Trees Or Tarmac??

 

       The destruction of the Hambach Forest continues, vast areas of rich forest land are being clear to create profit for RWE energy and construction company. This has been going on for some considerable time, but has been slowed down by persistent and determined opposition from locals and supporters from further afield. There is always a call for support to toughen and prolong the resistance to save what they can of this vast important wild habitat. Its destruction would be an ecological disaster, not just to the area, but would be another massive step in the deforestation of our planet. To survive on this planet we need more trees, not more concrete and tarmac. The corporate world will relentlessly devour all natural habitats, denuding our planet of green, and turning into a useless tarmac lifeless ball, all in the quest for profit. An insanity that only we, in our solidarity, can stop.

Dueren, Germany: 
Call from the Hambach Forest: We need all of you!

      From the 21st of November onwards we need all of you to help stop the cutting season this year!
      In three weeks there is going to be a trial concerning the lawsuit of BUND against RWE’s planned destruction of the Hambacher Wald this cutting season. The court published a “verdict” that already shows what kind of result we can expect: a piece of the forest that is not even in the existing cutting zone shall be protected. We expect RWE to try to start the destruction as soon as the trial on the 21st of November finishes. This year RWE plans to cut the oldest parts of the forest and all of the tree house villages.
      We have already constructed tree houses on many strategic points and more are planned. Now we need the voices and actions of as many people as possible to save the forest.
     We are going to demonstrate that this kind of exploitation of habitats for the purpose of profit can not happen without massive resistance. The struggle here is concerning everyone. One third of the German CO2 emissions are caused by lignite mining and the resulting damages to the climate are causing death, destruction, and forcing people from their homes worldwide.
     Get ready to come protect the forest in the middle of November. Organize yourselves in affinity groups in advance. Put your mobile numbers on the eviction list and spread our call to allies and friends.
    Everyone can support us in whatever way they feel comfortable. The tree houses are well equipped, open for everyone, and serve as safe spaces. We share the burdens of repression together. We have organized Out of Action places all over Germany. If you can’t come to the forest you can support us from your city through actions of solidarity and other means.
      We will keep the cutting zone squatted till the end of the cutting season. We will bring so much life to the forest RWE will not be able to carry out its plans this year. We will spread what happens during the cutting season with the help of diverse media coverage so that the whole world knows what crimes RWE is committing in the name of profit.
       In case of a widespread eviction we will reoccupy the forest on the forth weekend after day X with your help. Stay informed and spread the news to family, friends and allies. Solidarity is our strongest weapon.
        Together we will stop this crucial cutting season. Turn your theory into practice and live resistance.
       In the Hambach Forest and everywhere.
      Find more information about the cutting season and how to prepare: hambachforest.org/cutting-season-17
       All means to contact us: hambachforest.org/contact/

Useful information from a previous call for support:

       We have put together a call to action and translated it into different languages. Please help us spread it!
         We do not only want people to come, but we want everyone to be able to be active in the best way possible. That’s why we put together a plan and hope we’ll be able to realise it together with you

October onwards

        Beginning in October and continuing to the end of the cutting season, we will bring life to the area designated for deforestation to such an extent that RWE won’t be able to cut. To achieve this, we want to occupy as many trees as possible, so that they first have to evict the entire area before starting to cut. We will accompany any evictions with our own media channels. We will show the world that RWE wants to profit from destruction at every price. Our strongest weapon is, that we take care of each other. Everyone should only do actions with which they feel comfortable. The large tree houses should be accessible for everyone and be used as spaces for relax and take a break. We will try to carry repressions communally. We have organised out of action spaces throughout Germany.
       We believe that we can stop deforestation as a group! Turn theory into praxis and live a life of resistance! In Hambach and everywhere else.

