The PayPal founder’s support for Donald Trump made him an outlier in liberal Silicon Valley. What do we know about this controversial billionaire? Controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel will be a member of Donald Trump’s transition team, the campaign has confirmed.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Peter Thiel goes 'big league', joining Trump's presidential transition team
The surprise victory of Donald Trump this past Tuesday has quickly presented people in this country (and around the world) with a vastly different political landscape than we had expected.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at No One is Coming to Save Us
A book review of
Torkil Lauesen
380 pages
Nemo Publishing, Copenhagen 2016
by Stein Lillevolden (social worker)
First posted at: http://ift.tt/2fzOIQQ
Also published in the Danish newsletter Demos
In the late 1970s, I studied political science at Oslo University, by all evidence pretty half-heartedly. With half a heart — mostly because it was a deeply reactionary subject with a unilateral Western perspective on the world, though fortunately the activist students at that time were still able to squeeze into the syllabus theories about unequal exchange between the center and periphery of the imperialist system.
Theorists like Arghiri Emmanuel, Samir Amin, and Andre Gunder Frank saved my graduation (and continued student loans). They also gave compelling and inspirational insights into how poor developing countries were exploited in the world economy through unequal exchange, and provided a surprisingly revolutionary perspective on how such countries could liberate themselves from Western economic domination; this in a course where Henry Kissinger was seen as a credible statesman rather than a war criminal.
When I googled “unequal exchange” to see if it still has a place in the Norwegian Institute for Political Sciences curriculum, the first link was on the importance of changing hair shampoo based on different kinds of activity (jogging, partying, work, etc.), which might say something about Norway’s position in anti-imperialist discourse, given that the corresponding searches in Danish and English gave far more relevant results. Fortunately, there are still some activist and leftist political scientists outside of Norway. One of the most important is Torkil Lauesen, in Denmark, and his new book Det Globale Perspektiv, besides being a compelling survey of imperialist history, also provided a lovely reunion with my theoretical rescuers from poli-sci.
In this new book, Torkil Lauesen explains how global neoliberalism, with increased movement of goods, capital, and labor, simultaneously enhances a global racial hierarchy — a global system of apartheid. At the same time, the current economic and political crisis in this structure opens up opportunities for the progressive forces around the world to organize basic systemic changes through global analysis and cooperation, making resistance against imperialism as international as capitalism.
Torkil Lauesen has spent more than 40 years politically active in very different forms of struggle against capitalism, and he does not hide the different strengths and weaknesses of these different forms of struggle.
Lauesen has a somewhat unconventional educational background. He completed his degree in political science while serving a 10-year sentence in a high security prison in the outskirts of Copenhagen. The sentence was handed down for participation in the so-called Blekingegade Group’s robberies to obtain money for liberation movements such as the PFLP in Palestine. After journalist Peter Øvig Knudsen’s highly dramatized and tendentious books on the “Blekingegade Gang” and the subsequent films and television productions, it comes as a relief to read Lauesen’s sober description of the theoretical background, political development, and illegal practice of the Blekingegade Group, all without any hint of glorifying their actions.
When Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri wrote Empire, another of today’s major books on imperialism, there were strenuous attempts to marginalize Negri because of his 30-year prison sentence, “reduced” to 13 years, for “promoting terrorism and insurrection against the state”. There have been similar attempts to marginalize Torkil Lauesen, following his release, in particular by the venerable and respectable section of the left. So his book will not be part of the curriculum at the Institute of Political Science, but that will not prevent it from becoming part of activists’ revolutionary curriculum.
Lauesen tells about his background in assorted “alphabet-organizations” like KAK and M-KA; the latter, the Manifest Communist Working Group, would later become famous as the “Blekingegade Gang”. The group´s worldview was inspired by Lenin´s so-called parasite-state theory, where the material wealth in our part of the world is built on imperialist exploitation of the Third World. From this theory, they drew the conclusion that the Western working class is a labor aristocracy without revolutionary potential. This was also rooted in Lenin’s theory of imperialism, where a portion of the superprofits Western capitalists acquire through exploiting the rest of the world are used to buy off and pacify the Western working class, making it into to an aristocracy of consumers who have no interest in ending the imperialist exploitation of the Third World.
Following this logic, the group concluded that their revolutionary practice had to be to support the liberation movements in the Third World, instead of the traditional left-wing practice in trade unions and left-wing parties in the North. To put it mildly, this is not my favorite theory, as it is demobilizing and strongly discourages any attempt to counter power and resist the conditions of life in our part of the world. That said, it’s much more interesting with the theories of imperialism that Lauesen derives from here on in, and there’s no reason for me to get into a big fight over the “correct line”, when his analysis of imperialism is so good. The book contains a few such attempts at “line battles” against long-extinct dinosaurs, but fortunately, the main analysis of the current situation is far more convincing than the theoretical and practical issues of the 1970s.
The biggest strength of Torkil Lauesen’s new book is that he succeeds in writing about theory and imperialist history in a language that doesn’t require readers to have earned a black belt in Marxist theory. I can assure everyone with traumatic experiences from trying to follow the debates between Maoists, anti-imperialists, and Kapital interpreters during the 1970s — or, for that matter, from the 1980s and ‘90s autonomist mumbo-jumbo I myself partook in — that Lauesen’s book reads really well and is practically free of any dogmatic rhetoric. Considering the author’s political background, this is a feat unto itself.
