Democracy Is Direct

[American Dream]

Santiago de Chile: Solidarity to the #ICEbreakers
From Those Denied Entry into the US (& Their Friends)



We’ve received the following open letter from Chile expressing support for the occupations of ICE offices and detention centers around the United States. It offers a useful perspective from outside the boundaries of the US.

Charting Transit despite the State

We stand in solidarity with comrades across the world who are bravely barricading and occupying ICE detention centers in the so-called United States, in cities like Tacoma, Portland, Atlanta, San Francisco, and New York. The politicians in their offices shuffle papers while the liberals hold signs nicely asking the government to stop ripping families apart and traumatizing children. By contrast, these partisans understand that the gravity of the issue at hand—human life and dignity—is not a matter of politics.

For example, photos and videos from Atlanta spread across the world showed the #icebreakers blasting music while both the occupiers and those behind bars danced. Protesters taunted the police with donuts and repeatedly held their ground against police eviction. Rather than merely making visible that the voting public is unhappy with their elected officials’ decisions, they took direct action against the state bureaucracies and their functionaries to create moments of life and joy that cut across the divide between citizen and non-citizen.

These occupations are occurring while politicians are preparing for election campaigns; many will undoubtedly promise a more humane yet still “sensible” immigration policy in order to get votes. We wish to share one thing that is clear throughout the West: Electoral politics is not a path to survival. As long as the United States has existed, its borders have cleaved families apart. As long as states have existed, their bounded territories have served to exclude and kill.

When the liberals tell us that only solution is to vote in a progressive candidate, we say two things:

While your international and immigration policies dictate whether we live or die, we are dying.

While our friendships and families are being ripped apart, we can never vote.

Instead of living precariously at the whims of politicians and ebbs and flows of their legislation, we need to build the means to ensure our survival regardless of politics and law.

On September 11, 1973, the Chilean Military, backed by the CIA and US government, bombed El Palacio de la Moneda as General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Unidad Popular government. Many UP party members and leftists managed to escape to the US or Europe where they lived in exile. However, those without the economic or social means to immigrate to the “First World” found themselves in jails, torture chambers, or mass graves. While US policies overseas drive migration, US border policy serves to impede it, trapping people in war zones and dictatorships. The liberals around the world who expressed horror and demanded a return to democracy in Chile were blind to the array of non-democratic immigration policies that impacted the lives of Chileans before, during, and after the coup.

Continues: https://crimethinc.com/2018/07/05/santi ... ir-friends

[American Dream]

The Network: Russia’s Odd, Brutal, and Maybe Invented Pre-World Cup Terrorism Case

By Joshua Yaffa June 3, 2018




When I met Cherkasov in St. Petersburg, he told me about visiting Filinkov in the pretrial detention facility that abuts the city’s F.S.B. building. At that meeting, Cherkasov said, Filinkov pulled down his pants, revealing his right thigh, which was covered in dozens of ruddy keloid spots, a spray of burn marks left by repeated strikes from an electric stun gun. Cherkasov said that Filinkov told him that the F.S.B. agents first took him from the airport to a polyclinic, for a checkup. It was a grim moment of pseudo-concern: the reason, Filinkov came to understand, was to make sure his body could withstand the tortures to come. Back in the van, Filinkov was handcuffed. One agent pulled his wool cap over his face; another began to strike him with heavy blows. Filinkov panicked—at which point his body was jolted with the first electroshock.

Over the next five hours, Filinkov was driven around the outskirts of St. Petersburg, while being beaten and repeatedly shocked with the stun gun. He later described the ghoulish process in a jailhouse diary entry, which he publicly released: “They asked questions. If I didn’t know the answer, they hit me with electric shocks. If the answer didn’t correspond to their expectations, they hit me with shocks. If I tried to think or formulate, I was hit with electric current. If I forgot what they said, I was hit with the current.” Some of the questions were impossible to answer (“Where are the weapons?”), but others he tried to answer factually (basic details about his wife and friends).

