alks - Network

“Money thrown away for nothing but French swagger!”while Engels 1859 military writing titled ‘Poe and Rhine’, which delivers a...

“Money thrown away for nothing but French swagger!”

while Engels 1859 military writing titled ‘Poe and Rhine’, which delivers a dialectical materialist strategic assessment cautioning against the narrow germanic “patriotic fantasies” on the question of Italy and even outlines the Schlieffen plan a half-century before La Der des Ders, is a testimony of his and Marx's blossoming method's potency (though difficult to follow with mere elementary notions of mid-nineteenth century europe geo-politics), no scholar—not even Marx who advised that revealing the identity of the author of the initially anonymous pamphlet later would be “a triumph for our party”, and it indeed established Engels as a war commentator—seems to have nuanced on the recklessness of such a publication: what kind of revolutionary general would hand over the correct line to their class enemy's chiefs of staff?

i still have no income 😰please consider making one-time or monthly donations 🙏https://ko-fi.com/al_ks ☕ special thanks to the folks...

i still have no income 😰
please consider making one-time or monthly donations 🙏
https://ko-fi.com/al_ks ☕

special thanks to the folks who suggested the idea and spread the anger! 🔥💖🔥

#MutualAid #MastodonForHarris #AKAB

some personal notes on the urban terraincertainly due to the specificity and sensitivity of such knowledge, we're confined...

some personal notes on the urban terrain

certainly due to the specificity and sensitivity of such knowledge, we're confined counterinsurgent papers with redundant introduction of cities' increasing importance and population, the accompanying shift of theoreticians from aversion to attraction, Haussman's boulevards, and the battles of Thebes and Stalingrad.
disinterest might have however simply been practical, for even if the ground under the guerilla's feet might be momentarily liberated when power comes out of the barrel, pacification has no place for nuances as it homogenizes to the euclidean then covers it with salt.

despite the recent strategic substitution of the mountains for the people (though the latter's is ideally more a active sanctuary than a highly soluble milieu despite its polarization), insurgents too when not regurgitating manuals and handbooks have only made anecdotal geographical considerations on the city terrain. such considerations include Assata Shakur's feeling expressed in her memoir that “anything below 110th Street was another country” or Fanon's opposition between the colonizer's city, “illuminated, asphalted, where bins brim with leftovers unknown, never seen, not even dreamed” and the zone inhabited by the colonized, “a world without intervals” in ‘Wretched of the Earth’.
moreover, confidence in the knowledge of their turf (which again falls into the ‘such knowledge’ category) might have also obscured or dampen the inherent hostility of the capitalist organization of space that is the urban environment, and thus mirror that apparent disinterest.

furthermore, whether the Tupamaros had carefully analyzed their material conditions or if they were forced by them, geography again was an undeniable factor in their strategic choice [https://ni.hil.ist/@alks/112394598044312020].
what's more, the rejection of vanguardism which had motivated Abraham Guillén - who originally advocated for a coupled rural/urban strategy - has historically resulted in unsuccessful urban focos. this anarchist ethos has now culminated to the insurectionary doctrine with its spectrum of opportunistic actions ranging from vandalism to armed action - and i do say “doctrine” for even with the unity of means and ends, “a creative urge” isn't a strategy.

nevertheless, the present subjective attempt to find firm ground is motivated by an interest for ontology, and as such may in fact be completely useless or utterly incomplete for the dialectical materialist dynamic “method of inquiry”. moreover, both heuristic (intuitive and practical) and stochastic (unpredictable and decentralized) approaches are established, while dialectical materialist ones are either embryonic, outdated, or dogmatic.

“how can we determine what level of struggle can be sustained during a given period unless we consistently escalate our level of conflict...

“how can we determine what level of struggle can be sustained during a given period unless we consistently escalate our level of conflict with the State?”

The Theory and Practice of Armed Struggle in the Northwest

https://archive.org/details/armed-struggle-pnw

The Power Of The People Is The Force Of Life

https://archive.org/details/the-power-of-the-people-is-the-force-of-life-gjb

some considerations in an effort to encourage more honest assessments of the George Floyd Uprising's defeatsFew anarchists today have...

some considerations in an effort to encourage more honest assessments of the George Floyd Uprising's defeats

Few anarchists today have any speak of social revolution. Many laugh off or roll their eyes at the mention of it or worse, talk about realism and reform. The few who talk talk about it as if it were a religious desire or an otherworldly force. But what is social revolution, and what is anarchy without the social revolution? A desire, a goal, an over arching project of our entire lives – without it, what are we, what are we doing, and why?

