Year: 2020

In a suffocating world, squats are a breath of freedom

from Women Defend Rojava Αρχική, Κείμενα/Ανακοινώσεις

read in Greek:, read in German:, in Portuguese below

In the morning of Monday, August 17th, in Thessaloniki, the squat Terra Incognita was evacuated by the repressive forces of the state.

For over 16 years, Terra Incognita has been a meeting place and a melting pot for hundreds of fighters, men and women, thanks to its stable structures, such as a library, a printing house, a gym etc., hosting events, interventions or demonstrations against repression, capitalism, fascism and patriarchy..

A few days later, in the early hours of Saturday, September 5th, the state mechanism chooses to evacuate Rosa Nera squat in Chania (Crete). This attack is not random either, since Rosa Nera in recent years has been the center of investment plans by the administration of the Technical University of Crete, given that the squat is situated on Kastelli hill, one of the most touristic places in the city.,

For 16 years, Rosa Nera hosted people and events, supported and participated in many struggles, local and non-local, had been a stable spot offering practical solidarity towards immigrants but also the local community thanks to its numerous open structures such as library, reading room, children’s workshops, playground, theater groups, community garden, charity bazaars etc.

Continue reading “In a suffocating world, squats are a breath of freedom”

Debunking UN’s new Venezuela report: Using human rights to promote US War and criminal Siege

Anya Parampil·October 1, 2020Red LinesVenezuela

Red Lines host Anya Parampil debunks a new report issued by the UN Human Right’s Council which accuses Venezuela’s government of “crimes against humanity”. Transcript below.

By Anya Parampil

A new report by a special mission of the United Nations Human Rights Council was released in September and is making headlines after it accused Venezuela’s government of crimes against humanity.

Because it is getting so much attention, several people have reached out to me asking for clarification regarding the information and allegations presented in the report. So I thought I’d help provide some context.

see also..https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/stop-us-murder-machine/COMMENT: We do not deny that the Venezuelan State, like almost all others, has used torture against civilians. The ‘Chavez revolution’ can only survive by militarized organisation against the endless subversion, sanctions and coups of strongest Empire in history. But within that State control there are still genuine mass communal solidarity movements, a constituent assembly, gender rights, housing and health rights, etc. now sadly disappearing in mass hunger and poverty.

The first point to understand about this report is that none of its authors set foot in Venezuela in order to produce it..

The Office of the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Council, Michele Bachelet, did not author this report.

Continue reading “Debunking UN’s new Venezuela report: Using human rights to promote US War and criminal Siege”

Environmental destruction as Fast as the High Speed Train .. English /Spanish


from todoporhacer.org. translation thefreeonline

What do the Isla de Valdecañas, Madrid Central low-emission zone and the high-speed AVE trains have in common?

An island in an environmentally protected area in a reservoir in Cáceres converted into a luxury resort.

A low emission zone in Madrid denounced by the Partido Popular (PP) and annulled for “defects of form” by a judge.

An underused and overrated high speed train network.

Three conflicts where, once again, the environmental movement has always been on the frontline against politicians, businessmen and judges who strive to increase every day more social and territorial inequalities and environmental catastrophes.

For more than 50 years, different sectors of society have been warning of the irreversible path that humanity is taking with respect to the environment that surrounds it. Climate change, the end of fossil resources, the loss of biodiversity, population concentration in large cities, long-distance tourism, the transmission of diseases, the financialization of the economy, industrial relocation … are indicators that something is going very badly.

Continue reading “Environmental destruction as Fast as the High Speed Train .. English /Spanish”

#Liebig34, #Berlin: Turning the eviction into a disaster – but how?

CALL FOR DEMO AGAINST EVICTION OF L34 ON THE 3RD – CHAOS INSTEAD OF EVICTION

DEMO October 3rd – Friedrichshain – 9pm

We are angry! Angry that Liebig34 is about to be taken away from us. Angry that every attempt at a self-determined life is being tried to be crushed. We are fed up with all the harassment by cops in the neighborhood and everywhere else.

We are fed up with their repression, the state and its servants, who make it impossible for people to shape the city they live in.

We shit on investors for whom Berlin is nothing more than a Monopoly board on which they can move their houses around. We don’t give a shit about the yuppies who, with their new buildings and condominiums, are displacing the people who spend their lives here, for whom the street and the Dorfplatz is more than just the way to the co-working space.


We demand a city from below. We want to occupy houses. We want to decide for ourselves how we want to live.

Liebig34 presents: CosyColdKitchenTalks – soft words in rough times

The Liebig34 must stay! Not only because it is the home of so many people. But above all because Liebig tells the story of a Berlin where not only people with capital and an SUV could meet for a beer. Because it is a place far away from consumerism. A place of lived solidarity and feminist utopia.


The neighborhood has changed so massively in recent years and decades that many old-established residents have had to leave. Spaces of the neighborhood have given way to yuppie cafés, and condominiums are displacing house projects.

When Liebig leaves, another ball of gentrification is set rolling. We don’t want to let that happen.

Continue reading “#Liebig34, #Berlin: Turning the eviction into a disaster – but how?”

Trashing the Last Paradise. World’s biggest Pantanal Wetlands still Ablaze

As Brazil’s wetlands burned, neo-fascist Bolsonaro regime did worse than nothing to help

Tatiana Pollastri And David Biller / The Associated Press

September 30, 2020 02:53 PM

As Brazil’s wetlands burned, government did little to help

Jair Bolsonaro’s government says it has mobilized hundreds of federal agents and military service members to the region to douse the flames. However, all along the only highway through the northern Pantanal, dozens of people —  firefighters, ranchers, tour guides and veterinarians — told The Associated Press that the government has exaggerated its response and there are few federal boots on the ground.

The world’s largest wetland is on fire: how can we save the Pantanal?

https://blog.ecosia.org/what-is-the-pantanal-and-why-is-it-burning/

These are small outtakes of the devastating fires happening in the Pantanal, shared with us in late September 2020 by Reinaldo Nogales.

PORTO JOFRE, Brazil — After hours navigating Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands in search of jaguars earlier this month, Daniel Moura beached his boat to survey the fire damage. In every direction, he saw only devastation. No wildlife, and no support from federal authorities.

Continue reading “Trashing the Last Paradise. World’s biggest Pantanal Wetlands still Ablaze”

Thinking about Work from Ecofeminism. English/Spanish



By Joana Bregolat .. via Kaos .. shared with thanks.

Translation by The Free Online

The covid-19 pandemic has disordered and accelerated processes that have been defining our lives for some time.

The confluence of a global health crisis with permanent economic and financial crises, the climate, energy and food crises that we have been observing for some time, and the crises of care, sovereignty and social reproduction that are embodied in our bodies and territories on a daily basis, they have modified our ways of living and inhabiting the planet.

Instability appears again as a constant adjective that describes our day to day.

It is in this context that we find ourselves in the end of 2020 full of uncertainties, doubts and tensions, seeing how monsters grow and old and usual economic recipes return and we we lose out.

Cutbacks, privatizations, bank bailouts announce more pressure, more precariousness, more anguish…

We are once again at a turning point.

But in this desperate trench of struggle for survival, there are opportunities to rethink ourselves, to rethink everything.

The youth climate movements have taken up the challenge and porganised on September 25 a mobilization of agitation on the need to transform a structural axis of our system: work.

Fight Like a Girl: How Women's Activism Shapes History
Reviewing the notion of work

In general terms, classical political economy has defined the concept of work around views that only understand production, exchange values, wages and benefits, reducing their understanding to a commodity and forgetting the systemic link between the (re) production of goods and services and the (re) production of life (Pérez Orozco, 2006: 38).

It is a look at the uprooted, disembodied economy, which in the process of compartmentalizing and hierarchizing the realities and experiences that go through our daily lives has turned our backs on our own survival (Federici, 2010).

Continue reading “Thinking about Work from Ecofeminism. English/Spanish”

Practical Anarchism for Collective Belonging (Liberation Lens Series)

This is first essay in the Liberation Lens Series at https://wellexaminedlife.com

The Myth of Anarchism

A specter is haunting the United States, the specter of anarchism. It lies on the edge of the political imagination as something unimaginably perverse. What could be scarier to a people whose self worth is tied to the supposed greatness of their nation-state tradition than people who question whether the state needs to exist at all? What could be more divergent from a society obsessed with partisan politics than to suggest that maybe instead of focusing our energy on getting the “right” leaders into political office we might need to abolish political leadership as a concept in order to create the world we want? 

The anarchist is cast as a mad idealist or perhaps an angry disaffected youth who is always white and always male. The anarchist is always denying some fundamental facts about human nature and what we would really do when left to our own devices. The anarchist is an extremist, unreasonable, and demanding the impossible. A brick thrower. An arsonist. Egoist. The chaos he brings is all the proof we need to reject his so-called political beliefs, which are really just a license to do whatever he wants. 

The Reality of Anarchism

Black Joy (1977 film) - Wikipedia

Meanwhile, in Black neighborhoods around the country, people can’t name a single state system that is functioning how it’s supposed to. Getting by requires staying with friends or having our aunties watch our kids or borrowing our neighbor’s car.

Continue reading “Practical Anarchism for Collective Belonging (Liberation Lens Series)”