Mind Invaders

Of Courage and Resistance: Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement Statement on Charlottesville

Today we mourn Heather Heyer, a comrade who was killed in yesterday’s demonstration against the nationwide fascist convergence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In a beautiful display of courage and resistance, hundreds of anti-fascists stood up in Charlottesville this weekend to prevent the unification of multiple white nationalists groups and combat the lynch mob terror that they intended to unleash in the city.

The white supremacists were beaten.

Our fighters showed daring and a willingness to risk their own safety for the sake of others, and we hold them in the highest regard. Due to their fortitude and unwavering determination, the anti-fascists held their ground and succeeded in stopping the rally. Though we will never know exactly how many lives were saved by their actions, it is clear that without resistance to their fascist terror many more would have been harmed.

This incident was, in fact, one battle in a long war that white supremacist society has waged upon us since the inception of this country. As state control was solidified, white supremacy’s hold on society became inescapable and its ideology permeates every facet of American existence. Our battle, instead, for life, for liberation, for humanity, our war against white supremacy is the basis and the core of our resistance.

The American state is collapsing. As capitalism remains mired in crisis, its once solid position within the global order is crumbling. With ever widening cracks in the state’s foundations, those who reaped the benefits of white supremacist society and American imperialism are grasping at any last chance to maintain their position in the hierarchy it legitimates.

Our goal is to destroy white supremacist society at its very root. Every facet of the prevailing American order, from the millions of prisoners shoved onto plantations, to the street-side executions by police, to the withholding of basic needs from those who most need them, must be effaced from the new world that we must and will construct together.

To counter the systemic violence of a dying empire, to lay the foundations of a new and different organization of life, it is essential for each and every one of us to fight for liberation and collectively defend our communities with the same intensity that we offensively attack the enemy. As we continue our struggle against fascism and towards revolution, it is necessary for us to see ourselves in all those around the world currently engaging in this war as well: from the barricades in France to the battlefields in Rojava, wherever fascism rears its head, the Partisan tradition demands that we bury it in an unmarked grave.

We hold the names of those who have fallen in this battle close to us as we renew our commitment to their struggle. Those who have been taken from us in the heightened moments of conflict will be the cornerstones for us to strengthen our resolve so as to ensure that their sacrifices will build towards victory.

Rézdar Bréz Abdullah Öcalan, Bi Hevalan Re

From the Warzone of North Kurdistan

The Turkish state has already failed to achieve its own aims. It might succeed in “cleansing” the autonomous cities and districts from militants. But that will not solve the “Kurdish question” and it surely will not deescalate the conflict in the long run. On the contrary, the Turkish state’s extremely brutal and indiscriminate operational procedure already leaves estranged more and more Kurds as I witnessed myself in the region. And many of the youth will radicalize and will – and, as some reports suggest, already have – “go into the mountains”, i.e. join the PKK to become guerrilla fighters. The killing of hundreds of militants today will most likely generate thousands of militants tomorrow. Similar things can be said regarding the Kurdish people in general and their political and ideological outlook. In general the people in North Kurdistan have a very humanist and moderate approach demanding peace, seeing self-defence only as a last option against state oppression. However, people were increasingly accusing the West – of Turkey and outside of Turkey. In some instances voices turned bitter and aggressive. Nobody should wonder if Kurds run out of patience one day, turn away from the perspective of any possible common democratic project with the West of Turkey and begin to see the so-called international community merely as a community of power and economic interests.

Turkey is about to completely descend into chaos and all-encompassing warfare. Kurdish forces have repeatedly warned the Turkish state to back off or otherwise they would escalate the war in the whole of Turkey once Spring begins and the guerrilla forces can operate more freely. But the Turkish state in its madness could very well extend the current war further by provoking the PKK to intervene on a much larger scale or by invading Rojava/North Syria. Either way would trigger a turmoil and bloodbath neither the Turkish state nor anybody else will be able to control any longer.

By Luciana Bohne  

Today, pestilence-carrying rats are back infesting Europe. Ukraine writhes in a delirium of historical topsy-turvy. On 14 October, it celebrated the first Defenders’ Day, a national holiday legally decreed by the Ukrainian Parliament. The date is significant, for on this day, seventy-three years ago, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was founded. In WW II, UPA cooperated with the Nazis, supplying a Ukrainian voluntary SS division– the SS Freiwillingen-Schutzen-Division “Galizien,” the infamous Galitian Division.