It was also a minor stroke of genius that Lauesen left the discussion of Marx’s theory of value to a separate appendix in the back of the book. A “major nightmare” for everyone who ever participated in a study circle, which caused people to run away screaming after an endless review of the Marxist theory of value, before they ever got to the interesting philosophical, historical, economic, and political analyses, was redeemed here by the author in a sensible, elegant, and educational way. In addition, even his appendix on the theory of value is good and easy to comprehend, and is completely free of dogmatism tainting the historical and political analysis.
The core of Lauesen’s political and economic analysis consists of his rethinking of the theory of the unequal exchange, though still with clear references to the dependency theories of Arghiri Emmanuel and Samir Amin.
It is also a strength of the book that it combines theory with the art of putting concrete numbers on the size of unequal exchange and the global apartheid system in which international capitalism is organized. The annoyingly slow Dell notebook computer I write reports on when at work, is assembled by East Asian or South Asian workers who might earn only a few per cent of what I earn when I use it, and this is not just because I’m highly paid by Danish standards. The production of computers is globalized in transnational production chains, where each sub-process is located where production costs, infrastructure, taxes, wages, etc. are best for capital.
Moreover, the iPad I am so happy with and with which I am presently sitting in the sun and writing this article on, was produced under equally outrageous conditions. According to Lauesen, Apple management refers to the Foxconn factories in China, which produce their iPads, as “Mordor” – the name of the hell where the prince of darkness rules in Lord of the Rings. This insight does not stop Apple from taking out at least 45 percent of the sale price of an iPad in pure profit, while the wages of the person who assembles it can be measured in thousandths of the sale price.
Apple does not own a single factory, but gets everything produced by subcontractors in the South who brutally exploit labor. The same goes for many brand products that are part of our everyday lives, whether we’re talking about clothing, shoes, automobiles, furniture or electronics. The subcomponents in my beloved iPad are manufactured by companies such as Toshiba and Samsung. All the subcomponents are then transported to Shenzhen in China, where the company Foxconn has its huge assembly plants. Here iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, and other brand PCs are assembled by 400,000 Chinese workers who produce 12 hours each day, 6 days a week, sleeping and eating in the factory dormitory and receiving a salary which in 2009 was the legal minimum in Shenzhen, namely 83 cents an hour.
We are part of an increasingly unequal world, where the working class in the South is exploited in ways that have not been since the early industrialization of Europe. Technological advances in the productive forces have led to an industrialization of the former periphery, which the dependency theorists never thought possible, as they believed the South would remain suppliers of raw materials. However, today 80 percent of the world’s industrial workers are located in the South, while the North has de-industrialized.
This has meant a totally changed world, with China being the most obvious example. Yet my daily wages are still equivalent to at least a week’s salary in China, so I can buy cheap goods from the South, which in turn allows me a far greater material consumption than what would be possible if everything was produced on a Danish wage level. This is a recipe for ecological disaster, in addition to the sweatshops, child labor, and appalling working conditions with which the international working class is exploited to the utmost. The consumer aristocracy in the North takes daily “advantage” of this disastrous course, when we with our salaries can buy cheap products created through the exploitation of humans and corresponding exploitation of nature via the consumption of undervalued raw materials.
In the theory of imperialism of the 1970s, political economists explained how the development of the periphery in the South depended on capitalism in the center. Today we in the “center” are dependent on the production of the “periphery”. Lauesen argues that today, the “producer economies” and “consumer economies” are closely connected through global production chains, and that unequal exchange within this system has altered relations in the global system from the 1970s model of center and periphery. Lauesen predicts this economic development will create revolutionary situations in the South, which it is our responsibility to ally with and support.
At a time when there is a tabloid consensus that it is no use trying get people to read more than tweets of at most 140 characters at a time, or else just enjoy the selfies on Facebook, it is obviously risky to recommend a 380-page Danish volume on imperialism. However, the fact is that people are reading theoretical and analytical political works to a surprising extent, and that it is more the subsequent organizational effort that is lagging behind.
For example, Negri and Hardt’s Empire and Pikettys Capital are sold in huge numbers, and they are read. Therefore, my recommendation of Lauesen’s book has to do with continuing these earlier debates. His book has caused me to jump up from my chair, to yell and scream in rage about globalized capitalism, and has set the rusty gears in my brain and my dormant anarchic attitudes in motion.
In many ways, Lauesen is starting where Piketty leaves off, and although Piketty is empirically impressive, unlike Lauesen he provides no figures about globalized capitalism. Whereas Negri and Hardt’s analysis leads us to a universal Imperium with neither center nor periphery, it is Lauesen’s great strength that he ends his book by sketching a theory of action for the coming revolutionary struggle. He draws on the lessons learned from the Zapatistas and other revolutions of the 20th century where people tried to build transnational alliances with like-minded movements.
