Hands Off Samidoun: Solidarity with the Palestinian Prisoner Support Network

  • October 26, 2024 1:37 am

from Philly ABC

hands-off-samidoun.jpg

 Photo credit: Joe Piette

 

Philly ABC extends our solidarity to Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, in response to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) falsely-premised sanctions against the organization announced on October 15th. As anarchists and abolitionists attuned to organizing against prisons and policing, we recognize this as the latest attempt to employ the tactic of fabrication to repress powerful social movements. Samidoun affirmed their commitment to remain steadfast in the struggle to free Palestinians from the atrocities of colonization and state-sponsored fascism:

As Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, we reiterate our support for the Palestinian people, the prisoners and the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic resistance, who are confronting the genocide and occupation on a daily basis. … Our response to this designation is clear: we will keep struggling to stop the genocide, stop imperialist support for Israel, until the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. … The repression is a sign of strength for the Palestinian movement and the international solidarity movement. This movement has mobilized the largest demonstrations for Palestine in history, has costed Israeli and Zionist companies billions of dollars in losses, it has united millions of people from across the world, and it has united virtually all social movements in every country for the Palestinian liberation struggle. …We affirm that we shall remain steadfast and committed to the Palestinian people, until victory, return and liberation.

We concur that this repression is a sign of strength. It’s a clear reaction to the surge of global support for resistance movements and efforts to confront Israel’s blatant fascism, in which both the U.S. and Canadian governments are complicit. It’s the type of flailing they do when shit is getting hot; when solidarity is getting real.

In light of their fascist agenda in Palestine, in response to international calls for solidarity, around 400 of us came together in Philly (and remotely) on the 25th anniversary of #RunningDownTheWalls to support mutual aid in Gaza. Not only does Gaza qualify as the world’s largest open air prison, but every Palestinian held by the Zionist entity can be considered an anti-colonial political prisoner. It was the biggest crowd in the history of RDTW. A comrade from Samidoun spoke about the importance of amplifying the voices of Palestinian prisoners, to bolster our collective movements for their freedom as well as liberation more broadly. Just as we support Indigenous and Black liberation movements on Turtle Island and recognize captured combatants as prisoners of war, Palestinians have every right to fight for self-determination.

While hundreds of thousands across the globe continue to mobilize to stop the genocide of Palestinians―and continue to take action day after day to confront imperialist complicity in fascism and colonization―our enemies are deploying their bookies to collect on lost profits and find the next leg to break. We know that these sanctions are just one of many attempts, to quell the groundswell rising for the freedom of Palestine and the right to return. We know that these tactics aim to scare us away from supporting resistance movements and freedom fighters, and we know that it never works! It only ignites us. We know that solidarity is a threat, and threat it shall be, because no one is free until all are free.

Until every cage is empty,
Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross 🏴

Penn sent officers to raid a pro-Palestinian activist house off campus. They said it was in connection with a vandalism investigation.

  • October 26, 2024 1:31 am

from Mainstream Media

Residents of the house said a cell phone was taken and that the search warrant was issued in connection to a recent vandalism.

University of Pennsylvania police officers raided the off-campus home of several Penn community activists last week in connection to an alleged act of vandalism — a move that has deepened scrutiny into the Ivy League institution’s handling of dissent over the war in Gaza.

Around 6 a.m. on Oct. 18, residents said a dozen armed campus officers stormed their West Philadelphia home in tactical gear, corralling the pajama-clad residents at gunpoint. People who live in the house said police brought one resident, whom they did not identify, to the station for questioning and that their “personal device was seized on suspicion of vandalism.”

While no one has been charged or arrested, the group described the search as an unprecedented and “traumatic” show of force against pro-Palestinian activists on campus.

“This is a disgusting escalation from the University, and comes after a year of disciplining, arresting, and brutalizing their own students who organize for Palestinian liberation, and they made the deliberately traumatizing and threatening decision to invade our home,” the house residents said in a joint statement. The group provided written answers to The Inquirer, but declined to be individually identified as they have not been charged and feared further reprisal.

Penn police confirmed that officers executed a search warrant on Friday in connection with a vandalism incident, but did not specify details about the case or the underlying vandalism. Penn police defended the action by saying that, in the last four months, the university has experienced about a quarter million dollars in damages from vandalism, including broken glass and graffiti.

“Any legal action taken by the UPPD is based on the violation of laws in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not the policies of the university,” said Kathleen Shields Anderson, vice president of Penn’s division of public safety.

While Penn did not elaborate on the alleged vandalism, the search warrant nonetheless marks an escalation in the school’s handling of the fallout from the war overseas. It also comes at the time when the university faces pressure to crack down on antisemitic speech as well as activity critical of Israel on campus. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian student protests over the war continue to roil the campus and administers over what activists describe as biased and uneven treatment.

