I mention Evergreen's Christmas gift drive. I keep returning to that idea because it would create a "crowd" that our prisoners' families can be added to, thereby ensuring their anonymity and thus their privacy. Yes, it helps poor white families, but my motivation trends to the strategic goal of helping, which is to say empowering, our prisoners.

^^^ It is possible to reverse-engineer what Evergreen do:

They are a women's auxiliary that do vetting, that's their core function, because it's the hard part, but that function in turn can be reverse-engineered:

They started out doing the Christmas gift drive then later took over membership vetting for NJP.

But vetting families for the Christmas drive would be a simpler procedure than vetting people for membership in, say, a nationalist political organization. The latter, in my experience, involves a phone interview followed by a visit at one's home. I imagine that being vetted as a Christmas drive recipient might involve a mutual acquaintance, a phone interview and viewing copies of bank statements.

It is "woman's work" because women tend to have built-in charm and emotional radar, when they choose to turn it on.

It is not easy being a prisoner and you, a person not imprisoned, might find that you pick up some of that psychic energy, for want of a better term, from being in frequent communication with them. Just saying, be aware of this, and don't identify with it; it is a separate thing from yourself.

One thing I need to add on the subject of a UK version of Evergreen's Christmas drive. I went back and forth in my mind on this but it needs to be stated. PA is very unlikely to do something that would harbour our prisoners' families, because of the "t" word. In fact, it would be bad for us for them to pre-empt that space with their own, similarly structured Christmas drive. So, please, somebody, take this idea on.

I don't want this to turn into the Evergreen channel but here is the information to bring new subscribers up to date:

https://t.me/tcppuk/173
https://t.me/TheEvergreen/419
https://t.me/TheEvergreen/420

Just to reiterate: My initial thought was simply to put up Amazon wishlists for prisoners' families. But that is no good because they are too few to ensure their anonymity and privacy even if they are given code numbers. Unfriendlies could perhaps match lists to prisoners families. So instead what is needed is an Operation White Christmas UK to add them into, so they are among many others and unidentifiable.

^^ Needless to say, this is not just about helping individuals. It is an aspect of psychological warfare and sends a huge message: "We are virtuous, we take care of our own, we are powerful, our opponents are child-killing scum." It both makes the enemy look terrible and uplifts the depressed among us. "God is with us."

I received a letter from James on Wednesday and from the date on the letter it took a week to arrive.

At his new prison James appears to have a similar e-mail service as Ash has, called "Purple Post," that has to be read while standing at a public console and no paper copy is possible. That means that he greatly prefers written letters, allowing him to work on a reply in his cell.

James' previous prison, HMP Swansea, has not forwarded any mail since his move back in June. He has lodged a formal complaint about this. The practical result, as I see it, is that you should resend anything sent in that interval, to his new address.

Swansea is still withholding the four books that I had sent. The excuse now is that the book shipments did not have invoices or shipping notes. I have now submitted copies of all the invoices, along with a cover letter that admonishes them for not doing what all the other prisons do and deliver any books sent from an approved vendor, which Blackwell's is. I have also sent backup copies of the invoices to James.

I was reading a long letter from a prisoner and it occurred to me that much of what he is writing should be in a blog. That would be MUCH more efficient than repeating the same facts and thoughts to multiple correspondents.

As it is I have to constantly make judgement calls about what I divulge while helping other supporters be better informed. It would be better if I don't need to do that so much.

I am going to suggest that to the prisoners. They can write material clearly marked for public consumption and one or more of us types it into, say, a Telegram channel devoted to that prisoner, his blog. Then a link to each new entry can be posted here.

Any volunteers?

^^^ It would be somewhat interactive - for example such a blog's chat group could be printed off a week after the post goes up and sent to the prisoner.

Vincent's website (the whole nine yards!):

https://sansconcession.net/

It defaults to French but you can switch to English by clicking the "English" tag at the top or, if that isn't visible, the "7A" symbol to the right of the address field to get a drop-down language menu.

There appear to be two people posting to the blog, "The Writer" and Vincent. A very interesting, and current, read.

Before I put the group Givesendgo campaign up I need to get a vote so I don't have to make a decision that might not please everyone.

We have prisoners of two types: Those who have a Givesendgo of their own and those who don't. A brief glance will reveal that the ones with their own Givesendgo have collected a fair amount. I don't know exactly how much has been donated to the ones that don't have a Givesendgo of their own and only get money via the gov site but it probably is not much, other than from their immediate families.

The group Givesendgo campaign can go equally to all prisoners, or just to the ones that don't have a Givesendgo of their own. If we go the latter route then we would advertise all the Givesendgos.

I don't feel comfortable with either choice, so I'll create a poll (finally, a use for democracy!).

I would probably make a FOIA request if I thought that one section of government was collaborating with, or inciting, another section of the government to harass me or infringing on my rights.

Similarly, if one of the parties was an NGO and the other a section of the government, I would lodge a FOIA request with the section of the government.

The parties might include CT, prison service, CAA, HnH. You get the idea, It could be a goldmine.

The request could, for example, request all communications between the bodies regarding my case (if I were to have a case).

I believe that such requests are free if it involves one's own criminal case.

https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request

^^^ I dream of publishing such findings in a scandal sheet like Justice Report.

Ash's latest letter argues his case, and he asked that it be published. OK - would anyone be willing to type it? It is about four pages. I can do it but I would like to test the waters to see who is willing.

In addition to arguing his case, Ash's letter contained the following housekeeping type of information:

The letter took eight days to get to me.

He said that outgoing letters are FREE, which is welcome news. So don't worry about prisoners' postage costs, at least for Ash and James - both of their envelopes had the same kind of blue franking pre-printed on the envelope.

Ash also said that he has enough books, that he either brought with him or that friends have sent. [Nevertheless, he probably has "Chess Behind Bars" by now. And I imagine that he might eventually run out of reading material, so I'll ask again in a few months.]

Two of us visited Ash yesterday and he was allowed extra visiting time so we had two hours with him.
He is in good spirits and shape, he is hitting the gym hard and it shows too.
He is grateful for the letters received and really appreciates them.
I'm keeping him supplied with books and A4 paper which has to go via Waterstones (which is a shame as I dislike that company) and take about a week to reach him.

I would like to see more innovation in motivation strategies for the e-right, to convert them into irl-right.

We have had a surfeit of "point and gasp." Indeed, entire careers of grift have been built on that approach.

I gather that point-and-gasp is supposedly intended to get people angry. I suspect that getting angry is mainly an end in itself, a cathartic discharge and excuse to vent that gives a squirt of reward hormones. If that is the case then it is actually counter-productive of action.

I appreciate that emotions must be involved in motivation. For example, what gets one up in the morning? It might be anger (a la Kate), it might be love, it might be fear, or it might be hate. The way I see it, these emotions have temperatures (hot, warm, cold, cold) and durations (brief, long, brief, long), just like physical phenomena.

Our would-be leaders press the anger button over and over but for most experiencers it becomes an end in itself. Similarly for love, Fear makes them run away. Like Pandora's box, that leaves perhaps one item after the others have flown, if we're only concerned with spontaneous emotions.

However, "Fake it until you make it" can work. You can do one thing while motivated by another, doing whatever internal logic works for you. People will praise you as courageous and loving while you know you're nothing special in those things.

Whatever works. But point-and-gasp is a spent force.