Lauesen emphasizes that the struggle against globalized capitalism also provides opportunities to undo the distinction between “us” and “them” that characterizes the politics of nation-states and the West, whether in relation to refugees, racism or economic exploitation, and from there move in the direction of global awareness, concrete solidarity, and common struggle. Confronting worldwide unequal exchange will have consequences for our way of life, but is indispensable if we do not want predatory capitalism to wipe out all human existence. Torkil Lauesen´s book Det Globale Perspektiv is a good place to start studying in the increasingly necessary revolutionary curriculum.
In the 1970s and 80s, Torkil Lauesen was a member of a clandestine communist cell which carried out a series of robberies in Denmark, netting very large sums which were then sent on to various national liberation movements in the Third World. Following their capture in 1989, Torkil would spend six years in prison. In 2016, Torkil’s book Det Globale Perspektiv was released in Denmark. In it, he explains how he sees the world political situation today, and his thoughts about the future. This story of Torkil and his comrades’ activities that led to their arrest is recounted in fascinating detail in the book Turning Money into Rebellion: The Unlikely Story of Denmark’s Revolutionary Bank Robbers (edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn, published by Kersplebedeb & PM Press in 2014) currently on sale at leftwingbooks.net. There is currently an Indiegogo fundraiser to be able to have Det Globale Perspectiv translated into English and published by Kersplebedeb in 2018. Please consider donating here.
If the title of my article alone makes you wanna write me off right off the bat, and makes you decide not to read my article then that is your right, but you lose any right to argue or attack me unless you have listened to what I am gonna say here and considered all my points.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Cultural appropriation is a toxic concept.
If the title of my article alone makes you wanna write me off right off the bat, and makes you decide not to read my article then that is your right, but you lose any right to argue or attack me unless you have listened to what I am gonna say here and considered all my points.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Cultural appropriation is a toxic concept.
In the 1970s and 80s, Torkil Lauesen was a member of a clandestine communist cell which carried out a series of robberies in Denmark, netting very large sums which were then sent on to various national liberation movements in the Third World. Following their capture in 1989, Torkil would spend six years in prison. In 2016, Torkil’s book Det Globale Perspektiv was released in Denmark. In it, he explains how he sees the world political situation today, and his thoughts about the future. This story of Torkil and his comrades’ activities that led to their arrest is recounted in fascinating detail in the book Turning Money into Rebellion: The Unlikely Story of Denmark’s Revolutionary Bank Robbers (edited and translated by Gabriel Kuhn, published by Kersplebedeb & PM Press in 2014) currently on sale at leftwingbooks.net.
There is currently an Indiegogo fundraiser to be able to have Det Globale Perspectiv translated into English and published by Kersplebedeb in 2018. Please consider donating here.
I was born in 1952 in Denmark. My mother was a nurse, my father a seaman. If ever there was a capitalist welfare state, Denmark was it. We got a TV and a refrigerator in 56, a small Renault car in 59, and we moved from a social housing flat to our own house in 62. The slogan of the ruling Social Democratic Party was: “Make good times better.”
My first experience with politics was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. During the Cold War, as part of the arms race between the superpowers, the Soviet Union intended to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba. This was partly a response to the US deployment of similar missiles in Turkey directed against the Soviet Union and partly a response to the unsuccessful CIA-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
The Soviet ships, bound for Cuba with the equipment, were spotted in the Baltic Sea near the coast of Denmark, and the US established a naval blockade of Cuba. What would happen when the Soviet ships came into confrontation with the US Navy? Nuclear war between the superpowers lurked on the horizon.
I was ten years old, but understood very well the seriousness of the situation. The Civil Defense had distributed a leaflet to every family entitled: “If the War Comes.” In the booklet there were pictures of how one should take cover under the coffee table when you see the light flash of the exploding bomb. On our new TV, I had seen the image of the mushroom cloud, and in our street, I heard the sound of sirens that were tested every Wednesday. Our neighbor had stored a lot of canned food and water down in their basement. I thought about what would happen when we had eaten the food and were forced to come up from the basement. What would the world be like?
The immediate danger passed. Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and discussions about hair length took over in my mind. But now there was also an organization : “No More War” was the first political movement I supported, and I was quite sure that I would be a conscientious objector when I was drafted.
Another military confrontation—the Vietnam War—loomed larger and larger in my mind, not least because of the daily footage on TV. It is no wonder that the Vietnam War was an important mobilizing factor for my generation of anti-imperialists. The war was one of the most brutal in recent history. The bombing from B-52 aircrafts, which began with Operation Rolling Thunder in 1965 and continued until the ceasefire negotiations in 1973, was massive. North Vietnam, which was the size of Texas, was bombed with a tonnage three times greater than the total bombing of Europe, Asia, and Africa during the entire Second World War. Fifteen million tons of bombs with an explosive force equivalent to 400 Hiroshima bombs were poured down on Vietnam. CIA anti-guerrilla operations, such as Operation Phoenix, “neutralized” more than 80,000 civilians suspected of being Viet Cong supporters. Overall, more than 1.5 million Vietnamese were killed because of the US war. It is not an exaggeration to call the American war a “genocide”—a verdict that the Russell Tribunal, chaired by Jean Paul Sartre, reached in Stockholm 1967. President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger should, according to international law, have been brought before a war crimes tribunal.
