NEWS

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 25
https://yourvalley.net/stories/arizona-spending-30-million-to-rent-water-rights,267515

Arizona spending $30 million to ‘rent’ water rights  Your Valley

BBC News – Science & Environment

2021 10 25
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59044650

Astronomers have found hints of what could be the first planet ever to be discovered outside our galaxy.

Ars Technica
Eric Bangeman
2021 10 25
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/four-revelations-from-the-facebook-papers/

Trove of leaked documents paint damaging picture of company that has prioritized growth.

Infographics – Cool Infographics
Randy Krum
2021 10 25
https://coolinfographics.com/blog/2021/9/29/nature-timespiral

Nature Timespiral is a summary of notable events from the Big Bang to the present day by Pablo Carlos Budassi. The infographic spans 13.7 billion years, each billion being represented by a 90 degree angle on the spiral.

The history of nature from the Big Bang to the present day shown graphically in a spiral with notable events annotated. Every billion years (GA) is represented by 90 degrees of rotation of the spiral. The last 500 million years are represented in a 90-degree stretch for more detail on our recent history. Some of the events depicted are the emergence of cosmic structures (stars, galaxies, planets, clusters, and other structures), the emergence of the solar systems, the Earth and the Moon, important geological events (gases in the atmosphere, great orogenies, glacial periods, etc.), emergence and evolution of hominid species and important events in human evolution.

You can buy a high quality poster, print or high-resolution download of the timespiral on Budassi’s website.
Found on My Modern Met

General Intellect Unit
PodBean Development
2021 10 25
http://generalintellectunit.net/e/081-anarchist-cybernetics-part-3/

In which we conclude our discussion of Anarchist Cybernetics, by Thomas Swann.
If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon.
Links:
Anarchist Cybernetics, by Thomas Swann
General Intellect Unit on iTunes
http://generalintellectunit.net
Support t…

General Intellect Unit
PodBean Development
2021 10 25
http://generalintellectunit.net/e/080-anarchist-cybernetics-part-2/

In which we continue our discussion of Anarchist Cybernetics, by Thomas Swann.
If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon.
Links:
Anarchist Cybernetics, by Thomas Swann
General Intellect Unit on iTunes
http://generalintellectunit.net
Support t…

General Intellect Unit
PodBean Development
2021 10 25
http://generalintellectunit.net/e/079-anarchist-cybernetics-part-1/

In which we read Anarchist Cybernetics, by Thomas Swann.
If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon.
Links:
Anarchist Cybernetics, by Thomas Swann
General Intellect Unit on iTunes
http://generalintellectunit.net
Support the show on Patreon
htt…

Existential Comics
Corey Mohler
2021 10 25
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/417

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 25
https://www.best-infographics.com/fragrance-brands-with-most-followers-on-social-media/

Plenty of beauty products are shared on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and other social networks on a daily basis. In fact, top fragrance brands have millions of followers on these sites. This infographic from FragranceX visualizes that:

The post Fragrance Brands with Most Followers on Social Media appeared first on Best Infographics.

“phenomenology” – Google News

2021 10 25
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/scientific-nightmare-the-backstory-of-the-dsm/

“Scientific Nightmare”: The Backstory of the “DSM”  lareviewofbooks

“”Existentialism”” – Google News

2021 10 25
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22717082/horror-movies-history-get-out-texas-chainsaw-blair-witch

A horror movie history, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Get Out  Vox.com

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 25
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/cats-crows-and-planet-earth-drawings-by-belarusian-political-prisoners/

Cats, crows and planet Earth: drawings by Belarusian political prisoners  Open Democracy

“hannah arendt” – Google News

2021 10 24
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/10/25/debunking-the-sovereignty-from-foucault-to-agamben/

Debunking the Sovereignty: From Foucault to Agamben  Modern Diplomacy

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 24
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-spooky-scary-anarchists

Trick or treat?

While some people roam the streets door-to-door merrily busking for candy, anarchists take to the streets to do direct action. For some, direct action means patching potholes, for others, it means littering. Is being an anarchist about being the house that gives the best candy? Or is it about who TPs the house that gives the best candy, or who makes the best prank? Would you rather be feared or be loved? To be remembered fondly, or to live in infamy? Why not both?

Isn’t that what masks are for? Isn’t that what festival and carnival are for? An opportunity be and do what you regularly wouldn’t, then go on with the rest of your ordinary life.

Halloween is such a festival. Many people take the opportunity to dress up as they normally wouldn’t. Be it by putting on a cute, funny, or even a sexy outfit, or donning the scary mask of a slasher flick villain, or horror movie monster. But this year, instead of jumping on the bandwagon of whatever is trending -like that year when everyone was The Joker, and surely this year everyone will be wearing a square mask from Squid Game- why not dress up as an anarchist? Which anarchist would you pick?

It’s mainstream to have a certain fascination with the macabre, as long as it takes up the form of true crime podcasts and horror fiction. Anarchists can be scary too (BTW: Which are your favorite scary stories about anarchists or by anarchists?). Yet there’s been a Santa Clausification of certain anarchist figures, like with Kropotkin, going as far as literally calling him "Bread Santa". Often anarchists try their best to put on a cuddly persona when being interviewed in mainstream media. Nevertheless, anarchists are still widely used like boogeymen to scaremonger.

Which anarchists still remain intimidating and strike fear in hearts of rulers and masses? Which are the most terrifying deeds attempted or carried out by these anarchists? If you wore their faces as masks, what devilish phrases would you shout as you ride out for a night of mischief? Do you dare invoke them by their name?

Can you hear them whisper?

Tags: totwtopic of the weekhalloweenhalloween means attack!every day is halloween

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 24
https://anarchistnews.org/content/no-bonzo-anarchy-art-and-mutual-aid

All Episodes
VABF Day 1: N.O. Bonzo on Anarchy, Art, and Mutual Aid

VABF Day 1: N.O. Bonzo on Anarchy, Art, and Mutual Aid

Oct 23, 2021

N.O. Bonzo is an anarchist street artist and illustrator whose work is much admired in the activist community. In this interview, Bonzo discusses their beautifully illustrated edition of Peter Kropotkin’s most famous book, Mutual Aid, and the politics of anarchy and art. Check out Bonzo’s edition of Mutual Aid:

https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1185

Tags: Victoriaanarchist bookfairpodcastinterviewartmutual aid

Scientific American Content
Emily Waltz, Nature magazine
2021 10 24
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02854-3

Companies are updating vaccines and testing them on people to prepare for whatever comes next in the pandemic

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Ars Technica
Tim De Chant
2021 10 24
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/plastic-industry-pollution-to-overtake-coal-in-us-by-2030-report-says/

Supply chain for plastic production is rife with carbon emissions.

Politico
Derek Robertson
2021 10 24
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/24/soft-boy-pop-culture-harry-styles-gender-politics-music-514168

In a pop world ruled by Harry Styles, some hard rockers are going Trumpy.

CounterPunch.org
Pete Dolack
2021 10 24
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/24/chinas-winding-road-toward-capitalism/

Image by Ezreal Zhang.

There is perhaps no bigger controversy among partisans of the Left than the nature of China and its economy. Is it socialist? Capitalist? State capitalist? A hybrid? That so much debate swirls around this issue is its own proof that the question doesn’t have a definitive answer, at least not yet.

What can be agreed upon is that China has experienced decades of extraordinary economic growth. But the nature of that growth, and the base upon which it has been created, are also subject to intense debate, arguments that necessarily rest on how a debater classifies the Chinese economy. An additional debate is whether China’s growth is replicable or is the product of particular conditions that can’t be duplicated elsewhere. And what should be at the forefront of any debate is how China’s working people, in the cities and in the countryside, fare under a tightly controlled system that promises to bring about a “moderately prosperous society.”

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The post China’s Winding Road Toward Capitalism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

“phenomenology” – Google News

2021 10 23
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/consciousness-deep-dive/202110/the-real-problem-consciousness

The Real Problem of Consciousness  Psychology Today

Jacobin
Tom Fraser
2021 10 23
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/1930s-canada-league-social-reconstruction-public-housing-capitalism-real-estate/

It is impossible to walk through Toronto in 2021 without being overwhelmed by the juxtaposition of garish mansions LARPing as British country homes and decrepit apartments renting for over $2,000 a month. The irrationality of housing under capitalism is not, however, a recent development. Already in 1937, the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR), the intellectual […]

Jacobin
Luke Savage
2021 10 23
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/multilevel-marketing-scam-lularoe-pyramid-scheme-capitalism-myth/

Back in high school, a friend of mine somehow got looped into attending a seminar concerned with spreading the good word about an exciting — though notably nonspecific — job opportunity. In retrospect, everything about the initial experience was less a series of red flags than it was a proverbial flotilla of giant crimson banners […]

“Sartre” – Google News

2021 10 23
https://hungarytoday.hu/european-intellectuals-1956-communist-thinkert-hungarian-revolution-october-23-impact/

1956 Revolution and Suppression of Uprising Led to Western Intellectuals’ Disappointment in Communist Ideology  Hungary Today

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 23
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/23/the-dawn-of-everything-by-david-graeber-and-david-wengrow-review-inequality-is-not-the-price-of-civilisation

The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow review – inequality is not the price of civilisation  The Guardian

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 22
https://www.statepress.com/article/2021/10/tempe-to-change-names-of-streets-parks-with-kkk-ties

Tempe to change names of public spaces tied to local 1920s KKK chapter  The State Press

VICE US
Jana Lerner
2021 10 22
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dypgkw/the-14-year-old-who-founded-girls-who-hack-is-inspiring-the-next-generation-of-hackers

“Women aren’t really taken as seriously in the cybersecurity field, and I’ve noticed that with most of my girlfriends, they don’t really get opportunities to work with a community of girls to learn.”

“”Existentialism”” – Google News

2021 10 22
https://www.indulgexpress.com/culture/art/2021/oct/22/16-artists-reflectexistentialism-at-delhi-art-exhibition-36449.html

16 artists reflect existentialism at Delhi art exhibition  indulgexpress

Daily Infographic
Matt Gaedke
2021 10 22
https://dailyinfographic.com/social-credit-system-pros-and-cons-a-look-at-chinas-system

In 2020, China announced that it would be implementing a social credit system whereby individuals and companies throughout the country could increase their “social credit score.” This score aims to keep track of the good and bad deeds of citizens, rewarding those who do good in their communities and punishing those who don’t. As a […]

The post Social Credit System Pros and Cons – A Look at China’s System first appeared on Daily Infographic.

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 22
https://www.best-infographics.com/high-speed-history/

It is no secret that people have been obsessed with speed for a long time. As our vehicles have advanced over time, world records have fallen regularly. This infographic from TitleMax takes a look at the history of land speed world records:

The post A History of Land Speed World Records [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

Politico
POLITICO Staff
2021 10 22
https://www.politico.com/cartoons/2021/10/21/the-nations-cartoonists-on-the-week-in-politics-000262

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here’s an offering of the best of this week’s crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

Democracy Now!
webdev@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
2021 10 22
http://www.democracynow.org/2021/10/22/branko_marcetic_and_stephen_smith_on

President Biden acknowledged Thursday his Build Back Better agenda is in jeopardy due to two Senate Democrats: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both senators have pushed Biden to slash in half his $3.5 trillion proposal that would be spent over 10 years to vastly expand the safety net and combat the climate crisis. We take an in-depth look at the two lawmakers, starting with Sinema. "Unfortunately, Sinema really reads as a cautionary tale of what happens when political ambition becomes a be-all and end-all," says Branko Marcetic, Jacobin staff writer, who describes the political evolution of Sinema, who ran in her early career as a socialist and has moved "rightward and rightward every step of the way."

Scientific American Content
Simon Makin
2021 10 22
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pathogen-sensing-mask-could-detect-covid-infection/

Freeze-dried genetic circuits could reveal the presence of SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, MRSA, and more

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

“”Anarchism”” – Google News

2021 10 22
https://bookriot.com/the-17-year-old-who-invented-science-fiction/

The 17-Year-Old Who Invented Science Fiction  Book Riot

Mother Jones
Mark Murrmann
2021 10 22
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/confederate-monuments-came-down-where-are-they-photos/

It’s been a long time since I sat in an American history class, but what I remember of my education in Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1980s and ’90s is how much of it was not fact, but myth. I was taught that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights—a concept that seemed plausibly defensible […]

CounterPunch.org
Becky Grant
2021 10 22
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/22/a-look-inside-counterpunch/

For nearly a quarter of a century, I’ve had the great pleasure of being part of the CounterPunch team. In many ways, CounterPunch has veered little from its founding blueprints. Since the beginning, our mission has remained fundamental: to provide in-depth reporting and commentary, helping readers to make informed assessments on the vital public issues More

The post A Look Inside CounterPunch appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

CounterPunch.org
Richard Falk – Daniel Falcone
2021 10 22
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/22/colin-powell-grotesque-atrocities-and-the-new-liberal-conscience/

Although Powell accepted responsibility for arguing a false case as to weapons of destruction before the UN Security Council during which he described Saddam Hussein as posing ‘an imminent danger to the world,’ he refrained from opposing the war. In fact, Powell would later comment, “I think we had a lot of successes in Iraq. Iraq’s terrible dictator is gone.” But so are hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians gone. More

The post Colin Powell: Grotesque Atrocities and the New Liberal Conscience appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Foreign Policy
Zaid Omar Nabulsi
2021 10 22
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/22/jordan-is-not-palestine/

Reannexing the West Bank is an impractical idea that would threaten Jordan’s stability, deny Palestinians the right to self-determination, and reward Israel’s illegal settlements.

It’s Going Down
Anonymous Contributor
2021 10 21
https://itsgoingdown.org/phoenix-antifascists-shut-down-nazis/

Action report from antifascists and anarchists in so-called Phoenix, Arizona. At around 2 am on August 29th, an antifascist spotted a very large Patriot Front banner on the Longmore Rd. bridge of the US-60 in Mesa, AZ. It was facing eastbound and read “Strong Families Strong Nation.” Patriot Front is a white nationalist group that… Read Full Article

libcom.org news
R Totale
2021 10 21
http://libcom.org/news/hollywood-strike-wasn-t-21102021

IATSE header.png

MK Lees offers context to the recent IATSE strike vote and potential settlement. This article was first published by Organizing Work.

However, even as the leadership is ready to call it a day and send their members back to work, even in a relatively anemic, top-down union like IATSE, the workers still have the final say in what action they will take to stand up for their own needs…

MK Lees

read more

Current Affairs
Nathan J. Robinson
2021 10 21
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/10/the-echoes-of-hitler/

Reading “Mein Kampf” shows how much continuity there is between the anti-egalitarian Nazi rhetoric that produced the Holocaust and today’s mainstream right-wing beliefs.

Ars Technica
Jennifer Ouellette
2021 10 21
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/watch-this-wooden-knife-cut-effortlessly-through-juicy-medium-well-done-steak/

Also: A hardened wood nail performed as well as its stainless steel counterpart.

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 21
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/ursula-le-guin-science-fiction-utopia-capitalism-socialism-anarchism

Ursula Le Guin’s Radical Utopias Still Resonate Today  Jacobin magazine

“Sartre” – Google News

2021 10 21
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/books/nausea-jean-paul-sartre.html

Review: ‘Nausea,’ by Jean-Paul Sartre  The New York Times

Ars Technica
Ron Amadeo
2021 10 21
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/google-stadias-salvaged-future-as-a-back-end-cloud-service-is-here/

After its consumer flop, Google wants to license Stadia tech to companies.

Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine
Josaphat Musamba
2021 10 21
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-problem-with-conflict-minerals

In the early 2000s, activists began to campaign against the extraction of “conflict minerals.” Today, violence continues unabated in eastern Congo, underscoring the misguided frameworks governing transnational intervention.

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
Lynn Trimble
2021 10 21
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/modified-arts-reopens-in-roosevelt-row-and-more-metro-phoenix-art-news-12241806

Quick bits of culture news to help you keep up with the city’s creative side.
Here’s a quick look at arts news around metro Phoenix to help you keep up with the city’s creative side. Modified Arts Reopens…

Ars Technica
Sam Machkovech
2021 10 21
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/dune-2021-film-review-the-spice-must-flow-but-then-it-stops-abruptly/

"Must watch" for classic Dune fans does not mean the same thing as "must love."

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
Lynn Trimble
2021 10 21
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/celebrating-50-years-of-alwun-house-phoenixs-iconic-haven-for-sexy-daring-and-bizarre-art-12211942

Owners Kim Moody and Dana Johnson’s bungalow in the Garfield neighborhood has nurtured generations of artists.
A pair of funky sculptural spiders sits atop the front lawn at Alwun House, where they’re getting ready to celebrate not only Halloween, but also the 50th anniversary of the offbeat arts institution that helped to launch the burgeoning cultural scene in downtown Phoenix. The bright orange, two-story house on the corner of 12th and Roosevelt streets is situated just a few blocks east of Roosevelt Row, in a section of the city where founder Kim Moody and his partner, Dana Johnson, have watched the city grow and evolve over the years.…

It’s FOSS News
Ankush Das
2021 10 21
https://news.itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-price-hike/

Raspberry Pi will be revising the price for Raspberry Pi 4 and re-introduce the 1 GB RAM option to get around the global chip shortage issue.

The post Here’s Why Raspberry Pi is Increasing its Price appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

Scientific American Content
Celina Osuna, Ed Finn, Osvaldo E. Sala
2021 10 21
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-dune-should-teach-us-about-the-beauty-of-wastelands/

There are deep-rooted connections between sustainable deserts and a sustainable future

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

“Rojava” – Google News

2021 10 21
https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/25991-Catalan-parliament-recognizes-administration-in-northeast-Syria

Catalan parliament recognizes administration in northeast Syria  Kurdistan24

Infographics Archive
Sebastiaan Laan
2021 10 21
https://infographicsarchive.com/how-to-give-yourself-a-free-college-education-online/

81% of people believe education is shifting to autodidacticism. That is, more people are becoming self-taught in part or whole. The shift is supported by the way in which the formal system of higher education has declined in popularity. College costs have tripled over the past generation, leading the average to spend 20 years paying off student …

The post How to Give Yourself a Free College Education Online appeared first on Infographics Archive.

It’s FOSS News
Rishabh Moharir
2021 10 20
https://news.itsfoss.com/freeoffice-2021-release/

FreeOffice 2021 comes with improved integration with MS Office products and extra features to improve productivity, all for free.

The post FreeOffice 2021 is Here for Linux With Enhanced Compatibility and New Features to Rival Microsoft Office appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 20
https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarcho-blackness

From ILL WILL

A Conversation with Marquis Bey

In the summer of 2020, Marquis Bey published Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism with AK Press. Released hot off the heels of a nationwide uprising against white supremacy and the police, the book stages an encounter between blackness and anarchism that offers insight into the spirit of that rebellion and others to come. The occasion spurred the following conversation, beginning in 2020 and wrapping up in the final months of 2021. In it, we discuss fragmentation, unsettled notions of blackness, being held accountable, and more. Marquis Bey’s next book, Black Trans Feminism, is due out January 2022. 

Ill Will: In your Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism, you write that:

To infuse anarchism with anarcho-Blackness is to push anarchism’s logics further. Many anarchists did not organize on the grounds of difference and differentiation, even as they sought ways to prevent their silencing. Hence, anarcho-Blackness supplements these oversights via an insistence on perhaps assemblage, or swarm, or ensemble, whereby there is a consensus, or consent, not to be individuated — which is another way to say an affirmation to emanate from difference toward the insistence on collectivity and agential singularity.

If I’m understanding this correctly, you seem to be arguing that the path forward for revolutionary struggle lies not in ignoring or sidelining internal differences in the name of a common enemy (as previous generations of revolutionaries may have done), but rather in consciously composing ourselves in such a way that these differences do not become markers of unique individuals, but serve rather as properties of a more robust, resilient crowd. This reminds me of a reflection on the Yellow Vest movement in France, in which two participants theorized the source of the movement’s resiliency:

Considered in itself, donning a safety vest carries with it no unifying ideology, principle, or demand, nor any particular subject-position or identity. It operates as what we might call a ‘meme with force’. A meme does not necessarily alter the content of a struggle. In France, for instance, the catalyzing factors are without a doubt eminently familiar social pressures, such as the rising cost of living, diminishing social mobility, cuts to public services, a triumphant neoliberal government who spits in the eyes of the working poor, etc. What the meme of the Yellow Vest offers is a malleable form within which this content can assume the force of an intervention. […] The fluidity of the meme makes it possible to join a march, a blockade or a roundabout occupation without having to buy into a ‘common interest’ or the legitimizing beliefs of a movement. It does not solve, but simply defers the question of a common grammar of suffering to a later point. […] This question being, can people whose lives are defined by incommensurable modes of violence experience the same world, the same language, a shared vision of freedom? The meme neither resolves nor suppresses this incommensurability — there is no shortcut to an existential commons. What it does, rather, is unleash these differences from any prerequisite of unity, by interrupting our comparative habit of legitimating suffering by weighing one of its forms against another. The yellow vest opens the field of politics: suddenly the center is everywhere, and everyone can attack and get organized for their own reasons, irreconcilable as they may or may not be.

Given its level of political polarization, do you think that this notion of “deferring” questions of difference makes sense in the U.S. context? 

Marquis Bey: This is a wonderful comparison to make. I think there is a generative synergy between my understanding of anarcho-blackness and this idea of a “meme with force.” So thanks so much for making that connection. To the possibility of “deferring” questions of difference in the U.S. in light of political polarization, it is, of course, tricky. Surely there is utility in a solid, united front — strength in numbers and all that. I don’t want to discredit a utilitarian approach to change-making, for I imagine there are many who care less about everybody within the group having their identities or desires or niche proclivities met, and care more about, essentially, “Are we getting shit done? Yes? Cool. No? Not cool.”

But I think I am still committed to a different way of approaching politicality. And I think it is more than an Audre Lorde-esque mobilization of differences as our strength rather than our weakness. I am trying to express a way of thinking about the very presence of fractures within a demographic or organization as itself a way of doing politics. In other words, the move toward fracturing, toward dissolving the purported cohesion of a group — what someone like black critical theorist Nahum Chandler would call, following Derrida, “desedimentation” — strikes me as politically desirable. It is because this desedimentary movement signals a refusal of the violence of that which imposes a monolith or circumscription, which can be given the name normativity. So I want to mobilize and find solace in the non-normative (not the “anti”-normative), because it marks the refusal to abide normative, circumscriptive, nonconsensual impositions.

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And this is the “anarcho-,” the anarchist “No Gods, No Masters.” It is not merely a niggling contrarian but a Socratic gadfly, an irreverence toward law and order and hierarchy and wholism, because only in perpetual openness do we continue to ask and interrogate, and only when we ask and interrogate can things be something other than this.

IW: This image of “desedimentation” helps me to visualize what you’re referring to. I’m imagining the cold, stagnant bottom of a pond being disturbed by some little turtles looking for a winter getaway, stirring up all kinds of seemingly-uniform sediment into particles that combine and fall to the bottom in new forms. This last part — the proliferation of new mixtures, the “something other than this” you allude to — feels like the key part of that process though, but one that often seems like an afterthought for many anarchists. Given how deeply social life (and the ecological sphere that supports it) has been fragmented over these last few years — often at the hands of our enemies in D.C. and Silicon Valley — I don’t think we can afford to be content with the nihilist Schadenfreude that comes with watching the world fall apart. If anything, that process seems like it has rapidly accelerated to such a degree that outright civil war — total desedimentation — feels almost like a given at this point. But what then?

I’m reminded of a passage from Now  that elaborates this path a bit:

At the cost of accepting fragmentation as a starting point, it can also give rise to an intensification and pluralization of the bonds that constitute us. Then fragmentation doesn’t signify separation but a shimmering of the world. […] Realizing the promise of communism contained in the world’s fragmentation demands a gesture, a gesture to be performed over and over again, a gesture that is life itself: that of creating pathways between the fragments, of placing them in contact, of organizing their encounter, of opening up the roads that lead from one friendly piece of the world to another without passing through hostile territory, that of establishing the good art of distances between worlds.

How do you imagine that we could proceed from this point of utter fragmentation – nascent civil war – towards a horizon of re-composition, of organizing our worlds on our own terms? What pathways need to be created?

MB: I love that image of the turtle in the pond. It’s such a quiet but profound image to me, so thanks so much for that, truly. Too, I love the Now quote — a shimmering of the world. Mm, lovely.

What is fragmenting is the very ground on which we walk. Indeed, desedimentation breaks apart and dissolves the sediment on which many things we know and love rest. So to loosen and fracture that means that we are walking on…what? Nothing. And how can we find footing on nothing? It seems like we lose so many things that were comforting to us.

But I do not see this as negative. In fact, it seems to me that the very ground on which we were walking, and the foundation on which many of our structures and things rested, were toxic, to put it bluntly. Sure, we are in deeply unfamiliar territory when we undermine the ground and sure we are lost — which is to say, we don’t recognize anything around us — when things are utterly fragmented. But that is precisely the beginning of another possibility, another kind of life we might hope to live, a life that is, in its departure from what has been given to us currently, fundamentally not this. Why would we wish to recognize our surroundings when our optics for recognition cannot currently account for what might be radically new and otherwise?

Having no footing and fragmenting things is to me the mark of an actually radical movement toward radically reconfiguring (or obliterating or destroying in service of creating, à la Bakunin) sociality and what it means to be with one another, to relate to one another much differently. We must create under-the-radar and submersive (submergent and subversive) pathways, indeed pathways that do not look like pathways. They might look like digital spaces, or sub-sub-sub-reddit forums, or basement study sessions with drop-outs and adjunct professors and grad students and vernacular thinkers with their toddlers, or conversations in the kitchen over the preparation of food, or in the office over the water cooler or during a smoke break while you’re stealing company time.

IW:  You’re certainly right about the terrible discomfort of this groundlessness. For many, this last year took some of the last “simple things” away from us that we never thought could disappear — the ability to gather some friends together on a porch without fear or guilt, to open a window without tear gas or wildfire ash seeping inside, to plan a modest future with our loved ones without having to factor in the prospect of civil war or mass starvation.

I’m not as confident as you that this kind of groundlessness is generative, or necessary. To take these mixed metaphors even further — it’s difficult to chart a subversive pathway to an undercommon life if the ground just above us is fracturing, if the school basements are all locked, the water coolers removed, if the food banks and kitchen pantries start to run empty, if digital screens have atrophied our ability to look each other in the eye, if social media has taught our younger siblings that the only form of political engagement is critique and banishment. 

I apologize for the bleakness, because some days I absolutely share your optimism about the opportunities of the present, but other days it feels difficult to muster. 

MB: No need to apologize for the bleakness; bleakness can often be a sober and clear-sighted assessment of the terrain before us. Believe me, there are plenty of moments in which bleakness and even nihilism wrack my very being. I just think my optimism stems from a place of always being able to maneuver within the turmoil, from a sense of knowing — however small (and sometimes it is vanishingly small) — that even purported tyranny or oppressive totality is not all-encompassing. In short, my optimism comes from a deeply Sisyphean place: though Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to spend eternity rolling the boulder up the hill, straining along the way, only for it to roll back down and for the cycle to repeat, even the gods could not dictate what Sisyphus thought on the descent; they could not control or limn what he dreamed as he descended, what he thought, what kind of schemes he continued to cook up (he was still, after all, the trickster they hated in the first place). We may not be able to open our windows or have friends on our porch or drink from water fountains anymore. And that is devastating for many. Nevertheless, we laugh on Zoom, we mask up and walk to our grandparents’ house just to say “hi,” we read the book we’ve been meaning to read, we find out we’re not as introverted as were thought and in fact reach out to more friends, we are distracted in different ways that now allow us to see different things about the world, and we protest still. And that is why, like Sisyphus, I imagine myself and others happy.

IW: As forewarned, I already feel different, a bit better.

So far we have mostly focused on the “anarcho-” in anarcho-Blackness, but I’d like to shift a bit to talk about how you conceive of Blackness more generally and how the recent uprisings and demonstrations have confused the American racial caste system. Summarizing a remark by Ashanti Alston, you write in your book that “Blackness does not merely consolidate all those who meet a racial quantum. Such a measure would collapse and monolithize those under its rubric.” And later, citing an exchange with Fred Moten, that Blackness “must be claimed by any and every body.”

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These conceptions of Blackness — as something both radically open and fundamentally impure — is one that would probably confuse (and maybe even terrify) many academics and activist-types who have invested so much into static conceptions of Blackness as a marker of racial identity. Could you explain a bit about why you’ve thrown yourself behind this more un-settled understanding of Blackness?

MB: I get in sooo much trouble with this understanding of Blackness. And I get it: it is often understood, and deeply felt, as something exclusive, something provincial, something only a few of us get to have. That to me, however, is blackness as affixed to a racialized category. There is another way I understand Blackness though, a way that is different and distinct from that racialized category. This distinction is what Fred Moten and Nahum Chandler and J. Kameron Carter would call “paraontological.” All that means is that, as Zora Neale Hurston has said, “all your skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.”

So this is to say, Blackness as linked to the skin is not sufficient for me as a referent for how one does a certain kind of work, a subversive and oppositional and transgressive work. I am interested in politics broadly conceived rather than doubling down on a racial identification, which is not unimportant, surely, but ultimately insufficient for the radical, insurrectionary, abolitionist work I am in service of. Blackness then comes to index the very subversive force that cannot be hemmed by taxonomic logics, racial classification among them.

To put a finer point on this, it might be best to defer to three thinkers. The first is Hortense Spillers, who writes in the introduction of her essay collection, in a reading of Ralph Ellison, “‘Blackness’[:] a symbolic program of philosophical ‘disobedience’ (a systematic skepticism and refusal) that would make the former available to anyone, or more pointedly, any posture, that was willing to take on the formidable task of thinking as a willful act of imagination and invention.”

The second and third are George Shulman and Fred Moten. In his essay “Fred Moten’s Refusals and Consents: The Politics of Fugitivity,” Shulman writes, 

As the name for life’s animating and undoing excess, blackness provokes forms of order…Blackness thus connotes aspects of life that anyone can – and all need to – acknowledge. Moten thereby conceives the life made by those marked black in terms neither ethnically closed nor symbolically foreclosed, but politically and aesthetically open.”

Shulman continues in a footnote, “Indeed, blackness is ‘before the binary said to define our existence’ and ‘older than Africa’…[B]lackness is a general force of fugitivity that racialization in general, and the more specific instantiation of the color line, exacerbate and focus without originating’.” He thus denies that blackness is a “property” that belongs to Blacks.

IW: This idea of blackness existing “before the binary” — that is, before the racialized demarcation of African slaves/indentured servants that occurred in 17th century Barbados and then later in the mainland colonies — is a really useful way of elaborating this other non-epidermal understanding of the term. Without that kind of clear distinction, I imagine that many people might mistake this commitment to openness as an invitation to a sort of “transracialism,” which apparently is back in the news again.

Instead, what you and these other thinkers seem to be positing is that this other kind of blackness is actually impossible to appropriate, because by its fugitive nature it could never truly be owned in the first place. In your book, you instead strive for “holding in a way that does not commit to having, to ownership,” and “to [living] without being owned and without owning; a way to have done with properties and the private without giving up sensibilities of holding.”

This deep commitment to fugitivity and openness seemed to be on full display in the un-managed demonstrations and riots back in late May. Before the black middle class counter-insurgency could take root, there was a common sensibility within these crowds that everyone who was present deserved to be there, that everyone had a duty to protect one another, and deserved to savor the victory over the police. Numerous videos from Minneapolis show Somali women throwing back tear gas while Black and white high schoolers from the surrounding neighborhoods proudly posed in front of the burning precinct together. Judging from the hundreds of mugshots and self-incriminating (but still heartening) tweets, this generalized rejection of whiteness and embrace of Blackness was seemingly pervasive throughout dozens of urban areas for a few weeks’ time. With several months of hindsight, what do you make of this sudden and surprisingly diverse insurrection? And what about the more recent and persistent unrest in majority-white cities like Portland and Seattle?

MB: Yes, it is much more gritty, as it were, than a shallow “transracialism.” It is a necessary commitment to do insurrectionist work, to be in the trenches — living and loving in the trenches, as Audre Lorde has said — and on those grounds there is an affiliation and coalition, the grounds of insurrection and insurgency, or political and politicized work.

The sudden rise in more diverse insurrections out in the streets is deeply heartening to me. Not heartening in this, frankly, bullshit notion of “diverse communities coming together” but in what seems to be a demonstration of the commitment to the fact that the terrors of capitalism and cis white masculine supremacy accost us all, in varying degrees, but all of us nonetheless. It manifests a genuine belief in the coalition: that the harm being done to Black people, for example, is harm done to those in the struggle and in solidarity with Black people and blackness. It is a demonstration, I think, of white folks’ refusal of whiteness, their refusal to allow whiteness to ensnare them into its folds. Uprisings happening in majority-white places, to many, and to me as well sometimes, seems like it might surely be the result of a certain kind of fear: white folks thinking that “I better say that I support Black people and BLM lest I get canceled or called, gasp, a racist.” But I want to think that it is more than that; I want to think that all the houses with “Black Lives Matter” signs on their lawns and in their windows in Evanston, IL — where my university rests and through which I drive weekly — might, as it were, infect those white folks. It might have the unexpected outcome of forging them, incipiently, slowly and gradually radically, through a kind of Black radicality. And I’m all for that. Blackness and its radicality, insurrection and insurgency, have more than enough room for everybody. So get in on it.

IW: I want to think it’s more than that too. Surely some white people are motivated by that fear you mention of seeming socially progressive — but I find it hard to imagine that this fear was the exclusive or even primary driver of white participation “in the trenches” as you put it. Putting up a yard sign or even attending a few protests doesn’t compare to the stakes of actively participating in the street battles with police, or setting fire to state and capitalist property. In their recent letter to Liaisons about race treason in the George Floyd rebellion, Nevada declared flat out that “no one sets fire to a police station out of shame.” I think we can read this refusal of whiteness as a form of, or perhaps a symptom of, this process of desedimentation you spoke of previously, which I want to return to briefly.

Thinking about fragmentation seemed to have a certain resonance during the Trump years and especially with last year’s confluence of pandemic, uprising, and election. When we began this interview last autumn, it seemed like everyone was clamoring about an upcoming civil war. A year later, it feels as if things have settled again. Following January 6th and Biden taking power, the state has been hard at work attempting to reimpose itself as a unified totality. How have the last several months changed your thinking on this fragmentation and groundlessness?

MB: What an astounding question. I think the last several months have done a number of things to my thinking and feeling, from a number of avenues.

On the one hand, things have “settled” and there is no longer the governmental, bipartisan, presidential "face" of the terrors of the nation for us to use as a foil to mark and tout ourselves as “not like that.” In other words, it was quite easy for many of us to understand ourselves as sufficiently “radical” when we had “45” as a comparison. Now that Biden is in office, with his moderateness and tepid liberalism, it is easier to feel comfortable. This is, as I’m understanding it, we’re witnessing a resedimentation, a return to the settled silt of a “moderate and sensible,” which is to say, non-radical politics. And that is disheartening.

On another hand, as I describe in my forthcoming book, Black Trans Feminism, I am unceasingly hopeful, fugitively so. That is, I refuse to believe that those white folks or those cis folks or any of those hopelessly normative-identificatory folks who began experiencing tremors in the austerity of (their) whiteness and cisness and identificatory normativity just disappeared. They are still there, thinking and feeling and experiencing the subtle and not-so-subtle tugs of radicality. In other words, they cannot fully put themselves back together after having been fractured. The fracture, like broken glass, will never be recomposed in the exact same way. They are still out there, doing something, perhaps less visible, but I am of the belief that they didn’t simply “go back to normal.” How could they? So it seems to me that even though the ground has in many ways re-congealed, at the very least, it has not congealed in the same way, and that difference is consequential. That difference means that something else, something new is now possible that was not before, and I find that generative and hopeful.

(And we still, with this, continue to agitate and write and think and commune along the lines of radicality, never letting these people remain comfortable. In other words, this ought not to make us complacent but all the more vigilant — we have seen a glimmer of what we might become, and we cannot simply “go back.”)

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Additionally, I want to note the ways that the past several months, the past year, has affected me personally. Some are aware of the online accusations against me regarding harm that I’ve done, and that bears upon my thinking and relating as well. Even those of us who aspire toward and try to enact as much as we can radical politics do harm — serious harm — to others. We all do harm, differently impactful and non-equivalent, but harm nonetheless. And we are responsible for those harms. When the claims were brought to me, I was faced with a decision: do I try to tell “my side” of the story and perpetuate this long history of continued violence that takes gendered form as a “he said/she said” (though I am not a “he,” and am acutely aware of how queer and nonbinary people like myself have their sexualities demonized, often retroactively)? No, I did not want to do that, and refused to. The breach of an ethical relation necessitated that I show up, now, in an ethical way, which took the form of steadfastly doing things that, now, try to mitigate harm — foregoing royalties for the Anarcho-Blackness book (which are being given to an organization committed to ending gendered harm), going through a multi-tiered accountability process, opening myself up to the gloriously terrifying process of transformative justice, and doing all of this willingly, non-begrudgingly. In short, I was fractured and fragmented, my sense of self was fractured and fragmented, so I needed to heed that and not try to simply “go back.” I needed to, and continue to need to, mend and heal and grow and transform. The ethical call I was faced with, in the notation of the harm I had done, was to take that seriously: how can I be accountable? Go through an accountability process to the extent that the person harmed wished; do that process openly and honestly; be and continue to become transformed by that process, impacting not just how I interact with a handful of people but with everyone (I even had an open conversation with my students after a few of them heard about the accusations, and that conversation was hard but so, so important).

To cry in front of others and have them witness my sitting with the harm I did, to continue to commit to abolitionist politics in the face of others who might want me carcerally punished, or to demonstrate kindness and compassion to all — that pervades how I, we, must live in the world. So often many do not wish to be accountable to their harms because — and I count myself in this too — there is a fear that they will be disposed of or exiled. But abolition necessitates that no one is disposable. No one, full stop. We are to hold and love and care for everyone, even when it is hard, and I want to commit to that. Because that to me is what radicality looks like. In holding accountable, there is double emphasis on the accountable and the holding.

So all of this is to say, there is a fragmentation of even our logics of relationality. When we see the 45th president shunning or disposing of or maligning others, or accused of harm he’s done, how do we respond with respect to abolitionist politics? We are to fracture that impulse to incarcerate and dispose, desediment the commonsense-ness of immediate shunning. Ask: what are the conditions that made this harm possible? How can those harmed be facilitated in their healing? (And if the facilitation during my accountability process is any indication of how it could be for others, we would be in a monumentally different world if we were all shepherded and held in that way, my god). How can we ensure that harm is mitigated, because even those who do harm have been harmed and need, too, care and compassion. How do we commit to the axiom that, as adrienne maree brown concisely put it, we will not cancel us?

That is one of the ways, I think, ongoing desedimentation of carceral impulses can look.

IW: I really appreciate you sharing that experience with us. In a somewhat oblique way, it ties in with my next question, on gender. In your work, the theorization of blackness always seems to go hand in hand with the theorization of gender, of transness. If I’m reading you correctly, you seem to rebuff what has become a commonplace ideology of “intersectionality.” For example, in The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender, you write that, “I do not simply mean that black ‘women’ are ‘multiply marginalized’ but something more incisive: that the figure of the Negro, that blackness, animates and instrumentalizes gender always toward its dissolution.”

This reminds me of a claim Idris Robinson makes in “How It Might Should Be Done,” one of the most groundbreaking interventions from last summer’s rebellion, where he states that intersectionality is “no longer feasible or viable as a guide for us. […] In place of intersectionality as a discourse of systemic oppression, what we need to do is to bring back the idea of Black feminism as a discourse of struggle.” It seems clear that it’s necessary to think beyond a simple matrix of identities defined by their oppression, compounding on each other, and that is what you are trying to develop through your upcoming work. Can you elaborate on what this more incisive thought looks like for you?

MB: Absolutely. I was actually on a panel with Idris Robinson when he said something very similar and I was floored. Like, “There are other people who are thinking this way?!” That was wild to me, and so heartening. So I love that Idris is promoting such a stance.

So yes, Black Trans Feminism is trying to do just that: to think in excess of intersectionality, and indeed, “identity” as such. To me, identity is not an innocent description; identity is a regime, a normative regime at that. I want to radically reconfigure what “identity” means, and this desire is motivated by an understanding of identity as resting on an assumptive coherence, knowability, and nonporousness, all of which are regulated, normative regimes of legibility and stability. This disallows so much that we might be or could have been. Which is one of the reasons why I mobilize, in all realms, abolition: it is because various identities — race, gender, sexuality, etc. — all foreclose what we might have been but for these notions of race, gender, and sexuality. In other words, it is not that one simply is a certain race or gender; those things are impositions, “imposed ontologies,” as Fred Moten would say, and as such they circumscribe us ontologically from the jump. We are not permitted to appear or exist without them; who we could have been is already, from the outset, curtailed. On this, I draw on Judith Butler’s Frames of War: 

Mobilizing alliances do not necessarily form between established and recognizable subjects, and neither do they depend on the brokering of identitarian claims… [W]hen such networks form the basis of political coalitions, they are bound together less by matters of ‘identity’ or commonly accepted terms of recognition than by forms of political opposition to certain state and other regulatory policies that effect exclusions, abjections, partially or fully suspended citizenship, subordination, debasement, and the like.

So I care much less about one’s identity, not because it doesn’t matter at all or isn’t relevant; rather, I care less about one’s identity because that says little to me about how a person feels and what they think about how they move, or do not move, through the world; it says little to me about their relationship to white supremacy and cisnormativity and heteropatriarchy, or about what and how they agitate for, how they subvert and disrupt power. I’m interested in politics and dispositions and postures: not “Are you Black?” or “Are you a Black woman?” or “Are you transgender?” but instead how do you do blackness? How do you engage black feminism? How do you promote trans insurrection?, where all of these things are modes of analytic critique and subversive of power. They are, in short, things that we do, not, simply, things that we are.

“What do your politics look like? What kind of work do you do?”, as my dear friend and homie Marshall Green has written. (They have also said on a number of occasions, taking seriously transformative justice and abolition, “People do monstrous things, but no one is a monster.”)

If abolition is about a whole host of things — non-disposability, eradicating not simply violence and carcerality but the possibility of a world where violence and carcerality make sense, departing from normativity, imagining otherwise ways of doing and being and living, care and compassion and love — then part of this must include owing it to ourselves to dare to imagine something wholly different. We cannot hold onto the things of this world, particularly those things that make us comfortable. Again, as I write in Black Trans Feminism (and forgive this lengthy quote, but I stand by each word):

[I]dentities are at base hegemonic bestowals and will thus have diminished liberatory import in the final analysis; indeed, we cannot get to the final analysis — which I offer as an abolitionist analysis — with these identities if such an abolitionist terrain is given definition by way of the instantiation of the impossibility of violence and captivity. Black trans feminism cannot abide such classificatory violences, so it urges us to also abolish the categories we may love, even if they have not always been received well. If the aim of the radical project of black trans feminism is abolition and gender radicality…it is imperative to grapple with what that actually means. We cannot half-ass abolition, holding on to some of the things we didn’t think we would be called to task for giving up. If we want freedom, we need to free ourselves, too, of the things with which we capture ourselves. The project at hand is interested in a thoroughgoing conception of freeness, and it seems like black trans feminism, to call on Saidiya Hartman, ‘makes everyone freer than they actually want to be.’ When the white woman or the black trans person or the queer-identified person comes at such a project with their indignation about me, us, black trans feminism, trying to take away the very things that we’ve worked so hard to achieve, we are surely to meet them with a certain level of kindness as an ethical attentiveness to how such trauma has been felt and the joys of mitigating, in whatever way, those traumas. But, and I mean this, we are not to capitulate to a sort-of abolished world because some people who may look like us or the people who have been forged in oppression are pleading to us. We still, even when Grandma doesn’t (think she) want(s) it, work to abolish the world. That is what black trans feminism, as an orientation toward radical freedom, commits to. And that will not be easy, nor will it feel good in the ways we expect.

So I want us all to dare to imagine and insist on a world that even we cannot fathom. That will look utterly outside of our very framework for encountering the world. And I smile at such a fact, because then we might actually, finally, be able to live.

Images: Morel Doucet

Tags: interviewill will editionsAK Press

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2021 10 20
https://anarchistnews.org/content/roving-band-anarcho-punks

From Empty Hands History by Spencer Beswick

The Vermont Family’s Revitalization of American Anarchism
The Vermont Family was a roving band of anarcho-punks that helped build the American anarchist movement in the 1980s. They were a key element of the connective tissue that linked the dispersed anarchist milieu. The Family originally came together within the “Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament,” in which hundreds of people walked from Los Angeles to Washington, DC over the course of nine months in 1986. As many of the liberals dropped out or retreated to cars, a core group of anarchists coalesced to form a traveling “anarchy village” which grew from 15 to around 70 or 80 people. They ran the village through consensus and promoted anarchist politics within the march. After the march reached DC, the Family stayed together as a loose network of travelers, comrades, and friends.

The name of the Vermont Family came from a sort of collective joke. One punk in the anarchy village shared a story about Vermont: apparently it was written in the state constitution that in 1991, two hundred years after its founding, there would be a popular vote on whether the state would remain part of the country. Thus, a fantastical plan was hatched to convince anarchists to move to Vermont and push it to secede from the union. It goes without saying that this did not happen, and it turned out that Vermont had no such plan to put its status to a vote (the similarity of this plan to the later right-libertarian New Hampshire Free State Project is interesting to note). But the moniker stuck as both an inside joke and badge of identification, and many people in the crew adopted it as part of their names.

The Vermont Family formed on the road and stayed on the road throughout their existence until 1989. In their years of traveling, they played a crucial role that has gone unacknowledged in the histories of this era: they formed the interpersonal connections that were necessary to build a continental network of anarchists.

This past summer, I interviewed a person named Mike, who was one of the core members of the Family. He pointed out that in the age of the internet, it is hard for us to understand how an anarchist milieu could function in the 1980s. It required people to travel and make physical connections between far-flung collectives and projects. Some of the Family traveled in an old bus, some hitchhiked; like a punk version of Ken Kesey’s Merry Band of Pranksters, the Family spread anarchy everywhere they went. A few of them even made their way to West Germany, where they lived in squats and participated in the larger, more militant movement there. They took what they learned back to the US, where they helped to popularize models from the German Autonomen: squatted social centers, infoshops, and black bloc tactics.

When major actions or gatherings were planned in an American city, members of the Vermont crew would show up months in advance, put down temporary roots, and help organize a bigger and better event. They were central to the series of annual national convergences—Chicago 1986, Minneapolis 1987, Toronto 1988, and San Francisco 1989—that established continental networks of dedicated anarchist militants. The Crew stayed on the road until 1989, when a large number of them went to San Francisco to help organize the 1989 Anarchist Gathering. Finding fertile ground, many of them settled down for the long term in the Bay Area. They established several large collective houses that served as major hubs for both the local and national movement in the 1990s. Many of them remained active in Love and Rage, Anti-Racist Action, and other anarchist projects.

I have not yet been able to find any documentation of the Vermont Family beyond my oral history interviews, but its story is central to the broader history of the revitalization of anarchism in the 1980s.

***

Empty Hands History is written by Spencer Beswick, a History PhD student at Cornell University who studies the history of the left to offer inspiration for today’s movements.

Tags: Vermont1980spunk

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
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anarchistnews.org
thecollective
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from Centre of the Web

-Episode 4, by D.

Day 12: Barcelona

Somewhere around 2 in the morning I drag myself out to a rest stop and buy a bottle of water. My baccy must have fallen out again here but I’m really not in a state to realise, or care. Back on the bus, across the aisle from me two young women are sleeping on each other’s shoulders, a blanket over both, and from my angle they look like a modernist painting, a mish mash of lips and cheeks and hair, strangely more beautiful than each on their own. Picasso would have liked it; a sexist bastard bar none, from what I’ve heard. I want that freaking blanket – it’s cold and I’m in shorts. 

Wake up to the sight of Catalonia passing by the window, ancient and new, industrial buildings, an evil empire, sand yellow towns appearing and disappearing around them, churches lit by yellow lights in the gathering dawn. It’s the first time I’ve really wished I was travelling slower. It’s starting to rain again.

At the Barcelona bus stop the water tips down around the coach stand and the travellers stand and smoke and look out at the rain. A little old man asks me for change and I say no, for no reason except I’ve just woken up and I’m taking a picture when he asks. 

I go to a local place and buy two coffees one after the other and something to eat and try to book a hostel around the corner. I’m getting bad vibes from the waitresses because I ordered takeaway accidentally and ate inside. Something screws up on the internet and I don’t manage to pay – it’s going to be one of those sorts of mornings. My mum offered to pay for a hotel room but I just don’t fancy the only one nearby, and besides it seems wasteful. I stagger round the nearby hostels and only the one with bad reviews has any rooms left. At least I can check my bag. 

As the big guy (literally – you could fit two of me in him) behind the counter tells me I can’t check in until 2 I find myself unaccountably irritated. It’s his attitude, which is kind of shirty, and the screenful of surveillance camera feeds on his right and I just don’t like bodybuilders. I find myself wondering if I could beat him in a fight and decide I would throw my bag at him, which feels like it weighs about a tonne right now. Improbable violent situation planning is a pretty reliable sign I’m tired. 

Once I’m done with the bag I decide to walk to the anarchist space I was told about, even though this is like two hours away. This sort of bad decision making is another sign I’m tired. Unfortunately, recognising signs I’m tired is not something I’m good at when I’m over caffeinated and exhausted.

I get about half way there, through the most boring and cloned part of the city centre, give up when my phone dies and catch the metro back. On the way to the hostel, the same man asks me for change as before. I give it to him this time and hope it brings me luck. They let me check in early and I sleep. 

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the power of language and symbols. Language here is very important – in Bilbao it was whether you spoke Basque that decided if you were part of the tribe, in Barcelona, possibly Catalan, in Madrid, Spanish. I felt excluded, especially in Madrid, by not speaking the language – and everywhere I go it marks me as a tourist. Maybe that’s a good thing. But whenever I go into a shop or get on a bus I hear English pop music and I’m reminded of the power we’ve wielded. I think of Esperanto and wonder what this trip would’ve been like if that experiment had succeeded. 

In symbols we see the same divisions; though they are truly international, their meanings are not – and what does it feel like to be Hindu and see the swastika routinely derided? What about the stone cross for Celts? It’s the nature of fascism to imbue these patterns with terrible, divisive meaning and to some extent they exceed in separating us. What does this mean for language? Would we be happier if we had one language, would we be one people? Or would we have lost a million subtleties of thought? 

I woke up at 18.30, made dinner and talked to a German tourist at the hostel who knew even less Spanish than me. Ego mildly boosted, I made for the local punk bar strip by metro, jumping the barrier all sneaky-like. When I get out, there’s the sound of explosions and crowds fill the street. It’s a fireworks festival, with masked folks carrying huge sparklers and smoke everywhere. I wander round in the haze for a bit, a little drunk on it, and buy a beer from someone selling them in the street, but like so much tourist stuff it kinda bores me. I slip back out and walk to the nearest punk bar, nevermind. Outside I sit on the phone for a bit catching up with my dad. When I’m finished I’m about to go in when I see the bouncer giving me an interested look. ‘Anarchista?’ I ask. Yup. Individualist, insurrectionist – we agree heavy on dislike for communists – the history of Barcelona doesn’t make anarchists take kindly. He warns me about thieves on the street and says they carry knives, just walk away. Roger. After chatting for a bit I wander inside to check out the scene. 

It’s a wide mix of tourists and local punks, but a bit exclusive. Everyone’s in a convo and the vibe isn’t super welcoming. Oh well, I buy a beer, chat with the barman, go bother A, the bouncer some more. I like him a lot – he has that independence and mildly psychotic aspect so many young masculine folks bring to the struggle. The street scene outside is chaotic – you could write a song about it – one with four lines and a repetitive chorus. Tourists and thieves and beggars and punks and the neighbours above are apparently right touchy about the noise. One of A’s jobs is to keep it down. I don’t envy him. 

Back inside, I’m joined by an older German guy on holiday. He gets talking on politics (what else?) and tells me how proud he is that he started with nothing, as a chef, and now he earns 179k a year before tax. As we talk it becomes clear why he’s in a punk bar; he misses being part of the crowd, one of the rest of us, misses the simplicity of poverty. You couldn’t wean him from riches though. It’s just not in the thought processes of those able to succeed under capitalism. They can’t help but think they deserve it, that it says something good about them, that they should be proud – that they’re part of an elite. I hold my tongue and try to find points of agreement, similarities, ways to get a little donation for the party. Gotta play the long game innit – if I verbally knock him down and pull out his toenails at this stage he’s just gonna go back to his bank account, wife and house. Would I have sex with someone for 100k? Why are you even asking?! Obviously, every penny to the Anarchist Party… 

Jokes aside, my ideology may say power corrupts but I also believe in individual free will and I always try to convince these sympathisers that they’d be happier back among us and that anarchism is a positive, social ideology they need not be afraid of. 

He buys me alcohol – probably in an attempt to weaken the strength of my arguments – and I gotta admit by this point I’m getting a little shaky. By the time he leaves – complete with promise, albeit vague, to donate – I’m in a great mood, everyone is my comrade, can I put a song on the jukebox? Where do you go to dance around here? 

Place called Sidecar apparently and I’m just about to make a move when a young woman from London asks if I’m English – yeah! – that’s nice, everyone around here is Spanish… well no shit lady, you just flew 350 miles and you expected them to be English? You followed the history of the British Empire lately? Also, most people here are Catalan… I don’t get a chance to say any of this because she’s already wandered off with the supreme disinterest of Londoners everywhere. I feel mildly rejected but it’s ok, my drink addled attention span is already caught up in something new, a young local guy kicking a can down the street. I whistle a sort of ‘geddon bai’ sound and he runs over, offering to do a dance with arms locked. 

I was drunk, ok?

We do the dance thing and as we de-interlock I see 20 euros appear in a doorway across from me. Jump for it and grab it and think ‘shit, that be mine’ check my pockets as I start to walk away. 

Wallet’s gone. Oh fuck. 

I spin around but he’s gone. I chase down the street in the same direction. Two guys in a doorway say ‘he went that way’ pointing to my left. Turn the corner. Empty road.  Approximately at this moment, the comment about knives and the memory that my card has contactless appear in my head like whack-a-moles at the arcade.

I slow to zero, call the bank and walk to the nearest atm in hopes I might run into him. Suddenly I’m pretty sober. Card cancelled, I re-explore my pockets. Beautiful life! My broken wallet has dumped all my cash and my passport photocopy into my pocket. Getting back to Nevermind I see the bouncer head inside with my hostel door key. I run after and get it back. The night has turned out ok after all. 

I walk home (the metro’s closed), picking up a broken skateboard on the way with some vague notion of fixing it or using it to bash anyone that fucks with me. Nobody does. It takes me about an hour and a half to get back to the hostel and when I arrive in the dorm the sleepers twist and turn, brains half aware of movement, unsafe, but having chosen that – perhaps for reasons of economy, perhaps from a desire to be closer to life, to the world, to other people. In a flash of tipsy intuition, I realise the answer to a question I’ve been asking myself since before I arrived. ‘Why do I feel attracted to vulnerable people?’ 

Later, I write an approximation of the answer: 

With freedom comes insecurity. The closer to life you live, the more chance it ups and fucks you. It’s not a complete trade off – this society normalises the victimisation of the free, ours wouldn’t – but here and now, those of us with the security of a few resources, the constraints of knowing what we’re fighting for (and that we have to) and the maturity to be ready to give, are naturally attracted to those still unanchored, still drifting, hoping, sleeping. Sexual attraction isn’t always appropriate – the lizard doesn’t always understand morality. But to care for these people, to love them – platonically or otherwise – isn’t something we need to be ashamed of. They are the beautiful and free.

Day 13: Barcelona

Wake up and my UK plug converter has disappeared. Priority no. 1 is to get my phone charged. No. 2 is to get the hostel re-booked. I have about 30 euros left, 5% charge and without a phone, no way of getting more – and the hostel costs more than 30 a night. I walk to the train station to look for another plug converter but it’s 12.95. I walk back outside, thinking and trying to organise for the hostel to be re-booked by someone else. I walk back inside. No-one’s looking and the guy has already taken the block off the rack to show me the thing, so I pocket it and walk. Outside, I break it open on the side of a bin. Someone else chucks a paper bag into it without showing the slightest interest. Priority no. 1 sorted and priority no. 2 follows quite shortly once I get back to the hostel. 

Panic over. 

Last night I had an inkling of catching a plane back to England, to be back in time for a demo in a few days and save the nightmare of trying to manage without a card out here, especially while hitching. Fortunately, now my phone is reliable again, I have privilege to fall back on. Sure does make life easy. 

My mother is happy to help, wiring some cash and booking a flight for two days’ time. Yes I feel guilty and more to the point, yes I feel like I’ve taken the easy way out, sold out part of the experience; the painful, annoying bit of trying to survive in a foreign country with no money. But, on the other hand – I fucking work for change, I struggle in hopes that one day everyone will have a life around the same standard as mine. I ain’t about to beat myself up for a little self care. 

Also, I have a reasonably intense pain in my chest, which I’m associating with smoking. Feeling like shit is not motivating me to keep getting out there and hitting the street. 

Once I’ve sorted food and booking and plane and stuff I go chill in the dorm. Fuck work, I don’t feel like it. I listen to music and zone out for a bit. 

When I get up to go make dinner it’s not too long until an event at 1830 at the bank Expropriat in Gràcia, a leftie district a few stops away on the metro. I think it’s a manifestation (demo), but when I re-translate the blurb I realise it’s a talk. A friend from the hostel is going to the beach and I envy her but fuck it, it ain’t what I came here to do (1) and what would I feel like if I left Barcelona without checking out the scene? I eat, roll a cigarette and drag my unwilling ass to the metro. 

– later

Glad I did. When I get there it seems dominated by the elderly – something I find worrying from experience in England. But as time goes by more young’uns arrive and it seems a good crew. I use google translate to ask for someone to summarise in English for me and it kinda works. I get about 30%, enough to feel a part of things. It’s good to see a meeting with older, relatively normal people involved, speaking well and determined to do something; they’re discussing Fridays for Future and how in Spain, many of the labour syndicates won’t support people who go on strike for them. It makes me realise how important it is for us to take part and support anyone who’s catching that kind of trouble. 

Afterwards I’m hanging around hoping someone speaks English when a young German woman comes over. She’s more than up to chat anarchist politics and we go get beer and wander round in circles for a while. She reminded me a bit of my best friend from when I was younger and I’m not gonna lie, I was starting to get hopeful she wanted to be more than friends. 

But I also had gotten used to this feeling around people I knew barely at all by this point and now – writing a few days later, back among the scene at home and with some emotional distance – I can recognise that as someone who’s spent most of my life with reasonably intense family relationships, part of me was searching for a community, or a person to anchor myself to. There was a creeping insecurity around me from being alone that wanted to hook onto someone. 

She has a bloke in Germany – and fair play, though I think she’s into me too she’s gonna be monogamous as they agreed to be and I respect that. I half expect to feel that sense of soul death that I used to get when I was a kid. Don’t worry, I will. No journey would be complete without at least one moment of existential dread. But not this time. Instead, just a sense of blossoming friendship. Shit, I’ve grown. 

We talk a lot. Revolution, anarchism, the finer points of currency or no currency? Autonomy from the state or acceptance of unethical consumption? And other hot topics among anarchists who agree about pretty much everything else and are looking for something to debate. 

It’s fun. When it comes time to go home, we faff around on the metro a bit before saying goodbye, then I realise I have to go up one stop on the same line. I run down the stairs after her just in time to wave goodbye as the train disappears into the tunnel. 

On the way down the street to the hostel, I catch the eye of a drunken lady standing in the entrance to a cafe. We strike up conversation. It turns out she’s a quantum physicist at the university. In my heart, she says, I am an anarchist. But you have to work within the system to achieve anything. Uh huh. The owner of the cafe has his own contribution; in France, he says, we have solved the problem. We have the guillotine. Every 150 years we kill the lot of them; they need to be reminded who they work for. The problem is, we missed the last 150 years. I don’t have the energy to argue with either of them, so I chat for a bit around the subject and wander home.

Day 14: Barcelona

I’m getting pretty skint so my task this morning, once the hostel is re-booked, is to get cash from a Western Union. It takes me a while, partly because I enjoy myself, taking time to get coffee and breakfast. I speak to my dad on the phone and boast that I can write a song every two days when I have the time. He asks me to write a country song for him. Well, ok then I guess…

The cigarettes are still killing me a little. The pain in my chest has faded but I can feel the thinness of my health. Tomorrow’s plane is waiting and I’m half glad, half disappointed. 

Before my friend left last night we exchanged numbers and part of me thinks she won’t text. But she does. There’s an open air gig tonight down by the harbour, past where I got robbed and she invites me. It’s a Spanish feminist rap group. 

I catch a metro to Sagrada Famillia, near a Western Union, using my last few coins. Near the monument there are thousands of tourists, swarming the streets, a pickpocket’s wet dream. I’m carrying my passport to get the money out and I keep my hands on my pockets as I walk the couple blocks. 

Getting the cash is a non-event. A polite and well trained cashier runs through the process she does every day. No inch of humanity escapes her professional facade. I didn’t expect it anyway. Sorted, I go outside for a coffee. 

I’m chatting to a Barcelona student on Tinder but there probably isn’t time for us to meet and I can feel him flaking. When he says he’s busy I’m kind of glad – it’s not beyond me to waste time and money getting to a meeting point he didn’t agree to, especially when I’m not sure how to fill the day. 

Back at the hostel I slowly get myself into a zone to write. I cheat a bit and listen to a backing track to get the structure ok. It goes: 

Day by Day

The streets aren’t the same

That I once knew 

The sun outshines the rain 

More than it used to 

But the tears still fall

When I remember you

And how I took the road 

To anywhere new

In all the bars 

the drinkers sing 

The praises of 

living free

But ever since 

I lost your ring

There’s a weight in my hand

Where it used to be

I dream you’re sleeping

There in the dark

The one beside you

Doesn’t share your heart

In the beginning

Maybe you dreamed too

But now I’m nothing

But a broken fool

So I’ll catch a plane

To another life

That disappears

As soon as I arrive

I can’t turn around

There is no way

So I just keep breathing

Day by day

Don’t boast if you can’t back it up. It ain’t the best thing I’ve ever done but I don’t mind it. While I’m working, the German guy from a bunk across from me comes in. It turns out he likes country music too, kinda, and we talk about True Detective and how great it was. I lie still for a bit and try and get into siesta mode but it ain’t happening, so I start getting ready to go out instead. The guy asks me what I’m up to – just gonna go make some dinner before I go out, I reply, you? I dunno, I’m kinda bored. You wanna come with? 

He does. We slow walk across to the supermarket chatting shit. Turns out he’s an architecture student, here to draw the buildings. When he asks me what I’m here for I give my now standard response – 50/50 vacation and trabajo. What kind of work? Politics. And so the endless conversation begins again. 

It’s a variation I haven’t played for a while; that of the person who’s brand new. What does anarchism mean, then? And all that. I give him the works as we get dinner sorted – vegan meat, one minute rice stir fry thing. I have to run out for onions but it’s all good. Over dinner, he tells me about how the German war machine – and by extension, the holocaust – was sustained by extreme drug addiction. 

Makes a lot of sense to me if I’m honest. 

As he tells me about his upcoming trip to New York and how architecture is quite expensive to study I realise who he is though – the classic privileged guy who’s fascinated by the struggle of those who aren’t, but wouldn’t ever let it affect his life. With the dishes washed up, I roll a cigarette, say goodbye and step out to head for a bookshop the quantum physicist told me about not far from here.

La Ciudad Invisible is a nice well lit little place, with t-shirts and kids’ books sharing space with the heavier shit. A bit expensive though, for my wallet – or my lack of a wallet, to be exact. I start a conversation with the guy behind the till. He tells me they had 6 people arrested for terrorism charges that day, but the movement is otherwise healthy. It seems he’s more interested in the community practices of the Anarchist movement around here, its food sharing programs, its self-managed workplaces. There’s a few of them and the local scene is big enough – well hell, this is Barcelona – to support them alongside a few squats I won’t have time to see and the usual catalogue of small groups and actions. Mine and his approaches are a little at odds, he’s very much the ‘work with anyone you can’ type and even tells me ‘maybe I’m just getting old and becoming a hippie.’ Maybe he is. I come away from it depressed. It’s the last night y’know and this doesn’t seem like my revolution. 

What is my revolution? I have a few answers, crowding to the front as usual, but none of them are definitive. I guess part of it is just that I feel I’m moving too fast, I want to slow down but I can’t because the flight’s already booked and I don’t want to go home and this guy with his slow world has reminded me what I’m missing, the tranquility of age. But part of me also screams back an accumulation of swear words, that tranquilo never fought the revolution, that people are suffering here as much as anywhere, that the Communists shot the Anarchists here, in the ruin of the Social Revolution, the last time we had a chance. 

Whatever my revolution is, it ain’t mine, it’s ours.

The first bar I go into is expensive, so I sit on a bench and smoke a cigarette and try and sort my head out. I’m just trying to kill time, too, before the gig at 10. Talking to my friend on the phone helps a little. My throat is hurting and I feel tired. I pull myself back up onto my feet and wander towards the tube. Getting out at Jaume I, back near the bar where I was robbed, I decide to wander past. Killing time, of course, not trying to prove anything. It doesn’t seem the same now, it’s quieter, and when I walk inside A, the bouncer isn’t there. I realise he was half the reason I liked the place. I buy a beer and sit there waiting for something to happen, someone to say hi or time to pass, but only the last one happens. It’s just another murky punk bar in a big and tourist filled city, already bored to death with people like me. It’s a long way from the bar in Santander where they sat me down and we played battleships. 

Comes time and I head out. The alley is still dodgy, plenty of poor folks around, but with the tourist traffic reduced – it’s a Monday – it’s lost any real danger. It’s just the people now, no meat.

The gig is by the water. It’s huge, open air and there are guys everywhere with bags of beer and ice, selling them for €1.50. The crowd is gathering but quiet, the gig hasn’t started yet and there’s that anticipation. I feel lonely as I wait for my friend to arrive, and have all the usual fears of never finding her. What would I do at this gig, in this community, with no Spanish? Go home, probably. I try and relax. There isn’t much else to do and when the gig starts I try and get into it, but it’s beyond me. I never could fake my way to happiness. I feel excluded again, like I did all those years ago. 

Suddenly a text, just as I’m starting to wonder What the Hell? A meet point not far from where I am and there she is, we say hi and hug and I follow her and her amigas through the crowd, like I’m being led through the same door I entered a moment before, only this time it leads somewhere else. My friend H translates some of the choruses but I can see it’s difficult and I say just to listen and enjoy the moment. She does. Watching her enjoy it, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer is enough for me to feel the beat in my legs. It looks like a good show. Time’s getting late quite fast and I have a plane to catch in the morning but I don’t want to leave and when the first band ends I go sit with H and we chat about politics. She’s a pessimist and I’m an optimist but just having met her feeds my positivity and I know I win her over a little. Or maybe pessimists just always like to be disagreed with. 

She saves me from an awkward scene with a beer seller who wants me to give him my last cash in exchange for some kind of beer deal I don’t want. He’s super intense in fast Spanish and my shaking head and de nada’s are getting nowhere. In the end she gives him 50¢ to make a move, which he weirdly accepts. 

Back to the revolution, we discuss the eviction of Exarcheia. She’s a little too focussed on the formal Anarchist movement and its expressions, I think. I believe that if the activists of Exarcheia are dispersed, with their experiences of liberation still in their hearts, after 6 months of recovery they may well do more for us all individually in the towns and villages and cities of Europe, than they do by keeping those spaces open now. (2)

On the other hand, for the refugees who’d been housed there and are now being moved into immigration camps by the Greek state, the suffering only increases. There is, ultimately, little justification for optimism except the need for hope. We get through another band and it’s coming on for 2 o’clock when I decide it’s time to go.

A large subsection of my brain would like to hold H, but the other part is still shouting quite loud and in the end I manage to just about keep my cool. We say goodbye and hope we’ll meet again. I touch the tip of her chin with one finger for just a moment before pulling away and waving. As I turn to walk away, my heart beating its shit out and my hands shaking, I stop to roll a cigarette saying ‘this is what we have cigarettes for, this is…’ and turn. She’s waving from the top of the bridge. I wave back and wait for her to disappear. Then I roll the cigarette and wait some more. 

I wait for longer than I should, hoping she’ll come back, though I have no right or reason to expect it, hoping I could reach her from here – but for what? I can’t tell you. 

I walked away smoking, reminding myself not to hurt myself, staring in a dangerous manner at a reachable cctv camera, telling myself to stay alive. I crossed the road and, to my surprise, realised the metro was open. I walked down the steps, counting this one thin blessing that would get me home in time for sleep. 

“Fruity, fruity, fruity” they said. I didn’t even notice them at first, just two English tourists, kinda well dressed. “Fruity, fruity, froo-ty” “are you guys being fucking cunts?” (3) I asked. 

“Look at your fucking sandals mate, who wears sandals like that?” “Frooty frooty frooty…”

I tell them to fuck off and give them the finger. Half curious if I can get a free metro ticket, I wander down to the gates, but the security are on tonight. Seems legit. I wander back to the machines, where the two guys are struggling to figure out how to get a ticket. 

“Where you from mate? England? We’re from South London we are!” This last said like it gave you a fucking passport or something. 

“Devon,” I said as I bought myself a ticket. 

“Ahhh fucking Devon, you shouldn’t have said that, is that why you’re wearing those fucking sandals? Is that what they wear in Devon?”

I look them up and down. Turned out pretty nice for city boys, look a little sweaty though in black jeans and shirts and trainers… 

“What are you two, in a fucking soul band or something?” His mate’s still struggling with the ticket machine. “You’ll work it out,” I add, “I’m sure they have them in south London too.” I turn and walk for the barriers. 

“Frooty, frooty, frooty!” I reach the barriers and start to put the ticket in. The security guards are still there. Am I really gonna take this from these assholes? asks a voice in my head. No, comes the answer and I turn around blood pumping-

“You wanna go then you fucking cunts come on then! Let’s fucking go, you want some!” I get to within range of the mouthy guy and he lamps me from the left real fast, so quick I don’t see it coming and I’m on my ass. I’m getting up, come on then, might as well finish it now, but the security appears between us. 

“He started on me!” Says the mouthy one. 

“No, no, you leave now,” they say. I get up and go through the barriers. Head feels like it’s been hit by a train, like they used to say. I wander down to the station and sit on the bench. 

A few minutes later the security appear. “Are you ok?” They ask.

“Si, si”

“You have your wallet, your phone?” 

“Si”

“Why did they want to fight you?” 

“They were calling me a fruit and…” 

“Muy Engles is no muy bien” with fingers held in the international ‘little bit’ symbol. 

“Si. He called me a marricone… and I’m not homophobic but I am not a marricone…” they nod, look a little non-plussed and wander back out to the gates. 

Dunno what I was on about. I spent half the day trying to meet a dude on Tinder. Since when am I not a marricone? 

I spend the ride home dazedly considering the rights and wrongs of Muerta A La Policia (MALP!) when they’re so fucking handy sometimes. I don’t come to any interesting conclusions. 

Back at the hostel, at 2.5 miles an hour I order a bag of mini chocolate croissants and a cup of hot milk. No good vegan me. 

I get in the lift. Everything takes a hundred hours. When I get into the dorm, each task, charging the phone, getting the provisions onto the bed and following them, elongates with slowness and pain as I try to be quiet. In the bed, dressed, I eat the lot and drink the milk, cheap sugar passing like morphine into my veins I pass out into a drugged sleep. 

Day 14: Barcelona / Aeroplane

Wake up at I don’t know when but it’s early. Feeling…. Nothing much, not even tired. Not had enough sleep to feel tired. Head hurts. Everyone else is getting ready to go and I let them leave first, one by one, each short acquaintance I’ve made since being in the dorm. I whisper goodbye to those I know, then go and shower. Glad I got my bag packed yesterday. 

Made some breakfast and ate outside, with a coffee. Checked the time and I’m not too far behind. Roll a cigarette and make a move, say goodbye to the guy on the hostel desk. 

Gonna miss the street and the sun and the skyline. I walk to the bus station and stub out my cigarette, then descend into the metro. I buy a ticket to the airport – it’s a special price, a special line that goes that way – like an escape route in a video game that skips all the other rooms. I sit on the train and wait, head hurting. I sit and sit and sit. 

The airport is huge and modern, spaceport like with just a couple of cheeky stickers – non political – on its endless grey hallways. They are building more outside the window. I pause on the bridge from the metro to the terminal and wait for the energy to come back. My head hurts. 

In the terminal I find parts A and B but not C, which is where I’m supposed to be. I still have some time and there’s no one at the counters. I buy a coffee at ridiculous expense and sit for a minute refuelling. On the Party group chat we are arguing with a socialist about our autonomy at an upcoming demonstration, the rights and wrongs of using the word ‘fascist’ liberally. Later it will turn out we should have been thinking more out of the box on this, but as usual it seems we’re just being told what to do by someone from another group and most of our back hairs are up. It’s a long way from the sense of solidarity between revolutionaries I’ve found here, but then maybe my ignorance hid the bad parts. Maybe if I’d known Spanish I would’ve heard the arguments. 

Still no sign of my counter opening. Eventually I ask. ‘Terminal C’s in the next building over’ I’m told. I have a little panic and run, but it’s ok. Everything smooths along and the only bad thing that happens is I get past the smoking areas before I have a last fag. 

On the group chat the argument trundles on… 

Port, bus, steps, aeroplane. I get on the wrong end and have to walk all the way down the aisle. You can tell I’m not used to this. I’m anxious. Beside me is a dude in a suit who looks pretty gross, doing business on his phone. I try and zone out a little but that coffee must be hitting me because I find myself watching his screen. Imagine my surprise when I see an email from a constituent accusing him of complicity in the actions of government because of his role as a Conservative MP. Holy fuck. 

He’s also on a Conservative MPs WhatsApp chat. I try and film it on my phone but I have to hold it at a ridiculous angle and the glare is too bright. Oh dear, I was hoping for a nice chilled out flight; what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna… 

He changes seats to the one across the aisle. ‘What’s wrong with this one?’ I say super normal like hoping he hasn’t clocked my weird ass behaviour. ‘Oh nothing, it’s just more room isn’t it.’ Cool, just what I want to hear. Next bad news – I know this guy’s an MP in government but I know literally nothing else about him. Also – plane just lifted off – can’t use the fucking internet. Is this an opportunity to give up? No! This does not happen every day! 

If I’m starting to get an idea that I want to verbally confront him, paranoia is also running on overdrive. I’ve just come from Spain where they do people for terrorism for practically nothing. Plus people are fucking freaky about aeroplanes. The sense that I have no choice about this, that I’m acting under pressure of circumstances, adds to my fear. Plus he keeps throwing glances my way. Either he thinks I’m sexy or he’s trying to look through the far side window.

I think it’s the latter. 

What do I do? The things I know how to do. I write a condemnation of the government and him by extension. I delete all the apps and data on my phone that could give them information about my comrades. I memorise my speech (well, sorta) and make a plan to livestream a video of the action. None of the security stuff I do would stand up under intense scrutiny – my laptop is still logged in to all my shit for instance and it’s in the hold – but it’s the best I can do. I’m helped by the fact none of us talk too dodge online anyway. 

It doesn’t help that we’re still an hour away from landing once I have made all these plans. An hour spent stewing in my own anxiety. I’m having some trouble breathing properly. Thinking of Peter Tatchell (4) and Elin Ersson (5) helps with the determination but doesn’t help with the feeling of not having a choice. Compared to them folks what I’m doing is nothing. 

As we start to come into land though, I still hold my breath and close my eyes and tell myself I don’t have to do this if I don’t want to, I can walk away and come back tomorrow and keep fighting and yes I’ll know there was something I couldn’t do but that won’t stop me acting. I open my eyes with a decision to change the start of my speech to make it more clearly a peaceful protest, but otherwise to go ahead. 

You can see the vid on YouTube or on the Anarchist Party page or here on Centre of the Web. I’m really quiet (a friend called it ‘sweet’) because I can’t actually fill my lungs to speak louder. It’s very short and a lot of the vid is his tie. Funny enough, it still works. When I found out afterward it was Boris Johnson’s Parliamentary Private Secretary I could’ve just about exploded with satisfaction; it’s pretty unknown at the moment so satisfaction is about the only thing I’m gonna get from it. 

The Bristol terminal goes in a smooth process. I don’t get bothered, to my surprise, and I’m on the bus south to Exeter when the tiredness and the hunger hits me. The rain is falling against the windscreen and my phone has died. When I get to Exeter, my lift is late and I have to blag a phone call to check on it. It’s all fine. I eat dinner at home and have a drink with my friend, then let it go black. 

Conclusion: This Is One Flawed Motherfucker

Over the next couple of days I crashed through a family argument, sleeping at a former partner’s partner’s place, and an aggy antifascist demonstration, purely by keeping my head up and my brain moving a little bit faster than my mouth. Caffeine and cigarettes were the engine behind it all and when it was over I collapsed for a while. I’m quitting the fags now. 

This hasn’t been an attempt at fiction. It hasn’t been about showing you how good a person an anarchist can be – I expect that’s obvious. It’s just me doing the only thing I know how to do; putting myself out there as I am, ready to change, ready to fail but trying to tell the truth about it. Sometimes I spin it a little, but never by much. 

If Anarchism is against oppression and exploitation, against the positioning of one above another, honesty is a part of that project. If you just saw the actions I did and not the words in my head, maybe you’d think there was something special here. I hope now you’ve seen the insecurity, the isolation and the dirt you’ll get a little of why I’m just a part of something, never the whole. Maybe there is something special too, but it’s individuality, not perfection. We all have it. 

Glad to be here. 

Goodnight.

Footnotes:

(1) Actually, it was, but I’d forgotten that by this point

(2) Quite possibly my position is the result of ignorance. I’m told gangs operated in Exarchia and that, combined with constant struggle and internal conflict, might make it far less of a liberating experience than those of us watching from afar might hope.

(3) Trying not say it – I know it’s pretty gender oppressive. Still kinda automatic in some situations though.

(4) https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/13/protesters-peter-tatchell-mugabe-zimbabwe

(5) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/swedish-student-plane-protest-stops-mans-deportation-afghanistan

Tags: tourismblogjournaldiarybarcelona

Socialist Worker RSS

2021 10 19
https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/52537/Unions+hold+mass+rally+against+fascists+in+Italy

Politico
Vincent Manancourt
2021 10 18
https://www.politico.eu/article/ireland-facebook-decision-triggers-argument-over-limits-gdpr/

Ireland largely upheld Facebook’s argument that it doesn’t need consent to collect data.

Associated Press

2021 10 18
http://apnews.com/article/entertainment-music-arts-and-entertainment-los-angeles-hip-hop-and-rap-7034be97e538201d789ab54a2404a960

2021-10-19 01:09:40FILE – In this Feb. 9, 2020, file photo, Kanye West arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. On Monday, Oct. 18, 2021, a Los Angeles judge approved the request of the rapper, producer and fashion designer to legally change his name to just Ye, spelled Y-E, with no middle or last name. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kanye is now Ye.
A Los Angeles judge on Monday approved the request of the rapper, producer and fashion designer to legally change his name from Kanye Omari West to just Ye, with no middle or last name.
“There being no objections, the petition for change of name is granted,” Judge Michelle Williams Court said in court documents.
The petition filed Aug. 24 cited “personal reasons."
He has called himself Ye on his social media pages for years. He tweeted in 2018 that he wanted the change saying, “the being formally known as Kanye West. I am YE.”
The moniker was also the title of his 2018 album. He has said in interviews that, along with being a shortening of his first name he likes, that it’s a word used throughout the Bible.
The 44-year-old is in the middle of a divorce with Kim Kardashian West, who did not ask that her last name be changed back to just Kardashian when she filed to split from him in February. The couple’s four children also have his former last name.

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 18
https://www.12news.com/video/news/education/tempe-city-manager-on-next-steps-for-schools-parks-named-after-kkk-members/75-13e6da80-63ef-45fa-a782-7a03bc9b1961

Tempe city manager on next steps for schools parks named after KKK members  12news.com KPNX

Forward

2021 10 18
https://forward.com/fast-forward/476832/at-95-mel-brooks-will-finally-deliver-history-of-the-world-part-ii/

Hulu has nabbed the rights to air the eight-episode variety series, a sequel to the classic 1981 film.

Associated Press

2021 10 18
http://apnews.com/article/middle-east-lebanon-beirut-civil-wars-hassan-nasrallah-a3c10d99cca2ef1c3d58dae135297025

2021-10-18 18:58:51FILE – In this May 31, 2019 file photo, Hezbollah fighters march at a rally to mark Jerusalem day or Al-Quds day, in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, Lebanon. On Monday, Oct. 18, 2021, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah revealed that his militant group has 100,000 trained fighters. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader declared for the first time on Monday that his powerful militant group has 100,000 trained fighters. His speech appeared to be meant as a deterrent to domestic foes following the nation’s worst internal violence in years.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah disclosed the size of the Shiite group’s militant arm in his first speech since seven people were killed in gunbattles on the streets of Beirut on Thursday — the worst street violence the city has seen in years. The confrontation erupted over a long-running probe into last year’s massive port blast in the city.
It is difficult to verify the 100,000 fighters figure as Hezbollah is largely secretive. If true, it would be larger than the size of Lebanon’s armed forces, estimated at about 85,000.
The speech came at a time of heightened tension in Lebanon over the clashes and the course of the investigation into the Aug. 4, 2020 blast in which over 215 people were killed.
“We have prepared (those fighters) with their diverse weapons to defend our territory, our oil and gas that is being robbed before the eyes of Lebanese, to protect the dignity and sovereignty of our country from any aggression (and) terrorism and not for internal fighting,” Nasrallah said.
In his speech, Nasrallah accused the head of a right-wing Christian party, Samir Geagea, of seeking to ignite civil war in the small country.
Addressing Geagea directly, Nasrallah said: “Don’t miscalculate. Be wise and behave. Learn a lesson from all your wars and all our wars.”
Geagea’s office declined to immediately comment late Monday.
At the end of the country’s 15-year civil war in 1990, Hezbollah was the only group to retain its weapons. It has fought several rounds of war with Israel and took credit for Israel’s troop withdrawal from the country’s south in 2000. Hezbollah has also sent its fighters to support Syria’s armed forces in that country’s decade-long civil war.
Hezbollah and its allies have been highly critical of Judge Tarek Bitar, who is in charge of the port blast investigation, accusing him of being selective and going after some officials and not others while seeking to politicize the probe. They asked that he be removed.
The clashes Thursday came as officials from Hezbollah have suggested the judge’s investigation is leaning toward holding them responsible for the port blast.
Bitar has been criticized by other political groups, too, after he summoned senior officials as part of the investigation, including former ministers and a former prime minister, and charged them with intentional negligence that led to the deaths of over 215 people.
The judge has not publicly commented or responded to the criticism.
Thursday’s clashes saw gunmen battling each other for several hours with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the streets of Beirut. It was the most violent confrontation in the city in years, echoing the nation’s darkest era of the 1975-90 civil war.
Nasrallah accused Geagea of “manufacturing” Thursday’s clashes in the Tayuneh area of the city and described him as a criminal and a killer.
“The real program for the Lebanese Forces is civil war,” Nasrallah said. “The biggest threat to the social peace in Lebanon is the Lebanese Forces.”
Nasrallah accused Geagea and his party of seeking to scare Lebanon’s Christians over Hezbollah’s intentions. He said that’s mostly to serve foreign countries that have also made the Shiite group an enemy, including the United States, Israel and some Gulf states.
Geagea is a close ally of Saudi Arabia, which is critical of Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Geagea led the Lebanese Forces Christian militia during the 1975-90 civil war and spent more than a decade in prison. He was released after an amnesty following Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. The anti-Syria Geagea now leads the Lebanese Forces political party.
Nasrallah said his group and its ally, the Amal movement, expect results in an investigation into how the violence broke out Thursday. He suggested that if the army opened fire at protesters from the two Shiite groups, it should be held accountable.
It wasn’t clear from Nasrallah’s speech if his group and Amal are ending their call for the removal of the judge — a move considered by many as interference in judicial affairs.
The newly installed government has come to a standstill after opposition from Hezbollah- and Amal-allied ministers over government inaction against the judge. The crisis is the latest to beset the small nation of 6 million, already struggling with one of the worst financial crises in the world in the last 150 years.
___
Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.

Ars Technica
Nate Anderson
2021 10 18
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/disinformation-guru-hacker-x-names-his-employer-naturalnews-com/

Rob Willis now says no to a "half-assed whistleblow."

Associated Press

2021 10 18
http://apnews.com/article/technology-business-europe-european-union-0c02c959c0b73b84ce77df9bc557d9b9

2021-10-18 00:04:05FILE – In this April 14, 2020 file photo, the thumbs up Like logo is shown on a sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook says it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform. The company said in a blog post Sunday, Oct. 17, 2021 that those high-skilled workers will help build “the metaverse,” a futuristic notion for connecting people online that uses augmented and virtual reality. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
LONDON (AP) — Facebook said it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform that promises to connect people virtually but could raise concerns about privacy and the social platform gaining more control over people’s online lives.
The company said in a blog post Sunday that those high-skilled workers will help build “the metaverse,” a futuristic notion for connecting online that uses augmented and virtual reality.
Facebook executives have been touting the metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile internet, though their track record is spotty on predicting future trends. Expectations that CEO Mark Zuckerberg made four years ago of taking virtual vacations with faraway loved ones via a headset or using a smartphone camera to improve an apartment virtually have not materialized so far.
The company also is contending with antitrust crackdowns, the testimony of whistleblowing former employees and concerns about how it handles vaccine-related and political misinformation.
“As we begin the journey of bringing the metaverse to life, the need for highly specialized engineers is one of Facebook’s most pressing priorities," according to the blog post from Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs, and Javier Olivan, vice president of central products.
Facebook’s recruiters are targeting Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands and Ireland for the hiring drive.
The metaverse essentially is a massive virtual world that can be accessed in real time by millions of people using avatars, who can use it to hold virtual meetings or buy virtual land and clothing or other digital assets, often paying with cryptocurrencies.
The social network isn’t the only one working on the metaverse, and Facebook acknowledged that no single company will own and operate it. Other players include Fortnite maker Epic Games, which has raised $1 billion from investors to help with its long-term plans for building the metaverse.
But there are concerns Facebook and a handful of other Silicon Valley giants would end up monopolizing the metaverse and use it to collect and profit from personal data, mirroring the situation now with the internet.
Facebook last month announced a $50 million investment to fund global research and partnerships with civil rights groups, nonprofits, governments and universities to develop products responsibly for the metaverse. But the company added that it would probably take 10 to 15 years to “fully realize” many of those products.
In a separate blog post Sunday, the company defended its approach to combating hate speech, in response to a Wall Street Journal article that examined the company’s inability to detect and remove hateful and excessively violent posts.
A British parliamentary committee that’s working on legislation to combat online harm is set to hear from two Facebook whistleblowers this week and next. Sophie Zhang, a data scientist who raised the alarm after finding evidence of online political manipulation in countries such as Honduras and Azerbaijan before she was fired, will appear before the committee Monday afternoon.
Next week, the committee will hear from Frances Haugen, who went public with internal Facebook research that she copied before leaving her job earlier this year. Haugen testified before a U.S. Senate panel this month about her accusations Facebook’s platforms harm children and incite political violence, and her British appearance will be the start of a tour to meet European lawmakers and regulators.
___
O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

VICE US
David Gilbert
2021 10 18
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jg8y73/qanon-is-becoming-even-more-antisemitic

One of the movement’s biggest influencers just encouraged his followers to watch a 10-part neo-Nazi film.

“”Anarchism”” – Google News

2021 10 18
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything-history-humanity/620177/

Review: ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’  The Atlantic

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 18
https://www.best-infographics.com/which-animals-cause-the-most-damage-to-your-home/

Many of us love animals but they can damage your property if you are not paying attention. Skunks, rodents, snakes, and raccoons can all damage your property. This infographic from Groundworks Company takes a look at this issue:

The post Which Animals Cause the Most Damage to Your Home? appeared first on Best Infographics.

Scientific American Content
Nikk Ogasa
2021 10 18
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cigarette-smoke-kills-eye-cells/

A new study reveals how tobacco from traditional or noncombusted cigarettes kills corneal cells

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

“”Existentialism”” – Google News

2021 10 18
https://www.techradar.com/in/news/nintendo-switch-online-n64-games-a-brief-introduction-to-every-game

Nintendo Switch Online N64 games: a brief introduction to every game  Techradar

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 18
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/18/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity-by-david-graeber-and-david-wengrow-review-have-we-got-our-ancestors-wrong

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow review – have we got our ancestors wrong?  The Guardian

CounterPunch.org
Sonali Kolhatkar
2021 10 18
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/18/why-record-numbers-of-workers-are-quitting-and-striking/

The number of strikes and of striking workers might be far higher if more workers were unionized. Non-union workers like McGrath and Ragland hired by historically anti-union companies like Walmart might have been able to organize their fellow workers instead of resorting to individual resignations. While viral social media posts of quitting are impactful in driving the conversation around worker dissatisfaction, they have little direct bearing on the lives of the workers and the colleagues they leave behind.

More

The post Why Record Numbers of Workers Are Quitting and Striking appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

It’s Going Down
Anonymous Contributor
2021 10 17
https://itsgoingdown.org/the-2022-earthbound-farmers-almanac-is-looking-for-submissions/

Call from Lobelia Commons for submissions for the 2022 edition of the Earthbound Farmer’s Almanac. To hear Lobelia Commons on This Is America, go here. The past year has reminded us that we need to constantly re-imagine what the world can look like and to not let our imagination be curtailed by colonial institutions and… Read Full Article

It’s FOSS News
Jacob Crume
2021 10 17
https://news.itsfoss.com/pinephone-pro-introduced/

Priced at $399, PinePhone Pro is a Linux smartphone that may have the potential to replace some budget Android devices. You’d need to wait for a few months as a consumer.

The post PinePhone Pro is an Affordable Linux Flagship Smartphone That Could Replace Your Android appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

“Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” – Google News

2021 10 17
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1948826/middle-east

Turkey plans military action against Syrian Kurdish YPG if diplomacy fails  Arab News

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 17
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/video/990777

Tempe to consider renaming schools, parks, streets linked to KKK  FOX 10 News Phoenix

Forward

2021 10 17
https://forward.com/culture/476743/david-duchovny-the-chair-yiddish-writer-grandfather/

“It’s overwhelming, really,” David Duchovny said. “Just to think of his vitality, and his commitment, and obviously his playfulness, too.”

Ars Technica
Peter Opaskar
2021 10 17
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/before-the-new-version-lets-revisit-1984s-dune-the-greatest-movie-ever-made/

The pursuit of greatness must embrace the ridiculous.

Alexander R. Galloway
ARG
2021 10 17
http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/ephemera-pt-3-barricelli

Here’s some more ephemera from the process of researching and writing Uncomputable. These images pertain to section IV of the book, titled "Computable Creatures," which explores the cellular automata work of Nils Aall Barricelli from the early 1950s. For these chapters I wrote a simple Processing sketch that mimicked Barricelli’s original experiments. Here are some of the many failures […]

Jacobin
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
2021 10 17
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/american-christian-evangelicalism-anti-communism-gender-feminism-race-maga-trump-culture-wars-du-mez-interview/

Outside observers and critics confronted white evangelical support for Donald Trump — not exactly a Christian-family-values figure — as a puzzle to be solved. But while many saw hypocrisy, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez identified a number of continuities. In her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a […]

Daily Infographic
Matt Gaedke
2021 10 17
https://dailyinfographic.com/the-most-common-plastic-surgery-procedures

With the rise of social media and an increased focus on physical appearance, the rates of plastic surgery have begun to skyrocket. Interestingly, the type of procedure most Americans are opting for has also begun to shift. Cosmetic surgery in the U.S. has grown form 1.6 million procedures in 1997 to over 4.6 million in […]

The post What are the Most Common Plastic Surgery Procedures in the US? first appeared on Daily Infographic.

Jacobin
Henri Benoits
2021 10 17
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/paris-massacre-algeria-independence-nazi-collaborator/

The French Federation of the FLN organized this demonstration to protest the imposition of the curfew, enforced by the chief of police, forbidding Algerians — “French Muslims” as they were called at the time — to go out between 8:30 PM and 5:30 AM. This ban was intended to obstruct the organization of the FLN […]

New Politics
Daniel Fischer
2021 10 17
https://newpol.org/beyond-tragedy-postscript-on-kronstadt-at-100/

To avoid repeating the Kronstadt tragedy, and to build toward principled world revolution, we can commit to organizing transnational solidarity and speaking out against all forms of authoritarian repression.

Read more ›

The post Beyond Tragedy: Postscript on Kronstadt at 100 appeared first on New Politics.

“Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” – Google News

2021 10 16
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1949126/middle-east

How viable is the Kurds’ autonomous territory in northeast Syria?  Arab News

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 16
https://kjzz.org/content/1725254/legalized-syringe-exchanges-fentanyl-test-strips-could-help-combat-overdose-deaths

Legalized syringe exchanges, fentanyl test strips could help combat overdose deaths  KJZZ

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 16
https://www.azfamily.com/news/catalytic-converter-thefts-on-the-rise/article_d1031328-2e24-11ec-aaba-bb45efe85e9f.html

Tempe man watches thief steal catalytic converter; theft numbers rising  Arizona’s Family

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 16
https://www.best-infographics.com/10-jobs-that-you-can-do-without-leaving-home/

This latest pandemic has changed the way we work, shop, and play. The good news is there are now plenty of jobs you can do without leaving home. This infographic from Viking Metal Garages takes a look at 10 jobs you can do without leaving the house:

The post 10 Jobs That You Can Do Without Leaving Home [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

VICE US
Matthew Gault
2021 10 16
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7e5ad/girls-do-porn-victims-reach-settlement-with-pornhub

Fifty Girls Do Porn victims have reached a settlement with Mindgeek, Pornhub’s parent company.

Jacobin
Faith Bennett
2021 10 16
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/starbucks-workers-united-buffalo-union-drive-organizing-coffee-shop-industry-labor/

In August, three Starbucks stores in Buffalo, New York went public with their campaign for unionization. They named their joint effort Starbucks Workers United. In a textbook anti-union strategy, the corporation responded by petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to force all other Buffalo Starbucks locations, twenty stores in total, to participate in a simultaneous […]

ROAR feed | ROAR Magazine
Azfar Shafi
2021 10 16
https://roarmag.org/essays/uk-counter-terrorism/

Connecting counter-terror policing and surveillance to the question of policing at large is a vital step in advancing struggles against police and state violence.

“Rojava” – Google News

2021 10 16
https://theintercept.com/2021/10/16/daniel-baker-anarchist-capitol-riot/

A Florida Anarchist Will Spend Years in Prison for Online Posts Prompted by Jan. 6 Riot  The Intercept

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 16
https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/valley/3-schools-named-after-kkk-members-tempe-historical-records-show/75-49d15084-9065-4ae5-a6a6-e3d5f0152e03

3 schools named after KKK members, Tempe historical records show  12news.com KPNX

It’s FOSS News
John Paul Wohlscheid
2021 10 16
https://news.itsfoss.com/hellosystem-towards-first-release/

A Free-BSD implementation that reminds of Mac of the previous decade. We should see the final release soon.

The post helloSystem, the Mac-like FreeBSD OS, Takes Another Step Towards Full Release appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

Associated Press

2021 10 15
http://apnews.com/article/fires-oregon-george-floyd-portland-1de227091103e86a5844c36fac0cfc7c

2021-10-15 23:53:08FILE – In this Nov. 4, 2020, file photo, a man stands in front of a broken display window at a retail store during protests in Portland, Ore. Police in Portland say they believe a new state law prohibits officers from directly intervening when people smash storefronts and cause mayhem. The measure passed this year prohibits the use of crowd control methods like pepper spray and rubber bullets "unless use of force is otherwise authorized by statute." (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A crowd of 100 people wreaked havoc in downtown Portland, Oregon, this week – smashing storefront windows, lighting dumpsters on fire and causing at least $500,000 in damage – but police officers didn’t stop them.
Portland Police Bureau officials say that’s because of legislation passed by Oregon lawmakers this year, which restricts the tools they can use to confront people vandalizing buildings and causing mayhem.
“The reason that we did not intervene goes back to what we talked about last month with House Bill 2928 and the restrictions placed on us in a crowd control environment,” KOIN reports that Portland Police Lt. Jake Jensen said in a neighborhood meeting Thursday.
Residents frustrated by the latest round of destructive demonstrations Tuesday questioned whether that meant anything goes now in Portland.
“Does that mean we are now like a lawless city?” Linda Witt asked during the meeting with police. Jensen replied saying people can still face consequences later.
The legislation in question is House Bill 2928, which prohibits the use of things like pepper spray and rubber bullets for crowd control. However there is an exception – when the circumstances constitute a riot and if the officer using the chemical incapacitant reasonably believes its use is necessary to stop and prevent more destructive behavior.
“The law clearly allows Portland Police to use effective tools necessary to control violent crowds,” House Minority Leader Christine Drazan told The Associated Press on Friday. “However, activist attorneys are deliberately misinterpreting legislation to prevent police from intervening. They have no business putting law enforcement and community safety at risk.”
Portland Police Sgt. Kevin Allen told AP that officers have been made aware of the “potential implications” of the legislation and that it’s being analyzed by the city attorney’s office.
“Until we have some clarity on the bill we have to follow the most restrictive interpretation of it,” Allen said.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday. Neither did lawmakers of the Democratic legislative caucuses of the Legislature, which is controlled by the Democratic Party.
Portland has seen ongoing, often violent protests since the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Some activists have complained that the police have been heavy handed in their response.
On Tuesday, police say 35 separate locations were targeted — including banks, retail stores, coffee shops, and government buildings.
Authorities say although police did not directly intervene, officers did give direction to disperse over a loudspeaker and a Mobile Field Force moved in, at which point the crowd splintered.
___
Sara Cline is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

CounterPunch.org
Sen. Bernard Sanders
2021 10 15
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/15/why-americans-dont-know-whats-in-the-build-back-better-act/

Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better legislation – and the need to lower prescription drug costs, expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision, greatly improve home health care, make child care and housing affordable, establish Paid Family and Medical Leave and address the existential threat of climate More

The post Why Americans Don’t Know What’s in the Build Back Better Act appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Foreign Policy
Hasan Ismaik
2021 10 15
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/15/jordan-palestine-israel-annex-west-bank-israel-occupation/

Amman should reannex the West Bank to end Israel’s illegal occupation, bring peace and prosperity, and give Palestinians democratic rights.

Ars Technica
Ron Amadeo
2021 10 15
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/google-search-on-mobile-gets-continuous-scrolling/

The mobile site and app will soon let you scroll and scroll.

Ars Technica
Jon Brodkin
2021 10 15
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/trumpist-county-clerk-barred-after-leak-of-voting-system-passwords-to-qanon/

Peters lied about "consultant" who copied data; deputy clerk had cameras disabled.

Scientific American Content
Mindy Weisberger, LiveScience
2021 10 15
https://www.livescience.com/meteorite-near-miss-bedroom-canada

The woman awoke to find the space rock laying next to her head

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

VICE US
Paul Blest
2021 10 15
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvzw43/brandon-fellows-capitol-rioter-represented-self-in-court

He’s one of several accused Capitol rioters who’ve fired their lawyers and chosen to represent themselves in court.

“”Anarchism”” – Google News

2021 10 15
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/socialism-without-antisemitism

Socialism Without Antisemitism  Tablet Magazine

“phenomenology” – Google News

2021 10 15
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/143

Physics – Dark Matter Alternative Passes Big Test  Physics

VICE US
David Gilbert
2021 10 15
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj8g57/qanon-ron-watkin-is-running-for-congress

The man who did more than anyone to facilitate the rise of the QAnon cult is now running for office in Arizona.

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 15
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/15/peter-thiel-bets-on-the-far-right-tech-tycoon-spending-millions-to-bankroll-trump-wing-of/

Peter Thiel bets on the far right: Tech tycoon spending millions to bankroll "Trump wing" of GOP  Salon

Jacobin
Alex N. Press
2021 10 15
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/american-workers-labor-militancy-covid-19-strike-unions/

Evidence is growing of an uptick in labor militancy across the United States. This week, ten thousand United Automobile Workers (UAW) members at John Deere began their first strike at the company since 1986, and there are several other private-sector strikes still ongoing, including two thousand nurses at a Catholic Health hospital in New York, […]

CounterPunch.org
Chris Gilbert
2021 10 15
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/15/squid-game-capitalist-game/

What would you call a society in which everybody is an equal, everyone gets a fair chance, but is at the same time cruel and destructive in a way never before seen in history? The new Korean series Squid Game models this kind of social situation in an abstract way: It depicts a scenario in which debt-ridden More

The post Squid Game, Capitalist Game appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Scientific American Content
Teresa Carey
2021 10 15
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/beethovens-unfinished-10th-symphony-brought-to-life-by-artificial-intelligence/

Nearly 200 years after his death, the German composer’s musical scratch was pieced together by machine—with a lot of human help.

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

VICE US
Paul Blest
2021 10 15
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/93yejz/pete-buttigieg-taking-parental-leave-makes-conservatives-angry

The party of family values can’t understand why the secretary of transportation is spending time with his family.

Scientific American Content
Carmen Sanchez, David Dunning
2021 10 15
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-who-jump-to-conclusions-show-other-kinds-of-thinking-errors/

Belief in conspiracy theories and overconfidence are two tendencies linked to hasty thinking

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

VICE US
Audrey Carleton
2021 10 15
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7b85m/the-us-wants-to-turn-both-coasts-into-massive-offshorwindfarms

The Biden administration wants to lease federal waters off of all American coasts for major windfarming projects.

Daily Infographic
Matt Gaedke
2021 10 15
https://dailyinfographic.com/fastest-trains-in-the-world

Trains are one of the icons of the Industrial Revolution and a testament to human innovation. In our current world trains seem like an older technology that hasn’t seen significant improvement in a few decades at least. Japan has been the leader in pushing trains to their limits over the past half century since their […]

The post Fastest Trains in the World first appeared on Daily Infographic.

“”Existentialism”” – Google News

2021 10 15
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stanley-kubrick-explain-ending-of-2001-a-space-odyssey/

Rare clip of Stanley Kubrick explaining the ending of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’  Far Out Magazine

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 15
https://www.best-infographics.com/us-cities-with-the-highest-rates-of-hypertension/

Hypertension is a health issue many of us have to deal with. It can cause heart disease and stroke if not treated early. This infographic from HealthChampion takes a look at US cities with highest rates of hypertension:

The post US Cities with the Highest Rates of Hypertension appeared first on Best Infographics.

Politico
Jessica Pishko
2021 10 15
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/15/mark-lamb-arizona-constitutional-sheriff-elections-republicans-514781

Charismatic and ambitious, Mark Lamb embodies a new kind of Trump-era lawman.

CounterPunch.org
Paul Street
2021 10 15
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/15/americas-instinctive-fascism-creeps-on/

Recently Norman Ornstein told Salon’s Chauncy de Vega that the United States is mired in a crisis of democracy that shows parallels with Germany’s descent into Nazism during the 1930s. Ornstein is right to worry about the nation’s ongoing lethal rightward drift beyond “normal” bourgeois democracy. That is how the United States’ political life is More

The post America’s Instinctive Fascism Creeps On appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

CounterPunch.org
Michael Welton
2021 10 15
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/15/an-entangled-history-christianity-faces-off-with-the-enlightenment/

The churches relationship to the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment is an entangled history. Margaret Jacobs (“The Enlightenment critique of Christianity,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity: vol. VII: Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution 1660-1815) states provocatively that: “The period after 1660 saw the emergence of the first sustained attack on Christianity from within Europe since More

The post An Entangled History: Christianity Faces Off With The Enlightenment appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

CounterPunch.org
Jonah Raskin
2021 10 15
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/15/another-shit-storm-in-berkeley/

The shit is hitting the fan in Berkeley, again. The city, which is notorious for not thinking clearly or honorably about People’s Park and its legacy, announced plans recently to install a public toilet on Haste Street directly in front of a legendary mural that Osha Neumann and O’Brien Thiele painted 45 years ago. The More

The post Another Shit Storm in Berkeley appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

It’s Going Down
It’s Going Down
2021 10 14
https://itsgoingdown.org/fire-from-below-zoe-baker-on-lessons-from-anarchist-history/

On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with anarchist historian and YouTuber, Zoe Baker, about lessons from anarchist history, what past struggles can teach us about the social movements of today, just what the hell an ‘anarcho-communist’ is, and how anarchists in the past have dealt with the question of organization,… Read Full Article

Arizona Daily Independent
ADI Staff Reporter
2021 10 14
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2021/10/14/additional-5-million-allocated-for-arizonas-small-businesses-for-back-to-work-program/

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 14
https://ktvz.com/news/crime-courts/2021/10/14/portland-police-100-anarchists-cause-more-than-500000-damage-in-downtown-violence/

Portland police: 100 anarchists cause more than $500,000 damage in downtown violence  KTVZ

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 14
https://anarchistnews.org/content/constructing-anarchisms-anarchy-criterion

from Libertarian Labyrinth

Let’s start with a story:

A human individual encounters anarchy and recognizes in it a radical alternative to the archic social relations that surround them and seem to limit them in a variety of ways. They embrace the notion and begin to internalize it, to the degree that their circumstances allow. This causes them to alter their behavior, their social practice, as they try to realize anarchy in an archic world.

At this point, they might say “I am an anarchist” and call their practices anarchism. But where anarchy is an idea or principle that one can presumably embrace without worrying too much about affiliation, however tangled some of the senses of the terms may be with anarchist ideologies and movements, claiming anarchism and making that anarchist declaration place us more obviously on complex, contested social terrain. Our declaration can hardly avoid association with a long history of similar declarations and, whether we like it or not, implicates us the ongoing discussion about anarchism, its focus, its characteristic expressions, etc.

This is admittedly a bit of a just-so story—a narrative that puts some flesh on the proposed general formula of anarchism. The situation of the would-be anarchist and the old hand trying to negotiate a place amid the changing circumstances in the anarchist milieus is, as often as not, more a matter of rocks and hard places, with the individual simultaneously attempting to accommodate the demands of both the elusive ideal of anarchy and the complexities of anarchism in all of its various forms. But the argument of the current work is that, even if we don’t get into this familiar predicament in such an orderly manner, understanding the general relation between a small set of basic concepts—archy, anarchy, anarchist, anarchism—may be key to extricating ourselves from the worst of its tangles.

It may also be one important tool in the general defense of the anarchist project.

⁂

At this point, I’ve spent a lot of time working on the promised exploratory typology of anarchisms, concentrating on extending the comparative apparatus I’ve been building around it to address an increasingly broad range of anarchisms and would-be anarchisms, while at the same time attempting to strip out various kinds of potentially partisan assumptions. I think the work will demonstrate that at least some of the distinctions that anarchists would like to make between anarchisms, near-anarchisms and authoritarian pretenders to the title can be established solely on the basis of formal adequacy. When we try to map the elements of a given anarchism or would-be anarchism onto the formula, most constructions will probably show themselves weak in some respects, but some will be such bad fits that they will simply seem implausible as examples of anarchism.

In “Constructing an Anarchism,” the “journey from anarchy to an –ism” included ten intermediate steps, simply because relating our most fundamental terms to so many other terms, and then relating those terms to one another, forced a certain degree of elaboration that we might not otherwise achieve. The formula proposed — Anarchism = (((an + arche)ist)ism) — specifies a particular path between those key terms, but the goal is now not to construct an anarchism, but instead to map an existing one. We can easily imagine it as a complementary project.

As long as the central operation in the formula—the combination an– and –arche—leads us to consider anarchy a radical alternative to the archic status quo, our other terms—the anarchist who internalizes anarchy and then the anarchism they create or express as a result—would seem to be recognizable as expressions of the anarchy of anarchisms we are trying to address. If that that is the case, then our next moves would seem fairly straightforward: engaging in the comparisons that allow us to establish common ground among them, identify instances of uneven development, compare notes, learn from one another, synthesize or explicitly specialize, etc. And that central operation would seem to be necessarily radical. No means no. Arche really does seem to indicate something fundamental, foundational. To internalize an anarchy understood in those terms and then to express it in practice is no small task. We have our work cut out for us. But, given that seemingly obvious fact, it would seem hard to mistake that work for any sort of obviously reformist tinkering.

So the capitalists, the monarchists, the fascists, the traditionalists, etc., all of whom appear to reject that sort of anarchy for some much more partial rejection of the status quo, would seem to be formally excluded, either because they explicitly embrace some other principle (voluntarity, etc.) or because their “anarchy” shares little but homonymy with our own.

This, however, is where the issue of “pluralism” with regard to meaning rears its head. Meaning arises from use, with etymology, lexical descriptions and the like influencing the development of that use, but not ultimately setting any hard limits on the potential semantic drift. There is no ultimate authority to which we could appeal to maintain the close connection of the word “anarchy” with the etymological construction an-arche and with the radical, fundamental rejection of the status that shapes at least some “anarchist” thought and practice. Nor, of course, is there any particular sanction that is attached to the uses of majorities—and anarchists have been working against the semantic grain with the language of “anarchy” right along. There are simply practical consequences if, imagining that we are resisting some kind of authority or dogma, we allow our key terms to drift free—not perhaps of precise, shared meanings, as those have been hard to come by throughout the development of anarchist thought, but of conversations and controversies in which those terms and their meanings at least remain a fundamental concern.

Elsewhere, I have suggested that a focus on what I might now call an “an-arche-centered anarchism” has historically been the function of an undercurrent or countercurrent among anarchisms. While it has never been “dominant” in any of the senses that anarchists might accept, that project has at least had the support of anarchists that it was hard to ignore or deny: Nettlau, Goldman, Berkman, Mella, Voline, Faure, etc. And if there have been libertarian figures for whom the language of “anarchy” was an unfortunate choice—Tarrida del Mármol, Guillaume, Leval, etc.—their voices were unlikely to drown out those of the anarchists for whom “the beautiful idea” remained beautiful indeed. It has at times seemed instructive—and a snarky sort of fun—to emphasize the ways in which the internal development of anarchism has been hard to clearly distinguish from the kinds of hostile takeovers contemplated by our authoritarian rivals. But if, for example, the anarchist communists were pretty stingy in the credit they would give their mutualistic predecessors, the conflict involved was largely driven by a clash between two conceptions of anarchy, both of which were in their way quite radical.

In the course of attempting to understand the history and development of anarchist ideas, it has been necessary to dwell on the ruptures and ideological coups that can be recognized as clearly internal to anarchism-in-general. I consider that work entirely consistent with a project of synthesis in the present, as the differentiation involved simply provides more fodder for combination and mutual correction. Revisiting, even emphasizing old conflicts in this context seems like a matter of picking useful fights, particularly as we can only get our feelings bruised, and that in the most indirect sort of way. 

But what the present work has underlined for me is the very different character of what I can only really describe as a struggle against anarchy, at least in the realm of ideas, in which we see so much nominally anarchist energy exerted in defense of “legitimate authority,” “justified hierarchy,” various forms of “pure” or “direct democracy,” etc. and in favor of voluntarity as an alternate principle, “pluralism” for its own sake, etc. My initial response to that agitation is unabashedly partisan, a defense of the “beautiful idea” that is a product of both long reflection on anarchist theory and the kind of passionate commitment that may be necessary to really embrace anarchy. But neither of those things are precisely shareable. Our reflections are our own and certainly the same is even more true of our passions. So the struggle in the context of this new work has been to try to make the case in favor of that “an-arche-centered anarchism” as much on purely practical grounds as possible.

⁂

The position that I’m inclined to champion is that anarchy, understood in that form of an-arche, is, in fact, clear enough in its meaning to function as a criterion. That basic sense—a rejection of existing foundations or fundamentals—is simple enough, even if understanding all that it entails in various specific contexts is not. That standard of formal adequacy seems broadly applicable. As we contemplate anarchistic practices or elaborate anarchistic theory, are we really saying “no”—and saying no to something fundamental to the existing systems of social relations that we oppose?

If we are indeed proposing that sort of thing, most of the objections I see raised seem a bit misguided. It is natural to wish to avoid specialized language and to avoid rhetoric that is needlessly alarming. But in this case we seem to be speaking in a kind of plain speech that even Chomsky might have to recognize as such. We can rationalize the reasons for a thoroughly revolutionary change in social relations as much as we like, but that is really the specialized discourse. While we may not feel that putting an end to exploitation and oppression is a project that should be associated with “chaos” or “disorder,” it’s hard to escape the sense that, if we are “speaking the language of the people,” our task is probably to confront the fact that, given existing systems and the pervasive effects they have on our sense of what is natural and possible, and to do so as directly as possible. A slogan like “anarchy is order” perhaps opens a new conversation, but it’s up to us to make the apparent paradox intelligible.

Tags: Constructing AnarchismsLibertarian LabyrinthShawn P. Wilbur

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 14
https://anarchistnews.org/content/our-position-elections

from Anarchist Communists Meanjin

By Iswed Tiggjan

Anarchists are often characterized as being opposed to elections or the vote. Yet anyone that has spent any time in an anarchist or anarchist inspired organisation will tell you that voting is our favorite pastime, one which we take almost any opportunity to undertake. Rather than being opposed to elections we would love nothing more than to see them expanded throughout all levels of society. In fact anarchists should be considered as the most strident proponents of elections and the vote.

Capitalism is not Democratic 

Anarchists do not take issue with democracy (although some may dislike the term), rather we take issue with the fact that the society we live in is far from democratic. While we may have the right to vote once every few years for the politicians that will then make decisions for us, the working class lives in a perpetual state of dictatorship. Each day when we go to work we are completely controlled by the authoritarian ruling of our boss or manager. Every moment of our working lives is dictated to us by tyrants with complete control over our ability to financially support ourselves. Even outside of the workplace it is hard to argue that we live in a truly democratic society. The working class may elect politicians every couple of years but once that singular act is done the people are largely swept from the scene of political decision making. One only has to look at how rarely a politician, once elected, makes a decision based on the actual will of their constituents to see that the idea of them ‘representing’ anyone in parliament is a sham. It is arguable how much of a voice these politicians really even have, when in reality they serve as little more than mouth pieces for the forces of global capital. 

We maintain that capitalism and the state are irreconcilable with a genuinely democratic society. For democracy to exist in reality, rather than simply on paper, it must be a direct democracy. Federalism, term-limits, instant recallability and delegation rather than representation. These are all vital components for actual existing democracy. Genuine democracy would require a social revolution to make a reality.

How then should we view the phenomenon of elections in capitalist ‘democracy’?

In short, elections serve as a useful distraction, a way to convince the working class that they have a say in how society works. Elections convince people to believe they have a stake in the very system oppressing and exploiting them. We may have a range of parties which we can choose from, but very little changes. There is no option to vote capitalism away, or the state, or even to have a say when it comes to acts such as going to war, or spending billions on nuclear submarines. Our two main parties are virtually identical on most of the major issues, and history shows that even ‘progressive’ minor parties slowly shed their veneers of radicalism as they progress closer and closer to power. For the rare few that don’t, capitalism responds with their destruction – either through violent and bloody coups, or through economic assassination, utilizing mechanisms such as the world bank and IMF. 

Some may respond with the contention that a majority of people do not currently wish capitalism or the state to disappear and that therefore our inability to vote these things away is not really an issue. Instead elections allow us to vote for non-systematic changes which we want to see. This is partially correct. Some small changes can occur through elections and it would be remiss of us to  say that things cannot improve slightly by replacing a party like the LNP with some other alternative. 

However there are some issues with this line of thinking. The first is that we live at a stage of history where minor changes are not enough. The climate crisis is escalating rapidly, global inequality is skyrocketing, people are becoming worse-off by the day, while the existential threats of fascism and nuclear war are resurfacing with rapid speed. These are all factors which capitalist ‘democracy’ has shown itself as utterly incapable of resolving. We cannot vote these issues away, only international revolution can begin to resolve them.

The second issue to consider is the effectiveness of achieving any meaningful change through the electoral system. History has shown many times that it is militant mass movements and direct action which create meaningful change, not elected politicians. Reforms can and have been won from conservative governments, while so-called progressive governments have taken them away. The central factor is the level of organisation and power of the working class. This last point comes back to the role of elections in capitalist society. They exist to funnel energy away from direct action, militant organising and the growth of working class power towards door-knocking, electioneering and lobbying politicians. They exist to make sure our energy and our desire for change is funnelled into a mechanism which is incapable of threatening capitalism, the state and the other forces in our society that oppress us. 

It should also be noted that elections also serve as a useful battleground in which the capitalist class can play out their internal conflicts and competing interests.

Different parties, same imperialist policies

Elections as Harm Reduction

It is also worth touching on the common argument of elections as harm reduction. That is that either the incumbent government, or a party trying to become the incumbent is simply too evil and too harmful to be allowed to win the election. Therefore even though there is an understanding that elections aren’t the main battlefield, and are even counter productive – they have to be the focus just this once in order to ensure the lesser evil wins. This is a particularly understandable argument. As anarchists we will rejoice should the LNP lose the upcoming elections, and we accept that it may improve conditions somewhat for oppressed and exploited groups in Australia. Fundamentally however, the root causes of oppression will remain unaddressed. The issue is that every election is seen in reformist circles as ‘too important’, with the promise that after focusing on an election ‘just this once’, next time things will be done differently. But this will never be the case. Instead radicals and militants will continue to be told that now isn’t the time, that getting x politician into or out of power is the only thing that matters. The struggle for real change is always pushed back to the distant future in lieu of the most important election ever. Whether out of naivatity or a desire to maintain control, these claims that we must put our energy towards elections are inherently reactionary in their defence of the status quo. The clearest expression of this phenomenon is the recent US elections. Despite the removal of Trump, the US military machine continues wreaking havoc, saber rattling has increased with China, children continue to be placed in detention camps & exploitation and oppression continue unabated. In short little has changed. 

On Abstention 

Our positions should not be construed as a stringent argument against voting. We maintain that calling for abstention from voting is an argument with little relevancy for us in Australia. Rather this is a call to consider where we place our energy and our effort. It must also be noted that while we consider Australia to be a largely undemocratic country, we maintain that the few democratic freedoms the working class do possess need to be defended, maintained and expanded wherever possible. This is not a legitimation of parliament on our part, rather it comes from the understanding that the working class must wherever possible be encouraged to fight for and conquer greater freedoms for itself, freedoms which then create more fertile terrain for further victories. How these democratic freedoms are won matters, they can’t be given to the working class. They have to be conquered by our own efforts.

Politicians Won’t Save Us, We Have to Save Ourselves

This all leads us to the core of the issue of elections in capitalist society; they train us to see politics, decision making and creating change as the realm of a small minority in parliament, rather than something which must be undertaken by the entirety of the working class at all levels of society. It trains us to look for saviours in the guise of charismatic and progressive candidates acting as apparent representatives of the people. History has shown us that politicians are not going to save us. Not a single progressive party in history has been capable of truly resolving the oppression and exploitation baked into the capitalist system. What’s worse is that experience has also shown that progressive parties once in power will use that power to attack the movements which got them there in the first place in defence of the very capitalist system they claimed to be reforming. The situation we find ourselves in is too dire for us to continue placing our hopes in saviours, who even if well  intentioned are structurally constrained to take on the role of oppressors once elected.  But we can rejoice in the fact that the working class has never needed a saviour, rather it needs to understand the power it holds to reshape all of society, and to directly win the changes it seeks through its own actions. 

Tags: electionsAnarchist Communists Meanjinaustralia101

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 14
https://anarchistnews.org/content/anathema-vol-7-issue-6

from Anathema

Volume 7 Issue 6

Volume 7 Issue 6 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)

Volume 7 Issue 6 (PDF for printing 11×17)

In this issue:

What Went Down
By The Numbers
Outlaws Rising
Destroy 5G
On Sabotage
Return To Normal?
Eviction Defense
The Great Flood
It Could Happen Here Review
Krishna O Les Deseos
Tags: AnathemapublicationPhiladelphia

Forward

2021 10 14
https://forward.com/news/476670/jews-built-hollywood-so-why-is-their-history-erased-from-the-academys-new/

The new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles neglects Hollywood’s Jewish founders

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 14
https://www.best-infographics.com/all-about-mined-metals/

It is no secret that metals play a big role in our lives. Iron, aluminum, copper, and precious metals are the building blocks of the global economy. This infographic from Visual Capitalist takes a look at all the metals we mine:

The post All About Mined Metals [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

VICE US
Jeff Ernst
2021 10 14
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4avk59/mexican-government-seizing-more-illegal-fentanyl

Fentanyl produced by Mexican criminal groups is driving a sharp increase in deaths from overdoses in the U.S.

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 14
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1133872_efficiency-not-range-is-what-drives-lucid-is-it-the-first-true-rival-to-tesla

Efficiency, not range, is what drives Lucid: Is it the first true rival to Tesla?  Green Car Reports

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 14
https://www.best-infographics.com/parenting-philosophies/

Bringing a new life into this world is amazing but comes with its own unique set of responsibilities. It is not always easy to be the perfect parent but by studying various parenting philosophies, you will have a better chance of striking the right balance. This infographic from Playground Equipment takes a look at various […]

The post 23 Parenting Philosophies [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

Forward

2021 10 14
https://forward.com/culture/476671/velvet-underground-warhol-feelies-lou-reed-todd-haynes-rem-flaming-lips/

They influenced Sonic Youth, the Feelies, the Violent Femmes, Yo La Tengo, R.E.M and countless others. But who were The Velvet Underground really?

Forward

2021 10 14
https://forward.com/culture/476579/velvet-underground-todd-haynes-lou-reed-john-cale-documentary-delmore/

Todd Haynes’s new documentary about the Velvet Underground doesn’t destroy the myths around the legendary band; it just creates new ones.

Ars Technica
Sam Machkovech
2021 10 14
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/vive-flow-is-htcs-newest-all-in-one-vr-headset-coming-october-15-for-499/

An Android phone is required—because it’s the controller.

BBC News – Science & Environment

2021 10 14
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58883328

A team of people in the north of England are now making clothes, from seeds to finished garments.

It’s FOSS News
Ankush Das
2021 10 14
https://news.itsfoss.com/ubuntu-21-10-release/

Ubuntu 21.10 is an exciting release with GNOME 40 and several notable changes. Sailing ahead to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS already?

The post Ubuntu 21.10 is Available Now! Finally Brings the Much Awaited GNOME 40 With Ubuntu Twist appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

VICE US
Lauren Kaori Gurley
2021 10 14
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkb7vg/10000-john-deere-workers-go-on-strike

"This is about wages. With what other people are paying, it doesn’t matter if this is McDonald’s or Wendy’s. We’ve been stagnant compared to everyone else." 

Jacobin
Alex N. Press
2021 10 14
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/heaven-hill-kentucky-bourbon-workers-strike-overtime-scheduling/

Roughly 420 workers at Heaven Hill Distillery — a major bourbon producer whose brands include Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna, and Old Fitzgerald — have now been on strike for a month at the company’s bottling and warehouse operation in Bardstown, Kentucky. At issue is Heaven Hill’s push for concessions in a new five-year […]

Jacobin
Juri Meda
2021 10 14
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/italy-communist-party-comics-illustrated-children-press/

Children’s periodicals have long been a tool of patriotic propaganda, not least during the great military clashes of the twentieth century. In his 1976 study, Claudio Carabba documented how bourgeois Italy’s biggest children’s weekly, Il Corriere dei Piccoli, was long used by first the liberal ruling classes and then the Fascist regime to speak to […]

Ars Technica
Ax Sharma
2021 10 14
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/verizons-visible-wireless-investigating-hacked-customer-accounts/

Company suspects credential stuffing, but questions remain.

It’s FOSS News
Jacob Crume
2021 10 14
https://news.itsfoss.com/kde-plasma-5-23-release/

KDE Plasma 5.23 ticks all the right boxes to spice up your desktop environment experience. Happy 25th anniversary, KDE!

The post KDE Plasma 5.23 Release Marks its 25th Anniversary With Exciting Improvements appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

Ars Technica
Ax Sharma
2021 10 14
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/hacker-x-the-american-who-built-a-pro-trump-fake-news-empire-unmasks-himself/

He was hired to build a fake news op but now wants to put things right.

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 14
https://www.best-infographics.com/the-subscription-box-model-explained/

Subscription box businesses aim to make shopping automatic for customers. They enable shoppers to sign up to receive a product on a continual basis. Customers can pay to get a curated selection of items, products they’ve run out of, or member-only perks. This infographic from Top Subscription Boxes explains how this business model works:

The post The Subscription Box Model Explained [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

Scientific American Content
Rachel Crowell
2021 10 14
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gnarly-centuries-old-mathematical-quandaries-get-new-solutions/

A set of puzzles called Diophantine problems are often simple to state but hard to solve—though progress could have big implications for the future of mathematics

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Associated Press

2021 10 14
http://apnews.com/article/hezbollah-middle-east-lebanon-beirut-explosions-56b61328f420caf4e259aeb3f428fb9a

2021-10-14 08:21:05Lebanese army stand guard near the Justice Palace as supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal groups protest against Judge Tarek Bitar who is investigating last year’s deadly seaport blast, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
BEIRUT (AP) — Armed clashes broke out in Beirut Thursday during a protest against the lead judge investigating last year’s massive blast in the city’s port, as tensions over the domestic probe boiled over.
Gunfire echoed in the capital, and ambulances rushed to the scene, sirens wailing, amid reports of casualties. A Beirut hospital said it received the body of one person who had died and eight who were injured, according to a local television channel.
The protest outside the Justice Palace was called for by the powerful Hezbollah group and its allies who are demanding the removal of Judge Tarek Bitar.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the gunfire, but tensions were high along a former civil war front-line between Muslim Shiite and Christian areas.
The right wing Christian Lebanese Forces mobilized supporters Wednesday evening after Hezbollah and its allies called for the protest at the Justice Palace, located in a Christian area. Videos circulating on social media showed supporters of the Christian Lebanese Forces marching in the streets, carrying large crosses.
A journalist with The Associated Press saw one man open fire with a pistol during the protest, as well as gunmen shooting in the direction of protesters from the balcony of a building. At least two men were seen injured and bleeding. The army deployed heavily and sent patrols to the area to search for the gunmen, following the exchanges of gunfire between the Muslim and Christian sides of the capital.
In a statement, Prime Minister Najib Mikati appealed for calm and urged people “not to be dragged into civil strife.”
Hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrates that had been improperly stored at a port warehouse detonated on August 4, 2020, killing at least 215 people, injuring thousands and destroying parts of nearby neighborhoods. It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history and has further devastated the country already roiled by political divisions and unprecedented economic and financial meltdown.
Bitar, the second judge to lead the complicated investigation, has come up against formidable opposition from Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group and its allies who accuse him of singling out politicians for questioning, most of them allied with Hezbollah.
None of Hezbollah’s officials have so far been charged in the 14-month-old investigation.
The armed clash could derail the country’s month-old government even before it begins tackling Lebanon’s unprecedented economic crisis.
A Cabinet meeting was canceled Wednesday after Hezbollah demanded urgent government action against the judge. One Hezbollah-allied minister said he and other Cabinet members would stage a walkout if Bitar isn’t removed.

Politico
Stephanie Murray
2021 10 14
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/14/democrats-suburbs-lets-fund-the-police-515966

There’s no conclusive evidence that the "defund the police" movement seriously damaged Democrats in 2020. But candidates aren’t taking any chances.

Indigenous Action Media
admin
2021 10 14
https://www.indigenousaction.org/indigenous-peoples-day-of-rage-2021-action-report/

Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage 2021: Action ReportFrom www.Indigenouspeoplesdayofrage.org(More pics and info to be added as reports come in) From…

Indigenous Action Media
admin
2021 10 14
https://www.indigenousaction.org/indigenous-peoples-day-of-rage-round-two-kinlani-report-back/

Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage Round Two – Kinłani Report Back As the sun set on Sunday, Oct. 11 a…

Arizona Daily Independent
Cronkite News
2021 10 13
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2021/10/13/nonessential-border-travel-ban-to-be-lifted-after-nearly-20-months/

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 13
https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/524845-419413-destruction-marks-anniversary-of-portland-activists-murder

Pamplin Media Group – Destruction marks anniversary of Portland activist’s death  Pamplin Media Group

Forward

2021 10 13
https://forward.com/yiddish/476647/video-actor-jacob-lewin-describes-yiddish-cultural-life-in-the-lodz-ghetto/

Forward

2021 10 13
https://forward.com/culture/476628/this-woman-thought-a-holocaust-diet-was-a-good-idea/

The Christian weight loss guru has a lot of questionable teachings according to HBO’s “The Way Down” docuseries.

Current Affairs
Current Affairs
2021 10 13
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/10/is-christopher-hitchens-still-worth-reading/

An interview with Ben Burgis about his upcoming book: “Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, Where He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.”

Ars Technica
Jennifer Ouellette
2021 10 13
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/self-healing-quasicrystals-may-resurrect-hopes-of-practical-applications/

Unusual property reduces the defects that have hindered commercialization to date.

“Eugene Thacker” – Google News

2021 10 13
https://www.invisibleoranges.com/backpatches-elbowpatches-8/

Backpatches & Elbowpatches #8: Black Metal Theory  Invisible Oranges

Scientific American Content
Philip Lubin, Alexander Cohen
2021 10 13
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/planetary-defense-is-good-but-is-planetary-offense-better/

A new approach could mitigate the most damaging effects of an imminent asteroid or comet strike—or ensure many threatening objects never get close to striking Earth in the first place

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Politico

2021 10 13
https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-faces-privacy-fine-of-up-to-e36m/

VICE US
Audrey Carleton
2021 10 13
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4avkam/these-companies-are-making-physical-goods-out-of-thin-air

Carbon recycling turns gases sequestered from industrial processes into chemicals for product creation.

Politico
Associated Press
2021 10 13
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/13/consumer-prices-inflation-surge-september-515881

The unexpected burst of inflation this year reflects sharply higher prices for food and energy.

Forward

2021 10 13
https://forward.com/fast-forward/476617/from-judeo-greek-to-karaim-oxford-courses-on-12-rare-jewish-languages-aim/

Yiddish is the only language offered by the program that is not endangered or extinct.

Scientific American Content
Keolu Fox
2021 10 13
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genomes-show-the-history-and-travels-of-indigenous-peoples/

A new study demonstrates “I ka wā mamua, ka wā ma hope,” or “the future is in the past”

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
Chris Coplan
2021 10 13
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/the-rebel-lounge-past-future-phoenix-music-scene-mason-jar-stephen-chilton-11964775

The venue’s new focus is on short-term safety while maintaining its vital role in the arts scene.
In the past, we’ve published "Better Know a Venue." This regular column highlighted the coolest and coziest places to hear live music in Phoenix any day of the week.…

VICE US
David Gilbert
2021 10 13
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akg5jz/trumps-pick-for-arizona-governor-just-had-dinner-with-qanons-ron-watkins

The thin line that separated the GOP from full-on QAnon conspiracies has been eroding for months.

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 12
https://ktar.com/story/4724555/tempe-to-hold-first-in-person-council-meeting-in-18-months-thursday/

Tempe to hold first in-person council meeting in 18 months Thursday  KTAR.com

anarchistnews.org
Cory
2021 10 12
https://anarchistnews.org/content/paul-z-simons-immediatism-podcast

Two additional Paul Z. Simons texts have been made available on Immediatism.com. "An Anarchist Affection for Democracy" identifies the tension between anarchists who believe direct forms of democracy have utility and those, more nihilist-oriented, who believe it has no place. The latter group, as described by Simons, are more concerned with destroying all structures of power regardless whether they are horizontal, as direct democracy is described in this essay to be. "In a Moral Universe There Are No Anarchists" is Simon’s expression of support for a fellow writer suffering under accusations from within the anarchist milieu.

Both of these essays and most of those previously recorded on Immediatism (included below) are available in the Ardent Press book, A Full and Fighting Heart, available from LittleBlackCart.com.

An Anarchist Affection for Democracy part 1

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/651-an-anarchist-affection-for-…

An Anarchist Affection for Democracy part 2

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/652-an-anarchist-affection-for-…

In a Moral Universe There Are No Anarchists

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/650-in-a-moral-universe-there-a…

Stolen Comrades (as El Errante)

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/613-stolen-comrades-by-el-errante

John Brown’s Body part 1

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/611-john-browns-body-1-by-paul-…

John Brown’s Body part 2

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/612-john-browns-body-2-by-paul-…

Illegalism: Why Pay for a Revolution on the Installment Plan When You Can Steal One? part 1

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/475-illegalism-1-why-pay-for-a-…

Illegalism part 2

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/476-illegalism-2-by-paul-z-simons

Illegalism part 3

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/477-illegalism-3-by-paul-z-simons

Illegalism part 4

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/478-illegalism-4-by-paul-z-simons

Illegalism part 5

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/479-illegalism-5-by-paul-z-simons

Pure Black: An Emerging Consensus Among Some Comrades

https://immediatism.com/archives/podcast/324-pure-black-an-emerging-cons…

The Organization’s New Clothes

https://immediatism.com/archives/495

Continue to send feedback and requests to Cory@Immediatism.com and your comment may be shared on a future episode.

Tags: immediatismpodcastPaul Z. SimonsEl Errantehakim beydemocracyillegalismJohn Brown

Ars Technica
John Timmer
2021 10 12
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/the-shifting-economics-of-solar-power-in-china/

Adding storage could allow solar to produce nearly half of China’s electricity.

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 12
https://www.best-infographics.com/signs-your-wordpress-site-got-hacked/

WordPress is a pretty secure platform but the themes and plugins you install may have vulnerabilities that could lead to your website getting hacked. This infographic from iThemes takes a look at 7 signs your website is hacked:

The post 7 Signs Your WordPress Site is Hacked [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

The Intercept
Sam Biddle
2021 10 12
https://theintercept.com/2021/10/12/facebook-secret-blacklist-dangerous/

Experts say the public deserves to see the list, a clear embodiment of U.S. foreign policy priorities that could disproportionately censor marginalized groups.

The post Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” appeared first on The Intercept.

Autonomies
Julius Gavroche
2021 10 12
https://autonomies.org/2021/10/the-metaphysics-of-capitalist-radicality/

From the Lundi matin collective (#308, 11/10/2021), a text-intervention by Jean-Marc Royer … La critique d’un ordre social et politique a besoin d’une perspective, d’un horizon de sens pour parvenir à problématiser les analyses; le seul point de vue qui … Continue reading →

Gizmodo
Brianna Provenzano
2021 10 12
https://gizmodo.com/john-deere-workers-sure-look-like-they-re-about-to-go-o-1847847258

John Deere workers are inching precipitously close to a strike after they overwhelmingly voted to reject a new six-year collective bargaining agreement that had been recommended by the union representing them, the United Auto Workers (UAW).
Read more…

VICE US
Anya Zoledziowski
2021 10 12
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dyvay7/program-allows-canadians-pay-rent-to-indigenous-communities

A nonprofit agency set up the program encouraging average homeowners to pay about $400 annually to First Nations on whose territory they live or work. 

VICE US
Matthew Gault
2021 10 12
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/g5gz5y/archivists-create-a-searchable-index-of-107-million-science-articles

More than 107 million scientific journals have been catalogued and turned into a general index. The size of the archive is 38 terabytes.

Ars Technica
Andrew Cunningham
2021 10 12
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/microsoft-puts-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-in-its-app-store-for-faster-updating/

New WSL preview is available in the Microsoft Store for Windows 11 users now.

Scientific American Content
Naomi Oreskes
2021 10 12
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-when-talking-to-the-public-please-speak-plainly/

Jargon is appropriate when you’re speaking with colleagues, but it’s a turnoff for the rest of us

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Jacobin
Aliki Kosyfologou
2021 10 12
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/syriza-greece-radical-left-austerity-covid-19-climate-change-rebuild/

“Crystal-clear waters, constant sunshine, explosive local flavors and sublime sunsets”: so promised the “Endless Greek Summer,” Greece’s official 2020 campaign to promote tourism. A year and an environmental disaster later, everyone is asking where this summer went — and who actually enjoyed it. According to a poll for the Ιnstitute of Retail Consumer Goods (IELKA), […]

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
Katya Schwenk
2021 10 12
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/tech-companies-now-own-more-than-10-percent-of-maricopa-county-property-listings-12156324

Three house-flipping tech companies now own a major share of Maricopa County’s property listings.
Over 12 percent of property listings in the Phoenix area are now held by just three major “iBuyers”— tech companies that specialize in house flipping. Over the last several years, the Phoenix real estate market has become a major hub for iBuyers.…

New Politics
Paul Le Blanc
2021 10 12
https://newpol.org/beyond-kronstadt/

One must go beyond Kronstadt to understand Kronstadt. One must grasp, first of all, the struggle for human liberation and the hope of Communism.

Read more ›

The post Beyond Kronstadt appeared first on New Politics.

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 12
https://www.redpepper.org.uk/rudolf-rocker-an-anarchist-rabbi-in-london/

Rudolf Rocker: an anarchist ‘rabbi’ in London  Red Pepper

Infographics Archive
Jessica Smith
2021 10 12
https://infographicsarchive.com/visual-branding/

With visual branding, what you see is what you get. And this is one concept that’s vital for businesses in several ways. First, it’s the images that help a company stand out among its competitors. Consider companies such as Apple or McDonald’s: how many people cannot recognize their brand logos? Precisely! Yet, visual recognition accounts …

The post The Ultimate Guide to Visual Branding appeared first on Infographics Archive.

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 12
https://www.best-infographics.com/understanding-e-waste/

It is no secret that we are creating more e-waste every year. In fact, the vast majority of it is not being recycled the right way. This infographic from Raconteur takes a closer look at this issue:

The post Understanding E-Waste [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 11
https://anarchistnews.org/content/critical-theory-ursula-le-guin%E2%80%99s-always-coming-home

From Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism

These are my comments, presented on October 9, 2021, at the Ninth Biennial International Herbert Marcuse conference, on the panel “Ecology and Revolution.” My co-panelists were Thais Gobo, Sergio Bedoya Cortés, and Dan Fischer.

“’Is the world at its end?’

[…] ‘There is no end.’” (Le Guin 281)

In the realm of speculative fiction, the late historian Richard Stites identified three emergent themes in art from the early Soviet period: namely, portrayals of capitalist hells (or dystopias), alternative and anti-modern utopias, and communist heavens (Stites).1 In the century since the Russian Revolution, utopian and dystopian anti-capitalist themes have resonated in science fiction, including literature, films, and games. For instance, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921) inspired George Orwell’s 1984 (1948), while the visionary anarcha-feminist Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home (1985) pays tribute not only to Zamyatin but also to their common predecessors: namely, the anarchist novelist Lev Tolstoy, and the anarcho-communist theorist Peter Kropotkin. A generation before the Russian Revolution overthrew Tsarism and landlordism, the British poet William Morris had written News from Nowhere (1890) as an imaginative journey to a liberated England of the future, organized along free-communist and ecological lines.

In this sense, Le Guin’s award-winning2 novel Always Coming Home combines elements of heavenly communism with anti-modern and alternative utopianism to seek out a “good place” for humanity, even within the precarious context of a future climate-devastated Earth (Le Guin 19). In the words of John P. Clark, this book “is a critique of ‘living outside the World.’ And it is a critique aimed at us” (Clark). In this presentation, I will elucidate Le Guin’s reconstructive vision, which heralds our potential for harmony and “liv[ing] inside the world,” while also contemplating her portrayal of the grim realities of socio-political oppression and ecological crisis (156). I will then compare Le Guin’s views on technology, gender, and authoritarianism with the critical perspectives of Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, before concluding.

Rendering homage to her parents, the ethnologists Alfred Louis and Theodora Kroeber, Le Guin (1929-2018) uses anthropological approaches to narrate this exploration of ‘future history.’ As an interdisciplinary work, Always Coming Home combines speculative ethnology with poetry, parables, music, spiritual journeys, and emblematic memoirs to (re)construct the world of so-called Kesh culture. In “the Valley” of California in the deep future, the Kesh have set up an egalitarian society based on anarcha-feminist principles of care, free love, and the gift economy.3 Among the Kesh, hierarchies between mental and manual labor are relics of the past. Valley people practice both hunting and gathering as well as communal horticulture, insofar as the two-season climate (wet-dry) allows. The lands surrounding each Kesh settlement are divided into “hunting” and “planting” sides. Although five Houses exist in the Valley, they are “not arranged in any hierarchy of power, value, etc., nor [i]s there rivalry among them for status.” On the one hand, to be “rich” in Kesh society means to be generous; on the other, Kesh culture associates violence with masculinity (Le Guin 44, 70-1, 83, 93, 128n123, 158, 175), such that, in this work, “[t]he patriarchal […] is identified with the imperialistic” (Jameson 67).

The Kesh practice matrilineal exogamy: in other words, men go live with their wives’ families after marriage, and partners bond across communities (8-9, 44). They are also sex-positive: men proposition women erotically from positions of supplication, not domination, as adolescent boys engage in gay banter, and LGBT couples freely cohabitate (219, 366). The Kesh “dance the Moon” every year, when all marriages and partnerships are temporarily dissolved, and men and women ritualistically join together for nights of lunar-inspired group sex. Comprised of groups of towns within the wilderness rather than cities dominating the countryside, Kesh settlements are organized around the heyimas, a sacred space dedicated to learning, book-making, and the creation of art (Le Guin 242-50, 274, 298, 314-6).

Through the practice of “heyiya,” or the recognition of the sacred and boundless interconnectedness of humanity, flora, and fauna,Valley peoples practice a religion lacking gods. As such, their belief-system recalls Daoism, Buddhism, Hermann Cohen’s vision of a “religion of reason,” and the Lakota philosophy of mitakuye oyasin (or the interrelatedness of all life). It hearkens back to the Neolithic, when it is believed that there was “no separation between the secular and the sacred” (Eisler 23). Moreover, Le Guin’s concept of heyiya resembles the traditional Chinese idea of qi, or “life-force,”and the Freudian libido. The interconnected spirals of the heyiya-if, known as “the visual form of an idea which pervaded the thought and culture of the Valley,” strongly resemble the Daoist taijitu, with the latter’s dualities of light and dark (Le Guin 45).

Through heyiya, the Kesh do not repress contemplation of mortality, but rather, integrate reflection on death into song, dance, and poetry. Like Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, they acknowledge that existence is pervaded by pain and suffering. Valley people recognize rather than deny humans’ animality, and seek to emulate the mutual aid practiced by our cousins, who “live softly” and peacefully, and “don’t make it hard to live.” Though they utilize animal products, the Kesh refer to non-human animals as people, as in the Russian животные (“living beings”) (Le Guin 83-94, 112, 114, 160, 366-7).

In ecological terms, this future-world is marked by capital’s desolation of the global climate. Implicitly speaking to the threat of sea-level rise posed by the melting of the world’s glaciers and polar ice caps, Grey Bull recalls a journey by sailboat to what must previously have been the San Francisco Bay Area, whose houses, buildings, streets, and roads now lie at “the bottom of the sea” (Le Guin 138).

“Under the mud in the dark of the sea there

books are, bones are […].

There are too many souls there” (Le Guin 390).

Speculatively, there may be an intertextual connection between this estranging journey into the effects of global warming portrayed by Le Guin, and the premise of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017), which features a future wherein the polar icecaps have melted, with New York—like other low-lying cities—irreversibly inundated. Steven Spielberg’s film Artificial Intelligence (2001) is similarly set in a flooded Earth of the future. Likewise, at the conclusion of Planet of the Apes (1968), audiences learn that this dystopian world is in fact our own, deep in the future, after human society has collapsed. By contrast, in Always Coming Home—despite the ecological constraints imposed not only by catastrophic global warming, but also by chemical and radioactive pollution of the environment—Le Guin’s sympathetic portrayal of Kesh society arguably constitutes an (an)archaeology of the future: a vision, in other words, of “what [we] can become” (Le Guin 136-41, 159; Eisler 5). With the help of an information “Exchange,” the Kesh use soft technologies, including cybernetics, railways, and solar energy, to decentralize production and decision-making—thus integrating the past visions of Peter Kropotkin, William Morris, Lev Tolstoy, Murray Bookchin, and Marshall Sahlins, among others (Le Guin 379-80).

Valley vs. Condor: Kesh vs. Dayao

Le Guin’s narrator and alter ego Stone Telling emblematically experiences “two radically different cultures” (Clark): namely, that of the “introverted but cooperative” Valley people (or Kesh), and that of the Condor people, otherwise known as the Dayao. The Condor are a nomadic group of marauders who practice militarism, ultra-misogyny, slavery, and cruelty toward animals (Le Guin 29). Being the daughter of a Valley woman known as Willow and the Condor commander Terter Abhao, Stone Telling finds herself between worlds. As an adolescent, she embarks on a dystopian spiritual journey of exile from the Valley north with Abhao, and suffers in the City of Condor for seven years.

Named by the Kesh for the gruesome carrion bird, the Condor are “Men of no House [or home],” who are “at war with every peoples of the lands […]” (Le Guin 16, 192, 379). Theirs is a dominator society, where “male dominance, male violence, and a generally hierarchic and authoritarian social structure [are] the norm” (Eisler 45). Farmers known as tyon serve the military bureaucracy, which in turn invests in “Great Weapons” with which to conquer, extract, and enslave. Stone Telling describes with dismay how Condor men brutalize non-human animals, and questions why they ever had tried to resurrect imperialism. For the author, hyper-masculinity, domination, and violence are all linked: “Everything among the Dayao had to have a chief […]. Everything they did was war.” In other words, they “stood in no relation to anything in the world” (Le Guin 38, 190, 199, 349, 380).

In this pyramidal society, “True Condors” can only be men, and literacy is violently restricted to the soldier caste. “Condor Women” occupy an intermediate position in the social hierarchy, while “all other women, foreigners, and animals” are viewed with contempt as “hontik,” or “half-animal[s].” The Dayao effectively practice purdah, or gender apartheid, as well as polygamy, and wives are expected “to have babies continuously.” Given the hegemonic view among the Dayao that women are viewed as men’s property, honor killings are normalized and even encouraged. This contrast starkly with Kesh grammar, thought, and social practice, which—like the Anarresti language in Le Guin’s other ‘ambiguous’ anarchist utopia, The Dispossessed (1974)—“makes no provision for a relation of ownership between human beings” (Le Guin 42n40, 193-9, 200, 340-8, 345-6).

Through their casteism, gross sexism, and ultra-violence, the Condor soldiers recall the ancient Greeks, Vikings, Mongols, conquistadores, and other slaveowners of yore, plus the Hindutva and Taliban of today—not to mention Frank Herbert’s fictional portrayal of House Harkonnen in Dune (1965). The reactionary modernism and technical reason they practice—evinced in their use of napalm, and in their reconstruction of battle tanks—bring to mind U.S. and Nazi imperialism.

Having realized the “wrong way” of life in the City of Condor, Stone Telling recruits her father into helping her leave with her infant daughter Ekwerkwe and servant Esiryu. Though Terter is killed for his insubordination, the female trio succeed in escaping. Returning to the Valley not to intimidate or colonize, as Abhao—who “was in mind and heart no warrior at all”—had done under orders decades prior, Stone Telling renames herself “Woman Coming Home” (Le Guin 34-6, 353-8, 368). Ultimately, the author closes by denouncing “the manipulative world of domination we actually find ourselves in,” and affirming “the cooperative world of freedom we are capable of creating” (Clark).

Elements of Critical Theory in Always Coming Home

Le Guin was an anarcha-feminist who was well-versed in the writings of Bookchin, Kropotkin, and presumably also Tolstoy. I am unaware of her having read or directly engaged the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School. Nonetheless, they were contemporary radicals for many years, and many of the concerns raised in Always Coming Home closely parallel the critical analyses made by Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. Indeed, Le Guin all but cites Fromm’s The Sane Society (1955) when she concludes that “[w]hat we call strength [the Condor] calls sickness; what we call success it calls death” (Le Guin 380). Here, I will briefly examine three common themes found in Le Guin, Fromm, and Marcuse’s social theories: the dialectical analysis of technology, the avowal of feminist humanism, and the framing of psychosexual sadomasochism and political authoritarianism as dynamic systems.

Considering that the Kesh ‘economy’—such as it is—bases itself on hunting, gathering, and communal horticulture, and that the world depicted in Always Coming Home has been devastated by global warming and industrial pollution, some might take Le Guin to be a Luddite, and/or sympathetic to undialectical “anti-civ” discourses. Yet, neither such interpretation would be convincing. The author clearly favors literacy, learning, and life-long education for all, together with the egalitarian practice of medicine, and the use of “soft” technologies, such as gardening, sailboats, trains, and solar energy. In this sense, Le Guin takes a dialectical view of technology, whereby the so-called “Exchange” can help the Kesh designs tools with which to build an anarchist society, but it can also facilitate the Dayao’s militarist and genocidal expansionism.4 In turn, as we know, Marcuse and Fromm saw modern technology as a double-edged sword that could radically reduce the need for alienated labor and provide enough for all while also greasing the wheels toward fascist authoritarianism and collective self-destruction through war and ecological collapse.

Beyond this, Le Guin’s anarcha-feminist vision overlaps with aspects of Marcuse’s socialist feminism and Fromm’s psychosocial interest in matriarchies. Dialectically, the psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow critiques Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization (1955) as advancing an “anti-masculinist stance,” while also “manifest[ing] a near-complete invisibility […] of women as subjects” (Chodorow 140). Although it is true that Marcuse took several decades to advance a specifically feminist critique, in his last decade of life, he strongly endorsed the feminist movement for the potential he saw in it to transform society in a non-repressive way. In “Marxism and Feminism,” Marcuse hails the women’s rights movement, envisions a “feminist socialist” future, and endorses the androgynous ideal (Marcuse 165-172). Likewise, Fromm studied the findings of anthropologists like Robert Briffault to contest the orthodox-Freudian idea that the Oedipus complex is universal. Taking into account matriarchal and matrilineal societies of the past, such as Minoan Crete and Çatal-Hüyük, Fromm proposed that all love and altruism derives from the relationship between mother and child. Like Le Guin—he found in matrilineal societies a life-affirming alternative to Puritan and capitalist oppression (Jay 94-6).

Lastly, Le Guin closely echoes Fromm’s humanistic psychology in her examination of the psychodynamics of hierarchy: that is, of “the slave mind” (Le Guin 358). Particularly regarding gender, Le Guin illuminates domination as contingent: she shows that patriarchy and women’s self-derogation are upheld by attitudes, behaviors, and institutions that affirm male privilege and authority, and that, for the same reasons, such forms of oppression can be undone. For Le Guin, as for Fromm, defective social relations—including sexism, authoritarianism, and exploitation—persist because the less powerful party within such relationships—whether they be partners, workers, or slaves—resign themselves to such dehumanization. At the same time, as Hegel recognized in his dialectic of lordship and bondage, such relations of domination can be upset, if and when the subordinated party chooses to rebel. After all, mutual recognition is the humanistic alternative to involuntary sadomasochism (Chancer).

In Always Coming Home, we see how Terter Abhao professes his thoughtless faith in hierarchy: “As I give orders, I obey orders. In this matter I have no choice.” Additionally, when Stone Telling is enthralled to Condor culture in exile, she considers Esiryu “my slave, whom I obeyed.” Yet, back in the Valley, expressing anarcha-feminist humanism, Stone Telling returns to reason. She proclaims that “[t]here is no way that men could make women into slaves and dependents if the women did not choose to be so” (Le Guin 39, 198, 355).

Conclusion

Ursula Le Guin’s ‘ambiguously’ utopian anarchist masterpiece, Always Coming Home, is not only a classic of visionary fiction, but also an allegorical exploration of how we might salvage the future, within the context of catastrophic global warming. Following Bookchin’s framework of social ecology, and echoing the foundational message of Critical Theory, Le Guin shows how social, political, and economic domination are irrevocably tied in with ecological destruction. Her anarcha-feminist critique is disturbing in its persistent relevance: like the shocking recent femicides of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa in London, Le Guin’s book speaks to the centrality of “[m]ale violence against women […] in the fabric of our society,” and the need to “rip[ it] out” (Bate). Ultimately, against those who, with “their heads on wrong,” would perpetuate authoritarianism and self-destruction, Always Coming Home proposes that our best recourse is mutiny, rebellion, exile, and autonomy (Le Guin 159).

Works Cited

Bate, Marisa 2021. “Sarah Everard’s murderer has been sentenced. Now, Cressida Dick must go.” Open Democracy, 30 September. Available online: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/sarah-everards-murderer-has-been-sentenced-now-cressida-dick-must-go. Accessed 3 October 2021.

Chancer, Lynn S. 2020. “Feminism, Humanism, and Erich Fromm.” Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Hope, Humanism, and the Future. Eds. Kieran Durkin and Joan Braune. London: Bloomsbury. 96-107.

Chodorow, Nancy 1999. Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Clark, John P. “On Living in the World: Always Coming Home Revisited.” Fifth Estate, forthcoming.

Eisler, Riane 1987. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: HarperCollins.

Enzinna, Wes 2017. “Bizarre and Wonderful.” London Review of Books, vol. 39, no. 9.

Jameson, Fredric 2005. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. Verso: London.

Jay, Martin 1973. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.

Le Guin, Ursula K. 1985. Always Coming Home. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Marcuse, Herbert 2004. “Marxism and Feminism.” The New Left and the 1960’s: Collected Papers, volume 3. Ed. Douglas Kellner. London: Routledge. 165-172.

Stites, Richard 1989. Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Notes

1For example, Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908), Alexander V. Chayanov’s My Brother Alexei’s Journey into the Land of Peasant Utopia (1920), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), Yakov Okunev’s Tomorrow (1924), Alexander Belyaev’s Battle in the Ether (1927), V. D. Nikolsky’s In A Thousand Years (1927), or A. R. Palei’s Gulfstream (1928).

2The Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize (1985).

3Indeed, the portrayal of this “Valley” in California may be Le Guin’s tribute to the peaceful, stateless Valley community envisioned in the Daoist story, “Peach Blossom Spring,” written by Tao Qian in 421 C.E.

4Referencing her earlier work, The Dispossessed, Le Guin wrote to Bookchin, saying that she had based her novel in part on his idea of post-scarcity anarchism (Enzinna).

Tags: reviewUrsula K. Le Guinfictioncritical theory

Politico
Hannah Roberts
2021 10 11
https://www.politico.eu/article/forza-nuova-italy-coronavirus-vaccination-protest-rome-neo-fascist-groups-italy-ban/

Forza Nuova led anti-vaccine protests that turned violent.

Current Affairs
Nathan J. Robinson
2021 10 11
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/10/adventures-in-19th-century-socialism/

H.M. Hyndman was a buffoon and bigot who nevertheless left behind a fascinating account of the early decades of radical politics.

Jacobin
Andrew Perez
2021 10 11
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/corporate-health-care-industry-surprise-billing-private-insurance-federation-of-american-hospitals-chip-kahn-biden-letter/

The corporate health care industry typically presents a united front in defense of for-profit medicine — but in a new letter to regulators, the hospital industry has detailed some of the most abusive techniques being used by insurers to fleece Americans. The insidious details were spelled out by the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) in […]

Ars Technica
Tim De Chant
2021 10 11
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/gas-powered-lawn-mowers-leaf-blowers-to-be-banned-under-new-california-law/

Law targets small engines, which can pollute more than passenger vehicles.

CounterPunch.org
Winona LaDuke
2021 10 11
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/11/from-columbus-to-enbridge-colonial-exploitation-continues/

It’s somehow fitting irony on Indigenous Day — once known by another name — that a new Columbus is about to pump oil through Line 3, the last tar sands pipeline. That is the colonial-like corporation Enbridge. Maybe President Joe Biden will think about this one and stop the dirty oil from burning our rivers More

The post From Columbus to Enbridge: Colonial Exploitation Continues appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Forward

2021 10 11
https://forward.com/culture/476527/does-sarah-silverman-actually-have-a-point-about-jewface/

Sarah Silverman has spoken out against the practice of casting non-Jewish actors in Jewish roles. So why isn’t Jewish representation taken seriously?

Existential Comics
Corey Mohler
2021 10 11
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/415

Politico
Clothilde Goujard
2021 10 11
https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-whistleblower-to-be-invited-to-eu-parliament/

Frances Haugen has not yet confirmed if she will attend.

Scientific American Content
Rachel Nuwer
2021 10 11
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mammoths-roamed-when-humans-started-using-tobacco-at-least-12-300-years-ago/

A dig in the Nevada desert finds telltale seeds at the site of a late Paleolithic hearth

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Best Infographics
cyrus
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https://www.best-infographics.com/the-basics-of-nfts/

Plenty of people are excited about NFTs these days. If you have not dealt with the blockchain and cryptos in the past, understanding NFTs can take a bit of time. This infographic from Expensivity helps you make sense of non-fungible tokens:

The post The Basics Of NFTs [Infographic] appeared first on Best Infographics.

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Democracy Now!
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Amnesty International
Amnesty International
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The post China: UN must act on Xinjiang atrocities after petition shows mass global outrage appeared first on Amnesty International.

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

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It is essential to talk about the slave trade now, because we still live its heavy history and consequences every minute of the day. This is especially true in the former slave societies of the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America, but it is also true for Europe, which benefit- ted massively from the slave trade and the global institution of slavery. The slave ships are ghost ships still sailing around the edges of our modern consciousness. Their legacy in the present is discrimination, deep poverty, structural inequality, and premature death. More

The post Hydrarchy, Maritime Resistance, and the Production of Race: An interview with Marcus Rediker appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Jacobin
Walker Mimms
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“What the goddamn hell is this?” Cyril Lionel Robert James, lanky cricketer and budding journalist in colonial Trinidad, was unhappy as he scoured libraries in Port of Spain for a decent book on France’s former colony Saint-Domingue. The young writer could find only the likes of Percy Waxman’s The Black Napoleon. In those pages, he […]

Jacobin
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“My fellow Americans, as a young boy I dreamed of being a baseball. But tonight I say: we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.” It may be a quarter century old, but the classic Kodos-as-Clinton bit from The Simpsons has never really gone out of fashion […]

Daily Infographic
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Being lost in a forest or landing on a deserted island is something we don’t usually worry about, but in a hypothetical survival scenario when we might end up lost and away from civilization, finding out food or water would be our top priority if we’re expecting to last long in the wild until we […]

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Ars Technica
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It’s FOSS News
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Jacobin
Paris Marx
2021 10 09
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On December 14, 2016, the executives of the largest tech companies in the United States were seated around a conference table on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower. After opposing Donald Trump during the election, they’d assembled to kiss the ring and find a path forward that would serve their mutual interests. While it was […]

BBC News – Science & Environment

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Associated Press

2021 10 09
http://apnews.com/article/abortion-us-supreme-court-austin-courts-health-8f8f701e4bb857e7cd39bd45daa02063

2021-10-09 14:30:54FILE – In this Oct. 2, 2021 file photo people participate in the Houston Women’s March against Texas abortion ban walk from Discovery Green to City Hall in Houston. A federal appeals court is temporarily allowing the nation’s toughest abortion law to resume in Texas. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down the order Friday, Oct. 8. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal appeals court has allowed Texas to resume banning most abortions, just one day after clinics began racing to serve patients again for the first time since early September.
A one-page order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued late Friday reinstated the nation’s strictest abortion law, which bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. It makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
“Patients are being thrown back into a state of chaos and fear,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents several Texas clinics that had briefly resumed normal abortion services.
She called on the U.S. Supreme Court to “step in and stop this madness.”
Clinics had braced for the New Orleans-based appeals court to act fast after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, an appointee of President Barack Obama, on Wednesday suspended the Texas law that he called an “offensive deprivation” of the constitutional right to an abortion. Knowing that order might not stand long, a handful of Texas clinics on Thursday started performing abortions again beyond six weeks, and booked new appointments for this weekend.
But barely 48 hours passed before the appeals court accepted Texas’ request to set aside Pitman’s ruling — at least for now — pending further arguments. It gave the Biden administration, which had brought the lawsuit, until Tuesday to respond.
“Great news tonight,” Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted. “I will fight federal overreach at every turn.”
Texas had roughly two dozen abortion clinics before the law took effect Sept. 1. During the brief period the law was on hold, many Texas physicians remained unwilling to perform abortions, fearful that doing so could still leave them in legal jeopardy.
The new law threatens Texas abortion providers with lawsuits from private citizens, who are entitled to collect at least $10,000 in damages if successful. That novel approach to enforcement is the reason why Texas had been able to evade an earlier wave of legal challenges prior to this week.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had already once allowed the law to take effect in September, and stepped in this time only hours after Paxton’s office urged them to act.
His office told the court that since the state does not enforce the law, it cannot “be held responsible for the filings of private citizens that Texas is powerless to prevent.”
It is unclear how many abortions Texas clinics performed while the law was on hold. On Thursday, at least six abortions providers had resumed normal services or were gearing up to do so, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Prior to Pitman’s blistering 113-page order, other courts had declined to stop the law, which bans abortions before some women even know they are pregnant. That includes the Supreme Court, which allowed it to move forward in September without ruling on its constitutionality.
One of the first providers to resume normal services this week was Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, said her clinics called in some patients early Thursday who were on a list in case the law was blocked. Other appointments were being scheduled for the days ahead, and phone lines were again busy. But some of the clinics’ 17 physicians were still declining to perform abortions because of the legal risk.
Pitman’s order had amounted to the first legal blow to the law known as Senate Bill 8. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers said the impact had been “exactly what we feared.”
Planned Parenthood says the number of patients from Texas at its clinics in the state decreased by nearly 80%. Some providers have said Texas clinics are in danger of closing while neighboring states struggle to keep up with a surge of patients who must drive hundreds of miles for an abortion.
Other women, they say, are being forced to carry pregnancies to term.
How many abortions have been performed in Texas since the law took effect is unknown. State health officials say September data won’t be available on its website until early next year.
A 1992 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court prevented states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy. But Texas’ version has so far outmaneuvered the courts because it leaves enforcement to private citizens to file suits, not prosecutors, which critics say amounts to a bounty.
“This is an answered prayer,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group.
___
Associated Press writer Jamie Stengle contributed from Dallas.

Associated Press

2021 10 09
http://apnews.com/article/business-taliban-islamabad-middle-east-islamic-state-group-4d419bb70259f93f7165169889d05ff1

2021-10-09 09:50:39Relatives and residents pray during a funeral ceremony for victims of a suicide attack at the Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. The mosque was packed with Shiite Muslim worshippers when an Islamic State suicide bomber attacked during Friday prayers, killing dozens in the latest security challenge to the Taliban as they transition from insurgency to governance. (AP Photo/Abdullah Sahil)
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Taliban on Saturday ruled out cooperation with the United States to contain extremist groups in Afghanistan, staking out an uncompromising position on a key issue ahead of the first direct talks between the former foes since America withdrew from the country in August.
Senior Taliban officials and U.S. representatives are to meet Saturday and Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Officials from both sides have said issues include reining in extremist groups and the evacuation of foreign citizens and Afghans from the country. The Taliban have signaled flexibility on evacuations.
However, Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen told The Associated Press there would be no cooperation with Washington on containing the increasingly active Islamic State group in Afghanistan. IS has taken responsibility for a number of recent attacks, including a suicide bombing Friday that killed 46 minority Shiite Muslims and wounded dozens as they prayed in a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz.
“We are able to tackle Daesh independently,” Shaheen said, when asked whether the Taliban would work with the U.S. to contain the Islamic State affiliate. He used an Arabic acronym for IS.
IS has carried out relentless assaults on the country’s Shiites since emerging in eastern Afghanistan in 2014. It is also seen as the terror group that poses the greatest threat to the United States for its potential to stage attacks on American targets.
The weekend meetings in Doha are the first since U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan in late August, ending a 20-year military presence as the Taliban overran the country. The U.S. has made it clear the talks are not a preamble to recognition.
The talks also come on the heels of two days of difficult discussions between Pakistani officials and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Islamabad that focused on Afghanistan. Pakistani officials urged the U.S. to engage with Afghanistan’s new rulers and release billions of dollars in international funds to stave off an economic meltdown.
Pakistan also had a message for the Taliban, urging them to become more inclusive and pay attention to human rights and minority ethnic and religious groups.
Afghanistan’s Shiite clerics assailed the Taliban rulers following Friday’s attack, demanding greater protection at their places of worship. The IS affiliate claimed responsibility and identified the bomber as a Uyghur Muslim. The claim said the attack targeted both Shiites and the Taliban for their purported willingness to expel Uyghurs to meet demands from China. It was the deadliest attack since U.S. and NATO troops left Afghanistan on Aug. 30.
Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center, said Friday’s attack could be a harbinger of more violence. Most of the Uyghur militants belong to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which has found a safe haven in the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan for decades.
“If the (IS) claim is true, China’s concerns about terrorism in (Afghanistan)—to which the Taliban claims to be receptive—will increase,” he tweeted following the attack.
Meanwhile, the Taliban began busing Afghans who had fled from the insurgents’ blitz takeover in August and were living in tents in a Kabul park back to their homes in the country’s north, where threats from IS are mounting following the Kunduz attack.
A Taliban official in charge of refugees, Mohammed Arsa Kharoti, said there are up to 1.3 million Afghans displaced from past wars and that the Taliban lack funds to organize the return home for all. He said the Taliban have organized the return of 1,005 displaced families to their homes so far.
Shokria Khanm, who had spent several weeks in one of the tents in the park and was waiting Saturday to board the Taliban-organized bus back home to Kunduz, said she isn’t concerned about the growing IS threat in the northern province.
“At least there we have four walls,” she said but added that she was nervous about the future after fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government troops had destroyed her house.
“Winter is on the way. There is no firewood. We need water and food,” she said.
During the Doha talks, U.S. officials will also seek to hold the Taliban to their commitment to allow Americans and other foreign nationals to leave Afghanistan, along with Afghans who once worked for the U.S. military or government and other Afghan allies, a U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak on the record about the meetings.
The Biden administration has fielded questions and complaints about the slow pace of U.S.-facilitated evacuations from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal.
___
Associated Press writers Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington and Samya Kullab in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Who Gets the Bird?
Jonah Furman
2021 10 09
https://whogetsthebird.substack.com/p/weekly41

NEW ORGANIZING New election filings at the NLRB: 115 workers at Garden Fresh Salsa in Ferndale, MI are organizing with UFCW Local 876. 113 non-tenure-track faculty at Bates College in Lewiston, ME are organizing with SEIU Local 1989. 75 employees at non-profit (plus charter school? I couldn’t tell) Common Ground in

The Institute for Anarchist Studies
IAS
2021 10 09
https://anarchiststudies.org/25-moments-for-25-years/

Here are 25 historic moments relevant to anarchism, in no particular order. To mark the occasion of our 25th anniversary, the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) is working to raise $25,000, in part to award grants again in 2022. We could use your help. Please support … Read more

Scientific American Content
John Fialka, E&E News
2021 10 09
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/landmark-ozone-treaty-could-prevent-more-than-400-million-cases-of-cancer/

The Montreal Protocol has helped heal the ozone layer that blocks harmful ultraviolet rays

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Daily Infographic
Daniel
2021 10 09
https://dailyinfographic.com/key-things-consider-if-bees-went-extinct

You probably have heard that quote from Albert Einstein that says: “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live”, well… I have to tell you that there isn’t evidence that Albert Einstein actually said that, but besides that, the quote itself is more or […]

The post Key Things To Cosider If Bees Went Extinct first appeared on Daily Infographic.

Foreign Policy
Meaghan Beatley
2021 10 09
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/09/abusive-partners-parental-rights-spain-vicarious-violence/

A gruesome case of “vicarious violence” in Spain raises new questions about whether abusive partners can ever be good parents.

Scientific American Content
Chad Mirkin
2021 10 09
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-big-bet-on-nanotechnology-has-paid-off/

The National Nanotechnology Initiative promised a lot. It has delivered more

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Ars Technica
WIRED
2021 10 09
https://www.wired.com/story/twitch-streamers-earnings-exposed-now-its-a-meme/

“I’d never want to hide how much I make, so I’m down to make a meme out of it.”

Politico
Lauren Gardner
2021 10 09
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/09/global-fight-kratom-opioid-alternative-515730

The U.S. government has twice tried to classify kratom as a controlled substance, but public outcry and pushback from Congress thwarted those efforts.

Politico
Ian Ward
2021 10 09
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/09/david-shor-democrats-privileged-college-kid-problem-514992

An influential data guru expounds on why he thinks his party is losing ground: Their reserve army of young, upscale liberals keeps stepping on their message.

Foreign Policy
Kyung Hyun Kim
2021 10 09
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/09/squid-game-netflix-south-korea-capitalism/

Netflix’s new Korean horror drama suggests there’s more to life than the brutal realities of neoliberal capitalism.

Associated Press

2021 10 09
http://apnews.com/article/xi-jinping-taipei-beijing-taiwan-china-61f510599558249f9afa839052c4000a

2021-10-09 04:00:23Chinese President Xi Jinping looks as he arrives at an event commemorating the 110th anniversary of Xinhai Revolution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021. Xi said on Saturday reunification with Taiwan must happen and will happen peacefully, despite a ratcheting-up of China’s threats to attack the island. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Saturday that a “peaceful” reunification of Taiwan with China’s mainland was in Beijing’s interests, despite ratcheted up military threats against the self-governing island.
Xi spoke at an official celebration in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People that focused largely on the need for the ruling Communist Party to continue to lead China as the country rises in power and influence.
“Reunification of the nation must be realized, and will definitely be realized,” Xi vowed before an audience of politicians, military personnel and others gathered in the hulking chamber that serves as the seat of China’s ceremonial legislature.
“Reunification through a peaceful manner is the most in line with the overall interest of the Chinese nation, including Taiwan compatriots," the leader added.
Xi’s remarks came just days after the Chinese military sent a record number of military aircraft flying towards Taiwan in exercises that the self-ruled island has called a threat. Over the course of four days, starting last week, the mainland People’s Liberation Army flew fighter jets, bombers and airborne early warning aircraft 149 times towards Taiwan, with the largest single maneuver involving 52 jets.
Taiwan and China split in 1949 amid a civil war, with the then-ruling Nationalist Party fleeing to the island as Mao Zedong’s Communists swept to power on the mainland.
Saturday’s ceremony in Beijing was in honor of the 110th anniversary of the Chinese revolution that led to the overthrow of the Qing emperors and the establishment of the Republic of China under Sun Yat-sen. Taiwan celebrates Oct. 10 as National Day and Xi’s address touched on common aspirations for a unified future, despite the stark differences between China’s authoritarian one-party system and Taiwan’s vibrant multi-party democracy.
Taiwan’s National Day celebrations this year will feature a rare display of military equipment, including missiles and a performance by fighter jets to be held Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in the center of the capital, Taipei.
That marks the first inclusion of military hardware in Taipei’s official celebrations in years, and the first since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016.
Local media coverage of rehearsals for the celebration showed large missile launch vehicles driving on Taipei’s streets, although the missiles themselves were not directly visible.
In the past, the Taiwanese government has kept its missile capabilities out of the public eye to avoid appearing provocative, said Kuo Yu-jen, a defense studies expert at the Institute for National Policy Research in Taiwan.
Kuo added that Taipei feels it “must demonstrate that Taiwan has the ability to deter China’s threat” as Beijing becomes “overly assertive.”
In years past, the national day celebration has featured choreographed performances by motorcycle-riding military police and overflights by the island’s air force. However, missiles were not part of that display.
“I think this is to raise Taiwan’s people’s morale,” said Fan Shih-ping, a professor of political science at National Taiwan Normal University.
Taiwan’s leader Tsai has placed a higher premium on national defense than her predecessor from the more China-friendly Nationalist Party, launching a revitalization of the island’s shipbuilding industry and commissioning a program to build submarines domestically. She has also instituted reforms in the military, including improving benefits for military personnel and even increasing the quality of food served in the messes.
Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told legislators Wednesday that the situation with China “is the most severe in the 40 years since I’ve enlisted.” Chiu later told reporters that he believed China would have “comprehensive” capabilities to invade Taiwan by 2025.
Since the split, Taiwan has been self-ruled, but its sovereignty is denied by Beijing, which has refused to renounce the option of using force to bring the island under its control. Beijing has also sought to isolate Taiwan internationally by barring it from the United Nations and other international organizations and opposing official contacts between its government and nations that recognize China, especially the United States, which is legally bound to consider threats against Taipei a matter of “grave concern."
U.S. and Japanese officials have warned that China’s growing capabilities pose a rising threat to Taiwan’s security and that of the region.
“The Taiwan question is purely China’s internal affair, which tolerates no external interference," Xi said on Saturday. “No one should underestimate the Chinese people’s strong determination, will and capability to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity."

“Rojava” – Google News

2021 10 09
https://hawarnews.com/en/haber/ypj-ypg-fighters-pledged-to-follow-ocalan-approach-h27090.html

YPJ, YPG fighters pledged to follow Ocalan approach  ANHA

Arizona Daily Independent
Lynne Weaver
2021 10 08
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2021/10/08/arizona-has-the-most-complicated-and-complex-property-tax-system-in-the-nation/

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 08
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c2ffbb08-18c7-4393-8a78-b62e8ae5e320

What’s up Dox? Arizona passes law criminalizing “Doxing”  Lexology

“hannah arendt” – Google News

2021 10 08
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/moral-landscapes/202110/how-we-succumb-totalist-organizations

How We Succumb to Totalist Organizations  Psychology Today

Indigenous Action Media
admin
2021 10 08
https://www.indigenousaction.org/smash-the-non-profit-indigenous-complex/

Indigenous non-profits are the problem. The Non-profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) is a system of relationships designed by colonial and capitalist…

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 08
https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2021/10/08/white-supremacist-admits-to-firing-ak-47-into-minneapolis-police-station-during-george-floyd-protests/

White supremacist admits to firing AK-47 into Minneapolis police station during George Floyd protests  The Black Wall Street Times

“phenomenology” – Google News

2021 10 08
https://bigthink.com/thinking/henri-bergson-time/

Why philosopher Henri Bergson rejected the word "time"  Big Think

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 08
https://www.dailydot.com/irl/arizona-police-shoot-man-tiktok/

Viral TikTok shows group of officers shooting man who was following orders  The Daily Dot

VICE US
Tess Owen
2021 10 08
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3xje9/proud-boy-rabbi-promises-religious-exemptions-for-covid-vaccine

Asher Meza went on YouTube to tell his subscribers he’d give out exemptions to both Jews and gentiles alike.

VICE US
Samantha Cole
2021 10 08
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3dyax/chatroulette-moderation-penis-problems

Andrey Ternovskiy is forever trying to keep his site—a viral early 2010’s sensation—from devolving into "dicks looking at dicks."

New Politics
Samuel Clarke
2021 10 08
https://newpol.org/kronstadt-an-unavoidable-tragedy/

Kronstadt should not be seen as Lenin’s tragedy, nor Trotsky’s or the sailors’. No, it should be seen as a tragedy of the revolution itself and the hierarchical relations that it created. It is a tragedy of structures and systems of power, not one of individuals and personalities.

Read more ›

The post Kronstadt, an Unavoidable Tragedy? appeared first on New Politics.

Politico
Associated Press
2021 10 08
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/08/september-jobs-report-gains-515662

Employers are still struggling to find workers because many people who lost jobs in the pandemic have yet to start looking again.

VICE US
Joshua Wolens
2021 10 08
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/g5g44q/the-terrific-visual-novel-renaissance-of-vampire-the-masquerade

A fixation on the legacy of Bloodlines has caused a lot of great adaptations to be overlooked.

ROAR feed | ROAR Magazine
Democracy at Work
2021 10 08
https://roarmag.org/2021/10/08/david-harvey-acc-s03e22/

A bimonthly podcast hosted by Professor David Harvey that looks at capitalism through a Marxist lens.

Politico
POLITICO Staff
2021 10 08
https://www.politico.com/cartoons/2021/10/08/the-nations-cartoonists-on-the-week-in-politics-000260

Every week political cartoonists throughout the country and across the political spectrum apply their ink-stained skills to capture the foibles, memes, hypocrisies and other head-slapping events in the world of politics. The fruits of these labors are hundreds of cartoons that entertain and enrage readers of all political stripes. Here’s an offering of the best of this week’s crop, picked fresh off the Toonosphere. Edited by Matt Wuerker.

CounterPunch.org
Dave Lindorff
2021 10 08
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/08/the-rich-are-different-theyre-richer-than-us-and-far-greedier/

F. Scott Fitzgerald is famously said to have once remarked to his pal Ernest Hemingway, “The rich are different from you and me, Ernest,” to which Hemingway is said to have replied, “Yes, they have more money.” Fitzgerald had it right. Particularly these days, when the wealthiest people in the US are not millionaires, or More

The post The Rich are Different: They’re Richer Than Us and Far Greedier appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

“hannah arendt” – Google News

2021 10 07
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/dreyfus-zionism-sartre

Dreyfus, Zionism, and Sartre  Tablet Magazine

Ars Technica
Jennifer Ouellette
2021 10 07
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/resident-evil-reboot-trailer-looks-like-a-welcome-return-to-gaming-roots/

Director Johannes Roberts wanted to evoke dark tone and scary aspects of the games.

BBC News – Science & Environment

2021 10 07
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58831636

Britons are cutting their meat consumption, but not quickly enough, according to scientists.

Forward

2021 10 07
https://forward.com/fast-forward/476341/anne-frank-online-manuscipts-historical-context/

The new online edition includes historical context and comparative analyses.

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 07
https://anarchistnews.org/content/notes-development-proudhon%E2%80%99s-thought

from Libertarian Labyrinth

These notes will obviously be of most use to those who have followed previous discussions of the individual texts, but it represents what seems to be a fairly promising attempt to deal with the shifting terms of Proudhon’s analysis from 1839 until his death and, as such, may be useful to others, if only as a bit more concrete suggestion that such a resolution is possible. Its early stages have been worked out on social media and it consists of:

Two Twitter Threads…
I.
I’m back to wrestling with Proudhon’s Federative Principle. It’s a weird text, with anarchist and governmentalist thought all mixed together. I wonder if that’s because it was something like a conclusion published before the work (“Pologne”) was itself complete. I know that “Theory of Property” and “Theory of Taxation” have a similar character, as do most of the other bits drawn from the study on Poland. I guess I’m not clear if that’s also the case for “War and Peace.”

Anyway, the heart of the work is the dialectic between initiative (“authority”) and reflection (“liberty”), which should remind us of the dynamic between “the fundamental laws of the universe:” universal antagonism and reciprocity (“mutual penetration of antagonistic elements.”)

And, let’s face it, all of the familiar keywords there seem to have been given a decidedly Proudhonian twist.

Now, if we assume some degree of continuity in Proudhon’s project—which I think we should, despite some shifts in language and focus—we probably also have to tie these two later oppositions to the “synthesis of community and property” from 1840.

In context, The Federative Principle seems designed to answer the question of what would be better for Poland and Italy than unity. And as a proposal for better government, it has little interest for me. As an application of principles that might also be applied to anarchy, however, it has quite a bit more.

The 1848 dynamic starts with “universal antagonism,” but then follows with the recognition that the antagonistic elements are not discrete, proper individuals, but are instead already connected by some form of “interpenetration.” So the balancing of interests involved in justice is “social,” in at least a certain sense, even when it is simply a matter of individual reflection on the entirety—and the complexity—of our personal interests. If we assume that the “fundamental laws” of 1848 remain valid for Proudhon in the 1860s, then “initiation” / “authority” seems to be an expression of “antagonism,” while “reflection” / “liberty” is related to that peculiar sense of “reciprocity.”

Connecting “liberty” to “reflection” already seems provocative, but there is precedent in Proudhon’s work (in the study on liberty in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church.) And, once we recognize that fact, perhaps the additional connection to “mutual interpenetration” is one we should have anticipated, with collective force key to things.

But if “The Federative Principle” and “Theory of Property” are closely connected, then we also have to address a connection between “liberty” and “property”—and then perhaps make sense of the “liberty” that was a “synthesis of community and property” in 1840. (Dizzy yet?)

For Proudhon, the human individual was a “free absolute,” which we should probably understand in the context of the “fundamental laws” as both “antagonistic” in its “absolute” character and “free” specifically because it is capable of “reflection” (capable of saying “I,” etc.)

At this point, of course, we have to decide if we’re going to drag in the opposition from Philosophy of Progress—opposition to “the absolute” (in the sense of fixity or pretentious to fixity) and support for “progress” (in the sense of constant change.)

There are a lot of useful pieces here and they go together surprisingly well, but I don’t think anyone should be surprised if the various “proudhonized” terms don’t lend themselves to simple, low-context citation. Let’s first try to address the various terms individually and then try to tie them together.

Absolute/absolutism: Proudhon was an anti-absolutist in the sense that he saw movement and development everywhere. Individual unities are absolute in terms of tendency, but tendency already implies development, where absolutist appeals to authority generally invoke some sort of fixity.

The human individual as “free absolute” still develops according to an irresistible internal “law,” but, being a unity of forces, is shaped by their conflict in ways that create a capacity for reflection.

The collective force generated by the interaction of the constituent elements of the human unity is its health and its liberty—so we might expect that increasing the complexity and intensity of our internal interactions might increase both.

There are important connections to the thought of Stirner and Fourier that should be explored when we try to make a more elaborate sketch of this anarchic, potentially anarchistic human unity. I started that work in the “Rambles” and will continue it sometime soon.

What we can say now is that the human unity as “free absolute” depends on both the absolutism-of-tendency of its various elements and the capacity to reflect—to delay reaction—that emerges from their interaction. But absolutism in the form of fixity would be death.

Liberty: This is the most protean of the terms we’re examining—which ought to be a caution for those attached to the notion that “property is liberty.” It is tied to reflection in the sense that it involves a capacity to defer response, to temporarily step out the flow of things.

But liberty and reflection are tied to reciprocity in that sense of interconnectedness with others. Presumably one of the reasons that the human unity can reflect is because it extends “beyond hat and boots” (to borrow Whitman’s phrase.)

So if “property is liberty” in this context, it can only be because what is proper to the human unity is not, in fact, exclusive to it. We might also say with equal justification that “community is liberty,” provided we make the clarification that it is a question of specific connections, not absolute community.

At this point, all of the terms are becoming a bit protean—and there is ultimately a loose synonymy among Proudhon’s key terms that has to be accounted for. “Property,” modified in the ways necessary to be “liberty” in this specific sense, is “community,” similarly modified. But the rough equation of “property” and “reciprocity,” while ultimately a valid, useful bit of interpretation, obviously isn’t the thing at work in the most familiar texts. That “equation” is more easily addressed in terms of the property-community synthesis proposed in 1840.

We should note here a similarity between the dynamic we’re exploring and one I noted in individualist writings, where one stands apart (steals away?) in order to experience connection and comes together with others in order to experience a more exclusive sort of uniqueness.

Let’s pile on some obvious equations we have left out thus far. “Property is theft,” to go with “property is liberty,” and, in a transitive movement sanctioned by Proudhon in Theory of Property, “liberty is theft” (which may not seem so unlikely at this point in the analysis.)

For Proudhon, property was theft first in 1839. In Celebration of Sunday he argued that the biblical commandment was against “putting aside,” making most forms of appropriation vulnerable to the charge of theft.

The human unity presumably exists as it exists, as a free absolute, through some dialectical play between the instances of “separating ourselves,” asserting individual property, and the reconnections with community that seem to emerge from at least a certain kind of separation.

If we want to loop all the way back now to The Federative Principle, then we need to connect authority-as-initiative to some of the various terms that might be placed in dynamic opposition with reflection-as-liberty. Antagonism? Community? Absolutism?

In The Federative Principle, the problem seems to be that social unities have to be allowed their “initiative.” Collective reason has to be given its space. But social collectivities, while real, are not “free,” being absolutes without the capacity for direct reflection.

Tufferd claimed that Proudhon’s “State” was simply “what persists.” Anarchists could not be anti-State in that sense without denying fundamental aspects of human existence, as our interpenetrations are as much intergenerational as simply interpersonal.

We have our own “determinisms” (as Armand often puts it), but our reflective capacities are not alien to that determined development. The capacity for liberty is a product of our individual organization. If our initiations have a natural antagonistic tendency, all the more reason not to bolster them with the pretense of “rights” or with privilege.

But “rights” could also be proudhonized: “RIGHT… is the recognition of human dignity in all its faculties, attributes and prerogatives. There are thus as many special rights as humans can raise different claims, owing to the diversity of their faculties and of their exercise.” So perhaps the “authority” in The Federative Principle is another sort of recognition of human dignity, this time in its social form. If the State is, as Proudhon put it, “a kind of citizen” and the equal of the other citizens, perhaps the recognition doesn’t commit us to much. But I’m not sure that modern anarchists have anything to gain from emulating Proudhon’s attempt to recuperate all of these governmentalist terms. So, again, I’m more interested in considering “initiative” as a constant than “authority” or “right”—and I think we can safely choose.

“Property” may be a slightly different case, precisely because Proudhon seems intent on using it without recuperating it. Indeed, he arguably emphasizes the “unpardonably reprehensible” aspects of it more than necessary and more than those of other potentially harmful institutions. We know that his own ambitions, expressed at the end of “Theory of Property,” were modest: “A small, rented house, a garden to use…” Possession was an “each under their own vine and fig tree” affair, ultimately abandoned as an insufficient shield in more combative contexts. But since that context is not exactly anarchistic, perhaps we can reconstruct his reasoning along slightly different lines. I’ll take that question up a little later in a new thread.

II
Let’s start our neo-Proudhonian reconstruction with the task of recognizing “human dignity.” If “possession” had ever reached the level of a system, it would arguably have been by reducing “property” to a matter of simple mutual recognition.

Everyone has a place in the theater. “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid…” And if social relations remained simple enough, a general awareness of our interconnectedness and an unwillingness to rule or be ruled might suffice.

We can imagine a near-anarchy not far from the pastoral simplicity and patriarchal government of Sylvain Maréchal, stripped of the golden age mythology and endowed with a somewhat more egalitarian approach to the family, but still simple and apparently fragile.

But that wasn’t the path that Proudhon took. Whatever his inclinations might have been, he was committed to understanding the society around him and had little time for utopias of any sort. So he focused on the collective force generated by complex relations.

That led him to rethink political questions in terms of “the recognition of human dignity in all its faculties, attributes and prerogatives,” with the manifestation of that dignity occurring at a range of scales—not quite the Fourierist gamut of “infinitesimal to infinite,” perhaps, but not too distant from it either.

Not every social or political grouping identified had a real basis in the division and association of individual capacities, but social unities were indeed real for Proudhon and had their “rights,” based on their status as manifestations of human capacities.

Important things happen across these other scales and durations. As societies become more complex, it is likely that many of the most important elements—the most hegemonic elements—are developed and maintained in some isolation from direct person-to-person interactions.

So we have these “unity-collectivities,” social beings at scales and with lifespans very different than individual human beings or more direct, intimate human groupings. And we have forms of “collective reason” performed by them in more or less “emergent” fashion.

Crowds produce more than just the proverbial “madness.” For example, Proudhon seems to have identified “the Revolution” with developments in the realm of collective force and collective reason, which human reason and human actions would often trail or resist.

At these scales, things develop according to their “determinisms,” with adjustments made according to logics derived from the qualities of the social beings in question. But these beings seem to differ from individual human beings in their lack of direct capacity for reflection.

Perhaps such an analysis would ultimately lead us back to a an account similar to the one we find in The Federative Principle. We have developments in the realm of the social that seem to run on ahead of our more individual recognition and engagement with them. But they can really only run on in directions already determined by prior events. So perhaps there is no complete escape from governmentalist language and the analysis of governmental forms.

If the course is to be changed or the process to be adapted to the needs and desires of human individuals, then, given Proudhon’s general scheme, we would expect that what is needed is the introduction of a reflective element, which ultimately has to emerge from “free absolutes.”

To make social beings engage in a balancing reflection, if necessarily “at second hand,” we would expect that not just individual reflection, but reflective social interactions among individuals would be necessary. However, contrary to those focused on “getting things done,” that might be largely a matter of deferral and interruption, in an attempt to give social beings some of the same capacity to be uncertain, to waffle and dither, to have mixed impulses and to try to serve them all, etc. that we find in ourselves. That is all, after all, part of what goes into human reflection.

⁂

…and a Follow-up
[Doing this kind of work on Twitter forces a certain kind of simplicity on it, which was useful in the early steps, but I’m starting to feel the constraints of the character limit, so I’ll finish up here on the blog.]

⁂

There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, but what the preliminary analysis suggests to me is that we might usefully take up the late distinction between initiative and reflection as fundamental elements and then at least begin a summary or synthesis by mapping the other elements, to what ever degree is possible, onto those two. Removed from the specifically governmentalist context of The Federative Principle, what appears there as a defense of the “right” of “the State” to its acts of “initiation” may perhaps be treated as little more than a recognition of “human dignity” at more-than-individual scales and as manifested by social collectivities. If so, then the “authority” of this “State”—presumably a kind of “citizen-state,” equal in its “rights” to other citizens—is of the “authority of the bootmaker” variety and is derived from its particular role in the expression of human capacities. (And, let’s note in passing, Proudhon at least potentially introduces some of the same kind of confusion about *force* and *authority* that we find in works by Engels, etc.) Attempting, once again, to avoid the governmentalist language of The Federative Principle, we might return to works like “Toast to the Revolution,” where Proudhon explored the “laws” of revolutions, the logics by which their “great equitations of principles” and “enormous shifts in mores” play out, in order to get a sense of how collective reason both indicates the natural developments of existing determinisms and pushes us toward them. Perhaps all we need to see in the “initiative” of social beings is their capacity for doing “the next thing,” the thing implied by the forces and contradictions at work in the present, for good or ill, whether or not we are prepared to play along.

All of the discussion of federation in government would then be simply one practical exploration of how these social beings, who are, in Proudhon’s terms, absolutes, but not reflective free absolutes like individual human beings, might gain a second-hand capacity to reflect. The same is arguably true of the “New Theory” in Theory of Property, where the project of making absolutist “property” a counterbalancing force to the absolutism of “the State” might also be seen as an experiment in a more general sort of federation. There is a general sense that decentralization increases the capacity to defer action and to engage in reflection and deliberation.

Behind it all, there is a fairly simple scenario, I think, in which past events, and the deterministic forces produced by them, interact with “society,” understood as a social being or organized ensemble of social beings (which may be two ways of saying the same thing), with our attention being particularly turned to the ways in which the organization of society allows that interaction to be something other than just the simplest sort of deterministic driving. Where the scenario gets complicated, I suppose, is in the fact that it does involve multiple scales and durations, which coexist without being reducible to one another, and various sorts of unities—individual human beings, families, workgroups, nations, etc.—all of which express “human diginity” in some form and, thus, all of which have some claim to recognition within Proudhon’s conception of social relations. But at this stage, when we are simply trying to get our bearings in the context of Proudhon’s development, we can largely divide the phenomenon to be accounted for between those direct, unreflective expressions of existing determinisms and everything that might cause us, as potentially reflective human individuals, to engage in reflection and perhaps draw different conclusions about “the next thing” within non-governmental forms of association and mutual consultation.

⁂

This fairly simple scenario describes a dynamic that we might perhaps now use as the center of a more fully developed account of the development of Proudhon’s thought, accounting for the details of that development as they occurred, rather than just skipping around among them suggesting parallels. Such an account would almost certainly clarify some aspects of Proudhon’s work that tend to remain obscure for us, such as the fact that he seems to have remained, throughout most of his career, an anarchistic analyst of fundamentally archic systems, whose work is really of a significantly different genre than most subsequent anarchist writings, which, if it was to be thoroughly transformed into or recovered as a form of anarchism, would undoubtedly be a quite different form that most of those with which we are familiar.

An analysis of property, for example, that attempted to account for all of the developments between 1839 and 1865 might well focus on the question of “putting aside” in relation not just to material goods and resources, but also to the individual self, treating the self-separating assertion of “property in one’s person” in terms of Proudhon’s first version of property-theft. The Celebration of Sunday arguably deserves its place not just in our understanding of Proudhon’s own work, but also in a larger analysis of the way those close to Proudhon in various ways (Pierre Leroux, William Batchelder Greene) made use of biblical references to ground their works of political economy. It is quite possible that starting from the issue of self-separation might also allow us to lift much of the discussion of property, theft, liberty, etc. out of contexts rather heavily laden with ideological and moral baggage, so that we could focus on fundamental structures and dynamics, rather than lavishing so much energy and attention on the potential of each successive insight or twist to bolster familiar partisan positions. In the context of the partisan squabbles, it is easy to scoff at a serious treatment of claims like “liberty is theft,” even though the texts themselves arguably lead us where phrases like the aforementioned “stealing away” might have taken us rather directly.

With regard to anarchy, perhaps nothing would serve us better than to figure out precisely which conception of anarchy must remain “a perpetual desideratum.” That process probably starts by recognizing that The Federative Principle is a surprisingly anarchistic book about the actual function of governments and then connecting its insights—some of them perhaps powerfully anti-ideological—to the still equally enigmatic treatment of “anarchy in all of its senses” in The General Idea of the Revolution. I started to work through some of the basics in “Anarchy: Historical, Abstract and Resultant,” but, again, this is an instance in which the opportunity to review the uses of anarchy throughout Proudhon’s work, with the benefit of a clearer understanding of the uses made in The Federative Principle, might be tremendously fruitful. But that would mean beginning with an engagement will all that is provocative and still largely unexamined in that late work, like the claim that:

The forms of anarchy depend upon the will of each individual, within the limits of his rights, and are indifferently monarchical or democratic.

I’m not honestly certain if there is an interpretation of that phrase, even with careful attention to contexts, that quite makes sense—but simply doing the work of clarifying what Proudhon is doing in the text with the various parts of his apparatus (fundamental concepts, false ideas, basic forms, a priori conceptions, etc.) is probably a work worth undertaking.

I’ve suggested more than once in recent months that I think Proudhon late analyses muddy the waters for anarchists, conflating governmentalist concepts (authority, absolutism as an ideology, etc.), which we might simply abandon, and ideas about fundamental structures and tendencies (antagonism, absolutism as a product of determinism, etc.), which we perhaps need to address more directly. And while the connecting thread between his various analyses has remained elusive, that has seemed like an unfortunate circumstance. At the moment, however, I’m inclined to think that even just the rough sketch I’ve been able to make here of the relationships between the various phases of Proudhon’s analysis is enough to make a more complete engagement with the development of his thought a rather attractive prospect, whether the goal is ultimately to reconcile that thought and modern anarchism or whether it is simply a question of using the Proudhonian theory as a foil, with the ultimate goal of fully extricating anarchist thought from the connections and confusions that persist despite anarchists’ love/hate relationship with Proudhon.

Tags: Libertarian LabyrinthShawn P. WilburProudhoun

Mother Jones
Mark Helenowski
2021 10 07
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/10/robinhood-trading-app-design-ui-ux-video/

When my colleague Hannah Levintova mentioned she was reporting on the suicide of Alex Kearns, a young Robinhood trader, I instantly took note. It’s a tragic case, where a trade involving a complex financial instrument that had been translated into a slick phone interface went bad. The trading app with a self-described mission to “democratize […]

“Sartre” – Google News

2021 10 07
https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-its-life-and-death-intellectuals-cant-keep-serving-the-status-quo/

Chomsky: It’s Life and Death — Intellectuals Can’t Keep Serving the Status Quo  Truthout

UNICORN RIOT
Unicorn Riot
2021 10 07
https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/dozens-march-against-sexual-violence-from-frat-houses/

Minneapolis, MN – Dozens participated in a nighttime march down University Avenue of Minnesota’s ‘Frat Row’ protesting sexual assaults on September 10, 2021. The march happened on a Friday night around 10 p.m. during ‘Rush Week’, when students are choosing which fraternity to join and…

The post Dozens March Against Sexual Violence from Frat Houses appeared first on UNICORN RIOT.

Ars Technica
Scharon Harding
2021 10 07
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/jabra-owner-acquires-steelseries-to-tap-into-high-end-gaming/

Jabra parent company GN makes an approximately $1.2 billion deal.

Jacobin
Ines Schwerdtner
2021 10 07
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/berlin-germany-nationalize-big-landlords-organizing-housing-campaign-rent-prices/

In a time of defeats for the Left, it’s something special when we can celebrate a resounding victory. On September 26, some 56 percent of Berlin voters — over 1 million people — backed the radical demand to socialize two hundred forty thousand apartments in the German capital. The fact that this campaign made such […]

Associated Press

2021 10 07
http://apnews.com/article/entertainment-business-strikes-hollywood-arts-and-entertainment-b22eb148f04b4403dd0c480d6a2a1b62

2021-10-07 13:27:32A poster advocating union solidarity hangs from the office building housing The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 80, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021, in Burbank, Calif. The IATSE overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike for the first time in its 128-year history. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
A major Hollywood strike could be on the horizon for some 60,000 behind-the-scenes workers in the entertainment industry. Over the weekend, members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IASTE) overwhelmingly voted in favor of authorizing a nationwide strike for the first time in its history.
Here we look at who is involved, what they’re asking for and what’s at stake.
WHAT IS THE IATSE?
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (or IATSE for short, pronounced eye-AHT’-see) is a 128-year-old union representing over 150,000 artists, craftspeople and technicians in the entertainment industry in the United States and Canada. Comprised of cinematographers, costumers, set designers, script supervisors, hair and makeup artists, animators, stagehands and many, many more, the IATSE represents essentially everyone who works in any form of entertainment (including movies, television, theater, concerts, trade shows and broadcasting) who isn’t an actor, director, producer or screenwriter.
WHY ARE THEY IN THE NEWS?
The three-year contracts that cover about 60,000 of the union’s members — one that primarily covers film and TV production in Los Angeles and Hollywood and another that covers other production hubs including New Mexico and Georgia — expired in July. For the past four months the union has been negotiating new terms with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Those discussions fell apart on Sept. 20. The IATSE says that the AMPTP have failed to address their biggest workplace problems, and membership voted overwhelmingly to give the organization’s president, Matthew D. Loeb, the ability to authorize a strike.
WHAT ARE THE WORKPLACE PROBLEMS?
The IATSE says its members are subjected to excessive working hours, unlivable wages for the lowest paid crafts and failure to provide reasonable rest, including meal breaks and time off between marathon working days and weekend work. Further, they say that workers on some “new media” streaming projects get paid even less. The Instagram account @ia_stories has been sharing anonymous accounts of some harrowing personal workplace stories and the effects of the excessively long hours on everything from personal safety to mental health.
WAIT, WHAT’S THE AMPTP?
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is a group that represents hundreds of entertainment companies, including the major Hollywood studios, streaming services and production companies, and negotiates essentially all industry-wide guild and union contracts.
WHY ARE THE STREAMERS PAYING WORKERS LESS THAN TRADITIONAL STUDIOS?
In 2009, the IATSE and studios mutually agreed that new media productions required greater “flexibility” because the medium was not yet economically viable. That has changed in a big way, but the expectation of flexibility from crews has not. They feel they are being taken advantage of while streaming budgets and profits have reached blockbuster levels.
WHO ELSE SUPPORTS THE IATSE DEMANDS?
Social media support has been significant and many prominent people in the film industry have spoken out in support of the crews, like Octavia Spencer, Mindy Kaling, Jane Fonda and Katherine Heigl. On Monday, the Directors Guild of America issued a statement of solidarity too, signed by the likes of Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Barry Jenkins, Ron Howard, Ava DuVernay and Lesli Linka Glatter. Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and 118 Senators and members of the House have also sent a letter to the AMPTP urging good faith negotiations.
IS A STRIKE INEVITABLE?
No, and leadership on both sides have said they would like to avoid it if possible. On Tuesday, the IATSE and the AMPTP resumed negotiations.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY DO STRIKE?
With 60,000 workers covered under the expired agreements, most productions would have to shut down in the U.S., including network shows and Netflix productions. But not all are affected: The IATSE contracts for “pay tv,” including HBO, Showtime, Starz, Cinemax and BET, don’t expire until Dec. 31, 2022 so those will keep going. Same goes for commercials and low budget productions, which also have different agreements.
As far as long-term consequences, it all depends on how long the strike goes on. The 100-day 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which also came about when contracts failed to address “new media” realities and loopholes, resulted in scuttled projects, shortened seasons of popular television shows and an influx of reality shows to fill the schedule gaps. Most networks and streamers have content reserves to fill the gaps for a bit.
WHAT NOW?
We wait.

Associated Press

2021 10 07
http://apnews.com/article/technology-business-china-europe-united-states-e13548edf082992a735a0af1da39b6c8

2021-10-07 13:00:56FILE – In this Nov. 10, 2016, file photo, people walk past a Microsoft office in New York. Microsoft on Oct. 7, 2021, says Russia once again accounted for most state-sponsored hacking, with a 58% share of intrusion attempts it detected in the past year. The targets were mostly government agencies — in the United States, followed by Ukraine, Britain and European NATO members. (AP Photo/Swayne B. Hall, File)
BOSTON (AP) — Russia accounted for most state-sponsored hacking detected by Microsoft over the past year, with a 58% share, mostly targeting government agencies and think tanks in the United States, followed by Ukraine, Britain and European NATO members, the company said.
The devastating effectiveness of the long-undetected SolarWinds hack — it mainly breached information technology businesses including Microsoft — also boosted Russian state-backed hackers’ success rate to 32% in the year ending June 30, compared with 21% in the preceding 12 months.
China, meanwhile, accounted for fewer than 1 in 10 of the state-backed hacking attempts Microsoft detected but was successful 44% of the time in breaking into targeted networks, Microsoft said in its second annual Digital Defense Report, which covers July 2020 through June 2021.
While Russia’s prolific state-sponsored hacking is well known, Microsoft’s report offers unusually specific detail on how it stacks up against that by other U.S. adversaries.
The report also cited ransomware attacks as a serious and growing plague, with the United States by far the most targeted country, hit by more than triple the attacks of the next most targeted nation. Ransomware attacks are criminal and financially motivated.
By contrast, state-backed hacking is chiefly about intelligence gathering — whether for national security or commercial or strategic advantage — and thus generally tolerated by governments, with U.S. cyber operators among the most skilled. The report by Microsoft Corp., which works closely with Washington government agencies, does not address U.S. government hacking.
The SolarWinds hack was such an embarrassment to the U.S. government, however, that some Washington lawmakers demanded some sort of retaliation. President Joe Biden has had a difficult time drawing a red line for what cyberactivity is permissible. He has issued vague warnings to President Vladimir Putin to get him to crack down on ransomware criminals, but several top administration cybersecurity officials said this week that they have seen no evidence of that.
Overall, nation-state hacking has about a 10%-20% success rate, said Cristin Goodwin, who heads Microsoft’s Digital Security Unit, which is focused on nation-state actors. “It’s something that’s really important for us to try to stay ahead of — and keep driving that compromised number down — because the lower it gets, the better we’re doing,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin finds China’s “geopolitical goals” in its recent cyberespionage especially notable, including targeting foreign ministries in Central and South American countries where it is making Belt-and-Road-Initiative infrastructure investments and universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong where resistance to Beijing’s regional ambitions is strong. The findings further belie as obsolete any conventional wisdom that Chinese cyber spies’ interests are limited to pilfering intellectual property.
Russian hack attempts were up from 52% in the 2019-20 period as a share of global cyber-intrusion bids detected by the “nation-state notification service” that Microsoft employs to alert its customers. For the year ending June 30, North Korea was second as country of origin at 23%, up from less than 11% previously. China dipped to 8% from 12%.
But attempt volume and efficacy are different matters. North Korea’s failure rate on spear-phishing — targeting individuals, usually with booby-trapped emails — was 94% in the past year, Microsoft found.
Only 4% of all state-backed hacking that Microsoft detected targeted critical infrastructure, the Redmond, Washington-based company said, with Russian agents far less interested in it than Chinese or Iranian cyber-operatives.
After the SolarWinds hack was discovered in December, the Russians transitioned back to focus mostly on government agencies involved in foreign policy, defense and national security, followed by think tanks then health care, where they targeted organizations developing and testing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments in the United States, Australia, Canada, Israel, India and Japan.
In the report, Microsoft said Russian state hackers’ recent greater efficacy “could portend more high-impact compromises in the year ahead.” Accounting for more 92% of the detected Russian activity was the elite hacking team in Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency best known as Cozy Bear.
Cozy Bear, which Microsoft calls Nobelium, was behind the SolarWinds hack, which went undetected for most of 2020 and whose discovery badly embarrassed Washington. Among badly compromised U.S. government agencies was the Department of Justice, from which the Russian cyber spies exfiltrated 80% of the email accounts used by the U.S. attorneys’ offices in New York.
Microsoft’s nation-state notifications, of which about 7,500 were issued globally in the period covered by the report, are by no means exhaustive. They only reflect what Microsoft detects.

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“phenomenology” – Google News

2021 10 07
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/jacques-derrida-defense-of-marxism-hauntology-specters-of-marx-deconstruction-postmodernism-post-structuralism

Jacques Derrida’s Defense of Marx and the Birth of Hauntology  Jacobin magazine

“phenomenology” – Google News

2021 10 07
https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/sense-of-purpose-in-life-associated-with-better-memory-354475

Sense of Purpose in Life Associated With Better Memory  Technology Networks

In Defence of Marxism

2021 10 07
http://www.marxist.com/a-people-s-history-podcast-the-chartist-revolution.htm

Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal and author of Chartist Revolution, recently appeared on A People’s History podcast talking about the Chartist movement, alongside John McDonnell, Emma Griffin and Katrina Navickas. The Chartist movement represented the first time the organised working class fixed its eyes on the seizure of power. The Chartists unashamedly fought for radical, socialist changes. Today, the Marxist movement stands on the shoulders of the great Chartist fighters – a revolutionary tradition to which we owe a tremendous debt. Listen to the full podcast here.

Politico
Quint Forgey
2021 10 07
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/07/cia-china-focused-unit-515548

The mission center is intended to “address the global challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China that cuts across all of the Agency’s mission areas,” the CIA said

Ars Technica
Jim Salter
2021 10 07
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/the-best-part-of-windows-11-is-a-revamped-windows-subsystem-for-linux/

WSL is finally easy to install—and offers automatic sound/graphics support.

Scientific American Content
Viviane Callier
2021 10 07
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/simple-mathematical-law-predicts-movement-in-cities-around-the-world/

A new model could help model disease transmission and urban planning

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 06
https://www.statepress.com/article/2021/10/housing-demand-increase-affordability-zoning

Tempe continues to grow while housing demand intensifies  The State Press

Associated Press

2021 10 06
http://apnews.com/article/kellogg-workers-strike-pandemic-business-e9dce3bcb90b707a6e00d320f1b1fa01

2021-10-06 19:45:12Workers from a Kellogg’s cereal plant picket along the main rail lines leading into the facility on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, in Omaha, Neb. Workers have gone on strike after a breakdown in contract talks with company management. (AP Photo/Grant Schulte).
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A summer of labor unrest at U.S. food manufacturers has stretched into fall, as pandemic-weary workers continue to strike for better pay.
Around 1,400 workers at Kellogg Co.’s U.S. cereal plants walked off the job this week, saying negotiations with the company over pay and benefits are at an impasse. Meanwhile, in Kentucky, a strike by 420 workers against Heaven Hill Distillery is in its fourth week.
The actions come on top of strikes earlier this summer by 600 workers at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, and 1,000 workers at five Nabisco plants across the U.S. In June, Smithfield Foods narrowly avoided a strike by thousands of workers at a plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The number of actions is unusual. Kellogg says this is the first time its U.S. cereal workers have gone on strike since 1972. Nabisco workers last walked off the job in 1969.
But after a difficult 18 months, which saw many workers putting in 12-hour shifts and mandatory overtime to meet pandemic demand, employees are in no mood to compromise.
“We’re drawing a line in the sand,” said Rob Long, a production mechanic who has worked at Kellogg’s Omaha plant for 11 years. Kellogg workers are also striking in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
Long said he and others are upset about a two-tiered system of employees that gives fewer benefits and less pay to newer workers, creating a wedge within the ranks. Long said the company wants to get rid of a provision that currently caps the lower tier of workers at 30% of the workforce.
After decades of watching companies chip away at pay and benefits, food workers sense that they have a rare upper hand in the wake of the pandemic, says Patricia Campos-Medina, the executive director of The Worker Institute at ILR Cornell.
Labor shortages mean companies can’t easily find replacements for food-production workers, she said. And the pandemic put a spotlight on the essential __ and sometimes dangerous __ nature of their work.
“Workers in general are demanding that companies invest more in the workforce and not just use the profits for the shareholders,” she said.
Campos-Medina said the trend is not only happening with unionized workers like those at Kellogg, who are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union. Non-union fast food workers have walked off the job in dozens of U.S. cities seeking a $15 minimum wage. And workers at three Starbucks stores in Buffalo, New York, are trying to unionize.
The strikes come as food companies are still trying to get back to normal levels of production. Kellogg’s cereal sales had been anemic for years, for example, as families shifted to portable breakfast items like nutrition bars. But when schools closed and kids were home last year, U.S. cereal sales shot up 7%. So far this year, they’re down 7.7%.
Kris Bahner, Kellogg’s senior vice president for global corporate affairs, says the company’s compensation and benefits are already among the industry’s best. The company, which is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, says its longer-term employees made an average of $120,000 last year and $118,000 in 2019, and its proposed contract would shift newer workers to those higher wage rates over six years.
“We are disappointed by the union’s decision to strike,” she said. Kellogg began negotiating a new four-year contract on Sept. 8.
But workers on the picket line in Omaha say they’re routinely working 74- to 84-hour weeks to earn that money. Some workers said they’ve endured 12-hour shifts seven days a week throughout the pandemic, with only a few minutes’ notice about mandatory overtime.
“We do make good money, but we’ve given up a lot,” said Dan Jourdan, a packing machine operator who has worked at Kellogg since 2001. “If we worked just 40 hours a week, we’d make nowhere near that kind of wage.”
___
Durbin reported from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Wrangler News
Wrangler News Staff
2021 10 06
https://www.wranglernews.com/2021/10/06/intels-20b-investment-in-2-new-chip-factories-in-s-chandler-to-create-3000-high-wage-tech-jobs/

Two new computer-chip factories, to open in 2024 at Intel’s Ocotillo campus in south Chandler, will create more than 3,000 high-wage tech jobs.

The post Intel’s $20B investment in 2 new chip factories in S. Chandler to create 3,000 high-wage tech jobs appeared first on Wrangler News.

Ars Technica
Ax Sharma
2021 10 06
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/twitch-admits-to-major-leak-exposing-source-code-creator-earnings/

Twitch confirms the data breach but is investigating the full extent.

Industrial Worker
Shawn Kinnaman
2021 10 06
https://industrialworker.org/iww-recognizes-union-for-remote-staff/

In August, the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World voted unanimously to extend voluntary union recognition to staff working outside of the IWW’s General Headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. While the IWW’s staff in Chicago were previously unionized, the new Remote Workers Union covers employees hired more recently and located in New … Continue reading "IWW Recognizes Union for Remote Staff"

The post IWW Recognizes Union for Remote Staff appeared first on Industrial Worker.

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 06
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/06/the-fifty-governors-2022-515211

Voters in 36 states will elect a governor next year. Here’s a cheat sheet.  POLITICO

Democracy Now!
webdev@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
2021 10 06
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/10/6/abolition_book

Derecka Purnell draws from her experience as a human rights lawyer in her new book, published this month, "Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom," to argue that police reform is an inadequate compromise to calls for abolition. Since the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville in 2020, many states have passed laws aimed at reforming police, but congressional talks at the federal level have broken down. Purnell reflects upon her personal journey as a Black woman who believed in police reform before pivoting to abolition, saying, "I became a part of social movements who pushed me to think more critically … about building a world without violence and how to reduce our reliance on police."

VICE US
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
2021 10 06
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dyvnjk/twitch-hack-of-135-gb-of-data-includes-how-much-its-biggest-streamers-make

The leaked data includes source code, internal tools, and the financial data of streamers.

Alexander R. Galloway
ARG
2021 10 06
http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/ephemera-pt-2-debord-the-game-of-war

Guy Debord’s "Game of War" is a huge part of Uncomputable. He provides the framing narrative in the preface. And section five on "Crystalline War" is largely devoted to Debord and his unexpected turn to game design. While I don’t really talk about Kriegspiel in the book — I wanted to focus on Debord’s process, not […]

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 06
https://www.tor.com/2021/10/05/ursula-k-le-guins-the-dispossessed-to-become-tv-series/

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed to Become TV Series  tor.com

Scientific American Content
Sophie Bushwick
2021 10 06
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-blank-wall-can-show-how-many-people-are-in-a-room-and-what-theyre-doing/

The technique is the latest method to glean a surprising amount of surveillance from a meager source

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Associated Press

2021 10 05
http://apnews.com/article/nuclear-weapons-92aba763bfa9c19dcc912af7a1eefe75

2021-10-05 23:02:08Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a member session at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Ministerial Council Meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021, in Paris. (Ian Langsdon, Pool via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a reversal of Trump administration policy, the State Department on Tuesday disclosed the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile. It said this will aid global efforts to control the spread of such weapons.
The number of U.S. weapons, including those in active status as well as those in long-term storage, stood at 3,750 as of September 2020, the department said. That is down from 3,805 a year earlier and 3,785 in 2018.
As recently as 2003, the U.S. nuclear weapon total was slightly above 10,000. It peaked at 31,255 in 1967.
The last time the U.S. government released its stockpile number was in March 2018, when it said the total was 3,822 as of September 2017. That was early in the Trump administration, which subsequently kept updated numbers secret and denied a request by the Federation of American Scientists to declassified them.
“Back to transparency,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. He said the Biden administration was wise to reverse the prior administration’s policy.
Kristensen said disclosing the stockpile number will assist U.S. diplomats in arms control negotiations and at next year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference, which will review the disarmament commitment made by nuclear powers who are treaty signatories, including the United States.
The Biden administration is conducting a nuclear weapons posture and policy review that is expected to be completed early next year.
At the Conference on Disarmament last February, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “President Biden has made it clear: the U.S. has a national security imperative and a moral responsibility to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.”

