Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Ukraine In The Membrane: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

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Make no mistake, the US is being entirely pragmatic in its Ukraine proxy war. It gets to shore up control over its European vassals, preoccupy Russia and bleed its coffers, expand its military, advance its information interests, and all it costs is a little pretend empire money.

So of course the empire provoked this war and sabotaged peace at every opportunity. Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it? It stood everything to gain and very little to lose. I mean, unless you count greatly increasing the possibility of nuclear annihilation.

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Empire apologists constantly comparing mounting tensions with Russia and China to the beginning of World War Two wouldn’t be as much of a problem if our entire civilization hadn’t been propagandized for generations into believing World War Two was awesome and good. Our deliberately reinforced cultural fascination with that war now has everyone saying “That bad government is Hitler and we’re the good guys who are fighting Hitler and we need to go fight Hitler as soon as possible!”

World War Two was the single worst thing that has ever happened. Period. It is only because of mountains of propaganda that comparisons to the lead-up to WWII don’t have everyone saying “Okay well let’s ramp up diplomacy, de-escalation and detente to make sure that never happens again.”

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Imagine being such a pathetic limp-dicked cuck that of all the problems in the world you choose to spend your time shrieking about “communism” and “wokeness”.

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Western rightists are freaking out more and more about communism. We’re no closer to communism than we were 30 years ago, their thought shapers just changed the definition of “communism” to mean having a government and sometimes seeing a Pride flag.

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A lot of the “anti-wokeness” thing seems to come from people knowing they’re being manipulated by the powerful but having no lucidity on the matter, so they end up going after the wrong targets. It’s not all hateful bigotry; a lot of it is just confusion about where the enemy is. People have an intuitive sense for when they’re being manipulated, but figuring out exactly how mass-scale manipulation is manufacturing consent for the empire takes a lot of learning, and none of it is information they give you in school or teach you in the mainstream news.

Liberals who exploit social justice in a cynical and transparently phony way are largely responsible for this dynamic. People can smell phoniness, and they’re smearing that smell all over real social justice issues.

This is not to say that this dynamic I’m pointing to is the sole driver of all “anti-woke” sentiment; a lot of it is just garden variety prejudice and hate. Civilizations built on genocide, oppression and othering will necessarily have a lot of that lingering around, both conscious and unconscious. But there’s also this other dynamic of confusion which can be addressed.

Whatever your motives, spending your time fretting about “wokeness” is counter-productive. At best you’re just making the world less pleasant for marginalized populations while taking your crosshairs off of real power structures as humanity hurtles toward extinction on multiple fronts, and at worst you’re also fueling the very thing you’re trying to get rid of by providing evidence that there are all these hateful bigots who need to be forcefully opposed.

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Living in a liberal western democracy means you have the freedom to criticize your own government for its tyranny, and the press has the freedom to hammer you with propaganda to ensure that you never do.

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“I’m so glad I don’t live in a country like Russia or China where people are forbidden to criticize their government. I live in the west, where I’m free to criticize Russia and China all I want.”

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We need to get a handle on this climate thing so we can leave a healthy world for our children, our children’s children, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s ex-girlfriends.

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Eastern philosophy is better than western philosophy. Western philosophy is a bunch of miserable wankers trying to think their way into truth and meaning, and failing. Eastern philosophy actually discovered and promulgated practical methods for attaining happiness and inner peace in life.

Western philosophy is millennia of people going “I’m sure if we shape our head noises in the right way and put them in the right order everything will make sense.” Eastern philosophy is turning away from the head noises and going, “Okay, what’s really going on here?”

Trying to make sense of life using thought is like trying to solve an algebra equation using a hammer. It’s the wrong tool. Eastern philosophy discovered this thousands of years ago and set about creating and distributing the proper tools while the west kept hammering away at the textbook.

The difference between western philosophy and eastern philosophy is the difference between a poet who knows how to diddle words to craft a clever turn of phrase and a poet who actually has something real to say. The east plunged to the depths while the west bobbed on the surface.

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The word courage tends to evoke images of heroes and daring rescues, but in real life courageous people mostly use that attribute for confronting uncomfortable truths within themselves.

___________________

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, buying an issue of my monthly zine, 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/09/01/ukraine-in-the-membrane-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
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Canadian Tire Fire #43: Homes Not Cops in Halifax, News from the DTES, and Fighting Racism Against Migrant Workers

photo: @PADScommunity

This week we bring you an in depth look at migrant justice struggles in Canada. We cover a Homes Not Cops rally in Halifax, fires and a police killing in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, and some prison updates as well. A couple of these stories will discuss sexual assault.

In Ottawa, folks disrupted the Pride flag raising ceremony at Ottawa City Hall. In a tweet, one of the protesters explained, “We engaged in this disruption to call out the corporatization of pride + the hypocrisy of pride being celebrated by the same state agents which pride started as a riot against.”