Therefore, it was no accident that one of the first political books I bought was War Crimes in Vietnam, by Nobel Prize winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. Recently, in connection with writing The Global Perspective, I looked at the book again. The following passage had been underlined by me in the late sixties:
“To some, the expression ‘U.S. imperialism’ appears as a cliché because it is not part of their own experience. We in the West are the beneficiaries of imperialism. The spoils of exploitation are the means of our corruption.” (Russell, Bertrand, 2013 [1966], ‘Peace through Resistance to US Imperialism’, in Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasril, eds., Russell’s America: His Transatlantic Travels and Writings, A Documented Account, vol. 2, 1945-1970, London: Routledge)
This passage obviously affected me, for looking back on the development of my political views, the words sum up my experience. It began with feelings: as a need for justice for the people of Vietnam, as resentment against US napalm bombings. Possibly, I was also having a guilty conscience over the fact that I was leading a rich life, while so many people in the Third World lead theirs under such poor conditions. I am comfortably writing this text on one of our two household computers. We also have an iPad, a couple of mobile phones, and a flat panel TV. Our 90-square-meter apartment has a bathroom and a modern kitchen. On holidays I travel abroad by plane, enjoying the sun in countries where people are stone broke. The high income I have can pay for it all. Perhaps it is this disparity in the necessities of life that has given me my personal political drive. What kind of history is it that has led to this global disparity? What mechanisms are involved in maintaining it? And why is it so hard to change this situation? In order to find answers to these questions, I began searching through political theory.
In 1969, I found the answers in the political organization that later turned into the so-called “Blekinge Street Group.” Their theory explained to me how the world is organized and functions in a manner that I could recognize immediately from my own everyday life. The theory explained that there was a connection between all the riches in our part of the world and the poverty in the Third World—the connection being imperialism. It also explained why the working class in our part of the world did not want socialism, preferring reforms within the existing system.
I became a member of the Kommunistisk Arbejdskreds (Communist Working Circle), or KAK. Theory turned my individual uncoordinated political action into organized strategic practice. Concretely, this meant study visits to the Third World to see the social conditions and meet with liberation movements first hand, and later on, practical material support to some of these movements. These experiences strengthened my initial feelings: We felt a personal responsibility to help the liberation movements – which had now turned into real people, into comrades. We wanted to be a little cog in the machinery promoting a different world order.
This practice, these feelings, again brought about political reflection and studies aimed at investigating, explaining, and mobilizing others—and hopefully ourselves—i.e. evoking feelings and action.
Thus, theoretical development was always important to us. There was always careful theoretical, strategic, and tactical thought behind our practice. We always discussed politics before practice when working with liberation movements. Therefore, when looking back on more than forty years of political activity, one can see an oscillation between feelings, practice, and theoretical reflection. This book is a collection of these theoretical deliberations.
As mentioned above, I was politicized by the Vietnam War. In the solidarity work and in demonstrations against the war, it was primarily students who were at the forefront. We did not see much of the working class and its organizations. At the same time, it seemed to me that there was an enormous difference between the conditions which the proletariat of the Third World was living under and the problems that the working class in my part of the world was grappling with. There is a great difference between starvation, long unhealthy workdays, and two dollars pay a day, on the one side, and longer holidays, increased pensions, and two dollars more per hour, which were on the agenda of the labor struggles in Denmark in the sixties.
The fact that the challenges facing the working class of the Third World are far greater than the problems the working class faces here might seem obvious to most people. That there is a connection between these living conditions and the radicalism of the resistance and the desire for a different world order might also be regarded as an uncontroversial observation. Among leftists in our part of the world, however, this observation is highly controversial. To claim that the working class in countries like Denmark is taking advantage of the global division of labor, and therefore doesn’t have a direct interest in changing the existing system—and that this fact is the reason for the lack of international solidarity on the part of the working class—is considered taboo and almost treasonous.
Nevertheless, these were the kinds of heretical thoughts that the KAK was putting forth in what it referred to as the “parasite state theory.” However, it was not just the intellectual consistency of the KAK’s theory that drew me in. It was also the commitment and the integrity that the members I met were showing. To them solidarity was not just political statements, but “something you could hold in your hand.” There was a connection between what they were saying and the practice they maintained.
The parasite state theory was formulated and developed primarily by the leader of the KAK, Gotfred Appel, in a series of articles that appeared in the KAK’s newspaper Kommunistisk Orientering (Communist Orientation) between 1966 and the dissolution of the KAK in 1977. (Many of these texts are available online at snylterstaten.dk) One consequence of the dissolution was the formation of the Manifest–Kommunistisk Arbejdsgruppe (Manifest – Communist Working Group), or MKA. In the MKA we tried to substantiate and develop the economic basis of the theory of the parasite state, linking it to Arghiri Emmanuel’s theory of unequal exchange, which described how the exploitation of the proletariat in Asia, Africa, and South America comes about by way of international trade. Historically and sociologically, we also tried to elaborate our theory, linking it especially to Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory. This theory describes the historical and political development of capitalism from the Middle Ages up until today, as a continuous center-periphery relationship.
