Behind the Bastards

I have a book coming out from AK Press.

It's a reissue of my anarchist utopian book, A Country of Ghosts.

If you like my very, I like writing war stories, but I specifically like writing war stories that are actually sad and how about how war is horrible.

And so A Country of Ghosts is such a book.

And this story will eventually, I'm excited to say, I just signed the contract for AK Press is going to put out a short story anthology of mine, which will include this story.

There's also Multi-species Cities, solar punk, urban futures.

one of the things that scott crow in his uh in Setting Sights which is a really good book on community self-defense does is set out that um a key aspect of community self-defense as you said is that you're like a member of the community and i think i guess the question i have is because guns are what they are and have the kind of cultural weight that they have it's you you people are always people who accept being armed as an aspect of their personality are always going to be kind of fighting having that dominate their personality and it wouldn't it it's clearly something that a lot of people have an issue with the thing that is important is to be a member of the community who happens to be armed as opposed to an armed activist whose whose role is being armed right like i i i mean do you agree with what i'm saying or kind of like i'm wondering how you think about it because this is something that i'm kind of going around in my head about as well because it's it's it's clearly where a lot of the problems happen right that the gun becomes central to the identity of the people who bring it which is something that happens to the cops yes and also the mentality of separating yourself from the community and not being part of the purpose of being there and so i'll defer to my my uh comrades here to go a little bit further with it but i would just say that there's a significant difference between armed community defense and having a intentional presence of armed community defense at an event or a protest and being a person who shows up with a gun those are two really different things and so i think that's the that's one of the benefits of being part of an organization that does this collectively with accountability with training with a known role in the community so that there is consistency among what we do and why we do it and a history of folks understanding that if we're present somewhere it's because we've been asked to be there and that what we're doing there is aligned with and approved of by the people who are organizing the event and then i'll i'll let somebody else who's more eloquent than i am uh answer that further if they feel like they can

I have read Lorenzo Vericini's Settler book on settler colonialism

the author of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and some other real

I think that's why people like Settlers by Jace Akai so much like I think the thesis wasn't great But there's so much incredible stuff in that book that like it works Anyway, the having a really wild thesis allows you to like really like get into some yeah so anyway, one of the things that Kennedy talks about in that book is that a crowd an open crowd as he describes it an open crowd is Must constantly be growing and the moment it stops growing it starts shrinking, right? Yeah like this I think that dynamic in terms of both movement and like a Momentary protest or riot right is like really real I can I can totally see that Yeah and I think one of the things that Particularly organizers are trained to do and like that that we learn to do especially in the low periods and we're like Organizing these little you know, you know These little crystallized groups of like hard cadre or whatever is that like you that like what we learn as organized is something that is defendable But once you start defending something you start losing it because we cannot Take on the state or the police in a head-on confrontation and This is this can be confusing because sometimes you can successfully defend for a few weeks Maybe even a few months you can defend a space sometimes But once people get really interested in the defending then they begin forming bureaucracies governments internal policing security forces Whatever it is They start becoming the like the the they start undermining the very thing that made it powerful Which was this sudden rapid growth this sudden like, you know, like like big explosion of power and self-recognition that comes in the beginning of movement and I think I Don't think there's a way to will That problem away like I don't think we can just like think our way out of it Like it's just a problem but I do think that like one thing that we could take from the experience of occupy and the experience of last decade is That like if you do, you know consider yourself someone who wants to participate in these kind of movements Which is probably why you're listening to this podcast right now Don't try and defend Like don't try and defend like some things will need to be defended sometimes obviously But like if your main thing is like the thing we should never defend something we've achieved so far We should never not be willing to destroy it in order to like build something bigger Right, like we should never no movement thing that we have be it an Occupy Park Be it an be it like a taken space defending that should never outweigh The possibility of expanding and if that's our strategic mindset obviously moment to moment You can't just be thinking that constantly. Yeah, but the strategic mindset is like what we have now is Is only good to the extent that it can turn into something more Rather than we have to defend what we have now if you can think that way I think it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities And I think it's what has worked over the last decade that I've seen is When people attack when people expand when people try to do try to do new stuff It doesn't always work and it doesn't always hold but that's but when that stuff stops happening The movement is doomed. I think I think I think that's a really good way to Wrap things up. I think that's a nice beautiful sentiment I kind of view this type of thing in more than just protests and you know in a very different facets of life I think you can always learn from past experiences from past struggles But if you try to perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely gonna fail Yeah, you can should always learn and move on but you should not be focused on any kind of replication Is there any of your books or writings? You'd want to plug before we wrap up here?

