from Instagram

Incredible flyer designed by @rat_maf
Saturday, October 11 at 3pm
Wooden Shoe Books
from Durian Distro
Since the ascension of the Prabowo Subianto presidency, the valiant people of Indonesia have resisted and pushed back on Prabowo’s authoritarian designs. Prabowo Subianto was the son-in-law of the hated Suharto, the dictator of the New Order period. During the New Order, Prabowo orchestrated massacres in occupied Timor-Leste and oversaw the forced disappearance of democratic activists. He rose to the presidency in an electoral campaign making use of fake news, AI-generated images, and authoritarian nostalgia.
It is theorized that the period of Indonesian democratization known as the Reformasi (reformation) has ended and that a new period of militarization and dictatorship has arisen known as the Neo-Orba (the new New Order), a civil-military dictatorship. This Neo-Orba is part of a global trend of democratic backsliding or autocratization.
from Durian Distro
The Merdeka West Papua Support Network strongly condemns the ongoing crackdown on democracy activists in Papua, today, Wednesday, 27 August, in the town of Sorong, following the unlawful transfer of four Papuan political prisoners to Makassar District Court — a clear violation of Article 85 of Indonesia’s Criminal Procedure Code.
A rail station tear-gassed, Affan Kurniawan killed by being run over by an armoured car protesters attacked with water cannons, batons, and the brutality of policing. Over 600 people have been arrested. That was just on the 28th of August in Jakarta, when thousands protested against excessive government pay. Yet it is not isolated, protests in Pati a few weeks earlier faced similar police violence, as did the protests against the TNI law earlier this year. This is not okay, the violence by the police and security forces has been brutal, excessive, and indiscriminate. Moreover, journalists have been attacked and media organisations threatened.
from O.R.C.A.
We Are Not Afraid of Ruins is a film by Greek filmmaker Yannis Youlountas recently translated into English that follows the squatters’ movement from 2019-2024 in the anarchist stronghold of Exarcheia in Athens as they support refugees, resist incursions by organized fascists and the state, and try to live their day to day lives in free from domination and exploitation.
Run time ~90 minutes, in Greek with English subtitles.
from O.R.C.A.
MAY 17th
6PM
ORCA
Vamos a pasar un rato conociendo a Ch’o Tinimit, un nuevo centro social anarkista en Xela, Guate. Habrá comida, juegos, musica, amigos y conversación con unx de lxs fundadorxs del proyecto. Invitan a sus amigos, y traiga una mascara de covid!
Join us for a low-key kickback to learn about Ch’o Tinimit, a new Anarchist info shop in Xela, Guate. There will be food, friends, games, music, and conversation with one of the founders of Ch’o Tinimit. Bring your friends, wear a mask!
from O.R.C.A.
In October 2019, protests against a transit fare hike in Santiago erupted into a nation-wide insurrection against the Chilean state. For six months, the streets were transformed into vibrant laboratories of self-organization, creativity and resistance, before ultimately being cleared by the promise of a new constitution and the spread of a global pandemic.
In the opening installment of Interrebellium, subMedia traces the history of the Estallido Social through the first-hand experiences of its participants, as they share battle-tested street tactics, and hard-won lessons about the lengths that the state will go to repress and recuperate challenges to its rule.
‘The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’:
Covers & Spine for Printing (8.5x~11.58″, color)
Paperback, ~5.25″ x 8.25″ x 0.58″, 266 pages
“A Mano Armata (Excerpts)”:
Covers for Printing (8.5×11″, b&w)
Pamphlet, ~5.4″ x 8.25″, 51 pages
Limited amount of physical copies available, email reekingthickets@proton.me to check availability and get yours – $5 for the book, $2 for the pamphlet (just to cover part of the cost of printing) plus shipping if not local (book weighs ~1lb) If you’re a reading group or bookstore, infoshop, think you can get it into a prison, etc., inquire about possibly reduced cost or free books! We’re still working out the kinks of our very small-scale production process, and this edition is somewhat rough, with some edges trimmed on a slight slant, the occasional smudged or faded line of text, and the possibility of some toner rubbing off over time.
