Read the full article HERE:Like their closest relatives, the great apes, man is basically a fruitarian animal, but with the advantageous option carnivorism. So advantageous that probably saved us from extinction, because when scarce plant foods (for example, because of an ice age or desertification of forests) can be fatal rely solely on them.
The need to get meat in times of severe famine took our remote ancestors to form groups of hunters armed with sticks and stones and prepared to work together in order to increase their chances of success against large dams (the most desirable, but also the most dangerous). And this successful survival strategy had several side effects.
One was the domestication of some wolves and jackals who spontaneously began to participate in the hunt to take the bones and other parts that men would not eat (it did not possess the powerful jaws of carnivores and their digestive systems specialist). The ancestors of our dogs helped locate and harass the prey, and in return a portion of the loot they took. That man found his best friend.
Another consequence of the hunting team was surely the exaltation of violence and increasing social prestige of brute force, thereby relegating women (less corpulent and often limited in physical activity for long periods of gestation ) and the consolidation of male camaraderie. To collect fruits should not be very strong: women, and even children can do as well or better than men; but to face a buffalo or a mammoth should be well provided with muscles and testosterone.
According to a report published in 2015, for more than ten years, Ana Belen Montes has endured the following confinement conditions, in frank violation of her human rights:
- “A Federal Prison Bureau decree (due to her espionage conviction) restricting contact to only her closest relatives.
- A prohibition on inquiries about her health or the reasons for her detention in a center for the mentally ill, when she suffers no such condition.
- A prohibition on the receipt of packages.
- Letters sent to her are returned by registered post to the sender.
- She is not allowed associate with other inmates.
- She is not allowed make or receive phone calls.
- She is not allowed read newspapers, magazines or watch TV.
- She is not allowed visits from friends.
- Her family members have, because of her commitment to the cause of Cuba, rejected or refused to maintain contact with her, meaning that Ana has been totally isolated from the world for more than a decade.”
Read the full article HERE:"Hon, I got involved in the activity that has brought me to you because I obeyed my conscience rather than obey the law I consider that the policy of our government towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unfriendly.; I considered myself morally obliged to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose on it our values and our political system. "
" We have displayed intolerance and contempt for Cuba for four decades. We have never respected the right of Cuba to define their own destiny, their own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand how we continue trying to dictate ... how Cuba should select their leaders, who should not be their leaders and what laws are most appropriate for that nation. Why do not we let them decide how they want to conduct their internal affairs, such as the United States has been doing for more than two centuries? " " My greatest wish would be to see the emergence of a friendly relationship between the US and Cuba. I hope my case, in any way, encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and work together with Havana, imbued with a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect and understanding. " " Today we see more clearly than ever that intolerance and hatred -for individuals or governments - all that is spread pain and suffering. I hope that the United States develop a policy with Cuba based on love of neighbor, a policy that recognizes that Cuba, like any other nation, wants to be treated with dignity and not with contempt. "
"Of course, I am a poet, not a fool. I do not think a poem will defeat a bullet; But it can affect the thinking of the man whose finger is on the trigger. I have read my work at the gates of Faslane, home to the British fleet of submarine nuclear weapons. There, among crowds, there are soldiers and policemen who stop and listen. Where could my words end up in their heads? When your loved ones approach, afraid of the darkness? I have toured the atomic weapons testing sites of the US deserts, leaving seeds and syllables - seeds of peace, and again, where those weapons were used in Japan. It is not because I am brave (I am not), but that I am human and like everyone I have met, I deplore war and do whatever is in my power, as a person of peace, as a poet, to speak against her and make people gather, to act in reconciliation".
Gerry Loose
A Comrade has left us
We are sorry to hear of the death of long-time anarchist militant and member of the CNT Spain, Jose Luis Garcia Rua. Garcia Rua passed peacefully on Friday morning, January 6 at the age of 93. Rua was born in 1923 in Asturias, Spain. His father had been a member of the CNT who perished on the Oveido front during the Civil War. In 1939, he was forced into exile in France, eventually winding up in a concentration camp of Argelers and Barcarès, however he was able to return later than year.