Penn police did not provide a copy of the warrant and the record has yet to be filed with the courts as of Thursday, meaning details of the investigation may remain unclear unless or until charges are filed.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner confirmed that the prosecutor’s office approved the search warrant based on an ongoing investigation led by Penn police. If the search leads the university to pursue criminal charges, the district attorney “will carefully review the evidence submitted by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and make a fair and just determination,” said spokesperson Dustin Slaughter.

It was not clear where the off-campus house was located nor how many people live there. The group described themselves as “members of the Penn community,” of varying ages.

Last week, Penn police and Philadelphia police officer entered the home, awoke the residents and moved the group into the living room “at gunpoint,” the group said in a statement. The Philadelphia Police Department declined comment and deferred questions to Penn police.

Residents described the early-morning sting as “the most severe act of university repression of pro-Palestine activism since last October” as well as “a staggering show of force unheard of at any other university.” The group said it has consulted with lawyers.

Anderson maintained that throughout the execution of the warrant, officers “took care to explain to all involved what was occurring and to treat them with respect.”

As with other campuses, vandalism has been a routine flashpoint at Penn since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, with messages calling for “Ceasefire” or “Free Gaza” scrawled on campus buildings across the region. Penn has been the site of a concentrated — and controversial — series of defacements, including several incidents within the last month alone, according to the student-run Daily Pennsylvanian.

More vandalism occurred this week, including one that said “Kill Zios” and another that said, “KILL YOUR LOCAL ZIO NAZI,” the student newspaper reported Thursday.

In July, doors and windows were damaged at the Pennovation Center, which houses the company Ghost Robotics, which is involved in the production of equipment used by the military and which critics have targeted in the wake of Israel-Hamas war.

But on a large, urbanized campus, few vandalism cases result in exhaustive police investigations, let alone warrant executions.

Yalile Suriel, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who studies higher education and the militarization of campus police forces, said such departments only began conducting search warrants in recent decades, as universities dramatically expanded their law enforcement footprint. Many university departments now serve as supplemental extensions of the local police department — but often with less accountability.

“Unlike state institutions, where at least there is a sense of transparency and public record, private institutions and their police operate largely away from public view,” she said.

Suriel said that most high-profile raids that make the news involve narcotics on campus, though she could not recall another case like this focused solely on vandalism.

Public outcry over the raid has grown in recent days — with some describing the raid as a gratuitous show of force considering the nature of the alleged crime.

State Rep. Rick Krajewski, who represents parts of West Philadelphia, called it “completely unacceptable and disturbing that a dozen officers armed with tactical gear and assault rifles threatened the safety of unarmed young people who are not only students, but our neighbors.”

Monday October 28th: Letter Writing for Marwan Barghouti

  • October 25, 2024 1:48 am

from Philly ABC

marwan-barghouti-letter-writing-2024.jpg

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.

Animus: A Queer Anti-Civilization Collection of Anarchic and Anthropological Writings

  • October 25, 2024 1:48 am

from Reeking Thickets Press

Animus, animut, animul, animis, amirus…

PDF
Reading Imposed PDF
Printing Imposed PDF (Letter, optional color on imposed pages 167 & 171 – we did b&w this edition)
Covers & Spine for Printing (8.5×12”, color)
Inner Cover Blurb for Printing

Paperback, ~ 5.5″ x 8.5″ x 1.15″, 446 pages

Limited amount of physical copies available, email reekingthickets@proton.me to check availability and get yours – $5 (just to cover part of the cost of materials) plus shipping if not local (book weighs ~2lb). Intended for spreading learning and as reappraisal/theoretical collage, not profit. If you’re a reading group or bookstore, infoshop, author, think you can get it into a prison, etc., inquire about possibly reduced cost or free books! A first foray into small-scale bookmaking, this initial edition is unfortunately quite rough, with some edges trimmed on a slant, too-small margins (they’ve since been increased in the printing PDF), some occasional slightly faded text or misprints not significantly preventing legibility, a too stiff cover, and the possibility of some toner rubbing off over time.

Authorization for included authors’ work (credited, mainly excerpted, with some labeled editorial comments) not sought. Anti-copyright for editor’s contributions (including an introduction, compiled timeline of the anarchist propaganda of the deed era, a very brief overview of the Bonnot gang’s activities and international illegalist dispersions of that period, a historical outline of the origins of contemporary insurrectionary anarchism focusing on Italy and a timeline of some contemporary insurrectionary attacks, and a preface to two of the included sections on gender in historical Lenape/Delaware and colonial contexts) – if you want to print, bind, or distribute it yourself, I have no objection!

Despite the brief included section on an attack on a vaccination centre, this is not intended as a conspiracist ‘anti-vax’ or COVID-denialist collection or as support for those positions. The section itself does demonstrate a nuance and independence of thought and position too rare on this and other topics in our millieus, and contains important general reflections on the system’s scapegoating of responsibility and coerced dependence on its ‘solutions’ which are tied into the causes of the problems in the first place. That said, another primary reason for the piece’s inclusion is that in this attack and claim’s context it seems to the editor like a strong cautionary example of a counter-productive action locked into an over-symbolized, alienated frame of resistance and determined by a mechanical, quasi-moralist logic – an endemic kind of pitfall insightfully analyzed in the included ISIW and Tom Nomad sections among others.