Pack list
       If you want to come by during the cutting season, the following things might come in handy:
Any medicine you need to take
Water tight shoes, even better if you’ve got two pairs, in case one needs to dry…
Rain clothes
Sleeping bag
(Air) matress
Camouflage clothing (trousers, jacket, balaclava)
Knife
Head torch
Lighter
Toothbrush
If you’ve got one, a tent, otherwise we’ll find a place for you to sleep
If you have allergies, food that is suitable for you
small book for personal notes
sturdy, robust clothing
harness, if you’ve got one. There are some communal ones in the forest
Working gloves

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A Moderniser!!

           Sitting in a bookshop café, the other day having a chat with a couple of anarchists comrades, the conversation rambled from football to travel on trains and buses, the horror of airports, and a host of other equally important subjects. Then the matter of Jeremy Corbyn came up, to which I said he was the new Messiah that would lead the people to the promised land, only to find they were back where they started in the desert. Then other UK Messiahs came up, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, and the difference between them, though I think the difference is illusionary, to my surprise one of my comrades referred to Tony Blair as a “moderniser”. The reason for my surprise is that I consider this as 100% mainstream media propaganda language. Tony Blair was one of a bunch of careerist who decided, for their own ends , to move the Labour Party even more to the right, and to blatantly admit that they would do business with large corporations and the financial Mafia, this is modernising if you are a rabid neo-con, where the previous Labour Party hid behind the illusion that it opposed such institutions, only when in power to sit down and do business with them to “grow the economy”, which is a euphemism for improving the profitability of big business and the financial Mafia. If and when Our Saviour Jeremy Corbyn, comes to power, there may be a few slices of bread thrown our way, in the shape of improvements to social services and help for the NHS. These will not even make up for the ravages of the last decade of “austerity” and “balancing the books” ideology of the present political ballerinas. I know both my comrades agree, as long as we hold to the party political system, we will live in a system where big business and the financial Mafia will continue their efforts to turn every human action and activity into a profit making endeavour. The Messiahs will come and the Messiahs will go but exploitation will continue. 

        However, I think my comrade should find another label for Holy Tony, perhaps something along the lines of arrogant, right wing, careerist, lost in an illusion of grandeur and his dream of the Phony Tony legacy, a hollow shell of a self-centred fantasising dangerous dreamer. A moderniser, never.

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PFI, Private Fiddling Initiatives.

         In this greed driven capitalist system the financial Mafia and the moguls of the corporate juggernaut have refined the numerous ways they can steal from the public purse, of course with the unstinting assistance from their minders, the state apparatus. They work hand in glove with each other to further the plunder of that public purse.
       The capitalist greed merchants start their grand theft by first managing us, the ordinary people, to "work" for them in producing tremendous wealth, then let us lick the droppings from the cats saucer, then they move on to getting us to pay rip-off prices for the merchandise we produced.
       Of course there are other ways they dip their hands into the public cash machine. One of those devious rip-off schemes is the Public Finance Initiatives, (PFI). This is the con-trick of getting public bodies to engage in projects where the financial Mafia fund the infra structure of our NHS and other public institutions. Then, in theory, the infra structure becomes the property of that institution. In the UK this con-scheme started about 20 years ago, with a push from the corporate friendly State. Today, these public bodies now owe a staggering £300 billion in PFI debt. Our public institutions are in hock to the financial Mafia to that mouth dropping £300 billion, that's debt that you and I will have to pay the vampires from our taxes.

         Our NHS is sinking under a totally engineered, state and corporate greed burden. Between 1997 and 2007 approximately 90% of capital investment in the NHS was PFI. The result is that today the NHS is cracking at the seams from lack of funding, yet it has to pay out to private companies a staggering £2 billion per year. £2 billion of our cash that could be improving the service to the people, is flowing into the bank accounts of private companies. Will it end, well not likely, as by the time that the infrastructure is paid off, it will need upgrading, repairing or replacing, and so the merry-go-round continues, shovelling our cash into the pockets of the vampire squid, the corporate world. It is a brilliant scheme for transferring public money to private bank accounts, and let's not talk about the quality of some of those PFI built infrastructures, that's another story.