In so-called BC, police repression continues against land defenders. On August 12th, three land defenders were pepper sprayed by RCMP CIRG officers on the yintah, outside the home of one of the land defenders. Two of the land defenders were arrested as well. You can read the full report on Gidimt’en Checkpoint’s website.

Read on for the full stories!

A Look at Racist Policing, Canada’s SAWP, and Attempts to Stop Deportations

This week a decision was made by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal that the group Justice For Migrant Workers calls a historic victory. The decision is about a 2013 police investigation into a disgusting sexual assault of  a rural Ontario woman. The woman identified her attacker as migrant farm worker due to his accent and dark coloured skin. While investigating the assault, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) conducted what they called a voluntary collection of the DNA of dozens of migrant workers, all believed to be from the Caribbean, who were working on a nearby farm.

The migrant workers on the farm were employed through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). This program is well know for its exploitative structure of tying workers to the employer that hires them for the season and can fire/deport them with no reason. The human rights tribunal referred to testimony given by  an international policy and governance expert, Dr. Hennebry. Quoted from the decision Dr. Hennebry said this of the SAWP:

[It is] “textbook definition of structural racism” in that it is embedded in colonial histories, and relies on cheap racialized labour with workers who are deemed needed for the economy but unworthy of settlement. As such, the SAWP reinforces “anti–migrant rhetoric” and the exclusion of migrant workers from the social fabric by preventing their integration and inclusion into communities, by design.”

Leon Logan, the applicant in this case, testified that although the police were quite polite and clear with him, the farm owner was expecting all the workers to cooperate with the police investigation and accept the DNA collection. Mr. Logan feared exercising his right to not volunteer for the collection would put his employment in jeopardy, and he was right. An excerpt from a letter written by the farm owner to the police after the main suspect was identified states:

“When I was informed that three of our off–shore workers had refused to take a DNA test regarding the tragic occurrence of a man (who fits the physical description of a number of our workers), violated a woman in her home … I made the decision that none of these men would be invited back to work for our company in the future unless they consented to take a DNA test, as had been asked for by the Investigation Police Force.”

The investigation found that when workers were screened by police, very few factors were considered, such as the suspect’s age, height, facial hair, or whether the workers had an alibi. Ultimately it became clear that the workers’ skin colour alone was used as the deciding factor in whether they would be considered a suspect. During the tribunal, police explained that other aspects of the physical description of the suspect were disregarded due to the unreliability of memory around traumatic events, although they used this description when talking with local farm owners and in media releases. In the end the tribunal decided the OPP discriminated against the Caribbean workers based on this fact. That skin colour and place of origin was the sole determinant in collecting and storing their DNA information. The tribunal awarded monetary damages to Mr. Logan and set the precedent for another 53 workers to receive damages. A separate case will need to be conducted for the workers to have their DNA information destroyed and wiped from police record and database.

Delving Deeper into the Realities of the SAWP

Migrant farm workers on two different farms wrote an open letter to the Jamaican labour minister this week. While the letter was written by Jamaican workers, they say other workers from Mexico and the Philippines feel the same way. The letter states that rats eat their food and they have no way to dry their clothes after a rainy day, leaving them to work in damp clothing and footwear. The state their rooms are crowded and they are surveilled by cameras in their houses. They call the SAWP systematic slavery, giving a visceral image to Dr. Hennebry’s more academic comment of “colonial histories.” When discussing the realities of trying to live under this policy structure, they say, “We work for eight months on minimum wage and can’t survive for four months back home.” The letter states they are subject to verbal abuse and “treated like mules” as well as being “exposed to dangerous pesticides without proper protection.”

Underscoring these horrific conditions is the deaths of four workers in the past two weeks. One of which was noted and confirmed by the CBC the other 3 were mentioned in the letter to the Jamaican labour minister. The letter calls for the establishment of anonymous reporting lines to report unsafe conditions, as well as the removal of government agent deduction fees as the agents are of no help in changing condition on the farms. Further demands made in the letter are for enforcement of housing standards and, of course, STATUS FOR ALL!

Migrante Fights Deportations

The Alberta chapter of a global migrants rights group that started to assist migrants being deported from the Philippines has been fighting multiple deportations in the last few months. The groups says they have received multiple requests for help throughout June and July of this year. The group was able to have the deportations paused for two different families in Edmonton.

Two other public campaigns are underway by the group now. One campaign hopes to prevent the deportation of a family to Mexico after having fled that country due to targeted violence and now being rejected as refugees in Canada. The other is to prevent the deportation of Migrante’s national chair, Danilo de Leon. Migrante points out that the federal government is supposed to be working on a program to regularize undocumented migrant workers, yet these workers are still getting deportation orders.