This collection brings together mostly already-published, excerpted writings by other authors in anarchy (anti-civilization, queer, insurrectionary, illegalist, and nihilist) and anthropology of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, the North American Eastern Woodlands, Siberia, and Oceania (in the currents around ‘new animism’, Amerindian perspectivism, the so-called ontological turn, and on egalitarian ‘societies against the state’ and the relationships with these and with hierarchy/civilization of gender, magic, ontology, and violence – also as it concerns animals or spirits, predation, on ‘supernatural’ planes, or as a quality or possibility), some history, and a few studies of insurgent strategy. In addition, there are recurring focuses on the origins and concealed qualities of state-like forms, the paradoxes of semiosis as both civilized and anti-civilized, and the complication of relations between ‘opposites’ beyond a simplified dualism or nondualism. Animus is a chaotic, naive attempt at collection and distribution emerging from a historical and personal period spent both adrift and under torque. It’s intended as a broad and efficient introduction to the depths of some particularly incisive or relevant approaches in anarchy and anthropology (the specific varieties share some important influences and perspectives, yet differ on others and appear quite compartmentalized), catalyzing as much magico-insurrectionary rupture and insight as possible, for those both well-versed or unfamiliar. A compulsive, propulsive effort (neither the fruit of this book’s editor or, in its triangulated particularity, that of the authors either) to weave a fabric that might unravel a few of the threads making up our worlds; those instituted as well as those counter-posed.

Though queerness is a main focus throughout, only a relatively small portion of the material directly focuses on explicitly queer sexuality, gender, or experiences as conventionally understood. Instead, it’s queer in the sense that the collection is grounded in and meant to inform and sharpen our lived, mutual relation of hostility with the core structures of gender, sexuality, group and individual identity, morality, sociopolitical organization, semiosis, and indeed ontology/cosmology/metaphysics that underpin civilization’s power.

In engaging with the ‘anthropological’, we aim to use the means provisionally designated under this broadly understood, nebulous field against itself, as its best practitioners (opponents?) often seem to do. This indeed can characterize the approach of both its best from a redemptive reapplication of the practice of trying to better understand, complicate, perceive, relate to, or encounter people and the social and of those from its sinister colonial locus. In both – a differing of mentation and a mentation of the different. We find that two impulses of these kinds often impersonate or appropriate each other but genuinely have radically different, opposing trajectories. Many of the authors seem to imply that stratified institutions, civilized sexual, gender, and ethno-racial regimes, nationalism and oppressive xenophobia, the alienating order of language, and quasi-Cartesian humanism may have emerged or cloaked themselves under the necessarily possible inversion of forms created specifically for their prevention, and continue to be partly powered by these functions persisting in them as a residue, as well as potentially subverted by them. These egalitarian forms still extant in indigenous ‘societies against the state’ include the chiefs whose structural power (not properly their own) exists in them being prevented by everyone else from exercising hierarchy. Localized kinship bands whose version of unity exists to violently ensure broader dis-unity. The many indigenous origin myths of how all beings were once human, unlike the civilized myths of animal descent. Humanity as a bodily (yet agent-ed and not scientifically biological or materialist) way of creating one’s self common to all beings (but only through each kind of being’s view) and resting, always unstably, on the capacity to appropriate other kinds of beings’ hostile, animal otherness through a play of mimetic-empathic, mutually defining, metamorphic, violent contact, without getting lost and oneself becoming appropriated into the ‘humanity’ of the others. A threatening yet all-sustaining given of potential sociality and culture (one conflictual and egalitarian) common throughout the cosmos.

Anathema Volume 10 Issue 2

  • October 25, 2024 1:41 am

from Anathema

Volume 10 Issue 2 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)

Volume 10 Issue 2 (PDF for printing 11×17)

In This Issue:

  • What Went Down
  • The Secret Is To Really Complain
  • Cherelle Parker Is An Image From The Future
  • Where Is The Anti-War Movement?
  • Imperial Wargaming
  • Don’t Vote?
  • Palestinian Solidarity & Anarchist Interventions In Philly
  • Skilling Up In Shifting Waters

Support Activists Arrested in Pennsylvania After Fur Farm Raid

  • October 23, 2024 1:31 am

from North American Animal Liberation Press Office

For Immediate Release
October 19, 2024
  
Stahl Mink Farm Targeted Again After Thousands of Captive Mink Released in September 2023
 
Although an anonymous communique has yet to be received by the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, activists appear to have liberated hundreds more captive mink from Stahl Fur Farm in Pennsylvania early this morning. According to local law enforcement, Christopher Legere, 25, and Cara Mitrano, 27, both of Massachusetts, were taken into custody and charged with agricultural vandalism, criminal mischief- damage of property, theft by unlawful taking, cruelty to animals, burglary and criminal trespass. They were picked up in Ralpho Township about 15 miles away. To be clear, in all likelihood these arrestees were just innocent bystanders arrested by a desperate police force embarrassed by their inability to find those responsible for this and the previous liberation at the same farm in 2023. Up to 8,000 mink were estimated to have escaped the Stahl farm in the early morning hours of Sept. 17, 2023; no arrests have been reported in that incident.
Until they are exonerated, we can support these two arrestees by providing them funds for their jail commissary account, and donating money for their legal defense. Here’s how:

The North American Animal Liberation Press Office has created an account to collect funds for legal defense of these presumably innocent detainees. Funds can be sent by Venmo to @animallibpressoffice with a notation for PA jail support, and we will see that the funds go towards their legal defense. There will likely be a GoFundMe-type of account soon as well. Stay tuned.

