Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Friday, December 15, 2023

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3223 - Recent Crimethinc Newsletters - Fall 2023

 

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3223 - Recent Crimethinc Newsletters - Fall 2023



Back when we worked together on a class at WMU, my good friend Ryan Walters gave me a copy of the classic Crimethinc book: Days of War-Nights of Love-Crimethinc for Beginners.



I have read it many times, and I have been planning to feature parts of it on this blog for sometime. Maybe in 2024.

And so, I am excited that Crimethinc now has newsletters, which I have featured on this blog before.

In fact, I have published three Crimethinc or Crimethinc-related posts (the related one is the one on Antifa).

So, here is a fourth and the second newsletter collection.

In this series of four newsletters, going back to May 2023 and up to last month (November), you will learn many things, such as Elon Musk himself had the Crimethinc account (Chad Loder) banned from X-Twitter.

There’s some good analysis of Israel consolidating authoritarian power long before the Hamas attacks of October 7th.

There’s lots of other news from around the world of activists resisting regimes, capitalism, murder, rights-denial, and more. Anarchists, progressives, and all those who oppose fascism unite in variety of causes tracked by Crimethinc.

YOU CAN’T KILL AN IDEA.

The last newsletter directly addresses the Gaza slaughter that’s taking place. Over 13,000 Palestinians killed, almost half of which are children.

Israel has launched more strikes on Gaza (22,000+) than nay in modern warfare, more than the U.S. launched against Afghanistan and Iraq combined in the history of those conflicts.

Great reading here.

Thanks for tuning in.

MY PREVIOUS POSTS

Sunday, February 23, 2020
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1832 - Crimethinc: Seduced by the Image of Reality

Wednesday, December 1, 2021
A Sense of Doubt blog post ##2479 - Why is opposing fascism a bad thing? What is Antifa and correcting the record against the scapegoating from the GOPQ

Tuesday, April 11, 2023
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2975 - Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear - CrimethInc Newsletters


May 11, 2023

A Bulletin from the CrimethInc. ex-Workers Collective

Greetings friends! Since last we wrote you, there have been new upheavals in Russia and France, and we’ve published several new articles offering background and on-the-ground reports.

Last week, a veritable uprising broke out in France in response to the murder of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk. In this article, participants in the uprising explain it in the context of anti-racist and anti-colonial struggles in France dating back to the 1970s, and discuss the relationship of this uprising to the social movements of the past two decades.


In March, we reported on the previous round of protests in France, during which police nearly killed several people. One of them, Serge, remained in a coma for weeks after French police shot him in the head with a grenade in Sainte-Soline on March 25, 2023. Thankfully, Serge has recovered enough to release a message, which we have translated and published here.


In response to the same protest during which police grievously injured Serge and many other demonstrators, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin announced the state-ordered dissolution of the movement Soulevements de la Terre [“Uprisings of the Earth”] and had 18 people arrested on accusations of association with it. As usual, the state endangers the lives of those it supposedly protects, blames the victims of its attacks, and then sets out to silence the survivors. Please read this statement of solidarity with Soulevements de la Terre.

At the end of June, Yevgeny Prigozhin led his private military company Wagner in a short-lived mutiny against the Russian government. We immediately translated three statements about the mutiny from anarchist groups in Russia: the Movement of Irkutsk Anarchists, the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists, and the editorial collective behind Autonomous Action.


Meanwhile, in the United States—defying scores of frivolous charges of “domestic terrorism,” activists and community members in Atlanta, Georgia just completed their sixth week of action against the proposed Cop City police militarization facility. The authorities intent to build Cop City despite popular opposition; the movement is determined to stop them despite unprecedented repression.

 

We have published an analysis exploring the strategic challenges facing the movement to stop Cop City, chronicling the actions of the movement and the reactions of the authorities throughout 2023. This picks up where our earlier articles detailing the history of the movement left off.

There is also a zine version of "Living in an Earthquake," which you can download here. Feel free to print these out and distribute them!


In setting out to stop the militarization of police, people in Atlanta are taking on an institution that has become increasingly central to governance all around the world, soaking up more and more resources of society as a whole. From Atlanta to France—abolish the police!

If you want to be informed when translations of our texts appear on our site in languages other than English, those are announced on our Telegram channel. You can subscribe here.

 

For example, our collection of Russian anarchist responses to the failed Wagner mutiny is available in ten languages—English, Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and French. You can see all the material we have available in each of the 36 languages available on our site here.

In case you missed it—to celebrate the reprint of our classic gender poster, we also printed a remix of the poster, along with an essay discussing the way that popular conceptions of gender—and the reactionary violence directed against them—have shifted over the past twenty years.

 

Our British comrades have made an A2 format printing of the gender poster remix. The proceeds will be divided between the Anarchist Federation's "HRT for all and for free" fundraiser and the Trans Liberation Front, a Bristol-based direct action group in support of trans, intersex, and GNC people. If you are in the UK, you can order them here.

 

For now, everyone who orders from our online store will also receive a sticker version of the new poster.

