In his novel The Man in the High Castle, which depicts a
Nazi-dominated world, Philip K. Dick describes a dynamic where the
Reich, despite holding enormous power, makes itself progressively more
volatile and reactive. At one point in the book, a character observes
that “most high-placed Nazis are refusing to face facts vis-a-vis their
economic plight. By doing so, they accelerate the tendency toward
greater tour de force adventures, less predictability, less stability in
general. The cycle of manic enthusiasm, then fear, then Partei
solutions of a desperate type…all this tends to bring the most
irresponsible and reckless aspirants to the top.”
This satirical vision of Naziistic excess parallels the dynamic that’s now making the capitalist world collapse. The ruling elites, by refusing to address the plight of the global poor and ignoring the environmentally and economically unsustainable nature of capitalism, are making civilization ever more unstable.
As civil unrest spreads around the world in reaction to the decline of living standards, and as a recession looms that will be worse than the last, the political and business class throws crumbs to the suffering masses while seeking militarized solutions to the growing chaos. The neoliberal regimes in Ecuador and Chile aren’t going to yield to future protests much beyond the minor concessions they’ve made so far. They’ll respond to further uprisings by escalating their police repression, which in Chile’s case has already come to mirror the brutality of the Pinochet era.
Impressive strength of the Revolt, it’s a dream week. There is
exhaustion, many of us sleep very little because of the mixture of worry
and anxiety. But there is no doubt that we still have a lot of strength
to continue fighting.
Another day of protests where massivity was the tonic, continue the focus of clashes between rebels versus police and military. Anarchists and Antifascists on alert for posts on social media by members of ultra-right groups who call for their support to crush the mobilizations.
Riots outside a police station in the commune of Peñalolen, where
neighbors claim that police crucified detainees on the antennas of the
roof of the police compound. In the center of the city encapuchadxs
(hooded ones) attack the subway Baquedano, a place accused of being used
as a macabre torture center.
Drivers of the public transport company “SuBus”, on which lines 200
and 300 depend, paralyse their functions in solidarity with a colleague
shot in unclear circumstances.
There are also truck drivers, taxi drivers, collectives and car
owners. Demanding that the price of the road tolls be reduced, the call
is to travel very slowly on the motorways.
Bolsonaro’s friend and ultra-right presidential candidate Kast tries to take political advantage of a movement called “yellow vests”, a group of citizens who, full of paranoia, take care of their homes and patrol their neighborhoods, protecting themselves from imaginary enemies and looting (no house has been registered to date)
The truth is that they are functional people to the system who protect “their” supermarkets and criticize the use of violence. Fascist Kast calls for a march on Sunday. Political parties and parliamentarians “shield” the president of Chile from the demands of the people for his head, diverting anger towards the psychopathic interior minister Andrés Chadwick Piñera (cousin of the president) blaming him for the murders and demanding his resignation.
Congress approved the idea of legislating to reduce weekly working
hours to 40 hours. A week ago this idea was strongly resisted by the
government, the right wing and the businessmen.
Despite President Sebastian Pinera cabinet reshuffle Monday morning, Chileans angry at inequality called for more demonstrations this week in the biggest political crisis since the country's return to democracy in 1990. #ChileDespierta#CambioDeGabinetehttps://t.co/BJiaRyNKjV
There’s a problem in Catalonia. You don’t need to be a genius to notice. We won’t analyse its causes here, nor make a political statement in favour of either side.
There are different points of view within our organisation regarding the right to self-determination claimed by parts of the Catalan people. But if there is something that defines the history of CNT, within Catalonia and in the state, it must be that we always stand against repression.
The Spanish state has proved, once again, to be anything but democratic. No matter how often they intone the “democracy” mantra. Today, the sentence in the trial [of the politicians sent to jail for participating in the organisation of the referendum on independence of the 1st of October 2017] was finally made public.
It arrived after multiple and outrageous leaks [on the process] to the media, which flatly contradict the idea of the separation of powers. Now, let’s leave aside any personal affinity or animosity that could be felt towards Catalan politicians in general, and the imprisoned ones in particular.
We must realise that, in any case, as an organisation that defends direct action and social mobilisation, CNT is affected by this sentence. Because it’s been drafted in a way that any public demonstration, no matter how peaceful it may be, can be construed from now on as “sedition” [a crime akin to treason in Spanish law, carrying a sentence of up to 15 years in jail].