       If you are foolish enough to want to continue this plunder of the public purse, then stay with the present greed driven corrupt system of capitalism. If on the other hand you would like to live on a society that sees to the needs of all our people, without the rip-off from greed driven power mongers, parasites and vultures, then you have to look at demolishing this man made economic system of exploitation and corruption. Stop appealing to the parasites, to be a little more kind to you, and to give you a little more of the wealth that you created, they don't understand that language. 

        Only the ordinary people can create a society that looks after the ordinary people, only when we control our communities and our work places, can we hope to create that better world. Forget that middle class approach of petitioning for improvements, within the parameters capitalist system, forget the pointless appealing for reform, where some extra crumbs come you way. Forget a bigger crust, take over the bakery.

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The Corporate Juggernaut And Genocide.

       The horror, death and destruction that is Syria, is difficult to grasp, the scale of the deaths, maiming and total decimation of the country's infrastructure is Armageddon, here and now. No matter how you look at it, the greatest destruction and deaths on the planet are perpetrated by the so called "developed countries". This is how they attempt to dominate the world, state violence by their military might, taking sides and creating fields of blood and slaughter to determine who controls certain swaths of the planet, and the resources there in. Of course the various states don't always use their military killing machines, sometimes it is their corporate bed partners that do the damage with the backing and support of the state.
       I don't think you'll find our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, reporting this case of genocide, being carried out by a corporate juggernaut with the backing of a state that weaves the usual duplicity, and creates the necessary legislation to make it all "legal".
      In Columbia the Wayuu people have for countless generations relied on the Rancheria river, it is their main source of life, their only drinking water in the area for the people, animals and irrigation of the land. Now by duplicity, smoke and mirror illusion, it has gone, mainly to feed a large mining corporation. The Wayuu people are dying a slow death, while the corporate mining juggernaut gets richer and richer. The festering marriage of capitalism and the state at work.  When it comes to profit, people are expendable.

 A father and son observe the remnants of the Rancheria river on Wayuú land / The Cercado dam and reservoir

      Colombia’s largest indigenous group, the Wayuú, have been left for dead after the Colombian government diverted the Rancheria river to South America’s largest coal mine in 2011.
      Five years ago, Colombia’s government completed the construction of the Cercado dam, a project they claimed would improve the lives of all in the arid Guajira region by supplying 9 towns with a second source of drinking water, employing 1,000 workers and providing irrigation for 18,500 hectares of farmland. However, the dam’s impact on the lives of Colombia’s largest indigenous ethnic group, the Wayuú people, was ignored entirely. The river was the only source of drinking water available near the Wayuú and its disappearance from the landscape has had dire consequences. Now, the Wayuú must walk over three hours to water wells filled with dangerous bacteria and salt, making health complications and diarrhea the new normal.
        The area is entirely devoid of clinics and hospitals. Without the river, the Wayuú can no longer cultivate their land, leaving them not only thirsty, but hungry as well. Since the dam was completed in 2011, over 4,700 children, most of them under the age of five, have died from thirst or other complications associated with a lack of clean drinking water. Of course, these are only the documented deaths. The Wayuú, whose population now hovers around 100,000, say that more than 14,000 have died.
       Did the Colombian government live up to its lofty promises of offering water to new communities and farms? It turns out the largest beneficiary of the Cercado dam is a giant coal mine, known as Cerrejón, that uses more than 17 million liters of water a day while the Wayuú lives off of less than 0.7 liters a day per person, though their water is often too salty to drink. Cerrejón, whose logo reads “responsible mining,” is South America’s largest pit coal mine and produces an estimated 32 million tons of coal annually.
      Though originally founded by ExxonMobil, the mine is now jointly owned by a consortium of some of the largest mining companies in the world – AngloAmerican, BHP Billiton, and Xstrata. The Wayuú and their leaders have worked tirelessly to try to confront these mining behemoths who have stolen their water and threatened them with extinction. However, the mining companies often work with right-wing paramilitary groups, who are responsible for the deaths of thousands, in order to get what they want. The Colombian government is also uninterested in improving life for the Wayuú as its mining ministers are notoriously corrupt. Just this March, Colombia’s mining minister resigned amid a corruption probe.