For more information you can check out Migrante Alberta’s website, facebook and twitter

Halifax Homes Not Cops Rally

On August 18th, hundreds gathered in downtown Halifax to demand solutions to the city’s housing crisis. The rally and march took place on the one-year anniversary of an encampment defence action. In 2021, when police moved to evict two small shelters on public property, hundreds of community members pushed back, and the protest escalated, with police pepper spraying the crowd and arresting 24 people. 18 were charged, and six people’s charges are still outstanding.

This year, people marked the day with renewed calls for a moratorium on all encampment evictions in Halifax, and an end to police involvement in the housing crisis. They also had demands on the provincial government, who they called on to invest in affordable public housing and to strengthen tenant protections.

The crowd gathered in front of the Old Memorial Public Library to hear speeches before marching to City Hall and the Nova Scotia legislative building.

Fires and Police Violence Continue in Vancouver’s DTES

It has been another particularly difficult stretch for residents in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. A fire in an SRO (single room occupancy) building on August 22nd caused the building’s roof to collapse, and spread to a neighbouring SRO. All in all, the fire displaced at least 60 of people, into even more precarious housing situations or onto the street where they are at high risk of being pushed out by ongoing Vancouver Police Department street sweeps.

As if it wasn’t enough to be displaced from their homes, whether from the already under-maintained SROs destroyed by fire, or from tents and other structures on Hastings Street targeted by violent street sweeps, the DTES community also witnessed the killing of Chris Amyotte by police on August 22nd. Chris was an Ojibway father of 8 from Ditibineya-ziibiing (Rolling River) First Nation in Manitoba.

Chris was in Vancouver visiting family when he was bear sprayed one morning. He went into a convenience store in the DTES and took a jug of milk to pour on himself to relieve the pain. VPD arrived and shot him multiple times with a beanbag gun, killing him. Organizers with VANDU are conducting a community investigation into the killing.

Vancouver MLA David Eby recently threw his hat into the ring to be BC’s next premier by running for the leadership of the provincial NDP. He recently announced desire for a policy of involuntary care for people who have suffered severe or repeated overdoses. VANDU and countless others including addictions doctors have spoken out against his idea. They say that is is likely to kill more people if put into practice, citing increased stigma, hesitation to seek care, and a higher likelihood of overdose following forced treatment.

VANDU and other organizers with “Our Streets” have been calling for David Eby to meet with them to discuss the housing and street sweeps crisis in the neighbourhood. He has not responded to their calls.

In happier news related to David Eby, his MLA office was recently painted in solidarity with Gidimt’en land defenders. The front of his office read “David Eby is a colonizer,” “Solidarity with Sleydo,” and “Save Old Growth.”

Solidarity with all those working to make David Eby’s life a little harder, all those fighting police violence and anti drug user policies, and everyone doing their best to survive in the DTES.

Prison News

Since his death at the hands of prison guards in Ontario’s Central East Correctional Centre in 2016, Soleiman Faqiri’s family has been demanding justice. This past week, for the third time, Ontario Provincial Police announced that no guards would be charged for his death. This announcement came as a result of new findings from Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist that concluded that the actions of the Correctional Officers led to Soleiman’s death. Yet, after reviewing the findings, the OPP determined that there was insufficient evidence to lay criminal charges.

In Nova Scotia, a former prison guard was sentenced to three years in prison for sexual assault against three women who were prisoners at the Nova Institution for Women in 2018. The court found that there was no possibility for legal consent given the imbalance of power between the individuals involved.

While the above cases involve different outcomes, the takeaway is the same: prisons are an irredeemable institution. A situation where some human beings hold complete power over others will be abused and is itself abusive. Justice for Soleiman Faqiri, for the former prisoners of the Nova Institution, and for all those who have suffered abuses of power at the hands of guards and the prison system itself.

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by Canadian Tire Fire via It's Going Down
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Straight (Pride) Outta Modesto!: Far-Right Rally a Flop as Counter-Protest Routs Proud Boys

Report from One People’s Project on recent mobilization against far-Right ‘Straight Pride’ rally in Modesto, California.

A planned “Straight Pride Rally,” which was in truth an annual anti-LGBTQ+ effort by neo-fascists, was aborted when they were opposed by over 200 antifascists at the local Planned Parenthood where they planned to rally on Saturday, one day before the 59th anniversary of the March on Washington. The rally, which was attended by local Proud Boys and other far-Right groups and individuals, was also a disappointing turnout for the less than 30 individuals after 80-100 of them came out last year.

The antifascists, many of them part of the LGBTQ+ community were at the rally site for an hour before the neo-fascists arrived, one lone street preacher from San Jose, with a sign saying “Jesus Saves from Hell” opposing them across the street on McHenry Ave. At one point during this exchange, Modesto Window Tint, which was next to where the preacher was standing began blasting banda music from its outside speakers to drown out his words after antifascists asked him to raise the volume. Despite this, owner Tony Manriquez noted they were not taking sides “We’re neutral. We’re just window tinters, man,” he told the Modesto Bee.

