"Nearly three years ago, Steven Bass' tent led to a police ticket - a ticket that led to a trial, an appeal denied and 160-day sentence in El Paso County jail. Bass, the first person cited under Colorado Springs' camping ban, remains mired in a legal battle backed by a University of Denver assistant professor working for free."

I might adopt "apostasy, not prayer" as a personal slogan.

Propaganda for the angry wage worker.

I will print out, assemble, and post a free hardcopy of any pamphlet on this website for anybody who wants one. (Send requests to cynic@mretc.net)

"Mikhail Bakunin, an anarchist born in Russia 200 years ago, is being investigated by the Rio de Janeiro police under the suspicion that he is participating in protests against the World Cup and social injustice. Police suspect Bakunin of participating in “vandalism acts during protests.”"

I've never heard of the "National Communist Front" before. I started reading this interview assuming it was some sort of fascist "communist" party, but the interviewee was both informative and came across as rather reasonable (and they explicitly denounced so-called nationalist "communist" groups like national Bolshevism)

Denver Post column on the latest NLCHP report.

The NLCHP has released a new version of their report on the criminalization of homelessness based on a survey of 187 American cities. This is the 11th edition of the report; the last one was released in 2011.

"The report shines a spotlight on the fact that still far too many cities criminalize the basic life actions that homeless people have no choice but to perform in public."

Nice table and map

"One of the two lead contractors for Israel’s apartheid wall in the occupied West Bank, Elbit Systems, has won a $145 million contract from the US Department of Homeland Security to provide similar systems on the Mexico-US border."

1. The headline is hilarious
2. The author says the Islamic State is "ultraconservative" and that it has destroyed many cultural artifacts, in the same sentence.
3. "If we didn't intervene when they were killing people, it would be kind of grotesque to intervene over a building"

An illustration of workers alienated from the products of their labour.

"While it’s tempting to dismiss IS supporters as brainwashed or bloodthirsty, conversations with a group of these young men reveal theirs is a more nuanced position than that."

This Methodist pastor burned himself to death in the parking lot of a Grand Saline, Texas, shopping center last month. In his suicide letter he wrote, "I will soon be 80 years old, and my heart is broken over this. America (and Grand Saline prominently) have never really repented for the atrocities of slavery and its aftermath."

A local paper talked to Larry Compton, the chief overseer I mean chief of police in Grand Saline: "Compton said the preacher’s death disturbed him. He added that while Grand Saline might once have been racially divided, today it is a community of acceptance. 'It might have been that way in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s like a lot of places, but today we are a community of different ethnicities and racial makeups,' he said." [1]

1: http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-News+Local/201968/madman-or-martyr-retired-minister-sets-self-on-fire-dies

"Police wearing riot gear raided a well-known Newtown squat amid protests on Thursday evening."

A few minutes of video with commentary:

"The eviction of "The Hat Factory" Social Centre"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7a4RGJpS9k

"In the face of official inaction, dozens of Palestinian organizations recently issued a call for ordinary people around the world to mark ten years since the ICJ ruling by making July the month of action against the apartheid wall."

This is the online click-through version of the prole.info pamphlet. I will print out, assemble, and post a free hard copy of this pamphlet for anybody who wants one. (Send requests to cynic@mretc.net)

libcom.org's short introduction to work.

This article reports that Öcalan, the founder of PKK, has moved towards anarchism while in prison (after reading Murray Bookchin, apparently)... but I'm still getting a pretty strong Marxist-Leninst cult vibe from their website (http://www.pkkonline.com/en/).

Here's a quote from a 2012 interview with members of the Kurdistan Anarchist Forum:

"We are aware that Ocalan’s ideas have changed since he has been in prison. But we are not very optimistic about these changes. Also these changes have not, at least for the time being, been reflected in practice or organisationally in the PKK and PJAK. It is certainly true that the PKK has got many followers among the Kurdish people and have a big impact on Kurdish mass movements. They also talk about federalism. But none of this makes them in any way Anarchist organisations, nor does it make them compatible with Anarchism. They are, in fact, as far as one can get from Anarchists and Anarchism because Ocalan, first has not given up his authority and dominance over the mass movement, and second, they are still advocating nationalism and patriotism."

Still, anyone who would defy Turkish borders in order to resist ISIS sounds okay to me.