To our knowledge, The Unexpected Guest, A Mano Armata, and many of the included sections of Palestine, Mon Amour haven’t been properly translated into English, and this primarily machine-based translation – though we feel is sufficient for some purposes – certainly can’t be considered as such. Translation was carried out by Nim Thorn, a non-speaker of Italian, using various translation programs with the results then checked for apparent mistakes or divergences and the offending passages re-translated in context with dictionaries and using other translation programs. Short stanzas (such as the section “Untitled” in Palestine, Mon Amour) or metered sections (such as the Faust excerpts in The Unexpected Guest) were also translated word by word using comparisons of multiple tools. The introduction to the second edition of A Mano Armata is a particularly bad translation, of a difficult text in the first place, though some parts of it still shine through quite clearly, and the subject matter – in part about the desire to engage with the word backwards by constructing semio-cognitive labyrinths to reflect absence and help bypass the recuperating tendency of the will and language – feels ironically relevant.
No authorization was sought for this independent, not-intended-for-profit project and, for our part, further printing or distribution is welcomed.
`The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’ brings together a new, rough translation of the 2010 book L’Ospite Inatteso by influential Sicilian insurrectionary anarchist, robber, poet, and philosopher Alfredo Bonanno (and as he reminds us, former motorcycle racer, professional poker player, and business executive) with similar, mostly previously untranslated sections from another book of his, Palestina, Mon Amour, and some relevant excerpts from his essay, “E noi saremo sempre pronti a impadronirci un’altra volta del cielo: Contro l’amnistia” (trans. – “And we will always be ready to storm the heavens again: Against the amnesty”).
An accompanying 51pg. pamphlet, “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)” collects more topical sections from that book of his (the title of which translates as `with armed hand’, or `at gunpoint’ and is part of the Italian legal name of offenses analogous to armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon, with `a mano‘ also having the sense of a tool ready and available for use, or of `hand-made’, `manually’).
The sharply echoing, often numbered and diary-like stanzas that make up much of the book are a remembrance of the deadly, pro-liberatory armed struggle Bonanno took part in during the `60s and following decades, including alongside Palestinians in the Levant (relating also his experience of torture for this by Mossad in 1972), in Greece against the junta, in Ireland, Algeria, Uganda, and Italy. Written mostly during various later-life prison stints in Italy and Greece for robberies and seditions (both real and fabricated), these poetic, searingly honest tracings of formative, difficult memories grapple with suffering, monstrosity, humanity, and ghostly normality, the silent, irreversible and all-transfiguring singularities of death and of ending the lives of others, and the irresolvable tension between the quantitative and qualitative. The paradoxical, messy engagements with the often deeply flawed, recuperative, and quixotic but sometimes critical aspects of clandestine revolutionary warfare come deeply into play, alongside those with the projects of memory, theoretical and personal understanding, and the word itself. Bonanno refuses to shy away from the stark insights and puzzling question marks born of having closely shadowed and struck at torturers, informers, provocateurs, traitors, cops, and soldiers, and does so without hiding behind either moralism or trite anti-moralist cliches. Reaching us like an esoteric, late medieval folk heretic, Bonanno in these texts feels perfectly attuned to apprehend his and our current moments (in particular their real incomprehensibility), even through such unlikely lenses as his highly ambivalent exegeses of Saint Augustine or Goethe’s Faust.
Footnotes, selections, typesetting, back cover text for the book (the back cover text of the A Mano Armata pamphlet is taken from excerpts of the text), and cover designs are also by Nim Thorn.
from O.R.C.A.
