Why is there a lag in our publishing activity

First, and not least, we do not get paid or receive any money from doing this, nor did we undermine the project as something quick and simple.  Certainly we would be able to do more if there were more of us doing it, so if you have developed an interest in getting involved let us know.  Sometime horizontal organization is slow and complicated in terms of production.  Each one of us must convince and be convinced of a proposal to do something.  And this we do neither consider a luxury of a problem, quite the opposite we are critical of those who operate under a hierarchy, an authority, and produce.  

Judging by certain polemics it would seem that there are anarchists who spurn any form of organisation; but in fact the many, too many, discussions on this subject, even when obscured by questions of language or poisoned by personal issues, are concerned with the means and not the actual principle of organisation. Thus it happens that when those comrades who sound the most hostile to organisation want to really do something they organise just like the rest of us and often more effectively. The problem, I repeat, is entirely one of means.

Errico Malatesta   October 1927

So it is not only important to us to do something or do it quickly, but to find the acceptable ways to do it.  If we were to develop specialists, hierarchy, authority, to do something, the value of the product would be all lost as we have returned to the state of affairs we are so eager in departing.  So among the other, real life projects we are engaged in, our digital project has fallen back in priority, while we are constantly reexamining what we have done so far and where we want to go with this.  And this must take time.

Hannah Arendt on the Concept of Power

Hannah Arendt on the Concept of Power by Pat Duffy Hutcheon

My first and only personal encounter with Hannah Arendt was when she came to speak to the students at Yale University in 1968 while I was studying sociology there. As always, she was questioning the conventional wisdom of the times. At that time -- at the height of the Vietnam War crisis -- she stood solidly with the student protesters. Nevertheless, during that visit she sounded a warning against the popular obsession with unlimited "sovereignty" of either the individual or the collective, and with violence as a favored vehicle for both entities in their pursuit of social change. She let us know how much she deplored the glorification of violence by many students, and their glib talk -- from privileged and protected enclaves in the Western world -- of the "necessity" for violent revolution. For this she blamed what she saw as the malevolent influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Franz Fanon. She felt (rightly, I now believe) that these writers and other significant opinion setters among the young were then sowing the seeds for which the whole world would one day reap the whirlwind.

What about music as a form of collective entertainment

Music, the art that has survived capitalism and springs up from every part of the earth and every moment that humans have occupied, continues to express societies, classes, nations, genders, metaphysical beliefs, problems, emotions, happiness and pain.  It should not be left on the hands of experts, industries, interests, or government to dictate, to suppress or promote.  As a tool, as most arts, crafts, and techniques, should be redistributed to all those below as users and not passive consumers.  Everyone can learn music, sing, play an instrument.  To do it well takes practice first and a little bit of talent, which we are not convinced of what it really is.

Music has also played a role in popular movements.  There has never been any significant social change without some music associated with the movement that caused it, while music for the sake of producing more music has not lived as long, as the music of social history.  We found a good introduction to a music genre that survived some real sever oppression to follow basic steps of emancipation and struggle to freedom.  The struggle, the living conditions of the past, the pain and suffering of those who sang their way on the narrow path towards liberation, is embedded in their songs.

We Borrowed this From the Music Room


This Primer is dedicated to promoting Rhythm and Blues, but it's clear to anyone with a passing interest in the music that it really doesn't stick to any clear definition of the genre.

John Lee Hooker

As a Primer, it's an attempt to illustrate the music, the labels and the artists of a particular style but it cannot lay claim to be a theoretical, academic or scholarly treatise. This is primarily because I am ill-equipped to do it well and there are others who are far better qualified to deliver a definitive history of the form.

So what you'll find below is an emotional and historically flawed account of the music that the Primer promotes, designed to provide a background and context for what you'll find in the real world..

Call-out for actions and manifestations on the 22 February 2014 !

Thursday 6 February 2014, by zadist

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

Resistance and Sabotage !
This call-out is motivated by:

=> the call-out of the NoTAV movement at Val di Susa in Italy calling for a national day (22 02 2014) of mobilisation and action, each one in their area, city, environment.
=> the call-out of the ZAD movement at Notre-dame-des-Landes in France calling for a national manifestation in Nantes, France

This is a call-out for actions and manifestations on the 22 February 2014 !