In 1983, the MKA released the book Unequal Exchange and the Prospects for Socialism in a Divided World. At the time, it was the most comprehensive and coherent statement in Danish on the theory of the parasite state, addressing both its economic basis and its consequences from a political and a class point of view, not to mention providing a strategy for what to do in the core countries of imperialism. (Originally published in Danish in 1983, Unequal Exchange and the Prospects for Socialism in a Divided World was translated into English in 1986, and is available at snylterstaten.dk)
In April 1989, the MKA was disbanded due to the incarceration of several of its members in connection with the so-called “Blekinge Street Gang” case. Today, there is no formal organization around the theory of the parasite state in Denmark – even though the internet website snylterstaten.dk can be seen as an expression of the ongoing relevance and interest in these matters.
Following imprisonment in 1989, the focus of my political studies was globalization and neoliberalism, which were becoming more and more prominent in those days. At the same time, there were big political changes in the world. The Soviet Union and the socialist states of Eastern Europe were dissolved and integrated into the capitalist world market, while the anti-imperialist struggle in the Third World ran out of steam and/or lost its socialist content.
My theoretical framework was still the global “center-periphery” divide. There was no sign of change in the polarization between rich and poor countries. However, the fading socialist perspectives in the liberation struggle and the dissolution of the Soviet Union led me to reflect on how a socialist economy and political order might be established, and with which strategies and practices we might move in that direction.
For a number of years after my release from prison in 1996 I was active in various forms of globalized resistance. I took part in an “Encuentro” in Chiapas, Mexico and several World Social Forum meetings; organizing inspired by the Zapatista uprising and the resistance to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
So I hadn’t considered the parasite state theory systematically in the light of the big changes that had occurred in the global division of labor and the new transnational modes of production etc. since we had first laid out the theory in Unequal Exchange and the Prospects for Socialism in a Divided World. This is what I want to contribute with my book The Global Perspective.
The book is divided into three parts: history, political economy, and political strategy. In part one, I go over the history and theory of imperialism, the parasite state, and labor aristocracy from its origin in the 1850s up to 1989—as seen from my personal perspective. I made the cut off point 1989, partly because it strikes me as an important year historically, what with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and partly because it was also an important year for me personally, for it was when the MKA was disbanded and I was imprisoned due to the exposure of our illegal practice. This is a major historical survey, full of quotes and names, reflections, asides, and literary references, so that those interested may get a sampling of, and an easier introduction to, the theory. It was very important for me to trace the main thread of the theory in time and space, from its creation in the mid-19th century onwards.
In part two I present the status of imperialism today. How does globalized capitalism function? How does it affect class relations globally? Here I include the many new contributions which have been added to the theory since the 1990s up to today, both from academia and political movements.
Lastly, in part three I deal with politics and strategy. Who are the actors? What are their current politics? I offer strategies for anti-imperialist movements in the present time. In this section I also assess the future of capitalism and the possibilities for socialism. So, while part one is history and part two is characterized by facts, part three presents a proposal for debate.
Over the last few years, I have come to learn – through another new development since 1983, the internet – that a number of political organizations and theorists have been developing, and are working continually with, theories about the connections between imperialistic modes of exploitation and their political and class-related consequences. Such theory is not a dying idea from the 1970s, but is still is very much alive and kicking. It has been encouraging to discover that I am not part of a dying breed, and it is to this tradition that I hope The Global Perspective will constitute a worthwhile contribution.
October 30, 2016
Dear Friends,
Carol Saucier, Ray Luc Levasseur and I write today to ask that you help our dear sister and former co-defendant, Barbara Curzi. Barbara is a former political prisoner, one of the Ohio 7, who, after their arrests in Ohio in 1984, went on trial for actions by the United Freedom Front against corporations who upheld apartheid in South Africa and contributed to the wars in Central America. (Please donate).
Unfortunately, Barbara was recently diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. She is beginning an intensive six-month chemo regimen and then is expected to undergo surgery, possibly followed by radiation. Barbara lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts with her cats and dog and hopes she can keep her home while she fights this terrible disease. Barbara hasn’t been well for a while most especially since she lost her beloved son, Ricky (whose father is political prisoner, Jaan Laaman) five years ago. The more health problems she had, the more she has struggled financially to keep a roof over her head and is now dangerously close to losing that.
She was about to get a part-time job just before her diagnosis,to supplement her disability check but now instead finds herself way behind not only on her mortgage and utilities, but can’t get Internet and phones services back until she pays them off completely. Fortunately, the amount to keep her in her home and get her back to functioning, is not so insurmountable that we can’t raise enough to at least take those worries away from her. Once caught up, Barbara would still need some support to keep up with her monthly expenses, while waging this battle. Her struggle will be compounded by additional expenses related to trying to get better, including travel and integrative treatments, among other things. Suffice to say that she is in dire straits and those of us who love and respect her, want to reach out to others who can chip in whatever they can to help alleviate her burdens.
Barbara served 7 years of a 15 year sentence she received after conviction in Brooklyn, New York for Conspiracy. She returned to Massachusetts after her release from the federal prison system to rebuild her life with her children. As many former prisoners, and especially political prisoners, Barbara has struggled to find work and survive, but she is still deeply committed to the struggle for justice.
