Category: collapse capitalism

9 Anarchist Zines from December 2017, free download

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By:   thecollective       The following zines were published over the past month or so within the broad anarchist space. As always, we encourage folks to read, discuss, and engage with the ideas within. Organizing study groups, talk about them with your friends, leave copies in random places, or write scathing critiques of the ideas contained within and circulate them widely. Anarchist ideas are sharper when accompanied by a robust dialog and debate.

If you have suggestions for titles to include next month, let us know.

Below & Beyond Trump: Power and Counter-Power in 2017

This is a “strategy and analysis document” published by the Black Rose Anarchist Federation. It provides an analysis of the political context for social anarchists in 2017 and the prospects for “pro-organizational revolutionary anarchists” to intervene in the current period. The documents focuses on (briefly) understanding ruling class power, social movements, and offers suggestions for a path forward. In response to their understanding of the contemporary period, they call for building social movements from below, offensive campaigns, and developing explicitly socialist practices and programs. It reads a lot like a political party platform with a lot of vague statements, sloganeering, and solutions.

Download the PDF

 

Plain Words #4

This is the fourth issue of a counter-information project based in Bloomington, Indiana called Plain Words. This issue features a few reports on actions in Bloomington (anti-logging and grand jury solidarity) alongside a number of longer essays. The stand-outs include “Mirror, Kaleidoscope, Dagger: What is Anarchism?” and an essay remembering the life of Haymarket martyr Louis Lingg. Continue reading “9 Anarchist Zines from December 2017, free download”

Faircoin: the Eco-Solidarity money that could Sweep the World

 1:1 FairCoop risingThe Post-capitalist movement known as FairCoop steadily grows stronger, worldwide, in an integrated way. Independently from the decisions of centralized institutions, statements of hierarchical organizations, fluctuations of market speculation and mainstream skepticism … we are empowering ourselves in an exponential and radiant way.

CONSULT FAIRCOIN DIRECTORY:  HERE

Three years of intense cooperative activism have made economic and social emancipation tools a reality, to the point where anyone with Internet access can become autonomous in their local environment, regardless of the culture, political situation, economic pressures or legal impositions, and become part of the new global fair economy.

For three years with FairCoop, a group of cooperative activists have spent their energy to build an innovative set of tools and solutions to help people to have an actual, practical alternative choice: for instance, they are creating a novel, independent and fair economy with the help of a unique anti-speculative crypto-currency: FairCoin

  •  What is it?
  • https://fair-coin.org/  FairCoin is the first fairly distributed crypto currency.
  • 99.99% Proof-Of-Stake, rewarding savers and cooperation
  • All the coins were premined and fairly distributed to thousands from all over the world. Computing power not needed.
  • Backed by a strong, diverse and committed community.
  • Promotes prosperity and financial freedom with real value.
  • Working to become the coin of fair trade.

In this way, Faircoop and its structures are creating the tools in order to slowly leave the control of the state and capital, offering a realistic transition plan instead of relying simply on empty rhetoric or intellectual abstractions.

It is a constructive project and serves an important role, as the real task for radicalism today is to help people, collectives and regions to realize that they don’t need state bureaucracies, political parties or impersonal economic institutions.

Understanding that we are faced with not just a passing financial crisis but a systemic disintegration, we realized that the truly unrealistic and utopian dream was that of endless capitalist accumulation, as the established powers insist on going headlong over a cliff, stubbornly insisting on growing inequality and endless consumption of finite resources. Continue reading “Faircoin: the Eco-Solidarity money that could Sweep the World”

Time to Pull the Plugs: Only Anti-Capitalism could Save The Planet

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Capital will not lead the exit from the fossil economy. Only a movement of movements can amass a social power greater than the enemy’s in the little time that is left.

Andreas Malm             Illustrations by  Zoran Svilar

Our best hope now is an immediate return to the flow. CO2 emissions have to be brought close to zero: some sources of energy that do not produce any emissions bathe the Earth in an untapped glow. The sun strikes the planet with more energy in a single hour than humans consume in a year.

Put differently, the rate at which the Earth intercepts sunlight is nearly 10,000 times greater than the entire energy flux humans currently muster — a purely theoretical potential, of course, but even if unsuitable locations are excluded, there remains a flow of solar energy a thousand times larger than the annual consumption of the stock of fossil fuels.

The flow of wind alone can also power the world. It has nothing like the overwhelming capacity of direct solar radiation, but estimates of the technically available supply range from one to twenty-four times total current energy demand.

