Oct 2014 – Page 2

Daring activists uses GPS to track illegal logging trucks in the Brazilian Amazon

great action I reckon!

Illegal Logging in Para State, Brazil as revealed by Greenpeace activists.

October 15, 2014

Every night empty trucks disappear into the Brazilian Amazon, they return laden with timber. This timber —illegally cut —makes its way to a sawmills that sell it abroad to places like the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan using fraudulent paperwork to export the ill-gotten gains as legit. These findings are the result of a daring and dangerous investigation by Greenpeace-Brazil that had activists hanging out with truckers and illegal loggers, all the while surreptitiously tagging trucks with GPS locator beacons. The high-tech equipment allowed the organization to track where the logging trucks went.

“Illegal logging can be hard to get to tackle. Logging happens deep in the forest, far from the eyes of the world,” reads a blog on the mission by Greenpeace. “But all that is changing. Covert GPS tracking technology and satellite surveillance means…

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12th Oct.. Day Of Indigenous Resistance

Designated by Franklin D Roosevelt as “Columbus Day” in 1937, the 12^th of October is the date that Christopher Columbus first “discovered” the Americas.

The anniversary was re-named “Day of Indigenous Resistance” by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2002 to commemorate the beginning of the indigenous struggle against European invasion and colonisation.

On 12 October, the Spanish state celebrates its festival with a great military parade as the central event. This is a date full of

controversy. Today it is called the Day of the National Festival, but for a large part of Franco’s time, it was also called ‘Hispanitat’ Day

and originally the Festival of the Race. And it was and is not only observed in Spain, but also in a few American countries under very

different names, in commemoration of the beginning of the Spanish colonisation of America.

In Argentina for example, it is called the Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity, and in Chile the Day of the Meeting of the Two Worlds,

whereas in Nicaragua and Venezuela, the 12 October is the Day of the Indigenous Resistance.

Continue reading “12th Oct.. Day Of Indigenous Resistance”

Death of Freedom: IS and Turks unite against Kobanê revolution

11/10/2014 MANIFESTACIÓN POR KOBANE.. 5.00 Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona

update: see Roar article below

Latest reports say that IS attackers have been re-armed and have taken more than half of Kobanê the last stand of the progressive YPG Kurdish volunteers.

All of the surrounding countryside has been lost, with nearly 200,000 refugees in Turkey.

Kurdish reinforcements are still held back by the Turkish army in nearby Efrîn i Cizîrê.

Food water and ammunition are running out and the IS forces are massacring, burning, raping, looting and imposing Sharia law.

The Turkish army are sealing the border and giving direct physical and medical aid to the Islamist forces.

In the last few days over 30 people have also died in Turkey in protests against Turkish support of IS and blocking of Kurdish reinforcements.

Arîn Mîrkan and her children

The amazing resistance to barbaric macho IS by the progressive revolutionary volunteers in Kobanê is summed up in the fate of Arîn Mîrkan , among thousands of others.

Arîn Mîrkan was a commander of the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ), defending the Kurdish city Kobanê against the attacks of the Islamic State. Kobanê is on the 21st day of courageous resistance against IS. Arîn was surrounded by the jihadists, but instead of surrendering and falling into their dirty hands, she detonated herself and killed many IS-members with her. Continue reading “Death of Freedom: IS and Turks unite against Kobanê revolution”

Great new edition of ‘The Free’.. classic anarcha-feminist novel.

The new updated ‘pocketbook’ edition of ‘The Free’ is Out Now!

And now available through Active Distribution here.. cheaper than Amazon!

You can download it free here to read on a tablet, laptop or cellphone…

Also it’s being reviewed in a 26 page essay by an eminent critic.

Plus the new SLIDESHARE is finally finished here

A few more commentaries on the book.

The Free is a story with a serious message, and the real joy of it is how author M.Gilliland disguises that within a very good story. Almost every other “message” book I’ve ever read has been a bit ham-handed and clunky, but The Free is, well, Free of all that.

Based on the somewhat disjointed pitch, I was expecting a fairly wacky tale, but The Free has many serious moments that could give literary fiction tales a run for their money. Dialog is spot on perfect and it’s easy to emphasize with the main character as either Linda or Maxie. In fact, in a lot of ways, Linda/Maxie and to some extent Macker are the normal ones, the straight-man role for the crazy world Gilliland has created.

It’s also interesting to note that The Free is quite a timely tale given what is happening in the world. We’re killing our climate and our economy is going down with it, making The Free an admirable anecdote to represent our somewhat lost generation.

John Breeden II Old Number Seven

I am fascinated by the short, succint narrative passages. I am engaged by the structure of the work, the amusing characters, a plot that reminds me of Ulysses (the Joyce version). Well done and best wishes. Mercutio

‘’This is the most detailed fictional treatment of the movement from a world recognizably like our own to an anarchist society that I have read. More importantly, it is imagined strongly enough to allow readers to believe that events could happen this way. That is to say, it gives plausible answers to the two most important questions regarding such a transformation: under what preconditions is it likely to occur, and once it starts what factors most contribute to its success?……” Dan Jaekle

This reads like “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole and Alan Moore’s “V For Vendetta”. You have that skewed look at mass rebellion from a protagonist a little out of the mainstream idealistic vision of a revolutionary. This is at it’s core taking a non-plausible hero or unlikely band of heroes that you have made conventional. It’s the literary equivalent of taking Humpty Dumpty and making him Che Guevera. Brillant writing executed with precise subtlety.–JL “The Devil Of Black Bayou:”

Reading this was so energising. I love the MC and her humour and her struggle to make sense of everything. Very, very good writing. Refreshingly different. It feels as though you had enormous pleasure writing it and that shines through. Nothing to criticize. Thanks for an interesting and uplifting read. Made my day! Fontaine

Strong believable, compelling situation. “Like a bee in a jar” is lovely.
“I had the idea that my father was great. It’s true he did shout and roar and get drunk. But I was his own big girl.” This is beautiful writing, we feel how torn she is between the emotional and the rational view of her father.
Similarly in,“But I still believed by dada was the best. For me he’d always been the bee’s knees. And I didn’t dare doubt it.”
“It was groaning brutal” is magnificent!
Nothing is simple here, it is life with all its hidden complexity, I liked, “I’m still not sure sure that I didn’t vomit on her on purpose” and “They always have their hooks inside your head” The world you’ve created is dark and rich.
“My feet went crunch crunch down the gravelled drive, like a zombie late for lunch.” Brilliant and funny, as is, “I’d like to say I couldn’t care two drops of diarrhea what he done. But that would be a sinful lie.” and I loved,
“because the sun and the moon and all the stars shone out of his arsehole” it is gloriously strong and earthy.

Sharda D. http://www.authonomy.com/books/42835/mr-unusually-s-circus-of-dreams/