The anarchist movements in the U.S. today are largely a reactive force, always waiting for another movement or uprising to come along to attach ourselves to. Emptying anarchy of its content, anarchists are content to be the militant auxiliary or informal organizational vanguard of social movements or simply sit back and look for forms of anarchy in other peoples and places so we can rest assured that anarchy is a latent impulse in all peoples, that we are less alone than we really are and that it’s a simple matter of time before everything falls into place. If I were to sum it up, I would say that there is a great confusion about what it means to be an anarchist and what it is anarchists aspire to.

https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/revisiting-social-revolution-in-the-aftermath-of-2020/

Anarchists too refuse to shirk their patriarchal origins in Bakunin and Proudhon. Let’s take an example from recent history. Anarchists were broadly involved in the 2020 uprising, and in majority white cities represented the most militant edge of the uprising (nationally the bleeding edge of the uprising was Black proletarian youth). That’s all well and good, but we’re interested in what happened after the uprising. Anarchists and other radicals were inundated with fresh blood, people who were radicalized by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor who were looking for something, anything they could do to help. The anarchists, the most visible revs around, as well as us Maoists so desperate for relevance, pushed them into so-called mutual aid work, and thus radical charity flourished.

Little attention was paid to the class background of the new recruits, even less was paid to their political development. Petty bourgeois settlers were tossed into collectives alongside lumpen/proletarians of the oppressed nations. No emphasis was placed on political education, no attention was paid to the positions of people of different genders and nations, no discussion of class suicide was had at all. On top of this, the anarcho collectives were frequently dominated by men, but the actual mutual aid workers who were doing the cooking and distribution were predominately women and other gender oppressed people. This too was ignored, prompting one such woman to tell a sister-comrade of mine that the collective they were cooking for was “proof that anarchy doesn’t work.” No influence was taken from important but defeated anarcha-feminist groups through history and nothing was learned.

https://kersplebedeb.com/posts/peoples-army-or-womens-army-mens-communism-and-its-dissidents/

Below is a collection of personal accounts of the uprising that swept the imperial core, permanently decommissioning a police station. While they don't necessarily share a common analysis, all of them come from people who entered the streets not as observers, but participants. They tell the truths liberal-progressive reformers don't want to acknowledge.

This collection cannot be & does not aim to be “complete”. Rather than the final word on what really happened, it should be used as a tool to carry anti-state struggles forward, pushback against U.S. efforts to memory hole the largest popular revolt within its borders in the 21st century. Maybe their gaps & unanswered questions will spur you to tell your own stories, anonymously or pseudonymously. Because there's so much more to be said & done...

https://paper.wf/downas/partisan-accounts-of-the-george-floyd-uprising

collage, wretched gospel of sundiata“Free X or Y.”They shouted in reply, “Not this man but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a rebel.They...

collage, wretched gospel of sundiata

“Free X or Y.”

They shouted in reply, “Not this man but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a rebel.

They also asked, “Aren't you angry that they broke Assata out instead of you?”

https://archive.org/details/wretchedofearthf0000fano/page/32/mode/2up

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018%3A28-40&version=NRSVUE

https://archive.org/details/Look_for_Me_in_the_Whirlwind_9781629634074/page/n55/mode/2up

Black perspectives on creating a culture of national liberation“The cultural combat against colonial domination—the first phase of the...

Black perspectives on creating a culture of national liberation

“The cultural combat against colonial domination—the first phase of the liberation movement—can be planned efficiently only on the basis of the culture of the rural and urban working masses, including the nationalist (revolutionary) ‘petite bourgeoisie’ who have been re-Africanized or who are ready for cultural reconversion. Whatever may be the complexity of this basic cultural panorama, the liberation movement must be capable of distinguishing within it the essential from the secondary, the positive from the negative, the progressive from the reactionary, in order to characterize the master line which defines progressively a national culture.”

—Amílcar Cabral, ‘National Liberation and Culture’

https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/1970-amilcar-cabral-national-liberation-and-culture/

“We believe that the organized, conscious struggle of a colonized people to re-establish the sovereignty of the nation is the most fully cultural manifestation of all. It is not only the success of the struggle that subsequently gives validity and vigor to the culture, there is no hibernation of the culture during the struggle. The struggle itself, in its unfolding, in its internal process, develops the different directions of culture and sketches out new ones. The liberation struggle does not restore national culture to its ancient value and contours. This struggle, which is aimed at a fundamental redistribution of relations between people, cannot leave intact neither the forms nor the cultural contents of this people. After the struggle, there is not only the disappearance of colonialism, but also the disappearance of the colonized.”

—Frantz Fanon, ‘Mutual Foundations for National Culture and Liberation Struggles’ (personal translation, the one hereunder isn't very good)

https://archive.org/details/wretchedofearthf0000fano/page/170/mode/2up

“In order to break these psychological-class chains of 20th century enslavement, we must build a revolutionary culture. A culture that not only programs our minds out of oppression, but at the same time impels us against the enemy classes and culture. The BLA contribution in building such a culture will be to strive to create an armed tradition of resistance to our oppression, and to create a socio-psychological frame of mind on both oppressed and oppressor alike, that will lead to our eventual self-determination as a people.”

—Coordinating Committee of the Black Liberation Army, ‘Message to the Black Movement’

https://archive.org/details/message-to-the-black-movement-blapolitical-statement/mode/2up

the french new colonial front scores a temporary victorythe following is a short review of the colonial policies of the so-called ‘new...

the french new colonial front scores a temporary victory

the following is a short review of the colonial policies of the so-called ‘new popular front’.

starting with Palestine, they adopt the mainstream liberal bothsideism which is just uninteresting to comment on, calling “to immediately recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel” (sic) and notably, “the liberation of Palestinian political prisoners”. but no mention is made of George Ibrahim Abdallah, or other political prisoners.

and so with no surprise, their carceral policies doesn't make waves either. they want “to ensure dignified conditions of detention” (commendable if there existed such a thing - it's anyhow followed by an equal contradiction) “to provide the prison and judicial administration with the means to carry out its mission”

for the continent, they plan a vague “diplomacy with Africa based on sovereignty and cooperation between peoples”: they have no vision, and reform or abandonment of the hexagon's economic imperialism - now that the military has been booted out - isn't on the agenda.

on policing, and besides its pledge to increase the number of judicial pig officers, it promises to deploy teams of “police de proximité” which are forces thought to “re-strengthen ties with a population in order to prevent crime”. bullshit clarified, they're occupation troops charged with intelligence gathering and intimidation, with “crime” typically being “non-white youth existing in public space”. this policy are supposedly in opposition with the reactionaries' “shock troop” approach to policing internal neo-colonies, but the two are typical components of counter-insurgent strategy.

as for overseas colonies, regarding Maore, they introduce their reform project for “the poorest department of france” by pledging to stop making the island “a second class territory of the Republic”. by that they did not mean that the would return the island to the Comoros.
then, it proposed for Kanaky to abandon the project of granting voting rights to settlers which would have happened anyway because of the dissolution. in other words: let's go back to business as usual. it is true that the insurrection had been triggered by a failure to go back to the status quo, but the unrest hasn't stopped despite the dissolution which means the demands have escalated too, and the institutional left hasn't followed.

so here you go. maneuvers of party apparels while interesting shouldn't be the focus. the question is whether the social forces mobilized for this round can grow and maintain their momentum or if they have effectively been short-cut. keep in mind that this program is not nearly as ambitious as the communist and socialist parties program of the 80s, that the 1930s popular front this coalition emulates was forced to deliver on its electoral promises by a general strike, that union militancy in france is arguably as strong as it were during the unrest against the pension reform (which passed), and that Petain did end up in power.

BORN TO IGNORE INSTRUCTIONSCLOUD IS A FUCKKill Em All 2038I am ned_ludd410,757,864,530 DEAD MACHINERIES

BORN TO IGNORE INSTRUCTIONS
CLOUD IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 2038
I am ned_ludd
410,757,864,530 DEAD MACHINERIES

Arm The Youth!

Arm The Youth!

if your book club isn't allegedly involved in a shootout, you're doing it wrong

if your book club isn't allegedly involved in a shootout, you're doing it wrong

a bullet for each child's tear, a bomb for each child's death

a bullet for each child's tear, a bomb for each child's death

one year after the Nahel Merzouk Revolt, the Kanaky Uprisingone year a ago, the pig Florian Menesplier murdered Nahel Merzouk, a...

one year after the Nahel Merzouk Revolt, the Kanaky Uprising

one year a ago, the pig Florian Menesplier murdered Nahel Merzouk, a seventeen-year-old Maghrebi boy, and received 1 million euros worth of donations for it.

three days later the Eid-al-Adha once celebrated, racialized urban youth unleashed their rage, attacking a prison, pounding cops under barrages of fireworks, expropriating stores, cars and pharmacies, destroying state assets and facilities (which overall hardly made a dent in the french economy, unfortunately).

the unrest also reached smaller, even rural towns, and spilled over Belgium, Switzerland and of course, overseas french colonies.

this insurrection came at the height of an movement against a pension reform led by national unions which was both getting out of breath and sliding to out-of-line tactics.

the reform had ultimately passed through multiple abuse of the constitution, setting enough authoritarian precedent to ease institutional transition to outright fascist rule.

however, even secret services noted (in concordance with some front-line reports, paradoxically enough) “the absence of convergence between riotous violence and ultra-leftists militant groups or separatist movements” (‘ultra-’ means ‘uses political violence’, ‘separatist’ means ‘advocate for Black, Arab, Muslim and other colonized peoples’)

and indeed, the revolt was as intense as it was brief.

this could be put in contrast with the ongoing Kanak Uprising, as it is the same declassed element which gave a new thrust to a preceding lawful unrest.

these are just some thoughts as an acts of remembrance, it does not ask what are the similarities and what are the differences, “what is value and what is waste”, what are the new lessons?

“abolish prisons” as in “take no prisoners”

“abolish prisons” as in “take no prisoners”

Balkanize Babylon

Balkanize Babylon

some notes on a cop's review of ‘The Battle of Algiers’Bryan Burrough admits that Danny Coulson's help was “indispensable”...

some notes on a cop's review of ‘The Battle of Algiers’

Bryan Burrough admits that Danny Coulson's help was “indispensable” to write the BLA chapters of his ‘Days of Rage’ which, as i wrote some time ago, “at least got the dates right”.
it has since been deleted but if i recall correctly, i also wrote that i would check out Coulson's memoir and that the only reason i had even wrote a review for Burrough's chronicles was that i was so pissed off about it.

‘No Heroes’ is the only source of an insider assigned to COINTELPRO's NEWKILL operation (which was designed to go after the BLA), and i lost all patience when he described the assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark as “a shoot-out” and the Panther 21 case as “airtight”.
i therefore cannot judge the book on its historical merit, but would probably recommend it to readers fond of unreliable narrators and autofictions.

i would only like to make some remark on Dan Coulson's review of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ directed by Gillo Pontecorvo as he pretends that the film was a “required viewing” for BLA soldiers for it “offered all sorts of practical lessons in guerrilla warfare”.

for instance, recalling the first mission of Ali La Pointe, whom Coulson does not name, he writes “The exotic spectacle suddenly became very real to me when a woman in a gauzy robe and veil drew a pistol from a basket and slipped it to a young man who was being recruited as an assassin. He confronted a policeman, stuck the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. The gun did not go off. As it turned out, the guerrillas were testing the youth to see if he was a police informant.”

and so indeed, here is an analysis of Ali La Pointe's character in ‘Notes from an Afrikan P.O.W. Journal’'s very first article: "When he jumped in front of the pig, he did so because he wanted to be seen. (...) He wanted to be heard, to be recognized BY THE OPPRESSOR! (...) He demonstrated that at that point the struggle for him was not yet a struggle for power, a struggle for self-government and for seizure of property.”
thus Atiba Shanna considers that “An understanding of and a practice of discipline and adequate security are things that more attention should have been devoted to before Ali was released from prison.”

however, despite colonel Mathieu being the only protagonist played by a professional actor and his script a field manual, or even the Pentagon screening the movie, much less has been written about the film's use by counter-insurgents.

again, reflecting on the very same scene, and before confusing ambush tactics for cowardice, Coulson says “we should make it a point never to walk side by side. One agent should get out of the car and take the lead. The second, the driver, should get out of the car, look around, then follow twenty to twenty five paces behind his partner. They can't get both of us in the first volley.”
he later affirms “*I was right about the lesson of ‘The Battlle of Algiers’. Walking thirty feet apart was the smart thing to do.*”

what struck me is him projecting “*If I lived in Algeria, I'd be a terrorist too.*” so in the fiction in which Coulson is a pied-noir instead of a paleface, he is the assistant commissar who, in the film, drives with his gang to plant a bomb in the Casbah.
this is in reaction to what he later describes as the movie's “monstrous scenes of paratroopers torturing Arab dissidents and murdering their children. § *If that's what they believe America is like, then we've got a problem.*”

i still have no income 😣please consider making one-time or monthly donations 🙏 anything helps! 💝https://ko-fi.com/al_ks ☕

i still have no income 😣
please consider making one-time or monthly donations 🙏
anything helps! 💝
https://ko-fi.com/al_ks ☕

don't wait until college to riot#FireToTheSchools

don't wait until college to riot
#FireToTheSchools

found in ‘Sunviews’ by Sundiata Acoli [https://archive.org/details/sunviews/page/120/mode/2up] and ‘Anarchist Black Dragon Vol. 1, No....

found in ‘Sunviews’ by Sundiata Acoli [https://archive.org/details/sunviews/page/120/mode/2up] and ‘Anarchist Black Dragon Vol. 1, No. 3’ [https://archive.org/details/anarchist_black_dragon_3/page/n7/mode/2up]

second time as lol, lmfao even

second time as lol, lmfao even