Anarchic update news all over the world - 12.02.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #279 - Syria: How to
      rebuild after Raqqa? (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  Britain, freedom news: Shard owners threat Ian Bone and
      Class War with High Court injunction (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Poland, rozbrat: State symbols, abstractions and small
      birds. AKK Revenge [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  US, Black Rose Anarchist Federation: WAS THE UC BERKELEY
      SHUT DOWN OF MILO YIANNOPOULOS WORTH IT? 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





Returning from Syrian Kurdistan where he joined the YPG as a foreign volunteer for several 
months, our comrade Arthur takes stock of the prospects for the peoples of the region 
after the deadly fighting in Raqqa. ---- It's no secret that the war against Daesh is 
coming to an end. The last few months have not been easy for the revolution, the Raqqa 
prize has been paid at the cost of the lives of many worthy comrades, but has also had a 
significant political cost. By that I mean that, by the pressure of the imperialist states 
that wanted to end their Islamist Frankenstein as soon as possible, the siege of Raqqa was 
a bloody battle. We are talking about several thousand civilians killed at least, and 
there is almost no building that bears the marks of fighting. What will the population say 
when they return to their battered city?

The task will be immense for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to make their proposal for 
democratic confederalism accepted in a field of smoking ruins. Especially since the Daesh 
territories have certainly been resumed but a large majority of its militants, having 
understood that they could do nothing against our assaults, supported by the air strikes 
of the coalition, have simply scattered and hidden among their supporters in population. 
This is the paradox of the eagerness to finish for the imperialists: the disproportionate 
destruction of this offensive have surely offered more opportunity for flight to the 
jihadists than a slower but more measured advance.

Win the hearts of people

The comrades on the spot are well aware of it, it is what I said in one of the first posts 
on my blog [1], the destiny of the revolution will be played in the post-Daech and the 
capacity to win the heart of the people. Nevertheless, given the state of the country's 
infrastructure, one of the issues will be very clearly reconstruction. As the song says: 
empty stomach, man can not argue. But with the ruthless blockade organized by Turkey and a 
complicated situation in Iraqi Kurdistan, a virtually non-existent industrial apparatus 
(the north of Syria has always been an inner colony, the breadbasket for the rest of the 
country), to whom to turn? The United States or Russia will soon offer assistance that 
will not be without compensation. The revolution is definitely a game more complicated 
than a tweet. It is here that we, activists around the world, have a role to play.

Arthur Aberlin

[1] To read on the blog kurdistan-autogestion-revolution.com

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Syrie-Comment-reconstruire-apres-Raqqa

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Message: 2





Ian Bone of Class War and ‘persons unknown'  are threatened by the owners of the Shard 
with a court injunction preventing them from protesting in front of Western Europe's 
tallest building. The protest was called for in response to recent news that  all 10 of 
the multimillion-pound apartments near the top of the 95- storey building remain empty six 
years after the tower opened. The posh flats have a price tag of up to £50 million each. 
---- The injunction was filed with the High Court less than 48 hours after Ian Bone asked 
on his Facebook:  ‘Anyone know where the entrance for the luxury apartments at the Shard 
is?'  He added:  ‘We are starting weekly actions - Thursdays 6-8pm starting Feb 8th.' This 
apparently concerned the Shard owners enough to set their barristers on Ian: an old-age 
pensioner. The lawyers representing the owners of the skyscraper also request Ian Bone, an 
old age pensioner, to pay legal costs.

The important part of the court papers delivered to Bone is a statement from the Shard 
head of security, who happens to be an ex- copper with 30 years experience with the 
police. He states that the planned protest was brought to his attention by ‘a contact in 
the Metropolitan Police'. In rather dramatic statement he claims that the defendants 
intend to test Shard's security andt hat it puts at risk of exposing the building's 
security flaws and potential vulnerabilities to terrorists and others with criminal 
intent. He plays the terrorist card further by stating that the protest will interfere 
with the critical work the building's security is undertaking in relation to counter 
terrorism at a time when the threat of terrorist attack in the UK is considered as severe. 
He also describes Ian Bone as well- known anarchist. Later, the claimants produce the 
evidence in which Class Was is described as ‘far-left, pro-anarchy pseudo political party'.

