The Free

Fanfare for Anarchism: A Home for the Homeless

“Life itself is anarchist, which explains why anarchistic forms of sociality surface again and again, throughout history, even in the teeth of the most oppressive social conditions imaginable”.

by Darren Allen The Acorn 95 at Nevermore via thefreeomline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-FWT

Occasionally you hear people complain about being ‘politically homeless’. What they tend to mean is either that there is no longer a traditional left-wing, which sought to manage people and nature in the name of a global ‘society’, or that there is no longer a traditional right-wing, which sought to subjugate people and nature in the name of a national ‘tradition’.

The reason they’ve departed from political life is that in our neoliberal, postmodern, online unworld, society no longer exists, the Western working class has been either weakened or subsumed into the [decaying] middle-class and nations are now irrelevant, as are institutions, so there is no place left for either the ideology of the traditional management class (socialism) or for the traditional owner class (capitalism), and this has left those who still adhere to them, ‘homeless’.

While such people remain blind to the true nature of the postmodern condition — a consequence of technocratic capitalism and technocratic socialism — they will be unable to even consider the only home that can ever welcome them; Anarchism…

I say ‘perennial’ because, as I have argued in an introductory article, nature is anarchist, friendship is anarchist, work is anarchist (when the boss is absent), romantic love is anarchist, scientific endeavour is anarchist, all primal (pre-agricultural, pre-conquest) societies were anarchist and artistic creation is anarchist. Life itself is anarchist, which explains why anarchistic forms of sociality surface again and again, throughout history, even in the teeth of the most oppressive social conditions imaginable. Anarchism springs up in prisons, in shanty towns, in peasant communes and even occasionally, and most amazingly, in the modern workplace. Anarchism sprouts through the cracks of the system as weeds do between its paving stones, because it represents the root and spring of our social nature.

You would think then that anarchism would be a popular way of life today. You would think that a movement which in essence includes all great artists and scientists [1] would be extremely attractive. You’d think that a genuine alternative to the system-friendly managerialism of the left and the system-friendly capitalism of the right would be an easy pitch. You’d think that an approach to politics which, like the majority of populations everywhere, pushes leftwards economically (redistributing wealth) and rightwards socially (enforcing organic cultural borders), would find a great deal of popular support. You’d think! But I’m afraid you’d be wrong, for two basic reasons.

Firstly, most people do not want the spiritual and intellectual freedom that anarchism represents. It terrifies them. They want to avoid the crushing oppression of worldly life, but they cling to the institutions, the money, the capital, the comfort, the routine, the technology and the mindless work that are all preconditions of that life.

You can download a PDF of this publication from here

Ukraine War Day #1077: Somebody is blowing up Recruitment Centers

Dear Readers: In recent days Ukraine has seen an interesting phenomenon: All over the country people are blowing up the so-called “recruitment centers”.

Posted on February 4, 2025 by yalensis via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-FWg

Ukraine the acronym is ТЦК which stands for Територіальний центр комплектування та соціальної підтримки (Territorial Center for Recruitment and Social Support).
Ukraine War Day #1077: Somebody is blowing up Recruitment Centers

**A policeman and his dog not far from the site of an explosion in Rivne**. [Don’t click on it, it’s just a static screenshot from a video.]

Despite the benign name, these are, basically, the draft centers where Ukrainian men are dragged, against their will, to serve in the army.

I have this piece from the Ukrainian site New Voice nv.ua to describe what is happening.

On February 1 in the city of Rivne (Western Ukraine), there was an explosion at the ТЦК. One man died, 6 were wounded.

On February 2 in the city of Pavlograd (Dnepropetrovk Oblast), there was an explosion outside the building of the ТЦК. One man was wounded, he was said to be a soldier.

On February 1 in the town of Piryatin (Poltava Oblast), a man wearing a gray balaclava and “pixellated” (greenish camo) pants approached a soldier of the Poltava ТЦК waving a hunting rifle and demanding that he hand over his weapon.

This occurred at the exact time when a group of draftees were being escorted to the 199th training center. When the soldier refused to hand over his rifle, the unknown man shot him dead from a distance of 2-3 meters.

Having killed the soldier, the unknown man helped himself to the soldier’s automatic rifle and then fled, along with one of the men who was being drafted. [In other words, the killer basically was there to rescue one of the draftees.]

In an update to the Piryatin story: The shooter and the draftee he rescued were both apprehended on that very same day. Evgeny Rogachov, who is Chief of Police in Poltava announced that they had apprehended the duo just a few hours after the shooting.

He doesn’t give out his names but says that the shooter was a native of Poltava, born in 1984, and the man he took from the ТЦК is also a Poltava native, born in 1988.

[yalensis: what do you want to bet the two men are brothers or cousins?]

These incidents listed are just the tip of the iceberg, there are other such incidents of resistance, either spontaneous or otherwise, happening all over Ukraine.

Also in Russia there have been a series of attacks on recruitment centers, often by anti/war activists, and some brave anarchists have been jailed under accusations of taking part.

The Ukrainians, of course, blame Russia, claiming that the FSB and GRU are organizing these acts of resistance and sabotage. Andrei Kovalenko, who heads Ukraine’s “Center for Countering Russian Disinformation” is convinced that the Russians are behind it.

He also blames the Russians for the media campaign against mobilization, for example all the videos posted online showing men being dragged into draft centers against their will. Bloggers, bots, and social media are all being directed in this endeavor by the Russian GRU, according to 100% State media under Martial Law..

By now there is absolute horrific chaos as Ukraine has run out of volunteers and, as the frontline of the war collapses, “recruits”, often captured in the street” are sent to near certain death as lowly foot soldiers with little or no training. Any man who could bribe their way out, hide or flee the country has long since disappeared and foreign mercenaries are difficult to hire at any price.

Free Louna! News on the case of Louna, an anarchist trans woman imprisoned in the context of the fight against the A69

Free Louna! News on the case of Louna, an anarchist trans woman imprisoned in the context of the fight against the A69

03/2/2025 by soutienlouna via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-FVm

For over 3 months now, Louna, an anarchist trans woman fighting against the A69, has been held in pretrial detention in the Tarbes men’s remand center, in solitary confinement.

Despite this confinement that is starting to last and the conditions of solitary confinement, she remains in good spirits, and we are still angry at knowing that she is locked up.

Louna is accused of setting fire to a construction machine intended for the construction of the A69, a highway project that is both useless and deadly, between Castres and Toulouse, French State.

Requests for release, including under judicial supervision or electronic bracelet, have been refused to date.

Here we return to the reasons for her incarceration, with the elements that we collected following the other GAVs and during a public hearing, or with what we interpret from them, but also on the means to support her.

The next important deadline for Louna’s release arrives in mid-February: the judge of liberties and detention will have to decide whether or not to renew her pretrial detention. Let’s widely disseminate the slogan “Free Louna”, demand her release and let the jails, repression, and state transphobia die!
Elements of the investigation

On the night of May 4 to 5, 2024, a construction machine was set on fire not far from the A69.

According to investigators, CCTV footage on site shows two people setting fire to an excavator, then one of them being the victim of a backfire.

However, that same night, a person was admitted to the emergency room in one of the hospitals closest to the scene of the fire, with injuries that could be compatible with the accident filmed.

This is Louna, who was actually hospitalized that night.

According to the hospital’s video surveillance images, three people appeared to be accompanying her. Investigators spotted the car in which Louna allegedly arrived with these three people, they noted its license plate and therefore the identity of its owner.

In addition, Louna indicated a relative’s phone number on an emergency form, a number that the cops seem to have assigned to one of the escorts.

Cops also came to seize her clothes during her hospitalization, and found DNA on a pair of shorts as well as on a covid mask contained in a pocket. This DNA was attributed to one of the people suspected of having accompanied Louna to the hospital.

During their visit, the cops also took photos of the escorts, of better quality than the CCTV images because they were taken with a smartphone.

This was probably to try to do facial recognition, for example by comparing them with the TAJ¹ photos or the photos of A69 activists from their incessant profiling.

After two days in hospital, Louna decided to leave on her own.

Based on this evidence, four people were arrested in mid-October: Louna, two people suspected of being among the escorts, and the owner of the car.

The police custody lasted up to 94 hours, and the interrogations continued.

The investigators also took advantage of this police custody to recover Louna’s DNA from a cup she had used, in addition to having probably already picked it up on her clothes at the hospital.

They state that this same DNA was found on a covid mask left at the scene of the fire.

Following this, Louna was indicted as part of this investigation and the three other people were released.

The charges are the destruction of an excavator by an explosive substance and participation in a criminal conspiracy with a view to destruction by dangerous means.

In mid-November, investigators carried out a new search and arrest at the home of an activist, still looking for at least one of the hospital escorts.

They searched his apartment for a watering can, because the hospital’s video surveillance allegedly shows a person getting out of the car with a watering can (hide your watering cans haha).

Apparently, the cops targeted this person using facial recognition, because she was known to the police for her activism in the green circles of her city. She too was released without further action to date.

Among the other techniques that the cops said they used or that are assumed to have been used, they allegedly tapped one or more of the suspects for calls and text messages in clear text and tracked the movements of one or more people by tracking their cell phones.