The Financial Mafia Fiddles While The World Burns.

       Our system propaganda machine, the mainstream media, continues to paint a picture that all is well within the system, with a few hiccups here and there. This despite the obvious impending collapse of the financial system that will bring extreme hardship and deprivation across the globe, moving it right across the developed world instead of containing it mostly, as it tries at present, in the poorer countries of the world. On top of that, there are massive uprisings across the globe by the people, against the brutal exploitative system that has for generations, heaped so much misery and deprivation on so many while lavishing untold wealth on the few. It is obvious to the thinking observer that something has to break and that break is not far off.

This from Its Going Down:

          The Demise of U.S. Hegemony: Analysis of a Revolutionary Heat Wave in Haiti, West Papua, Mexico and Beyond

Filed under: Analysis, The State

— Abolition Media Worldwide 

A look at recent revolts in Haiti, West Papua, and Mexico and how they are linked to the decline in US imperial power.

       A massive revolutionary heat wave has swept the globe this summer, as militants have risen up with the intent to overthrow their colonial and imperialist foes. In the face of gruesome and relentless State repression, the people are nevertheless holding and gaining ground. From West Papua to Mexico, from Haiti to Colombia, from Honduras to Sudan and beyond, those who have long suffered the violence and indignities of occupation are declaring, unequivocally, that they have had enough. These and other uprisings around the world herald the demise of U.S. hegemony.

Recent Events in West Papua, Mexico, and Haiti

        On September 23rd, 2019, West Papuan revolutionaries burned down an Indonesian colonial government building in Wamena, as the insurrection in West Papua that began last month gained new momentum. In August, racist attacks against West Papuans in cities on the island of Java prompted widespread protests in the provinces, and roughly 2,000 West Papuan students studying in Java headed home early. Indonesia’s colonial occupation of West Papua and the racist violence stemming therefrom have propelled these protests into a full-on insurrection— and the Indonesian State has responded accordingly.

The State remains unable to suppress the revolution, despite many feverish attempts. At least 35,000 West Papuans have been forced from their homes, and an additional 6,000 Indonesian police and military personnel were deployed to West Papua earlier this month. Still, when police murdered sixteen West Papuans after students protested against racism, the people administered revolutionary justice in the form of flaming barricades and the torching of several buildings, including a government building and the airport.

         In Mexico, on the fifth anniversary of the disappearance of 43 Normalista students from Ayotzinapa, militants attacked the national palace where President Andrés Manuel López Obrador currently lives, a Christopher Columbus statue, and other commercial and government buildings in Mexico City. The Normalista students disappeared on September 26th and 27th of 2014; last week, roughly 4,000 people, including students and anarchists, took part in enacting revolutionary justice against the State on their behalf.

Targeted offices included those of Secretariat of Welfare, the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other government agencies. In all, roughly thirty businesses and public offices were affected.

          On Friday, September 27th, revolutionaries throughout Haiti destroyed police headquarters, attacked residences of government officials, and burned a jail and courts to the ground. Insurgents there are fighting to overthrow the corrupt right-wing regime of Jovenel Moise, who is backed by the U.S. Four people died in clashes in recent days, with many reports of injuries. Moise’s government had siphoned off Venezuelan aid money that came through Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program, which had allowed Haiti to buy petroleum products at discount and on credit. The program has now been suspended, owing to both the U.S.’s interest in overthrowing the current Venezuelan government in order to install a new far-right puppet regime and its support of the Haitian State.

Faced with devastating fuel shortages and prices, the people of Haiti have set the island ablaze. In the capital city of Port-au-Prince, police were met with armed resistance; in Jacmel, the central court and prison were burned to the ground, while prisoners arrested during the last round of uprisings earlier this summer were liberated. In Thomonde, revolutionaries disarmed the police, who fled as their vehicles and substation were set on fire. And in Les Cayes, the office of USAID NGO Caris Foundation was ransacked and their vehicle was set on fire.

The Death of U.S. Hegemony

        While circumstances vary from one to another, these struggles are united in myriad ways. Not only are they all instances of anti-imperialist rebellion, but also among the sinister empires at the root of the oppression endured in West Papua, Mexico, and Haiti alike is none other than that of the United States.