Other renewable sources — geothermal, tidal, wave, water — can make significant contributions, but fall short of the promises of solar and wind. If running water constituted the main stream of the flow before the fossil economy, light and air may do so after it. Continue reading “Time to Pull the Plugs: Only Anti-Capitalism could Save The Planet”

The Blue Passport .. Bollocks to British Bigotry and Class Castration

Assuming the UK does not pull back from Brexit, a non-EU passport will be required. A mock-up of this, in what can only be described as ‘Tory Blue’, was published by the Home Office just before Christmas, when most people were half sozzled. Continue reading “The Blue Passport .. Bollocks to British Bigotry and Class Castration”

Argelia da luz verde al Fracking Gas con EU Imperialistas TOTAL y CEPSA

   Read original in English HERE: https://wp.me/pIJl9-aGe 

A pesar de las promesas, Argelia ha abandonado su moratoria sobre el gas de Fracking que adoptó después del levantamiento popular de 1915, con miles de heridos y un muerto, Mohamed Anoui, de 21 años. La fuerte resistencia unida obligó al Estado a abandonar sus planes por temor a volver a encender una guerra civil….

El fracking utiliza un cóctel químico tóxico y una presión explosiva incontrolable para romper rocas abiertas y puede envenenar permanentemente las aguas subterráneas de las cuales las comunidades argelinas del desierto son 100% dependientes.

El gas natural es más del 90% de metano que escapa fácilmente y es docenas de veces más letal que el CO2 en el marco de 20 años.

El “apuesto por el gas” de la UE como un sustituto “verde” es un fraude flagrante que ignora la urgente necesidad de salvarnos de Climate Meltdown. Los nuevos oleoductos subsidiados por el público de la UE, NordStream, TAP y Midcat son peligrosos e inmorales apostados por la codiciosa industria de combustibles fósiles corruptos para encerrarnos en su producto para las generaciones venideras.

La tubería de Midcat es especialmente perversa. Se promueve para “traer gas africano a Europa” cuando la capacidad de los oleoductos actuales de Argelia no puede satisfacer ni la mitad de las necesidades de Iberia. El único uso para Midcat será bombear gas LNG de Barcelona a Francia (en lugar de enviarlo directamente a Francia). Si Midcat se construye será puramente porque la UE pagará por ello y los políticos españoles obtendrán su parte. Una vez que se construya Midcat, el argumento puede cambiar a “necesitamos nuevos gaseoductos de Argelia para incorporar Fracking Gas y hacer que Midcat sea viable”.

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En 2015, la industria, incluida Halliburton, prometió que sus operaciones previas al Frackinjg en Argelia eran “absolutamente limpias”, pero los activistas visitaron los sitios de la encuesta y descubrieron desbordamientos de lagos de desechos tóxicos y productos químicos esparcidos por todas partes. Fotos y vídeos publicados en sitios de redes sociales revelaron la ausencia de instalaciones para tratar el agua y el lodo de perforación, llevando a la gente de Ain Salah a rebelar y sacar a la luz la falsidad de las afirmaciones de Sonatrach.

El Gas de Fracking es mucho peor que el gas extraido por métodos convencionales. Es al menos el doble de dañino que el carbón para el cambio climático. debido a las inevitables filtraciones de metano. (De hecho, algunos estudios han calculado que podría ser hasta 5 veces peor que el carbón; nunca se han realizado mediciones en los EE. UU. A pesar de que se perforaron varios millones de pozos de Fracking, excepto en casos limitados controlados por la propia industria corrupta.) El Presidente Trump ha ABOLIDO POR DECRETO hasta los controles voluntarios que iban a ser introducidos)

Timimoun, donde comenzará el fracking, es el antiguo centro de un centenar de pueblos de oasis impresionantes, Se ubica entre majestuosos acantilados. Todos los oases se encuentran 100% dependientes del agua limpia del acuífero.

La UE todavía acepta el fraude del Gas de Fracking de los Estados Unidos, bajo una fuerte presión para permitir su ingreso a Europa, a pesar de ser más caro y dos veces más letal para el clima que el gas de Rusia y otros competidores. Continue reading “Argelia da luz verde al Fracking Gas con EU Imperialistas TOTAL y CEPSA”

Algeria Green-lights climate-lethal Fracking Gas with EU Imperialists TOTAL and CEPSA

leer en castellano.. AQUI https://wp.me/pIJl9-aJa

Despite promises Algeria has abandoned its Moratorium on Fracking Gas which it adopted after the 1915 popular uprising, with thousands of injured and one death, 21 year old Mohamed Anoui. In 2015 the strong united popular resistance forced the State to drop its plans for fear of re-igniting civil war. Now Total and Cepsa are back and due to Start Fracking in April 2018.

The first fracking fields are planned withTotal and Cepsa, in the Tight gas fields of SW Algeria, first in the fields of Ahnet.Timimoun, Touat and Reggane which were already extensively prepared before Total was temporarily expelled during the Anti Fracking Uprising in 2015.

Fracking uses a toxic chemical cocktail and uncontrollable explosive pressure to splinter open rocks and can permanently poison groundwater on which Algerian desert communities are 100% dependent.