Anything from a union picket, a sit-in, a rally to stop the bailiffs from evicting a family…It is an outright assault on everybody’s basic rights. And let’s not be naïve: sooner or later, it will be used against us. That’s why we denounce this sentence and we stand together with large parts of Catalan society in rejecting it. Lately, we’ve seen some bizarre sentencing coming out the courts, such as the prison terms served on the Altsasua youngsters [that were condemned for allegedly having a fight with military police in plain clothes].
check out ‘La Mosca TV’ , autonomous squatters videos
We all stated our solidarity with them, as everybody understood that it was nothing more than attack on basic rights. Similarly, we denounced the raids and arrests in the “Piñata” and “Pandora” police operations, that saw several anarchists arrested. They were accused of being part of a terrorist network, sent to jail and held in solitary confinement [and finally released as no accusation could be substantiated]…
Many years ago, we lived through the “Scala” operation. We are fed up with the state using all its nasty tricks to suppress any initiative that may represent an alternative to its power. We are the people. We are your neighbours.
The Barcelona barricades are defended by the autonomous assembly-based CDR local groups of which there are now dozens in Catalunya
We have the right to make decisions on our future and on our lives. It is not a matter of flags or countries. It is about basic individual and collective rights. Not standing firm together with our neighbours when they are suffering state repression, when they are being held under anti-terror laws, would be mean and not libertarian at all. Keeping quiet when disproportionate sentences are being dished out would be implicitly siding with those in charge of repression.
We know that our struggle is in the streets, demanding justice and raising our voice. We can offer our experience and we must learn from those beside us. We have to share, be the people. We need to plant a seed of resistance and dignity.
The streets must be ours. For the sake of all those who have suffered the state’s repression and for those that will have to endure it, at home and around the world, we must prove ourselves worthy, as an anti-authoritarian working-class organisation.
We will stand together with anyone repressed by the state. Because the state, whichever it may be, is our enemy. We know where our place is: in the streets, in the workplace, in college… fighting for our basic rights.
Comment:
Few people in the West think about the ethics of buying fossil fuels
from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. What is the truth.. beyond the fact that
the US and CIA are spending millions on anti Russian propaganda?
Many climate activists think that accepting
US frack gas instead, thus also accepting the impunity and coercion of
the plant’s biggest climate criminal, would be even worse.
Fracking has made the US more than self
sufficient in gas and oil, with over a million wells drilled, with
immunity from clean air and water laws,, with toxic and radioactive
tailings , destroyed aquifers , innumerable abandoned wells, etc.
But worst of all US laws make it non
obligatory to even measure the gigantic methane leaks in fracking, over
20 times as bad as CO2 in the short term. . Though great clouds have
been measured from space over the fracking fields this is blamed on
natural causes and the Trump regime has made even the voluntary
measurements introduced at the end of Obama’s term unnecessary US forcing and bribing Europe to accept Frack Gas .
Meanwhile the Russian state cynically
supports the Paris agreement while largely doing the opposite and
fomenting the nationalist fantasy of turning the Arctic into a Russian
lake. It is expanding its planet destroying fossil fuels industry with
pipelines through Turkey, the Baltic and as far as China. Russia largely
ignored the record breaking fires sweeping the arctic tundra and forest
last summer.
Russia is doing less than nothing about the
mounting evidence of permafrost meltdown, the ‘climate bomb’ which,
according to irrefutable science, would release billions of tons of
methane and tip the climate forever into ‘unsuitable for human
occupation’ mode. The Methane Bomb: New Proof that Frack Gas is Twice as Bad as Coal for Climate.
Check out Russia’s attitude on RT, where daily articles laud fossil
fuels and attack science based climate activists, especially Greta
Thunberg, to the delight of their far right nationalist followers.
Both sides must be opposed. Now that we are winning the battle
against dirty coal its time for an all out attack on gas and oil. The
industry has known about climate change for 50 years, and still receives
TRILLIONS in state aid and tax breaks. Even a fraction of that cash
could put the planet on course to achieve the modest climate goals, with
some chance of saving us from catastrophe and extinction.
A world revolution is necessary but still largely unprepared.
Meanwhile reforming alternatives exist. For example even in a place like
the Yamal peninsula there are year round winds and there is 24 hour sun
in summer.
Renewable electricity could make millions of tons of fossil free ammonia, transportable from Gasprom’s gas port. Ammonia can now be transformed cheaply in situ into green hydrogen and used for industry, and in principle all internal combustion engines could be adapted to run on green ammonia.
Such technologies exist already, while the owners and investors in fossil fuels continue to get richer and richer, diverting their wealth to tax free havens, as they push the world climate over tipping point cliffs. see https://co2freefuelexistsnow.wordpress.com/
The info below suggests that both options,
US Fracking and Russian Gas, are equally execrable. Death to the
Climate Killers! Leave It In The Ground!!
