Autumn Conscription ---- The autumn conscription for military service
began in Russia on October 1. It usually lasts until December 31. Butthe exact dates are determined annually by the President of the Russian
Federation by a special order issued on the eve of the start of the
conscription. Citizens of the Russian Federation from 18 to 30 years old
are called up for military service. Those who want details can read the
decree at the link. ---- Army representatives assure that conscripts
will not be sent to the front, but, firstly, they have already been
sent, secondly, conscripts are being persuaded by all means to sign a
contract, thirdly, the front has a tendency to suddenly appear where it
is least expected, as happened, for example, in the Kursk region. Well,
and in general it is no secret that the army is legalized slavery and
cruel patriarchal relations, in which, in the absence of women, men show
their aggression and dominance towards other men who have a lower status
in the army hierarchy, and some even without a war have a chance to
return home in a closed coffin.
What can we say when the country is at war. The German poet and
anarchist Erich Mühsam wrote in his pamphlet "Murder" during the First
World War:
"Think about the conquest of cities, how soldiers, for weeks away from
skirts, with crazed nerves pounce on other people's women. Think about
the inner savagery of everyone who, in constant fear for their lives,
daily observes death and corpses, in whom predatory instincts awaken
from this, and who, in addition, is daily taught that killing people is
bravery. And think about the battles themselves in modern wars! Where is
there any more personal courage there? "
Yes, now with the innovation of automatic receipt of summonses through
public services, it has become more difficult to resist conscription by
simply not opening the door. But there are options. Contact resources
such as "Go to the forest", do not go to the slaughter, do not become a
murderer or a corpse. As for friends and relatives, be very careful when
talking to them about such possibilities. Unfortunately, there are cases
of denunciations of relatives((.
You will soon be able to download Mühsam's pamphlet in the form of a
brochure on our anti-war agitation page. The author was killed by the
Nazis in 1934 after brutal torture and abuse that did not break his spirit.
Empathy and xenophobia
While the war in Europe continues, the war in Western Asia continues. On
October 1, Iran launched a massive missile attack on Israel. An unnamed
Iranian official told Reuters that the order to launch missiles at
Israel was given personally by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The map of
incoming missiles in Israel was all red with dots indicating the targets
and possible impact sites of these missiles. In the end, Israel's
missile defense worked well. But there were casualties. In the city of
Jericho on the West Bank, an Iranian missile killed a Palestinian worker
from the Gaza Strip - not an Israeli citizen.
Most likely, The attack was a response to Israel's killings of
Hezbollah, Hamas and senior officers of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps. Hezbollah was created during the Lebanese civil war by
several radical Muslim clerics with financial support from Iran. Their
goal was to create a religious state in Lebanon modeled on the Iranian
one and to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Over the past week,
Israel has been launching massive missile strikes on Lebanon, which,
according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, have killed about 2,000 people.
Before that, Hezbollah had been shelling Israeli cities and towns on the
border with Lebanon for a year. Several dozen people were killed in
these attacks, and about 70,000 people fled their homes due to the shelling.
It is difficult to calculate how many people have died from Israeli
attacks in the Gaza Strip in general, but the figure is over 40,000.
Meanwhile, October 7 marked exactly one year since the pogrom carried
out by the Palestinian group Hamas, in which more than a thousand people
died on the Israeli side, the vast majority of whom were civilians.
Hamas is still holding more than a hundred hostages, including children.
I have already raised this issue, and I am not too lazy to repeat it
again: the suffering of the civilian population is the suffering of the
civilian population, no matter what their nationality, religion or
territorial affiliation. And I had hoped that my non-anarchist friends,
who are outraged by the attempts of Middle Eastern refugees to get to
Europe, would be able to compare the situation after the encounter with
the harsh reality of war, when people of a similar culture, and
sometimes even their own friends, were forced to abandon everything or
be left with nothing, to save themselves in Europe. But this comparison
and understanding did not happen.
