More on the crisis in the Ukraine

“Volatile” does not even come close to describing the current political landscape in the Ukraine. As of the day this post is published, President Viktor Yanukovych has taken a “sick leave” and talks have stalled; prime minister Mykola Azarov resigned on the 27th of January and the parliament voted to repeal the anti-protest laws— though the laws won’t officially be repealed until the president signs off on them.

Now again, we feature work from our comrades in the Ukraine, this time in an interview with nihilist.li: “This interview with a comrade from the Autonomous Workers’ Union in Kiev was done on January 28, 2014. It sheds some light on the events around the Maidan: the array of reasons behind the protests, their focus on the hated president, the differences to the “orange revolution”, the role of the right, the weakness of social struggles and possible scenarios.”

Here, they discuss the involvement of ultra-nationalist and neo-nazi groups in the protests:

Q: Right-wing parties and fascist groups play a role in the protests. How important are they actually? Do they get much support? How do other protesters relate to them?

A: Far right party Svoboda is the most organized of the three large political forces trying to control the protest. They are the only party which has real active cells in various regions, actual activist base. So, as the most organized and the most ideological of the three, they are gaining the most. Apart from Svoboda, there is an umbrella coalition of neo-nazi militant groups. It is called Right Sector. They were formed in the beginning of the protests, and by now they’ve succeeded to gain enormous prominence and conquer sympathies from apolitical and liberal people. They are mostly famous by their demonstrative militancy and aggression, and the public doesn’t see anything wrong with these cute young patriots. Lately, the same pattern repeats in other regions, where neo-nazi football hooligans turned out to be the main assault force fighting the police and pro-government thugs.

The fascist hegemony was indisputable until January 19th, when the protests were joined by lots of other people – random apolitical citizens, liberals and even the left. That happened because the agenda of the protests shifted to repealing the “dictatorship laws” passed on January 16. Since then they had to step back a bit but nevertheless it’s obvious that in the long run these protests will enormously benefit the far right, whoever wins. In the case of the victory of the opposition, they will surely get themselves the police forces, special services etc. If Yanukovych wins, this means that half of the country will become firm supporters of the far-right as supposedly the only patriotic radical force able to confront the dictator.

Meanwhile, most left activists also joined the protests after January 19 because those laws will severely damage them as well. They found their niche in infrastructural activities, such as vigils in emergency hospitals: they stay there in order to prevent police and thugs kidnap the wounded. Other area of left activity is the above mentioned attempt at igniting the political strike.

Read the entire interview here.

DC has no May Day.

Cartoon by Mike Flugennock

Or, why the Institute for Policy Studies can eat shit.

I’ve often groused about how the activist millieu in DC is domesticated, low key and dead. Every event inevitably follows this formula: BORING SPEECH followed by THREE WORD CHANT, with ANNOYINGLY SERPENTINE MARCH that passes by OUTSIDE BORING OFFICE BUILDING, OUTSIDE BORING OFFICE BUILDING, OUTSIDE BORING OFFICE BUILDING, OUTSIDE BORING OFFICE BUILDING, winding up OUTSIDE BORING OFFICE BUILDING, with BORING SPEECH, THREE WORD CHANT, THREE WORD CHANT and BORING SPEECH. Sometimes, BORING SPEECH is interspersed with BORING FOLK MUSIC.

It’s almost as if all of these events are planned by the same central committee. We’ve long been frustrated and irritated by the presence of 501c(3) non-profit groups– they latch on to every movement and suck the life out of it. Suddenly, every event –no matter how grass-roots its origins– is handled like a goddamned rock concert, with backstage passes and VERY BUSY STAFFERS who are VERY IMPORTANT AND CANT TALK WITH YOU RIGHT NOW WOULD YOU KINDLY STEP AWAY FROM THE SPEAKERS. You have to butter these little shits up, too, or else they’ll do everything in their power to keep you from taking pictures or interviewing people.

Politics.

So it comes to pass that every activist event ends up following the same fucking script, with people on the street becoming so accustomed to the routine that they block it all out. The people of DC have acquired ninja-like prowess in dodging and brushing off bright, shiny-faced youth with pamphlets, and shitty, squawking bullhorns just blend into the white noise of the city. I know, you’re getting less than minimum wage to hand out fliers for an hour or two and it looks good on your curriculum vitae when you apply to another 501(c)3, but the people who told you to do this have no connection with the worker you’re slowing down who needs to catch the subway or else she’ll lose her minimum wage job.

This is why no one who lives in DC gives two shits about activism anymore, and why no one bothers to start anything. You’d think DC would be alive with political discourse on every corner, but it’s not. Everything has been domesticated. Tamed. Broken. Every movement, no matter what it is, will inevitably be co-opted by a large, well-funded nonprofit who will then move its own people into leadership positions in the original, grass-roots group. Or– as with the case of Occupy DC, where there is no leadership position– the nonprofits will create leadership positions with their own people already in the position; namely, the Institute for Policy Studies’ involvement with Occupy DC. We were looking up info about tomorrow’s May Day event at Malcolm X park, and saw this press release. “That’s odd”, we thought. “Occupy is just supposed to DO THINGS, not have press agents and people who live in very expensive apartments in Alexandria.”

“Who ARE these people?” “Hmm… they work for something… Institute for Policy Studies?” “INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES?! A FUCKING NON-PROF?!” “Yeah, fuck that shit, I’m not wasting my time on that crap.”

What DOES MayDay DC have planned, anyway? A carnival? A family friendly outing of happy, puffy, safe pablum that completely undercuts the serious nature of the entire goddamned 99% message? The right wing and corporatists are waging a very literal war on working people, dissidents and anyone who doesn’t fit into their narrow “God-Money-Empire” worldview, and the best way to demonstrate this is by having nonprofit staffers dress up in CLOWN COSTUMES for a goddamned PARADE?

The common line of apologist bullshit from non-profits is that without the power of a nonprofit, they wouldn’t be able to pull in notable speakers or professional sound systems– which is probably they’ve had their sights set on Occupy since it first appeared. Think about it– a legitimately grass-roots movement that doesn’t want or need your fucking Genelec monitors that you can’t mix properly, and where speakers like Slavoj Zizek spent their own money to travel to and attend. Hell, DC may actually by a perfect example where right wing media may have had its baseless propaganda finally hit a mark: a rich, well-funded group of flatulent, old “establishment leftists” really have taken over the activist scene in DC.

The major difference between what Institute for Policy Studies does and what Americans for Prosperity does is AFP has the backing of the Koch brothers’ billions, and IPS only has donations from a few well-off people from left-of-center. Either way, both of these abominations are the very definition of astro-turf political movements. Nothing of any journalistic importance will happen at Malcolm X park today, and I’m certainly not going to risk my brand new camera and lenses to cover a fucking astro-turf event that’s already being photographed by talentless hacks working for a fucking non-profit. Fuck that shit.

Merry Lulzxmas from Antisec!

On December 10th, Anonymous posted this video on youtube:

Recapping the entire year of epic hacks and promising an epic “Lulzxmas,” the video implied a massive hack was forthcoming. Naturally, Anonymous and Antisec delivered– with the thorough wrecking of the defense think tank Stratfor.

Stratfor is a “global intelligence company” that has been referred to by Barrons as the “shadow CIA” and routinely advises top scions of the defense, extractive and banking industries. As key shapers of government policy, they particularly had the ear of the administration of George W. Bush. Despite this supposed expertise, they still fell to the cannons of the Lulzboat.

You can see the defacement in its live form here (for now, anyway– who knows when they’ll regain control of their servers) but it has been preserved forever here: http://zone-h.org/mirror/id/16416728

Here’s Anonymous’ statement directly from the defaced front page of Stratfor:

OH STRATFOR. IF YOU ONLY KNEW WHAT ALL IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN.
‘BUT WAIT’, YOU ASK. ‘IS THIS IT?’ 0H N0, WE GOT MORE IN STORE…
BUT FOR NOW, SOME INSPIRING WORDS OF WISDOM FROM IT MANAGER FRANK GINAC:

“You do realize how preposterous it is to suggest that stratfor simply
shutdown completely for 2 days, right? The plan that you’ve attached paints a
gloom and doom picture claiming no chance that such a move will succeed. Does
that really seem a rationale conclusion?”

We couldn’t let the above quote pass without this similar quote:

YOU DONT EVEN KNOW THE EXTENT OF THE GLOOM AND DOOM WE HAVE PLANNED, FRANK

“Attended the TakeDownCon security conference. Focus of the conference was on
wireless and mobile security. No vendors pushing product or service at this
conference. Instead, great presentations by renowned white hat hackers (good
hackers) and security experts. Bottom line is that no mobile platform is
secure, including the Blackberry, but there are best practices that minimize
the risk of their use within the enterprise. We will be incorporating these
best practices in our operation over the coming months.”

INCORPORATING PRACTICES FROM “GOOD WHITE HAT HACKERS”? HOW’D THAT WORK OUT?

“It blew my mind to discover that our email server backups are being stored on
the same physical server. I’m affectionately referring to these little
discoveries as ‘Mooney turds’.”

SO SAD WE RM’D YOUR MAIL SERVER AND ALL BACKUPS, FRANK

“Most if not all of us use professional and social networking sites like
LinkedIn and Facebook. All offer levels of privacy ranging from wide open
where everyone can see your profile, activities, and posts to closed allowing
only your immediate connections (or friends) access. As a private intelligence
company we must all take extra care to protect our personal information from
those who would use that information to exploit us personally or
professionally. Although we don’t have hard and fast rules on how to set your
privacy settings nor do we restrict use of such sites, I suggest that you
temper your need to share with prudence and consider the business that we are
in. It’s also important to check your privacy settings regularly to ensure
that the sites you use haven’t changed the meaning or scope of privacy
settings — we’ve all heard or read the news regarding this practice at
Facebook. I suggest that you never include any information in your profile —
regardless of privacy setting — that could be used to compromise your
identity. Specifically, never include: your birth date, your exact street
address (although this information can usually be found on the web quite
easily), your cell phone number, SSN or other government issued ID number
(that should be obvious), or any other information that someone could use to
compromise your identity if your account were compromised.”

EVEN WITH ALL THE BEST SECURITY PRACTICES LEARNED FROM THE “RENOWNED WHITE
HAT HACKERS” WE STILL MANAGED TO STEAL ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION. UMAD?

For the uninitiated, “rm -rf” is a command line for unix systems that forces the deletion of all data in a given directory. From this, we can discern that Anonymous deleted… well… everything. A defense contractor should, after all, be quite familiar with a “scorched earth policy,” don’t you think?

Merry Lulzxmas!