ZAD: Anyone can take part or not take part in a struggle against a dam

And now, what can we do?

Sunday 2 November 2014, by zadist

All the versions of this article: [English] [français]

 

Saturday night, at the construction site of the dam project in Sivens, at around 2am, Remi died. For those that were there over the last 6 months at Testet, for those who were in the battles of at the ZAD at Notre Dame Des Landes, for those who at one time or another have found themselves face to face with a line of cops, one thing is obvious, this was neither an error nor a suspicious death, here we are talking about an assassination.

Saturday night Remi died after a long day of confrontations. The day before the opponents of the project made the guards leave the site and managed regain ground by destroying what still remained on the site by setting it on fire. The next day the anti riot unit of the gendarmerie returned to the site to protect what is now an empty parking lot. At 2am that night the death of Remi was announced by medics. Despite this the police continued to shoot at the protestors until the early morning.

Current events and the state of the world

It has been a very sad August when we allow the media to affect us.  Thousands of people dying unnecessarily, in war and conflict, in protests and on the streets, from Missouri to Gaza, from Kurdistan to Damascus, from Donetsk to Santiago, armies, states, police, brutally slaughter their perceived enemies. In Syria the latest count of deaths since the uprising begun has reached 170,000 people and with the ISIS the numbers are climbing.  In Gaza 2,100 is the last count in a few weeks.  In Ukraine it is questionable what the numbers are but lately different sides refer to 2,000.  In Africa the numbers are never so important to the western media to report, until the Ebola epidemic  came and the media took an interest as far as this epidemic may cause a threat elsewhere.  Yet there is one constant statistic that not many are reporting in the mass media.  Over 60,000 people a day, nearly half being children, are dying from the simple cause of the lack of nutrients and clean water.  Meanwhile if one is to divide the annual world production of corn (alone) by the population one will find the corn produced alone can prevent death from hunger.  An enormous amount of food is produced worldwide, maybe "too much" according to economists who are waged by corporations that benefit from the rise of the price of commodities.

Crisis of Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism

http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/Assets/pdf/Crisis%20of%20Humanity.pdf
World Economy  www.worldfinancialreview.com  May - June 2014 Pg 14 – 16

Global Capitalism:
Crisis of Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism

By William I. Robinson

About the Author

William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and international studies, and Latin American studies, at the University of California - Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Promoting Polyarchy (1996), Transnational Conflicts (2003), A Theory of Global Capitalism  (2004), Latin America and Global Capitalism(2008), and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (2014).

World capitalism is experiencing the worst crisis in its 500 year history. Global capitalism is a qualitatively new stage in the open ended evolution of capitalism characterised by the rise of transnational capital, a transnational capitalist class, and a transnational state. Below, William I. Robinson argues that the global crisis is structural and threatens to become systemic, raising the specter of collapse and a global police state in the face of ecological holocaust, concentration of the means of violence, displacement of billions, limits to extensive expansion and crises of state legitimacy, and suggests that a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward to the poor majority of humanity is the only viable solution.

The New Global Capitalism and the 21st Century Crisis

The world capitalist system is arguably experiencing the worst crisis in its 500 year history. World capitalism has experienced a profound restructuring through globalisation over the past few decades and has been transformed in ways that make it fundamentally distinct from its earlier incarnations. Similarly, the current crisis exhibits features that set it apart from earlier crises of the system and raise the stakes for humanity. If we are to avert disastrous outcomes we must understand both the nature of the new global capitalism and the nature of its crisis. Analysis of capitalist globalisation provides a template for probing a wide range of social, political, cultural and ideological processes in this 21st century. Following Marx, we want to focus on the internal dynamics of capitalism to understand crisis. And following the global capitalism perspective, we want to see how capitalism has qualitatively evolved in recent decades.

Editorial. Rebeldía Zapatista (Zapatista Rebellion)

the Word of the EZLN

Front Cover of Rebeldía Zapatista #2

We rebellious Zapatistas, along with our mother earth, are threatened with destruction in our Mexican homeland. Both above and below the earth’s surface, the bad governments and bad rich people, all neoliberal capitalists, want to commodify everything they see.

They want to own everything.

They are destructive, they are murderers, criminals, rapists. They are cruel and inhuman, they torture and disappear people, and they are corrupt. They are every bad thing you can imagine, they do not care about humanity. They are, in fact, inhuman.

They are few, but they decide everything about how they will dominate countries that let themselves be dominated. They have made underdeveloped countries into their plantations, and made the underdeveloped capitalist so-called governments of those countries into their overseers.

This is what has happened in Mexico. The neoliberal transnational corporations are the bosses, their plantation is called Mexico, the current overseer is named Enrique Peña Nieto, the administrators are 
Manuel Velasco in Chiapas and the other so-called state governors, and the badly named municipal “presidents” are the foremen.

This is why we rose up against this system at dawn on January 1, 1994.

Mining, the destruction of land by neo-colonialists

AGAINST THE IMPERIALISM AND NEOCOLONIALISM OF MINING COMPANIES, THE CURRENT BATTLE OF THE PEOPLES

A New Store for Zapatista Women’s Cooperative

** Organization is required to win, NGO’s from several countries point out in Puebla
** Emissaries from Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador expose abuses of transnationals

By: Rosa Rojas

Tlamanca, Puebla, March 15, 2014

The struggle against extractive mining “it’s not only for our life, but also an anti-imperialist struggle and against neo-colonialism that is imposed on the peoples with the servile attitude of the neoliberal governments and the agreements on free trade and on protection for foreign investment,” according to what was made clear here today after the exposure of particular cases of problems with mining companies that communities from different states of the country confront, as well as those in Panama, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

War against people who need water

This article barely scratches the surface of what neo-liberalism really is and how things will progress globally if we do not built sufficient resistance to the goals of neo-liberalism.  Absolute dependence of life on the global market economic system and states bluntly acting as armies to enforce the rights of the corporations to which everyone will depend on for their survival.  Total conquering of land, water, life. Absolute conversion of any human activity into a commodity or prohibition and repression of any other activity. Absolute social control through dependence on the most basic needs for survival, and war on any resistance and social organization from below.  Those who resist will be branded terrorists from "corporate" media.
Some have been talking about this since the 70s and 80s and people thought of them as either conspiracy theorists or doomsday theorists, or science fiction addicts.  Just because the truth about neo-liberalism can not absolutely and completely be explained with classic political theory on capitalism (predominantly Marxism) does not mean that it is not real.  It is here.  It is Nafta for North America, it is EEC for Europe, it is WTO, it is IMF, it is everywhere!  Except for Chiapas that is.  It is not happening there.  Why?  There are no easy answers and if they were you shouldn't trust them.  Learn and decide for yourself.  This is a static advise here in the institute.  Do not even believe us.  Gather information, do your own research, decide, then organize based on your informed beliefs.  From below as they say in the caracoles.

From: NaturalNews

Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I'm about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level. You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.

As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from "diverting" water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.