What if one of our worthy NATO allies in Europe—say, Germany—declared a national holiday, say, The Day of Defenders of the Fatherland, in honor of the Schutzstaffel (the Nazi SS), the paramilitary “protection squadron” or “defense corps” of Heinrich Himmler’s industrial death army, indicted at Nuremberg as a criminal organization along with the Nazi party and its elite? Would Israel pause in its latest killing spree to justifiably raise the wrath of the ghosts of the Shoah? Would the Holocaust-conscious United States raise the voice of indignation against this opprobrium to the sacrifice of the Greatest Generation? Would the members of the European Union, laureled with the Nobel Prize for Peace, stop the frantic building of walls against the tidal waves of refugees and cry, “not again?”

Chi non ha mai guidato una moto credo non sappia bene cosa significhi: dopo un po’ inizi a sentirla un'estensione di te. A differenza di un'auto, dove per farle fare qualcosa si aziona un comando, una moto deve essere guidata con il corpo; ti devi muovere con lei e, man mano che prendi confidenza, ti stupisci di come si diventi un tutt'uno, di come tu senta il suo motore e di come lei senta il tuo corpo. Un viaggio è una danza. I’m a cowboy, on the still horse I ride.

Chi non ha mai guidato una moto non credo possa capire questa sensazione. Questa unione con un pezzo di ferro.

Poi un giorno capita l'imponderabile: ti ritrovi ad un punto in cui la tua estensione se ne va. Hai perso il controllo. Scappa, seguendo le leggi della fisica che dicono che un corpo pesante schizzerà per la tangente ad una velocità superiore rispetto al corpo più leggero, che deve lasciarla andare, e si ritrova a rotolare sull'asfalto sentendo nelle orecchie il suo ferro che raschia per terra.

È il momento in cui la magia si spezza. Lascia spazio alla sensazione di tradimento, seppur non sai capire chi o cosa abbia tradito chi o che cosa, anche se sai che l'unico che poteva impedirlo eri tu ma non ce l'hai fatta.

Ringrazi di essere con le ossa intere, recuperi i pezzi, metti su la maschera per tranquillizzare tutti quelli che accorrono per vedere come stai. Abbandoni il tuo ferro ammaccato in un angolo promettendo che domani tornerai a prenderlo, poi torni a casa e piangi.

Bisogna restaurare l’odio di classe. Perché loro ci odiano, dobbiamo ricambiare. Loro sono i capitalisti, noi siamo i proletari del mondo d’oggi: non più gli operai di Marx o i contadini di Mao, ma “tutti coloro che lavorano per un capitalista, chi in qualche modo sta dove c’è un capitalista che sfrutta il suo lavoro”. A me sta a cuore un punto. Vedo che oggi si rinuncia a parlare di proletariato. Credo invece che non c’è nulla da vergognarsi a riproporre la questione. E’ il segreto di pulcinella: il proletariato esiste. E’ un male che la coscienza di classe sia lasciata alla destra mentre la sinistra via via si sproletarizza. Bisogna invece restaurare l’odio di classe, perché loro ci odiano e noi dobbiamo ricambiare. Loro fanno la lotta di classe, perché chi lavora non deve farla proprio in una fase in cui la merce dell’uomo è la più deprezzata e svenduta in assoluto? Recuperare la coscienza di una classe del proletariato di oggi, è essenziale. E importante riaffermare l’esistenza del proletariato. Oggi i proletari sono pure gli ingegneri, i laureati, i lavoratori precari, i pensionati. Poi c’è il sottoproletariato, che ha problemi di sopravvivenza e al quale la destra propone con successo un libro dei sogni.

Edoardo Sanguineti

FARC-EP SAYS GOODBYE TO EDUARDO GALEANO

On the website of the Peace Delegation in Spanish, they published a communique entitled “Thank you Eduardo, for everything”, signed by the National Secretariat, the FARC’s highest 9-member leadership.

“Nobody on our continent who has read “The Open Veins of Latin America” could continue living in peace without doing in some way something for the demands of the indigenous people, the black people and the impoverished masses of this so-called New World”, states the communique.

The FARC-EP highly appreciates Galeano’s wisdom, reflected in his books:

“It was enough to read some pages of his uncountable books, or pay attention to the wise logic of his words, full of irony, to understand on which side stood his brilliant intelligence”.

The FARC-EP further states that his political stance against big landowners, landlords, bankers, governors, politicians, empires, priests never led him to predicate hatred against anyone. His commitment with the cause of the peasants, the workers, the invisible masses, according to the insurgency, is exemplary.

KOBANÊ AZAD BÛ, KOBANÊ IS FREED !!

BIJI BERXWEDANA KOBANÊ BIJI OURS HEROES : YPG, YPJ, PKK, PESHMERGAS..