#ReOccupy

Tactical Briefing #8

Hey all you jazz players and re-occupiers out there,

Imagine this: It’s midnight, November 3rd. Every American’s fingernails are gnawed to the quick. Trump holds a razor-thin lead. If the counting stopped here, he’d eke out a win of the popular vote.

If Trump tries to steal the election, what will you do? What role are you prepared to play in this historic showdown?

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The Pulse Newsfeed

Are We Plunging Into a New Dark Age?

Plagued by climate change–induced disasters, political turmoil, and the worst pandemic in a century, the world barely noticed when the United Nations released a report last month detailing calamitous prospects for the diversity of life on Earth. Though some progress has been achieved in the last decade, according to the report, national governments' commitments to protect biodiversity have fallen flat on the global scale. Now, "humanity stands at a crossroads with regard to the legacy we wish to leave to future generations." Due to our species' failure to act, many thousands more risk going extinct forever — eventually leading to our own extinction — unless our collective apathy can be swiftly transformed into urgency. And yet the UN report marks only the latest of a series of dire warnings swallowed up in a news cycle fatally distracted by Donald Trump's asinine antics.

What is it with us humans? Why are we so easily distracted? Why can’t we confront our existential crisis? Are we really plunging into a new dark age?


Link this.

Trump is infected . . . with xenophobia

Just before it was revealed that he (and many other Republicans) had been infected with coronavirus, President Trump announced that he aims to limit the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year to just 15,000. That's down from 18,000 last year — and far below the 110,000 that his predecessor approved for entry in 2016.

Fanning the flames of another lethal infection — xenophobia — the president paired the announcement with a race-baiting tirade against Rep. Ilhan Omar at a rally in her home-state of Minnesota. At the rally, days after attending the elbow-rubbing event at which an actual (rather than fabricated) threat to life was likely spread among several high-ranking Republicans, the president attempted to spread fear of immigrants "from the most dangerous places in the world." In addition, Trump claimed that his Democratic opponent "will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp" if he, Joseph Biden, wins the election.

Trump's misinformation-riddled remarks came only a day after he failed to denounce white supremacists during the first presidential debate, echoing prior inflammatory comments on the subject of the Unite the Right rally in 2017. A group that the president was asked to denounce during the debate, the so-called Proud Boys, celebrated what they saw as a tacit acknowledgement of his support. Questioned by reporters, the president pleaded ignorance, claiming "I don’t know who the Proud Boys are." Only when pressed the following day to clarify his views, in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, did Trump finally say, "I condemn the Proud Boys."

Together with his punitive policies and his habit of iterating xenophobic canards, the president's reluctance to distance himself from far-right and racist ideologues all but wipes out the United States' reputation as the land of tolerance and opportunity — a safe-haven for the persecuted. In famed Republican president Ronald Reagan's words, "America's tradition" is "as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries," with a "responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression." But the current president is too craven to uphold that tradition. Having neglected to prevent the worst pandemic in a century from ravaging his country, Trump is stooping to cowardly fear-mongering — and destroying what remains of the United State's reputation in the process.

Link this.

Uncovered Anarcast: Anarchist Spirits

From Occupy to Antifa, why are anarchist ideas and tactics appealing to an ever broader, younger audience? And what, in the first place, is the defining spirit of anarchism? Investigative photojournalist Jeremy Lee Quinn interviews Adbusters' co-founder and editor-in-chief, Kalle Lasn, on these topics and more for his podcast, Uncovered Anarcast.

Link this.

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ADBUSTERS #151

Find out more about the #WhiteHouseSiege in this landmark issue . . . and be a part of history. It all starts on September 17th.

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Belarus

On Monday, masked men snatched Belarusian opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova off the streets of Minsk, stuffed her into an unmarked minivan, and drove her to the southern border. After arriving around 4am Tuesday morning, she ripped up her passport; as a result, border guards would not allow her to be sent across into Ukraine. Kolesnikova's kidnapping comes off the back of mass gatherings Sunday, when 100,000 marched through the streets of Minsk to President Lukashenko’s residence. Dressed in the nation's pre–Soviet era colors and waving flowers in the air, protestors have been disputing the legitimacy of last month's election for over four weeks. In place of striking journalists at Belarus' state news network, Putin has sent in personnel from Kremlin-funded broadcaster RT to prop up Lukashenko’s brutal regime. Brussels, London, Washington and Ottawa have made tepid calls for the preservation of democracy. The fate of the country hangs in the balance.

Circulating on social media:

"Footage of an Israeli soldier kneeling, George Floyd–style, on the neck of a Palestenian senior protesting in the West Bank."

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#BLM Street

I sensed then, and this belief would grow as the years went on, that the lifeblood of the movement was not going to be the spokesmen – the schooled, sophisticated, savvy upper crust who might be best at speechmaking and press conferences. They would be the leaders, naturally, but it was going to be the tens of thousands of faceless, nameless, anonymous men, women and children – men like my father, women like my mother, children like the boy I had been – who were going to rise like an irresistible army as this movement for civil rights took shape.
John Lewis, from his autobiography, Walking with the Wind

David Graeber,

David Graeber, the anarchist intellectual whose early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement, died Wednesday. He was 59.

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#WhiteHouseSiege Tactical Briefing #3

Trump is trying to steal the election . . . it’s got many of us pretty rattled . . . and things could turn very ugly very quickly as November 3rd approaches. Lawyers are already in court, mounting pre-emptive strikes and preparing for the scorched-earth scenarios likely to come.

Meanwhile white supremacists are waiting in the wings, spoiling for a violent showdown.

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#WhiteHouseSiege Tactical Briefing #2

Time is short. Shall we rely on William Barr to interpret the law justly, in the interest of all Americans? On the police or military to drag Trump from the White House when he loses? On the grace and civility of the alt-right hordes and white supremacists? Of course not.

By now it’s clear that Trump and his sycophants will do anything to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, including crippling the Postal Service. There is no limit to their cynicism, no end to their corruption.

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#WhiteHouseSiege Tactical Briefing #1

It’s been nine years since we set off the political earthquake of #OccupyWallStreet, laying siege to NYC’s Zuccotti Park and inspiring thousands of similar protests around the world.

The Occupy anniversary arrives September 17th, 2020. And it may be the perfect day to trigger another global big-bang moment — a massive collective action of the sweetest kind of disobedience.

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1920, 1959 and 2020

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You are Stuck.

Dear people of the Adbusters Media Foundation,
We are Afra van den Hoogen, Mila Vuckovic and Nick Verkroost; three first year students of the Audiovisual Media-studies at the University of the Arts in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Last semester we followed a subject about 'culture jamming', for which we created a poster about this subject.

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Co-opted by Capitalism

Earth Day’s fiftieth anniversary, which fell on April 22, marked a strange celebration for climate-change deniers. Breitbart News, the notorious mouthpiece of the alt-right, published an article that day under the headline “Michael Moore–backed ‘Planet of the Humans’ Takes Apart the Left’s Green Energy Scams.” The following day James Delingpole, who once wrote in The Telegraph that “it would be nice to think one day that there would be a Climate Nuremberg” for any and all “who talked up the global warming scare,” tweeted that Moore was his “new hero.”

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While earlier forms of money consisted of anything from sea shells to sheep, coins made of gold and silver gradually emerged as the most practical means of exchange and for the storing of value.

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