Why growing up Anarchist made me a better Permaculture Designer

RTF lady

…..This post intends to share my love for both anarchism and permaculture and why the relationship between them keeps me up at night.

Anarchism and Permaculture

I joined the Anarchist Federation and the Anarchist Youth Network as a young teenager (circa 13-14 years old). While a lot of people have a jaunt at socialism or the Green Party and other escapades and find themselves radicalised by increasing dissolution with liberal ideas, I found I dove into the deep end.

And so began a lifelong love affair with ideas and action that questioned the legitimacy and role of a state, the capitalist economic system and all other forms of intersecting oppression, like racism, sexism and human supremacy.

I hungered for an understanding of all the fucked up things I’d seen or gone through.

”The site Empty Cages Design provides a portfolio of my work as an organiser, designer, agroecologist, educator and writer. It gives a platform to the courses, workshops, events and projects that I organise”.

Continue reading “Why growing up Anarchist made me a better Permaculture Designer”

Defend LGBT Victims: Stop Crimes against Humanity in Eurasia


by  Tamara Grigoreva and Ismail Djalilov

A wave of brutal crackdowns on LGBT communities in the post-Soviet space has exposed civil society’s shortcomings — and is destroying lives.

B+W illustrations: Anastasia Vikulova.

Every day, before leaving the house, Milan zips his jacket all the way up to his chin. He puts on his sunglasses, hat and earphones with the volume cranked up to the max and walks to a language class.

“People can barely see my face that way, and I can barely hear what is happening around me. I go to class, and then sometimes I meet with the social worker or go to the doctor. Then I have something to eat and set off to walk around the city until I’m so exhausted I can barely walk. Only then do I go home,” Milan says, adding that the thing he is most afraid of is closing his eyes and not being able to fall asleep.

 see also .. Gay concentration camps in Chechnya – Wikipedia

Gays Being Attacked and Killed Across Russia, Not Just in Chechnya

Azerbaijan authorities arrest dozens of LGBTQ people

“This is why I prefer to come home so tired that I literally pass out. Otherwise, every time I close my eyes, I feel the cold concrete floor against my stomach, I can taste the blood on my tongue, hear the shouting of the guards and see those smeared walls.”

Almost a year after Russia’s Novaya Gazeta broke horrific accounts of the roundups and severe torture that gay men were subjected to in Chechnya (the exact number of deaths remains unknown), the crisis is far from over.

Though many gay men in Chechnya, like Milan, fled abroad with the help of Russian LGBT rights defenders, they still have to hide their real identities and locations to prevent possible harassment from the Chechen intelligence — just like in Chechnya.

Over the summer of 2017, reports of similar crimes across the North Caucasus increased, and in September, reports of similar roundups, humiliation and torture against LGBT people (who allegedly had STDs and were involved in sex work) emerged from Azerbaijan — and in October, Tajikistan created a registry of LGBT citizens after police conducted operations to identity them.

While each crisis had its specifics, they all were used by the authorities to demonstrate their ability to crush any vulnerable community in an atmosphere of impunity, as well as to divert attention from other issues and extort money from the victims.

Continue reading “Defend LGBT Victims: Stop Crimes against Humanity in Eurasia”

8th March..First Ever Feminist General Strike called in Spain

Its a Feminist women’s strike. In order to give it legal coverage it had to be officially registered by a Trade Union, in this case the anarchist CGT. But it’s not legal to call a Women’s Strike in Spain, so they went one further and registered it as the first feminist General Strike. Legal and official.

CGT women officially registered the Feminist General Strike 

Why is the feminist strike on March 8 different from all the others?

The mobilizations and the strike for International Women’s Day are called in more than 150 countries for a more just and egalitarian society. This is just one of the data that makes this call unique. la página web de la Comisión 8M.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, a new, unprecedented strike was called for, a women’s strike, which shouts to want them “free, alive, feminist, combative and rebellious”. Thus, a call is made to support the stoppages, for all women who can and for all women who do not. But do you know what this feminist strike means and why it is not like the others?

Continue reading “8th March..First Ever Feminist General Strike called in Spain”

Afrin defenders ambush and defeat Turkish ‘Special Force’ Butchers

  Special Police  of Turkey  Credit: Anadolu

see also.. Massive demonstrations for Afrin on March 3rd

Turkey suffered heavy losses on Thursday during its invasion of Afrin with the military announcing that eight soldiers were killed and admitting 13 more wounded. The defenders reported 33 more deaths among the hired FSA mercenaries used by the Turkish state.