If you would like to contribute to the effort to minimize the stress to survive for Barbara, and help her make it through this battle, please see the linked “Go Fund Me” page at: http://ift.tt/2ebSAIk
Barbara’s daughters, Lucia and Nina Colombaro, have set up a “Lotsa Helping Hands” page to help organize care and comfort for Barbara, so if you think you can help with practical matters or would like to follow Barbara’s progress, please see: http://ift.tt/2ebUqsM
Donations received will go directly to Barbara to help alleviate her troubles. Please spread the word by sharing this email and contribute whatever you can. Thank you.
Love,
Pat (Rowbottom, formerly Levasseur)
Carol (Saucier, formerly Manning)
Ray Luc Levasseur
(l to r) Ray Luc Levasseur, Barbara Curzi, Carol Saucier, Pat Rowbottom,
Bob Boyle, Ken King, Sandy Simpson, Kazi Toure. From Liz Fink Memorial.
2016
*****
The above is reposted from Sacramento Prisoner Support
Nov 12 at 11 AM to Nov 13 at 6 PM
Église Saint-Denis, 454 Laurier E.
( entrée principale / main entry 5075 Rivard, accessible entry/ en fauteuil roulant 5050 Berri )
With more than 200 participating publishers, Expozine 2016 is an exceptional opportunity to dive into the wild universe of today’s small presses and self-publishing authors and artists, local and international, and to meet the creators in person, from both English and French linguistic communities.
Avec plus de 200 éditeurs à Expozine 2016, c’est l’occasion exceptionnelle de plonger dans l’univers de?calé des e?diteurs, e?crivains et artistes inde?pendants locaux et internationaux, et de rencontrer en personne le milieu des petits éditeurs montréalais, francophone et anglophone.
Pour plus d’informations / for more information : www.expozine.ca
Groupe FACEBOOK group : http://ift.tt/2eg5TY5
Toilettes mixtes disponible / Non-gendered bathrooms available.
Kersplebedeb Publishing is seeking to raise funds to translate and publish the book Det Globale Perspektiv (The Global Perspective), by former Danish political prisoner Torkil Lauesen.
In the 1970s and 80s, Torkil was a member of an underground communist cell which carried out a series of robberies in Denmark, netting very large sums which were then sent on to various national liberation movements in the Third World. Following their capture in 1989, Torkil would spend six years in prison. In 2016, Torkil’s book Det Globale Perspektiv was released in Denmark. In it, he explains how he sees the world political situation today, and his thoughts of the future.
Torkil’s books bridges the gap between Third Worldist theory, and the question of “What Is To Be Done?” in a First World context. It is an important contribution towards developing an effective political practice based on the realities of the global situation, avoiding the pitfalls of sugarcoating the situation with the First World populations, or of falling into pessimistic quietism. As Torkil says, “It is a book written by an activist, for activists. Global capitalism is heading into a deep structural crisis in the coming decades, so the objective conditions for radical change will be present, for better or for worse. The outcome will depend on us, the subjective forces.”
To make this book available in English, we will need funds to hire a translator and to help defray the printing costs. This is where your help can make a major difference — please consider donating via our Indiegogo fundraiser page here.
We need $4,500 to publish this book. This money will pay for:
We are looking for $6,000, as the various costs associated with Indiegogo, and with providing gifts to donors, are expected to account for one quarter of the total donations we receive (i.e. if one gives $100, Indiegogo will take $5, and the cost of mailing you the thank-you gift you will receive will be at least $20).
So long as $3,000 is raised, we will proceed with translation. The amount raised in excess will help keep the sale price of this book as low as possible.
Never before has the world been so starkly divided between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Never before has the global situation been accelerating so quickly. The Third World national liberation movements of the 20th century very much triggered the liberatory movements that did manage to emerge in the First World, and seemed for an all-too-brief moment to point to an escape hatch from history’s downward spiral … but for many today that all seems like ancient history.
Torkil Lauesen was a participant in the communist and internationalist struggles during the tail end of the national liberation period, and today remains committed to the ideals that motivated him then. The Global Perspective is an important contribution, bridging not only generations, but also the gap between theory and practice.
Kersplebedeb has published numerous books outlining the need for a global view, one that centers the struggles of the most oppressed, on a world scale. With your help, we will be able to add The Global Perspective to this list.
Not everyone has money to donate to a project, even though they may want to. We understand that completely. But even if you can’t make a donation at this point, there’s lots you can do to help us in this campaign:
The relevant website URLs are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF88VYo-ZhQ
Thanks for all your support!
