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...
Well, well, ain’t it grand? The G7 will lend Ukraine $50 billion to help it buy weapons .
Not that Ukraine will be expected to pay it back – it’s supposed to be repaid with profits earned from Russian assets in Europe. European companies want a share, especially European arms manufacturers.
Some of the money will go to establishing weapons manufacture in Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement on 13 June aimed at strengthening Kyiv’s defence capabilities – a step towards “Ukraine’s eventual membership in the NATO alliance”
Is everyone swallowing this nonsense?
Putin is suggesting an immediate ceasefire, with Ukraine withdrawing its troops from the predominantly Russian-speaking four former oblasts of Ukraine that Russia currently occupies, and which Russia has integrated into the Russian Federation, and publicly abandons its quest to join NATO.
Russia would retain Crimea. Numerous surveys have confirmed that the people of Crimea are content with their 2014 choice to join Russia. Ukraine, Russia, and the European powers previously agreed to a similar plan in 2014
Zelensky originally came to power on a campaign of peace, ensuring the autonomy of those four regions.
His term of office has expired. He’s now operating on behalf of the USA, and running a regime that suppresses political parties, free speech and religious affiliation.
It’s almost comical how Zelensky struts the world stage demanding more weapons, as Ukraine’s military suffers huge death toll, and draft-dodging abounds.
Ukraine’s economy, agriculture, wrecked, – millions have emigrated, and many are hungry. And it’s becoming clear that Russia is winning.
The Peace Conference in Switzerland a farce – designed to bolster Zelensky as the great world “freedom leader?
The hypocrisy of the “Peace Conference” now ended in Switzerland – not attended by leaders of USA, China, Brazil. India – and of course, Russia not invited ended. The Peace Party ended in disarray as leadrw walked out and a dozen states refused to sign the idiotic final statement.
The peace terms are limited to nuclear safety, food security (i.e. Ukraine’s ability to export its food by sea) and the return of Ukrainian children transferred to Russia.
But Volodymr Zelensky insists on matters not included on the agenda – a complete Russian withdrawal to 1991 borders, payment of reparations, and punishment for what he says are Russian war crimes.
Not on Ukraine’s, NATO nations’, or USA’s radar is there any question of considering Putin’s terms, or even talking to Putin.
It looks as if U.S. President Joe Biden is leading NATO by the nose, -with U.S weapons companies rejoicing, and the ‘saintly’ Zelensky as glowing Field Marshal – pressing on to the complete destruction of Ukraine.
You may enlarge any image in this blog by clicking on it. Click again for a detailed view. Today and tomorrow I’ll be featuring images that I made at the Crested Caracara nest that I discussed a couple of days ago. I made three trips to the nest site this year and wound up spending […]
* On Sunday May 26th, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock claimed that she saw a video filmed by a member of Hamas of an Israeli woman being raped on October 7th 2023. But such no such video exists. Despite it being definitively exposed as a lie, a few days later, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reasserted that […]
Matías S. Zavia La Agencia Internacional de la Energía (IEA) ha lanzado una advertencia contundente: se avecina una sobreproducción de petróleo “sin precedentes” que requerirá importantes ajustes en la industria energética. Exceso de petróleo. A pesar de todas las decisiones que han tomado los países del mundo para avanzar hacia la neutralidad de carbono, los productores […]
Joe Kottke (NBC News) writes about Gardi Sugdub, where more than 1,000 people from the Guna community have evacuated the island and have been relocated to mainland Panama, “ becoming the first community along the country’s coast to do so because of climate change.” [Also see our previous post Gardi Sugdub Disappearing Island.] About 300 […]
Standing up against rape, murder and repression remains at the heart of our acts of resistance
Wat Tyler’s head was spiked and displayed as a warning upon London Bridge on June 15, 1381. In this literary essay, an anonymous author affiliated with the Kurdistan freedom movement, traces a path in time and between ideas to reflect on that rebellion and its significance today.
rich man in his rolling acres poor man still outside the gate -- A Place Called England, Young’uns
We are in a heavy grind. We have not entirely halted yet our stories have been silenced. We are in grave need of a revival of spirit. We used to celebrate the changing of seasons, and cherish our martyrs. We used to know to direct our anger not inwards or upon our loved ones, but straight at the enemy. How do we learn how to survive and fight this system at the same time? We must fight until there is no life without becoming, not just surviving but belonging.
We must know our roots well, our histories of resistance will let hope grow and swell against violent systems and mentality of conquest. These stories of revolt, go way beyond a demand for recognition, and in our bones these stories are alive. What a disgusting farce it is to claim we never had a revolution: there is always a true democratic history, but we must know how to defend it and give meaning to it once again. How are we to build an alternative to this murderous system if we cannot defend ourselves?
