Morning Comrades! Very happy to announce the start of the Fall / Winter season for Black Lodges with this first drop. As with all brandalism pieces all profits are being directly donated to Doctors Without Borders, and seeing that I have never done this North Face Rip in red, here’s your chance! Every order is getting a free A4 poster thrown in for good measure of the Marx piece I shared with you on Wednesday.
In other related Black Lodges news, I am tie dying all those Riot T-Shirts today and the entire drop should be shipped over the weekend. For those of you that ordered anything, keep an eye out for the automated shipping emails that come directly from the online store. As always, a heartfelt thank you for your patience and support in these matters.
So, Texas. Rather, the Texan government and irrespective of the usual insanity that we hear from that “club”, they really went for it this time. Not that it needs to be put on record but just to be clear, I fully support a women’s right to choose and making her choices fully acceptable, available without fear and judgement and for free is the bare fucking minimum of what I consider a civil, logical society. Just so that we are clear on the subject and the baseline.
If I understand it all correctly, and feel free to correct me if I get something wrong here, a new law went into effect in Texas that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. That's well before many women even know they are pregnant. If not most.
The law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who helps a woman obtain an abortion — including those who give a woman a ride to a clinic or provide financial assistance to obtain an abortion. Private citizens who bring these suits don't need to show any connection to those they are suing.
The law makes no exceptions for cases involving rape or incest.
The foreigner that grew up in Germany whose history of denunciation still sends violent shivers down my back literally got goose bumps after finding out about this whole “put a bounty on women “ bullshit. Criminalizing abortions is as caveman as it gets but this extra level of dystopian hell is beyond understanding. I am not going to waste anyones time explaining high school ethics in regards to this issue but rather try and connect the dots behind who is responsible for this, as they all have names and address and potentially offer some help in regards to short terms tactics here. As with everything in the US and the rest of the “West”, we have to follow the money to find out who is pushing the US and ultimatively the rest of the West towards a radical Christian Capitalist Fascist Kleptocracy. Make no mistake, this has been the goal since the mid 30s, one that took shape under Reagan and Thatcher, to a certain degree Mitterand and Kohl here in Europe by the late 70s and early 80s. Call it Neo-Liberalism, Globalization, I call it hell, whatever suits your needs.
A name that regularly comes up when digging a little deeper is the Federalist Society. Sounds harmless enough like the countless other" “think tanks” across the west, when they really aren’t. Long story short, the Federalist Society and particularly their subsidiary, The Judicial Crisis Network, as well as the Donor Trust are fronts created to not only obscure who is funding them but with the clear aim to shape and control the judiciary in the US - and they have and are - you all remember that pathetic excuse of a man Brett Kavanaugh being elected to the US Supreme Court - made possible by the Donor Trust / Judicial Crisis Network / Federalist Society. Thanks to invaluable research by a number of investigative journalists we now know that the donors behind this massive push to an anti-regulatory, anti-union, pseudo “free market” that utilize religion and social issues to obscure their plundering are the familiar faces of the Koch Brothers, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Mercers for example. How do we know that these groups have a big agenda before the courts? We know that because they also fund a fleet of front groups that file so-called amicus briefs before courts signaling what results the big donors want, and they use the Federalist Society to stock the judiciary with judges who will rule their way. If this all sounds too outlandish, by all means read this report from the office of Sheldon Whitehouse, himself a Senator from Rhode Island.
Essentially, this is the reality I wrote about a few days - quite literally the 1% shaping realities through “law”, powerful, vocal minorities - and I don’t have the space to discuss the philosophical nature of law and morality here - ok, laws are unmoral in nature and predominately should be broken - and in this case, as in centuries beforehand, utilizing “religion” as a pretext to divide and conquer. That’s the very short version analysis.
