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.

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.

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 !

How a mining conflict led to the political emancipation of a community in Northern Greece.

#Skouries - a story of political emancipation

February 19, 2014   x-pressed.org

Author: Evi Papada  

Source: FROM THE GREEK STREETS

 

Mining conflicts are increasingly surfacing globally due to complains over mines and pollution of water, soil and land occupied as well as over transport and waste disposal. The Skouries forest in Halkidiki has been at the center of a hot dispute between the mining company, Hellas Gold, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining giant Eldorado Gold and local communities. The company claims that an ambitious plan for mining of gold and copper in the area- including deforestation and open pit mining with excavation and everyday use of explosives- will benefit the region through the creation of some 5,000 direct and indirect jobs, while local residents argue that the planned investment will cause considerable damage to the environment and livelihoods, resulting to many more jobs losses in the existing sectors of the local economy (farming, pasture land, fisheries, beekeeping, food processing and tourism). The residents’ claims are supported by research conducted by various independent scientific institutions including the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Technical Chamber of Macedonia. In addition to legitimacy questions underpinning the transfer of mining rights from the Greek state to the aforementioned company [1], the Environmental Impact Assessment produced by El Dorado has been found to contain gross methodological discrepancies and whilst the public consultation process could be at best described as cosmetic [2].

From Fire to Autonomy: Zapatistas, 20 Years of Walking Slowly

Saturday, 25 January 2014 09:28  

By Andalusia Knoll and Itandehui Reyes,  truth-out.org

Note: truth-out does great work in sharing knowledge about the reasons we should not yet give up any struggle.  In this great piece one should not overlook this paragraph:
mandar obedenciedo (command by obeying): to serve and not be served; represent and not supplant; build and not destroy; propose and not impose; and convince, not defeat, from below not above.

Speaking in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico, on a cold drizzly New Year's Eve, the Zapatista Comandante Hortensia addressed the crowd: "Twenty-five or 30 years ago we were completely deceived, manipulated, subjugated, forgotten, drowned in ignorance and misery." She was communicating the official words of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on the 20th anniversary of their rebellion, when thousands of indigenous people rose up in arms, took over dozens of major towns and villages in this southern state, and declared "enough is enough, never again will there be a homeland that doesn't include us."
Comandante Hortensia went on to explain how over the past two decades, they have constructed their own autonomous government, complete with their own health and education system, based in the indigenous traditions of their ancestors. Despite the continual efforts of the "neoliberal bad government" to displace them from their land, the Zapatistas have successfully recuperated thousands of acres of land on which they have constructed communities that are governed "from the bottom up." Community members participate in rotating government positions that operate under the democratic principle of "mandar obedeciendo" (commanding by obeying).

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”.

Dialectical Communitarian Anarchism as the Negation of Domination

A Review of "The Impossible Community"

Saturday, 30 November 2013 09:50 By Javier Sethness, Truthout | Op-Ed

• Print 

(Image: Bloomsbury)Professor John P. Clark's The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013) is a masterful work, one which seeks to invert radically the destruction of nature and oppression of humanity as prosecuted by capitalism, the state and patriarchy by encouraging the intervention of a mass-confluence of anarcho-communist - or communitarian anarchist - socio-political movements. This project is only "impossible" because its realization is heterotopic - inherently contradictory - to the prevailing system of domination, such that it demands the abolition of hegemony in favor of a different, liberated world: that of the "third great epoch of history," in Clark's vision, when "humanity finally frees itself and the earth from the yoke of dominion." Taking equally from Buddhism as from dialectical philosophy, Clark stresses the importance of enlightenment, mindfulness and awakening as preconditions of revolutionary political praxis. And although he implicitly seems to agree with the overall thesis of the (anti)catastrophist line developed by Sasha Lilley and company, he also affirms the productivity of a commitment to truth that squarely confronts the profoundly shocking, traumatic and even convulsive nature of such truth: the very first page of his preface acknowledges the sixth mass extinction in which terrestrial life is at present entrapped and notes the "horror" of a capitalist world in which billions go without the basic necessities of a good life. Advancing the philosophy and practice of communitarian anarchism as an exit from the depraved present, Clark dedicates much of his text to examining the anti-authoritarian and cooperative spirit of humanity, as embodied in many of the customs of pre-modern or "traditional" societies, as in the history of Western revolutionary movements. In this sense, Clark does well to distance himself from the Eurocentrism advanced by many Western radical thinkers, including social ecologist Murray Bookchin, whose imprint on The Impossible Community is otherwise nearly palpable.

November 17th 1983 ... rewinding 30 years of constant revolution

If we only loved one thing about the Zapatistas it would be the clean refreshing feeling that comes in their writing.  Inspired by ideas of Europe and by the ideas and struggles of native people instead of producing through a dialectic blend even more complexity for us to digest, they create from 0 something new and simple.  Instead of complicating what for centuries seems too complex to implement, they implement what it was so simple to implement to begin with.  But as every major human discovery has in the past, the notion of "why didn't I think of that before", for 30 years they are continuing to discover new ground and content so fast that we must forget what we are and what we do in order to comprehend the significance of their discoveries.

Here is a sample of what we are (and probably failing) trying to convey:

Original source from the jungle

nov192013

REWIND 3.

REWIND 3.

Here we explain the reasons behind this strange title and those that will follow, narrate the story of an exceptional encounter between a beetle and a perplexing being (that is, more perplexing than the beetle) and the reflections of no immediate relevance or importance which occurred therein; and finally, given a particular anniversary, the Sub tries to explain, unsuccessfully, how the Zapatistas see their own history.

November 2013
To whom it may concern:

WARNING – As noted in the text entitled “The Bad and Not So Bad News,” the writings that preceded that text had not yet been published. Ergo, what we are going to do is “rebobinar” (that is, “rewind” the tape) to what should have appeared on the Day of the Dead. Having rewound, you may then read in inverse order the inverse order in which the texts will appear and that way you will…hmm…forget it, I’ve even managed to confuse myself. The point is that you get the gist of the “retrospective” perspective. It’s as if one is going in one direction but later returns to see how they got going in that direction in the first place. Got it? No?

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.