While sincerely helping Ukrainian refugees and being horrified by the
destruction and casualties among the civilian population, they remain
indignant at the same Kurds, Arabs and any other people whom they
consider to be simply lazy barbarians.
And now I am talking about opposition-minded citizens of Russia who want
to change it, but just try to explain to them about their imperial
thinking and racist prejudices that they drag into their "Beautiful
Russia of the Future", and they will immediately get offended and say
that you have Russophobia and in general you are like that Venetian
artist with a Russian passport who became famous in the liberal
environment for her accusations against the opposition. By the way, what
do they not like about these accusations? Well, what they don't like
about the accusations of the Venetian artist Katya Margolis is that they
are supposedly guilty of the fact that since Russians are born in their
place of birth, they are all imperialists, racists, and so on, and
nothing good can be expected from them. It is especially offensive to
hear this for oppositionists. Now, if we look at the reaction of the
majority of representatives of the liberal opposition to the destruction
in Gaza and the humanitarian catastrophe, it is either a vengeful joy
"serves them right" or a kind of ostentatious pragmatism "it's their own
fault, they chose Hamas themselves, and they are all terrorists or
families of terrorists there." And these are the people who demanded not
to consider all Russians as Putinists and generally thinking and acting
the same.
The host of the "Radical Mood" channel tried to understand the problem
that prevents empathy towards Palestinian women and Palestinians. I do
not have the opportunity to analyze this video in detail now, but I
would like to dwell on some points that I consider important. So, after
all, there should be verifiable fact-checking on such sensitive topics.
In this video, it is not always convincing. For example, the former CEO
of Al Jazeera tweeted that the IDF's accusations of raping women in
Shifa Hospital were fake (those who don't like the Israeli source can
click on the link to the tweet in Arabic). He rightly noted that the
suffering of Palestinians and the victims among them is enough to
justify indignation.
As for the accusation that pro-Palestinian content is allegedly blocked
and that it is not on the agenda of Western feminism, this is just not
true. Even liberal Western feminists often remain silent, but the left
mainstream is entirely devoted to Palestine. And here Western left
mainstream feminism just goes to the other extreme, and in the fight to
end the suffering of Palestinian women and children, it ignores the
women and children of Israel who suffered from the Hamas attack. Empathy
for everyone - so empathy for everyone. Unfortunately, intersectional
feminism is too busy counting privileges and loses women in the process.
And it's very good that the channel's host also expressed sympathy for
the victims of the October 7 pogrom.
The video begins with the words of writer and feminist Cynthia Enloe: "I
came to the conclusion that maintaining incuriousness and disinterest in
us serves foreign political interests. Incuriousness is dangerous in its
convenience, and it easily hides behind the subtle mask of pragmatism
and intellectual conservation: "We will never know the whole truth."
Sounds familiar, right? How many times have you been told "oh, I'm not
interested!" when you started talking about the problems of the Kurds?
Or "oh, it's all too complicated to understand," when you started
talking about the problems of Palestine and the Nakba. But you know,
humans are curious by nature. Look at little children, with what thirst
they learn about the world, until their curiosity is killed in a school
designed to whittle them down to identical blanks to make convenient
cogs for the state. So yes, I have hope that the curiosity given to us
by nature will migrate. And you can form your own opinion about the video.
And I also want to remind you of the importance of talking about
problems and arguing, if necessary, but precisely for the sake of
finding out that very "whole truth". And not to put cliches, like, if
you sympathize with Palestinian women, then you support the attack on
Jewish women, oh you fascist anti-Semite, and vice versa - if you
sympathize with the Jewish victims, then you support the Israeli
bombing, oh you fascist colonialist.
Relocation and corporation
Many emigrants fleeing political persecution or military conscription
ended up abroad, and most without any preparation or money. They found
themselves in the shoes of people whose lives they had no real idea
about before. In the shoes of refugees, illegals and foreigners looking
for work without knowing the language. For many, this is a shocking
experience, but one hopes that their affairs will improve and they will
be able to better know and understand those people about whom they had
previously had prejudices.
