What Is Wrong With Extinction Rebellion?

           Though I have always believed that the people have to take to the streets in a drive to change society to one that sees to the needs of all of society, not just the privileged few, I just can’t accept the direction of this particular protest. Yes I accept that climate change is a rapidly impending disaster, and yes we have to tackle it head on. However to ignore the root cause of this looming disaster, which is the capitalist economic system, which is part and parcel of the state system, is doomed to failure. This particular protest is aiming to get the state apparatus to legislate for “green capitalism”, a mythical beast that belongs in the category of fairy tales. Capitalism, green or any other shade, can only survive by continual growth, ever increasing consumption and growth of profit for the few. These are its essence, its blood vessels for survival, and it is obvious that these very goals are the very cause of the climate disaster that we face. To “save the planet” we have to stop the drive for continued growth, drastically cut consumption and end the mantra of everything must produce a profit. In other words we must destroy capitalism if we are serious about “saving the planet”. 

 

 

       I consider it naive in the extreme to expect capitalism ever to embark on a drive that will destroy it, an end to perpetual growth, and to work towards a continual cut in consumption, as both these aims would destroy its need for ever growing profits. Profit, wealth and power is what capitalism is all about, no matter its colour. If you wish to “save the planet” then get behind those who wish to destroy capitalism and its bastard twin, the state, as that is the only direction that will take you down the road to “saving the planet”. 

       Yes, take to the streets, grow your numbers, create disruption, stop the city, but have no illusions about who your real enemy is, capitalism brought us to this catastrophe, it can never get us out of it. Capitalism of any shade or colour and “save the planet” ideals, will never make pleasant bed-fellows, one will have to kill the other to survive, they are totally incompatible. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Attack The Root, Don't Pluck At The Petals.

       I and countless of thousands of others have repeatedly stated that the climate change protests as they stand are delusional. They are appealing to the state to legislate to turn the capitalist destructive monster into a nice friendly green capitalist destructive monster. The planet cannot and will not be saved by states in conjunction capitalists, they are the bedfellows of the destructive system that is capitalism, a system that feeds them unimaginable wealth and power. The answer is obviously outside the state/capitalist way of thinking, capitalism needs perpetual growth, perpetual growth is the destruction of the planet. It is impossible to push for perpetual growth on a planet with finite resources, something has to give. If we continue with this economic model then in the not too distant future, we lose, and the planet goes on for countless more centuries without us. We have to attack the root of the problem, not pluck at the petals. The following article from Contra Madriz puts it much better than I could.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

        Various institutions, environmental groups, trade unions and student groups gathering under the name “Fridays for Future” have announced a so-called “Week for Climate” from the 20th to the 27th of September. Basically this week consists of programmed and alienating demonstrations in which the State and other institutions (UN, G7 etc) are being asked to remedy or take action against the disaster they are causing. In their simplistic and reformist discourse they never criticize the cause of the ongoing devastation: industrial techno capitalism and its technocratic organization of the world.
       They are the ones who criticize climate change without criticizing those who produce it: they have a corpse in their mouths, those who defend the myth of progress, of sustainable development and of a ‘comfortable’ life in exchange for slavery and the commodification of every aspect of our lives, a life sold to technological domination. They are the ones who have purchased the new fashionable product, climate change, from the supermarket of rebellion.
      Fridays for Future? Today more than ever the future does not exist, we live in an eternal present and any vestige of the past has been erased. The technological prostheses that surround and colonize us make us live in a continuous state of sleepwalking, where the catastrophe is not about to come as they insist on warning us, the catastrophe is here and now, the catastrophe is the alienating life directed by the algorithms of our ‘virtual assistants’, the catastrophe is a world already devastated by industry.
      Climate change is just one more of the thousands of harmful consequences of the industrial revolution (the only revolution, that began two centuries ago, that has reached all parts of the planet and colonized and commodified all lifeforms). Climate change is inseparable from the techno industrial system: deforestation, acidification of the oceans, desertification, extinction of thousands of animal and plant species, thousands of chemical products that doom our existence, pollution of land, air and water are just some of the the harmful consequences of this system. We believe that to speak only of climate change without criticizing the techno industrial system is to fall into a reductionism and to not go to the root of the problem.
       Climate change and all the toxicity are the consequences of the technocratic project that manages and administers our lives. A project that consists of colonizing, dominating and commodifying all lifeforms. Once nature has been colonized and dominated, the next objective is human beings, a project based on the convergence of technologies known as NBIC (nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive sciences) to which we can also add robotics and artificial intelligence, their greed has no end. If everything is commodified right down to our daily activities, their profits will not stop increasing. To turn the world and everything that inhabits it into a programmed machine where nothing escapes its control: world-machine, human-machine. This leads us to a mechanistic vision of the world, of ourselves and everything that surrounds us.
     Hundreds of research programs with multi million dollar investments are dedicated to finding new sources of energy. This need for energy for the world to function results in the devastation of territory and annihilation of millions of human and non-human animals. Industrial energy runs the world, it is necessary for the production and distribution of all those unnecessary products that we find around us, it is the economy and it is war. The system has identified and understood as a big business that only ‘renewable’ and ‘clean’ energies will allow to it operate, expand and survive. The new technocratic project is ‘renewable’ and ‘sustainable’, it is ecological. This new project also covers the entire territory, from the industrial deserts of solar panels and wind farms (also causing climate change, devastation of the territory, diseases etc) to eco-cities (non-places where everything is controlled, optimized and automated, also producing hundreds of harmful products and an alienating life). So, to defend green energy is to defend the project that is hurtling us at great speed and a huge rate of progress towards the abyss, it is to defend those who are creating a totalitarian world, it is to defend the project of those who manage and administer our robotized lives.
        This is why we are calling for a week of struggle against climate change and all harmfulness from the 20th to the 27th of September from an anarchist perspective, which goes beyond the limits imposed by social democracy. One more week, in which by means of diverse forms of direct action various groups and individuals will confront the techno industrial system. The week of September 20-27 is only a goal for liberal and statist ecologism, but for those of us who aim for the elimination of the State, capitalism, patriarchy and the techno-industrial system, it is an opportunity to escape the narrow margins of domestication and initiate an autonomous, anti-capitalist and anarchist path against techno-industrial toxicity.