Wat Tyler was assassinated by William Walworth, the mayor of London at the time. Walworth thought it was a simple solution in his attempt to ‘keep the peace’ and protect the property of the few, yet it was proved to be a classic case of how it’s impossible to kill an idea. On June 16, the rebels marched on the Tower of London, sought out the Archbishop of Canterbury, and chopped off his head.
Late 14th-century depiction of William Walworth killing Wat Tyler; the King is represented twice, watching events unfold (left) and addressing the crowd (right). Image: Wikipedia
Perhaps when looking back it may seem simpler then, an ‘us and them’ situation with crime and punishment for all to see, blood, guts and screams. Yet when a change of punishment was established as a new strategy focusing on our minds more than our bodies, a special warfare began. An ideological, psychological manipulation backed by the rich few, guarded by those just doing their jobs. Society was forced to divide, become uprooted or stripped of roots.
Rootless folks defend their right to exist in peace, and the uprooted are kept hidden to those who do not know their neighbours and ignore unmarked vans. Though this only accounts for the few. Challenging the special warfare upon us from this patriarchal dominant state, and fighting against the ideas of Nation and State, has always been our defiance: society’s story.
Queen Elizabeth has bitten the dust, though we shouldn’t need to wait for the dust to settle to know what action to take. And it starts with a society without such draconic dependencies.
Caesar was not dead, there were a thousand Caesars. And the church kept peace among them. The priests made us hate our bodies, and fear the forests, the mountains, the black night. They monopolised magic and wed it to ceremony. --The Witch’s Child
But its no good blasting the sex pistols at our grandparents or watching The Spider Chronicles: defence of the monarchy, the state, cannot be undone through stories without knowing all the characters. Revealings of truth only make an impact if we know and can defend our democratic history. We must question: why such blind trust exists in the first place? Some say it was the blind faith in Richard II that eventually pacified the rebels of 1381.
Persecution of women for simply being, continues everywhere. It has reached its worse stage with the current State, the ultimate centralization of power and enslavement. Without the exploitation of women, the power of the state could not exist. This was as true as early as the dawn of slavery and was still so during what would come to be known as the Hundred Years War. The commissioners, sent into the villages to discern who was illegible to pay tax, would be especially heavy handed with women, putting hands up their skirts to see if they were virgins or married.
Wat Tyler’s daughter was assaulted by a commissioner called John Bampton, and the working-class resistance was set to light. Unrest was already stirring and pressure building in the English feudal system, especially in the decades following the Black Death. The nobility and the church were attempting to reassert their power, after a period of rising wages and sudden access to many acres. These horrific assaults on women were what sparked the 14th century “Peasant Rebellion”, in fact an anti-repression revolution.
There is no free homeland, without free women --Tal’at feminist movement, Palestine
Wat Tyler and the Kentish rebels marched on London to show the foundation of living society came from their hard work: they had realised there worth, and were prepared to die for it. They had autonomously organised demands to ensure their worth was not forgotten, and those after them. The demands were to end the free labour of workers tied to land through serfdom, and the destruction of centralization of power. Demands were radical and socialist, the rebels understood and identified the order of power, and insisted on the establishment of grassroots participation and decision making in society.
A imagined illustration from c.1470 of the priest John Ball (“Jehã Balle”) on a horse encouraging the rebels and Wat Tyler (“Waultre le tieulier”) in 1381. Implausibly, the rebels are depicted as soldiers in full plate armour carrying St. George’s Cross and Plantagenet flags. Image: Wikipedia
What is society’s demands today? The centralisation of power in the capitalist system ensures manipulation of oppressed voices, our stories are twisted to suit the exponential growth of a dirty system. Perhaps our answer for contemporary times lies beyond nation-state governance formed at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
It sometimes seems impossible to dream of a stateless world. We have somewhat forgotten our natural responsibility to Life. Huge fundamental questions of governing society seem daunting to us, because we are faced with contradictions. In a system ruled by those that believe only in a reality unchanging – tradition used to harm; positivist science claims solutions are indeed black and white, wrong and right, fact or fiction. According to whom?
We cannot shy away from going deeper to understand why and how contradictions exist, without trying to ‘solve’ them or reduce their meaning. If we are to truly accept and understand really what diversity is, it is to run towards the difficulties, the tense conversations, the conflicts both in our own bodies and in our society.
By 1380 society had seen three episodes of taxation by King Richard II and his government, who sought a violent hegemonic solution to fund war with France. By today, the global capitalist system is interdependent with war. War hangs like the sword of Damocles above the so-called United Nations. What exactly is united? Modern tribes.