People gather in Montreal, Thursday, July 28, 2016, to denounce the death of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa. Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Opinion: Realities faced by black Canadians are a national shame
People gather in Montreal, Thursday, July 28, 2016, to denounce the death of Abdirahman Abdi in Ottawa. Graham Hughes / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Opinion: Realities faced by black Canadians are a national shame
Of the 2016 presidential election, New York Times international affairs correspondent Roger Cohen wrote, “The race is tightening once again because Trump’s perceived character – a strong leader with a simple message, never flinching from a fight, cutting through political correctness with a b
Read the rest of this post on the original site at There is no neutral there: Appalachia as a mythic “Trump Country”
Their public conference had been interrupted by a demonstration march and a bomb threat, so the white nationalists decided to meet secretly instead. They slipped past police officers and protesters into a hotel in downtown Memphis.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at The white flight of Derek Black
Donald Trump’s supporters deserve to have their concerns taken seriously. If the media and commentators in 2016 can agree on nothing else, it’s this. It’s a bit of an odd meme.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Taking Trump voters’ concerns seriously means listening to what they’re actually saying
Their public conference had been interrupted by a demonstration march and a bomb threat, so the white nationalists decided to meet secretly instead. They slipped past police officers and protesters into a hotel in downtown Memphis.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at The white flight of Derek Black
Of the 2016 presidential election, New York Times international affairs correspondent Roger Cohen wrote, “The race is tightening once again because Trump’s perceived character – a strong leader with a simple message, never flinching from a fight, cutting through political correctness with a b
Read the rest of this post on the original site at There is no neutral there: Appalachia as a mythic “Trump Country”
Donald Trump’s supporters deserve to have their concerns taken seriously. If the media and commentators in 2016 can agree on nothing else, it’s this. It’s a bit of an odd meme.
Read the rest of this post on the original site at Taking Trump voters’ concerns seriously means listening to what they’re actually saying
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 5:30pm
at the Center for Gender Advocacy
1500 de Maisonneuve West, #404
(métro Guy-Concordia)
Join us as we launch the 2017 Certain Days Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar alongside Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History, a novel by Diana Block. Diana spent thirteen years living underground with a political collective committed to supporting the Puerto Rican independence and Black liberation movements, during which time she had two children, worked in the AIDS movement, and published poetry under a pseudonym – she will be present at this event, speaking about life underground, the ongoing reality of political prisoners in the United States, and reading from her book.
This event is FREE; the Certain Days calendar, copies of Clandestine Occupations, and various books from Kersplebedeb Publications will be sold.
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* There will be snacks, coffee, and juice
* Space is wheelchair accessible
* Childcare available on site
* Traduction chuchoté disponible de l’anglais vers le français
[Please share widely]
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The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal, Toronto, and New York, in partnership with three political prisoners being held in maximum-security prisons in New York State: David Gilbert, Robert Seth Hayes and Herman Bell. The initial project was suggested by Herman in 2001, and has been shaped throughout the years by all of our ideas, discussions, and analysis. All of the current members of the outside collective are grounded in day- to-day organizing work other than the calendar, on issues ranging from migrant justice to community media to prisoner solidarity. We work from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, queer- and trans- liberationist position.
When San Francisco activist Luba Gold goes underground in 1984 to support the Puerto Rican Independence movement, a far-flung network of women is confronted with the risks of prison, the terrible costs of betrayal, and the exhilarating possibilities of love through struggle.
Based on lived experience, Diana Block’s bold new novel spans two generations of radical women, their lovers, children and friends. This is revolutionary feminism in epic form, from the passions of Solidarity to the awakenings of Occupy and even beyond — to a beautifully imagined insurgency of the Future.
“A story of female and intergenerational solidarity bringing us voices we cannot ignore. Read this book!” – Silvia Federici
Diana Block was a founding member of San Francisco Women Against Rape and the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee in the 1970’s. She spent thirteen years living underground with a political collective committed to supporting the Puerto Rican independence and Black liberation movements. While underground, she had two children, worked in the AIDS movement, and published poetry under a pseudonym. Since returning voluntarily from clandestinity in 1994, Diana has committed herself to anti-prison work, becoming a founding member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (http://ift.tt/2dGiCoo) and the Jericho Movement for Political prisoners. Besides her novel Clandestine Occupations, she is also the author of the book memoir Arm the Spirit-A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back, which will also be available at this event.
Organized by the Certain Days Calendar Collective, Kersplebedeb, with support from QPIRG-Concordia and the Center for Gender Advocacy.
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal, Toronto, and New York, in partnership with three political prisoners being held in maximum-security prisons in New York State: David Gilbert, Robert Seth Hayes and Herman Bell.
The Certain Days Calendar can be purchased from Kersplebedeb Leftwingbooks.NET by clicking here
The Calendar was a project first suggested by Herman in 2001, and has been shaped throughout the years by all of our ideas, discussions, and analysis. All of the current members of the outside collective are grounded in day- to-day organizing work other than the calendar, on issues ranging from migrant justice to community media to prisoner solidarity. We work from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, queer- and trans- liberationist position.
Today’s struggles for liberation, and against capitalism’s permanent war, ecological destruction and colonialism, are rooted in the history of earlier struggles for justice, including the mass movements of the 1960s and 70s. Many political prisoners and prisoners of war featured in this calendar were organizers during that period: members of the Black Panther Party or the American Indian Movement,PuertoRicans fighting for their homeland,or white anti-racist allies working in solidarity with oppressed peoples. Many of them have been in prison for 40 years or more. Even more organizers have been locked up in the decades since. Yet these prisoners are not relics of past movements. They are still active in their political work, and despite the hardships of organizing in prison, they continue to organize for justice in the present day, behind bars and on the streets. The dates from movement history noted/commemorated in the pages of this calendar serve to educate/remind us of that rich and ongoing tradition of resistance. Given that prison robs people of the ability to mark time—having access to calendars was one of the demands of the 2011 California prisoner hunger strike—creating a calendar that talks about prisons is an act of resistance in and of itself. We hope our work together on this calendar can act as a bridge between our various contexts: inside and outside the prison walls, the differing realities of the U.S. and Canadian states, and between the movement generations.