Finally, in the department of capitalists admitting we were right all along… On the 24th anniversary of the international anti-capitalist mobilization of June 18, 1999, the headlining article in the New York Times openly declared what we have been saying for a quarter of a century: neoliberal globalization creates catastrophic wealth inequalities, wrecking the biosphere and generating extreme-right nationalism. If you want to read our analysis of modern capitalism rather than depending on corporate journalists for your understanding of exploitation, you could start with our book, Work.

Buy Here

September 14th, 2023


Greetings and felicitations! We’re back from our summer travels and eager to catch up with you!!!

First, if you are a student returning to class for the fall, form an anarchist student organization! We’ll gladly send you outreach material in bulk. For inspiration and ideas, you can read about how one anarchist student organization got going here.

The RICO Case in Atlanta and the Fight to #StopCopCity

At the beginning of this month, the Georgia Attorney General brought RICO charges against 61 people accused of protesting against the construction of Cop City, a planned police militarization facility. The indictment is an attempt to portray the entire movement as a criminal conspiracy. Three people central to this case are being accused of “money laundering” for providing legal support to previous arrestees.

 

By indiscriminately lumping together scores of arrestees, many of whom have never met, into a fabricated conspiracy case, the prosecutors aim to criminalize protest itself. This is a case of politically driven repression aimed at suppressing all forms of activism and dissent, in the style of authoritarian despots like Vladimir Putin.

 

A surprising part of the text of the indictment is given over to painting a picture of the defendants as anarchists who engage in mutual aid, read zines about how to address the media, and disapprove of police violence. The prosecutors hope that this smear campaign will goad jurors into declaring the defendants guilty despite the shortage of concrete evidence.

For background on the fight to stop Cop City, you could consult the most recent installment of our ongoing chronology of the movement.

 

After the announcement of the RICO charges, the Atlanta city government made the outrageous decision to reject a petition signed by over 100,000 locals demanding a referendum on whether to build Cop City. Now participants in the movement are calling for a mass action November 10-13 to shut down construction.

Reports from Saint-Imier

Over the summer, some of us joined 5000 other anarchists from around the world at an anarchist gathering in Saint-Imier, Switzerland. We’ve published a full report including background on the historical events that the gathering commemorated and accounts and appraisals from attendees from half a dozen different countries.

We followed up that coverage with a narrative exploring the political practices and discourse around gender and sexuality during the gathering in Saint-Imier and in the contemporary anarchist movement at large.

Other News from Europe

In July, 2023, the Greek government evicted a Kurdish refugee camp in Greece. The decades-old camp had served as an important center of organizing in southeastern Europe. In this analysis, Beja Protner shows how this operation connects Turkeys’ war on Kurdish people, the Greek government’s war on autonomous spaces, and the European Union’s war on migrants.

Following up on our earlier coverage of the revolt in France sparked by the murder of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, we published “Learning from the Flames,” a reflection on the series of powerful movements that have rocked France over the past decade and what has prevented them from bringing about revolutionary transformation thus far.

You Still Can’t Kill an Idea

Our comrades at Municipal Adhesives are reprinting the sticker they published in solidarity with us after Elon Musk banned us from Twitter. You can order these here. Our comrades from Black Mosquito have done a European printing, as well, which is available here.

Speaking of that particular despicable billionaire, last month, Musk made his agenda more explicit by amplifying an openly anti-Semitic campaign to ban the Anti-Defamation League from the platform formerly known as Twitter. Musk is trying to blame declining advertising sales on Jewish people; in fact, the fault is his alone, for going out of his way to welcome self-declared Nazis back to the platform while banning or suppressing the users who originally made Twitter interesting.

 

As long as there are billionaires, they will be able to purchase and destroy the technologies we depend on for information. This is just one of the many reasons we seek to abolish capitalism—to bring about a world in which narcissistic bigots cannot monopolize control of any communications platform. In the meantime, we urge you to shift from corporate social media platforms to comparatively horizontal communications technologies.

 

You can follow us on Mastodon, on Bluesky, and on Telegram. If you want to keep up with our publications in languages other than English, we announce those on our Telegram channel.

 

Speaking of which, we’re still seeking assistance translating our articles! If you can help, please contact us!

Events This Fall!

Last weekend, we participated in the Bash Back convergence in Chicago. This coming weekend, we will be tabling at the New York City Anarchist Book Fair, and the first weekend in October, we will table at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair. If you want to invite us to participate in an event anywhere in the world, contact us.

Print Material

We’ve added another zine to our zine library—our classic introduction, A Civilian’s Guide to Direct Action.


We’ve also designed a zine version of our coverage of the RICO case so you can distribute it in your community. Please print these out and share them:

In Memory of

Active Distribution has published a book version of our eulogy for the Russian anarchist Dmitry Petrov. Dmitry organized against the autocratic government of Russia until he was forced to flee the country with the secret police looking for him. He traveled to Rojava and helped publish a series of books about the revolutionary experiment there, participated in uprisings in Ukraine and Belarus, organized a clandestine network to fight against Putin, and was finally killed last April fighting against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The book includes a biography tracing Dmitry’s activities and collects our translations of his writings. You can order it here.

 

Our comrades at the anarchist PR project Agency have announced a media grant in memory of Jen Angel, a longtime anarchist organizer who passed away last February.

 

This September also marks three years since the passing of David Graeber, a tireless, insightful, and wide-ranging anarchist thinker. We encourage you to visit The Museum of Care and the David Graeber Institute in his memory.

 

Until next time!


October 9th, 2023
November 21st, 2023

Hello, dear comrades.

Welcome back to our newsletter. Here, we’ll update you on all our projects and publications over the past few weeks.

The month and a half since last you heard from us has been full of tragedies, especially in Palestine. At the same time, we have been inspired by the courageous actions of people around the United States who have occupied government and university buildings, blockaded transportation infrastructure, and shut down weapons factories to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. This is a good time to spread knowledge about how to engage in direct action.

The Catastrophe in Palestine

As we write to you, the Israeli assault on Palestine has killed over 13,000 Palestinians and displaced well over a million more, with no end in sight. Almost half of the dead are children.

Slaughtering thousands of children has not brought back the Israelis killed on October 7, nor has it secured the safe release of Israeli hostages. It will not halt the decades-long cycle of bloodshed that led to this tragedy. It can only lead to more deaths and concentrate more power in the hands of militarists and bigots. Israeli politicians are pursuing their own political benefit with no consideration for those who will experience the consequences.

The United States government is apparently prepared to sign off on an unlimited amount of bloodshed to maintain its foothold in the oil-rich Mideast. While some hope for a ceasefire, it appears that the only way to stop the bloodletting will be to block the flow of arms to the Israeli military.

To provide background on the situation, we published a text from the perspective of a Palestinian in the Galilee of Palestine.

In “Strategizing for Palestinian Solidarity,” a collective of Jewish anarchists involved in the fight to Stop Cop City in Atlanta explains why they are committed to solidarity with Palestinians and what they think it will take to halt the assault on Gaza. They explore the protests calling for a ceasefire, arguing that solidarity movements must shift from presenting demands to taking direct action.

In “Shutting Down the Port of Tacoma,” participants in an attempt to blockade the port on November 6 explore strategic questions in the context of the decades-long history of port blockades in the Puget Sound.

In “How They Stopped Work at the Raytheon Facility,” we describe how demonstrators in southern California used the element of surprise to blockade a defense contractor facility on November 13.

History

As activists set out to target weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems and Raytheon, it could be instructive to study previous campaigns. Two decades ago in the UK, a campaign known as Smash EDO set out to shut down an arms factory in Brighton. We’ve published an overview of that years-long struggle.

We also revisited an article we published in 2006, in which we suggested that one way to make sense of the Bush administration's otherwise incomprehensible decisions in Iraq was to assume that they were not trying to suppress jihadism, but rather to create an environment in which it could proliferate. Seventeen years later, this text looks prescient. It foretold the rise of the Islamic State, predicted the extension of the label “terrorist” to ordinary activists, and foresaw how the situation in Palestine foreshadowed other ethnic conflicts and forms of mass repression.

Audio

We are steadily releasing audio versions of our articles now, including “Strategizing for Palestinian Solidarity,” “From the Galilee to Gaza,” and “Understanding the RICO Charges in Atlanta.”

Zines

We’ve prepared a zine version of “From the Galilee to Gaza,” offering a Palestinian perspective on the assault on Palestinians. Please distribute these in your community.

We've also prepared a zine version of "Green Scared?", our analysis of the FBI crackdown on ecological direct action in 2005. This text summarizes what we can learn from the strategy that the police and prosecutors used to repress activists.

Music

Last month, a new company has bought the music platform Bandcamp and fired half of the employees. If this goes anything like the acquisition of Twitter did, Bandcamp may cease to serve as a resource for do-it-yourself musicians and labels.

Unfortunately, we use Bandcamp to keep all the music we have released over the decades available for free. If you want to download anything we've released, do it now while you still can!

Posters

We’ve made a poster expressing support for those on the receiving end of state violence in Palestine.


“Neither the apartheid policies of the Israeli government nor the brutality of the Israeli military have brought safety to anyone in the region. There is no way to stop to the bloodshed without putting an end to the colonial oppression of Palestinians.”

Stickers

Our comrades at Municipal Adhesives have made a sticker version of our #StopCopCity "Defend the Forest" poster. You can order them here cheap.

Languages

Over the past month, thanks to the tireless assistance of our multilingual comrades around the world, we have published versions of our articles in ten languages including Spanish, Italian, French, Czech, Greek, Portuguese, Russian, Bulgarian, and Polish.

 

If you can help us to translate into any language, please contact us!

Events

Since our last message to you here, we’ve distributed massive quantities of literature at anarchist book fairs in Boston, Sacramento, and São Paulo, as well as at the Block Cop City weekend in Atlanta. If you want to invite us to table or speak at an event, contact us.

Thank You

Everything we do is copyright free, produced and distributed by volunteer labor. We’re trying to change the world, not turn a profit. If you wish to support us, you can do so here.

 

Above all, we are grateful that you are out there, permitting yourself to care and take action. Until next month, we wish you all the best in your efforts. May they intersect with ours.

Support Us Here


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2312.15 - 10:10

- Days ago = 3084 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

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