For more info and copies/free pdfs after event, visit reekingthicketspress.noblogs.org
Join us on March 16th at 6:15pm at ORCA for the release of the book `The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’, the pamphlet “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)”, and a screening of the film ¡G.A.R.I! (2013, 1h 23 min, French with English subtitles), by Nicolas Réglat, followed by a discussion if the mood strikes us. For location and accessibility info, email orca.philly@protonmail.com (note that ORCA is not wheelchair accessible and heating in the space can be spotty). There will be free books (somewhat limited quantity, somewhat crudely printed and bound) and pamphlets and the event is also free, with no RSVP necessary. Masking is encouraged and expected, and there will be an air filter running. There will be a box you can drop contributions to Reeking Thickets and ORCA in, but only if you really feel like it. After the event the full reading and printing pdfs will be uploaded, and a somewhat limited further quantity of physical copies will be available (email reekingthickets@proton.me) for $5 each to cover some of the costs of production, or, possibly, for slightly more at local radical bookstores.
`The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’ is a 266pg. book from Reeking Thickets Press bringing together a new, rough translation of the 2010 book L’Ospite Inattesso by influential Sicilian insurrectionary anarchist, robber, poet, and philosopher Alfredo Bonanno (and as he reminds us, former motorcycle racer, professional poker player, and business executive) with similar, mostly previously untranslated sections from another book of his, Palestina, Mon Amour, and some relevant excerpts from his essay, “E noi saremo sempre pronti a impadronirci un’altra volta del cielo: Contro l’amnistia” (trans. – “And we will always be ready to storm the heavens again: Against the amnesty”).
An accompanying 51pg. pamphlet, “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)” collects more topical sections from that book of his (the title of which translates as `with armed hand’, or `at gunpoint’ and is part of the Italian legal name of offenses analogous to armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon, with `a mano‘ also having the sense of a tool ready and available for use, or of `hand-made’, `manually’).
To our knowledge, The Unexpected Guest, A Mano Armata, and many of the included sections of Palestine, Mon Amour haven’t been properly translated into English, and this primarily machine-based translation – though we feel is sufficient for some purposes – certainly can’t be considered as such. Translation was carried out by Nim Thorn, a non-speaker of Italian, using various translation programs with the results then checked for apparent mistakes or divergences and the offending passages re-translated in context with dictionaries and using other translation programs. Short stanzas (such as the section “Untitled” in Palestine, Mon Amour) or metered sections (such as the Faust excerpts in The Unexpected Guest) were also translated word by word using comparisons of multiple tools. The introduction to the second edition of A Mano Armata is a particularly bad translation, of a difficult text in the first place, though some parts of it still shine through quite clearly, and the subject matter – in part about the desire to engage with the word backwards by constructing semio-cognitive labyrinths to reflect absence and help bypass the recuperating tendency of the will and language – feels ironically relevant.
Footnotes, selections, typesetting, back cover text for the book (the back cover text of the A Mano Armata pamphlet is taken from excerpts of the text), and cover designs are also by Nim Thorn. No authorization was sought for this project and, for our part, further printing or distribution is welcomed.
The sharply echoing, often numbered and diary-like stanzas that make up much of the book are a remembrance of the deadly, pro-liberatory armed struggle Bonanno took part in during the `60s and following decades, including alongside Palestinians in the Levant (relating also his experience of torture for this by Mossad in 1972), in Greece against the junta, in Ireland, Algeria, Uganda, and Italy. Written mostly during various later-life prison stints in Italy and Greece for robberies and seditions (both real and fabricated), these poetic, searingly honest tracings of formative, difficult memories grapple with suffering, monstrosity, humanity, and ghostly normality, the silent, irreversible and all-transfiguring singularities of death and of ending the lives of others, and the irresolvable tension between the quantitative and qualitative. The paradoxical, messy engagements with the often deeply flawed, recuperative, and quixotic but sometimes critical aspects of clandestine revolutionary warfare come deeply into play, alongside those with the projects of memory, theoretical and personal understanding, and the word itself. He refuses to shy away from the stark insights and puzzling question marks born of having closely shadowed and struck at torturers, informers, provocateurs, traitors, cops, and soldiers, and does so without hiding behind either moralism or trite anti-moralist cliches. Reaching us like an esoteric, late medieval folk heretic, Bonanno in these texts feels perfectly attuned to apprehend his and our current moments (in particular their real incomprehensibility), even through such unlikely lenses as his highly ambivalent exegeses of Saint Augustine or Goethe’s Faust.