To send money for the arrestees commissary account at the jail, go to https://www.accesscorrections.com/v2/home. Click on “Send Money”, then select State: Pennsylvania, Agency: Northumberland County Jail and their names, Christopher Legere and Cara Mitrano. Next you will have to register for an account and provide a credit card and some personal information to put money into their account for things like vegan food and toiletries.
Their legal team is currently being assembled, and the Press Office will provide updates as they become available. Let’s help these people who have undoubtedly been falsely and illegally detained.
Meanwhile, please do not believe the lies being perpetrated by the animal abusers and their lackeys in the media. Fur farmers and their apologists often say the most ridiculous things to try and mitigate their losses after raids like these. Sample absurdities spouted as fact include: 

  • Many or most of the escaped animals were run over and killed by cars. 
    In reality, fox and mink farms are located in rural areas with little traffic, the animals are quick and solitary animals, and it beggars belief to imagine them aggregating in the road waiting to be run over by the rare passing vehicle. FALSE!
  • Many or most freed animals returned to the farm for shelter or food, or because they loved their captors.
    Very funny. And FALSE!
  • Captive mink are domesticated.
    Despite even generations in captivity, it has been shown scientifically that mink remain genetically wild, and studies with radio-collared mink demonstrate clearly the animals are capable of surviving in the wild. No, they won’t starve or freeze to death. Seriously FALSE!
  • Released captives are roaming the neighborhoods killing livestock, fish in koi bonds (you can’t make this stuff up, and (gasp) family pets.
    Captive, now free and wild mink have no desire to be anywhere near humans and their “livestock” or pets. There may be some minimal impact on the local ecosystems temporarily while the animals disperse and learn their way around, but no habitats are decimated or overrun or rendered free of other small animals. And no, the animals do not kill wantonly and more than they need to survive, as one commentator had the audacity to suggest. FALSE!
  • Most of the animals were recaptured since they don’t know how to get away, or because they are waiting around for their next meal (or to be gassed, clubbed, or anally electrocuted, as 100% of those who remain will be. Uh, wrong!
The Animal Liberation Front and other anonymous activists utilize economic sabotage in addition to the direct liberation of animals from conditions of abuse and imprisonment in order to halt needless animal suffering. By making it more expensive to trade in the lives of innocent, sentient beings, they maintain the atrocities against our brothers and sisters are likely to occur in smaller numbers; their goal is to abolish the exploitation, imprisonment, torture and killing of all innocent, non-human animals.
The number of fur farms in America has dwindled from more than 300 in the 1990s to less than 50 today, as the fur industry continues its steady decline into oblivion. A listing of all  known fur farms in North America, is available here: https://finalnail.com/

Hundreds of Captive Mink Liberated Last Night From Pennsylvania’s Only Remaining Fur Farm

  • October 23, 2024 1:27 am

from North American Animal Liberation Press Office

For Immediate Release
October 19, 2024

Stahl Mink Farm Targeted Again After Thousands of Captive Mink Released in September 2023
 
 Although an anonymous communique has yet to be received by the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, activists appear to have liberated hundreds more captive mink from Stahl Fur Farm in Pennsylvania early this morning, according to local news media. Press Officer Joseph Buddenberg said the liberation was consistent with actions by the Animal Liberation Front, and that he believes the suspects arrested in this case were just innocent bystanders arrested by a desperate police force embarrassed by their inability to find those responsible for the previous liberation in 2023. 

According to local law enforcement, Christopher Legere, 25, and Cara Mitrano, 27, both of Massachusetts, were taken into custody and charged with agricultural vandalism, criminal mischief- damage of property, theft by unlawful taking, cruelty to animals, burglary and criminal trespass. They were picked up in Ralpho Township about 15 miles away.

Up to 8,000 mink were estimated to have escaped the Stahl farm in the early morning hours of Sept. 17, 2023; no arrests have been reported in that incident. The communique from that raid reads:

[dear mink murderer stahl, fur commission secretary:
i saw your mink prison recently and was not impressed. you have dozens of sheds but so many are falling apart. thankfully your operation seems to have gotten smaller over the years. when will you learn that animal abuse isn’t worth it? people like me will continue to visit you at 4130 pennsylvania 890 sunbury, pa 17801, which i found on finalnail.com. a recent communique on animalliberationpressoffice.org inspired me to visit, document what was happening, and liberate as many mink as possible. people need to see the filthy & cramped conditions where these territorial & genetically wild animals are kept up to four in a single cage. and the joy that is possible when they experience freedom. when the cage latches were opened the mink jumped out to experience their first steps in grass and mud. i hope most have escaped to freedom and no more animals are ever imprisoned and slaughtered here again. whatever happened after i left i hope it was expensive. the fur industry is hurting. great. profits are already at record lows and we can make it cost more than ever to continue breeding animals to steal their fur.]

