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From Alternet

Many young people diagnosed with mental disorders have acted on their beliefs in ways that threaten authorities.

Many young people diagnosed with mental disorders are essentially anarchists who have the bad luck of being misidentified by mental health professionals, who 1) are ignorant of the social philosophy of anarchism; 2) embrace, often without political consciousness, its opposite ideology of hierarchism; and 3) confuse the signs of anarchism with symptoms of mental illness.

The mass media equates anarchism with chaos and violence. However, the social philosophy of anarchism rejects authoritarian government, opposes coercion, strives for greatest freedom, works toward “mutual aid” and voluntary cooperation, and maintains that people organizing themselves without hierarchies creates the most satisfying social arrangement. Many anarchists adhere to the principle of nonviolence (though the question of violence has historically divided anarchists in their battle to eliminate authoritarianism). Nonviolent anarchists have energized the Occupy movement and other struggles for economic justice and freedom.

In practice, anarchism is not a dogmatic system. So for example, “practical anarchist” parents will use their authority to grab their child who has begun to run out into traffic. However, practical anarchists strongly believe that all authorities have the burden of proof to justify control, and that most authorities in modern society cannot bear that burden and are thus illegitimate—and should be eliminated and replaced by noncoercive, freely participating relationships.

My experience as a clinical psychologist for almost three decades is that many young people labeled with psychiatric diagnoses are essentially anarchists in spirit who are pained, anxious, depressed, and angered by coercion, unnecessary rules, and illegitimate authority. An often-used psychiatric diagnosis for children and adolescents is oppositional defiant disorder (ODD); its symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”

Among young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading ADHD authorities, says that they have deficits in “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. A frequently used research tool that distinguishes alcohol/drug abuser personalities was developed by Craig MacAndrew, and is commonly called the MAC scale. It reveals that the most significant “addictive personality type” have discipline problems at school, are less tolerant of boredom, are less compliant with authorities and some laws, and engage in more disapproved sexual practices.

I have encountered many people who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychoses, and who are now politically conscious anarchists, including Sascha Altman DuBrul, author of Maps to the Other Side: The Adventures of a Bipolar Cartographer. DuBrul, several times diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has lived in rebel communities in Mexico, Central America and Manhattan’s Lower East Side, worked on community farms, participated in Earth First! road blockades and demonstrated on the streets in the Battle for Seattle. He reports that many of his anti-authoritarian friends also have been diagnosed with mental illness.

Teenagers, as evidenced by their musical tastes, often have an affinity for anti-authoritarianism, but most do not act on their beliefs in a manner that would make them vulnerable to violent reprisals by authorities. However, I have found that many young people diagnosed with mental disorders—perhaps owing to some combination of integrity, fearlessness, and naïvity—have acted on their beliefs in ways that threaten authorities. Historically in American society, there is often a steep price paid by those who have this combination of integrity, fearlessness, and naïvity.

While DuBrul and his friends have political consciousness, my experience is that most rebellious young people diagnosed with mental disorders do not, and so they become excited to hear that there is actual political ideology that encompasses their point of view. They immediately become more whole after they discover that answering “yes” to the following questions does not mean that they suffer from a mental disorder, but instead have a certain social philosophy:

• Do you hate coercion and domination?
• Do you love freedom?
• Are you willing to risk punishments to gain freedom?
• Do you instinctively distrust large, impersonal and distant authorities?
• Do you think people should organize themselves rather than submit to authorities?
• Do you dislike being either an employer or an employee?
• Do you smile after reading the Walt Whitman quote “Obey little, resist much”?

Young people who oppose inequality and exploitation, reject a capitalist economy, and aim for a society based on cooperative, mutually owned enterprise are essentially left-anarchists—perhaps calling themselves “anarcho-syndicalists” or “anarcho-communitarians.” When they discover what Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, Kirkpatrick Sale, or Emma Goldman have to say, they may identify with these thinkers. These young people have a strong moral streak of egalitarianism and a desire for social and economic justice. Not only are they not mentally ill but, from my perspective, they are the hope of society.

There is another group of freedom-loving young people who hate the coercion of parents, schools, and the state but lack an egalitarian moral streak, and are very much into money and capitalism. Some of them may have been dragged into the mental health system after having been caught drug dealing, and are labeled with conduct disorder and/or a personality disorder. While these young people rebel against they themselves being controlled and exploited, many of them are not averse to controlling and exploiting others, and so are not anarchists, but some have spiritual transformations and become so.