¡G.A.R.I! (2013) by Nicolas Réglat is a documentary about the affinity groups of French and Spanish anarchists who briefly gathered under that acronym (trans. – `Revolutionary Internationalist Action Groups’) in France from 1973-1974 for revolt and to join with Spanish anarchist and autonomous rebels in combat with the far-right dictatorship of Franco and the broader capitalist, authoritarian order, who were then under real threat of judicial or extra-judicial execution. It included the participation, alleged in some cases, of many influential figures including Jean Weir, Lucio Urtubia, Floréal Cuadrado, Jean-Marc Rouillan, and Octavio Alberola. Operating between various regions of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and coordinating with rebels in or exiled from Spain, and with groups across Europe, GARI carried out a kidnapping of a Spanish banker and numerous non-lethal arsons, bombings, acts of infrastructure sabotage, machine-gunnings, robberies and fraud, while carrying out creative counter-information and aiding in the smuggling of arms and fighters to and from Spain. In the ambit of groups like the Angry Brigade or the First of May Group, GARI embraced an aggressive and strategic transnational armed struggle while remaining in touch with the spark of situationism and the autonomous movements, and resisting the vanguardism, organizational fetishization, and authoritarian variants of anti-imperialism so prevalent then and now. Though only existing as such for a short period before diffracting in countless directions across the constellation of struggle in Europe (including some arguably non-anarchist directions, such as the later path of Action Directe) which they contributed to spreading, GARI was an important node and precedent in the experimenting millieu from which contemporary insurrectionary anarchism was then emerging. Taking as point of departure a never-published comic book created by the GARI kidnappers in 1976, Réglat sets out to `save from the dustbin of history’ the stories of those involved, which includes that of some of his own family members. Consisting of archival footage and present day conversations with people involved in the events, and made possible by the expiration of statute of limitations, the film is a refreshingly human look into complex experiences from a chapter often glossed over, yet the consequences of which still ripple strongly in our struggles today.
Submission
flyer .png: https://upload.disroot.org/r/hUBqVExC#PhuSmVKBegubTa6qLs72At5lyIHGsK3aX6at31YXjIU=
flyer PDF: https://upload.disroot.org/r/DfteY0Wu#BVshmlG7jvVnbolWTfoSUAylk+Dm7KAf4m97jB1/HEg=
How can one live freely in the shadow of a prison?
There are moments, like today in Syria, when we can only rejoice. See the statues of Bashar and his relatives looted, the crowds in the streets, the open prison doors. These moments that remind us that all regimes, including the most authoritarian ones, can fall.
If there is a constant in the revolutions, it is that of freeing prisoners. Symbol of power, of who can decide the freedom of its subjects, prison is one of the nodes on which rests submission to the State and acceptance of social norms.
One of the worst prisons in the world, Sednaya, has apparently been completely emptied of its prisoners, allowing people to see their relatives whom they had not heard from for many years or even meet them for the first time. But let’s not be mistaken, while the «rebels» are emptying the prisons of the fallen regime, those under their control are already filled with opponents.
Revolutionaries have already fallen in the trap of supporting pro-State organisations, by third-worldism, against imperialism, seduced by kurdish communalism or the romanticism of the guerrilla. Unfortunately it is more a religious alliance, wishing to give direction to “the will of the people” than the insurgents in Syria who managed to overthrow the regime. Such structures using military practices will never be desirable. We want to carry an anti-authoritarian and without borders solidarity with the revolted in Syria, because our hopes in the Syrian revolution go beyond the perpetuation of a society held by arms, subjected to a celestial power as earthly, which requires prisons to exist.
While we welcome the liberation of syrians from the shackles of Assad’s clan, we can only hope that what was in seed during the 2011 insurrections can go even further, towards a self-organisation of all spheres of daily life, attack and the total questioning of power and property.