The Shard is owned by Qatari royal family via a Jersey registered company. The Qatari 
royals are also the owners of numerous other prestigious London properties, such as 
Harrods, a massive £200m-plus Regent's Park palace, the Olympic village and half of One 
Hyde Park: the world's most expensive apartment block. The former emir of Qatar scored 7th 
place on the list of the World's richest royals. His fortune is estimated at £1.72 
billion, and the The Sovereign Fund managed by the top circle of the Qatari royal family 
is estimated at approx £240 billion. The family currently owns more property in London 
than the Windsors.

Ian Bone is due to appear in court this Thursday: the same day as the planned protest. 
Talking to Freedom News, he said: ‘from Brixton Arches to Pret a Manger Ladbroke Grove its 
been a good week for anti-gentrification in London - now the acting and publicity at the 
Shard gives us an opportunity to push things further.'

The protest is still going ahead.

zb

https://freedomnews.org.uk/shard-owners-threat-ian-bone-and-class-war-with-high-court-injunction/

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Message: 3






About the exhibition entitled "Zemsta" "Abstractions in orange, pink and yellow", which on 
Wednesday at 19.30 will have its finisaz, with its author, Antonym Zmyslonym, Marek 
Piekarski talks. ---- For me, this is one of the best exhibitions we've made during these 
five years, but at the same time an opportunity to show and to be present in part a bigger 
project, that is, to enter the role that Revenge set for itself in the assumption. Tell me 
what's going on in this activity, what the project is about. ---- The idea was born in 
reaction to seeing one boy in turn in a black and sad patriotic blouse, with a huge white 
eagle in this tenacious, formally approved form. And this eagle once again associated me 
with a hen connected to high voltage and I thought to myself - I would like to help, this 
tension try to somehow disconnect, unload, drain this patriotic pair. It's best to have 
fun, because by this napinke, all our national uglyness and the celebration of 
independence in November is terribly sad for us. This is how the first edition of the 
"Little Birds" project was created, i.e. a collection of patriotic t-shirt designs without 
embrace.

The exhibition in Zemscie is another part of this project, prepared on the occasion of 
Independence Day, the day in which everything - including the forms of rebellion against 
state oppression - is so Polish and symbolic that it asks for abstractions and foreign 
language titles.

So these are not abstractions but birds? And it has something to do with national 
symbolism. Are not you afraid of laws and paragraphs?

I wanted to find a pattern for a bird that would be close enough around the official form 
of a state symbol to be completely legible, but it did not directly use any of the 
elements of this symbolism - and thus provoked to play with both form and the meaning of 
the symbol. That the kind of black background of sweatshirts is good and pink bad? And if 
it offends one's feelings, then what and why? Where is the border between the state symbol 
and a pile of colorful squares? Is it possible to punish and for what reasons? If a police 
patrol caught up with me during posters gluing at the beginning of November, what would 
they do? In the dark, all these backgrounds are red, and I would say that I am trying to 
artistically celebrate the National Day because I love my homeland and Lech Poznan. And 
that squares are, because it's modern art, on the computer. And what, would they give me a 
mandate? I would like to pay a premium for the opportunity to participate in this 
intervention. Such things as the police council on art, especially on the radio, 
especially with the current power, you will not see the galleries.

The work opens dozens of possibilities for interpretation, encourages action, but also 
shows a specific perspective. An attempt at polemics with the current state of Polish 
culture? That's what you mean?

 From the very beginning, the project was rather a blink of an eye and invitations to play 
than attempts at serious polemics with anything. And probably the most to his face in this 
cheap, pop-up style. On the other hand, Poland's Culture and National Heritage have 
recently become so tense, oversensitive and overwhelmed by their role that perhaps such a 
slick kick in an institutional ass is the right method of polemics.

And pixels?

Pixels are only pixels, probably just as obvious in graphics as typescript in literature. 
I have a weakness for them, because through such a simplification, projects lose their 
individual character, they become anonymous, common, they are easily duplicated, everyone 
can process them in their own way and use them in new ways.