Continue reading HERE:

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Spaceship Earth Has No Escape Capsule.

 

         Two policies that will, in my opinion, eventually destroy the planet for human habitation, one is the illusion of perpetual growth, and the other is the continuous wars that are engineered to support that illusion. At the moment practically the whole of the Middle East is a hell-hole of bloodshed, destruction and unbelievable misery for millions of ordinary people, and this is just one strand of what has been continuous wars imperialism has foisted on the planet. These wars are to hold/gain or increase control over resources to feed that illusion of continuous growth, or they are to protect markets, create or capture new markets, or to prevent another force from gaining ground in that field. The driving force is capitalism's insatiable insane philosophy of "perpetual growth", a policy of rip the planet apart  to feed the greed of the corporate world. Where and when will it stop, will the corporate world one day say, well I think we have done enough damage, let's start to try to repair the mess we have created? If that's what you believe, you will be a spectator to humanity's destruction. The when and where is up to the ordinary people, the world belongs to all life that lives on, and depends on, the planet for survival, and if we don't stand up and fight for it now, our home will be lost forever. Just remember, spaceship Earth has no escape capsule.

Global Fuckin Warming from subMedia.tv on Vimeo.

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Policies Written In Blood.

         The following video is of West's powerful butchers, the power mongers of NATO, the brutal protectors of the West's corporate imperialists. Having wined and dined on our money, they display their arrogance by proclaiming their belief, "We are the world", their joyous and flamboyant display disguises their savagery, their blood socked past, and their brutal destructive vision. When will we rise up and rid ourselves of this militarised savagery and corporate greed. Their policies are written in the blood of ordinary people, and it is all about plundering of resources, corporate greed and state power.

Thanks Loam for the link:

       At the Istanbul meeting on 13 May 2015, NATO leaders finished a well-watered meal. They mock the cretins who believe in them by singing "We are the world". This video is of Jens Stoltenberg, General Philip Breedlove, Federica Mogherini and many of the West's Defence Ministers.

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"Fastest Growing Economy In Europe".

        A little bit more of my thoughts on the “fastest growing economy in Europe”. a phoney growth built on a mountain of personal debt. While this is held up as a success story by our corporate minded lords and masters, its fruits to you and I are nothing like a success story. As I mentioned in my previous post on this illusion, child poverty is on the increase, homelessness is on the increase, those in temporary accommodation are on the increase, those sleeping rough is on the increase. We can add to that, this year saw an increase in insolvency and bankruptcies. Then we have the number being locked up in our vastly over-crowed prisons is on the increase, with obvious resultant riots. So the dystopian vision materialises with other details such as a massive increase in prisoners suicides and self-harm. All this is the world of the ordinary people in this the fifth richest country in the world. Where is all that extra wealth generated from this “fastest growing economy in Europe” going? Certainly not to our National Health Service, as it crumbles under the stress of under funding and under manning, in preparation for its slicing and dicing for sale to the corporate greed merchants. Our education system is falling apart for much the same reasons as our NHS, with the result that the future potential of millions of kids will be stunted. Yet we are supposed to feel satisfaction, and take comfort in the fact that we are the “fastest growing economy in Europe”. 