Just before 11 AM PDT, a handful of individuals attempted to confront the antifascists, resulting in a brief brawl that pushed them back. As they walked backwards from the advancing crowd the Straight Pride Rally supporters set off fireworks causing one of them to ignite a nearby bush. Almost immediately after this, police declared the rally an unlawful assembly and warned everyone to disperse. The two sides were kept away from each other by riot police who then began to push the antifascists off the Planned Parenthood property and out of the area, firing pepper spray bullets and bean bags into the crowd, injuring two. Three persons were arrested for “failure to disperse,” including two Straight Pride Rally attendees.

The rally area was quiet two hours later with the minuscule number of neo-fascists that showed up relocating their rally to a women’s health center two miles away. They still saw opposition as some passers-by pelted them with eggs at one point. Antifascists meanwhile, after being chased for much of those two hours by riot police, met up again in various locations. Some went to the local jail to provide jail solidarity for the counter-protester arrested. On Sunday morning, anti-choice chalkings were seen on the sidewalk around the Planned Parenthood building.

The Straight Pride rally was organized by  Don Grundmann a former member of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue whose latest organization is the National Straight Pride Coalition. He was a participant in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and is best known for inadvertently calling his organization “a totally peaceful, racist group” at a 2019 Modesto City Council meeting, causing the chamber to erupt with laughter and the video of the gaffe to go viral.

On their website, Grundmann promoted the rally as protesting “against the (Planned Parenthood) genocidal holocaust against the black community,” going on to name the NAACP, Vice-President Kamala Harris, Senator Cory Booker and Former President Barack Obama. They also announced that Brotherhood of a New Destiny (BOND) founder, minister and talk show host Jesse Lee Peterson, would be their Grand Marshall. Peterson, a Black man, has been a long time antagonist towards not just the LGBTQ+ community but especially the Black community and is known for working with and embracing White supremacists and their ideology, even calling Donald Trump, “the Great White Hope.”  His announcement as this rally’s Grand Marshall came despite how in recent months he has been embroiled in a sex scandal after two male associates claimed in interviews with the Church Militant – a far-right Catholic website – that Peterson engaged in sexual congress with them and propositioned others. In the end, those that attended the rally at the other location were predominately White and Peterson did not attend.

This was the fourth year Grundmann has held this rally.


by One People's Project via It's Going Down
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We’re Being Trained To Worry About ‘Russian Propaganda’ While Drowning In US Propaganda

Listen to a reading of this article:

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One of the weirdest, most insane things happening today is the way the entire western world is being trained to freak out about “Russian propaganda” — which barely exists in the west — while ignoring the fact that we are spending every day marinating in billions of dollars worth of US empire propaganda.

CNN has an article out titled “Darya Dugina’s death provides a glimpse into Russia’s vast disinformation machine — and the influential women fronting it” on the recently assassinated daughter of Alexander Dugin, a Russian political thinker of wildly exaggerated influence.

The article uses Dugina’s assassination to further stoke its audience’s ever-growing panic about Russian disinformation, quickly becoming a commentary on Russia’s entire propaganda network without bothering to articulate how Dugina’s death “provides a glimpse” into its workings.

Without the slightest hint of self-reflection or irony, this CNN article about Russian propaganda cites as its two main experts a think tanker from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and a think tanker from the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). The Atlantic Council is a NATO narrative management firm that is funded by NATO, the US government, the UK government, various other US-aligned states, the arms industry, and numerous billionaires. CEPA’s donor list looks similar to the Atlantic Council’s and includes US arms manufacturers and the US government through both the US State Department and the CIA cutout National Endowment for Democracy. Both are used to promote the information interests of the US-centralized power alliance in Europe and North America.

As we’ve discussed previously, the way news media cite corrupt warmongering think tanks to discuss foreign policy without ever mentioning their immense conflicts of interests is plainly journalistic malpractice. But this practice is ubiquitous throughout the western news media, the because western news media are propaganda outlets.

The article cites RT, the Internet Research Agency, and something called United World International as examples of “Russia’s vast disinformation machine,” despite every one of those institutions having a degree of influence that is the exact opposite of “vast” in the western world. In 2017 RT accounted for all of 0.04 percent of total TV viewership in the UK. A study found that the much-touted US “election interference” campaign by the Internet Research Agency in 2016 consisted mostly of posts that had nothing to do with the election and comprised “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content” seen on Facebook. I’d be surprised if anyone reading this has ever even heard of United World International, and CNN’s own article acknowledges that before that outlet was banned from western social media its accounts only ever had a few thousand followers.

So when I say Russian propaganda barely exists in the west, I mean it is quantifiably a complete non-factor. Compare those paltry numbers to the nonstop barrage of empire propaganda that westerners are fed every day of their lives by every news media outlet of significant influence — whose coverage of the Ukraine war has eclipsed that of all recent wars the US has been directly involved in — and it becomes clear that this message we’re being fed that we all need to panic about Russian propaganda is itself propaganda.