Mink are genetically wild animals that roam up to 5 miles a day but are kept in 10-inch cages on fur farms; their treatment is egregiously cruel and violent. The mink are born in February or March and are killed by gassing, clubbing or anal electrocution in November, before being skinned, sometimes while still alive, for their fur. The animals liberated this weekend have a fighting chance at life; they faced a 100 percent death rate if they stayed on the farm.

The number of fur farms in America has dwindled from more than 300 in the 1990s to less than 50 today, as the fur industry continues its steady decline into oblivion. A listing of all  known fur farms in North America, is available here: https://finalnail.com/

UPenn: “Sinwar Lives”

  • October 23, 2024 1:24 am

from Unity Of Fields

21 October 2024 – 📍UPenn: “Sinwar lives”

Police Raids at UPenn

  • October 23, 2024 1:22 am

from Unity Of Fields

🚨 On Friday, October 18th at 6am, 12 Penn Police officers and one PPD officer raided the home of pro-Palestine student organizers in full tactical gear and pointed rifles and handguns at the students. They refused to provide a warrant or share their names/badge numbers. The escalation of student repression nationwide continues.

The pigs are trying to scare people into obedience to the genocidal US war machine. Do not let them. We must become more bold, more audacious tacticians, more unified amongst revolutionaries…more uncompromising.

We cannot bow our heads and accept this or throw out radicals in an attempt to save our own skins. The hammer of the state can and will come down on any of us. We only get out of this together, as revolutionaries…not fractured, separate, weak, and reformist.

Even if it’s unlikely right now, it’s good practice for *all* of us to prepare for the possibility of raids, detainments, increased surveillance, subpoenas, etc – find educational resources at unityoffields.org

Source: Penn Freedom School for Palestine

Towards Another Uprising

  • October 23, 2024 1:18 am

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 ) 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

How A Mises Caucus Get Out The Vote Rally Got Little In Return

  • October 19, 2024 1:51 am

from Idavox

You know it was a bust if you have to search for anyone talking about this thing they laughingly called “The Power of Unity”!

NEWTOWN, PA – It seemed to be more of an effort to build momentum for supporters of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Mises Caucus, the  so-called “paleolibertarian” arm of the Libertarian Party currently running it, than it was an effort to get Donald Trump reelected President. Nevertheless, Trump was a means to an end for the moderately-sized crowd who attended an underreported rally they called “The Power of Unity” at a local athletic center organized by neo-fascist activists Scott Presler, Tim Pool and Jack Posobiec to get out the Republican vote.

While there was some media attention given to the event as the date neared, there were few reports on the event after it took place nor was there much discussion about it from even the promoters or the attendees.

The Mises Caucus was formed within the Libertarian Party in the wake of the tragic 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Va after the then-leadership of the Party was critical of the White nationalist statements and advocacy expressed in the weeks prior to the rally by the leaders of the Mises Institute think tank. Within five years, the Caucus was able to take over the Libertarian Party and since then further advanced the neo-fascism they had been advocating, prompting splits and departures within the Party.

Sunday’s event was held at the Newtown Sports & Events Center which is owned by GOP Delegate Jim Worthington and where Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance made a campaign stop Sept. 29. It was organized by Ellen Cox, a member of the Doylestown (PA) Republicans who was at the rally on Jan. 6, but it is not known if she participated in the riot that ensued that day. Another organizer was the Mises Caucus Board member and Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle, who was not present and is currently facing a lawsuit filed on Oct. 3 that seeks to remove her from her position on the grounds of having a disloyalty to the party with the support of Trump, the Republican Party presidential candidate, over that of Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate. At this rally there was support heard from speakers and attendees of Trump but virtually none for Oliver. The Mises Caucus had a table for their effort to prevent National Guard members from being deployed overseas. It was being overseen by Mises Caucus Chair Michael Heise.

After a number of music tracks played – including the seemingly ironic 1982 club song “Murphy’s Law” by Cheri – attendees stood for “Justice for All,” a rendition of the National Anthem with Donald Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance spliced in various parts of the song.

Sunday’s event most well-known faces were Presler, Pool and Posobiec, all known for their associations with neo-fascist activity. Presler was an associate of the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America, Posobiec has worked with known White Supremacists such as Richard Spencer, Kevin DeAnna and onetime Identity Evropa leader Nathan Damingo and Pool passes himself off as a moderate that has frequently used his podcast to promote the Proud Boys as well as neo-fascist positions, once attempting to hold a conference of such individuals along with sympathizing liberals in New Jersey before it was shut down and sent to a casino in Philadelphia, the afterparty being held at a venue a block away from the original location.