Gazprom’s Bovanenkovo gas field on the Yamal Peninsula (Photo: TASS/Kremlin)
“Revolutions without theory fail to make
progress. We of the ‘Friends Of Durruti’ have outlined our thinking,
which may be amended as appropriate in great social upheavals but which
hinges upon two essential points which cannot be avoided. A program, and
rifles.”
— El Amigo del Pueblo,
No. 5, July 20, 1937.
Towards a Fresh Revolution is
the highly influential pamphlet written by anarchist CNT militants
during the Spanish revolution who opposed the co-option of their
organisation into the Republican government.
The introduction to the 1978 edition of Towards a Fresh Revolution was written by Jaime Balius, former secretary of the Friends of Durruti and director of its paper.
Towards a Fresh Revolution
Friends of Durruti
CONTENTS:
Introduction: Forty Years Ago
Overture to the Spanish Revolution
July 19th
May 3rd
Spain’s Independence
Collaboration and Class Struggle
Our Position
Our Programme
I. Establishment of a Revolutionary Junta or National Defence Council.
II. All Economic Power to the Syndicates.
III. Free Municipality.
Towards a Fresh Revolution
The Friends of Durruti: Some of its members and/or contributors to its paper, El Amigo del Pueblo.
Introduction: Forty Years Ago
The Friends of Durruti Group was formed in early 1937. Its members and supporters were prominent comrades from the Gelsa battle-front. Remaining true to their anarchist beliefs, they refused to submit to the militarisation and, as a result, moved to the capital of Catalonia (Barcelona) where, along with other Barcelona comrades, they set up the group.
They took as their symbol the figure of Buenaventura Durruti, an idealist who had devoted his whole life to his anarchist beliefs. He was a man of action as his heroic death on the Madrid front testifies … that heroic and timeless Madrid which lives on in the spontaneous catchphrase which the Republic’s government’s fight from their city drew from the capital’s inhabitants … Viva Madrid sin gobierno! (Long live Madrid without government!).
\
This indomitable spirit of the people of Madrid lasted throughout the entire siege of the capital, and it was this spirit that the Group adopted as its own. Thus it was that the fighting men from Gelsa (with the Durruti Column on the Aragon front) became the heralds of the message “Stand fast and fight to the last!”
These were virtues which no one can deny that Durruti, the anarchist from Leon, did have. At his funeral Barcelona paid him the tribute of one of the largest popular demonstrations ever, as the Catalan proletariat took to the streets as a body to pay homage to the man who had given his life for the cause of the disinherited the world over.
Having given a rough outline of the nature of our Group I shall now proceed to a short introduction to our pamphlet: Hacia una nueva revolucion (Towards a Fresh Revolution). First of all, when was it written? Around mid-1938. But it must be emphasised that for us to write a booklet of this sort, with the title we gave it, at that tragic hour for the Spanish proletariat, was a highly suggestive action, amounting to a cry of hope for the fighters of Spain. Notwithstanding their heroism and tenacity, they found themselves surrounded by the most fearful defeat on account of their failure to crush the counter-revolution led by the Stalinists, who were backed by the camouflaged reformists inside the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) and Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) and all who were established in the upper echelons of the State.
Turkey has expelled 300,000 people from their homes, and as in Afrin you can be sure every obstacle will prevent their return. Their farms and properties are already being occupied by imported Al Qaeda, ISIL and jihadi terrorists intent on pillage, rape, kidnapping as as happens in Afrin .
And let’s not forget this was only the first step in the plan to destroy the wonderful multi-ethnic, multi religion and feminist Rojava Revolution.(see also CrimesoftheTurkishOccupationArmyAgainsttheCivilians)
Turkey’s undeclared war on the Kurds is supposedly now on pause. Though president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s objective remains: to ethnically cleanse a 30km strip of Rojava (the mainly Kurdish territory of north Syria). During the week that led up to the ‘ceasefire’, numerous Turkish-backed Islamist and jihadist brigades swept across the border in a terrifying killing spree. One of the more appalling killings was that of Syrian-based Kurdish politician and human rights advocate Hevrin Khalef. Her body was mutilated.
Khalef’s alleged murderers have now been identified and revealed together with militias believed to have committed similar atrocities.
Catalonia today faces the fourth call for a general strike in just over two years related to the independence process. Summoned by the Intersyndical Union Forces – CSC and the Alternative Intersyndical of Catalonia (IAC) and although formally with a work and social demands sheet, the 2017 referendum ruling is clearly in the background of today’s mobilization. It will coincide with the arrival of Barcelona with the March for Freedom that brings tens of thousands of people to demand the freedom of male and female political prisoners
Catalunya enfronta avui la quarta convocatòria de vaga general en poc més de dos anys relacionades amb el procés independentista. Convocada per les…
The Free 