Analysis without action, though, is meaningless, or as Marx so aptly said it: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
Whilst it is important to understand who is doing what to you, let’s face the fact, that alone will not help the thousands of women now in acute danger from fragile, insecure, little men out to play patriarch. I don’t have a list of local resources at hand that actively will help those in need, but I am sure that these will be shared far and wide over on social media these next coming days. Watch out for those, and I will share them as I come across them. In addition to that, inquire locally with existing organizations that have LOCAL and STATE experience how you can help. Considering the trigger happy fragile male reality of Texas particularly it’s important to support those with experience. Speak and seek out local and state anarchist orgs, and leftist org will do, women houses and organizations and ASK what they need.
Secondly, in regards to fighting back - well, I might have to keep that offline for now. I have some ideas and comrades in Texas, let’s see what they say. At this time, the line in the sand has been drawn and you need to know what side you are on. A social media post, an essay on substack etc will no longer be enough.
Again, for the record: Fuck All This. Fuck the last remaining throes of the capitalist patriarchy, fuck the rule of 1% and the hell they unleash on the world for another private jet. BURN. IT. ALL. DOWN.
Ok, just to clear the air for a moment before we get into the regular content, here is a video from Turnstile whose new record Glow On might as well be one of the best things to happen this year. I slept on this band for too long and now I am fan and a half.
Time to end this week with the usual and always brilliant contributions from both Ana and Tatjana respectively.
Labneh is a type of home made cream cheese, albeit a lot more creamy and frankly, tastier. Best thing about it: it’s super easy to make and honestly even better than hummus.
Ingredients:
500g of good hearty yoghurt, salt, some herbs such as Zaatar, Rosmary, pickled Lemons, Sumach and or Parsley, ideally all of these - some cucumbers and a load of good olive oil!
Step 1
Salt the yoghurt, wrap in a cloth, weigh it down a little and put in the fridge over night. You will end up with super nice creamy cheese.
Step 2
Add the olive oil ( amount to your liking ) with all the herbs, swirl around a little and that’s it. Best damn dip, bread spread whatever you want this for there is. The End.
If you've ever spend time in or around Mexico, chances are you've had the drink we're doing this week: the MICHELADA. If you haven't, well, it's a delicious beer cocktail and I can only recommend you try it. It's simple yet tasty as fuck.
Depending on who you ask, there's a few of the ingredients or measurements that will differ slightly. There's not a clearly defined origin on this drink really. The most popular one goes that a guy named Michel Ésper drank his beer with ice, lime and salt in a specific glass called 'chabela'. After a while other people also wanted try this concoction and started referring to it as 'Michel's lemonade', which with time became the 'Michelada'.
WHAT YOU NEED:
Tomato juice, Fresh lime juice, Salt/chili salt, Fish sauce, a good easy-drinking pilsner/lager style beer - Ice, Highball glass, Jigger and a Bar spoon (tea spoon will do here)
GARNISH:
- Find your chili-salt and pour some out on a napkin. I used gochugaru-salt for this.
- Take a lime boat and touch the glass with it in 1-3 upwards strokes, where you want the garnish to sit. Don't press the lime against the glass too hard or with your hand. Plenty of juice will go on the glass without any force.
- Wipe away any stray lines of lime juice running down the glass with a napkin.
- Gently press the side with lime juice on into the chili-salt with small up-and-down motions until you're satisfied with the look.
- Clean up and tighten your lines with the corner of a napkin.
HOW TO DO IT:
If you've done the garnish, pour everything in carefully and gently as to not fuck up your work. A good tip is turning the side of the glass with the garnish on away from your body and the side you pour from.
- Pour 6 cl of tomato juice, 2 cl of fresh lime juice, a bar spoon of fish sauce and put a pinch of salt into the glass. Stir to make it mix together. Add some chili powder/bitters, if you like it more spicy. - Put ice in.
- Top off with beer, but stop a few centimeters from the top. Give it a little stir to make the beer mix in nicely too. You wanna keep the bubbles from the beer, so be gentle! Pour the beer again to fill the rest of the glass.
- Drink!
ON A PERSONAL SIDE NOTE:
Micheladas are light, delicious, and have a good beer and tomato-umami-thing going. I know some use Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, oyster sauce and so on. Some use Clamato (clam-tomato juice) instead of pure tomato juice. It's completely up to you what to go for. I personally find a good fish sauce is both easily to find/buy and easy to work with. For the garnish I used a gochugaru-salt mix, but using szechuan pepper instead also tastes great.
I personally like using lacto fermented tomato juice for micheladas. If you're unfamiliar with fermentation in general, lacto fermentation is one of the easiest ways to ferment and a good way to start. Think of it as the gateway drug to suddenly having an incubator on the bottom of your closet to make tempeh and koji.
Lacto fermentation has nothing to do with dairy, if that's what you got from the name. It's a probiotic string of bacteria which can already be found in our digestive system . It's a lactic acid bacteria used for controlled fermentation in certain types of food production; kefir, yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi and a lot more. Lacto fermented foods are insanely good for your stomach and the bacteria culture there. The stomach is basically like the 2nd brain of your body, so you need to take care of it that way. Fermented foods can help you get better health and are good for your stomach in general, but can it can also help break down proteins your stomach might not be so good at by itself – especially a lacto fermented type on this one. Many people can't really decide weather they like it or not the first time they try it, but most of the time that's just the normal reaction to tasting something foreign you have no reference for. The only way to find out really is to keep trying it.
To lacto ferment the tomatoes yourself, you need a sterilized, airtight container (like a hermetic glass storage jar or just vac pack it, if you have one of those bad bois lying around), some nice and firm tomatoes, salt and a scale. That's it. Sterilize the jar with boiling water, let them cool down after and wash the tomatoes. I recommend putting gloves on from here on out since you don't want to introduce any foreign bacteria to the tomatoes. Plus if you have any cuts on your hands.. well, you're about to find out if you do, if you go no-glove. Cut the tomatoes into pieces – personally I always remove the seeds and gel part – and weigh them. Find what 2% of that weight is and add that in salt. Massage it in to the tomatoes in a bowl (less mess to clean), put them in the jar and close it. Make sure it's airtight. Try to not have much air left in it. You want it to steep in itself, if that makes sense. A plastic bag of water can sometimes help press everything down and together in there. Put the jar a in place without direct sunlight and wait 3-5 days. Open the jar and blitz the tomatoes. After this, sieve them and viola: lacto fermented tomato juice! Remember to store the final product in the fridge. I like keep the leftovers from sieving. I dehydrate it and turn it into a lacto-tomato salt for cooking or drinks, but that's just me.
You can leave your lacto ferments for longer if you want, but the longer you leave them, the more lacto-like it'll taste. At some point you cross into 'weirdass, horrible fart'-territory in both smell and flavour. Sometimes there's a risk of it exploding from pressure the longer you ferment it as well. The rule of thumb is to add the equivalent of 2% of what the produce weighs in salt; if your tomatoes weighs 100 g, then you add 2 g of salt. Depending on what you're fermenting and how you like it, this can vary a little (pinapple is nice with 1,7% for example). You can lacto ferment basically any kind of fruit and vegetable. I can recommend trying almost-ripe strawberries, pineapple, watermelon, carrots, kohlrabi and radishes. I recommend reading a bit more about lacto fermentation in general than just this, if you're serious about trying it out, but it's a good place to start none the less!
Last but not least: Salud!
That’s it for this week comrades. Stay sharp, build those affinity groups in your neighborhood and remember, every move you make, be it for the betterment of yourself, the improvement of the material conditions of you and your crew, every move is a move towards liberation, self-determination and ultimately the changing of reality. Be kind to yourself, we are all coming home to ourselves, together.
Texan here. Here's a list of links to support: https://linktr.ee/WestFundTx
https://www.bucklebunnies.org/
https://janesdueprocess.org/
https://thebridgecollective.org/
https://fundtexaschoice.org/
https://linktr.ee/AfiyaCenter
https://linktr.ee/FronteraFundRGV
https://linktr.ee/teafund
https://www.lilithfund.org/
https://www.clinicaccess.org/
I have more to say on the passage of Texas' 666 new laws, this being only one of the most cynical and brutal, and I may try to respond more here later.