Here as there, so much remains to be destroyed. Prisons, Religions, States.
Happiness to the reunion of the freed, force to the ones locked up all over the world!
Anarchists, confident as wary,
France, December 9th 2024
from Making Worlds
Borders must be abolished. Borders produce and are produced by carceral, racist, classist, sexist, and xenophobic regimes. Border Abolition Now demands transformative politics to dismantle these systems of oppression.
Taking the key tenets of abolitionism and applying them to the debate around borders, join editor Brian Whitener and guests as they discuss and offer new tools for anyone working to defend freedom of movement for all.
Advance registration appreciated.
Brian Whitener is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo and author of Crisis Cultures: The Rise of Finance in Mexico and Brazil. His other projects include The 90s; De gente común: Prácticas estéticas y rebeldía social, co-edited with Lorena Méndez and Fernando Fuentes; and the translation of Grupo de Arte Callejero’s Thoughts, Practices, and Actions with the Mareada Translation Collective.
Geo Maher is the Coordinator of the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction in Philadelphia.
Viktoria Zerda (she/her) is a Mexican-Tejana, abolitionist attorney and clinical law professor at Rutgers Law School. Viktoria is currently based in West Philadelphia, but is originally from San Antonio, Texas.
from Philly ABC
Join us on Monday October 28th at 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books as we send letters to Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader associated with the First and Second Intifidas, and with the campaign for improved conditions for Palestinian prisoners. Marwan has been variously referred to as “the single most popular Palestinian leader alive,” a “ “symbol of resistance,” and “the world’s most important prisoner.” We’ll also sign a card for political prisoner Josh Williams, whose birthday is November 25th.
From prisonersolidarity.com :
Marwan Hasib Ibrahim Barghouti was born in the West Bank village of Kobar in 1962. He is a prominent and popular political figure associated with Fatah, currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison. He is a member of the Fatah Central Committee, and of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). Often described by Palestinians as the ‘Palestinian Mandela.’
In the run-up to the First Intifada, Barghouti was a student leader at Bir Zeit University involved in popular protests. He was deported by Israel to Jordan in May 1987 and was only allowed to return to the West Bank in 1993 as part of the Oslo Accords. The following year, in 1994, he became secretary-general of Fatah in the West Bank. During the Second Intifada, he allegedly directed military attacks against Israeli targets. Israel accuses him of having established the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB) at the time.
Barghouti was arrested and sentenced by an Israeli military court in 2002 to five consecutive life sentences for orchestrating attacks on Israelis. Since his imprisonment, Barghouti has been active in the prisoners’ movement and has published various articles from prison to communicate with the outside world. While in prison, he helped draft the 2006 National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners — which he co-signed with Abdulkhaleq al-Natsheh (Hamas), Bassam Sa’adi (PIJ), Abdel Rahim Mallouh (PFLP), and Mustafa Badarneh (DFLP). In 2017, he led a large-scale hunger strike to demand improved rights and conditions for prisoners.
The campaign for Barghouti’s release was launched in 2013 from Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island, in South Africa, where many leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle were imprisoned. Signing the Robben Island declaration calling for Barghouti’s release were eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, himself a veteran of the South African campaign.
from Act For Freedom Now
At the end of 2010 an individual act of despair in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a daring, enraged, and joyful upheaval that travelled through North Africa into the Middle East and beyond. People defied the oppressive systems they had been immersed in for generations and came together in the streets to topple the political elites at their helm. The authorities, at first stunned by this courageous spirit that they couldn’t understand, then unleashed a cynical and brutal response.
This defeat is still being inflicted on the people in the region, and is also felt all over the world by those who stood in solidarity with the uprisings but were mostly unable to overcome their powerlessness as the uprisings were massacred.