        The crap coming from the mouths of our lords and masters sitting in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, is that ever increasing trade will solve all our problems. Hence their scurrying around post Brexit, screaming about trade deals with all and sundry, dictators, fascist regimes and despots, as long as the corporate world can make money from the deal. As long as we frame the problem in these terms of ever increasing trade, we will lose the argument. Ever increasing trade is the life blood of the corporate world and will only widen the gap between rich and poor, will only fatten the bank accounts of the corporate greed merchants. Instead of pushing for ever increasing trade, we should be framing the argument in terms of building self sufficiency, with a decent life for all, seeing to the needs of all our people, and what ever surplus we have distributing in the form of mutual aid to those communities still struggling for self sufficiency. Removing profit from the equation and allowing the corporate world to die is the only road to equality, the only way to end poverty and deprivation. We should be aiming for a world where all the wealth that is created should be delivery to all those who created that wealth and those who are in need. We should see the phrase, “the fastest growing economy in Europe” as the slogan of the greed driven corporate world and as the death knell of equality.

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Something Rotten And Malignant At The Heart Of Our Society.

 

       A happy new year to all my family, friends and comrades, so forward into 2017, filled with hope and determination, that we can change the world. This time of year all across the world people gather, filled with goodwill towards each other, a feeling of camaraderie sweeps across the globe, and then it dissipates and fragments. This year let's hold on to that feeling and join hands in the realisation that we are one people, and we can shape this world to our liking and our needs.

       Of course we should not forget that there are those who can't join in any gathering of their choice, for a multitude of reasons, among them, abject poverty, illness, and living in a war decimated area and then those who find themselves locked in the penal cages of the state. Prisons are symbols telling us that freedom has not yet been born, they are living monuments to power, authority and repression. Prisons are edifices reminding those lovers of freedom that their work is far from over. 

       No matter the nation state, it will have its prisons, a tool in its defence of its monopoly on power. Here in the UK that so called "bastion of freedom", the powers that be, boast of crime figures falling, but fail to see the contradiction in the rising numbers of its citizens it locks up in its cages of repression. In that other "land of the free" the good ol' US of A, they lock up more of their own citizens than any other despot, dictator or monarchy on the planet.

      No matter the "prison reforms", prisons are an intolerable abomination of human dignity, they are factories for the destruction of the individual, the state's tool for control. In present day capitalism, prisons are more and more becoming production units for making money for large corporations. In other words prisons are large factories housing slaves. There are no workers rights, no minimum wage, no paid holidays, no days off, no sickness benefits and no health and safety cover, but there are punishments for not working hard enough.

      Naturally, human beings, being what they are, lovers of freedom and dignity,  if you treat them in this manner you build up pressure, and sooner or later the pressure blows. In America on the 29th of September, the largest strike in American prison history began, and ran for months. Some of the individuals involved in that stand for dignity are still being brutally punished by the state's henchmen, know as screws.

     Here in the UK over the last few months, we have seen a series of prison riots,  all brutally suppressed by the heavy hand of the state. Recently in Brussels, in civilised Europe prison riots broke out at several prisons, Tournai, Arlon, Huy, Landtin, and Andenne.  the prisoners burned their cells, flooded the units, trashed the hallways, etc. Saturday May 7, a devastating mutiny rocked the Merkplas prison in Anvers. Whole wings were destroyed and burnt by the insurgent prisoners. Walls were levelled, fences torn down, whole units ransacked.

        Prisoners strikes, and prison riots are symptoms of something rotten and malignant at the heart of our society. People will make a stand about animals being held in cages, but seem to tolerate human beings being held in cages, Why? Of course our babbling brook of bullshit, the main stream media, pedals the lie that our prison are full of nasty, evil, brutal psychopaths. When the truth is far removed from that pungent vomit that the media spews out. Facts show that a very high proportion of those in prison are suffering from some form of substance addiction, a high proportion suffer from mental health problems, a high proportion are illiterate, all of these problems make it difficult to integrate into society. These are people that need our help and support, not to be locked up in cages at the whim of a biased judicial system, that is there to protect the rich and wealthy.

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We Must Administer The Medicine.