The day’s toll brings the number of Turkish soldiers killed since the launch of operation “Olive Branch” to at least 40.

The private Dogan news agency reported that intense fighting had broken out in the afternoon between  invadingTurkish special forces units recently deployed in Afrin and YPG members, who mounted an ambush with the help of tunnels.

According to the report a Turkish helicopter sent to rescue the wounded had to turn back after being hit, while the area was shelled to allow the Turkish forces to flee.. the Kurdish forces  damaged aCobra helicopter and destroyed at least two Turkish military vehicles in the Reco district on Thursday.A member of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) takes part in a demonstration alongside Syrian-Kurds in the town of Amuda Credit: AFP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was informed of the incident during a visit to Senegal.

The defenders admitted that twenty-three YPG / YPJ fighters have died in the battles over the last 24 hours in  Reco. Two columns of a hundred militiamen stormed in surprise the Turkish pro positions in response to the helicopter attack against Kurdish positions.

HoweverTurkish aviation, with Russian and Syrian flight permission and using NATO equipment, detected the tunnel where they fell back and performed a massacre.

An injured girl receives treatment at the Avrin hospital in the Kurdish-majority town of Afrin Credit: AFP Continue reading “Afrin defenders ambush and defeat Turkish ‘Special Force’ Butchers”

The 1001 Crimes of Adolf Erdogan : #1002.. Abuses Little Girl on Stage

Execrable Erdogan Imitates Hitler: Kisses, fondles Girl  and proclaims her ‘Ready for Martyrdom’

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan exploited a little girl in military uniform and said that she is ready for martyrdom

.shared from ANF

In a speech in Maras province, Erdogan also said that the girl will be honored with the Turkish flag if she were to be martyred.

The little girl in military uniform was ‘invited’ to the podium during Erdogan’s speech. As she cried Erdogan said: “You see we have maroon berets, too. But a maroon beret does not cry. A special command, a colonel, a maroon beret… Wonderful! Her Turkish flag is in her pocket. If she becomes a martyr, [her coffin] will be covered with a flag, God willing. She is ready for everything, is she not ?”

Since the speech, thousands of social media users shared Erdogan’s photo with the little girl compared to the leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler standing next to a child soldier.

shared from ANF news

Atrocious Erdo gets off on kissing his victim.

see also…   Turkey’s president says all he wants is same powers as Hitler
Erdoğan caught Smuggling Arms to Libyan Jihadis.. again

By  TM     In a bid to plant a closely aligned Islamist zealot as the ruler of Libya, the Erdoğan government has not only been facilitating the shipment of arms and the smuggling of oil but has also been helping in the transfer of jihadists back and forth between Libya and Turkey. The trace of evidence revealing his government’s involvement has now found its way to the UN documents as well. I hope one day he and his associates will be held accountable for fuelling the war in this North African country ……

……………………………………………………Continue Reading HERE

Erdoğan threatens the world with exporting jihadist terrorists ..

2 days ago – by Abdullah Bozkurt. Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ratcheted up his usual anti-Western diatribe, taking it a step further to threatening Europe in particular with a flood of returning jihadists, warning that countries had better cooperate with Turkey or risk seeing a wave of terrorism in their…

… continues   HERE

Feb 21, 2018   Erdogan actually declared war on all countries that were part of the Ottoman Empire from Morocco to Mecca and from Vienna to Persia. He declared war on well over 30 countries. Erdogan is a mad man, even a mad dog. Someone will have to put him on a strong …

………………continues   HERE

1001 More Crimes

  • 154th journalist imprisoned in Turkey by ErdoganAsli Ceren Aslan, editor of the newspaper Özgür Gelecek (Free Future) was arrested on 9 February in the province of Urfa province, Kurdish southeast of Turkey. She was “officially” arrested in Urfa, near the border with Syria while following the events in Syria and Rojava Kurdistan.
  • Damning UN report slams Turkey, revealing the extent of its anti-Kurdish war
    Damning UN report slams Turkey, revealing the extent of its anti-Kurdish war
     

Feminists Seve, Fatma and Pakiza killed.