The CNN write-up criticizes RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan for saying in 2012 that “When Russia is at war, we are, of course, on the side of Russia.” As though CNN ever sides against the US during US wars. Not only does CNN consistently take the side of the US government in every single war, it conducts brazen propaganda operations to help start new ones, like the time it staged a scripted interview with a small Syrian child calling for US military interventionism in Syria.

The only difference between Russian state media and US state media is that Russian state media is honest about what it is.

This wave of nonsensical, artificially created panic about Russian disinformation has been used to dismiss any and all information which comes out that casts the US empire and its lackeys in a negative light as Russian propaganda or the work of Russian agents. We’ve seen this over and over again, from the way Julian Assange has been falsely cast as a Kremlin operative to the way indie media are falsely framed as Russian propaganda operations.

The latest example of this deception is the way incriminating leaked emails of prominent British figures published by The Grayzone have been dismissed in a new Politico hit piece as a dishonest representation of emails obtained by Russian hackers per “the Russian playbook”. Grayzone staff hastened to point out that not only does the Politico article fail to grapple with the rather important question of what the leaked emails actually contain, but that it failed to mention that its primary source is a UK Foreign Office veteran and psyops specialist who has a publicly stated vendetta to get The Grayzone censored online.

The manufactured hysteria about a nonexistent epidemic of Russian propaganda in the west has people so blinkered and confused that it’s become impossible to criticize the most powerful government in the world for its planet-threatening brinkmanship with a rival nuclear superpower on any online forum without getting accused of being a secret agent for the Kremlin. My own social media notifications are continuously lit up with accusations of Putin loyalty and rubles in my bank account just for criticizing the most dangerous impulses of the most powerful and destructive government on earth, despite never having worked for Russia or any other government.

What’s funny about all this is that by constantly warning of the dangers of Russian propaganda, imperial spinmeisters are admitting that they know it’s possible to manipulate public thought at mass scale using media. They’re just lying about who’s doing it to us.

In reality, they’re not worried about Russian propaganda. “Russian propaganda” is just a spooky story we are told to keep us from noticing that our civilization is saturated in US propaganda.

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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, buying an issue of my monthly zine, 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/31/were-being-trained-to-worry-about-russian-propaganda-while-drowning-in-us-propaganda/
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Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Running Down the Walls 2022!

The Anarchist Black Cross Federation announces Running Down the Walls events across the so-called US for 2022.

Since 1999, prisoners and supporters throughout North America have participated in the annual event known as Running Down the Walls (RDTW) often running or walking simultaneously in many cities and prisons at once. This is a non-competitive 5K run/jog/walk/roll in order to raise awareness and funds for political prisoners.

Over the years, we have raised thousands of dollars and lots of awareness around the struggle to free political prisoners. Many places will be hosting RDTW 2022 between September 11th or 18th – stay tuned to our blog for more details from all of the locations participating this year!

Find out more about Running Down the Walls and the ABCF Warchest (which the runs support).

List of 2022 Runs:


by Anarchist Black Cross Federation via It's Going Down
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Lillington, NC: 16-Person Hunger Strike Announced at Harnett Correctional

Report on hunger-strike kicking off in Lillington, NC. The following is a statement from sixteen of the participants in the strike.

On August 30th, sixteen prisoners housed in the SC-S 24 building of Harnett Correctional, in Lillington, NC went on an indefinite hunger strike. A supporter received the following statement, signed by all sixteen participants, with the request that it posted and spread online to make their grievances known. Stay tuned for future calls to action!

In the meantime, supporters can call the Warden of Harnett CI, Cathy Judge, at 910-893-2751 to express their support and concern for the hunger strike.

To Whom It May Concern,

On August, 30th 2022, those of us housed in SC-S 24 building will partake in a hunger strike due to our current living conditions. Inhumane conditions here consist of black mold, asbestos, and bug infestations. Presently there’s no air conditioning, running hot water, sprinklers, emergency call buttons, or safety instruction to notify where exits are located. The cell doors are 1900s outdated manual doors that lack any type of emergency release, if the door is disabled. Due to their being no rec cages, offenders spend their one-hour rec time in full restraints.

Some offenders are housed behind a four-inch thick metal door without the proper necessities to correspond with family and loved ones. Offenders are being targeted, assaulted, and tortured. Staff are using mental health offenders that are under the influence of substances as confidential informants (CIs) to target us, affecting our release dates. These same mental health offenders are allowed to file false PREA [Prison Rape Elimination Act] allegations against other offenders, and remain in population while the accused are placed in restrictive housing until an investigation is completed. Yet staff continues to the use the same CIs after proving the allegations are false. However, if that same offender were to accuse an officer of a PREA they’ll place the offender in restricted housing while the officer remains on his post.

