This is beautifully produced and provocative, check it out. For full coverage of the RNC check out our dedicated feed.

midwest unrest writes: A new 10-page comic book attack on the elections. Read and laugh. Print out and distribute. Available at http://www.taktic.org/~grafikatak/

http://www.midwestunrest.net/comic.pdf

low res version for web viewing:
http://www.taktic.org/~grafikatak/comicbook.pdf

hi res version for printing:
http://www.taktic.org/~grafikatak/comicbookhires.p df"

Flint writes "When a state is determined to pursue war, and all forms of indirect symbolic protest actions have failed to sway politicians to halt their imperialist aggression, the only remaining option is direct action by the working class. One option is a general strike by workers that can effect the production and transpiration of military capital, that is the materials essential for the war machine. The other is to deprive the military of the labor it needs to fight the war. The slogan from the Vietnam War protests deliberately speaks to this, "What if they had a war, and no one came?" The U.S. military is overwhelmingly recruited from the working class, and convincing our class as a whole to refuse to work for this blood money may be our best chance for both ending the war in Iraq and limiting the imperialist ambitions of the U.S. for future decades.

Blood Money:

The Human-Capital Equation of the U.S. Occupation of Iraq

by Stephen "Flint" Arthur

"Endless development of armed force. Every day we hear of fresh inventions for the more effectual destruction of our fellow-men, fresh expenditure, fresh loans, fresh taxation. Clamorous patriotism, reckless jingoism; the stirring up of international jealousy have become the most lucrative line in politics and journalism. Childhood itself has not been spared; schoolboys are swept into the ranks, to be trained up in hatred... drilled in blind obedience to the government of the moment, whatever the colour of its flag, and when they come to the years of manhood to be laden like pack-horses with cartridges, provisions and the rest of it; to have a rifle thrust into their hands and be taught to charge at the bugle call and slaughter one another right and left like wild beasts, without asking themselves why or for what purpose. Whether they have before them starvelings... or their own brothers roused to revolt by famine-the bugle sounds, the killing must commence."
Peter Kropotkin - War!

"An Artist Under Occupation:


Gaza Stripped"


Eric Drooker,
Counterpunch

It was simultaneously a very good thing, and a very bad thing.

Neither Susan nor I expected to be allowed to enter Gaza in the first place. All of our Palestinian friends told us it was impossible and, at any rate, too dangerous these days....

But here we were, walking through the goddamn check point, with a two hundred pound suitcase full of acrylic paint and two dozen brushes. Pleasantly surprised to be entering the Gaza Strip, on a hot mid-east morning, our euphoria proved to be as short lived as water on desert sand.

Oh shit...we're entering Gaza.

NOT BORED writes ....Article by Guy Debord (1985) on food in capitalist society. First time in English translation.

Hunger Reducer

Abat-faim

One knows that this term [1] designated a "meal's principal dish, which one served first to quiet down, to reduce the hunger of the dinner guests" (Larousse). In their dictionary, Hatzfield and Darmesteter refer to the term as "antiquated." But history is the infallible master of dictionaires. With the recent progress of technology, the totality of nourishment consumed by modern society is uniquely becoming hunger reduction.

The extreme degradation of nourishment is a banality that, in the manner of other banalities, is generally tolerated with resignation: as a fatality, a ransom paid for progress that one knows can't be stopped because one is overwhelemed by it everyday. Everyone keeps quiet about it. Some because they don't want to speak of it, others because they can't. The immense majority of the population that tolerates this degradation, as well as their strong suspicions about it, simply can't face such an unpleasant reality. It is never agreeable to admit that one has been played for a fool, and those who have created "beefsteak" [2] -- and its claims -- in the form of a "reconstituted" shadow of itself are also little disposed to admit what they have lost by allowing convenient ersatz semblances into their habitats. Those who can refuse nothing for fear of going back upon all that they have let happen in their lives are habitually the same.

hydrarchist writes.... This is an article written for the e-zine http://suburbia.sindominio.net
by Nomada and Montserrat Boix about hacklabs.