Garcia Rua began a career as an academic, but worked in construction, metal and mines. He was involved in anti-Francoist activity and ultimately repressed for his role in a miners' strike. He lost his job in academia for some time but ultimately became a professor of philosophy in the University of Granada in the mid-70s. In 1977, after the death of Franco, he was chosen Secretary of the Andalucian region of the CNT, a position he held twice. Between 1986-1990, he served as the General Secretary of the CNT and from 1997-2000, as the General Secretary of the IWA.
He is the author of numerous articles and books, both related to anarchosyndicalism as well as his academic interests. On May Day 2015, he made an impassioned speech about the International Workers Assocation, calling on comrades to continue the tradition of militant anarchosyndicalism. This was the last speech that he made in public.
We send our condolences to his family.
IWA Secretariat
When the Standing Rock Sioux of North Dakota discovered that a pipeline carrying fracked oil was to be built through their land, poisoning the land and its people, there near the headwaters of the Missouri River, destroying sacred sites and burial grounds, they stood up to block the machinery of destruction. This ignited a resistance that has captured the world’s attention, and gathered the support of hundreds of tribes, and massed thousands of supporters to the site in the struggle for water and life.
In response, the governor of North Dakota called out the National Guard on behalf of the private oil company against the protesters. Private security hired by the pipeline company pepper-sprayed and set attack dogs on men, women and children. Because of the defenders bravery and solidarity, construction has been at least temporarily halted. The people have vowed to remain as long as it takes to protect the land.
With their many dangerous pipelines leaking and spilling their poisons everywhere, their mauling of the Earth with fracking, only the oil companies, with immense power over and within the US government, benefit from this plunder. With the poisoning of waters in such cities as Flint MI and across the country, the plundering of the Earth by mineral extraction industries, and the use of water by private corporations, this has become a flashpoint in the people’s resistance to corporate rapacity.
This struggle represents the unity of working people who have little or no stake in this corporate plunder. The native people at Standing Rock whose land is being decimated suffer from 85% unemployment and the highest poverty rate in the country. A growing section of the working class is heading in this direction, thrown out of the capitalist system by automation, no longer exploitable, targeted by police brutality and murder, their communities torn apart and their land and water poisoned. The so-called oil boom in North Dakota has mostly benefited the owners of the oil companies, leaving many people who go there for work homeless or laid-off and stranded.
This conflict is coming to a dramatic head as more and more people are driven into poverty, despair and no future. This is unifying us around a common cause, the absolute necessity for a radical change in the economic system—from one of exploitation, artificial scarcity and destruction, to one of cooperation, with each other, the world around us and the Earth.
Our stand is to hold the government responsible for protecting the Earth and its people. We can unite to create a cooperative society—this one global, national and regional—based on the abundance the new tools of production make possible, along with a social structure to support it. A new Fire is burning. This is what Standing Rock is to us all.
Richard Wolff, American economist known for his analytical methodology and study classes or social strata. Since 2005, much of his work has focused on the analysis and critique of the capitalist economic model, the global crisis it has generated and methodical exploration of Marxist economic alternatives along with other cooperative models.
"In ecological ethic, the great moral question is not " what I do against the recycling bin " , but " what I do against the bank headquarters " . What is behind the devastating ecological crisis that is sweeping the biosphere is the self - expanding dynamics of capital. "
José AgustÃn Goytisolo. Born in Barcelona on 13 April 1928, his family was brutally shaken by the death of his mother (Julia Gay) in an aerial bombardment by Franco regime, in 1938. José AgustÃn was specially affected, and named his daughter after his lost mother. 'Words for Julia' is one of his best-known poems (sung by Paco Ibáñez -anarchist)