I painted the pixels of birds for the exhibition in Zemrow classically, on canvas and oil 
paints, which I diluted with potato spirit. At the time it just seemed funny to me, but as 
I think about it now, after several jumping competitions, I think it's actually a pretty 
shapely polemic.

Jumps in art or in Polishness? Autotherapy?

All at once. The strength of these pictures is probably due to the appeal to symbolism, 
which we all have stuck in our heads more than we think. I once thought that in exchange 
for free education most of us had to stare at such a picture with an eagle in the frame 
for some 9,000 hours (12 years x 200 days x 5 lessons). It must have left a mark on every 
psyche, as well as ubiquitous religious symbols. Maybe in this way I'm trying to deal with 
it somehow.

 From time immemorial, we have Catholics fighting for the interests of "God of Earth", as 
if he could not defend himself. In Poland, they were able to introduce into the law a 
record of punishment for insulting religious feelings. And then we have the continuation 
of this interpretation - the Nazis who have trod on the positions of patriots through the 
Independence March. On the dam, proving to people that the swastika is a symbol of the sun 
etc ... Is not it that anarchists or, more broadly, freedom and progressive movements, 
stopped fighting for their symbols by completely giving away the bankruptcy? And that 
culture does not like the vacuum ...

I am not a specialist, but the evolution of the meaning of symbols seems to me quite 
natural. The problem is, as usual, our Polish lack of distance and devotional attitude to 
absolutes / abstraction, which I feel applies equally to everyone from the right to the 
left. Easily ridiculing translations of the ancient solar symbol or Roman salute, it is 
much harder to swallow the fact that referring to concepts such as socialism, communism, 
red banner or class struggle in their pre-war meaning are analogically not swallowed by 
the vast majority of our countrymen. And it's not entirely their fault. This is what brand 
marketing means in marketing and it is very difficult to change, especially when it is 
negative. On the consumer market, it is usually more profitable to "calm down" the brand 
and introduce a new one than to force it, that our let's give it to meat does not stink 
anymore. Because, of course, if you replace labels on postulates, it would turn out that 
almost everyone in this country agrees, only that some say the capitalists, and the other 
Jews.

I still have a big red banner somewhere in my house, somewhere around 2x4 meters, rolled 
up on May 1, eighty of a pole in front of the Polfa factory in Poznan. We were maybe 10-12 
years old, we were reading about the occupation and the fear was exactly the same as if we 
were downloading a great swastika. And we had no doubt that we were downloading the symbol 
of a totalitarian empire, under the occupation that we were born with, and probably we 
will die. By the way, when I find this banner somewhere, on the first of May I will drag 
him onto the same pole instead of the GlaxoSmithKline flag, a nice personal performance 
will come out with a giggle of history in the background.

Once I was waiting for someone at the Arsenal Gallery, near the unleavened Military Museum 
in the old market. A banner with an eagle in the window. A group of teenagers are 
approaching standing in front of the window and in delight, one of them says - "and that's 
what the fuck is about!" And then everyone starts to tear "away with the commune." Are 
your squares not too ambitious for such a deceased generation?

Well, I go by this museum every day and the fact should probably hit the UNESCO list of 
heritage, or better to some museum museum, as the best preserved example of 
nineteenth-century exposure techniques:) Once I went there with a five-year-old son who 
wanted to pee, but how tickets did not let us.

And squares it seems to me that this generation fit perfectly, only instead of "banner" or 
"eagle" say "logo". Current teenagers were born around 2000 and they are growing up in a 
completely corpored branding, creating for profit some completely crazed values, for joke 
called "intellectual". We had a block and paints in kindergarten, and now there is an 
Angry Birds block, My Little Pony block, Elsa paints, Star Wars paint and so on. And just 
try to buy not these. The kids recognize the brands in a flash, just like we recognized 
each other by the names of bands written on the pencil case. In junior high school one 
glance and one knows who is who, because Adik is oldskul, New Balance is more rebel than 
Nike, Fila is for debila, and brands from Decathlon for Janusza and Wieslawów.