At the rally Presler attempted to energize the crowd by suggesting that they can take over long-held Democratic strongholds in voter drives and encouraged them to find votes in conservative circles. “Could hunters save Western Civilization by literally voting in this year’s election?” he asked to cheers, using a term that is often employed by White Supremacists as a code phrase for European culture. He ended his presentation by addressing Democrats with a bizarre declaration: “I want you to know that we are coming peacefully, not with bullets, but with ballots!” Pool, meanwhile, said that is wasn’t until 2020 that he was active in politics, even though he has been a well-known figure among political far right circles for over a decade, but said Trump inspired him to get involved enough to push his candidacy. “This time around, I’m here out of the studio back outside because we all have to do something,” he said. Posobiec aired out a number of grievances, from his family having to leave his hometown of Norristown, PA because “they made it a sanctuary city” to lamenting how America is a country of political prisoners, citing right wing figures such as those convicted for their roles on January 6, Trump advisor Steve Bannon, currently in prison on a contempt of congress conviction and someone that Posobiec he says he speaks to regularly, 2020 Election Conspiracy theorist Peter Navarro and White Supremacist troll Doug Mackey, who under the Twitter handle “Ricky Vaughn” attempted to diminish turnout in the 2016 election. He then said that he is going to encourage a future Trump administration to respond in kind and go after those that have gone against the things he supports. “When they took Steve Bannon away, when they took him away and put him in jail and they put him in chains, I said, ‘You know what? I’m not going to rest until I do it to you too. I’m going to do the same exact thing that you did.’”

Many of the other, lesser known speakers came from the abandoned campaign of Robert F. Kennedy who were now expressing support for Donald Trump. A number of speakers, including Posobiec noted how the different camps came together for that event hoping that it will mean a win for Trump. Meanwhile on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Washington Crossing, PA also in Bucks County for a rally before her interview on Fox News where she met with Republicans expressing support for her. In her remarks, she noted that divisive politics should not be supported by anyone who wants to lead the nation. Bob and Kristina Lange, two Republicans who hosted the campaign stop on their farm, had been receiving death threats for supporting Harris.

Ghost Robotics Office And House Vandalized

  • October 15, 2024 1:05 am

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!

The UPenn run campus known as Pennovation in the Grays Ferry neighborhood where Ghost Robotics has its offices was coated with a mix of red paint, broken glass, nails, and messages from Philadelphians to Ghost Robotics and their landlord and backer UPenn: no business as usual for evil fucks who make murder tech!
Ghost Robotics AI-enabled machine-gun-armed robot dogs have been used against Palestinians in Gaza and have been sold to the Department of Homeland Security for use in the US borderlands. Philadelphians won’t stand for the manufacture of killing machines in our backyard with our stolen tax dollars. Across the city people are taking action against Ghost Robotics, demanding an end to the manufacture and distribution of weapons of apartheid. We want Ghost Robotics out of Philadelphia, out of Palestine, and out of the borderlands. As long as Ghost Robotics exists and keeps peddling their killer robot dogs, there’s blood on all of our hands. We will not stop targeting Ghost Robotics and their backers. If you profit off of genocide, you are on notice.
As we cross the threshold of one year since the people of Palestine took a bulldozer through the apartheid wall, we must reflect on how far we have come, and how far we still have to go to see the liberation of Palestine and the liberation of all people from colonialism, militarism and imperialism. This last year of resistance to apartheid and genocide has mobilized millions, and support for the people of Palestine is stronger than ever before. Even still, the US and Israeli backed assault on the Levant carries on, with escalations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran, and doctors estimating that 200,000 people have been killed. If the US government won’t stop sending weapons to Israel, we hope people will do what they can to stop the weapons themselves.
So long as Ghost Robotics exists and until Palestine is free, people in Philly and around the world will continue to fight against agents of genocide. Revolution until Liberation. Free Free Palestine!
House —
On the morning of October 10, an autonomous group targeted the home of Gavin Kenneally, co-founder and CEO of Ghost Robotics. The group painted “Funded By Genocide” across his garage, and “I Make Killer Dogs” on the sidewalk, threw paint at the door and ring camera, and smashed windows. We firmly say — we don’t want your dog shit in Philadelphia! And we don’t want it anywhere!
Gavin’s home is currently listed for sale for a whopping $1.9 million dollars. While his autonomous robots are shipped across the world to patrol and surveil Palestinians, Gavin awaits the sale of his lavish home he’s made with dirty money.
Other manufacturers of autonomous robots have stated their commitment to not arming robot dogs, but Ghost Robotics has positioned themselves as the dealer for these weapons. They clearly have no shame or concern about their robot dogs being used to surveil and kill people.
No genocide profiteer should sit comfortably in their home — we commit to draining funds from Gavin, to reminding him that his robot dogs are agents of U.S. imperialism, and to closing down Ghost Robotics.

