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Tactical Briefing #7

Things are heating up, the Carnivalesque Rebellion and Buy Nothing Day are only a couple weeks away!

kevin
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09 Nov 2010
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2 comments

Tactical Briefing

Carnivalesque Rebellion Nov. 22–28: A sudden unexpected moment of truth, a mass reversal of perspective, a global mindshift – from which the corporate/consumerist forces never fully recover.

Tactical Briefing:

Our rebellion against a future that does not compute is only two weeks away. Things are heating up. The recent protests in Greece, Toronto, Spain and France all started off full of gusto, but in the end yielded little. Activists around the world take note: massive 1960s style protests now only reinforce the existing order – without these spectacles of resistance, capitalism would lose its dynamic spark.

So this November let’s try a new tactical beginning: A week of myriad little local actions flaring up spontaneously all over the world. We attack capitalism – not at officially sanctioned protests – but like a swarm of bees attacking a wounded beast: with a billion incessant stings. Day after day, week after week, we keep escalating our actions until the cost of doing business as usual becomes impossible to bear … and the bloodied beast finally falls to its knees.

Organize a local action at MeetUp.com/Buy-Nothing-Day and get resources for the week at Adbusters.org/bnd.

Inspiration:

With any genuine act of rebellion, it is normal to feel pangs of anxiety and a few butterflies in the belly. Instead of suppressing these emotions, cherish and amplify them. They are nothing but the healthy indication that you are finally living. And when you are most afraid, remind yourself that every great revolution has been sparked by those who felt trepidation moments before victory. So, do not shy away; prepare yourself for the necessity of action by meditating on the following sage words:

“Take flight each day! At least for a moment, however brief, as long as it is intense. Every day a ‘spiritual exercise,’ alone or in the company of a man who also wishes to better himself … Leave ordinary time behind. Make an effort to rid yourself of your own passions … Become eternal by surpassing yourself. This inner effort is necessary, this ambition, just. Many are those who are entirely absorbed in militant politics, in the preparation for the social revolution. Rare, very rare, are those who, in order to prepare for the revolution, wish to become worthy of it.” —Georges Friedmann

Action: Announce the Rebellion to the World!

From now till the Carnival begins let’s plaster the planet with our call for insurrection. Grab a sign from Adbusters.org/bnd and nail up a dozen on your street, campus, everywhere …

Adbusters #93: The Big Ideas of 2011

The third issue in our I, REVOLUTION series will hit the newsstands worldwide in ten days. Subscribe online or call 1.800.663.1243

Meme War in Canada

Check out the debate we’re having with the Canadian Jewish Congress and Shoppers Drug Mart for pulling 3,500 copies of our magazine off their shelves – Hate Speech vs Free Speech.

Did you miss TACTICAL BRIEFING #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6? Sign up today to make sure you don’t miss a single Tactical Briefing

What is the Carnivalesque Rebellion?

A sudden unexpected moment of truth, a mass reversal of perspective, a global mindshift …

adbusters
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08 Nov 2010
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9 comments

The Carnivalesque Rebellion is about to begin. From November 22nd to the 28th, culture jammers of all kinds – from artists to churchgoers, anarchists to carpenters – will disregard the illegitimate laws of consumer society. For seven nights, they will honor instead the dictates of their hearts and the demands of their conscience. Overwhelmed by a myriad of insurrections and unexpected acts of resistance, consumer capitalism will grind to a halt.

With little time remaining before these events, what is needed now is not a treatise on the injustice of consumerism. It is true that 36 million humans starve to death each year, that there is an island of plastic the size of Texas floating in the ocean, and that one in four Americans have a mental illness. But these facts roll across our consciousness; they do not impel us to remake society. Whether we have become desensitized to the severity of our plight or our minds simply cannot fathom the direness of our situation, the fact remains that today what we need is the opposite of information.

The success of our insurrection will not depend on quantity of the crowd nor extent of the media coverage. In some cities the rebellion may be invisible and in others its impact downplayed. None of that matters. The Carnivalesque Rebellion will be victorious when we stop waiting for the majority, the mainstream, or the consumer class to give us permission to rebel. The revolution against consumerism will come when we trust our intuition and find within ourselves the permission to act.

The Carnivalesque Rebellion is, above all else, a chance to rise above cynicism, skepticism, and ironic detachment. It is an invitation to don the prankster’s mask, to regain the sense of magical possibility, and to finally start living.

Meet up with fellow activists and download posters and campaign materials at www.adbusters.org/bnd.

Hate Speech or Free Speech?

Why is Shoppers Drug Mart pulling 3,500 copies of Adbusters magazine off its shelves?

adbusters
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02 Nov 2010
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89 comments

freedom of speech

Nazi soldier burn blocks of houses in the Warsaw Ghetto to flush out Jewish resistance fighters. Photo by National Archives and Records Administration, College Park Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish a burning medical warehouse ignited by Israeli bombs in Gaza. AP Photos/Xinhua

Here is the story of why Adbusters has been blacklisted:

A walled off ghetto, an occupying military that controls the entry of food and daily necessities, desperate attempts by hungry civilians to smuggle commodities through tunnels, and punitive collective punishment against all those who resist … there are never-to-be-forgotten differences, of course, but also some striking similarities between the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II and the open air prison of Gaza in Israeli-occupied Palestine today. And yet the Canadian Jewish Congress is accusing Adbusters of anti-Semitism for making this historical comparison, and it has successfully lobbied one of Canada’s biggest pharmacy chains to remove Adbusters magazine from its shelves.

Now there’s a meme war brewing in one of Canada’s national newspapers:

Canadian Jewish Congress attacks Adbusters on October 22
Adbusters fights back on November 2

As any pro-peace activist knows, the pro-Israel lobby has a sordid history of using the charge of anti-Semitism to silence criticism of Israeli policies. Even President Carter was smeared because he dared speak of the “abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine’s citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank”.

But the use of cluster bombs on civilians in Lebanon in the closing days of the last Israeli incursion there, the wholesale deaths of noncombatants in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, the extrajudicial assassination in Dubai last January, the killing of protesters aboard the Mavi Marmara this summer, the ongoing construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the hate speech of Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, have changed the way the world now looks at Israel. This is fast morphing into a meme war that the Israeli PR machine can no longer win and this more than anything may finally bring Israel to the peace negotiation table in good faith.

Check out the Canadian Journalism Project’s article on this issue: Adbusters, ghettoes and Shoppers: Anti-semitism or free speech?

If you think that publishing side-by-side images of the Gaza and Warsaw ghettos is a valid expression of free speech, send an email to Shoppers Drug Mart’s CEO Jürgen Schreiber – jschreiber@shoppersdrugmart.ca and investorrelations@shoppersdrugmart.ca – and tell him that you are boycotting his store until Adbusters is back on the shelves. Be polite but clear. Then send a note to the Canadian Jewish Congress – www.cjc.ca/about-cjc/staff/ – reminding them that in a free country we debate rather than censor.

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