The nation state needed the bourgeoisie and the power of the capital in order to replace the old feudal order and its ideology which rested on tribal structures and inherited rights by a new national ideology which united all tribes and clans under the roof of the nation. --Towards Stateless Democracy, Abdullah Ocalan
Yet war, death and destruction seem abstract and the context unclear if we do not know of its true history. The conquest of power started far earlier than the 14th century. For thousands of years violent dominant forces have been used to establish new borders – eradicating fluid boundaries in tribal communities – to forcibly steal the lives, histories and landscape of others.
The same structures the whole world over keep people in poverty --The Wee Yellow Butterfly, Cathy McCormack
The violent conquest of the British Empire in its attempt to negotiate and take control of the areas of Mesopotamia, by ensuring the demise of the Ottoman Empire was replaced with newly founded United Nations (League of Nations) interests as a priority in the 19th century. Today in the 21st century the horrific situation of a genocide of Palestinian people bares the rotten fruit. Palestine was used as a buffer zone for fear of Russian regional expansion, which led to the so called ‘national home’ for Zionist Jews.
What a difficult predicament Churchill must have had when faced with an already thinly spread British Army in India, Egypt and Ireland, had to rustle up ex Black and Tans and Auxiliaries to form another murderous gang of servants. No rest for the wicked.
Organised resistance must be international, if we are to admit the same structures keep us tied down all across the globe, and across history; an internationalist lens in which we can understand the roots of history and its river of resistance also, is paramount to build an alternative way of life.
battles and wars leave deep wounds and scars and deep wounds are long in the mending --Lovers and Friends, Sean Mone
On the road to blot these deep wounds, we often rely on solutions which focus only on the material, yet what we really need as well as this, is more abstract. In all this blood shed and being told we do not matter, our personalities have been shattered and we are in denial of Love for protecting Life. We have all felt the emptiness. A gap in our souls where there was once so much excitement. We must learn to control our blind rage at our sufferings, and remember the real oppression is upon our very spirit.
The spirit and bravery of those involved in the Revolution of 1381 is what created a domino effect for many stories of community resistance thereafter, one such being the famous poll tax riots of 1990 during Thatcher’s tragic Tory reign. Though what we can truly learn from our brilliant history of resistance is to ensure there is as much bravery and strength put to autonomous organising as they did to chopping off heads and cooking up cocktails.
‘Anti’-organisations are necessary, but without a clear working towards what we are ‘for’ as well, they are sucked into being co-opted by insurgency strategies which use our ‘Anti’ resistance groups like antibiotics.
Drowning in commodities where price tags are slapped on our campaigns for a healthy planet, denying us our dignity, and belittling our natural defence of life and our worth as part of it: we must admit that the biggest war waged has been upon our value for life.
Of course revenge can be sweet. We can bet that beheading 6 of the king’s men at the start of the Peasant Revolt felt pretty damn good. However, revolution is not only huge revolts. The change that we want can only be actualized if we change ourselves too, we must admit how it has affected us within our bodies and fears. We must not be afraid to stand up for ourselves, just because some of us are comfortable doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t just as high, and the need to organise isn’t a priority now. We can no longer let resistance be pacified by “coloniser guilt” as an individual burden: the Nation State is not the working people’s united front. Shame goes nowhere in our culture but spreads like the mandrake’s rot of our souls from within.
We must foster meaningful education for our children, and support our mothers to be autonomous. We must recognise, just as Tyler and his rebels did, the value of standing up against rape, murder and repression, all of us must be confident to challenge this patriarchal capitalist system. Fear is the work of our enemy, and if we can widen our communities and connect our struggles effectively, we can realise our worth, and build a concrete utopia where we all find a belonging.
I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains where the grey rocks lie ragged and steep I’ve seen the white hare in the gullies and the curlew fly high overhead and sooner than part from the mountains I think I would be rather be dead --Manchester Rambler
This essay is dedicated to the memory of the fallen comrade Sara Hogir Riha of the Kurdistan freedom movement. She was born in Riha, North Kurdistan, where a tradition of resistance goes back to opposing both the British and French during WW1. She fell on 28 July 2023 in the Medya Defense Areas.
BY DENNIS KUCINICH | JUNE 13, 2024 Our government is planning a big draft, conscripting millions of young Americans for an even bigger war! I call to your attention a Democratic amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was slipped into the almost trillion-dollar Pentagon war spending bill, by voice vote, in the House Armed Services committee.
The Democratic Amendment to H.R. 8070, the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) reads:
Section 531. Selective Service System: Automatic Registration. SEC. 3. (a)(1) “Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.”
This amendment is in the NDAA legislation and there is no pending amendment to strip it from the bill. So, when the NDAA passes, as early as this week, Congress will have taken steps to make automatic conscription the law of the land.
Why an automatic draft? Members of Congress and the President have an obligation to explain to the American people to which foreign land will their sons, and perhaps their daughters, be sent to die?
