The Tar Sands Killer.

       Tar sands, probably among the dirtiest and environmentally damaging fuels man produces. It is not pumped out of a hole in the ground, you have to remove all the topsoil and vegetation growth, and in so doing destroy all the wildlife in the area. What you leave behind is a wasteland, a barren desert, in the case of Alberta tar sands, the largest in the world, the effect on wildlife is devastating.
       Not a new video, but still very relevant today.

This from Wikipedia:

        In Northern Alberta, oil development activities bring an enormous number of people into a fragile ecosystem. Historically, population figures have been very low for this region. Water is easily polluted because the water table reaches the surface in most areas of muskeg. With the ever-increasing development and extraction of resources, wildlife are recipient to both direct and indirect effects of pollution. Woodland Caribou are particularly sensitive to human activities, and as such are pushed away from their preferred habitat during the time of year when their caloric needs are greatest and food is the most scarce. Humans' effect on the Caribou is compounded by road construction and habitat fragmentation that open the area up to deer and wolves.^[118]

      Wildlife living near the Athabasca River have been greatly impacted due to pollutants entering the water system. An unknown number of birds die each year. Particularly visible and hard hit are migrating birds that stop to rest at tailing ponds. There have been numerous reports of large flocks of ducks landing in tailing ponds and perishing soon after.^[119] Data has been recorded since the 1970s on the number of birds found on tailing ponds.^[120]

        There has also been a large impact on the fish that live and spawn in the area. As toxins accumulate in the river due to the oil sands, bizarre mutations, tumors, and deformed fish species have begun to appear. A study commissioned by the region's health authority found that several known toxins and carcinogens were elevated.^[121] Aboriginal communities that live around the river are becoming increasingly worried about how the animals they eat and their drinking water are being affected.^[122]

        While there has been no link yet made between the oil sands and health issues, Matt Price of Environmental Defense says the connection makes common sense. Deformities in fish and high concentrations of toxic substances in animals have also been identified.^[123]

       This not being done because there is a shortage of oil, there is actually a glut of oil on the market. It is simply done to make money for already rich corporations. However, there are people who are prepared to make a stand and do what they can to impede this filthy destruction of the natural environment by rich greedy corporations.

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Workers Now Your History, Louise Michel.

       We should remember our own. On this day in 1883, Lousie Michel,(1830-1905) French anarchist, teacher, medical worker at the Paris barricades, was sentenced to six years in prison and 10 years monitoring, following several bakeries being looted after a large demonstration.

This from Wikipedia:

      During the Paris Commune of 1871, she was active as an ambulance woman treating those injured on the barricades. During the Siege of Paris she untiringly preached resistance against the Prussians. On the establishment of the Commune, she joined the National Guard. She offered to shoot Thiers, and suggested the destruction of Paris by way of vengeance for its surrender.

       She was with the Communards who made their last stand in the cemetery of Montmartre, and was closely allied with Théophile Ferré, who was executed in November 1871. Michel dedicated a moving farewell poem to Ferré, l’œillet rouge (The Red Carnation). Upon learning of this loss, Victor Hugo dedicated his poem Viro Major to Michel. This ardent attachment was perhaps one of the sources of the exaltation which marked her career, and gave many handles to her enemies.

       In December 1871, she was brought before the 6th council of war, charged with offences including trying to overthrow the government, encouraging citizens to arm themselves, and herself using weapons and wearing a military uniform. Defiantly, she vowed never to renounce the Commune, and dared the judges to sentence her to death.^[3] Reportedly, Michel told the court, “Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything but a little slug of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance.” ^[4]

    She spent twenty months in prison and was sentenced to deportation. At this time the Versailles press gave her the name la Louve rouge, la Bonne Louise (the red she-wolf, the good Louise).

The text of the L’œillet rouge"^[5] is as follows:^[6]

If were to go to the black cemetery

Brothers, throw on your sister,

As a final hope,

Some red 'carnations' in bloom.

In the final days of Empire,

When the people were awakening,

It was your smile red carnation

which told us that all was being reborn.

Today, go blossom in the shadow of the black and sad prisons.

Go, bloom near the somber captive,

And tell him/her truly that we love him/her.

Tell that through fleeting time

Everything belongs to the future

That the livid-browed conqueror

can die more surely than the conquered.

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Electron Club Open Day Just Got Bigger.