Case managers have no say in anything concerning offenders. They side with officers and other staff members in every situation. Case managers don’t honor the point system, set in place to determine an offender’s custody level. The FCC never disagrees with any recommendation against any offender. For example, SRG officer Lt. Palaez uses FCC to have offenders demoted when she can not validate allegations against them, due to new policy and procedures put in place that prevent SRG staff from labeling someone a security threat without merit. Offenders coming from close custody facilities are always targeted, and most receive infractions within their first 90 days of arrival at Harnett CI.

These are some of the many issues we would like to highlight and bring awareness to outside sources and family members of those being housed at Harnett CI in Lillington, NC. I am here at Harnett and can honestly say and state I’ve witnessed, heard, and experienced these issues and claims, which is why I’m participating in this hunger strike. During this course of actions I will not be indulging in any acts of violence or actions that pose a threat to the facility or any staff. May my signature serve as my participation in this hunger strike for awareness purposes and demonstrate that I was not threatened, coerced, or bribed into signing.

[sixteen signatures alongside DPS number]

photo: Milad Fakurian via Unsplash


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
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Announcing Creeker Vol 2 & Creeker Companion Vol 2!

Announcing new issues of Creeker and The Creeker Companion, which details the ongoing struggle against logging and the Ada’itx/Fairy Creek blockade.

Creeker is a grassroots, anti-authoritarian zine series that aims to bring depth, variety, critique and continuity to the ongoing process of reflecting on the Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek blockade and related efforts. It’s intended for creekers themselves, land defenders elsewhere, and the land defenders yet to come. The newest offering in the series includes contributions of art, analysis, photography, history, personal reflection and poetry that were anonymously sourced from participants at the blockade. The writing features eloquent and hard-hitting pieces that explore the dynamics of autonomous forest defense in conflict with recuperative tendencies at Fairy Creek, and histories of radical, uncontrollable resistance in the nearby Kax:iks/Walbran and Elaho Valleys.

Reading version: https://creekerzine.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/creeker-2.2-web-color-clean.pdf

Printing version: https://creekerzine.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/creeker-2.2-print-bw-clean.pdf

The Creeker Companion zines are curated to complement the Creeker zines with material that’s relevant to Ada’itsx and similar movements, but much broader in scope. Creeker Companion Vol 2 samples various sources and includes essays, poetry and communiques touching on movement history, state repression, vigilantes, and much more. A thoughtful, playful, boldly insurrectionary vibe throughout the zine joins a diversity of material together in refreshingly unexpected ways.

Reading version: https://creekerzine.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/companion-2.03-web-clean.pdf

Both Creeker and the Creeker Companion may be of interest to anarchists and land defenders in general. Check the website for previous volumes in the series. https://creekerzine.wordpress.com

photo: Sassin Camp


by Anonymous Contributor via It's Going Down
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Monday, August 29, 2022

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


Watch on YouTube here: Indigenous Mother Speaks Out About Son on Anniversary of His Killing
Via Christian Gasper
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Free Speech Doesn’t Matter If Propagandists Determine What People Say

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None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they’re informed.

None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don’t know they are propagandized.

Living in a liberal western democracy means having the freedom to criticize the tyranny of your government, but instead spending your time criticizing the tyranny of foreign governments who your government doesn’t like.

Free speech in a liberal western democracy means you have the freedom to say whatever you want about the abuses of your government, and the press has the freedom to hammer you with propaganda to ensure that you never do.

In a liberal western democracy you are free to criticize your government, but instead you are propagandized into criticizing the impotent puppets who get rotated in and out of office while your government continues doing all the same evil things regardless of who gets elected.

In liberal western democracies you are free to call the president “Drumpf” or “Brandon”, but you are not free to know who’s actually calling the shots in your country underneath the official government.

In liberal western democracies people say, “I’m so glad I don’t live in a country like Russia or China where people are forbidden to criticize their government. I live in the west, where I’m free to criticize Russia and China all I want.”

It doesn’t matter if you have freedom of speech if those in power can control what you will say. And in liberal western democracies, this is exactly what happens.

We grow up saturated with US empire propaganda in the west. We marinate in it. It pervades our consciousness. But because it’s all we’ve ever known, most of us don’t even notice it.

We think it’s normal that we’re always told our government is on the good and righteous side of every international conflict. We think it’s normal that we hear constantly about the tyranny of foreign governments while only occasionally hearing about bad things our own government did years ago (but it was an innocent mistake and it’ll never happen again).

“If we were being propagandized, I’m sure we’d have heard about it in the news,” we tell ourselves.

But the news is the propaganda. And it will never report on that bombshell story.

Propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society. In controls how the public thinks, acts, votes and behaves, but hardly anyone ever talks about it. Because the sources they’ve been trained to look to for information never say anything about it.