        In 1957, eight years after having recognized Indonesia’s independence, the Dutch empire began a process that would allegedly allow independence for West Papua in 1972. What the Dutch did not know at that time was that twenty-one years earlier, a 1936 expedition had discovered an ertsberg (ore mountain) on West Papua. While various territorial claims had been made, the mountain remained uninhabited for over twenty years.

         Enter the twin demons of capitalism and imperialism.

The United States mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold negotiated with Indonesian army general Suharto to allow prospecting on the mountain. In 1962, after Indonesia declared war on the Netherlands, the U.S. and U.N. predictably conspired to have “interim” control of West Papua signed over to Indonesia. The Indonesian State, having just over a dozen years earlier liberated itself from Dutch colonial rule, donned the colonizer’s clothes and viciously repressed the people of West Papua, making acts such as singing the West Papuan anthem and flying the West Papuan flag illegal.

General Suharto, no doubt thoroughly a U.S. stooge by this time, became president of Indonesia in 1968.

            Similarly, the U.S. empire also colonized Haiti through both stooge deployment and theft of resources. In 2015, the U.S. successfully installed its Haitian stooge, Moise, by enabling former president Martelly— via his goons— to frighten and intimidate Haitians into voting for Moise (who Martelly also backed). In 2010, Canadian and U.S. mining companies unearthed gold, silver, copper, and other valuable metals— roughly $20,000,000,000 worth— in Haiti. This was just after the devastating earthquake that instantly killed up to 300,000 people and from which Haiti has yet to fully recover.

Roughly 15 percent of Haiti’s territory was under license to North American mining firms and partners as of December 2018, including the U.S. company VCS Mining, the Canadian company Majescor, and their subsidiaries. Predictably enough, as the people of Haiti struggle harder and harder to meet their most basic needs, North American colonizers continue to profit wildly from the island’s resources.

Hillary Clinton’s brother, Anthony Rodham, was a prominent player in the mining scheme, according to corporate VCS documents. (It should come as no surprise that Rodham has no background in mining whatsoever.) Rodham joined the advisory board of VCS Mining in October 2013, and a 2014 VCS memorandum touts his influential connections to the Clintons’ “inner circles” and “power bases.”

While President Obrador (AMLO) was fashioned in the style of a left-leaning crusader for justice during the most recent Mexican presidential elections, he has unwaveringly done Trump’s bidding since taking office. AMLO, who vowed not to do Trump’s “dirty work” with respect to abusing and oppressing migrants while on the campaign trail, has been deploying unprecedented levels of troops throughout Mexico, including his newly-formed and contentious Guardia Nacional (National Guard): an amalgamation of existing federal, military, and naval police.

         In spite of ample promises made to respect the autonomy of indigenous people, AMLO created the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples to manage indigenous affairs— an obvious attempt to undermine organizations such as the National Indigenous Congress, an anti-capitalist indigenous resistance movement focused on defending land and resources and protecting indigenous culture. In April, AMLO announced a series of megaprojects he claimed would improve regional development: the Maya Train, a new refinery in Tabasco along the Gulf of Mexico, the Trans Isthmus corridor, and the Plan Integral Morelos— all of which involve dispossession of farmers and indigenous communities. In some cases, construction and management have already opened to bidding by transnational corporations, including many that are U.S.-based.

        Trump personally sent a message to AMLO to assure the latter that the U.S. would invest in the Maya Train in particular. The area it will cover— approximately 1,500 kilometers, from Palenque to Cancún— is already overrun by big-box hotels, fine-dining restaurants and nightclubs which allow tourists from advanced capitalist societies to enjoy luxury on the cheap. By comparison, local economic benefits from this arrangement are minimal. Tourists are spared the sight of the wretchedly under-serviced neighborhoods outside of town that are home to the army of service, maintenance and construction workers whose starting salary ranges from $180 to $420 per month for a six-day week. One can imagine how far that goes in a city dominated by international tourism.