The horrors in the region during the last decade are many. To name some that stick most in my mind: Sisi has turned back the clock in Egypt to military dictatorship with the material support of the US. The regimes in the other North-African countries are paving over any sign of freedom while being coaxed by European countries to shut down the immigration routes over the Mediterranean. Without the murderous military campaigns of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Syria, Assad wouldn’t have survived the uprising. The Iranian regime itself brutally oppressed three different uprisings in the country in the last decade. Most people in Lebanon are in a daily struggle for survival because of the greed of its political leaders while mobs at the orders of Hezbollah beat down street protests. Early on in the uprisings, Hamas, who has shot political opponents in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, culled attempts at an uprising by rounding up protest organizers and threatening them with murder. Leaders in the region understood once again that they can use any means against the populations under their control without real push-back from outside. Indifference, cynicism and opportunism trump moral appeals, and strategic alliances are always in play. The world churns on. For those of us who have not looked away, how can we not see a connection between Assad bombing Syrian cities into obliteration and Netanyahu razing Gaza?
The authors of “Towards the Last Intifada” (Tinderbox #6) don’t acknowledge these experiences of the last decade. Instead, they propose to join the opposing side of an American geopolitical alliance (keeping true to American centralism in their own way). According to them, the Axis of Resistance shows the path forward for anarchists to struggle against empire. This article seems to confound resistance with ‘the Resistance’. That is to say, they collapse any form of resistance from people in Palestine, and more broadly in the region, into a particular representation, adopting an umbrella term used by states, militaries, para-state/para-military organizations to describe their own activities. The authors of the article warn anarchists against being too sensitive to hierarchy – as if that is the only aspect of ‘the Resistance’ anarchists might find difficult to accept.
It is now a year after the bloody incursion of Hamas into Israel. Apart from discourse, the accomplishments of the Resistance so far are: Hezbollah has launched ineffectual rockets that have only inflicted significant damage on a Druze village, Iranian leaders are busying themselves with making appeals to the West to reign in Israel, militias in Iraq attacked a couple of US military bases in the country early on and then fell silent, while only the Houthis seem to have taken Nasrallah’s “Unity of Fronts” seriously. They succeeded in disrupting global shipping routes and have carried out some unexpected aerial attacks on Israel. In the meantime, Israel has wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah, drops bombs on Lebanon on a daily basis, has regularly bombed sites in Syria without retaliation, and commits executions in Tehran. The Axis of Resistance and the Unity of Fronts are mere slogans that obscure the strategic dealings among political, authoritarian organisations and states with their own (often differing) interests. It’s delusional to see it as something else. And Israel is calling the bluff of ‘the Resistance’ with an exponential military escalation.
Israel’s massacres in Gaza, with the material support of the Western countries, are relentless. The apartheid regime in the West Bank and Israel has been built up for decades, leaving almost no oxygen to breathe for those living under its control. Faced with this bleak reality and an overwhelming powerlessness to put a stop to it, anarchists may be looking for an effective resistance (or rather, as it appears, an image of one). But if we want to fight against oppression, we can’t be content with any opposition. Choosing to join one authoritarian, militaristic system against another will not put an end to the horrors of this world – neither in this conflict nor in any other. It is neither inherently defeatist or a sign of privileged indifference to refuse to take sides between warring groups and states. That conclusion can only be reached if we would reduce reality to simplistic representations. Instead, by being open to complexity and specificity, anarchist action can be a liberating endeavor. It is here that we can find affinities, build relationships on a different basis, and muster the strength and courage – or perhaps, humility and passion – to attack. Anarchists find their effectiveness when they can undermine and destroy oppressive systems. We will not find it in a military prowess which, at the end of the day, produces more oppression and misery. And so those that have a spirit of their own and a memory of past rebellions will fight for another uprising.
From the northern coast of the Mediterranean, with a heavy heart and a soul on fire
Early October, 2024
Submission
Early Monday morning October 14 before the start of the work week the offices of local weapons manufacturers Ghost Robotics was targeted with a message for Ghost Robotics and their backer the University of Pennsylvania: Ghost Robotics and Penn, THERE’S BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!
Until all people are able to live safely and freely in the place they call home, we commit to fighting for our collective liberation.