...Filinkov is not the only suspect in the Network case who has apparently endured torture. On January 25th, Igor Shishkin disappeared while walking his dog in St. Petersburg. Shishkin is twenty-six and has friends in the city’s anti-Fascist and anarchist circles. He is a vegan and runs an online store specializing in vegan food and nutrition products. “He is a vegan because he simply can’t imagine that you could relate to animals any other way,” his wife, Tatiana, told me, when we met for coffee near St. Petersburg’s central train station. Shishkin was missing for two days and then turned up in jail, charged with the same crime as Filinkov: membership in a terrorist organization—that is, the supposed Network cell.

Shishkin’s hearing was declared closed by the presiding judge at the last minute, and bailiffs rushed him past waiting journalists. One friend who caught a glimpse of him later said that he saw bruises under Shishkin’s eyes; his head was covered by the hood of his jacket, and a black mask obscured much of his face. Kosarevskaya and Teplitskaya called it a “special operation” to keep likely signs of abuse from becoming public. When the two volunteers went to see Shishkin in jail, they could see he had been badly beaten, with one eye dark and swollen. Shishkin said that he had injured himself during a training session. When they spotted what looked like burn marks on his left hand and, on a later visit, his back, Shishkin told them that he didn’t remember what happened. They didn’t press. “He knows that we understand, that the prison staff understands, that everyone understands,” Teplitskaya told me. Neither Shishkin nor his lawyer have filed a complaint alleging physical abuse.

Ilya Kapustin, a twenty-eight-year-old man from St. Petersburg, told me how, on the same night Shishkin disappeared, he was detained by five men in black clothes and masks. They ran up to him, near his apartment building in St. Petersburg, and, without saying a word, threw him on the ground, put his arms in handcuffs, and tossed him onto the floor of a waiting minivan. They asked about a friend and colleague who had been arrested, in January, on suspicion of carrying low-grade gunpowder, and who only later, this April, was added to the Network case. It turns out that Kapustin was simply unlucky—he had called the friend’s phone when he was being arrested, thus arousing suspicion. After detaining him, the five men asked why he had called his friend. “They said he was being held, that he was suspected of serious crimes,” Kapustin said. He recalled being in shock and completely disoriented. “I told them everything I knew—that is, practically nothing—but they were convinced I must know something else, that we are participating in some kind of plot together.”

The F.S.B. operatives then started to administer electroshock jolts to Kapustin. “They triggered the electric current and asked about something, and, when I didn’t have information they were after, they shocked me over and over, five or ten times in a row. Each shock felt like it lasted an eternity.” The pain was terrible, he told me. All he could do was gnaw at his teeth and wait for it to end. The agents threatened to take him into the forest, break his legs, and leave him there to freeze. “I could only think about how to end this, any way at all—let them come up with a fictitious case, or they could kill me. Any option was better than what is happening.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... orism-case

[American Dream]

The signs of the defeat of Libyan revolution



Statement against the UN sanctioned air strikes of Libya by a Libyan anarchist.

In a few hours, the UN Security Council will decide to start air strikes against Libya. France has said that it is ready to start the bombardment from tonight.

We condemn this international resolution, if it is realized. And we totally reject any foreign intervention in Libya, whatever shape it may take, especially a French one. France, that sold Qaddafi weapons worth billions, weapons that he is using today to blow up Libyans, the same France that didn't stop such deals until 3 weeks back.

We condemn this intervention that will transform Libya into a real hell, even more than now. That intervention will also steal the revolution from the Libyans, a revolution that has cost them thousands of dead women and men so far.

An intervention that will also divide the Libyan resistance.

And even if these operations do succeed and Qaddafi falls (or dies) like Saddam Hussein, it will mean that we were liberated by Americans and French, and I can assure you that they will keep reminding us of that every minute.

How we can stand this later? How we can explain all these casualities to the coming generations, all those dead bodies that will be everywhere ?

To be liberated from Qaddafi just to become slaves to those who armed him and empowered him during all those years of authoritarian violence and repression.