An Underground Resistance for Oppressed Young Anarchists

There are at least two ways that mental health professionals can join the resistance: 1) speak out about the political role of mental health institutions in maintaining the status quo in society; and 2) depathologize and repoliticize rebellion in one’s clinical practice, which includes helping young anarchists navigate an authoritarian society without becoming self-destructive or destructive to others, and helping families build respectful, non-coercive relationships.

If a nonviolent anarcho-communitarian (politically conscious or otherwise) is dragged by parents into my office for failing to take school seriously but is otherwise pleasant and excited by learning, I tell parents I do not believe there is anything essentially “disordered” with their child. This sometimes gets me fired, but not all that often. It is my experience that most parents may think that believing a society can function without coercion is naive but they agree it’s not a mental illness, and they’re open to suggestions that will create greater harmony and joy within their family.

I work hard with parents to have them understand that their attempt to coerce their child into taking school seriously not only has failed—that's why they’re in my office—but will likely continue to fail. And increasingly, the pain of their failed coercion will be compounded by the pain of their child’s resentment, which will destroy their relationship with their child and create even more family pain. Many parents acknowledge that this resentment already exists. I ask liberal parents, for example, if they would try to coerce a homosexual child into being heterosexual or vice versa, and most say, “Of course not!” And so they begin to see that temperamentally anarchist children cannot be similarly coerced without great resentment.

It has been my experience that many rebellious young people labeled with psychiatric disorders and substance abuse don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities. Often, these young people are craving a relationship with mutual respect in which they can receive help navigating the authoritarian society around them.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on May 17, 2013, in “Mental Health Surveillance Among Children—United States, 2005–2011,” reported: “A total of 13%–20% of children living in the United States experience a mental disorder in a given year, and surveillance during 1994–2011 has shown the prevalence of these conditions to be increasing.”

Is there an epidemic of childhood mental illness, or is there a curious revolt? My experience is that many young Americans, feeling helpless, hopeless, bored, scared, misunderstood, and uncared about, ultimately rebel; but given their wherewithal, their rebellion is often disorganized, futile, self-destructive, and appears to mental health professionals as a disorder or illness. Underlying many of psychiatry's diagnoses is the experience of helplessness, hopelessness, boredom, fear, isolation, and dehumanization. Does society, especially for young people, promote:

• Respectful personal relationships—or manipulative impersonal ones?
• Empowerment—or helplessness?
• Autonomy (self-direction)—or heteronomy (institutional-direction)?
• Participatory democracy—or authoritarian hierarchies?
• Diversity and stimulation—or homogeneity and boredom?

Emotional and behavioral problems are often natural human reactions to a society that cares little about: 1) autonomy—self-direction and the experience of potency; 2) community—strong bonds that provide for economic security and emotional satisfaction; and 3) humanity—the variety of ways of being human, the variety of satisfactions, and the variety of negative reactions to feeling controlled rather than understood. Young anarchists are especially sensitive to American society’s absence of autonomy, community, and humanity—and this can result in overwhelming anxiety and depression.

While giant pharmaceutical corporations promote psychiatry’s authority as a vehicle for increased drug sales, the whole of the corporate state supports psychiatry so as to maintain the status quo. In the old Soviet Union, political dissidents were diagnosed by psychiatrists as mentally ill, then hospitalized and drugged. Even more effective for those at the top of the hierarchy is what now occurs in the United States: diagnosing and treating anti-authoritarians before they have reached political consciousness and before they have created communities of resistance.

One reason that there is so little political activism in the United States is that a potentially huge army of anti-authoritarians are being depoliticized by mental illness diagnoses and by attributions that their inattention, anger, anxiety, and despair are caused by defective biochemistry, not by their alienation from a dehumanizing society. These diagnoses and attributions make them less likely to organize democratic movements to transform society.