So people say what’s on their mind, after what’s on their mind has been carefully curated by the imperial narrative managers who are responsible for controlling what information goes into their mind.

And they say it with complete freedom. Sure if what they’re saying goes against the interests of the western empire they won’t be allowed to speak on any large platforms where they might infect the mainstream herd with wrongthink, and sure if what they’re saying is really inconvenient they might get banned from even speaking on any of the major online platforms, but they still get to speak. Alone, where no one can hear them. Preferably into a hole in the ground.

And everyone else gets to ingest the mainstream swill. The authorized narratives that get amplified on traditional media and by the algorithms of Silicon Valley. The authorized narratives which mask the abuses of their own government — foreign and domestic — while magnifying and exaggerating the abuses of empire-targeted governments.

That’s why when some people hear my objections to the empire, they say “Well at least where I live we’re allowed to criticize our government!”

And that’s why I reply to them, “Okay. But you don’t.”

If speech wasn’t free people would realize they’re being oppressed, but if people started using their speech to voice real grievances about real power, they would swiftly discover that their speech is being ignored and power is doing as it likes. So inconvenient speech is curtailed by propaganda, by censorship, by algorithm manipulation and by media marginalization.

People are kept hopelessly enslaved by giving them the illusion that they are free, and any voice which interrupts that illusion is silenced by whatever means necessary.

That’s what free speech means in a liberal western democracy. You can say whatever you like, as long as it’s what they like.

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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, buying an issue of my monthly zine, 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

 



source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/29/free-speech-doesnt-matter-if-propagandists-determine-what-people-say/
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Saturday, August 27, 2022

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


Watch on YouTube here: Taty Maestri on Femicides and Violence in Brazil
Via Christian Gasper
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It’s Gross To Live Under The US Empire And Spend Your Time Criticizing Russia And China

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The other day an Australian journalist was giving me a hard time for not criticizing Russia and China the way I go after the US empire, calling me “morally bankrupt” for not criticizing all governments equally. He said the ethical thing to do would be to criticize the US, but also criticize the governments the US doesn’t like for balance.

I had a look at this fellow’s work online and did indeed see articles sharply criticizing China and Russia, as well as much weaker governments like Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and the Taliban.

But guess what government I didn’t see in his crosshairs?

This to me is the worst kind of moral cowardice. To live in Australia (effectively a member state of the US empire) and yet spend all your time criticizing far weaker and far less destructive governments than the US is like living in a Nazi-occupied territory during World War Two and spending your time shaking your fist at Brazil. It’s like tut-tutting judgmentally when you hear your neighbor raise her voice at her kids even as you yourself are busy murdering your entire family with an axe.

As I learn more and more about global power dynamics and interact with more and more people around the world responding to the things I have to say, I find myself growing more and more disdainful of those who live directly under the thumb of the US empire and yet spend their time criticizing unabsorbed governments like Russia and China. It’s literally the most pathetic, snivelling, power-serving position anyone can possibly take at this point in history.

The US empire is indisputably the most murderous and destructive power structure on the world stage today. No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to destroy any government which disobeys it. No other power is starving entire populations with economic sanctions, military blockades and brazen theft. No other power has been interfering in foreign elections anywhere near as often. No other power is terrorizing populations around the world with wars, covert ops, drone strikes, proxy conflicts, and staged coups and uprisings. No other power is using its military, economic, diplomatic and media dominance to bully the world into serving its interests. The US exports most of its tyranny outside its own borders (though certainly not all of it), but it is nevertheless plainly the most tyrannical regime on earth.

Everyone in the world should focus their scrutiny and criticism on the most powerful and destructive power structure in the world, because that is the sane and normal thing to do. But those who live in the US or its imperial member states have a special obligation to do so, because focusing on far less powerful and far less evil governments when you live under the umbrella of the US-centralized empire is gross.

Even if you don’t buy the argument that those who live under the US empire have a special obligation to focus their criticisms on that power structure, at the very least you should make your criticisms proportionate to the destructiveness. And because the US is by far the most destructive power on earth, you should be criticizing it far more often than you criticize other powers.

But it’s worth taking time to do some honest self-examination on why you feel the need to even give proportionate criticism to empire-targeted governments like Russia and China, in a society where every single one of the most powerful media and government institutions already criticize those governments constantly while ignoring the crimes of the empire. It’s worth examining why you feel the need to lend your voice to a message that is already being amplified as loudly as any message could possibly be amplified when criticisms of the empire are so profoundly neglected in the English-speaking world, and questioning  whether lending your energy to those propaganda campaigns would have any desirable effect at all.

If you do examine your urge to join the mainstream shrieking about US-targeted governments, what you will probably find (if you are honest with yourself) is that you’ve been marinating in pro-US propaganda your entire life, and that has warped your expectations of normal criticism.