After the first mistake - the militarization of the popular revolution - here we are committing our second mistake - the establishment of a new leadership of figures arising out of the remnants of the Libyan Jamahiriya regime. And our third mistake is coming inevitably, which will be to ask for help from our enemies. I only hope we will not reach the fourth one: that is, occupation and the arrival of the marines.

Sarkozy and France are our enemies; they are also enemies of the whole Third World. They don't hide their contempt of us. All that Sarkozy cares about is to be re-elected next year.

The man who organized the meeting between Sarkozy and the representatives of the interim national council is none other than Bernard-Henri Lévy, a quack philosopher, and for those who don't know him, a French Zionist activist who concentrates all his efforts on supporting Israel and defending its interests. We saw him lately in Tahrir Square just to make sure that the revolting youth there would not chant against Israel.

What can be said while waiting for the bombs?

Because bombs will not differentiate between those who are pro-Qaddafi and who are against him.

Colonialist bombs, as you know, have only one objective: to defend the interests of arms traders. They sold Qaddafi arms worth billions and then we ask them to destroy them now... Then we will buy new arms through the new government - it is an old, well-known story. But there are people who cannot learn except through committing old mistakes, made long before.

I say this very clearly: this is a very dangerous strategic mistake, one that the Libyan people will pay for, maybe for many years to come. More than the years of the rule of Qaddafi and his family.

I call today, and now, just hours before the burning of Libya and before it is made into another Baghdad, I call on all Libyans, all intellectuals, artists, university graduates, everyone, those who can write and those who cannot, every female and male citizen, to reject this military intervention by the US, France and Britain, and the Arab regimes that they support. At the same time, I call on all the peoples to support us, the Egyptians, Tunisians, French, even Chinese, all the peoples of the world, we welcome their support and sympathy.

But as for governments, whatever government, we will not ask anything from them, but to leave us alone, to let us finish the problem of Qaddafi by ourselves.

Saoud Salem
Libyan anarchist

17 March 2011

https://libcom.org/library/signs-defeat ... revolution

[American Dream]

On the Syrian Revolution

An anarchist initiative from within Korydallos prison, Greece



Syria is a country of huge inequalities. While seventy-five percent of the population consists of Sunni Muslims who have been arbitrarily divided from the Sunnis of northern Iraq, the coastline of Syria—the most fertile and rich land—is inhabited by a strong minority of Alawites and Shiites. Over the last forty-five years, these minorities monopolized power via Assad and his son’s regime, which perpetuated, among other things, tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. It is important to notw that this doesn’t necessarily mean all Alawites belong to the highest classes of social stratification.

Concerning Assad’s family, they came to power through Hafez al-Assad’s military takeover in 1970. He and the current dictator, Bashar al-Assad, governed with an iron grip and built a brutal dictatorship. Even the minor relative freedoms of civil democracy were curtailed. Political life on the whole was totally and strictly controlled by the one and only legal political party, the Ba’ath Party, and its allies. Trade unions, social groups, and all organized groups were controlled by the regime. Thousands of political prisoners, activists, and dissidents were thrown into brutal regime prisons. This bloodstained regime applied a policy that perpetuated long-lasting divisive conflicts and controversies.

Even though Hafez ruled with an iron grip, he applied a “pro-grassroots” economic policy and thus ensured a pretty decent standard of living for a significant part of the population. Some years before the outbreak of the uprising, however, his son Bashar al-Assad began to implement a series of neoliberal reforms, following the economic doctrine of the IMF. This shift broke any bonds between the regime and the social body. These reforms marked a clear division. On the one end stood a capitalistic elite, including most of members of the Assad family, who gained ownership of the telecommunications sector as well as nearly all the wealth of the country, in no time. On the other end stood mass unemployment, impoverishment of the population, and, generally, the deepening of class differences.

These very contradictions came to the forefront in the overall spirit of the Arab Spring, and had become the initial incentive for the Syrian uprising well before it was presented solely as a revolution against Assad’s oppressive dictatorship. It’s important to emphasize the fact that the spirit of the Arab Spring played a major role in the beginning, especially during the initial stages of the uprising. Mohamed Bouazizi, a street fruit seller, set himself on fire, triggering heroic riots in a number of countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. Even though the cases might appear as unrelated—at leaset from an “international competition” point of view—there is a crucial factor that unites them all. For decades, they had all been governed by dictators whose neoliberal policies brought about poverty and social exclusion for the wider population.