In the early 19th century in the United States, a network of secret routes, conductors, and safe houses were used by African Americans to escape from slavery. This network was commonly called the Underground Railroad, organized by runaway slaves, free African-American abolitionists, and white abolitionists. Today, communities of ex-psychiatric patients (see MindFreedom and the Icarus Project) are helping young anti-authoritarians resist their mental illness labeling and coercive treatments. There are also a handful of mental health professional dissident organizations that, while not promoting the social philosophy of anarchism, do oppose dehumanizing diagnoses and coercive treatments (for example, the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry).

While there are career risks for modern-day mental health professional dissidents, these are small risks compared with those taken by slavery abolitionists. So as a mental health professional, I find it quite embarrassing that there are so few professionals involved in the current resistance. In American history, there have been several shameful periods where groups—including Native Americans, homosexuals and assertive women—have been pathologized, dehumanized and given oppressive treatments by mental health professionals in an attempt to alter their basic being. Today’s psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors would do well to recognize that historians do not look kindly on those professionals who participated in institutional dehumanization and oppression.

Tags: mental healthCategory: Analysis

It's happening in New York City as we speak, and it's the topic looming over of one of the biggest trials in recent history. But way back in 1990, it was also happening — so much that a popular sitcom made it the subject of an very memorable episode. I was 7 when I first saw this episode. I'm 30 now, and it happens to me, too.

I definitely know people who would buy the app in this brilliant parody. I find that information devastatingly depressing but also absolutely hilarious — much like this skit.

via CONTRA INFO
Fault line of Istanbul – Insurrection notes from Taksim
Actually it was NOT totally unpredictable, but we somehow couldn’t see it was coming. What have people of Turkey being doing until this revolt? Students have beaten up the teachers who gave them grades lower than they deserved. People stabbed doctors who neglected their loved ones. They shot sergeants to run away, and deserted obligatory military service. They crashed police stations and beaten up abusive police officers. After courts gave their verdict, people gave a taste of their own verdict at the hallways of courts. Women brought their own justice to their violators. They committed suicides under the pressure of big exams, credit card debts…
http://www.vimeo.com/68207051
http://www.vimeo.com/67656293

Insurrection of individuals and revolutionary groups finally touched each other and got connected in Gezi Park Resistance (as of May 29 to date). So, we wanted to share some of our observations from behind the barricades with you:
• Roads were blocked, trunks and back seats are checked to see if they secretly sneak gas bombs to police. Because police used ambulances to sneak bombs, people carefully searched them; people stoned fire trucks because they were observed to be carrying water for the water cannons that put out fire barricades.
• ID checks for those who were suspected to be undercover police.
• CCTVs and cameras were dismantled and damaged.
• More than 40 outstanding barricades were set. Pavement stones, billboards, traffic signs, trash cans, whatever is in hand and lying around, were used.
• Banks, ATMs, billboards and bus stop advertisements were destroyed.
• Police containers and police cars were set on fire, OR used for the benefit of public.
• Construction machines and buses were overturned, damaged and set on fire.
• Food and necessary supplies were shoplifted from corporate supermarkets around the neighborhood.
• Media vehicles (CNN van) were overturned and destroyed.
• A bulldozer was captured to counter-attack riot control vehicles, and water cannons were pushed out of the streets.
• Young kids who were abused and humiliated by cops every day set the record straight by stoning and cursing them in their face. They wrestled back their integrity.
• Trucks and bulldozers were captured and used to build barricades.
• Unorganized and largely apolitical youth got acquainted, discussed and mutually learned tactics and strategies with more radical and organized groups.
• Thousands of young people got firsthand experience in clashing with police forces.
• Large solidarity network was spontaneously organized for food, beverage, solution for tear gas and cigarettes.
• Beverage and food points were set up to disperse free stuff to whomever in need.
• People started to frantically share everything, their chocolate bars, cigarettes, their home-made food, food they were given by others.
• Trash and litter were collectively collected, even the cigarette butts.
• Everybody was helping everybody with anti-acid solutions against tear gas on the barricades.
• People opened their houses’ doors, as well as small cafes and shops, for perfectly random protestors, who were cornered by police forces.
• Housewives and other people in the neighborhoods joined the protests with making noise with pans, etc.
• Food and anti-acid solution kits were placed in a lot of spots.
• First- aid points were set up.
• Doctors ran from barricade to barricade during heavy clashes.
• Street vendors happily proliferate in the absence of police, who normally chase them and confiscate their stuff.
• Sex workers, including transsexuals, could work, stroll around, and mingled with others freely without being abused.
• A vacant area under closure had been liberated for the public and turned into a small park.
• Some other vacant houses, which were under mortgage closures, were occupied and put into use.
• A small urban garden was created.
• A free library was set up.
• People read bulletins and pamphlets like they never did before. They thought things they never thought before.
• People claimed back and made the streets their own again with graffiti, stencils and various different flags and colors instead of billboards and commercials.
• Instead of going to work or back home with public transportation or cabs, people marched slowly under clouds of tear gas chanting slogans and curses. They weren’t scared anymore, they kept on marching.
• People determined their own agenda, not parties, powers or leaders.
• Not a single woman was abused. They freely marched, strolled around and stayed in the park.
• People spent their time together instead of killing it in front of TVs or computer screens.
• Masses were disillusioned and openly started to criticize mass media.
• Kurds freely waved their guerrilla flags (PKK), showcased portraits of their guerrilla leader under arrest (Apo) and enjoyed themselves with their traditional collective folk dances. Nationalists willy nilly had to get used to it. Even some of them couldn’t resist and joined the dances.
• Middle-class activists, with their pristine bourgeois hygiene standards, ate the same food, shit in the same portable johns and went long periods without showers together with the homeless people and street animals.
People realized life without cops is JOY, indeed.