‘Natural’ gas is over 90% methane which escapes easily and is dozens of times more lethal than CO2 in the 20 year time frame.

The EU’s ‘dash for gas’ as a ‘green’ substitute is a blatant fraud which ignores the urgent necessity to save us from Climate Meltdown. The new pipelines subsidised by the EU public, NordStream, TAP and Midcat are a dangerous and immoral  bid by the greedy corrupt fossil fuel industry to lock us into their product for generations to come.

The Midcat pipeline is especially perverse. It is being promoted to ‘bring African gas to Europe’ when the capacity of the present pipelines from Algeria can’t supply even half of Iberia’s needs. The only use for Midcat will be to pump LNG gas from Barcelona to France (instead of shipping it directly to France). If Midcat is built it will be purely because the EU will pay for it and Spanish politicians will get their cut. Once Midcat is built the argument may shift to ‘we need new pipelines from Algeria to bring in Fracking Gas and  make Midcat viable’.

In 2015 the industry, including Halliburton, vowed that their pre.fracking operations in Algeria were ‘squeaky clean’, but activists visited the survey sites and found open overflowing  toxic waste lakes and chemicals strewn everywhere. Photos and videos posted on social network sites revealed the absence of facilities to treat water and drilling mud, leading the people of Ain Salah to blow the whistle on Sonatrach’s claims..

Fracked Gas is much much worse, it is at least twice as Bad as Coal for Climate Change, due to inevitable methane leaks. (Indeed some studies have calculated it could be up to 5 times as bad as coal, measurements in the US have never been done despite several million fracking wells being drilled, except in limited cases controlled by the corrupt industry itself. Trump ABOLISHED BY DECREE the voluntary controls which were due to be introduced ) 

Timimoun, where the fracking will begin, is the ancient center of 200 magical oasis villages set into majestic cliffs. All are 100% dependent on clean aquifer water.

The EU still accepts the fraud of US Frack Gas, under heavy pressure to allow it into Europe, despite being more expensive and twice as climate lethal as its Russian and other competitors. Continue reading “Algeria Green-lights climate-lethal Fracking Gas with EU Imperialists TOTAL and CEPSA”

Yaqui Tribe Defends Land by Digging Up Gas Pipeline

  Wednesday, December 20th, 2017

from Bloomberg News and Earth First

A chunk of Sempra Energy’s natural gas pipeline sits in the dirt behind a community center in the village of Loma de Bacum in northwest Mexico. Guadalupe Flores thinks it would make a great barbecue pit.“Cut it here, lift the top,’’ he says, pointing to the 30-inch diameter steel tube. “Perfect for a cook-out.’’Photo: Yael Martinez/Bloomberg

It would be an expensive meal. The pipeline cost $400 million, part of a network that’s supposed to carry gas from Arizona more than 500 miles to Mexico’s Pacific coast. It hasn’t done that since August, when members of the indigenous Yaqui tribe – enraged by what they viewed as an unauthorized trespass their land – used a backhoe truck to puncture and extract a 25-foot segment. They left the main chunk about a mile from the community center, perpendicular to the rest of the pipeline, like a lower-case t.

 The impact extends far beyond Loma de Bacum and its 4,500 residents. Arizona’s gas exports to Mexico have plunged 37 percent since the shutdown, hitting an eight-month low in December. Mexico’s state utility is having to burn fuel oil instead to generate power, raising costs.

It’s not an isolated case. Mexico’s opening of its energy industry has succeeded in attracting capital, but it’s also been beset by territorial or environmental disputes, often involving the country’s myriad indigenous groups. When protest turns into sabotage, there’s a risk that investors will be put off from future phases, like an extensive shale development. It’s also grist to the mill of the leftist frontrunner for next year’s presidential election, who’s vowing to reverse some of the reforms.

‘Refused Consent’

The Yaquis of Loma de Bacum say they were asked by community authorities in 2015 if they wanted a 9-mile tract of the pipeline running through their farmland — and said no. Construction went ahead anyway.

The Energy Ministry acknowledged that account is true, in a statement that highlights the difficulties its officials confront. Consultation of the eight Yaqui communities along the route was carried out, as required by law. Seven of them gave a green light, the ministry said by e-mail, “while the town of Loma de Bacum refused consent.’’A piece of the gas pipeline extracted by the Yaquis of Loma de Bacum.  Photo: Yael Martinez/Bloomberg

The project is now in a legal limbo. Ienova, the Sempra unit that operates the pipeline, is awaiting a judicial ruling that could allow them to go in and repair it — or require a costlier re-route. “If they want to build a pipeline, that’s fine,’’ said Flores, the would-be barbecue designer who’s a local community leader. “But it won’t pass through here.’’

At the Energy Ministry in Mexico City, that’s becoming a familiar refrain. Continue reading “Yaqui Tribe Defends Land by Digging Up Gas Pipeline”