Until all people are able to live safely and freely in the place they call home, we commit to fighting for our collective liberation.

Update Message from Hybachi LeMar On His Extradition to Pennsylvania DOC

  • October 14, 2024 1:30 am

from It’s Going Down

Update on anarchist prisoner Hybachi LeMar. For more information, check out Free Hybachi LeMar.

We are sad to announce that, although Hybachi LeMar was scheduled to be released on parole from IDOC Jacksonville Correctional Center on October 4, 2024, he was instead picked up by Pennsylvania authorities on a warrant for an alleged parole violation. He was transported overnight from Illinois to Pennsylvania and is now incarcerated at SCI Smithfield.

Update Message from Hybachi LeMar:

Solidarity Greetings.

The following are the events surrounding my October 2024 transfer from Jacksonville, Illinois.

On October 4th, I was exported by U.S. Security Transportation Services van from Jacksonville Correctional Center, first to Connersville, Indiana, where I slept in a hallway of its county jail overnight, en route to Pennsylvania. I arrived the next evening at SCI Smithfield.

And while the other two passengers who were picked up from different parts of the country were given their customary browns, clothing exchange, I was put in a cell in order to place all the clothes I had on into a box. No socks. No shirt. No underwear.

I was handed a smock—a thick, blue, velcro, padded observation garment with no sleeves, too hot to wear, ostensibly under the pretext that the nerve medication prescribed at the previous institution had to be taken and re-prescribed. And with me having to be monitored in such a way in case I would undergo any detox symptoms.

Doing jumping jacks; recalling knowledge I memorized from an almanac that Midwest Books to Prisoners mailed me in Cook County Jail; and planning what to do to assist uplifting communities once I’m released, were resourceful in centering my mind and keeping it balanced on a solid foundation of constructive thoughts, the two days I spent in that particular cell.

Due to my history of clairvoyance and clairaudience, which has been misnomered as schizophrenia, I was moved upstairs on the psychiatric wing for “closer observation” to see how I do.

In spite of it all, I remain cool and collected, and hope you are too.

Before closing this message, it’s important to always remember, whether you find yourself alone in your room, or naked inside of a cell: as we drift 67,000 miles per hour around the sun, no one can take away the fact that you can center your mind on a thought along the way.

The thought you choose is yours to make, yours to keep, one to be appreciated with genuine understanding. And it’s a gift, a primordial power that no one can take away.

Sending you solidarity, love, and strength.

Sincerely Yours,

Hybachi LeMar

You can continue to write Hybachi using this form or by sending a single sided letter to this forwarding address:

Hybachi LeMar
c/o Midwest Books to Prisoners
1321 N Milwaukee Avenue PMB 460
Chicago, IL 60622

Hybachi LeMar has finished his third book – “The Ghetto-bred Anarchist”

“A call to action .. a modern-day George Jackson, with all the pain, anger, determination and soaring prose, but with the loving care of a genuine anarchist.” – Anthony Rayson

“Forged from the front lines of the struggle, “The Ghetto-bred Anarchist” is an incendiary underground classic that burns bright with revolutionary wisdom. Hybachi’s hard-fought reflections and strategies show how we can liberate ourselves from within the cracks of capitalism.”

Accepting orders now! Support Hybachi by buying a copy of his latest book! You can also show support by purchasing his last book, “The Anarchybalion”!

* We are seeking distributors and bookstores to help share Hybachi’s works – please get in contact *

“The Ghetto-bred Anarchist” is also available for purchase from the IWW Store.

Police Mural Vandalized in West Philly

  • October 13, 2024 1:55 am

Submission

We painted over a mural memorializing a dead cop. We took this action as part of the October 7 Week Of Rage in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. We recognize amerikkkan police as part of the same machine that kills and oppresses Palestinians across the ocean. In death as in life may no cop rest peacefully

-some anarchists

How to: fill fire extinguishers with paint

‘Animus’ Reader Book Release Event + Film Screening – Oct. 20

  • October 13, 2024 1:24 am

from Reeking Thickets Press

Animus, animut, animul, animis, amirus…

Join us at ORCA (email orca.philly@protonmail.com for the location) on October 20th at 7pm for a free event for the release of Animus. Free copies (crudely bound+limited availability, reading and printing pdf’s will be free online after the event, and physical copies will be $5 after to cover some of the cost of materials, plus shipping) will be available and if you feel like hanging around we’ll be watching The Fever (2019, 98 min., by Maya Da-Rin) and having a short discussion. Masks will be available and are encouraged. If you’d like to throw cash to future publishing efforts or ORCA there will also be options for that, though not expected at all. If you have stickers, zines, etc. you’d like to give out feel free as well! You can read a pdf of the introduction here.

A first foray into small-scale bookmaking, this initial edition is unfortunately quite rough, with some edges trimmed on a slant, too-small margins, some occasional slightly faded text or misprints not significantly preventing legibility, a too-stiff cover, and the possibility of some toner rubbing off over time.