translated by cain, and then edited and revised by hydrarchist


AcD
~ MeSk

Hacklabs, from Digital to Analogue

Wednesday 10 September 2003

Translated 06 June 2004
revised August 13, 2004

The history of the hacklabs began in 1999, year of the second italian hackmeeting in Milan, where the need to take a great leap forward in digital
communication and create physical links between people interested in the use of new technologies and having a social background was discussed. But let´s proceed step by step... What is a hackmeeting?... The hackmeeting emerged in Italy in 1998. The manifesto of the italian hackmeeting in 2003 underlines that it´s a "meeting of the alternative digital community", setting out a "vision of hacking as an attitude not exclusively related to computers". Our "hacker" being -- states the manifesto -- is manifested in everyday life, even when we don´t use computers. It´s shown when we fight to change everything that we don´t like, such as false and prefabricated news, the commodification and restrictions imposed on the division of knowledge and know-how, and generally the use
of technology to defend dignity and freedom. The hackmeeting meets annually, usually for a duration of 3 days, during which are organized talks and conferences related to the world of liberated data networks, free software, cyber-rights, cryptography, hacking in general and, most of all, it proposes strong links with social collectives that use the net as a space of communication, sharing and struggle for their different causes.

"The Pentagon as Global Slumlord"
Mike Davis

[This piece is from April 2004 during the general uprising in Iraq and the American siege of Falluja.The current escalation in many Iraqi cities seems to call for some analysis of the general US military strategy.]

The young American Marine is exultant. "It's a sniper's dream," he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. "You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."

"Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the
morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot."

"To take a bad guy out," he explains, "is an incomparable 'adrenaline rush.'" He brags of having "24 confirmed kills" in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.

Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting.

"Patriot Act Bullying Stirs Stronger Opposition:

Courts, Activists, and Civil Libertarians Weigh In Against Police-State Measures"

Allen Thompson

In early June of this year, Joe Previtera was arrested outside an Armed Forces Recruitment Center in Boston. He had been standing there silently for about an hour, dressed like one of the Iraqi prisoners abused at Abu Ghraib. His costume was realistic; he was hooded and caped and from his hands wires led into the crate he stood on. The police department used these wires as reason for charging him with making a false bomb threat. If convicted, Previtara could face several years in prison, far more punishment than the soldiers who tortured the Iraqi prisoners have received.

This incident is emblematic of how the fear of terrorism is being used to justify repressing dissent and taking away civil liberties in post-9/11 USA. The Bush administration is seeking to expand the Patriot Act and make all of its provisions permanent. Immigrants and social-change activists continue to be prime targets for police-state actions. Fortunately, resistance is very widespread.

"We No Longer Own Our Country"

Nuruddin Farah

On the day I needed to fly out of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, to get back home to Cape Town, my only choice was a Kenyan Fokker, normally used as a cargo plane, that was flying back to Nairobi with passengers. As we were being shown to our seats, the Kenyan captain told the passengers to hand over our passports. He said that he would hold them in the cabin until we landed in Kenya.

NOT BORED! writes:

"On Basque Armed Struggle"

Guy Debord

An open letter from Guy Debord, dated 1 September 1980, concerning the secret detention of Basque separatists in Spanish jails, translated into English for the first time since 1981. (Addressed "To libertarians")

Esteemed comrades,

We regret to have to draw to your attention a serious and urgent question about which you would ordinarily know more than we, who are far away and foreigners.[1] But we are obligated to clarify the diverse circumstances that until now have made it impossible for you to know certain facts or their meaning. We believe it necessary, therefore, to clearly expose you to those facts, as well as to the circumstances that have prevented them from reaching you.

At this moment, more than fifty libertarians are [secretly] being held in the prisons of Spain, and many among them have been held many years without being tried. The whole world, which every day speaks of the intriguing struggles of the Basques,[2] completely ignores this aspect of the reality of today's Spain. Even in Spain, the existence and names of these comrades are sometimes cited by a narrow sector of opinion, but generally there is silence about what they [the imprisoned libertarians] have done and what their motives were; and nothing concrete has been done to rescue them.

Anonymous Comrade writes: Reviewed By: John McMahon | An Anti-Author Whose Identity is Known to the Department of Homeland Security

To celebrate the fact that John Ashcroft's Department of Justice still has access to every American citizen's bookstore and library records, we decided to go to our public library and check out the Critical Art Ensemble's revolutionary manifesto titled Electronic Civil Disobedience, and other unpopular ideas . . .

http://www.altpressonline.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=227"