“Life is so boring, there is nothing to do except
spend all our wages on the latest skirt or shirt.
Brothers and Sisters, what are your real desires?
Sit in the drugstore, look distant, empty, bored,
drinking some tasteless coffee? Or perhaps
BLOW IT UP OR BURN IT DOWN.”
-The Angry Brigade

pics – police enter taksim square eventually, with the help of “taksim solidarity”; that commission behaving like they are representing the revolt. how a revolt, an insurrection can be represented? anyway. but of course people resisted against police invasion.
pics – painted slogans. they are in turkish, but just to show that, everywhere around taksim was graffiti, everywhere.

photos retrieved from occupygezipics
June 15th, 2013 | Tags: direct action, Istanbul, police repression, revolt, self-organization, solidarity, Taksim Gezi Park, Taksim square, Turkey | Categories: Arts – Culture, Ecology – Health, News, Repression, Videos - Multimedia

Tags: Turkeyinstanbuldirengezioccupygezitaksim squareRiotCategory: Actions

From Chile Bolivia Walmapu

by John Severino

A continuation of “The Intensification of Independence”. https://chileboliviawalmapu.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/the-intensification...
See the former for a glossary of terms in Spanish and Mapudungun.

Awareness of repression should never be turned into a list of cases and prisoners. Those who struggle must understand repression strategically. If the essence of repression is isolation, this means intentionally formulating our responses to overcome that isolation, both by connecting them to the lines of our ongoing struggle, and analyzing and thwarting the particular mechanisms through which the State seeks to isolate us.

In Wallmapu, that ongoing struggle is a struggle for the land, not as an alienated possession, but as a whole relationship outside of and against capitalism. Mapuche in struggle take over their traditional land, fighting with cops and landlords to do it, and sometimes burning them out; they block highways and sabotage the industries that would exploit their lands; and they farm, graze, and common in those lands, build their houses there, hold their rituals there, raise their children, marry, and bury their dead there, making their relationship with that land a solid fact.
https://chileboliviawalmapu.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/with-land-without-t...
https://chileboliviawalmapu.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/the-struggle-for-ll...

Chilean state repression against the Mapuche demonstrates two distinct modes. One mode operates at a lower intensity, and is less likely to be recognized within the format of the anti-repression list that pretends to confront repression by reacting to its most obvious manifestations. This lower intensity mode manifests in constant surveillance, in raids that brutalize community members, traumatize children, and confiscate tools needed for day to day existence (as nearly every farm tool is a potential weapon). This mode levies psychological exhaustion, producing a negative incentive which the NGOs, development funds, and charity projects that offer a positive incentive away from struggle are always waiting to take advantage of. The Chilean state specifically deploys lower intensity repression to isolate Mapuche communities in struggle, dissuading travel between communities and obstructing those from outside who would visit Mapuche communities. Counterinsurgency in Wallmapu also means protecting and promoting the capitalist development that molds the landscape in the furtherance of social control: monoculture deserts of pine plantations that suck up the water, ruin the soil, and supplant the native plants and animals that make the Mapuche way of life—their medicine, rituals, food culture—possible; megaprojects like dams, airports, and highways that displace communities and accelerate military and economic intervention into the territory.

