Letters Of Fire

Statement from a Comrade and Baltimore Native About the Uprising There

Posted on by in Letters Of Fire, Outrage & Agitation, Streets & Squares and tagged , , .

by Josh Baltimore for SIC
29 April 2015

I’m heading home in two days.

There is something very important happening not only in Baltimore, but across black America. As of now there have been no reported deaths at the hands of protesters in a city where 250 people are killed a year, nearly all of those homicide victims being black. In spite of the fires and the looting, the young people of Baltimore are still showing a greater restraint in their conflicts with police and store-owners than they have shown in their conflicts amongst each other. I say this because for years it has been my family too that has done some of the killing and much of the dying.

Why is it that the current uprising has, in spite of its violence, not tilted toward a shooting war between whites and blacks, cops and kids, landlords and tenants, bosses and workers, given the fact that the shooting war between young black men across the region is invariant? Because young black people still value the lives of their structural enemies more than they value their own. The engineering of what is possibly the most efficient self-cannibalizing social organism in history – the nightly shootouts, the stabbings, the overdoses – is a project that has been centuries in the making.Continue Reading

Ertrunken, ohne Pass oder Visa

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Der letzte Feuerbrief, eines freien Syrier’s, ertrunken im Mittelmeer

Mutter entschuldige, weil das Schiff gesunken wurde und ich dort nicht ankommen konnte und ich das Geld nicht verdienen werde, um die Schulden für diese Reise zu begleichen.

Oh Mutter sei nicht traurig falls sie meinen Körper nicht finden. Wozu wäre das auch gut? Es gäbe zu hohe Ausgaben um meine Leiche zu verschiffen, Beerdigung und Beileidsbekundungen.Continue Reading

Ahogándose sin visa ni pasaporte

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El último mensaje de un Sirio Libre ahogándose en el Mediterráneo

Perdóname mamá, porque el barco ha sido hundido y no pude llegar, y no voy a poder ganar el dinero para saldar las deudas que hemos hecho para pagar este viaje.

Oh mamá, no estés triste si no encuentran mi cuerpo, ¿cuál sería el beneficio? El transporte de mi cadáver, el entierro y las condolencias significarían demasiados gastos.

Perdóname mamá, porque la guerra ha acontecido y tuve que vivir como los demás, aunque mis sueños, como sabes, no eran tan grandes como los de los demás. Mis sueños fueron del tamaño de la caja de medicamentos para el colon y del precio del cuidado de tus dientes en el dentista.

A propósito, el color de mis dientes es verde, porque se le han pegado musgos, aunque siguen siendo más bellos que los dientes del dictador.Continue Reading

Drowning without Visa or Passport

Posted on by in Hearth & Home, Letters Of Fire, States & Borders and tagged , .
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The Last Message of a Free Syrian, Drowned in the Mediterranea

Translated by Muhannad Al Boshi

I am sorry mom, because the ship has been sunk and I couldn’t reach there and I will not be able to earn money to repay the debts we took for this journey.

Don’t be so sad Oh mom! If they will not find my body, what could be the benefit?! There would be too many expenses for moving my corpse, burial, and condolences.

I am sorry mom, because the war has befallen and I had to leave like the others, although my dreams, as you know, were not so great like the others.  My dreams were like the size of a medicine box, and the price of taking care of your teeth at the dentist.

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The EU kills! Ferries not Frontex!

Posted on by in Letters Of Fire, States & Borders, Streets & Squares and tagged , , .

AntiNote: Call to Days of Rage and Direct Action

First they came for the refugees, and I said nothing…

A regime operating on a combination of racist selfishness and cultural nationalism that kills thousands of refugees at its borders–and surveils, harasses, detains, and marginalizes them within its borders–will not be capable of preventing the rise of the misanthropic Right.

If we want to truly respect the memory of those drowned, yesterday’s catastrophe should represent a paradigm shift. These people did not die in a natural disaster, but were killed by an inhumane and frankly undignified man-made doctrine: “Drowning should serve as a deterrent.” Nothing about the mass death on the Mediterranean is unavoidable.

Just the opposite: everything about this in fact desired; all of it is consciously accepted as “worth it.” It’s time that we find out exactly who is responsible for this criminal doctrine; it is time that anyone who accepts this death as the price of “deterrence” be called to account for their words and deeds.Continue Reading

“Die EU tötet Flüchtlinge: Fähren statt Frontex!”

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AntiNote: Aufruf zu Tage der Wut und der Direkten Aktion

Sie kamen zuerst für die Flüchtlinge, und ich sagte nichts …

Ein Regime, das aus einer Mischung von rassistischem Egoismus und kulturellem Nationalismus Flüchtlinge an ihren Grenzen umbringt; innerhalb ihrer Grenzen verfolgt, verhaftet und marginalisiert, wird den Aufstieg der menschenverachtenden Rechten nicht verhindern können.

Die gestrige Katastrophe muss einen Paradigmenwechsel darstellen, wenn wir das Andenken der Verstorbenen respektieren wollen. Ertrunkene Menschen im Mittelmeer sind nicht unvermeidbar. Diese Menschen sterben nicht wegen einer Naturkatastrophe, sondern durch eine sowohl unmenschliche als unwürdige Doktrin: “Die Ertrunkenen sollen als Abschreckung dienen”. Nichts an all dem ist unvermeidbar.

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“Violence” at Blockupy: Enough with the Hypocrisy!

Posted on by in Letters Of Fire, Outrage & Agitation, Streets & Squares and tagged , , , , .

AntiNote: We encountered this article in German at Eisbrecher Wuppertal (via Linksunten Indymedia) shortly after the clashes around the grand opening of the new European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt last Wednesday. True to form, the dominant German-language media (and even much of the ‘alternative’ media) has been apoplectically clutching its pearls about the targeted property damage that the first phase of #M18 protests included in their largely successful blockade of the ribbon-cutting—while the dominant English-language media has been mostly silent.

This is a crying shame, considering that Blockupy 2015 represented a significant expansion and escalation of the continent-wide anti-austerity movement and should be considered in this context. This article provides some background on Blockupy (which grew out of the global Occupy movement and has learned and grown in the face of violent state repression—where nearly every other Occupy site faltered), and proposes applying similar levels of targeted militancy more broadly.

“Violence” at Blockupy Frankfurt: Enough with the Hypocrisy!
by some activists from Wuppertal, Germany
20 March 2015

In the country which is the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter, there were hours-long street clashes last Wednesday [18 March 2015]. After the massive repression faced by Blockupy activists in 2012 and 2013, state power lost control—at least for a short time—of entire sections of the city of Frankfurt.

Of course, the discourse over “violence” has dominated media reports. We should gladly engage in these discussions, so that conditions might change and we can finally put an end to the real structural violence all around us every day under capitalism.

Continue Reading