 

       We are coming to the end of the annual epidemic of the disease of consumerism, a time of the year when millions sacrifice themselves on the altar of debt. The epidemic passes, but the disease of consumerism lives on, as does the burden of debt. At this time of the year, the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, splurges out vast amounts of sewage in the form of "adverts" extolling the wonders of all manner of crap, the nearer we get to the cut off date of this consumer extravaganza, December 25th., the more neurotic the corporations become, and we see the magic of falling prices as they shout 10% off, 15% off, 20% off, 50% off and more, starting to display just how much they were ripping you off by, in the first place. No matter the occasion our capitalist society must turn it into one of mass consumerism. No event is complete without the sale of its paraphernalia, Christmas is just one of the major peaks in the disease of consumerism, which is slowly destroying the planet. We have the cure for this disease, but seem reluctant to administer the medicine, which is organising our communities on the basis of seeing to the needs of all our people through mutual aid and co-operation, free from the poisoning influence of profit, in a word, anarchism.

Here are some wonderful art works by Angel Boligan, for more visit arrezafe. 

 

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The Lie We Live.

        I posted this video near the beginning of the year, It seems even more relevant now that it was then. So I thought it might be a good idea to do it again, near the end of the year. Who knows, perhaps we will eventually realise that the Earth has no escape capsule, and do our utmost to sort out the mess we have created.

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The World's Eyes On Standing Rock.

 

      The camp set up by the water protectors at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline is facing a critical stage, as December the 5th, is the date set by the Army Corps of Engineers and North Dakota Governor, Jack Dalrymple to evict the water protectors. Solidarity, and publicity are needed now more than ever. Let's raise their voices across the planet. Support is growing in America, there are thousands of US veterans now arriving at the camp, there solidarity is welcome and needed. 

-------the announcement comes as thousands of U.S. Army veterans are expected to arrive at the Oceti Sakowin camp this weekend in anticipation of the Dec. 5 eviction notice given to the camp by the Army Corps of Engineers and North Dakota Governor, Jack Dalrymple. 

      Another show of solidarity comes from a delegation of Cuban trained doctors, who are heading for the camp to lend their expertise and support. Monday will be a very testing day, will the US state unleash its usual militarised violence against such large numbers, including thousands of its veterans, on its on soil? history should give us a dire warning. If the eviction goes ahead as stated, it will not be a quiet affair. What ever happens, let's make sure the world is watching.

       a delegation of doctors trained at the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba announced they will head to Standing Rock to “serve in solidarity.”
        In a late Thursday Facebook post, a group of U.S.-based medical professionals trained at Cuba’s famous Latin American School of Medicine, or ELAM, announced they will head to Standing Rock “to humbly serve in solidarity with the Sacred Water Protectors on the front lines of the current human rights and ecological crisis occurring right now in North Dakota.”
       Dr. Revery P. Barnes, a graduate of ELAM, said in a post on Facebook, “We answer the call to serve in alignment with the mission and core principles of our alma mater and dedication to our commitment to serve underserved communities in our HOME country.” The delegation will work in collaboration with the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council.
      “While Cuba instilled in us an unwavering commitment to internationalism, with the acceptance of a full scholarship to medical school at ELAM, we made the moral commitment to respond to the needs of our most vulnerable communities here at home in the U.S.,” the statement continued.
          On Wednesday, the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council – which has been providing emergency and chronic health care services to the thousands of water protectors gathered at Standing Rock – issued a warning about the grave health and safety threats posed by escalating use of violence by Morton County Sheriff’s Department and Dakota Access Pipeline security personnel, whom they described as creating “war-like conditions.”

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Tomorrow Can Be Ours, If We Want It.