Neither the State nor techno-science will save us.
The struggle is the only way.

(via Contra Madriz)

*Translation note [AWW] – the original title for the week of action translates directly as ‘Week of Struggle Against Climate Change and All Harmfulness’, which sounds fine in the original Spanish language text but does not translate well into English. We toyed with using the word ‘toxicity’ rather than harmfulness, but in the end decided to just leave it out.

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Out Of The Mouths Of Babes!!!

       "Out of the mouths of babes", I think the adult population should hang their heads in shame, at the state of the planet we are handing the next generation. The youth of the world are showing us how it should be done, From one concerned young girl in Sweden, we now have a world wide movement of youngsters taking to the streets against the insanity of our economic destructive system. The cause they are fighting for is one that none of us can escape, it is the survival of the human race. 

    We have to give these young people our unflinching support and take to the streets in solidarity with them. This is not a fun thing with a bunch of kids dodging school, these are intelligent concerned young people who are showing us the way. It is not just a local phenomenon, this is a world wide protest against the rule of our lives by the greedy corporate and financial juggernaut. A call for sanity and a stop to the rape and plunder of our planet just to feed a small cabal of rich and powerful people. What are we doing to our next generation when they can make statements like the one by the young Swedish girl who started this protest, Miss Thunberg,   "I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day." We are handing our youngsters a disintegrating planet and a future of fear. We can still do something about this poisoned legacy we are hand our children and grandchildren. We can join them on the streets across the globe, and take control of our and their future. Of course my own personal view is that the planet is not dying, but the planet is being murdered, and we know who by.

     Glasgow was no exception in this concern for the future, the young people of our city took to the streets on Friday and joined that world wide movement for sanity and a future. The banners that festoon the protest were loud proclamations of the truth that needs to be grasped, "Change the politics not the climate" and the truth that our "lords and Masters" view with blinkers on, "Stop denying our earth is dying", and a blatant truth that we should all grasp,  "If the world were a bank, it would have been saved." Who can deny any of these statements, from the mouths of our youth.

Some photos from Glasgow, thanks Keith.

      Two photos from Glasgow, courtesy of The Herald, (Colin Mearns Newsquest)

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

Spaceship Earth Has No Escape Capsule.

 

       States, councils and corporate bodies, talk the talk on climate change, but never walk the walk. Grand words, but actions that are mainly to protect the profits of the large corporations, who have billions wrapped up in fossil fuels. As the corporate juggernaut grinds its way through our planet, plundering for greed driven profit, our planet limps to a dubious future, where human life is doubtful. All unnecessary, all preventable, if we act now, but time is running out. We would do well to remember, spaceship Earth has no escape capsule. This is our only place for humanity, there is no other planet waiting for the Earth's population. Screw this one up and we are finished, no second chance. If this generation allows this greed driven suicide to continue, we condemn our grand children to an unimaginable, unlivable dystopia of our own making, surely they deserve better. 