A final but equally important factor in the area is the military operations in a series of countries in the Middle East conducted mainly (but not only) by Western imperialist powers. The invasion by Soviet troops of Afghanistan in 1979, the brazen help from the US to fundamentalists there, the “humanitarian” invasions by the American state and NATO in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 1991 and 2003—they have all slaughtered and forcibly relocated the populations of these areas, trapping them in a vicious cycle of violence while serving the interests of states and economic elites...


...This initial people’s movement was stimulated and politically guided by the vision of the the anarchist Omar Aziz (this fact may come as a surprise to all those who shortsightedly choose to interpret the events only at a state-against-state level, ignoring class-based analysis and thus becoming apologists for totalitarian regimes). Some months after the outbreak of the uprising, the anarchist Omar Aziz (who eventually died inside a regime prison in 2013) put forward the idea of local committees, which spread over a large territory of Syria in the following months, before being destroyed by regime forces or reactionary opposition entities. His inspiration was an important political contribution that is not simply a tale from the past. Rather, it remains alive up to today in the dissident regions of Syria, such as Aleppo, Dera’a, and Idlib, where people continue to organize social life under the sounds of bombs and the grind of deprivation, and they demonstrate not only against the regime but also the corrupted leaders of the armed opposition.

The core principle of this endeavor was to manage all sectors of life in a self-organized way, without people having to subject themselves to any kinds of power structures. Unfortunately, though, at a crucial point in the conflict—that is, when the violence was escalating, especially from the regime side—the self-defense of these grassroots committees hadn’t progressed sufficiently.

The decades of Assad’s junta in Syria resulted in the absence of organized political structures that would have been able—right from the outset and before suppression stifled spontaneity—not only to articulate overall demands, but also to strengthen and protect the emergent revolutionary movement from both the regime’s gangs (with and without uniforms) as well as the revolution’s dearest enemy, radical Islamist groups. As mentioned earlier, what triggered the revolution were the neoliberal reforms of the regime. It is important to keep in mind that when the uprising broke out in Syria, people’s movements had overthrown dictators who had ruled for many years already, like Ben Ali in Tunisia or Mubarak in Egypt. Syrian people may have expected the fall of Assad’s regime to be easier and faster. Unfortunately, they had underestimated the bloodthirsty crook they had as president, and also downplayed the interests of global and regional players such as the US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

https://antidotezine.com/2018/07/12/on- ... evolution/

[Elvis]

l those who shortsightedly choose to interpret the events only at a state-against-state level, ignoring class-based analysis and thus becoming apologists for totalitarian regimes

Shortsighted? I think the writer is trying to hitch the wrong horse to the cart. Ignoring U.S. hegemony in Syria—"state to state"—does no favor to class struggle in Syria; rather, a U.S. takeover dooms it.

The two issues are not two sides of one coin. Those giving Syrian class struggle priority, at the expense of the greater, immediate threat, thus become apologists for U.S./neocon aggression—which is never a solution to class-based inequalities.

[dada]

I don't see the logic, Elvis. I don't support the Syrian regime, yet I'm not an apologist for US aggression.

[Elvis]

I don't see the logic, Elvis. I don't support the Syrian regime, yet I'm not an apologist for US aggression.

You're dong it right. I was using the author's logic.

[American Dream]

https://vimeo.com/279894407

TFN #15: Chinga La Migra

By submedia.tv - July 13, 2018

Sub.media brings us their weekly installment of The Fuckin News, this time discussing the #OccupyICE movement and the J20 case.

In this week’s TFN, protests against ICE have been heating up across the United Snakes. We take a look at the dynamics of these occupations, plus the recent victory in the J20 trials and the alt-right’s latest plans to “Unite the Right”.

[dada]

See, now you've gotten me all confused, Elvis. So, just to be clear here. When you say:

Those giving Syrian class struggle priority, at the expense of the greater, immediate threat, thus become apologists for U.S./neocon aggression—which is never a solution to class-based inequalities.

It sounds like you are saying the article above is doing exactly that.

And I'm not following the logic. This, from an article in the 'love of Kremlin' thread, pretty much sums up what I think the point that the article from Korydallos prison posted above is making:

The option of criticising all powers intervening in the Syrian conflict, and so taking a genuinely internationalist anti-war stance, seems not to have crossed their mind.

[Elvis]

Those giving Syrian class struggle priority, at the expense of the greater, immediate threat, thus become apologists for U.S./neocon aggression—which is never a solution to class-based inequalities.

It sounds like you are saying the article above is doing exactly that.

Yes, that's the gist of it. I've been amazed by the number of "leftist"/"anarchist" sites that deploy dumploads of sophistry urging regime change in Syria—their leading motif—while mysteriously never criticizing U.S. intervention or calling attention to the neocon agenda at work. In some cases I think it's owing to ideological blinders (straitjackets?), others are outright CIA-type sponsored propaganda outlets.

"I'll make you think I'm delicious with the stuff that I say..."

"The option of criticising all powers intervening in the Syrian conflict, and so taking a genuinely internationalist anti-war stance, seems not to have crossed their mind."

Exactly.

[dada]

A final but equally important factor in the area is the military operations in a series of countries in the Middle East conducted mainly (but not only) by Western imperialist powers.

Syrian people may have expected the fall of Assad’s regime to be easier and faster. Unfortunately, they had underestimated the bloodthirsty crook they had as president, and also downplayed the interests of global and regional players such as the US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Those are quotes from the article from Korydallos prison.

What would satisfy you, Elvis?

edited to add: I'm questioning the idea that giving the class struggle priority, and/or criticizing the Syrian regime is to become an apologist for US aggression. Is support of Palestine only for apologists for antisemitism? Is criticism of Democrats Incorprated only for apologists for Donald?

I don't think your attempt to flip the narrative at the end of your post works, since you don't criticize the Syrian regime. The article from Korydallos prison takes a stand against all sides in the conflict.

edited again to add: From my perspective, the call for 'no more regimes' is ignored by those who call for regime change in Syria and those who defend the Syrian regime, alike. It's that old authoritarian mindset that I love so much, the kind that can't even begin to fathom a world without regimes.

[Elvis]

I used a rhetorical device, reversing the positions, to point out a fallacy. It's imperfect because, for one thing, not everyone is convinced that Assad is a "bloodthirsty crook."

The call for a world without regimes is a noble sentiment. It would make a good "think-piece" in the Times, if the Times ever published it. I doubt it would do anything to resolve the crisis in Syria.

[dada]

Ah, a noble sentiment. I see. You damn me with faint praise. How dismissive of you.

So consider me dismissed. Just remember, you're also dismissing this:

Some months after the outbreak of the uprising, the anarchist Omar Aziz (who eventually died inside a regime prison in 2013) put forward the idea of local committees, which spread over a large territory of Syria in the following months, before being destroyed by regime forces or reactionary opposition entities. His inspiration was an important political contribution that is not simply a tale from the past. Rather, it remains alive up to today in the dissident regions of Syria, such as Aleppo, Dera’a, and Idlib, where people continue to organize social life under the sounds of bombs and the grind of deprivation, and they demonstrate not only against the regime but also the corrupted leaders of the armed opposition.

The core principle of this endeavor was to manage all sectors of life in a self-organized way, without people having to subject themselves to any kinds of power structures.

Fantasy fit for a think-piece in the Times, no?

[Elvis]

I didn't dismiss you, I'm on board with the ideal. I'm less interested in going 'round and 'round about political theories or the semantics of propaganda as they relate to Syria than I am in seeing the armed outsiders just get the fuck out of Syria.

[dada]

Ah, the ideal. I see.Now you're just being insulting. I won't have it. Class dismissed.