 

         The struggle in America at Standing Rock, over the Dakota Access Pipeline, is our struggle. It is not just about a pipe line and the pollution of a river, it is about the earth we live on and its total destruction by big business, for greed and profit to the few. The Dakota Access pipeline is a scenario that is being repeated across the planet, an insane juggernaut of destruction powered by the financial Mafia and the corporate greed machine, and in most cases, they have the full support of the various states, backed up by the brutal state apparatus. It will only stop when we the ordinary people, stand up and end this greed driven madness. A better world is possible, we have the imagination, the resources, the power, all we are lacking is the will. With that will and solidarity, that new world can be tomorrow.

Thanks Loam for the link, this from People's Tribune:

         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.

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International Protests to Transnational Disaster.

     From Europe to America, the months long opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline is growing, but still needs more of your support. The water protectors are  not only facing the brutal force of a militarised police force, and the national guard, they are now heading into a fierce and bitterly cold winter. There have been a considerable numbers of water protectors injured, some severely, they warrant our strongest solidarity.  As well as actions of solidarity, they need material support to help them survive this two pronged attack.

From Greenpeace

      If you opposed Keystone XL, then you need to know about Standing Rock. Right now, hundreds of Indigenous activists are peacefully protesting the construction of a crude oil pipeline on ancestral lands, and they need your support.

Continue reading:

And from comrades in Exarchia Square in Athens:

        In the afternoon of November 24th 2016, we dropped a banner in Exarchia Square against the Dakota Access Pipeline, currently under construction in the US. This oil pipeline runs a distance of nearly 1,172 miles, from North Dakota to Illinois, and its cost is estimated to be around 3.7 billion dollars. In its destructive path, this mega-project is causing irreversible damage to territories, rivers and surrounding communities.
      Among the affected areas is also Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, where residents alongside people in solidarity resist the police, forces of the US army, and security guards of the groups assigned to construct the pipeline (Energy Transfer Partners being the main contractor). Repression has been so harsh over the last days, that among the hundreds who were injured there’s also an activist whose hand was amputated because of a concussion grenade fired by cops.
      At the same time, there have been many actions of resistance in various cities across the US and beyond, with rail-track and train blockades, direct actions and symbolic gestures of solidarity.
        We send strength to anarchist comrades and all others who fight in an anti-institutional, anti-hierarchical manner and without mediators against the construction of the pipeline, showing what it really is: one among the tentacles of domination draining the Earth.
       Our opposition to this and any other mega-project of the techno-industrial civilization stems from the conviction that the Earth belong to no one; from our need to defend by all means necessary everything that has remained untamed and wild in this artificialized world. Beyond any rhetoric of “ancestral” or “sacred” lands, we support the particular struggle until the liberation of the entire planet.

AGAINST THE OIL PIPELINE IN DAKOTA
ANATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST STATES, CAPITAL AND DOMINATION

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Our Only Help Will Be Self Help.

      Anybody who lives in the world of the ordinary people is well aware that we are going through very difficult times. Poverty is rife among our communities, and it is no accident, it is the result of ideology, an ideology that sees big business as the most important entity on the planet. All legislation is shaped to help big business, and that is always at the expense of the individual. So appealing to that machinery to help sort your problems will reap little if any gains. The world is now corporate orientated, the people are to be used to feed that entity. In the grand corporate plan of things, the people are on a downward spiral, as the drive for ever increasing profits, which fuels this greed driven juggernaut, is the root of their ideology.

     As the poverty grows and the powers that be, move ever further away from the people, we have to realise that we are on our own, no body is coming to help us. We have to develop self defence systems within our own communities, in co-operation with other communities. we have to devise strategies to empower our communities and the individuals within those communities, we have to grasp solidarity as one of our weapons, the only help we can expect is self-help.

     So it is congratulations to the people of Castlemilk, one of Glasgow's large housing estates where, like the rest of them, poverty is endemic. Community spirit and solidarity within the community is growing, community events are on the increase, thanks to the drive and initiative of individuals within the community. Let's see if this attitude and spirit can become infectious, and spread like an epidemic across our city, and other cities.  

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalgasgow.me.uk