        That this by-colonizers-for-colonizers railway invokes the name of the first indigenous people of Mexico pours salt on an ever-widening wound. (It is fitting that so many harbingers of the end of the U.S. empire’s dominion should occur as we approach Indigenous People’s Day, October 7th— a day the State calls Columbus Day and that was meant to celebrate Columbus’s enslavement and murder of indigenous people, but is now being reclaimed by U.S.-based anti-imperialists as a day to commemorate indigenous martyrs and express solidarity with ongoing indigenous struggles unfolding across the globe.)

One remarkable thing about the present moment is that the three revolutionary uprisings explored above do not even amount to half of the total number taking place worldwide:

        On September 20th and 21st, thousands of people in at least eight Egyptian cities took to the streets to demand the removal of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a fascist who won both the 2014 and 2018 “elections” after running against no serious contenders and amid widespread voting boycotts.

Two days later, on September 23rd, students in Colombia rebelled in the capital city of Bogota and defended themselves in the face of violent repression by the police. This was the second clash between students and police there this year, and the third since current President Ivan Duque took office. (Under his regime, repression of student protests of any kind has become increasingly merciless.)

Three days later, on September 26th, roughly two thousand people demonstrated in Khartoum, Sudan to demand the immediate release of Waleed Abdelrahman Hassan, a Sudanese student who had been detained by Egyptian authorities and delivered a coerced confession on television.

         Still, this list is not exhaustive.

Revolutionary anarchists stand in solidarity with all oppressed people, and recognize the potential contained in this moment. We mourn those who have already fallen in these struggles, but are buoyed by the knowledge that the Age of Empire is coming to a definitive end. The revolutionary heartbeat is palpable and thunderous, pulsing across oceans, deserts, mountains, and hills; igniting fortitude and resilience like wildfire. Neither individual State actors nor their imperial puppet-masters can put out the fire that burns in the chest of the People.

We welcome the imminent demise of U.S. hegemony, and support all of those who continue to fight for liberation!

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201182814172453998.html https://sfbayview.com/2018/12/merten-mercenaries-marionettes-and-the-media-blackout-on-haiti/ https://truthout.org/articles/amlo-in-office-from-megaprojects-to-militarization/

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

We Can Do It Ourselves.

      In most emergencies, "natural" or otherwise, the state never seems to step up to the line. It gets bogged down in legislation and concern for costs and a bias to protect property. It always falls to the communities to step forward and organise in a hands on and unstinting manner. Yes charities do step in but the are always dependent on the money factor, communities use mutual aid and utilise what is available, cost is seldom a factor.

    The following article shows this coming into play in the recent brutal cold spell to hit the Chicago area, if only the communities would hold onto this strategy after the crisis has passed, then perhaps we would see a more rapid collapse of the failed system of capitalism.  

This extract from Its Going Down:

Street Team Response

---------Several teams sprung up and mobilized quickly from a coalition of anarchist groups which included Little Village Solidarity Network, Haymaker, Tenants United Hyde Park Woodlawn, Blood Fruit Anarchist Library, Chicago Recovery Alliance, Lucy Parsons Labs, Four Red Stars, Chicago General Defense Committee, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and Chicago Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation, among others. Raising funds from family, friends, and allies, they were able to immediately put together a plan to track temporary warming shelters and open spaces that were available like Haymaker gym.
     Teams fanned out to purchase supplies and deliver them to whichever neighborhoods they knew best, giving rides to shelter where needed and checking in on people in encampments who were less mobile or didn’t want to leave. While hitting the streets other individuals were encountered who had the same idea, and some independent groups like ChiRides. As well, a warming school bus was making rounds and giving rides. Trinity Lutheran Church in Bridgeport was passing out socks that the teams were able to take with them, and shelters like Flood’s Hall in Hyde Park were looking for help with the early morning shifts, being especially busy at night. Provided by Chicago Recovery Alliance, narcan was available and distributed to whoever was in need.
     The city has a long history of criminalizing homelessness and prioritizing the needs of developers and landlords over tenants and people without housing, while hundreds of houses sit empty or foreclosed across Chicago. Though we don’t depend on the City of Chicago to come through in times like this, we used whatever tools we had to keep people safe tonight. A lot of the warming shelters that would be open during the day on Wednesday weren’t open at night, but the trains that were running 24/7 weren’t charging readmission. Passing out single ride ventra cards downtown and elsewhere has already kept a lot of people out of the cold, and then we have teams going in and out of train cards offering food and supplies through the night and all day today.
      We’re not here to be thanked or anything, but mutual aid and direct action are what’s going to save us from capitalism and that’s something that doesn’t just come about when you need it–it’s something that requires organizing now and practicing community care all the time.--------

Read the full article HERE: 

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Phoney Figures Conceal The Savage Insanity.

        Though this article from Its Going Down, original source, Anathema, was referring to America, it applies to the entire capitalist world. The three pillars of the capitalist cathedral that are necessary for its survival are, increase market share, reduce costs, and increase profit margin. Of course these are impossible to maintain in a finite world. Disaster for the many is the only outcome of such an insane system, its destruction is the only road open to a sane and just world, and that task is up to us, the ordinary people of this world, the corporate parasites will fight tooth and nail to hold on to their privileged insanity.  

        The following essay from Anathema argues that the success of “our” economy that we are told about over and over, from a variety of parasites, is nothing more a cycle of boom and bust that is designed to explode every few years, trapping us both in poverty and jobs that we hate.
        Despite constant governmental controversies and the raging disaster that is the global capitalist system, in late August President Trump was able to announce record-setting economic success as the U.S.’s bull market became the longest running in its history. For those struggling to find work and stay afloat, it may be surprising to hear that the economy is doing better than ever and unemployment at an all-time low. How is that possible?
       To start with, the stock market is not an accurate indication of how well the economy is actually doing. Even to many capitalist experts, the current valuations of the market seem like a serious stretch. But more importantly, to correctly assess current economic phenomena would require a historical perspective on capitalism and certain insights into its tendencies that no mainstream economist is willing to take on — hence professional analysts’ sometimes amazing inability to understand or predict economic trends.
       A basic tendency of the capitalist system is that it needs to keep expanding in order for it to preserve itself. At this point in its history, global capitalism has been struggling for some time to find new markets and other ways to continue growing profits at the massive rate that is now necessary. Its growth has happened through increasingly constricting labor costs in a number of ways – through employers decreasing full-time jobs with benefits, automating more jobs, and employing temporary, part-time, or even unpaid labor, as in the notorious case of prison inmates. Some specific manifestations of this have been the rise of the gig economy, which, in promoting “flexible” working arrangements, cuts the costs and responsibilities that corporations would have if they maintained a permanent workforce; the adjunctification of labor in universities, in which professors are hired on a cheaper, temporary basis instead of the university maintaining tenure-track lines; and a major shift towards what’s called just-in-time production, which similarly involves a dramatic increase in temporary work, as employers adjust their workforce based on supply and demand.
       So the fact that Walmart is posting high earnings does not mean, as mainstream analysts are suggesting, that consumer power is up and the economy will keep doing great. It just means that Walmart is a corporate distributor using just-in-time supply chains to crush labor and reduce costs to the absolute minimum. Meanwhile, news media is reporting unemployment in the U.S. is at 3.9%; it seems poised to hit 3.7%, the lowest it’s been since 1969. As we’ve written previously, this low number is actually the result of more and more people giving up on looking for work and no longer being officially counted in the “workforce.” This number has nothing to do with the total population of the U.S. and the significant actual changes in the nature of labor mentioned above. It is hopelessness and misery that are spreading, not the number of jobs.
         At what point will global growth actually peak, and another recession kick in? The U.S.’s current economic success is in part the result of the Trump administration’s massive tax cut, spending increases, and aggressive stance on trade, all of which have been calculated to grow the market for now without necessarily holding up well in the long term.
       Moreover, trade tariffs and the looming reality of Brexit stand to lead to a loss of investment confidence and tank the markets; however, it seems very possible that the escalatory trade threats with China are just Trump politicking and that nothing will actually happen until after the midterm election. The real sign of a looming recession is wage inflation, meaning the rise in the price of goods that happens when wages increase.
       It seems obvious, given the reality of employment conditions in this country, that there will not be any significant wage growth any time soon. Average hourly wages have risen only 2.7% in the past year, which is much lower than usual in a strong economy. What the current market’s success really indicates, then, is ongoing success by employers in keeping their workers underpaid and unstable, while pushing more and more people out of the job market altogether. While labor organizing and reforms may occasionally still have some successes, to reverse these trends and go back to better labor conditions under capitalism is structurally impossible for the capitalist system, which depends on increasingly minimizing labor costs.
      The only way forward for this economy is for the obscenely rich to get richer through devastating the livelihoods of more and more of the world, crushing the ability or will of the latter to do more than survive, let alone rebel.