Associated Press

2021 10 05
http://apnews.com/article/business-omaha-nebraska-memphis-michigan-d9185eb8fa9054d34a078063c3db6c33

2021-10-05 18:26:06First shift worker Travis Huffman joins other BCTGM Local 3G union members in a strike against Kellogg Co., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021, outside the Kellogg plant on Porter Street in Battle Creek, Mich. Workers in Battle Creek, Lancaster, Memphis and Omaha walked out at 1 a.m. Tuesday,, demanding livable wages and better benefits. (Alyssa Keown/Battle Creek Enquirer via AP)
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Work at all of the Kellogg Company’s U.S. cereal plants came to a halt Tuesday as roughly 1,400 workers went on strike, but it wasn’t immediately clear how much the supply of Frosted Flakes or any of the company’s other iconic brands would be disrupted.
The strike includes plants in Omaha, Nebraska Battle Creek, Michigan; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee.
The union and the Battle Creek-based company have been at an impasse at the bargaining table for more than a year, said Daniel Osborn, president of the local union in Omaha. The dispute involves an assortment of pay and benefit issues such as the loss premium health care, holiday and vacation pay and reduced retirement benefits
“The company continues to threaten to send additional jobs to Mexico if workers do not accept outrageous proposals that take away protections that workers have had for decades," said Anthony Shelton, president of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union.
The threat to move work to Mexico doesn’t sit well with Osborn.
“A lot of Americans probably don’t have too much issue with the Nike or Under Armor hats being made elsewhere or even our vehicles, but when they start manufacturing our food down where they are out of the FDA control and OSHA control, I have a huge problem with that,” Osborn said.
The company insists that its offer is fair and would increase wages and benefits for its employees that it said made an average of $120,000 a year last year.
"We are disappointed by the union’s decision to strike. Kellogg provides compensation and benefits for our U.S. ready to eat cereal employees that are among the industry’s best," Kellogg spokesperson Kris Bahner said in a statement.
Osborn said he expects the company to try to bring non-union workers into the plants at some point this week to try to resume operations and maintain the supply of its products.
The company acknowledged that it is "implementing contingency plans" to limit supply disruptions for consumers.
The plants have all continued to operate throughout the coronavirus pandemic, but Osborn said that for much of that time workers were putting in 12-hour shifts, seven days a week to keep up production while so many people were out because of the virus.
“The level we were working at is unsustainable,” Osborn said.
Kellogg’s workers aren’t the first food workers to strike during the pandemic.
Earlier this summer, more than 600 workers at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, walked off the job to protest working conditions during the pandemic, including forced overtime. That strike ended in July when workers ratified a new contract.
Workers at Nabisco plants in five states went on strike in August to protest plans by Nabisco’s parent, Mondelez International, to move some work to Mexico, among other issues, according to the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, which also represents the Kellogg’s workers. That strike ended last month when workers ratified a new contract.
___
Associated Press writer Dee-Ann Durbin contributed to this report from Detroit.

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 05
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nypd-fbi-raid-ed-mullins-b1932776.html

FBI raids NYPD sergeants union headquarters in Manhattan  The Independent

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 05
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/technology/youtube-misinformation.html

YouTube’s Ban on Misinformation  The New York Times

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
Josh Kelety
2021 10 05
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/joe-arpaio-is-running-for-mayor-of-fountain-hills-arizona-12148803

"I am serious about the position. I’m not retired."
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced today that he is officially running for mayor of Fountain Hills, the small town northeast of Phoenix where he lives. Arpaio, who is 89 years old, told Phoenix New Times in September that he was "really thinking" about running for the position in the 2022 election cycle.…

Politico
Lara Seligman and Paul McLeary
2021 10 05
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/05/tensions-us-china-taiwan-515142

Chinese military flights near Taiwan are nothing new, yet the size and frequency of the sorties have grown.

Foreign Policy
Stefanie Glinski
2021 10 05
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/05/afghanistan-economy-poverty-crisis-taliban/

Without urgent assistance, nearly the entire country could sink into poverty, the United Nations Development Program warns.

VICE US
Paul Blest
2021 10 05
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkbjxm/northwell-health-hospital-system-fired-1400-unvaccinated-workers

Workers at Northwell Health had until Sept. 27 to get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Phoenix New Times | The Leading Independent News Source in Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix New Times
Robrt L. Pela
2021 10 05
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/punk-music-and-underground-art-zine-fluke-celebrates-30-years-12116702

Publisher Matthew Thompson says zine culture is "very much alive and well."
Matthew Thompson doesn’t believe in being bored. “The world is full of boring people,” the publisher of FLUKE, a local punk zine, said.…

Democracy Now!
webdev@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
2021 10 05
http://www.democracynow.org/2021/10/5/pandora_papers_leak_global_elite

The Pandora Papers, described as "the world’s largest-ever journalistic collaboration," have revealed the secret financial dealings of the world’s richest and most powerful people. "We’ve uncovered a system that benefits a few at the expense of the many," says Ben Hallman, senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who details some of the project’s main revelations so far. We also speak with Vanessa Ogle, professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley and an expert on tax havens, who says the growth of tax havens like the Bahamas and Switzerland is directly linked to wealth extraction from the developing world. "The seed money for the expansion of these tax havens comes out of the colonial world," she explains.

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 05
https://screenrant.com/evil-ernie-new-series-anniversary-horror-comic/

Evil Ernie Gives Horror Icon a New Host for 30th Anniversary Series  Screen Rant

Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal
2021 10 05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSPmqqKams

VICE US
Ella Fassler
2021 10 05
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7e9y3/activists-are-designing-mesh-networks-to-deploy-during-civil-unrest

The Mycelium Mesh Project is testing DIY networks that can be quickly deployed on trees or lamp posts during a political uprising.

Ars Technica
Ax Sharma
2021 10 05
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/facebook-outage-likely-caused-60m-loss-impacted-small-businesses/

Configuration change cascaded down the data centers, bringing systems to a halt.

It’s FOSS News
Ankush Das
2021 10 05
https://news.itsfoss.com/gnome-42-dark-style-preference/

GNOME 42 plans to introduce a system-wide dark style preference to provide a consistent dark mode experience, similar to elementary OS.

The post GNOME 42 to Introduce a System-wide Dark Style Preference, Thanks to elementary OS appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

Politico

2021 10 05
https://www.politico.eu/article/216000-children-abused-by-french-catholic-church-report-finds/

“hannah arendt” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dialogues-by-stanislaw-lem-review-cybernetics-2zjx9mfcj

Dialogues by Stanislaw Lem review — a tech seer’s long-lost visionary warning about AI  The Times

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://deadline.com/2021/09/u-s-capitol-riot-documentary-four-hours-at-the-capitol-set-at-hbo-for-fall-premiere-1234846559/

U.S. Capitol Riot Documentary ‘Four Hours At The Capitol’ Set At HBO For Fall Premiere  Deadline

CounterPunch.org
CounterPunch News Service
2021 10 04
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/04/facebook-users-union-launches-firezuck-campaign/

San Francisco Last night, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told 60 Minutes that Facebook is misleading the public about lies, hate and disinformation on its platform. We wish we were surprised. Time and time again, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put Facebook’s profits ahead of truth, safety, health and democracy. That’s why today the Facebook Users More

The post Facebook Users Union Launches #FireZuck Campaign appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Ars Technica
John Timmer
2021 10 04
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/nobel-in-medicine-sensing-heat-cold-and-touch/

Discoveries triggered a wave of findings about how we sense our environments.

VICE US
Tess Owen
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5db7wq/anti-vaxxers-just-destroyed-a-covid-testing-unit-in-new-york

During a march against vaccine requirements, some New York City firefighters fist-bumped protesters and at least one law enforcement officer cheered.

Associated Press

2021 10 04
http://apnews.com/article/amtrak-tucson-arizona-shootings-fc9d1467b21a8bb5a1cefc80594a94a6

2021-10-04 18:18:32A Tucson Police Department SWAT truck is parked near the last two cars of an Amtrak train in downtown Tucson, Ariz., Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. One person is in custody after someone opened fire Monday aboard an Amtrak train in Tucson, Arizona, police said. The shooting happened just after 8 a.m. on a train parked at the station in the city’s downtown. Authorities say the scene has been secured and no threat remains. (Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star via AP)
A Drug Enforcement Administration special agent was killed Monday when a passenger, who also died, opened fire as officers were doing a routine inspection for illegal contraband on an Amtrak train in Tucson, Arizona, authorities said. A second agent and a Tucson police officer were wounded.
“It’s very horrific and we’re all just coming to terms with just how terrible a loss this is,” Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said. “But I also want to reflect on the really heroic actions of the officers at the scene. They literally ran towards the danger, into the car, where there was an active shooting situation going on.”
Magnus spoke outside the hospital where the agent and Tucson officer had been taken. The agent was listed in critical condition while the officer was in stable condition. He said authorities would not be releasing their names.
The shooting, which sent passengers fleeing, happened just after 8 a.m. on a train stopped at the station in the city’s downtown. A regional task force of DEA agents and Tucson police officers had boarded one of the cars to do a typical check for illegal money, weapons and drugs. It’s a common occurrence at all transit hubs, Magnus said.
Officers were in the middle of detaining a man on the upper level of the double-decker car when a second man pulled out a handgun and began firing. He exchanged several rounds with police and then barricaded himself in a bathroom on the lower level, Magnus said.
He was later found dead inside.
The other suspect has been arrested. It wasn’t immediately known what charges he faces or his relationship to the second man.
Magnus praised Tucson police officers for getting the injured DEA agent off the train and rushing him to the hospital in the back of a patrol car. The hospitalized Tucson officer had been on the platform when he heard the shooting. He was shot when he ran into the car to help.
There were about a dozen other passengers in the car where the shooting occurred.
“I just think it’s kind of incredible here there weren’t other people who were hurt, even though we’re completely so saddened by the loss of the officer,” Magnus said.
Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams also confirmed there were no reported injuries to the crew or passengers.
The Sunset Limited, Train 2, was traveling from Los Angeles to New Orleans, and arrived at the Tucson station at 7:40 am, Abrams said. There were 137 passengers and 11 crew members, he said. All have been evacuated to the station.
Evan Courtney was in a lounge car when people suddenly came running in yelling: “Shots fired!”
“I grabbed my backpack and ran,” Courtney told The Associated Press via Twitter direct messaging.
He said he huddled with other passengers while looking out the window. He saw several tactical police officers with assault rifles behind barricades. After 15 minutes, “police ran to us and told us to get out of the car and run in the opposite direction.”
Courtney later tweeted a photo of nearly two dozen officers including two embracing.
Dramatic video taken by a camera at the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum shows some of the shooting.
Multiple shots can be heard from inside a train before a man, who appears to be a security officer with a dog, boards in the middle of the second-to-last car through an open door. Two bystanders back away and then run past a baggage cart, joining four others as they usher each other into the last car and the door slides shut, the video shows.
One shot is heard and the security officer, holding a gun, backs off the train with the dog still on the leash. He runs behind a structure on the train platform as a man appears at the passenger car door, fires three shots toward the fleeing man and dog, and disappears back inside.
The camera belongs to Virtual Railfan, which operates more than 50 cameras livestreaming train operations around the country for train buffs. Kathy Abbott, operations manager, said both Tucson police and Amtrak police have asked for any footage to be made available.
Virtual Railfan’s cameras do capture crime but “maybe not this dramatic,” Abbott said. “This was definitely an adrenaline rush.”
Tucson, home to the University of Arizona, is about 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Phoenix.

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“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://azbigmedia.com/business/ducey-launches-arizonas-new-cyber-command-center/

Ducey launches Arizona’s new Cyber Command Center  AZ Big Media

VICE US
Edward Ongweso Jr
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj87wm/facebooks-outage-shows-we-need-antitrust-action-now

Facebook is already the internet gateway for millions of people across the world. Transparency and accountability can’t fix that. Breaking it up can.

Politico
Hannah Roberts
2021 10 04
https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-local-elections-takeaways-rome-milan-bologna-mario-draghi-pd-5stars-league/

What the vote means for Draghi, the right-wing coalition and the center-left alliance.

VICE US
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4avjqb/conspiracy-theories-about-facebook-outage-spread-even-without-facebook

Some people believe the hours long outage may be linked to a supposed data breach that is, most likely, actually a scam.

Ars Technica
Andrew Cunningham
2021 10 04
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/windows-11-the-ars-technica-review/

Attractive new design overshadowed by regressions and high system requirements.

“us uk australia japan china” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/oct/4/hr-mcmaster-china-relations-face-very-dangerous-ti/

H.R. McMaster: China relations face ‘very dangerous’ time for U.S., allies  Washington Times

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://yourvalley.net/stories/tempe-mill-avenue-sees-businesses-close-pandemic-high-rent,263132

Mill Avenue sees high number of businesses shutter  Your Valley

Best Infographics
cyrus
2021 10 04
https://www.best-infographics.com/most-commonly-used-homicide-weapons-per-state/

When it comes to homicides, guns are the most commonly used weapons. Certain states have a higher rate of homicides by knives and other weapons though. This infographic from Joslyn Law Firm covers which weapons are mostly commonly used for homicides:

The post Most Commonly Used Homicide Weapons Per State appeared first on Best Infographics.

Ars Technica
Jim Salter
2021 10 04
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-and-oculus-are-down-heres-what-we-know/

The root cause of the worldwide outage appears to be a flubbed BGP route update.

VICE US
Jason Koebler
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kvgez/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-are-all-down

Seemingly all Facebook-owned services have gone offline with little explanation thus far.

VICE US
Katie Way
October 4th 2021
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7badd/stop-asking-retail-workers-what-size-they-are

According to people who work in clothing stores, invasive body talk is a regular occurrence.

It’s FOSS News
Rishabh Moharir
2021 10 04
https://news.itsfoss.com/google-sos-sponsor/

Google plans to reward developers working on securing critical open source projects through Secure Open Source program by The Linux Foundation.

The post Google Sponsors $1 Million to Fund Secure Open Source Program by The Linux Foundation appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

Existential Comics
Corey Mohler
2021 10 04
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/414

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 04
https://anarchistnews.org/content/anews-podcast-230-%E2%80%93-10121

From Anews Podcast

Welcome to the anews podcast. This podcast is on anarchist activity, ideas, and conversations from the previous week on anarchistnews.org.

http://podcast.anarchistnews.org/episodes/anewse230.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Welcome to the anews podcast. This podcast is on anarchist activity, ideas, and conversations from the previous week on anarchistnews.org.

Sound editing by Greg.

What’s new this week written by chisel, read by chisel and chuckles

TOTW conversation – Truth and Lies (recording botched) by Octox

Music:
1. Huey Lewis & The News – The Power of Love
2. The Eagles – Lyin’ Eyes

Tags: anews podcastpodcastaudio

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://www.thenationalherald.com/archive_general_news_greece/arthro/more_violent_left_right_clashes_rattle_thessaloniki_arrests_made_vids-3362784/

More Violent Left-Right Clashes Rattle Thessaloniki, Arrests Made (Vids)  The National Herald

Politico
Nick Niedzwiadek
2021 10 04
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/04/yang-breaks-with-democratic-party-514991

“Breaking up with the Democratic Party feels like the right thing to do because I believe I can have a greater impact this way,” he wrote in a blog post.

Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine
Lucia Geng
2021 10 04
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/mutual-aid-goes-mainstream

Now that the pandemic has shifted from an immediate to a chronic crisis, organizers have a chance to rethink the political implications of their efforts.

Ars Technica
Tim De Chant
2021 10 04
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/10/facebook-is-tearing-our-societies-apart-whistleblower-says-in-interview/

"Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests."

New Politics
Alexi Gusev
2021 10 04
https://newpol.org/the-kronstadt-revolt-of-1921-as-a-part-of-the-great-russian-revolution/

The March revolution of 1921, initiated by “Red Kronstadt”, had to complete the cause of February and October revolutions of 1917. In this context, the Kronstadt revolt of 1921 appears as an integral part of the revolutionary process that took several years.

Read more ›

The post The Kronstadt Revolt of 1921 as a part of the Great Russian Revolution appeared first on New Politics.

VICE US
David Gilbert
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7ew8d/evangelical-pastors-fighting-back-against-qanon

“This is the most serious problem within Protestant Christianity that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

VICE US
Joseph Cox
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgxnwk/you-probably-dont-need-a-vpn

Most Americans may be better off not paying for a commercial VPN, according to multiple security experts.

VICE US
Karl Bode
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7e9va/there-is-no-escape-from-americas-robocall-hell

A new FCC proposal may help, but lobbying and recent court rulings mean the robocall menace isn’t going away anytime soon.

“hannah arendt” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/furry-transhumanists-and-the-culture-of-narcissism

Furry Transhumanists and the Culture of Narcissism  Splice Today

“”Existentialism”” – Google News

2021 10 04
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/jasper-johns-remains-contemporary-arts-philosopher-king

Jasper Johns Remains Contemporary Art’s Philosopher King  The New Yorker

CounterPunch.org
John Stanton
2021 10 04
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/04/native-americans-the-first-and-forgotten-slaves/

“Modern perceptions of early modern slavery associate the institution almost solely with Africans and their descendants. Yet slavery was a ubiquitous institution in the early modern world…The story of European colonialism in the Americas and its victimization of Africans and Indians follows a central paradigm in most textbooks. The African “role” encompasses the transportation, exploitation, More

The post Native Americans: the First and Forgotten Slaves appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Politico
Nick Niedzwiadek
2021 10 04
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/04/biden-us-debt-limit-514993

Biden repeatedly chastised Senate Republicans for repeatedly blocking Democrats from passing a debt limit increase in recent weeks.

VICE US
Jason Koebler
2021 10 04
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kvgez/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-are-all-down

Seemingly all Facebook-owned services have gone offline with little explanation thus far.

Daily Infographic
Charles
2021 10 03
https://dailyinfographic.com/12-countries-influenced-by-influencers

Influencers dominate social media with their picture-perfect accounts and mass followings. So how much power do influencers actually have when it comes to influencing consumers? The answer is more than you might think. And as a result, influencers have become an important tool for marketing.             This translates to influencers having the most power over […]

The post 12 Countries That Are Influenced By Influencers first appeared on Daily Infographic.

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 03
https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/homeland-security-leaders-pushed-unfounded-antifa-conspiracy-at-2020-portland-protests-report-states/article_00ba98e6-23b9-11ec-abb9-e3fbd26069aa.html

Homeland Security leaders pushed unfounded antifa conspiracy at 2020 Portland protests, report states  Bend Bulletin

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 03
https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchist-oral-history-project

from Empty Hands

Seeking Interviews

Have you been involved in anarchist projects or organizations in the United States from the 1970s-2000s? We would like to interview you for an Anarchist Oral History Project!

Spencer Beswick (he/him) is a PhD candidate writing his dissertation on the history of US anarchism in the late 20th century, with a particular focus on Love and Rage. Spencer has been active in anarchist and other left projects for the past decade, beginning with participation in Occupy Boston and currently consisting of helping to run a Marxist reading group and socialist night school where he lives in Ithaca, NY.

Connected to his dissertation research, Spencer is involved with a broader Anarchist Oral History Project seeking to interview a wide swathe of movement participants from the 1960s to today. He is looking to interview anyone involved in anarchist projects and organizations in the late 20th and early 21st century, particularly (but certainly not limited to) Love and Rage and associated groups like Anti-Racist Action. Spencer is located in NYC for Fall 2021 and will be traveling for research and interviews in 2022. You can reach him at spencerbeswick@gmail.com.

Author: Empty Hands

Empty Hands History is written by Spencer Beswick, a History PhD student at Cornell University who studies the history of the left to offer inspiration for today’s movements.

Tags: call for participationinterviewshistorical memoryacademic

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 03
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-beyond-left-and-right

Inspired by an anews thread that included a "you’re a leftist," "no, you’re a leftist" back-and-forth, let’s talk about anarchists using terms like Left and Right, even as derogatory terms. These are boxes, part of a model, that has never helped us, and now is so reified that it doesn’t serve anyone. They’re handy terms to dismiss someone you don’t want to listen to anymore, but the labels The Right and The Left are no more nuanced than any of the other identity terms that many anarchists recognize as superficial and massifying. That said, models for groups of people can be helpful, so what are better models to use? Obviously anarchists are familiar with color-coding (red, green, etc). What if that were made more interesting? Shading? Hues? Polka dots? We got a ton of designers here, let’s mix that shit up. Or fashions, like crust punk, hot topic, etc. What would your creative and generous model be for how to understand and talk about differences and similarities?

Tags: jargonlabelscategoriesmodelsidentitytopic of the week

Indigenous Action Media
admin
2021 10 03
https://www.indigenousaction.org/indigenous-action-podcast-ep-11-against-the-academy-voices-countering-the-academic-industrial-complex/

Subscribe: iTunes | Spotify In this show we hear from host Edxi Betts and our guests about their experiences within the Academic Industrial Complex…

“”Anarchist”” – Google News

2021 10 03
https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/homeland-security-leaders-pushed-unfounded-antifa-conspiracy-at-2020-portland-protests-report-states/article_00ba98e6-23b9-11ec-abb9-e3fbd26069aa.html

Homeland Security leaders pushed unfounded antifa conspiracy at 2020 Portland protests, report states  Bend Bulletin

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 03
https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchist-oral-history-project

from Empty Hands

Seeking Interviews

Have you been involved in anarchist projects or organizations in the United States from the 1970s-2000s? We would like to interview you for an Anarchist Oral History Project!

Spencer Beswick (he/him) is a PhD candidate writing his dissertation on the history of US anarchism in the late 20th century, with a particular focus on Love and Rage. Spencer has been active in anarchist and other left projects for the past decade, beginning with participation in Occupy Boston and currently consisting of helping to run a Marxist reading group and socialist night school where he lives in Ithaca, NY.

Connected to his dissertation research, Spencer is involved with a broader Anarchist Oral History Project seeking to interview a wide swathe of movement participants from the 1960s to today. He is looking to interview anyone involved in anarchist projects and organizations in the late 20th and early 21st century, particularly (but certainly not limited to) Love and Rage and associated groups like Anti-Racist Action. Spencer is located in NYC for Fall 2021 and will be traveling for research and interviews in 2022. You can reach him at spencerbeswick@gmail.com.

Author: Empty Hands

Empty Hands History is written by Spencer Beswick, a History PhD student at Cornell University who studies the history of the left to offer inspiration for today’s movements.

Tags: call for participationinterviewshistorical memoryacademic

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 03
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-beyond-left-and-right

Inspired by an anews thread that included a "you’re a leftist," "no, you’re a leftist" back-and-forth, let’s talk about anarchists using terms like Left and Right, even as derogatory terms. These are boxes, part of a model, that has never helped us, and now is so reified that it doesn’t serve anyone. They’re handy terms to dismiss someone you don’t want to listen to anymore, but the labels The Right and The Left are no more nuanced than any of the other identity terms that many anarchists recognize as superficial and massifying. That said, models for groups of people can be helpful, so what are better models to use? Obviously anarchists are familiar with color-coding (red, green, etc). What if that were made more interesting? Shading? Hues? Polka dots? We got a ton of designers here, let’s mix that shit up. Or fashions, like crust punk, hot topic, etc. What would your creative and generous model be for how to understand and talk about differences and similarities?

Tags: jargonlabelscategoriesmodelsidentitytopic of the week

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 03
https://www.kold.com/2021/10/03/gov-ducey-launch-new-arizona-cyber-command-center/

Gov. Ducey to launch new Arizona Cyber Command Center  KOLD

Indigenous Action Media
admin
2021 10 03
https://www.indigenousaction.org/indigenous-action-podcast-ep-11-against-the-academy-voices-countering-the-academic-industrial-complex/

Subscribe: iTunes | Spotify In this show we hear from host Edxi Betts and our guests about their experiences within the Academic Industrial Complex…

Forward

2021 10 03
https://forward.com/fast-forward/476233/david-lee-roth-van-halens-proudly-jewish-former-frontman-is-retiring/

“I am throwing in the shoes. I’m retiring,” he said.

Politico
Alexander Nieves
2021 10 03
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/09/30/california-prepares-to-police-burgeoning-cbd-market-1391460

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 03
https://azbigmedia.com/real-estate/residential-real-estate/heres-why-gilbert-has-become-a-premier-location-for-first-time-homeowners/

Here’s why Gilbert has become a premier location for first-time homeowners  AZ Big Media

Politico
Andrew Yang
2021 10 03
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/03/andrew-yang-book-excerpt-campaigning-514967

We should worry about what the modern campaign process is doing to all of our leaders.

CounterPunch.org
Dan Glazebrook
2021 10 03
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/03/counter-revolution-in-arabia-what-the-windsors-wrought/

The first article in this series looked at the ‘domestic’ role of the British monarchy, suggesting that they served as a ‘counter-revolutionary backstop’, a feudal remnant kept artificially alive in order to prop up bourgeois rule through the bypassing of parliament and the establishment of rule by decree in the event of serious popular unrest and revolt. In a nation as deeply saturated with colonial wealth and outlook as Britain, however, this is more of an ‘insurance policy’ than an active and ongoing role. In the realm of foreign policy, however – where the revolutionary overthrow of Britain’s colonial proxies is a real and ever-present danger – their role is much more active and visible. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Arab world.

Following the taxonomy deployed by the legendary Ghanaian revolutionary, Kwame Nkrumah, the Arab states can be divided into two main camps: those which are under the effective control of the former colonial powers and their allies (which he termed ‘neocolonial’ states), and those which are not. In the former camp are states such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, all of them creations of the British empire and to this day still controlled by the ruling families handpicked by Britain at the height of empire. The consolidation and reinforcement of the relationships between Britain and these families, and the shoring up of their power, is a core part of the role of the British royal family, and much of their time is taken up with hosting and visiting these families. This is especially important at times when their rule is under threat, providing an expression of solidarity at the highest level, an assurance that the British state will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with whatever repression is deemed necessary to hold onto power.

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The post Counter-Revolution in Arabia appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Scientific American Content
Avi Loeb
2021 10 02
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/microbes-natural-intelligence-and-artificial-intelligence/

Humanity’s greatest achievement might be building our successors

— Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Daily Infographic
Jenny
2021 10 02
https://dailyinfographic.com/garden-diary-for-the-year

Gardening is hard work but the avid gardener reaps rewards aplenty. There is nothing quite like fresh fruit and vegetables picked straight from the garden. Gardening is a year-round hobby and this infographic offers a comprehensive plan of how you should plan your garden schedule if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. Following this month-to-month […]

The post Garden Diary For The Year first appeared on Daily Infographic.

“”Tempe”” – Google News

2021 10 02
https://www.statepress.com/article/2021/10/united-campus-workers-union-calls-for-safety-at-asu

United Campus Workers call for health protections, fair treatment at protest  The State Press

“doug ducey” – Google News

2021 10 02
https://www.abqjournal.com/2432967/ducey-replaces-massage-therapist-regulatory-boards-members.html

Ducey replaces massage therapist regulatory board’s members  Albuquerque Journal

It’s FOSS News
Abhishek
2021 10 02
https://news.itsfoss.com/open-source-changed-linux-torvalds/

Linux would have been left behind like other hobby projects but open source changed that. Torvalds share some insights on the 30 years of Linux.

The post Open Source Changed Linux Otherwise It Was Done: Linus Torvalds appeared first on It’s FOSS News.

Current Affairs
Current Affairs
2021 10 02
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/10/how-the-rich-profit-from-racism-from-charter-schools-to-detention-centers/

Author Jim Freeman discusses his new book “Rich Thanks To Racism: How The Ultra-Wealthy Profit From Racial Injustice.”

The Institute for Anarchist Studies
IAS
2021 10 02
https://anarchiststudies.org/25-years-of-anarchism/

To mark the occasion of our 25th anniversary, the IAS is working to raise $25,000 to again award grants next year. We are also sharing “25 Things:” concepts, mutual aid examples, songs, and anarchist moments. Please support the work of the IAS in these increasingly … Read more

anarchistnews.org
thecollective
2021 10 02
https://anarchistnews.org/content/state-virus-far-right

from From Embers

How can anti-authoritarians intervene?

Writer, researcher and teacher Dr. Alex Khasnabish talks about a recent workshop he gave at the Halifax Anarchist Bookfair called “You Can’t Police Yourself Out of a Pandemic: Anti-Authoritarian Strategies in an Age of Crisis.”

We discuss both state and far right responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the tensions surrounding vaccination, anti-authoritarian strategies for collective care, and questions about where to go from here.

In the later part of the episode, Alex briefly references an article he wrote for Roar magazine entitled "From white fragility to white power in the age of COVID-19" – you can read it here.

Tags: From Emberspodcastcovid-19halifaxanarchist bookfair

Jacobin
Mikhail Lobanov
2021 10 02
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/mikhail-lobanov-russia-communist-party-new-left-putin/

The parliamentary elections in Russia held on September 17–19 brought another nominal victory for President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. Yet the most remarkable result was the leap in support for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), which came in second with 19 percent of the vote. Despite the usual fraud favoring Putin […]

Jacobin
Patrick Wyman
2021 10 02
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/10/local-gentry-patrick-wyman-class-wealth-power/

What is evoked for you by the words “ruling class”? For most people, the phrase is likely to conjure images that are distinctly metropolitan — whether associated with the likes of Wall Street and high finance, Greco-Roman architecture in Washington, DC, or the Ivy League institutions attended by many of America’s traditional elite. Almost universally, […]

Current Affairs
Nathan J. Robinson
2021 10 01
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/10/announcement-we-are-resuming-publication/

A note to our readers after a 1-month hiatus on what readers can expect from us going forward.

Arizona Capitol Times
Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
2021 10 01
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2021/10/01/states-hospital-profits-soar/

Arizona hospitals overall saw huge increases in their profits last year despite — or more likely, because of — Covid.

Daily Infographic
Alexis
2021 09 30
https://dailyinfographic.com/what-it-means-to-be-a-karen

Being a “Karen” isn’t just about your name– it’s a lifestyle. In pop culture, the “Karen” trope has become such a meme that the once extremely popular name has fallen virtually nonexistent for babies born in the past few years.  We all know someone who always seems to need to speak to the manager at […]

The post What It Means To Be A Karen first appeared on Daily Infographic.

@cyb3rd4ndy Timeline
CrimethInc. (@crimethinc)
2021 02 18
https://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1362430423192670211