Update on the Witch-hunt

Via Infoshop News

From Tides of Flame

In late July of this year, several anarchists in Portland, Seattle, and Olympia were subpoenaed to testify before a Federal Grand Jury set to commence on August 2nd at the Federal Courthouse in Seattle. The target of the investigation is presumed to be the vandalism that occurred during the May Day protests in downtown Seattle on May 1st, 2012.

August 2nd was the first day subpoenants were expected to appear before their inquisitors. Only one showed up. No one cooperated. After hitting this brick wall of silence, the Grand Jury scheduled its next round of interrogations for August 30th. But at the last minute, it was rescheduled for September 13th.

That day, Leah Plante (Portland) and Matt Duran (Olympia) went into the Federal Courthouse. Only one of them came out again.

Over a hundred people gathered outside the building, holding a support rally. Department of Homeland Security agents were scattered throughout the area, most of whom had guns with live ammunition. Inside, both Leah and Matt made it clear they would say nothing to the inquisitors. Leah was eventually dismissed but the inquisitors kept Matt. People outside soon learned there would be a contempt hearing in the courthouse regarding Matt’s refusal to testify. In a rare move by the feds, something that has not happened since McCarthy’s Red Scare, the contempt hearings were closed to the public. Within a few hours Matt was being stolen out of the courthouse in a blue van with blackened windows.

The feds can incarcerate Matt until the Grand Jury expires or is called off. He is now being held at the federal holding facility in SeaTac. Leah has been re-subpoenaed for a later date. All of this took place in an overwhelming climate of fear.

Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots

Via Al Jazeera

New York, NY – Almost every time I’m interviewed by a mainstream journalist about Occupy Wall Street I get some variation of the same lecture:

“How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what’s with all this anarchist nonsense – the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don’t you realise all this radical language is going to alienate people? You’re never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!”

If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honourable place. After all, since the financial crash of 2007, there have been dozens of attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of the United States’ financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. It was only on August 2, when a small group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians showed up at a meeting called by one such group and effectively wooed everyone away from the planned march and rally to create a genuine democratic assembly, on basically anarchist principles, that the stage was set for a movement that Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa were willing to embrace.

I should be clear here what I mean by “anarchist principles”. The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society – that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants.

Noam Chomsky: Is the World Too Big to Fail?: The Contours of Global Order

Via Guernica Magazine and Infoshop News

The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces—coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.

Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called “the most strategically important area in the world”—“a stupendous source of strategic power” and “probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment,” in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.

Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today’s policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield “substantial control of the world.” And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

Go Chris GO! 🙂 -WG

Via TruthDig

Posted on Apr 10, 2011

By Chris Hedges

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

The New Fascism

Via Infoshop News

We spend a lot of time talking about how the Left tries to control, manipulate, and contain working-class resistance and social struggles. While this of course is true, in the last few years the Right has been gaining power in massive numbers. Recently, the ‘Tea-Party’ has shown itself to be a major player in American politics, and presented itself as a ‘grassroots’ movement against big government. They’ve managed to promote an attack on social services and programs (budget cuts) as well as attacks on gays and immigrant workers. However, the Tea-Party is backed by multi-million dollar companies and controlled by major politicians and pundits. They support the same-old no-holds barred capitalism and authoritarian ‘Christian’ values that we’ve become so used to over the last decade under Bush. The following article is taken from Modesto Anarcho #16.

by CEN

Commenting on how the German working class movement could have stopped his debased regime from gaining power, Hitler once exclaimed, “Only one thing could have stopped our movement – if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.” Today, as capitalism breaks apart, the working class is left with the historical task of organizing itself as a force. Not only against capitalism, but against a radical right-wing that will also attempt to constitute itself as an alternative to the current state of affairs.

Noam Chomsky on the Situation in Africa and the Middle East

Via Infoshop News

Noam Chomsky speaks to Saswat Pattanayak

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Kindle Magazine

March 2011

SP- Prof Chomsky, where do you locate the contours of the current crisis in Egypt, Tunisia and rest of the Middle East?

NC- The source of the crisis in the Arab world goes back very far and it’s similar to what we find in the formerly colonized world. Actually it was expressed rather clearly in the 1950’s by President Eisenhower and his staff. He was holding an internal discussion which has been declassified since. Eisenhower asked his staff why there is, what he called a “campaign of hatred” against us in the Arab world. Not among the governments, which are more or less docile, but among the people. And the National Security Council, which is the major planning body, produced a memorandum on this topic. It said that there is a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports harsh vicious dictators, blocks democracy and development; and we do this because we want to maintain control over their resources – in this case, energy. And went on to say that the perception is fairly accurate and furthermore that, that’s what we should be doing.