Here is the annual statement from the Certain Days collective, explaining the theme of 2017’s calendar:
As we prepare to print this calendar in July 2016 (many months before it may reach your wall), it seems as though a societal shift may be on the horizon. The Black Lives Matter movement and anti-austerity demonstrations are mobilizing people against oppression worldwide. At the same time, the spectre of fascism looms large, both with the impending U.S. presidential elections and elsewhere.
Yet history has shown that if we want to make fundamental change we need to be prepared for a protracted struggle — a lifetime (or several) of work. But what sustains a movement? What visions and strategic orientations position us to win? What lessons can be drawn from past victories and defeats? What keeps us from burning out, giving up, or being crushed by repressive forces? These are some of the questions that informed this year’s edition of Certain Days.
Although the day-to-day tasks of any organizing campaign are certainly enough to take up all our time and energy, it’s vital that we pause to reflect on these questions if our movements are to survive, and to succeed. A critical analysis of the way we work allows us to become more effective over time, and to respond to changing conditions in the world — be they upsurges in popular mobilization, policy changes, or new forms of repression. Beyond looking at our own work, we need to learn from those who have come before us. The rewriting or erasing of our histories keeps us from incorporating lessons that have already been learned time and again. Looking to movements in other eras and places also gives us a window onto conditions of struggle that we haven’t had a chance to experience in our own lives.
Our movements are strongest when they can involve people wherever they may be — across prison walls and borders, and across divides like gender, race, and class — with leadership and meaningful participation from those most affected by a particular issue. For true unity, we need a genuine willingness to resolve internal conflicts and to grow as people and as organizations. A willingness, but also concrete tools, as we are bound to reproduce the divisive relations of the dominant society, and it will not teach us to undo them. This growth work needs to be coupled with a sense of connection with those who share our vision, a commitment to each other and our common goal, even in times of disagreement. Easier said than done, of course. Over the years, our own small collective has struggled with sustainability, and has at times failed to enact these growth practices.
If we are truly in this for the long haul, we need to think in terms of time frames longer than any one person’s involvement. We need ways to make movement spaces accessible to children and parents, and to involve multiple generations in our organizing. Just as studying history can teach us valuable lessons, movement elders like those paid tribute to in the art and writings of this calendar — Kuwasi Balagoon, Marsha P. Johnson, Marilyn Buck — provide inspiration and a sense of continuity. With each passing year, more of our elders join the ancestors. We remember their contributions, and honour their legacies.
Given the role that prisons play in keeping people down, it’s especially important that any work for social transformation include prisoners — not just organizations that work with prisoners, but grassroots involvement from prisoners themselves. Some of the most militant organizing on this continent at present is happening in prisons, such as the prisoner work stoppages in the U.S., and the hunger strikes underway at two Canadian migrant detention centres in Ontario.
But none of these ideas can provide a complete roadmap. To fully understand what sustains a movement, we need reflection and analysis, but we also need to dream, toimagine what has yet to be built. In the following pages you’ll find art, poetry and essays that invite that kind of dreaming. We offer you this year’s Certain Days calendar, and look forward to seeing what it helps to build.
The Certain Days Collective: Sara Falconer, Helen Hudson, Daniel McGowan
by Farha Najah
by Sophia Dawson
by Emory Douglas
by Xinachtli
by Micah Bazant
by Mazatl
by Marius Mason
by Amanda Priebe
by Ali Cat Leeds
The Certain Days Calendar can be purchased from Kersplebedeb Leftwingbooks.NET by clicking here
By far the most popular way for anarchists to stay organized, the Slingshot 2017 organizers are here, complete with mini-calendar, daybook planner, address book section, international radical contact list, and nifty what happened on this day notes scattered throughout. The artwork, as ever, is wonderful in a chaotic punk rock way.
Now in its 23rd year of publication, Slingshot is a 176 page planner/agenda with radical dates for every day of the year, space to write your phone numbers, a contact list of radical groups around the globe, menstrual calendar, info on police repression, extra note pages, plus much more. Slingshot has a tough layflat binding and a laminated cover, and comes in 16 cover colors printed with either black or silver ink (depending on how dark the paper stock is)—you can see most of these on the order pages (below) — if you have a preference indicate it when ordering, we’ll do our best to accommodate.
The Slingshot planner comes in two sizes, pocket size (4.25 inches X 5.5 inches) perfect bound, and a spiral bound larger size.
TO ORDER THE POCKET SIZE FROM LEFTWINGBOOKS.NET CLICK HERE
TO ORDER THE SPIRAL BOUND LARGER SIZE FROM LEFTWINGBOOKS.NET CLICK HERE
Kersplebedeb Leftwingbooks.net is happy to be the official distributor of Slingshot in Canada.
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