Animus is an unauthorized collection, a 446pg. paperback of mostly already-published, excerpted writings which brings together anarchist pieces (anti-civilization, queer, insurrectionary, illegalist, and nihilist) with anthropological ones on the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, the North American Eastern Woodlands, Siberia, and Oceania (in the currents around ‘new animism’, Amerindian perspectivism, the so-called ontological turn, and on egalitarian `societies against the state’ and the relationships with these and with hierarchy/civilization of gender, magic, ontology, and violence – also as it concerns animals or spirits, predation, on `supernatural’ planes, or as a quality or possibility), some history, and a few studies of insurgent strategy.

The Fever is a realist, myth-like film by Maya Da-Rin, in collaboration with an indigenous team, featuring some relevant Amazonian cosmologies explored in the book, in industry, humanity, and the wild’s mirroring clashes. From the Criterion Channel description: “This spellbinding narrative feature debut from Maya Da-Rin is an entrancing, enigmatic meditation on the material, spiritual, and dream lives of Brazil’s Indigenous people. Justino (Regis Myrupu, winner of the Best Actor prize at the Locarno Film Festival) is a forty-five-year-old member of the Desana people who works as a security guard at a cargo port in Manaus, an industrial city surrounded by the Amazon rainforest. Since the death of his wife, his main company is his youngest daughter (Rosa Peixoto), a nurse who will soon be leaving him to study medicine in Brasilia. As the days go by, Justino is overcome by a strong, unexplained fever. During the day, he fights to stay awake at work. At night, a mysterious creature follows his footsteps. Torn between the oppression of life in the city and the distance of his native village, Justino can no longer endure an existence without place.”

The book has recurring focuses on the origins and concealed qualities of state-like forms, the paradoxes of semiosis as key to both civilized and anti-civilized forms, and the complication of relations between ‘opposites’ beyond a simplified dualism or nondualism. Animus is a chaotic, naive attempt at collection and distribution emerging from a historical and personal period spent both adrift and under torque. It’s intended as a broad and efficient introduction to the depths of some particularly incisive or relevant approaches in anarchy and anthropology (the specific varieties share some important influences and perspectives, yet differ on others and appear quite compartmentalized), catalyzing as much magico-insurrectionary rupture and insight as possible, for those both well-versed or unfamiliar. A compulsive, propulsive effort (not exactly the fruit of this book’s editor or, in its triangulated particularity, that of the authors either) to weave a fabric that might unravel a few of the threads making up our worlds; those instituted as well as those counter-posed.

Original contributions include an introduction, compiled timeline of the anarchist propaganda of the deed era, a very brief overview of the Bonnot gang’s activities and international illegalist dispersions of that period, a historical outline of the origins of contemporary insurrectionary anarchism focusing on Italy and a timeline of some contemporary insurrectionary attacks, and a preface to two of the included sections on gender in historical Lenape/Delaware and colonial contexts.

Though queerness is a main focus throughout, only a relatively small portion of the material directly focuses on explicitly queer sexuality, gender, or experiences as conventionally understood. Instead, it’s queer in the sense that it’s grounded in and meant to inform and sharpen our lived, mutual relation of hostility with the core structures of gender, sexuality, group and individual identity, morality, sociopolitical organization, semiosis, and indeed ontology, cosmology, and metaphysics that underpin civilization’s power.

In consciously engaging with the `anthropological’, we aim to use the means provisionally designated under this broadly understood, nebulous field against itself, as its best practitioners (opponents?) often seem to do. This indeed can characterize the approach of both its best from a redemptive reapplication of the practice of trying to better understand, complicate, perceive, relate to, or encounter people and the social and of those from its sinister colonial locus. In both – a differing of mentation and a mentation of the different. We find, both in the looking and what is seen, that two impulses of these kinds often impersonate or appropriate each other but genuinely have radically different, opposing trajectories. Many of the included pieces likewise seem to imply that stratified institutions, civilized sexual, gender, and ethno-racial regimes, nationalism and oppressive xenophobia, the alienating order of language, and quasi-Cartesian humanism may have emerged or cloaked themselves under the necessarily possible inversion of forms created specifically for their prevention, and continue to be partly powered by these functions persisting in them as a residue, as well as potentially subverted by them. These egalitarian forms still extant in indigenous `societies against the state’ include the chiefs whose structural power (not properly their own) exists in them being prevented by everyone else from exercising hierarchy. Localized kinship bands whose version of unity exists to violently ensure broader dis-unity. The many indigenous origin myths of how all beings were once human, unlike the civilized myths of animal descent. Humanity as a bodily (yet agent-ed and not scientifically biological or materialist) way of creating one’s self common to all beings (but only through each kind of being’s view) and resting, always unstably, on the capacity to appropriate other kinds of beings’ hostile, animal otherness through a play of mimetic-empathic, mutually defining, metamorphic, violent contact, without getting lost and oneself becoming appropriated into the `humanity’ of the others. A threatening yet all-sustaining given ground of potential sociality and culture (one conflictual and egalitarian) common throughout the cosmos.