        There are those who are fighting this murder by profit, our solidarity should be guaranteed and unstinting, more power to their efforts. This from Enough is Enough:

Climate protectors occupy coal-ship transfer port in Rotterdam
       Rotterdam: This morning (March 9) dozens of climate activists from ‘We Stop Coal’ occupied the coal-ship port of the EMO Rotterdam. The participants of the protest state that it is time to break the power of the fossil industry. They say they will not leave until this renewed contract of EMO is made public and destroyed. There has been a huge international outcry about the continuation of the biggest coal harbour of Europe.
       If the Netherlands wants to take their responsibility regarding limiting the warming of the planet by 1.5 C°, then the port of Rotterdam should stop facilitating fossil fuels as soon as possible. “The port of Rotterdam and counsellor Visser are guilty of climate destruction. By not acting on their responsibility regarding the lease contract of the EMO transfer company they are equally responsible for the destruction of our Earth. People in the Global South and our children will be the ones facing the costs of the decisions of EMO.” Albeit spokesperson Maria Rietberg. “This is a Code Red for the climate. Rotterdam is the biggest coal dealer in Europe. If the government does not take action, it is up to us.”
       The port of Rotterdam is a crucial cross-section of the global fossil fuel trade. “Fossil fuels belong to the past. If we do not intervene right now, our planet will slide into a situation where their inhabitants are unable to live any longer”. Says Rietberg. “Rising sea levels, melting icecaps, millions of people on the move because of hunger due to failed harvest: the cause of this is partly to be found in Rotterdam.”
In the city council of Rotterdam, the behaviour and (lack of) responsibility of D66 councillor Adriaan Visser have triggered antipathy and a feeling of disbelief. Many local political parties urged their followers to take part in the climate march for a coal-free Rotterdam. The march is organized by the Climate Initiative and will leave this afternoon from the City House towards the port company at 13:00 h.
        In the port of Rotterdam, 28 million tonnes of coal is transferred yearly. The burning of this coal equals 47% of the total Dutch CO2 emissions. The majority of this coal is exported by train and inland ships to Germany. In November, hundreds of Dutch citizens joined the protests during the climate summit in Bonn at the Ende Gelände coal mine actions. Four thousand citizens joined the demonstration against the RWE brown coal mine. These people forced RWE to stop their destructive work.
German outrage
       The passive display of the Rotterdam city board has caused international dismay, both in Germany and England. In an open letter, international environmental organizations called upon mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, port company director Allard Castelein and the city council to phase out the coal transfer. “The international willingness for action to come to the Rotterdam port for big scale actions has increased enormously” Albeit spokesperson Micha Vos. “International anti-coal coalitions state that the Netherlands is avoiding their responsibility. With this unacceptable decision, the City Council acts against the Paris climate agreement.
Just transition for the port workers
       ‘We Stop Coal’ aims for a just transition. The coal port workers whose families depend on their income can be part of the immediate transition to renewable energy. The action group supports the call of the FNV -the workers union, for a Coal Fund for the workers of the coal branch. “We think it is necessary that the shareholders give a compensation back to the workers; have they not profited for years from their labour?” states Vos. “Renewable energy provides many opportunities for a new future in the port. The continuation of the status quo through failing government policy has enormous consequences. That is why we now stand up for the climate and demand climate justice for everyone”, albeit Rietberg.
We put a Stop to Coal, March 9, 2018.

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about.

It doesn't have to be that way.

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

Capitalism, The Devourer Of Everything.

         We view the Earth past and present, and try to see the future, and in our vision stretches a sea of concrete and tarmac, forests laid waste, seas polluted, rivers poisoned and a multitude of hungry pleading for survival. The monster that is capitalism has rained destruction on our planet, endless wars, and the plunder and rape of our planet’s finite resources will continue as long as that beast survives. The insane dream of eternal growth of capitalism is the harbinger of death for our home, the Earth, and all its wondrous and varied life. Look around and see the death throes of a living planet, brought about, not by accident, but by the deliberate actions of a man made system of greed, inequality, injustice and brutality, capitalism is a system of planetary suicide. If it is not already too late, the rescue of the planet must come through the total destruction of this madness of capitalism that devours all before it, in a pointless worship of greed. 
          Only the will of the people will kill the ravenous beast of capitalism, we have in all our hearts that dream of a better, fairer world for all, we have the ability, imagination and resources to turn that dream into reality, but first we must realise that the prime and most important task, is the destruction of beast that is capitalism.