The higher intensity mode of repression seeks a hostage for every outrage against a democratic solution to the “Mapuche conflict” that the weichafe commit. Sabotage and arson have been normalized at this point that the police are unable to arrest a suspect for every illegal action that is carried out, not without abandoning their pretext of legality. But every time a cop or latifundista is killed, or a major infrastructural project is targeted, the Chilean state selects several influential Mapuche to take the fall.

The Chilean state highly values its veneer of legality as a tool for achieving the consent of the governed by symbolically distancing itself from the dictatorship that ended in 1990. This is a difficult task as many Chileans remain suspicious of the government and many more are armed than when the military government took over in 1973. Twice a year, Chileans mark the continuity of their suspicions and in the poblaciones they test out their weaponry, often on police. Many Chileans also sympathize with the Mapuche struggle.

The Chilean state faces the same limitations as any state that tries to apply criminal law as a tool to repress a popular struggle. They have to break their own laws if the tool is to have any chance of getting the job done. This would not be a problem in a more sedated democracy, but the Chilean state in particular is sensitive about the effectiveness of its democratic image.

Generally, the only way the Chilean state is able to manufacture evidence adequate for convictions that nominally follow legal rituals is through the dubious figure of the anonymous protected witness. Mapuche communities and their capacity for vengeance are strong enough that the age old tool of the snitch could only be applicable to the Mapuche conflict with heavy modifications: defendants are never allowed to know the identity of the paid informants testifying against them, therefore they can make no specific challenges to the informants' veracity.

The Chilean state is attempting to stretch an already precarious legal foundation to bring the repression against the Mapuche into the realm of anti-terrorism. Three years ago, a disciplined hungerstrike backed by committed and expansive support defeated the government's previous attempt to prosecute the Mapuche as terrorists.
https://chileboliviawalmapu.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/mapuche-hungerstrik...
https://chileboliviawalmapu.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/clarification-by-ma...

Now, the government is trying again, pinning its hopes on the Quino case, in which a dozen peñi face up to twenty years in prison. If they succeed at the social level in applying antiterrorism law, they will have achieved a powerful tool in capping the Mapuche struggle, isolating those elements most committed to full independence and forcing the rest on the path back to a democratic solution that does not challenge the integrity of the Chilean state nor the capitalist ideas of alienated land and alienated freedom on a global level.

What we can induce is the following: the Chilean state, predictably enough, wishes to respond to every single major act of Mapuche illegality by taking hostage people it has identified as valuable to the struggle, utilizing the logic of collective punishment. The particulars of its situation require it to protect the democratic pretext for repression. Therefore, the success or failure of Chilean state repression against the Mapuche is a function of the extent to which that repression can be justified to Chilean society on democratic grounds, grounds on which the ruling class and the ruled can be said to have a unity of interests, because it is only within such a narrative that the argument of public order and safety makes sense.

Domestically, the segment of the Chilean population which the state fears has already demonstrated it will sympathize with the Mapuche struggle even if they burn down logging trucks, construction equipment, warehouses, developments, and mansions (something they frequently do). But in the last year, with the deaths of a couple estate lords, Chilean sympathy has waned. Although incoherence is a universal position under the yoke of capitalism, still we must call out their position as incoherent. These same people all sighed in regret when Pinochet died peacefully in his bed, claimed by old age rather than an act of vengeance. Why, then, do they moan and fret when a Luchsinger, one of the very bedrocks of Pinochet's power, dies at the hands of those who struggle? If Chileans who are committed in their support of the Mapuche struggle cannot convince their compatriots to resolve this incoherence by shedding their civic qualms, then either the Mapuche struggle has already encountered the outer limit of its available tactics, or the Chilean state will successfully be able to apply antiterrorism law in repressing them.

https://wccctoronto.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/the-importance-of-proclaimi...
https://wccctoronto.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/on-the-state-of-siege-in-vi...

On the international level, the Chilean state wants to project itself as a stable, developed nation that honors its business contracts and respects the rule of law. The level to which international solidarity can disrupt this projection is added weight to the other side of the scale which prosecutors, governing officials, and businessmen have brought out to see if they can successfully utilize this new tool against the Mapuche.

An additional fact surpasses such calculations: successful international solidarity would also serve as a bridge by which lessons of struggle, and of the nature of capitalism, that are elucidated in the context of the Mapuche struggle can be spread across the world and applied to our own battles.

This is the situation which gives sense to our solidarity, and it is only in this context that we present the following list of major cases of repression. Below: the real people, the specific clashes. Above: the lay of the land and the general motions of the war we are fighting.

The Quino Case
On October 10, 2009, a group of Mapuche blockaded the highway at the Quino toll station. On the sole evidence of a highly paid confidential informant, the Chilean state arrested 10 peñi, accusing them under the antiterrorism law of attempted murder, illegal association, robbery, and arson. The accused are José Queipul Huaiquil, Víctor Queipul Millanao, Camilo Tori Quiñinao, Felipe Huenchullán Cayul, Juan Huenchullán Cayul, José Millanao Millape, Juan Patricio Queipul Millanao, Jorge Marimán Loncomilla, Ernesto Cayupán Meliñán and Luis Marileo Cariqueo. The case faced a series of legal setbacks as judges struck down the use of the antiterrorism law, and later acquitted the defendants for lack of evidence. However, the prosecutor, pressured by the government and local business interests, continues to press new charges. One maneuver was to break off the cases of two of the accused, who are minors. Even after the others were acquitted, the two minors from the communities of Temucuicui and Cacique José Guiñón were brought to trial separately, and still under the antiterrorism law, in May 2013 (with results still pending). There are also indications that others previously accused in the case will be brought back to trial on new charges, again under the antiterrorism law. Many of them have already been imprisoned in the past, and some of them participated in the major hungerstrike of 2010 which ultimately caused the government to withdraw its use of the antiterrorism law and release the accused with “time served.” This case constitutes an attempt to lock up some of the most active and well known participants in the Mapuche struggle, on the accusation that they have formed an illegal network spanning multiple communities. Throughout the investigation period, police have also harassed, interrogated, and in some cases even arrested the children of those accused (though in the latter case charges have always been dropped or resulted in absolution).

Lof Yeupeko-Katrileo and the Vilcún fire
Shortly after midnight on January 4, 2013, the mansion of the major latifundista and usurper of Mapuche lands Werner Luchsinger was set ablaze at Vilcún, near Temuco. The bodies of Luchsinger and his wife, Vivianne Mckay, were found inside. Werner was the cousin of fellow businessman and latifundista Jorge Luchsinger. On January 3, 2008, Mapuche weichafe Matias Catrileo was shot in the back and killed by police guarding Jorge Luchsinger's estate against an action to pressure the latifundista with the longterm goal of recovering stolen lands. Police opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons. Catrileo was killed while running away.

The machi of Lof Yeupeko-Katrileo, Celestino Córdoba, was arrested and accused of the arson and murder under the antiterrorism law. At the end of May, the Chilean prosecutor filed a request for life imprisonment. Supporters have organized many marches and religious ceremonies to aid Córdoba, whose health has deteriorated rapidly since his imprisonment. According to the Mapuche, the machis do not often fare well in prison when their connection with the land is broken. When the Mapuche culture was more heavily repressed, the machis, or those who would have become machis, were often locked up in mental institutions. Córdoba is also accused of the December 2012 arson of another latifundistas home, for which the prosecutor is seeking an additional 36 years of imprisonment.

The leftist Mapuche organization CAM publicly denounced the arson. They attributed what they saw as an irresponsible act to the Temuco prisoners who split with them during the 2010 hungerstrike. Thanks to CAM's politicking and their attempt to avert the blame, a weichafe had to go into clandestinity.

Lof Yeupeko-Katrileo, renamed in remembrance of Matias Catrileo, is leading the struggle in the county of Vilcún for the recovery of stolen lands. The Luchsingers are the primary usurpers of Mapuche land in the county.

Wente Winkul Mapu
Wente Winkul Mapu, another highly active community on recovered land near Ercilla, was the site of a violent police raid in April 2012. Such raids are extremely common against Mapuche communities in struggle, resulting in the terrorizing of residents, the traumatization of children, brutality against the elderly, destruction of houses, and the stealing of tools and money. However, in April 2012, things turned out a little differently. One cop ended up dead. Apparently, the highly militarized, intensively trained, armed-to-the-teeth GOPE opened fire on themselves, killing one. Of course, the Chilean police are not about to let their stupidity and ineptitude go unpunished. They are claiming that someone inside one of the houses fired the shot, though they do not explain how the shooter got away from the surrounded village.

At the end of April 2013, police arrested the werken of Wente Winkul Mapu, Daniel Melinao, and accused him of complicity in the cop's murder. Melinao is a highly active, longtime participant in the Mapuche struggle. It is not a coincidence that police arrested him at the bus station in Collipulli as he was on his way to Concepción to participate in a panel discussion about repression against Mapuche communities.

At a court appearance shortly after Melinao's arrest, police arrested the longko of the nearby community of Temucuicui, Victor Queipul, accusing him of disorder, a charge that could bring a couple years of imprisonment. The longko had come to the appearance in solidarity with Melinao. Melinao was denied provisional release and sent to prison to await trial. The prosecutor revealed that they are searching for Erik Montoya, also of Wente Winkul Mapu. Two anonymous paid witnesses claim to have seen Montoya open fire on the cop during the raid. Montoya is in clandestinity.

In June 2012, police raided Wente Winkul Mapu searching for Montoya, entering houses without a warrant and smashing everything. When the weichafe of the community forced the cops out, they opened fire with tear gas and bullets. They shot one young weichafe, Gabriel Valenzuela Montoya, in the back. Six others were wounded, including Gabriel's grandfather and three minors. Gabriel evaded arrest for the confrontation by hiding until police left. He later denounced the police. Perhaps in retaliation, in November of the same year he was arrested and accused of a robbery-murder along with Luis Marileo of the community José Guiñón and Leonardo Quijón of the community Chequenco. Gabriel, who is being held in a juvenile detention center at Chol Chol, is currently on hungerstrike to protest the frame-up, which he and supporters say is intended to delegitimize the Mapuche struggle. Quijón carried out a hungerstrike in the prison at Angol shortly after his arrest. Marileo is also one of the accused in the Quino case.

The people of Wente Winkul Mapu and supporters have organized large protest marches to the courthouse to support Melinao, and in late May they began communally cultivating a tract of newly recovered land in protest of the use of the antiterrorism law and as a sign that they would continue their struggle.

Pilmaikén
Communities along the river Pilmaikén, in the far south close to Osorno, are fighting against the planned installation of a hydroelectric dam that would flood the valley and destroy much land and many villages, as well as the sacred ground of Ngen Mapu Kintuante. The Williche (Mapuche from the far south) have proclaimed their right and responsibility of self-defense and the defense of their territory against any further incursions into the Pilmaikén watershed by the Chilean government, Conadi (the governmental institution for the development of indigenous peoples in Chile), and the company Pilmaiquen, S.A. The ayllu rewe of Ngen Mapu Kintuante currently has four people facing charges for actions against the dams, including the machi Millaray Huichalaf.

Temucuicui
On May 19, 2013, the peñi Orlando Benjamín Cayul Colihuinca was remanded to preventive detention pending trial for the arson of construction equipment. Cayul is a member of the community Temucuicui Autonoma. The longko Victor Queipul and werken Jose Queipul, as well as several others of the same community, are also facing charges under different accusations. And on May 23, police raided the community, evicting and burning down several houses that had been constructed on land newly recovered from a latifundista.

Freire Airport
Mapuche from several communities in the area of Freire, south of Temuco, are fighting against the construction of a new airport. In 2012, Chilean justice convicted three people involved in the resistance: the werken of the community Mawizache, for illegal possession of a firearm; another member of the same community and the werken of the community Trapilhue, both for public disorder. In March 2013, the communities of Mawizache, Trapilhue, and Wilkilko had to release a public statement, refuting an announcement by AyunMapu, a leftist Mapuche organization based in Santiago that a deal had been made to go ahead with the airport. The three communities asserted themselves as autonomous, contradicting the organization's claim that they were members. They emphasized that they had participated in a handful of protests alongside but not under the authority of AyunMapu.

In raids against communities in the area on April 30, police arrested three peñi, Jorge Painevilo Loncomil, Miguel Painevilo Licanán, and Segundo Braulio Neculmán, and accused them of attempted murder, arson, and illegal possession of firearms. Two weeks later they were released pending further investigation. Their release was secured after a protest of several hundred outside the Temuco prison, and other mobilizations by communities hit with brutal raids in recent months.

On March 9, a large group of Mapuche blocked a major highway in the region with tree trunks and burning tires to protest the airport. The same week, a group of thirty temporarily seized the airport construction site.

Lof Newen Mapu de Chequenco
In February 2013, Juan Millacheo, longko of Lof Newen Mapu of Chequenco, was arrested by Argentinian police in Nequén, Puelmapu, by Argentinian police, and handed over to their Chilean counterparts. Millacheo had been living in clandestinity for 9 years after being condemned in 2004 to ten years imprisonment for arson under the antiterrorist law. After three weeks, the Chilean courts accepted the defense's motion to have the sentence commuted to one year of conditional liberty with monthly sign-ins.

Puelmapu
Puelmapu, the “Eastern Lands,” are the part of Wallmapu east of the Andes, occupied by the Argentinian state since the 1880s. Although repression and colonization after the invasion were more brutal in Puelmapu, the Argentinian state has not succeeded in stamping out the Mapuche struggle.

In July, 2011, a group of half a dozen armed men, associates of a local latifundista, attacked the community of Lof Loncon in the Rio Negro province, opening fire on community members. They then proceeded to steal the community's cattle, as police intervened to impede community members trying to stop the theft. In February of 2012 in the province of Nequén, nine families from the community Quintriqueo recovered a parcel of land that had been usurped by area landlords.

The struggle continues
In April 2013, Mapuche saboteurs damaged a railroad line, causing the derailing of a logging company train with over 40 cars full of cellulose and leading to the extensive destruction of the line. The next month, masked weichafe blocked several highways with burning tires in and around Temuco. Their communiqué read: “All political prisoners on the street with no conditions! Down with the 28M frame-up! Expel the pigs from the Mapuche communities!”

[The 28M frame-up is the new “Bombs Case of Temuco,” when several anarchists in Temuco were arrested on March 28, as police planted bomb-making material in the social center where they were arrested]

Tags: government repressionMapucheanti airportCategory: International

At least three events took place this year in Pittsburgh for June 11, a letter writing early in the day, followed by a demo on a busy intersection and a fundraiser dance party in the evening.

At the demo we hung numerous banners such as “burn the prison”, “a comrade in prison is a call to action”, “solidarity with Marie & Eric” and several others, converting a rapidly gentrifying area to a temporary anarchist space. We also had the benefit of a loud sound system blasting hot jams, and people chalking up the sidewalks and walls with anarchist slogans, handing out info about June 11 to cars and pedestrians. Eventually the police arrived, apparently somebody had complained and said we were doing “something about Marie Mason, against prison and playing Fuck the Police loudly”, so we are confident that our message was communicated effectively. The police quickly left finding we had already packed up the sound system. To conclude the demo a couple people spoke about local environmental defense and ongoing struggles against prison.

Later in the evening was a dance party, with delicious refreshments for sale and all money benefiting Eric and Marie. $1100 was raised, well beyond anybodies expectations. As the party was winding down a few bored uncontrollables took to the streets with torches and burned an effigy of an FBI agent in the middle of an intersection and dispersed quickly, wrapping up the day with a small but energetic expression of rage.

http://pghanarchy.tumblr.com/post/52840446455/june-11-reportback

Tags: Pittsburghjune 11thCategory: Actions

When Neil Patrick Harris is involved, you know it’s gonna be good.

This epic smackdown stems from an investigation into the Australian army and its culture of sexual exploitation. Unlike in America, when the Aussies found out that almost 100 army personnel may be guilty of gross misconduct and sexual exploitation of women -- both military and civilian -- they sent THIS GUY to send a message to any soldier who even thinks once about being sexist.

At 1:43, he gives them an ultimatum that leaves no doubt on his (and the rest of the Aussie army's) intentions. That is. BAD. ASS.

OK, Mr. Politician, if your "man brain" is so much smarter than my inferior "lady brain," then why are you so bad at math? 

I know it seems like a distantly futuristic time, but the year 2000 might soon be upon us. Will you be prepared with an electric belt and candy holder attachment?