• A day of action and sabotage to abolish all those megalomaniacs, devastating projects with the illusions of a durable development, green capitalism, geo-engeenering !
• A day of action and sabotage to regain our freedom and rights to take decisions about our own lives, our environment, our planet,( in a emancipated manner), instead of those in position of global decision-making, who are using the flag of democracy to impose their society of totalitarian power.
• A day of action and sabotage to bring to a halt the destructions and exploitation of entire species, the waste of tons of raw materials and natural resources everyday, justified by the term ’public interest’, while behind it there’s only money, profit and capital.
• A day of action and in solidarity with all those who fight, and for all those that lost their freedom and especially all those that are oppressed or imprisoned as "terrorists" or as simple delinquents.
• A day of action and convergence with all those struggles heading for a different world, where life and common values are worth more than money, competition and dominance.

No border ! No Nation ! No Pasaran ! No more BULLSHIT !

From the ZAD to Val Susa ! From Hambacher Forst to Square Taksim ? From Calais to Lampedusa Hambourg to Exarchia From Heathrow to Atenco From Valogne to Wendland From Niscemi to Mayo Monte Belo to Khimki Fukushima to Tshernobyle From prison to prison

Resistance et Sabotage !

ZAD, France: This is not a camp

Translated by resistrA http://resistra.espivblogs.net/2014/01/zad-france-this-is-not-a-camp/

Jan 27 2014

it’s a pirate look-out

Following various announcements for a possible start of construction of the Notre Dame des Landes airport, a series of articles were released in the press that pretty much regurgitated copy-pasted clichés. One of these articles caught our attention notably. In almost all the articles that would preach the possible eviction and the final catastrophe of ZAD we read “200 people, alter-globalists, continue to camp in ZAD.” The figure might seem rough. The term “alter-globalists” is not a term that the people who chose to fight against the airport and the world of “development” would embrace. But we don’t give a damn about that! For now we will hang on to the bad joke that describes what’s happening here as “camping”.

Why Free? And why this manifesto may be of interest

We will refrain from an endless analysis and discussion of why this book, among zillions, may be of interest to us, but we have highlighted some key phrases that drew our attention.  It may be easy to bash the book or to praise it and we may do both in the future, but it may have to be done together with all of you who may have read it.  What's the value of us providing with a reason not to read it but remain confident that its criticism is as good as reading it yourselves?

Both myself and my courageous publishers, Permanent Publications, have decided to publish a free online version of this book, and the normal paperback version under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license, for three reasons:

First, the ideas and practical tools contained within it should be free to whoever may find them useful, and not made falsely scarce by the mechanisms of the monetary economy.

Second, just as actions display our beliefs more honestly than our words, the ways in which ideas and practical tools are shared are at least as important as the words themselves. I wanted the medium to be fully aligned with the message.

Third, I wanted to release it under a Creative Commons licence because it felt fraudulent to have my name on the front of this book. As I said in the acknowledgements page of my last book, what are my words but “an accumulation of all that has come

Another Kind of Revolution

November 06, 2013

Another Kind of Revolution

The Mapuche’s Struggle for the Land

by JOHN SEVERINO

In the aftermath of the inspiring popular uprising in Argentina at the end of 2001 and the battles that blocked neoliberalism in Bolivia from 2003-2005, the Left came to power in governments across South America—most notably in Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia—in a series of electoral upsets that were quickly hailed as revolutions. In hindsight, these victories prove to be less than convincing. The new revolutionary governments institutionalized social movements, turning them into mere appendages, they continued cutting down the rainforests and displacing indigenous peoples in the name of progress, they supported free trade agreements, used paramilitary or police forces against student demonstrators, expanded the exploitation of gas, oil, and coal, and imprisoned dissidents. Business as usual.
The cynicism of these new governments should not have come as a surprise. True revolutions do not happen overnight, and they are not delivered by politicians. The kind of transformation that ends exploitation, misery, and the destruction of the environment, and that allows people to organize their own lives and fulfill their needs in freedom and dignity comes about in an altogether different kind of way.