The basic principle holds not just for the Arab world. It was expressed rather succinctly during the period of the recent spectacular uprising in Egypt by Marwan Muasher. He is a former high Jordanian official who is now the head of research in the Middle East for the Carnegie Endowment. He said there is a prevailing doctrine which is that as long as people are quiet, passive, controlled, there is no problem. We do whatever we like. Maybe they hate us, but it doesn’t matter, because we can do what we like. That’s a principle that holds in Arab world, in India, it holds domestically in the United States; its a standard principle of domination. Of course, sometimes the people break the chains and then you have to make adjustments. What’s happening in Egypt right now is a dramatic, but not untypical example. There has been case after case where the United States and other imperial powers before have been compelled to abandon support for the favored dictator because he could no longer be sustained. So there is a standard gameplan now being applied in Egypt. You support the dictator as long as possible by adopting the Muasher Doctrine. Everything is quiet, so no problem. When the dictator can no longer be sustained, you sort of push him aside, issue Reagan proclamations of your love for democracy and freedom and proceed to try to reestablish as much as you can of the former system. And that’s what we see happening right now in Egypt, and as I said, it happens over and over again.

Libyan Anarchist Denounces Western Intervention

Via WSM Ireland

Date: Thu, 2011-03-24 12:48

Once again the apostles of “liberal interventionism” are filling the newspapers and airwaves with their apologetics for Western imperialism dressed up as humanitarian mercy missions. Last Friday’s UN resolution 1973 is being touted as why this latest military incursion into a middle eastern oil producing land “has nothing to do with Iraq”. Yet North African and Middle Eastern voices of scepticism regarding French, UK and US motives are being systematically ignored. Here is the perspective of a Libyan anarchist, calling for support of the struggle against the tyrannical Gaddhafi regime, but fearing the Western military intervention is dividing the insurgents and burying the revolution.

The signs of the defeat of Libyan revolution

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.

Developing events in Montréal

Via Infoshop News

A STATEMENT ON YESTERDAY’S EVENTS, WRITTEN THE EVENING OF MARCH 13

On March 12, the Alliance sociale held a demonstration against austerity measures in downtown Montreal. In the midst of this, 12 anarchists wearing black were arrested and mainstream media later reported that 10 of them have been charged with criminal conspiracy and possession of weapons. Conspiracy charges have recently been used in to jail anarchists, release them only with cruelly restrictive conditions (like non-association with their friends and loved ones), and otherwise disrupt their lives and their ability to act.

Those wearing black were specifically targeted as people to arrest. Riot cops and pigs on horses invaded the demo and proceeded to brutally arrest people. A few escaped before the police could form a protective cordon to prevent any intervention on the part of bystanders. This is, of course, what the police are paid to do: repress dissent. Yet union marshals also helped in the process by taking the side of the police, forming an outer ring around the pigs, and basically acting like cops themselves. An article released yesterday on CMAQ by Michael Lessard gives the impression that bystanders were united in their opposition to the actions of the police. This is simply untrue. Who knows how many of the onlookers sympathized with the arrestees, because no one took any action to help them. Of course, even if they had wanted to do so, their task would have been made significantly more difficult thanks to the self-important marshals in their brightly-coloured vests.

Hundreds of Modesto JC Students Walkout and March Through Streets; Disrupt Mayor’s Event

Via Infoshop News

This morning, several hundred Modesto Junior College students responded to a call for a walkout against budget cuts that would result in the gutting of various departments and the laying off of faculty. Students rallied in the quad in front of the Morris (administration) building for over half an hour, giving impromptu speeches on how the cuts and layoffs would affect them. Security guards attempted to stop various students with mega-phones encouraging other students to join the rally from disrupting classes, but generally stood off to the side and took pictures of protesters. According to several students that were interviewed today, administrators with Modesto Junior College again called police and warned security that members of Modesto Anarcho would be on the campus, ‘stiring up trouble.’ Also speaking at the rally were several faculty members who expressed solidarity with the students for standing with them.

BBC Interview with Noam Chomsky

Great interview with Noam Chomsky,well worth watching. –WG

HERE