From, On The Nameless:

          Man stands atop the ruins of the world, the Nietzschean prophecy of man become a god unto himself seemingly complete. Wherever modern man looks he sees only himself. Reflected everywhere in the animated corpses of his dead creations living only on the power of his dream-magic. The gods no longer find a place suitable to dwell within the great panoplies of mechanical monstrosities. All around the gods seem to have withdrawn, and the manifold masks of the ineffable torn from the skulls of the gods, their naked bodies dissected and discarded. Everywhere in great pools of blood man sees only his own reflection, and is happy. The vast pantheon, the million faces of the earth laid to waste in the ascension of one arrogant ape. It is true, one could perhaps be forgiven in believing that men have succeeded in defeating the gods and taking the throne of creation for themselves.
           But the gods were and are not dead, and they do not rest in idleness. They persist within the dark places. They ready themselves, they lurk, they hunt, and they haunt from the shadows of the world. They no longer dwell on the earth, and we cannot speak of the gods in the old ways. The great and noble lands which they once presided over have been abandoned, left in ruin as the houses of the gods were ravaged for the self-serving ape. Thus we can no longer think of the gods as the old bringers of life, their only task now much more terrible. The vengeful destruction of a great chaos which has spread under heaven. The great pantheon of the gods become a pantheon of world-eaters. Noble and monstrous. Glorious and terrible. They ready themselves in the darkness, striking from out of the shadows of the world. While the masses of men continue to kneel blindly before their fickle, petty, and self-made idols the gods continue to ready themselves, and wage their endless war. Every earthquake which splits the gray concrete strangling the soft earth, every sea-front town swallowed by the rising seas reminding men of the power of water, every tornado which rips apart the decadent dwellings of the arrogant ape with the fury of air, every sinkhole that opens the jaws of the earth to swallow up the world of men is a victory for the ever-wild gods of the earth.

Read the full article HERE

Crazy Ape On Stage.

"All the world is a stage",

so said the ancient sage.

Behold hunger seize life's tender age,

sadly, dying children cause no rage.

Poverty's claws, hard and cold

strip the pride from the old,

once society's pillars  of gold

now broken, their dignity sold.

See our leaders stand aloof

proclaiming war a brand of truth,

draining blood from our proudest youth

sacrificed on greed's ugly tooth.

The crazy ape descends still lower,

death oozing from ever pore

crawls across the earth's floor

turning our planet into a festering sore.

"All the world is a stage",

so said the ancient sage.

Can the crazy ape come of age,

act out a more caring page?

To date,
the crazy ape has written brutal stories
tales of cruelty, of hunger,
painted pictures of appalling wars,
shoddily scribbled trite poetry of criticism.
One day
when he flicks back a page of history

reads with compassion,
asks why?
Perhaps then we can write beautiful poetry
causing a hurricane of love
to sweep across this world.  

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

Our Green Future.

        A green plan is the only way to save the planet, and of course those who have destroyed the planet, the corporate capitalists, rush forward to state that only they can be the saviour of the planet, all they need is more taxpayers money. Their propaganda machine goes into overdrive to convince us that our interests and their interests are the same, and we can trust the corporate beast to be our knight in shining armour and herald in the new beautiful green world. Of course this bullshit, sadly, is swallowed by many.

      The following article from Acorn, with lots of links to follow for further information, may help to shovel the bullshit out of our path.

Gaetano Salvemini.

        “The world nowadays teems with people who have fits of enthusiasm whenever they hear of state intervention, planned economy, five-year plans, and the end of laissez-faire. They do not care to ask who are the social groups in whose interests the state, ie. bureaucracy and the party in power, is to intervene and plan. “Yet the first question which should be asked when invoking the end of laissez-faire is precisely this: in the interests of whom should such abolition take place?”
      When Gaetano Salvemini wrote these words, he wasn’t referring to the 2020s, but he might as well have been. There are plenty of anti-capitalist comrades out there, who, even when they oppose the limited content of a Green New Deal or a New Deal for Nature, are tempted to give such schemes the benefit of the doubt in that they appear to be a step in the right direction, away from the unchecked market forces of “laissez-faire” capitalism.
      But, as Salvemini points out, we need to look carefully at who exactly is pushing these economic plans and whose interests they are designed to serve. Here, the hard work has already been done for us by investigative journalist Cory Morningstar and other writers featured on our Climate Capitalists page of links. 

     The briefest dip beneath the fake green surface of this contemporary political pond reveals it to be less a source of environmental and social hope than a rancid cesspit of private interests. We find ourselves deep within a massive global network of organisations and initiatives with names like the World Resources Institute, The B-Team, We Mean Business, Tomorrow’s Capitalism, The Natural Capital Coalition and Corporate Impact X. Here we can have the pleasure of meeting a former CEO of Unilever, the daughter of a CIA-backed Latin American president, the powerful founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum or a Silicon Valley billionaire hoping to get even richer through a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. In this strange upside-down world, in which Big Business is going to “save the planet”, we come across brave “solo” campaigners supported and promoted every inch of the way by international PR professionals, youth movements described as “grassroots” which are in fact funded and steered from above, high-profile activist “rebellions” cheered on by venture capitalists.
        We hear talk of “exponential opportunities“, “the investment of trillions of dollars“, and a “transformation unlike anything humankind has experienced before... a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres”.
      In short, as Morningstar explains, the so-called Green New Deal is being promoted “as the catalyst to unlock the 100 trillion dollars required to unleash the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. This project, of unparalleled magnitude, is the vehicle to save the failing global capitalist economic system and bring in the financialization of nature”. Having found the answer to the question recommended by Salvemini, we might reflect that it is not exactly surprising to find capitalism manoeuvring to incite state support for its money-making activities.
      It was in 1469 that the banker Lorenzo Medici observed: “Things can go badly for the rich if they don’t run the state”. It is a big mistake to fall for the capitalist lie that their world of “market forces” somehow operates independently of the existence of states. We perhaps might expect that naivety from advocates of the oxymoronic absurdity known as “anarcho-capitalism”, but it is strange to witness anti-capitalists likewise imagining that the involvement of state machineries in capitalist activities will inevitably act as some kind of brake on profiteering.
      Capitalism has always depended on the existence of a state in order to impose and enforce its domination. Indeed, we would argue that the state only exists in the first place as a tool of the wealthy elite. Its role has always been to rubber-stamp, with its self-proclaimed “authority”, the theft from the majority carried out by a greedy and self-interested minority. It is the state that announces that “property” is sacred and lawful and that any attempt to take it back amounts to “crime”. It is the state that physically protects the property and wealth of the rich by employing gangs of thugs to intimidate, attack or imprison anyone who threatens to confiscate it, by whatever means.
      It is the state that legitimises and enforces the expulsion of people from their land, that cuts them off from subsistence, from communal autonomy, and forces them into the waiting jaws of capitalist wage slavery. It is the state that raises armies and navies to conquer foreign lands so that its capitalists can plunder, cheat and exploit still further afield. It is the state that taxes the population, ostensibly in “our” interest, only to divert vast amounts of collective wealth into the pockets of capitalists, whether via their highly lucrative construction schemes (needed for “our” infrastructure), via their profitable arms dealing (needed for “our” defence) or, today, via their pseudo-green technologies (needed to save “our” planet).
      When state and capital work together in a more visible way, as with the planned “Green New Deal” and “New Deal for Nature”, this does not mean that capitalism is on the retreat. It just means that, in order to get through a period of crisis, capitalists are, once again, pretending that their interests are “our” interests, that we are all facing an “emergency situation”, that “our” future is at risk and that, therefore, trillions of dollars of public money should be stuffed, by the state, into the pockets of our capitalist saviours.
      Gaetano Salvemini book Those who persist in seeing a state-intervention version of capitalism as necessarily a step in the right direction, would do well to heed Salvemini’s study of one particular “limited planned economy deferential to capitalism”, which just happened to be the Fascist regime in Italy.
      He wrote: “Italy has never seen anything similar to the type of planning exhibited by the government of Soviet Russia. When an important branch of the banking system, or a large-scale industry which could be confused with ‘the higher interests of the nation’, has threatened to collapse, the government has stepped into the breach and prevented the breakdown by emergency measures.
      “The policies of the Italian dictatorship during these years of world crisis have been no different in their aims, methods, and results from the policies of all the governments of the capitalistic countries. The Charter of Labour says that private enterprise is responsible to the state. In actual fact, it is the state, i.e. the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. When the depression came, the government added the loss to the taxpayer’s burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social”.
       Salvemini summed up the overall impact of Fascist state intervention in the dealings of “laissez-faire” capitalism, by concluding: “The intervention of government has invariably favoured big business”. (3)
     Why would we expect things to be any different today?

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Murder Of A Planet.

        It is now obvious that the corporate world, is destroying the planet. Ground water is contaminated, rivers are polluted, oceans and seas are poisoned, glaciers are melting, forests are stripped bare. Natural habitats disappear under a carpet of tarmac and industrial constructions, more and more species become extinct. All this is done for profit to benefit the few. If we continue as we are doing, it is only a matter of time before the species responsible for this insane destruction of our planet will join the ever growing list of extinct species.
       Where does the state stand in all this? Take a glance around and it becomes obvious. Where resistance to this killing of the planet grows and gets in the way of corporate profit, the state apparatus, as the corporate world's hit squad, moves in and attempts to crush that resistance to the corporate greed and insanity.

       This appeal for solidarity from the Hambach Forest, where mining is set to destroy the entire forest.

 Info

            Short facts about the lignite mining in Rhineland (Germany)
           In the Rhineland in Germany, the company RWE is running 3 lignite mines where they extract around 100 Mio. t of lignite each year. Furthermore they run 5 power plants where the coal is being burned in order to produce energy. This industry causes aroung 100 Mio. t CO² per year, sets free a lot of fine dust as well as heavy metals, radioactive elements and other pollutants.
         To preserve the mines from flooding with water the ground water level of the region is being lowered to a depth of around 500m, which brings heavy consequences for the nature.
In addition many villages are being „relocated“ which means that the people there are forced to move and the land is being destroyed and contaminated.
       For the biggest nowadays running mine there – the mine ‚Hambach‘ – the forest ‚Hambacher Forst‘ is being cut since 1978. The plan of the company is to completely clearcut the forest until 2018.

The world's is largest digger at the RWE mine in Hambach Forest.

Second Day of Evictions! Support needed!

        Yesterday morning the meadow occupation was surrounded by police. This turned into a huge police operation: All main paths in the forest were cleared, fixed and broadened,, all barricades and tripods destroyed. Until today three unoccupied occupations were evicted (Crusty Town, Pizza, Molly). Police forces are still present all around, chasing people who try to build new barricades.

       This is an urgent call-out for all kinds of support! What has happened the last two days is a massive attack! Because all the roads are cleared and passable for big machinery it’s important to protect the forest occupations NOW!

         Come to the Hambach forest, we need food, water, blankets and most of all more people with fresh energy!

15.03.2016

19:30 For now the situation is calm again, seems like the cops left the forest.
17:10 Police chases activists who are trying again and again to barricade the roads.
17:00 Cops cut a rope in Oaktown and peppersprayed one other. This is hindering
food/water supply, climbing up or down is impossible now.
14:30 evicted until now: Crusty Town, Molly, Pizza (all platforms were not occupied at that time)
the meadow is surrounded again by cops, some on horses
tunnel near Molly is destroyed
11:00 copcars are patrolling in the forest

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

 

Do We Leave The Problems To Our Kids?

 

 

      So you have seen the grotesque pantomime performed by the political ballerinas at Westminster, you have seen the rising child poverty, you have seen the increase in precarious working conditions, you have seen the decimation of our social services, you have seen the increase in homelessness and un-affordable rents, you have seen the corporate mafia vultures circling our National Health Service. Look abroad and you see the rise of fascism in Europe and else where, you have seen the wars in the Middle East where the West has stepped in to bring the people of that area "democracy" and delivered death, destruction and destitution, plus an unimaginable wave of desperate people taking the dangerous course migrating half way across the world in search of a decent life. You look at our burning planet and the total unwillingness linked to complete inability of the system to do anything meaningful about this impending disaster. You look at Chile and you see the people of that country rise up in desperation to try and stop the the ever downward spiral of their living conditions, as well as the continuing exploitation, endemic corruption and state violence. Across the globe people are standing up and saying, very loud and clear, this system doesn't work for the vast majority of the people on the planet.

      We see the vast wealth that we produce, but we see it private jets, luxury yachts, opulent penthouse and vast gated estates, we are aware of the tax havens that are a boon to the millionaire and billionaire predatory class, while we, the wealth producers, struggle from day to day for a decent living.

      It is obvious that we have the imagination, the desire, the means and the ability to devise a much fairer and sustainable system that is built on mutual aid, and co-operation, that sees to the needs of all, and respect for all life on the planet. A system freed from the vile clutches of the profit motive, free of borders and authority over others. You know that in your hearts that is the world we want for our children and our grandchildren. However it is up to us to deliver it, or will we sit back and leave this vile corrupt system of exploitation for our kids to sort out?

     It is obvious that the system cannot be reformed, it is built on exploitation of others for personal gain, that is the basic principle of its existence. The only answer is the total destruction of the entire system, and that will only come about by you and me standing up and joining those who are already in direct conflict with this cancerous system of corruption and greed. We can eradicate it from the planet and place it in stories of the past, labelled "The Darkest Hour In Human History.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Time For That Grand Plan.

       Today, because of the economic system that dominates our planet, we seem to stumble from one disaster to another, from one crisis to the next. Our lords and masters' only concern is maintaining their power, their corporate buddies only concern is the next end of year balance sheet, all else is pushed aside. The planet and all its life forms, including us, are sacrificed to these ends. With this sort of prevailing thought, where does that leave our kids and grand kids? Are we prepared to allow this to continue, knowing that we are on a road to total destruction, that could be avoided, how long will we sit and watch vandals destroy our home?

Our long term plan is like our short term plan, only longer.

As usual some food for thought from Not Buying Anything:

         Humanity should think about developing a plan longer than the next election cycle. We don't need 5 year plans, we need 5,000 year plans. Preferably two of them.
          A solid 10,000 year plan would go a long way toward figuring out where we want to go with this petri dish known as Earth. I love the idea of thinking ahead 7 generations, but how about extending that to 500? Supposedly we are the smartest creatures on Earth (and the known Universe according to some), so we should be able to get our big brains together and do this thing.
        In order to reduce the chance of repeating the thousands of years of blind bumbling that we have been experiencing so far, we should come up with an overall plan for humans (and everything else) on our shared petri-planet home. Surely, considering the importance of my proposal, we can get some consensus towards a set of common goals and outcomes.
       Like survival at first, looking at our increasingly grim short term prospects.
       Then we can proceed from there and start planning for things like ridding the environment of human-created radiation produced during our misguided experiment with nuclear energy. That alone is a project that will take thousands of years. We should have one of those already, shouldn't we?
       Next in The Big Plan we can look out over the next few hundred years. Where do we see ourselves as a species? What do we want to achieve in this time? I for one would like to see something more substantial than the planet's first trillionare.
       A lot can happen in one year, let alone a hundred or a thousand. We should have a plan to help direct where we are going. Many of us can imagine a better world, and if we can imagine it, we can achieve it. We can put it in the plan.
      As an ex-teacher I know the importance and the challenges of planning. It will take a different way of thinking to extend our imaginations past the next election, or our own brief existence. But we do care about our kids, don't we? And their kids? And theirs? And so on all the way up the line?
      We have already had many thousands of years to get this thing right, and it feels like we aren't quite there yet. Let's get The Big Plan started.
     How do you see humanity developing over 10,000 years? The glorious possibilities are endless.

      Of course if we are to embark on that 10,000 year plan, the first step must be to completely get rid of capitalism, in all its destructive and ugly forms.

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

WW3.

          Just to clarify my position, I’ll start by saying, this piece in no way, manner, shape or form, supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, events are not happenings that just pop up out of nowhere, they are usually points on a chain of events.
        Let’s go back to WW2 and remind ourselves of the fact that is seldom admitted to in the West, Russia won the second world war. Russia managed to push the Nazi military machine more or less from Moscow to Berlin in less time that it took the allies to push them from Calais to Berlin. At the final stages of the war, the Americans realised that the Russians would reach Berlin before they did and could therefore lay claim to the capital. So the Americans sent a dispatch rider with the American flag to Berlin ahead of their forces so that he could plant the flag in Berlin and claim that they had also reach Berlin. Hence the split of the capital into East Berlin and West Berlin.
        From that day forward, America saw Russia as a threat to its global power, and labelled Russia as an enemy.
        Since then it has done everything in its power to weaken Russia, destroy its economy and remove it from being a threat to American hegemony, It has applied various sanction, and moved its military might ever closer to the Russian border in the form of its puppet organisation NATO. Everybody knows, push a tiger into a corner and it will pounce. Russia pounced and Ukraine is where the blood is shed.
 

 

       Call it what you will, but world war 3 is in progress and the American imperialism is winning and most of the public seem to think this is a good thing. What fails to register on the public consciousness is the fact that America has invaded more countries than any other nation on the planet. America has attempted to destroy more countries economies by sanctions and threat of force than any other country on the planet. America is an imperialist nation that has imprisoned a far great proportion of it own citizens that any other country on the planet. Every analysis of the American prison system comes up with the same result, it is nothing less than a cheap slave labour institution which makes billions of dollars for the corporate world.
        American imperialism is achieving what it has always wanted, the destruction of the Russian economy and it is succeeding with the co-operation and blessing of most Western countries. It can now turn its attention to its next rival for world domination, China. America has already surrounded China with a ring of fire in the form of missile bases, see John Pilger’s Coming War on China,
         American imperialism will go to any lengths to destroy any power group or country that should dare to challenge its hegemony. It will sacrifice populations in bloody wars, it will starve the population by means of sanctions, to maintain its dominant position on the planet. Not for the benefit of the people, but for the enrichment of the corporate world of billionaires and the protection of their wealth, power and privileges.
         Peace will only come when we get rid of nation states, national borders and see the world as one village where we all benefit from co-operation and mutual aid, freed from higher authorities and the profit motive. Our obedience to their rules and propaganda, to their flag honouring and the poison of patriotism is the foundation of their success.

Patriotism

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.
Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.
 

No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.
No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Polluters.

 

                                                Image courtesy of Wealthy Guerilla.

             It is frustrating to listen to the various government bodies talking about minimising the temperature change on the planet, in an attempt at saving humanity and host of other species. They talk of green energy, while industry drags its feet, they encourage you and I, the peasants, to take shorter showers, shallower baths and turn the thermostat down a degree. However they never mention the biggest polluters on the planet. By far the world's largest polluter is the military industrial complex, the pentagon etc. and then there is the millionaire/billionaire parasite class, with their massive limousines, several mansions, private jets, and those monstrous gas guzzling multi-million pound yachts. Until we tackle these mass polluters, we are peeing against the wind. Considering they, for the moment, are the ones who hold the reins of power and control all the wealth, they are very unlikely to to do much to change that situation. If we are to save the planet and humanity, though the planet will survive and probably flourish without us, we, the ordinary people, will have to do the job ourselves, by bringing to an end, this insane greed driven system of capitalism and its plundering of the Earth's resources simply for the profit and wealth of the few. I don't believe we have that much time, so drastic action on our behalf will be necessary.

                                              Image courtesy of The Guardian.

Image courtesy of Council of Europe.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Insanity Reigns.

        It is difficult to comment on the recent drone killing in Iraq by the irrational and impulsive action of Herr Trump, the possibilities for misery, carnage, chaos, death and destruction, involving millions of innocent people, is so multi-faceted that the mind draws back in horror and disbelief. However, it is a reality and must be faced and met with mass protests and direct action against all those who for whatever reason support this insanity. This is just the latest act of bloody imperialism by the US establishment, the latest in a long line that goes back more than a century. The blood of innocents drips from every dollar, countries become metropolises of misery and populations become an army of migrants, as a result of the US foreign policy, aided and abetted by its varies poodles dotted around the planet, including that previous blood soaked imperialist state of the UK.

     Sanity and humanity demands that we do our utmost to bring down this festering system of plundering the planet by the powerful for their own gain. As long as capitalism exists, power will dominate, wars will persist, death and destruction will be a daily occurrence for millions, and waves of displaced people will wash across the planet in search of safety and sanctuary. As always the rich and powerful will gain, the poor will always pay the price in sweat and blood. 

        Who can disagree with this extract from an article by Black Rose Anarchist Federation

In today's world, a daily occurrence for millions. 

        We share the view of fallen Black freedom fighter and Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. that “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government. I cannot be silent.” Much of the world has become a scorched battlefield for over two centuries as the dark shadow of U.S. imperialism, resource extraction, and capital accumulation first spanned the continent, then the globe. Through the colonization of indigenous peoples in the Americas to imperialist expansion around the world, this great purveyor of violence has displaced, imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, and killed untold millions. It is no surprise that in our time, through an endless “war on terror” that the darkest areas of this shadow have engulfed the broader Middle East.
        We stand in solidarity with the people of Iran and the Middle East who have suffered greatly from U.S. imperialism. The 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that ousted Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and brought the oppressive shah back to power made the ground fertile for the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Since then, the U.S. has been directly involved in destabilizing both Iran, and later, Iraq; first starting with the Iran-Iraq war (1980). The Gulf War of 1990-91, the intermittent bombings as well as the sanctions and blockade that lasted through the 90s, the 2003 invasion and ensuing occupation, and the battle against ISIS can more accurately be viewed as a three decade long war waged by the U.S. Intermittent threats of war against Iran, crippling economic sanctions and drone warfare have finally come to a tipping point. The world waits in horror as lines are drawn in the sand and Trump openly threatens to commit war crimes in Iran through the targeting of cultural sites. Millions of people who are desperately trying to escape the clutches of this endless war have fled their homes: the U.S. is guilty of creating the largest refugee and humanitarian crises since WWII. We demand: U.S. Out of the Middle East!

Read the full article HERE:
       My only disagreement with the above statement is that it is not "Out of the Middle East", it is off the face of the planet for all imperialism, capitalism.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk