they need to say in order to get as much public sympathy as possible. If the public is waking up to the need for social justice, then in order to continue manipulating, you want to not just look like an advocate for social justice, but the best advocate in the room. That way you can direct where public energy and attention goes.

And that’s exactly what they do. They’re not saying “Yes, this way toward Satanism!” like right wingers claim, they’re saying “This way toward continued support for the status quo! Our support for social justice means continuing to vote for status quo politics, consume status quo news, and shop at Amazon!”

Pro-choice activism in America will with 100 percent certainty see its energy herded toward support for the status quo politics of the Democratic Party. This doesn’t mean abortion is bad or that the establishment loves abortion, it means establishment manipulators will work to divert any movement into support for the status quo in order to control it.

__________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fiPatreon 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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Feature image via Lorie Shaull (CC BY-SA 2.0)



source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/06/27/ten-thoughts-on-abortion/