The Electron Open Day looks more exciting by the day, so don't miss out. Two new events added to the already fascinating list.

RADICAL INDEPENDENT BOOK FAIR
Books you don't find many of in the bookshop, zines, DVDs leaflets, posters, T shirts, book swap, and a whole range of freebies. RIB has em all.

WIKIPEDIA
One of the things that comes up when you search the internet a lot is Wikipedia. Full of facts, information images and all sorts.Did you know you can add stuff to WP? Did you ever think about it but weren't sure? Come and meet a Wikipedia volunteer who does and will explain how to go about it.

Electron Club.

Electron Club Open Day

Upstairs at the CCA

350 Sauchiehall Street

Glasgow.

Sunday, December 1, 12 noon to 4pm.

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A SAD SOLSTICE EVENT.

      The winter solstice brings about many strange and some memorable events, some joyous, some sad. It was during the 2005 winter solstice that on of the Earth Liberation Front, anarchist, environmentalist movement, took his own life while in Prison. We should always remember those who believed so passionately that they couldn't be bound by the state. Remember Bill Rodgers, a.k.a. Avalon, committed suicide in prison on the 21st. December 2005.

This from Wikipedia:

       Bill Rodgers a.k.a. Avalon (died December 21, 2005), co-proprietor of the Catalyst Infoshop in Prescott, Arizona, USA, was one of six environmental activists arrested December 7, 2005 as part of the FBI's Operation Backfire. He was charged with one count of arson for a June, 1998 fire set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) at the National Wildlife Research Center in Olympia, Washington. He was found dead in his jail cell on December 21, 2005. According to police, Rodgers committed suicide using a plastic bag.[1]

Government claims

      The FBI has claimed that Rodgers was a criminal "mastermind" and the anonymous author of Setting Fire with Electrical Timers, an Earth Liberation Front Guide,[2] which explained in detail how to create an incendiary device known as a "cat's cradle". Authorities said that once the guide was published they no longer were able to tell with certainty when the ELF cell connected to Rodgers was responsible for an arson.

Death

       Rodgers wrote a suicide note[3] which he mailed to a number of his friends:

To my friends and supporters to help them make sense of all these events that have happened so quickly: Certain human cultures have been waging war against the Earth for millennia. I chose to fight on the side of bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff rose and all things wild. I am just the most recent casualty in that war. But tonight I have made a jail break—I am returning home, to the Earth, to the place of my origins. Bill, 12/21/05 (the winter solstice.)

Many activists blamed two co-operating witnesses for Rodgers' arrest, both of whom are alleged to have been very close friends and members of the same ELF cell as Rodgers and agreed to become informants for the FBI.[4]

Continuing influence

      Rodgers has had a continuing impact on various anarchist and radical environmentalist movements. A number of acts of civil disobedience have been dedicated to his memory. Among these have been the removal of 28 beagle puppies from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Independent University of Madrid [5] and the burning of a partially constructed development in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

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WE SHOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER ONE OF OUR OWN.

       Once again I am a day late, it must be some sort mental decay.  December 9th marked the 170th anniversary of the birth of anarchist Peter Kropotkin

From Wikipedia:

       Kropotkin died of pneumonia on 8 February 1921, in the city of Dmitrov, and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Thousands of people marched in his funeral procession, including, with Vladimir Lenin's approval, anarchists carrying banners with anti-Bolshevik slogans. This was the last large gathering by anarchists until 1987, when glasnost saw them hold the first open free protest against Bolshevik state communism for over 60 years in Moscow. In 1957, the Kropotkinskaya station on the Moscow Metro was renamed in his honor.

More from Anarchy Archives.

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - RICARDO FLORES MAGON.

       As September closes, a bit late to mention, but one not to be overlooked, Ricardo Flores Magon, he was born the 16th. September 1874. After a life of revolutionary struggle and years in prison, he was arrested in America in 1918 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for "obstructing the war effort" and died in Leavenworth Prison on the 21st. November 1922. 

"FAREWELL!"

WE cannot break our chains with weak desire,

with whines and supplicating cries.

'T'is not by crawling meekly in the mire

The free-winged eagle learns to mount the skies.

The gladiator, victor in the fight,

On whom the hard-contested laurels fall,

Goes not in the arena pale with fright

But steps forth fearlessly, defying all.

O victory, O victory, dear and fair,

Thou crownest him who does his best,

Who perishing, still unafraid to bear,

Goes down to dust, thy image in his breast.

Farewell, O comrades, I scorn life as a slave!

I begged no tyrant for my life, though sweet it was;

Though chained, I go unconquered to my grave,

Dying for my own birth-right --- and the world's.

Ricardo Flores Magon.

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WORKERS, KNOW YOUR HISTORY, MARIUS JACOB.

         Today, 29 September, we celebrate the life and birthday of ALEXANDRE MARIUS JACOB (1879-1954) he was a French illegalist anarchist whose avowed mission was to steal back from the major thieves: commerce, the aristocracy, the state. Although a lucid and articulate thinker and polemicist, he soon learned to avoid political milieux and cut to the chase, working with common criminals. He was by all accounts a phenomenal burglar — he was a model for the “gentleman-cambrioleur” Arsène Lupin. He had, for example, the panache to leave at the scenes of his crimes a calling card in the name of “Attila.” He devised the trick, often enacted in movies, of breaking into an apartment from the floor above by poking an umbrella through the ceiling and using it to catch the plaster. At one point he bought a hardware store, where he could dismantle safes at his leisure. But he was also famously Robin Hoodesque, redistributing the bulk of his takes to the poor. When he discovered that an intended victim was choked by debts, he left her 10,000 gold francs, and when he found that another one was a writer, he put everything back and left money for damages. Caught and sent to forced labor in French Guyana in 1903, he attempted escape seventeen times, and authorities complained about having to bring in new guards at frequent intervals, since he regularly converted his jailers to his principles. He spent his last few decades as a market peddler in rural France. He died 9 August 1954.

More on wikipedia:

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - ERICH MUHSAM.

            Across the planet and through the years anarchist have come in for some brutal and truly barbaric treatment at the hands of the sadistic dupes of the state. We could probably fill the London telephone directory with names of our comrades who have suffered in this way. February marks the 78^th. anniversary of the arrest of one such comrade. The following from wikipedia.

Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic. Also a cabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic for works which, before Hitler came to power in 1933, condemned Nazism and satirized the future dictator. Mühsam was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.

Mühsam was arrested on charges unknown in the early morning hours of 28 February 1933, within a few hours after the Reichstag fire in Berlin. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, labelled him as one of "those Jewish subversives." It is alleged that Mühsam was planning to flee to Switzerland within the next day. Over the next seventeen months, he would be imprisoned in the concentration camps at Sonnenburg, Brandenburg and finally, Oranienburg.

         During his short stay in various concentration camps, Mühsam suffered dreadfully and was treated to unbelievable barbaric cruety. The following is one report of some of his treatment. Again from  Wikipedia.

"After breaking his teeth with musket blows; stamping a swastika on his scalp with a red-hot brand; subjecting him to tortures which caused him to be taken into a hospital, even now the fascist hyenas of the Sonninburg concentration camp continue their beastly attacks upon this defenseless man. The last news are really atrocious: the Nazi forced our comrade to dig his own grave and then with a simulated execution made him go through the agony of a doomed man. Although his body has been reduced to a mass of bleeding and tumefied flesh, his spirit is still very high: when his traducers tried to force him to sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied (the Nazi's anthem) he defied their anger by singing the Internationale."

It was even alleged that the camp's guards had even ripped out pieces of Mühsam's beard in order to make him look more like the caricatures of orthodox Jews seen in anti-semitic newspapers and tracts.

On 2 February 1934, Mühsam was transferred to the concentration camp at Oranienburg. The beatings and torture continued, until finally on the night of 9 July 1934, Mühsam was tortured and murdered by the guards, his battered corpse found hanging in a latrine the next morning.[3]

        Those with power will always fear, revile and attempt to eliminate those who call for justice and freedom. The state will not tolerate those who will stand up to its threats, that is why it carries on its relentless propaganda against and repression of anarchists.

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WHAT IF THE CORPORATE FASCISTS CONTROL THE INTERENET.

          We take wikipedia for granted but what would the world be without it? It is not just the loss of wikipedia but all the periferal damage, the censorship, the control over what you can post and what you can watch, that this act would impose on everybody. You would be under threat each time you clicked on a search engine list, or the list would be so depleted that it would be next to useless.The corporate world controls the fiscal policies of most governments and now they want to control you via the internet. You can rest assured that it is not for your benefit but for the benfit of the corporations in the media and entertainment world. It is another tentacle of corporate fascism.

Created by: Online University
Graphics by: Peter Kim

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ONLY BAD GUYS GET KILLED.

       The following information is taken from Wikipedie  where you will find links to all the detail given. The Western press never seem to notice casualities caused by there actions or those of their "rebel" group. According to our fair media, it is only Gaddafi that does the killing, we are always surgical and painless in our war efforts, and the people we support are good guys and would never do anything to harm anybody. It is the usual "fog-of-war" lies that the media peddle to keep you supporting the brutal wars, it is only bad guys that get killed. This will continue until we get rid of the state, its war machines and the partner in its festering marriage, corporate capitalism.

Deaths caused by anti-Gaddaffi forces.

        Among the security forces there had been more than 1,700 dead, including civilians in support of the government, alleged mercenaries and government soldiers. There have been many reports that members of the security forces have been killed by both the government and the opposition. Obviously as the fighting intensifies, so the death toll will riseon both sides, that's how we protect civilians.

        On February 18, two policemen were hanged by protesters in Benghazi. Also, on the same day, 50 alleged African mercenaries, mostly from Chad, were executed by the protesters in al-Baida. Some of them were killed when protestors burned down the police station in which they locked them up and at least 15 were lynched in front of the courthouse in al-Baida. The bodies of some of them were put on display and caught on video. By February 23, the government confirmed that 111 soldiers had been killed.On February 23, a group of 22 government soldiers attempted to make a breakout from an air base near Derna, which had been under siege for days by rebel fighters. Within hours, all of them were captured and eventually 12 of them were shot execution style while a 13th was hanged by the opposition forces. Between February 15 and May 22, 37 former government loyalists were killed in Benghazi in revenge killings by some opposition groups.

     Toward the end of the Battleof Misrata (February 18, 2011 – May 15, 2011), at least 27 sub-Saharan Africans from Mali, Niger or Chad, who were accused of being mercenaries, were executed by rebel forces.

Deaths caused by Coalition Forces. 

There's been some collateral damage?

        The Libyan official sources claimed that at least between 64 and 90 people were killed during the bombardments on the first two days of the U.N. intervention and another 150 had been wounded. The Vatican news agency confirmed that in Tripoli alone, at least 40 civilians died as a result of the bombing campaign. According to the Libyan Health office, the airstrikes killed 1,108 civilians and wounded 4,500 by July 13.

• On April 1, NATO airstrikes killed 14 rebel fighters and wounded seven more on the frontline at Brega.

• On April 7, news reports surfaced that NATO bombers killed 10–13 rebels and wounded 14–22 near the eastern oil town of Brega.
• On April 27, at least one NATO warplane attacked the Libyan rebel forces position near the besieged city of Misrata, killing 12 fighters and wounding five others.

• On May 13, 11 religious imams were killed and 50 others injured when a NATO airstrike struck a large gathering in Brega praying for peace in conflict-ridden Libya.

• On June 19, at least nine civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike on Tripoli. Reporters saw bodies being pulled out of a destroyed building. NATO acknowledged being responsible for the civilians deaths.

• On June 20, 15 civilians including three children were killed by another NATO airstrike on Sorman.
• On June 28, eight civilians were killed by a NATO airstrike on the town of Tawragha, 300 kilometres (190 miles) east of Tripoli.

• On July 25, 11 civilians were killed by a NATO airstrike on a medical clinic in Zlitan.

• On July 30, 3 journalists were killed and 15 wounded in Nato attacks against the Libyan state TV Al-Jamahiriya, which continued to broadcast after the attacks.

• On August 9, the Libyan government claimed that 85 civilians were killed in NATO airstrikes on Majer, a village near Zlitan. A NATO spokesman confirmed that they bombed Zliten at 11:45 p.m. on August 8, 2011 and 2:34 a.m. on August 9, 2011 but said that he was unable to confirm the casualties. The Libyan government declared three days of national mourning. Reporters were later taken to a hospital where they saw at least 30 dead bodies including the bodies of at least two young children. The Libyan government claimed that the bodies of others killed in the airstrikes were taken to other hospitals. Commander of the NATO military mission in Libya, Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard said "I cannot believe that 85 civilians were present when we struck in the wee hours of the morning, and given our intelligence. But I cannot assure you that there were none at all".
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