        The two sides of the cancerous capitalist nightmare, the privileges of corporate parasites depend on the poverty of the many.

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Autonomy Verses State Control.

     Years of occupation, in defence of the area and to prevent it becoming another tarmac and concrete jungle and now ten days of relentless state brutality to evict the occupants of ZAD, and still the battle rages. All the savage force of the state apparatus is being brought to forcibly evict a community, autonomy can't be tolerated in the psyche of the state. This land must be under their control and made available to the corporate juggernaut that is raping and plundering the planet. People will be beaten, bludgeoned, teargassed, and forcibly dragged and dumped or arrested, while the state talks of democracy. The struggle taking place in ZAD demands all our support and solidarity. This from Its Going Down:

       The first episode in a series by The Cinema Committee which looks at La ZAD, or the Zone to Defend, in France.
        In the early morning of Monday, April 9, 2018, the current invasion of the ZAD began. This land-occupation near the village of Notre-Dames-des-Landes is still under siege after nine days of tear gas, concussion grenades, drones, clubs, tanks, and attack dogs. Like the famous French children’s song, the imperial assault began on a “Lundi matin” and continued every day of the week until the following Monday when it started all over again. This is now the second week of the siege.
       In the original lyrics of the children’s song, the emperor, the empress, and the prince come to put “you” in a pinch every day of the week but luckily “you” are never there. The emperor of this little song was based on Napoleon III, the disease-ridden tyrant who ruled over France until his disastrous war with Prussia. Thanks to his idiocy and egotism, the city of Paris was surrounded by the invading army and within a year the autonomous Commune had forced the Republican government to flee the city. The current situation is much different than it was in 1871 and hopefully it ends with victory rather than bloodshed. In no uncertain terms, what is being fought for at the ZAD is the earth itself. Unlike the Paris Commune with its delusions about the citizen, the state school, money, and government, this epic battle in the hedgerows is being fought to free the land from the capitalist economy, not compromise with it.
       Our own personal time in the ZAD was far too brief and yet long enough to linger in our minds forever. Like those who’ve visited Chiapas or Rojava, the ZAD is one of the few places on the planet where capitalist time and its market relations have been abolished. Living a communal life free from economic constraints is a visceral experience that makes even the longest work-vacation seem like a sick joke. Nothing is more infectious and viral than the experience of a life worth living. It’s powerful enough that thousands of people have spent the past week fighting for it on the moorland of Notres-Dames-des-Landes where there have been over 100 serious injuries.
      On this Wednesday, April 18, three representatives of the ZAD met with the French state and reasserted their demand that the entire zone be held in common by the inhabitants. As could be expected, the state refused this demand once again and insisted that each parcel must be individually claimed by a private owner no later than April 23. Should the inhabitants of the ZAD refuse to sign their names on these individuals contracts, the French state will order another round of evictions and destroy the remaining 70 structures. This cannot be allowed to happen.
       To help spread awareness of this beautiful zone, we are releasing a series of videos that document this battle to save the ZAD. Each one is formatted as a self-contained episode and will cover the various aspects of this struggle. They are meant to be circulated across North America and will be released until the siege has been broken. This first episode covers the first two days of the eviction and weaves together footage from a variety of sources. As could be expected, the mainstream media outside of France is hardly covering this historic event and it’s up to us to disseminate news of the ZAD. We wish everyone good luck between the hedgerows and hope you all stay free. Keep up the good fight and know we are all with you across the ocean. Let’s bring the ZAD back home!

With love and affection,
-The Cinema Committee

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State Manufactured Terrorists.

 

        History tells us that the case posted below is far from unique, nor confined to America, we in this country have recently had the cases of undercover police steering groups in particular directions, leading to arrests. Universal surveillance, covert police, and secret service agents, are all part of the state apparatus, and make it very simple to manufacture terrorists, which in turn leads to a call for more policing, strengthening the state's control over the population. Keeping the population in a constant state of fear of an evil enemy infiltrating the fibre of our society allows for more draconian measures to "protect" the population, in so doing slicing away at the few freedoms we have.

This from Its Going Down:

         On the Friday before Christmas, “Breaking news alerts” came out on the 24-hour mainstream news cycle that a 26 year old Modesto, CA man was arrested on a federal charge of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The alleged plan was a mass casualty attack on Pier 39, a ranking candidate for San Francisco’s most well-known tourist trap. Pressed suits full of melodramatic reporters were on hand to remind everyone to stay safe and vigilant, more aptly to remind everyone of the set of vague and ill-defined external threats that are perpetually meant to keep a population, as any victim of abuse, in anxious compliance. Even the acting mayor of the city assured San Franciscans that “our way of life,” would not be assuaged, and of course promised more police.       

           It’s a story that ties up nicely and advances the ever growing paternal and nativist narrative about mysterious dangers that the new regime, in all its clumsiness, is alone equipped to protect us from. I was sitting in a laundromat just across the water from Pier 39 when the story broke, and what struck me instantly was how razor thin the shell game was. Even the highly publicized facts of this case say something bleak and concerning about the status of contemporary popular ideology, and the State’s hunger to fuel paranoia and to target anyone who fits, even in the most tangential way, into a criminalized category.

         Lay the order of events out chronologically, add a basic understanding of FBI counter-surveillance practice, what you have is not a story of domestic radicalization and terrorism. Rather, what emerges is a story of surveillance, thought policing, targeting, and media fear mongering. Our only goal in this short intervention is to expose that layer of the story that is still in the process of coming to light or being buried, and to raise important questions that are left strategically open in the story that is being told.

 “The FBI started watching Jameson in September after becoming aware of social media activity in which he “liked” or “loved” posts about terror attacks and ISIS, the affidavit said. Undercover employees of the FBI posed as supporters of ISIS and contacted Jameson, the affidavit said.”

Here’s an example of a post that the FBI apparently found concerning. Posts like this were flagged as terrorist sympathy and made Jameson’s Facebook page the subject of surveillance, and ultimately made him the target of a months long entrapment campaign.

What We Know

           According to CNN and multiple AP and MSM news outlets, Everitt Aaron Jameson, a 26-year-old Muslim convert from Modesto, California became the subject of FBI interest in September. From CNN:
          The affidavit avoids a direct admission of this, but media sources confirm that the FBI initiated contact with Jameson. Agents were posing to be senior members of ISIS. The agent who ultimately met with Jameson in person (the only such meeting) identified himself as an immediate subordinate of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. There was apparently no communication whatsoever between Jameson and any member of any foreign terrorist organization.
          Communications between undercover agents and Jameson throughout the Fall were vague at best. Jameson expresses his willingness to use or donate resources for “the cause,” the meaning of which is never expressed in any of the communications in court record. He makes vague references to Western colonialism saying things like, “the kuffar (loosely translated to “unbeliever”) deserve everything and more for the lives they’ve taken. He uses Arabic pejoratives like this against the US.
            What is being described as a “terror plot” in the media amounts to some vague suggestions that Jameson made in a single, in-person meeting with an undercover agent. He suggested a strategy in the broadest sense. Concrete plans were not reached. Relevantly however he indicated a willingness to die. We’ll revisit this.
           Jameson attempted to back out of the alleged plot on what appear to be moral and conscientious grounds two days before his arrest saying, “I also don’t think I can do this after all. I’ve reconsidered.”

Jameson’s Family Tells a Drastically Different Story
          He and his father (a self-identified Pentecostal) would argue amiably about their respective religious beliefs. His father even quotes him as saying, “yeah Dad, we all believe in the same God.”
          Jameson’s family, in conversation with the Modesto Bee, tell of Jameson as a distraught young man. He had lost his two young children to Child Protective Services after their mother Ashley was incarcerated. They divorced in 2016, and after a long battle with CPS Jameson once and for all lost custody of their children three months ago. Incidentally around the same time he became the target of a federal investigation.
       His father reports that he was frequently suicidal. Authorities also confirmed that he was held on suicide watch when taken into custody. Despite struggling with depression, he maintained a close relationship with his family. He shared his difficulties with his father, and his religious convictions with many in his family. His faith even made him the subject of teasing. Days before his arrest Jameson and his father even attended a Raider game in Oakland.
        Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, the veracity of the facts presented in the court affidavit and in the subsequent media storm, brief though it was. Jameson is still far from a picture of a terrorist master mind. At worst a slightly unstable man, he likely saw himself as having little to lose. He was in a position highly vulnerable to the kind of manipulation that we know the FBI to be capable of. We also know that his suggestions of violence were loose, ill formed, and abstract. He assumed guidance and direction from the FBI agents who were the actual architects of the alleged plot. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, when lofty fantasizing about violence started to feel like something real Jameson easily saw that this path was not for him.
         No matter how the dots of this story connect, we are forced to recognize the shallow simplicity of seeing this man as a terrorist threat. Consider further how Islam is portrayed in the media. Consider what a white Muslim, with no family history or traditional relationship to the religion, in one of California’s most conservative counties, might come to understand about the meaning of being Muslim. As we alluded above, his family jokingly nicknamed him ISIS. Consider how suggestible such a person might be to the perception of being sought from across the globe for service to his faith.
FBI Entrapment: The Public Strategy
         This struck me as an extraordinarily obvious case of FBI entrapment. According to Federal guidelines (Section 645 of the US Attorney’s Manual), entrapment takes place when one is A) induced to commit a crime by state officials, and B) one has no prior disposition to commit such a crime. No doubt Jameson’s prosecutors will cite his hastily crafted suicide note as evidence of his predisposition, however observers must ask what would possibly have motivated him to any kind of fantasies of violence if not the interference of undercover agents. Moreover, and not to sound too conspiratorial or alarmist, speculating about one’s internal attitudes with respect to violence, and punishing those with certain attitudes basically amounts to a case of thought policing.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

From Little Acorns Great Oak Trees Grow.

       The people of the world are not going to rise up en-mass and create that better world. What will change the world in our direction will be the sum total of countless little actions across the planet. Small actions in every village, town and city, increasing until it reaches a critical mass, creating a change in consciousness, then it will be unstoppable and the world will be ours. Continuous small affairs, toy-swaps, book-banks, clothes-exchanges, surplus food sharing, skill sharing, and so on. All of this undermines consumerism, the life blood of this insane capitalist system, and draws a community together, then slowly the world changes. However, we must accept that this revolutionary change will not come with roses alone.

This from Its Going Down:

        Last weekend, autonomists and anarchists organized a coat and clothes drive in the Downtown Modesto area, with hundreds of free items. The event was the end result of several days of organizing and collecting donations from the community including warm clothing as well as fresh apples, toothbrushes, and other free dental supplies.
       The event itself was attended by over 50 people, and during the event we had numerous positive interactions with individuals who discussed everything from job loss to how to get involved in the future with upcoming events. We also put up a banner that read: “Free Clothes” in Spanish and in English, as well as the slogan, “Community Mutual Aid” with a circle (A), and flew a red and black flag. We did this to make clear that this event was not simply carried out as an act of charity, but instead to put forward a set of anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian ideas, reclaim public space, have fun, and also meet people in our community. Police drove by, but did not fuck with us.
     In the past several years, attempts by the city, police, and developers to remake the Downtown core by driving out poor, homeless, youth, and the working class, have largely backfired. Many businesses have shut down, including the one grocery store in the Downtown area, cutting off access to the main supply of food for many elderly and impoverished people. But, there are signs that the gentrification machine will attempt to continue on the path ahead, especially in the wake of many stores shuttering, as we are seeing several new hip and swanky stores and bars openly in the Downtown. We can only assume that developers are hoping to accommodate displaced people from the bay area, while at the same time displacing us.
      While we enjoy helping provide resources for those without, we also know that class society and the State will not collapse through an accumulation of either negative or ‘positive’ acts – or posts on anarchist websites. Instead, in the coming together and building of actual relationships, we can attempt to create new forms of power for the battles to come. Only several weeks ago, we found ourselves alongside over 100 others, remembering the life and death of Nick Pimentel, who was murdered by local police in South Side Modesto. Also, on the same day as our coat drive, a march was organized to protest attacks on DACA, and down the road from the giveaway, residents have been protesting harmful waste covered up by the city near their homes.
     All of these struggles are connected, and across the divisions placed upon by by geography, neighborhood, gender, and race, we hope to build something that can overcome the systems of control and domination, and usher into being an existence worthy of the name ‘humanity.’

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

         

A Very Volatile Future.

         Anybody who looks around them must be aware that the political landscape is changing rapidly and the "far right" is on the rise. This should not surprise us, as every time the capitalist system starts to sink into one of its cyclical "crises" some how, from some where, the far right is released from its sewers, and slithers across the land. We have been here before. What might be surprising is the rapid rate at which this "far right" epidemic of vicious authoritarianism has spread. I believe we are in for a very volatile future, how it pans out will depend on how well the ordinary people organise to defend the meagre handful of rights they have, how much they wish to live in freedom, or how much they will buckle under to the bare knuckles of raw capitalism. As always, the future has still to be written.

An Appeal from Its Going Down:

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        On the evening of Friday, January 20th, a comrade of ours was shot in the stomach in the most public place on the University of Washington’s campus in Seattle – a place called “Red Square” for the color of its bricks rather than its politics.
        This Fellow Worker (what members of the IWW call ourselves) and Defender (for GDC members) is a longtime anti-fascist and dedicated activist, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the General Defense Committee of the IWW. He’s currently in critical condition at Harborview Hospital in Seattle. They have a Level One Trauma center, so it’s likely he is receiving the best quality care available, for which we are deeply grateful.
      How do we respond? We are building an expanded anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-fascist presence in Seattle, and this person was spearheading that effort. Will others are willing step up and replace his effort while he heals? Our response will help determine that.
          There is a limited amount of time for us to make clear to the world what is clear to us: we are under armed attack. The fascist right knows where to find us – protests such as anti-Donald Trump events, or actions against police brutality. In the Twin Cities, the trial has just begun of Allen Scarsella, one of the white supremacists who came to the Fourth Precinct in Minneapolis in November, 2015 and opened fire, shooting multiple people.
        We don’t have confirmation that the person who shot our comrade was a counter-protester angry at those protesting Milo’s hateful white nationalist misogyny. We do know that he turned himself into the police several hours later, claiming ‘self-defense.’ This, of course, is exactly what Scarsella did as well.
        Our friend will have enormous hospital bills and undoubtedly some legal costs as well. There will be a significant loss of income. Let’s raise him so much that he won’t have to worry about that angle of things. Please give. All money will be controlled directly by them and their partner; none will go to any other cause, excepting any fees associated with the fundraising service used.
        Please don’t just give; please tell your friends and families and organizations to give. That may sound daunting, but here’s why they should:
         This isn’t just about one guy. Your friends and families know that the situation has changed dramatically. They know that things are changing fast, and have heard the word fascism a lot since Trump was elected. They may even suspect that the breakneck pace of media revelations and executive decisions is intended to distract them and make them feel helpless.

Continue reading:

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Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Problem

This from Crimethinc:

The Problem

     …is that anyone could wield so much power in the first place. A man like Donald Trump could never be so dangerous if government and the market didn’t concentrate power in the hands of a ruling class.
Putting another party in power won’t fix this. All the faith invested in Obama’s promises of Hope and Change just legitimized the government long enough for a more ruthless tyrant to take the reins.         All the taxes paid by hopeful citizens just put more bullets in the guns of the police that will go on profiling, imprisoning, deporting, and murdering people under Donald Trump.
       We have to stop ceding our strength to these institutions. Instead, let’s build networks to meet our needs directly and defend ourselves against everyone who wants to rule us. The only way to freedom and equality is through self-determination, mutual aid, and collective resistance.

Download PDF leaflet HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk