blog of the post capitalist transition.. Read or download the novel here + latest relevant posts
Author: thefreeonline
The Free is a book and a blog. Download free E/book ...”the most detailed fictional treatment of the movement from a world recognizably like our own to an anarchist society that I have read...
-‘That’s if this contraption ever gets to the top.’-
Barney narrating
We were all off for the weekend. It was raining incessantly and the buses were late. Jerry drove us to the bus stop in a Pools van, and we were parked up waiting. Macker, Bernie and Josie hadn’t come.
But Maggie and Lucy, were making whoopee with Moonbeam in the back, plus me, Sol and Maxie, three bikes and boxes of gear, and food.
Currently enduring their fifth day of incarceration after barricading themselves inside the Keystone XL pipeline. Help get them out with a donation to their legal fund.
WINONA, TX – MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012 7:30 AM – Several protestors with Tar Sands Blockade sealed themselves inside a section of pipe destined for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to stop construction of the dangerous project. Using a blockading technique never implemented before, Matt Almonte and Glen Collins locked themselves between two barrels of concrete weighing over six hundred pounds each, aided by Isabel Indigo Brooks who went in with them .
Located twenty-five feet into a pipe segment waiting to be laid in the ground, the outer barrel is barricading the pihttp://tarsandsblockade.org/pe’s opening and neither barrel can be moved without risking serious injury to the blockaders.
Matt Almonte
The barricaded section of the pipeline passes through a residential neighborhood in Winona, TX. If TransCanada moves ahead with the trenching and burying of this particular section of pipe, it would run less than a hundred feet from neighboring homes.
Tar sands pipelines threaten East Texas communities with their highly toxic contents, which pose a greater risk to human health than conventional crude oil. TransCanada’s existing tar sands pipeline, Keystone XL’s predecessor, has an atrocious safety record, leaking twelve times in its first year of operation.
“TransCanada didn’t bother to ask the people of this neighborhood if they wanted to have millions of gallons of poisonous tar sands pumped through their backyards,” said Almonte, one of the protesters now inside the pipeline. “This multinational corporation has bullied landowners and expropriated homes to fatten its bottom line.”
Recently, over 40 communities worldwide planned actions with Tar Sands Blockade during a week of resistance against extreme energy extraction and its direct connection to the climate crisis. A growing global movement is rising up against the abuses of the fossil fuel industry and its increasingly desperate pursuit of dangerous extraction methods.
“I’m barricading this pipe with Tar Sands Blockade today to say loud and clear to the extraction industry that our communities and the resources we depend on for survival are not collateral damage,” said Collins, another blockader inside the pipe and an organizer with Radical Action for Mountain Peoples Survival (RAMPS) and Mountain Justice, grassroots campaigns in Appalachia working to stop mountaintop removal coal mining.
“This fight in East Texas against tar sands exploitation is one and the same as our fight in the hollers of West Virginia. Dirty energy extraction doesn’t just threaten my home; it threatens the collective future of the planet.”
Glen Collins
“At this late stage, doing nothing is a greater danger than the risks of taking direct action to stop destructive projects like Keystone XL,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson for Tar Sands Blockade. “That’s why folks working with groups like RAMPS, the Unist’ot’en Camp fighting a natural gas pipeline in British Columbia and Tar Sands Blockade are willing to use everything including their own hands and feet to ensure we all have a safe climate and healthy, thriving communities.”
HUNGER STRIKE CONTINUES
Today also marks day 5 of the Houston Hunger Strike in which Gulf Coast activists with Tar Sands Blockade are going without food to demand that Valero divest entirely from the Keystone XL pipeline and invest in the health and wellbeing of the communities it’s poisoning.
Diane Wilson and Bob Lindsey still on hunger strike in prison..
Diane Wilson and Bob Lindsey are undertaking a sustained hunger strike in solidarity with the Manchester community in Houston. Their hunger strike began with an act of civil disobedience on November, 29th when they locked their necks to tanker trucks attempting to enter the Valero refinery in Manchester. They refuse to eat until the following demands are met:
1. Velero completely divest from Keystone XL and all forms of tar sands exploitation
2. Velero invest in the health and well being of the Manchester community
3. Valero refinery shut down and vacate the Manchester community
UPDATES HERE:::BAIL MONEY STILL NEEDED:::WRITE TO PRISONERS:::NEW ACTIONS:::
This week’s move by George Osborne to cap benefit rises below inflation at 1% is the final deadly touch in a toxic series of measures likely to lead to unprecedented homelessness in the UK.
Osborne’ announcements, bringing misery to millions, seem like a parody of the mad upper class Tory, they have found a hatchet man who gleefully enjoys his job!
The final logic of Capitalism is war. The excuse of a ‘chemical weapons’ in Syria is as false as Saddam’s secret weapons. This time round more millions of innocents will die, to boost the profits of the US ‘War Economy’ Corporations who control the US Congress. This time round there is little protest, nobody believes they can be serious, but this war is becoming daily more certain. Now is the time for the US and UK public to stop a barbaric air blitz…
NATO poised to invade Syria – U.S. fleet on Syrian coast, 10,000 troops ready to go
The governments of the world are currently meeting at the Global Climate Summit in Doha, but it is clear that the leaders of the wealthier countries of the world, like the United States, are opposing any significant changes that are necessary to reduce carbon emissions and avoid further human suffering and environmental destruction.
Global Climate Summits have been taking place for nearly 20 years now and the global powers have been unwilling to stop the devastating effects of both the burning of fossil fuels and the economic system of Capitalism, which is the root cause of climate change.
Almost every day there is new evidence of glaciers melting, waters rising, intense rains, hurricanes, drought, heat waves and unpredictable weather patterns.
Look at the damage that Hurricane Sandy did on the east coast.
We all know something is not right. The world leaders will not solve this and the media will not tell us the truth about the seriousness of climate change.
It is clear to us that change will only come about from the grassroots, from a rejection of the system of Capitalism and a movement towards climate justice.
We hung two banners – There Is No Planet B – to illustrate the urgency of the problem, and – Burn the Rich, Not Fossil Fuels – to name the culprits for our current climate predicament.
On 14-N, day of the General Strike, our companion ALFON, was arrested in the neighborhood of Vallekas. After several days of confinement and interrogation in the dungeons of the Spanish State, he was sent to permanent prison, thanks to higher orders of the judiciary and the power of the government delegation, to this must be added the pressure of the mass media “communication “.Continue reading “Alfon.. LIBERTAD. Freedom for General Strike comrade NOW!”
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The Free 