The U.S. has been in a continuous “State of Emergency” since September 11, 2001, which provides a president with over 100 powers he would not ordinarily have. Notwithstanding that the automatic draft provision will go into effect in a year, a presidential order invoking emergency powers and/or an Act of Congress, could readily move millions from their civilian lives to the front lines of a war.
WHAT WE KNOW:
We know that America is fomenting wars around the world
We know that the military industrial complex controls our government
We know that we are on the precipice of a global war, provoking aggression rather than resolution with Russia, China and in the Middle East.
The only winners in these wars are the war profiteers.
They’re now going to take our children to fight in unnecessary, destabilizing, dangerous, debt-creating wars.
Just today President Biden committed the U.S. to an additional decade of support for Ukraine’s war with Russia.
There is no other conceivable reason to require more than 16 million American males to be automatically registered for the draft, other than to prepare for a large-scale war.
The Selective Service System is the vehicle by which individuals are inducted into the armed forces. This NDAA Automatic Registration amendment facilitates an efficient, large-scale draft.
The new law will automatically register all males between the ages of 18 and 26. Selective Service will notify in writing every young American male that they have been registered and will prescribe regulations which can require the registrant to provide “date of birth, address, social security account number, phone number and email address….”
There are members of Congress who advocate that young women also be included in any draft, which could bring to 32 million the number of Americans of draft-eligible age.
The U.S. currently has over 1,300,000 men and women, career soldiers, as well as volunteers, serving in the all-volunteer armed forces.
According to the new automatic draft law, undocumented immigrants, between the ages of 18 and 26, numbering at least 1.5 million, could also be conscripted, if it were to apply to women as well as men.
A government conscription edict covering the undocumented could ironically do damage to the so-called “replacement theory,” where draft-eligible undocumented immigrants could decide to retreat to the other side of the border. Military service may appeal to others as a path toward citizenship, since immigrants serving during “period of hostility,” can seek immediate naturalization.
The last time a draft was instituted in the United States was during the Vietnam War, when 1.9 million Americans were conscripted.
A total of 8.7 million Americans served during the course of that war, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, including married men, who were subject to the draft by Presidential order.
Of 58,220 U.S. service fatalities in the Vietnam War, 17,671 were draftees.
President Biden’s recent D-Day speech, quoted in Politico, contained this noteworthy warning for young Americans: “The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave.”
Years ago I had a conversation with then-Vice President Biden, who mused, painfully, about his own sons’ lives potentially being at risk in combat. His deep love for his sons is reflective of all Americans’ love for their children. Those parents and grandparents with a first-person understanding of the human cost of wars in Vietnam and Iraq may have a powerful aversion to exposing their children and grandchildren to deadly conflict, unless there is a direct threat to the territory of the United States.
Ukraine understands the price paid for war, having lost hundreds of thousands of its courageous sons and daughters in the ongoing war with Russia.
As Ukraine turns to conscription, there is push back coming from those who are subject to service but who understand they could well be facing a death sentence.
In Israel, the growing ultra-orthodox worshippers have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel, but the government is being pressed to expand its military ranks creating a political squeeze on the Netanyahu ruling coalition.
Conscription is under discussion in Germany and Italy, while at least nine other European Union countries already use the practice to replenish their armed forces.
Resistance does occur during a draft. I well remember anti-Vietnam war rallies with the cry “Hell, no, we won’t go!” But for a heart murmur and a high draft number, I would have joined my brother Frank Kucinich, Jr. on the battlefield in Southeast Asia.
During the Vietnam war, an estimated 60% of all draft-eligible young men found a means to avoid getting conscripted, (including future a President by the name of Bill Clinton). Some, fearful for their lives, fled to Canada or Sweden.
The Vietnam War ripped apart the country. The protests over the war, fueled by compulsory service and rising casualty numbers of US troops, led President Lyndon Johnson to decide, on March 31, 1968, not to run for reelection. The draft was ended in 1973 and was reinstated by President Carter on January 23, 1980.
We must have a national debate over America’s forever wars which have led to the automatic draft. Just what, exactly, are America’s interests? Our nation’s leaders’ diplomatic skills seem limited to putting a gun on the table and saying “Let’s talk.”
Why does our government choose war over diplomacy?
As directly-elected representatives of the people, Congress, a co-equal branch of government, has a responsibility under Article One, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution to decide to formally take this nation to a state of war.
Yet this congress, and others, have been content to appropriate money for war and then let the President take the responsibility, something the Founding Fathers sought to avoid in devising a system of checks and balances.
Congress must take up the question of war, long before the country institutes an automatic draft. An automatic draft is a preparation for war, dramatically altering the lives of young Americans. They deserve an answer. We all deserve an answer. America’s future is literally on the line.
The Free 