  • Ambulance blocked by police. DBP Silopi District Co-Chair, Gülşen Özden speaking to Hatice Kamer with BBC Turkish in Silopi as to killings of politician women said she received a phone call around 7:35 p.m. and the voice on the other end said they were shot and called for an ambulance. “They phoned me again in a few minutes. They hung up the phone saying ‘We are losing blood, hurry up. We all will die if you don’t come in 10 minutes’.Feminists Seve, Fatma and Pakiza killed. Ambulance blocked by police. DBP Silopi District Co-Chair, Gülşen Özden speaking to BBC Turkish in Silopi on killings of politician women said she received a phone call around 7:35 p.m. and the voice on the other end said they were shot and called for an ambulance.  “They phoned me again in a few minutes saying ‘We are losing blood, hurry up. We all will die if you don’t come in 10 minutes’. By the time the bodies were rescued they held 19 bullets.  Daily massacres took place in Eastern Turkey (North Kurdistan) as the Turkish police and half million strong army indulged in pogroms against the Kurdish population, who demand autonomous self-rule (but not a new state).
  • Turkish invasion in Afrin leaves ‘grim tally’ of children killed, ‘fleeing families’  – UNICEF

Failure of US bid to flood Europe with Gas from Fracking

….

 by TheFreeOnline      A few months ago US officials were openly boasting that they would steal the market for Russian gas in Europe by replacing it with their own LNG now flowing from the devastated fracking fields of America.
But in recent weeks not a single cargo of Frack Gas has reached Europe..What went wrong?
It seems that with so much anti Russian hysteria  they overlooked the price difference. . Gas shipped from the first US LNG export terminal was at one point priced in Rotterdam at $7.85 to $8.35  per mbtu  while the average Euro price was $ 5.35, (May 2017 European price, see Climate-lethal US frack-gas Footnote 3) .Even the rabidly anti Russian Baltic Republics seem to have shut up about bashing Putin with US gas, while Rotterdam has signed up as the trans-shipment center for cheap LNG from the new Russian LNG plant in the Arctic.

Frack-Gas is the same as normal gas, only that it’s up to 3 times more lethal than coal for the climate. Because extracting it requires fracturing shale in thousands of small wells with ultra toxic chemicals causing massive methane leaking.

Two of the biggest customers at present of  US fracking gas , Shell and Gas Natural, who have 20 year ‘take or pay’ contracts, have been shipping most of  their gas instead through the Panama canal to the Far East, where prices until now have been up to $3  per mbtu higher.

US fracking gas and oil depends on almost cost free loans and near immunity from water and air pollution laws and clean-up costs as well as a blind climate change denial policy.
The business, which has made the US nearly self–sufficient  in ‘natural’ gas, LPG and oil for now,  is often seen as a patriotic push to conserve US supremacy as the petrodollar scam wobbles  and the right to ‘infinite debt’ comes into question.Ironically the first giant LNG export plant in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, was first hit a glancing blow by the classic ‘climate change hurricane’ Harvey. . Though the company Cheniere claimed there was no damage there was still a queue of LNG tankers waiting to load at the port a month later and LNG journals were rejoicing that things were ‘getting back to normal’.  (see Recovery Continues as Sabine Pass)

Cheniere forced to close two Sabine Pass LNG tanks following dangerous  leak

Then there is the ongoing leaking tank disaster. The 6 mega plant ‘trains’ at Sabine Pass have been built in record time. Too fast it seems because last week the company was ordered to close down two of the five immense tanks where the gas is compressed by 600 times and held at minus 150 C until loaded onto the tankers. Continue reading “Failure of US bid to flood Europe with Gas from Fracking”

Greece: Update on anarchist hunger striker Konstantinos (25/02/2018)


via anahija.info       at anarchistnews.org   By: thecollective

24/02, early in the morning, a group of police special forces (EKAM) entered Korydallos prison and abducted comrade Konstantinos Giagtzoglou (who is on hunger strike since 21/02 demanding his permanent transfer in Korydallos prison, located in Athens) in order to transfer him to Larisa prison.

The comrade fought back which resulted in him being injured by the pigs. He wasn’t allowed to take any of his stuff, not even his medicine. As an immediate response, the rest of the prisoners rose up and captured all prison wings, demanding a meeting with a representative of the Justice Department. They demand the immediate return of Konstantinos in Korydallos prison.As a result of the massive mobilization in Korydallos, Malandrino and Chania prisons, a representative of the Justice Department has met with representatives of the prisoners in Korydallos prison (the whole prison was occupied by the prisoners for 5 hours) and has promised them that there will be a new council in session in Monday to examine our comrade’s demand.

The prisoners ended the occupation warning him that they will take action again if the comrade’s demand is not met.
Ntinos is now in Larisa prison and announced that he will escalate his hunger strike to thirst strike starting from Sunday, 25/02/2018. He has also published a letter about his struggle.

The comrade’s letter: Continue reading “Greece: Update on anarchist hunger striker Konstantinos (25/02/2018)”