We’re so accustomed to seeing the misdeeds of US-targeted governments grossly over-emphasized and exaggerated, while seeing US misdeeds grossly under-emphasized and ignored, that it sets the bar for our expectations of what normal criticism should look like. This distortion effect makes an appropriate level of aggressive criticism of the US empire look inappropriate and disproportionate; we’ve been trained in such a way that a normal amount of emphasis on the evils of US imperialism looks freakish and suspicious.

Image

In reality, it is not freakish and suspicious when someone focuses their criticisms on the world’s most powerful and destructive government. It’s freakish and suspicious that that isn’t the norm.

It’s a lot easier to criticize empire-targeted governments than the empire itself, because everyone we’re surrounded by has been consuming empire propaganda all their lives and we’ll receive pushback from them when what we say causes them to experience cognitive dissonance. And this is a major reason so many westerners opt for the path of least resistance rather than shining the spotlight of truth where the real monsters are.

But that’s cowardice. It’s bootlicking. It’s pathetic. Don’t facilitate the propaganda campaigns of your rulers while failing to criticize the crimes of those rulers just because it’s easier than putting your energy where it belongs. You’re not being a big brave truth teller when you criticize far away governments who have no power over you; you’re being a coward. Don’t serve power while pretending to oppose power. It’s gross.

______________

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, buying an issue of my monthly zine, 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2



source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/27/its-gross-to-live-under-the-us-empire-and-spend-your-time-criticizing-russia-and-china/
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Celebrating John McCain’s Death Is Good, Actually: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

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People on Twitter are currently raging because the account for the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire tweeted a post celebrating the anniversary of the death of John McCain, which is a good opportunity to explain why everyone who dances on McCain’s grave is right and why anyone who admonishes them for doing so is wrong.

The reason it’s good and important to celebrate the deaths of war sluts who facilitated mass military slaughter is because it helps bring clarity and proportionality to the horrors of war. You’re making it clear that John McCain’s victims matter more than his daughter’s feelings.

The fact that celebrating the death of war criminals is met with outrage is itself evidence that it’s something that needs to be done. If the public is so blind to the horrors of war that politeness is seen as a higher priority, those horrors need consciousness brought to them.

If mainstream westerners really understood what war is and what it means, it would never occur to anyone that it’s indecent to celebrate John McCain’s death.

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The most important thing for the English-speaking world to understand about China is that it’s none of your fucking business. If you live in the US or one of its imperial member states like Australia or the UK, you should be focused on attacking the criminality of the empire. All this neck-craning and pointing at China’s Covid policies or whatever from people who live inside the US-centralized power structure is like someone making a big deal about hearing his neighbor raise her voice to her children while he himself is busy murdering his own family with an axe.

The belief that western noses belong in Chinese affairs is the product of propaganda. Let China do China. We live under the most powerful empire that has ever existed, which is led by the most tyrannical regime on earth. That is where our focus belongs.

I’m becoming more and more disdainful of people who live directly under the thumb of the US empire and yet spend their time criticizing nations like Russia and China. It’s literally the most pathetic, snivelling, power-serving position anyone can possibly take at this point in history.

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Focusing one’s criticisms on the most powerful and destructive government on earth is the sane and normal thing to do. It’s not strange and suspicious that people like me do this, it’s strange and suspicious that more people don’t.

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“You never talk about the good things America gives the world!”

Like what? $400 million superhero movies?

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Keep supporting US foreign policy, American progressives. They’ll definitely give you healthcare any minute now if you just hate Russia and China a little harder.

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Everything that passes for “the left” in the English-speaking world is either controlled opposition, a glorified online hobby group, or both. That’s not all our fault; the empire poured vast amounts of wealth and effort into making that happen. But we need to be real about it.

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Democrats rehabilitated George W Bush out of political necessity. If you don’t turn him into a cuddly wuddly old painter who hates the far right and frolics with Ellen DeGeneres, you can’t support Democrats like Joe Biden who backed all of Bush’s most evil actions to the hilt.

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The UK could have had Jeremy Corbyn. Instead they’re getting empty refrigerators and frozen homes.

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Until a few years ago, “Russian propaganda” meant media created by the Russian government to facilitate the information interests of the Kremlin. Now it just means any media that criticizes the foreign policy of the most powerful empire that has ever existed.

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People sometimes tell me I’m a “grifter” who only says what I say for money. Yes, yes everyone knows this is where the real money’s at: promoting an extremely marginalized perspective online while being called a Kremlin/CCP agent all day. Nobody has ever gotten rich promoting mainstream perspectives.

You learn very early on doing political commentary that the easiest way to go viral is to say something that agrees with broadly supported sentiments in one of the two mainstream political factions. Most people succumb to the temptation to do this. The rest get called “grifters”.

___________________

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, buying an issue of my monthly zine, 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. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2



source https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/27/celebrating-john-mccains-death-is-good-actually-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
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