And then I have from 2011 the bus DIY guide to life that includes everything from like how to do worm composting to how to make your own makeup and like finance a house and that's like the magazine right

And there are some really great resources out there specifically um Wild Fermentation and the art of fermentation which are both by a guy named Sandra katz on how to ferment food without you you know you're using naturally occurring bacteria and fermentation as a means of preservation is possibly the oldest means of deliberate food storage that human beings have

Dr. Heinz Baumkotter was a notorious SS doctor at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin in addition to overseeing executions and selecting prisoners for the gas chamber. He conducted experiments with injections explosives and chemicals.

One such experiment saw prisoners strapped down and burned with phosphorus so that Baumkotter could test an experimental salve.

Another doctor's wife had a baby with shortened arms after her husband was told by Grunenthal that the medication would be perfectly safe if Taken during pregnancy later the woman pressed for a divorce accusing her doctor husband of having been too gullible in Munich

Mrs. H fell pregnant in October 1960 and her husband a general physician Asked a Grunenthal sales rep if he could safely give his wife contragand their response was boilerplate boilerplate contragand is totally non-dangerous and frequently prescribed especially during pregnancies in July 1961

Mrs. H gave birth to a severely malformed baby Her general practitioner husband believed contragand was to blame when he spoke with a prosecutor in 1963 He said he had thought he made his suspicions clear to a Grunenthal sales rep after the July 1961 birth But could not recall the reps name

Author Debbie Pearl, a minister whose books were sold by IBLP, wrote in Created to Be His Help Meat. Although wives should testify and pray that their husbands get 20 years in prison, they should also visit him there, be an encouragement to him, let him see the children three to four times a year.

Research for this episode was actually sparked by a graphic novel I found online called Joe vs. Alon School. It was written by a former student who goes by Joe Nobody.

I really recommend his story to everyone. It's a fascinating graphic novel, and it gives a lot of context on how the school had evolved by that point.

The electric sauce was gone by then, and safety gear in the ring was at least more common. But the whole experience was just as brutal.

It says it was self-published on Wikipedia, but I wonder what like if they went through like a distributor or something

Vulture called it completely batshit insane, the Phoenix New Times called it garbage and breathtakingly bad, hard to follow, who's speaking, fight scenes that were even more boring than the dialogue.

It's like what sorry, I have to take this one by one Sophie otherwise, we're not gonna get through any of it.

How does that pig blood feel asshole? Is it starting to course through your veins? Maybe even my god profit? Maybe oh my god off the profit.

I have a special delivery from you from the prophet. He laughs and then he does a deep stab into the Persian's throat killing him instantly. He drops to the ground on his way to meet Allah.

Hey, I've written a novel. It's called After the Revolution. You can find it as a podcast under After the Revolution and you can find it at atrbook.com as a free ePub.

If you like it, I am crowdfunding the sequel so that I can keep making my books free. That will be at After the Revolution, the sequel on GoFundMe.

That's After the Revolution, the sequel on GoFundMe.

Linna found him intriguing. I felt sympathy for this purposeful yet reserved young man and agreed to a rendezvous the next day in her memoirs.

She breathlessly described how Heidrick opened his heart to her over a series of long walks, a visit to the theater and a meal in a restaurant, and then asked her to marry him during their third evening together.

beyond the powerful physical attraction between them. Lena and Heidrich shared some key characteristics. Both were fixed on escaping their backgrounds and forging a different destiny for themselves. They were stubborn and extremely ambitious. Each had a cold calculating streak.

On 30th April 1931. He was dismissed from the Navy. Lena said that he was so shattered by the verdict that he had a total breakdown, locking himself in his room for days on end, smashing furniture and weeping uncontrollably.

Wait, THE Donald Ferris?' Reggie asked. '"The guy who made Visions of Blood?

'Both, actually,' Reggie replied.

The history of mankind is a history of more or less blind endeavors to conceive a common purpose in relation to which all men may live happily and to create and develop a common stock of knowledge which may serve and illuminate that purpose.

I believed literally that I would go to hell if I didn't go to church on Sundays.

I became a militant atheist almost overnight.

Many studies show that charters enroll a disproportionately small share of students who are English language learners or who have disabilities as compared with their home district. A survey of expulsion rates in the District of Columbia found that the charters which enroll nearly half of the student population of the district expel large numbers of children. The charter's expulsion rate is 72 times the expulsion rate in public schools.