But among the new wave of emigration there are also relocators, who were
not affected by the problems of emigration with one backpack and vague
prospects. These are employees of companies that took them with all
their children, household members and belongings to a new place of work
abroad, providing them with the necessary documents, temporary housing,
and so on. First of all, these are, of course, IT specialists. I also
have such friends. So, on the one hand, I understand those who envy IT
specialists, on the other hand, I know how much people worked hard to
become in demand in this industry. But, of course, having already gotten
used to their salaries and opportunities, many of them committed the
so-called survivor's error. They decided that this was the norm. And
that there is nothing more wonderful than corporations that care about
them so much and in which it is so wonderful to work. The future belongs
to the free market and corporations. And anyone who does not fit into
this market is just lazy, and that is how it should be. He chose it
himself, well, yes...
One of my IT friends, when we discussed this idea of corporations, said
that all this wonderful life with insurance, big salaries, relocation
and other perks - until the first layoff, when the corporation will
simply throw you out, and do it very quickly.
Last week, this is exactly what happened. Well, not that it was the
first time, but many did not believe that it would happen to them. On
October 1, ABBYY fired all its developers with Russian passports, whom
it had previously relocated abroad. The dismissal happened completely
unexpectedly for the employees. They were called with the chat and
microphones turned off, that is, deprived of the opportunity to even ask
anything. There they were told about the dismissal and disconnected from
all access to further work. As the publication about big business Forbes
writes, "during the blocking of credentials, the team of the senior
cloud solutions engineer ... "put down" the production, since it could
not update the access keys without the Russian engineers who had been
fired earlier." Unexpected.
All those fired were offered different terms of parting with the
company. After all, in Europe, the strict model of layoffs in one day
just won't work. So some were even given the so-called "parachute" with
two months of paid vacation, and some almost nothing. Those fired cannot
publicly complain now. Since they urgently need to look for a new job,
and public revelations of the previous company can close all doors for
them. But one can imagine that here is a person whose residence permit
in the country, all the bureaucracy, income, family well-being depends
on work, losing all this support in half an hour.
I think that many Russians have been fired much more harshly, and we
know very well from our own skin what that very "grin of capitalism" is.
And now even those who were sure that this would never happen to them
have received a very painful bite from capitalism. Will this teach them
anything? Well, I still do not see adequate reflection from the
so-called "liberal" opposition. Social struggle is still despised by it
and even equated with fascism. But it was precisely thanks to the social
struggle of previous generations that it was not possible to simply take
and throw out the fired employees. Sometimes insight comes through
shock. Unfortunately, more often than not, shock comes alone.
Against sexual exploitation
War makes survivors vulnerable, often depriving them of housing and
income. October 5 is the International Day Against Prostitution. In the
175th issue of "Trends" I gave a link to materials from the resource
netovar.org. This time I suggest you familiarize yourself with the
materials of the Telegram channel of the "Safe House" foundation. The
foundation provides the necessary assistance to survivors of commercial
sexual exploitation in prostitution, conducts preventive and
informational activities.
Following the link, you can read the cards that dispel many myths about
prostitution. Here is one of the quotes: "When "vulnerable" people
choose hard, low-paid work that grossly violates their rights, or even
"choose" to sell their organ - society quite clearly condemns the
employer or buyer of the organ and considers this exploitation and a
crime. In the same way, any prostitution should be considered as
exploitation of the most vulnerable people."
Well, that's all for today! We remind you that in "Trends of Order and
Chaos" participants of Autonomous Action and other authors give
anarchist assessments of current events. Listen to us on YouTube,
SoundCloud and other platforms, visit our website avtonom.org, subscribe
to our social networks and e-mail newsletter.
The episode was prepared by Nina T.
https://avtonom.org/news/pod-maskoy-pragmatizma-trendy-poryadka-i-haosa-epizod-178
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