I think that all patriotic clothing is simply another brand for them, with an anchor or an 
eagle in the logo. In theory, there are some values like "death to enemies of the 
homeland" or "never give up", but does anyone buy a Nike tracksuit because he wants "just 
do it"? Sooner or later, all these black sweatshirts will end up forgotten at the bottom 
of the wardrobe, where ours ended up with pentagrams, daggers and bleeding heads of goats.

Every day you deal with the design of such corporate brands. Is it by no chance your fault 
that young people ingest this whole capitalist, nationalistic, conservative crap? The 
creative milieu, in spite of its privileged role, does not give the impression of a 
society something that could embed its libertarian identity. Is it laziness, or rather a 
lack of willingness to understand this society? Is it more important to you than 
responsibility?

If I sold, then where is the money, as Swietlicki asked. Because every day I mainly deal 
with ZUS and rent, which sometimes works and sometimes I do not. And I think that the 
majority of creatively and quite independently people have a similar problem. If there is 
money, there is no time, and no money, no more time. So that there will be time and money, 
someone has to work for us, and then we take over his profit and have time:) In short - 
most of us sell on the market without much pleasure, but few can afford to sit down after 
work back to the machines and design the paper. And it's not entirely a matter of 
laziness. I would not like to speak on behalf of an abstract environment, but we with my 
friends have a whole list of revolutionary projects that we would like to move at some 
time. From the portal with cool materials for learning ethics for parents who want to 
teach their children on their own, to the foundation dealing with the organization of 
forest clearing. And we mark the next meetings on this topic in the calendar, and then we 
move them because the kid got sick, and then you have to give away some project for 
yesterday ... maybe now, as I've said about it and is writing it, it will succeed.

What's next with this project?

It seems that more and more will happen. On the birthday of Vengeance another edition of 
the project has already been created - computer game "Day of Vengeance", there are views 
of the appearance of shirts, and of course China has a leash and keyring container;) 2018 
is a special year - one hundred years of independence and one hundred years of electoral 
rights, current power he has 50% support in opinion polls, so there will be plenty of 
abstraction for celebration and subjects for polemics. If you feel like it, I invite you 
to combine and share effects yourself.

So where to look for it? Any www address, FB?

Any moment, as soon as I earn ZUS in February and will be a moment of time. Projects and 
photo documentation will surely be able to watch maleptaszki.pl and 
facebook.com/maleptaszki , soon I hope you can also play there a new version of the Day of 
Vengeance. And what's next, you'll see it.

Thanks for the interview and inspiration.

http://www.rozbrat.org/publicystyka/alternatywy/4597-symbole-pastwowe-abstrakcje-i-mae-ptaszki

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Message: 4





Reflections and debates on combating the growth of the far-right are essential. But often 
mainstream media narratives, which focus on respectability and sensationalize acts of 
property destruction, are drastically wrong on these questions. This piece from Salon by 
Black Rose Anarchist Federation member Mark Bray gives some well needed push back around 
these. ---- By Mark Bray, Salon ---- A year has passed since black-clad anti-fascists 
smashed windows and launched fireworks to shut down right-wing provocateur Milo 
Yiannopoulos' scheduled speech at the University of California, Berkeley, on February 1, 
2017. Unsurprisingly, pundits immediately condemned these "masked hoodlums who arrived 
from off-campus" for denigrating Yiannopoulos' "freedom of speech." The year of conflict 
on campus that ensued around speakers like Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer and Charles 
Murray provoked fascinating debates about speech rights that tap into our most deeply held 
principles. But pundits also objected to the "no-platforming" of Yiannopoulos for another 
reason: that "such actions turbo-charge his fame."

Berkeley witnessed "self-defeating violence" that was a "gift" to Yiannopoulos, according 
to The Chicago Tribune. A column in The New Yorker argued the protest was "a tactical 
error" that "served his ultimate interests." "Milo Yiannopoulos feeds on your violent 
protests," The Daily Beast claimed, because they allowed him to cultivate his "image as a 
victim of liberal intolerance." Ultimately, "resorting to violence is particularly 
stupid," The Telegraph asserted, because it plays into Yiannopoulos' "oh-so-obvious trolling."

As surely as the sun rises in the east, smashing windows to shut down a self-described 
"provocateur" was allegedly destined to propel Milo Yiannopoulos into the media 
stratosphere. But did it? A year is a reasonable enough sample size to start assessing the 
real effects of the Berkeley protest and the accuracy of pundit predictions.

Did bonfires benefit Yiannopoulos?

The media frenzy that followed on the heels of the Berkeley protest seemed to confirm the 
assumption that bonfires benefitted Yiannopoulos. Pre-orders of his book "Dangerous" 
skyrocketed and Bill Maher fawned over him on "Real Time." Overnight, Milo Yiannopoulos 
had become a household name.

Yiannopoulos' fortunes started to change a little over two weeks later, however, when a 
video surfaced showing him making pro-pedophilia remarks. Immediately this revelation 
caused Simon & Schuster to terminate his lucrative book deal, the conservative conference 
CPAC to cancel his planned speech at its annual event and hard-right news site Breitbart 
to urge his resignation from his editorial post. Though this fiasco was largely 
self-inflicted, the timing of the release of this 2016 video shortly after the Berkeley 
protest suggests that enhanced scrutiny accompanied his newfound fame. As the 
self-described "supervillain of the internet" was about to be welcomed into the 
conservative mainstream at CPAC, the conservative "Reagan Battalion" site unearthed his 
pedophilia comments. Yiannopoulos seems to have flown too close to the sun. Despite the 
media predictions that militant protest would "only help" his brand soar, it became 
painfully obvious that not all publicity is good publicity when you have skeletons in the 
closet.

More skeletons were unearthed when Buzzfeed published an exposé revealing Yiannopoulos' 
links to prominent white nationalists and neo-Nazis. As the months fell off the 2017 
calendar, Yiannopoulos was denounced by his former mentor Steve Bannon, defunded by the 
right-wing Mercer family and booted out of his role as a weekly contributor for The Daily 
Caller after one column. (The Daily Caller editor who brought him on was fired as well.) 
Even his own lawyers abandoned him in his suit against Simon & Schuster for terminating 
his book contract.

The impact of the Berkeley demonstration and other anti-Milo protests is most obvious when 
we examine the trajectory of Yiannopoulos's speaking engagements. From February 2016 
through the infamous Berkeley incident on February 1, 2017, Yiannopoulos scheduled 
approximately 61 public speaking appearances (most for his "Dangerous Faggot Tour"). Of 
those 61, twelve were shut down by protesters or cancelled by administrators for security 
concerns. Notable examples other than Berkeley included Black Lives Matter protesters who 
confronted Yiannopoulos at DePaul University in May 2016 (a planned return to DePaul in 
September was cancelled by the administration) and students and allies at UC Davis who 
successfully blockedthe entrance to an event Yiannopoulos had scheduled with Martin 
Shkreli in January 2017. Another seven of his talks were cancelled for logistical reasons. 
At least five of the 42 that occurred were interrupted in one way or another: Rutgers 
students smeared themselves with fake blood, UCLA students attempted to block the entrance 
to the event, and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities students interrupted him with air 
horns.

Pundit predictions versus actual impacts

How did the media spectacle of bonfires and fireworks at Berkeley affect Yiannopoulos's 
ability to organize future speaking engagements? Robert Schlesinger, writing in U.S. News 
& World Report, was confident back in February 2017 that the actions of "the masked 
vigilantes . . . no doubt guaranteed another dozen speaking engagements" for Yiannopoulos. 
Actually, he failed to deliver even that modest number of public talks over the next year. 
Though Yiannopoulos attempted to schedule about 16 public talks between February 2, 2017 
and February 1, 2018, six of those planned talks were cancelled at universities like San 
Diego State or private venues like the Patio Theater in Chicago because of a mix of 
popular pressure and "security" concerns. The United Liberty Coalition attempted to bring 
Yiannopoulos to Phoenix, but they gave up after they were rejected by 62 different venues. 
Eight of his talks, including all seven in Australia, were listed as occurring in a 
"secret location" to deter protesters. One of the only openly advertised events 
Yiannopoulos managed to organize was the woeful "Free Speech Week" at Berkeley in 
September 2017, which collapsed into a 20-minute talk in front of an audience of 50-100.

This dramatic decline in his public appearances over the past year is directly correlated 
with the precedent set in February 2017 at Berkeley. Love it or hate it, images of 
targeted property destruction in northern California provided a powerful incentive for 
venues to avoid potential headaches.

Resistance to the far right is essential

Reasonable people will disagree about the influence of the Berkeley protest on 
Yiannopoulos' plummet. What is not debatable, however, is that media predictions about the 
inevitable ascent of Milo Yiannopoulos after getting shut down in Berkeley were wrong. A 
year later, already banned from Twitter, Yiannopoulos now has no access to media platforms 
like Breitbart and the Daily Caller, no publisher for his books, no mega-donors to 
bankroll him and dwindling opportunities for public speaking. In an age of social media 
and 24-hour cable news cycles, Yiannopoulos is already old news. The short-lived nature of 
his stardom is even evident on Google Trends which shows that after spiking in early 2017, 
the frequency of subsequent Google searches for his name have plunged to 2016 levels.

Yet, this discussion misses the most crucial aspect of protests at Berkeley, Rutgers, 
DePaul, UCLA and other campuses. Pundits asked how protests would affect Milo 
Yiannopoulos' public profile. They failed to ask more important questions: How do 
Yiannopoulos' events and the rhetoric he spews endanger those he targets, and how can they 
fight back? How these protests affect Yiannopoulos (or other far-right figures like 
Richard Spencer or Ann Coulter) is interesting; how they affect resistance to the far 
right is essential. Lost in such debates is the astounding mobilization over recent years 
of a broad anti-racist movement encompassing Black Lives Matter groups, labor unions, 
faith communities, immigrants' rights coalitions, anti-fascist networks, feminist 
collectives and LGBTQ organizations that will not just ignore attempts to make white 
supremacy great again. We must situate the property destruction at Berkeley, heckling at 
UMASS Amherst, the air horns at Minnesota, the blockade at UC Davis, and other acts of 
disruption within this process of movement-building to understand their full effect.

Strategic and tactical debates rage within these circles, as they do in all movements. But 
by smashing windows rather than allowing Yiannopoulos to out undocumented students, as 
Berkeley officials claimed he was about to do, by dousing oneself in fake blood rather 
than let him promote rape culture, by barricading the entrance to his event rather than 
give him an opportunity to verbally attack a transgender student (as he had at the 
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee), these students and their allies prioritized the 
safety of those under attack and expanded the range of tactics available to resist the far 
right.

Protest is not just influence but about power

More fundamental than the tactical repertoire, however, is a shared understanding that it 
is dangerous to allow the far right to normalize racism, xenophobia and homophobia (for 
even the openly gay Yiannopoulos penned an article title "Gay Rights have made us Dumber, 
It's Time to Get Back in the Closet"). If we truly believe that Black Lives Matter, then 
we cannot accept the discursive legitimacy of anti-black racism that argues otherwise. If 
we are committed to taking seriously those who have spoken out to say #MeToo, then we 
cannot shrug off the anti-feminist promotion of patriarchal values as a simple difference 
of opinion. We may disagree about how to resist, but resist we must.

This requires expanding our view beyond the capriciousness of celebrity. As long as there 
is demand for outlandish misogyny or Islamophobia, the next Milo will step up to bask in 
the spotlight. Protest is not just about influencing an intended target, but building power.

Would shutting down Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley in February 2017 propel him into 
stardom? A year later we can see that pundits offered us the wrong answer. Yet, if we 
focus on resistance, we can also see that they were asking the wrong question.

This article was originally published as "Antifa vs. Milo Yiannopoulos: Who won?" with Salon.

  Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern 
Europe who was one of the organizers of Occupy Wall Street. He is the author of the 
nationally-bestselling "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," as well as "Translating 
Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street," and the co-editor of "Anarchist Education 
and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader." His work has appeared in the Washington 
Post, Foreign Policy, Critical Quarterly, Boston Review, and numerous edited volumes. He 
is currently a lecturer at Dartmouth College.

http://blackrosefed.org/shut-down-milo-yiannopoulos/

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