The Free

the War Starts Here … Camp 2017

Potzehne, Germany:the War Starts Here Camp 2017

From the 31th of july to the 6th of August the War-Starts-Here camp will set up in Potzehne (close to Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt,Germany). For several years now the War-Starts-Here camp has brought together lots of different people close to the modern and important military training site in Germany.

The “Gefechtsübungszentrum Heer”, abbreviated as GÜZ. Antimilitarist discussions as well as practical resistance left a persistent mark on both the participants of the camp and the surrounding region.

We gather to gain and share knowledge about wars and their preparation, to figure out the situation we are living in and to analyse its internal relationships. Perspectives in emancipatory movements are highly diverse – and so are the views on military and war.

This in mind, we want to further develop common ideas of resistance, strengthen the local antiwar-initiatives grown over long years and also discuss our differences respectfully. It seems highly important to us, that we make a step towards the locals and talk with them about their experiences…and maybe more…

For this year’s camp we build on last year’s main issues. The motto “Krieg.Macht.Flucht.” is still up-to-date, saying “war causes flight” while making use of the ambiguous German word “Macht” (translating both as “makes”/”causes” and “power”).

This time our focus will be the development of common anti-militarist and anti-racist perspectives of resistance. Let’s overpower our powerlessness – the camp in Potzehne wants to provide a space for that. We want to have discussions at a horizontal level with everyone sharing our radical refusal of the global destructive circumstances.

Training, exercise, preparation and export – war starts here! We want to make this deadly site publicly visible, since it is of crucial importance to war preparation. Through various antimilitarist actions we want to disturb the “normal” operation on the GÜZ, let’s mark, block, and sabotage this full-speed-running machinery of war!

The camp is self-organized and thus, in its existence, shape and impact depending on active participation. Do not miss anything you haven’t helped to organize! Together we create a social counter project: From a society deeply infiltrated by authoritarian structures, let’s set sails towards Utopia.

Our acceptance has limits: nationalist, antisemite, islamophobic, racist and sexist attacks happen much too often. Exclusions based on characteristics as clothing, age or use of language happen much too often.

We are trying to be aware of, question and change our own socialized way of thinking and our behavior and we expect everybody to do the same.

More information concerning the arrival, the program and the complete call out you can find on:
war-starts-here.camp/

Since 1978 CEO Pay Has Soared by ‘Outrageous’ 937%

Worker Wages Flat but New analysis shows how corporate bosses rake in huge salaries and bonuses as inequality continues to soar … by Jake Johnson, staff writer 16 Comments

(Photo: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr/cc)

Wages for most American workers have remained basically stagnant for decades, but a new report published on Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that the CEOs of America’s largest firms have seen their pay soar at a consistent and “outrageous” clip.

“Simply put, money that goes to the executive class is money that does not go to other people.”
—Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute

Between 1978 and 2016, CEO pay rose by 937 percent, EPI’s Lawrence Mishel and Jessica Schieder found. By contrast, the typical worker saw “painfully slow” compensation growth—11.2 percent over the same period.

Mishel and Schieder also note that CEOs of “America’s largest firms made an average of $15.6 million in compensation, or 271 times the annual average pay of the typical worker.”

“While the 2016 CEO-to-worker compensation ratio of 271-to-1 is down from 299-to-1 in 2014 and 286-to-1 in 2015, it is still light years beyond the 20-to-1 ratio in 1965 and the 59-to-1 ratio in 1989,” the report observes. “The average CEO in a large firm now earns 5.33 times the annual earnings of the average very-high-wage earner (earner in the top 0.1 percent).”

(Image Credit: Economic Policy Institute)

EPI’s report is just the latest on an ever-expanding list of analyses documenting America’s staggering income inequality, which is the worst in the industrialized world. In March, the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman labeled the U.S. inequality crisis—the massive gap between the wealthiest and everyone else—”a tale of two countries.”

“For the 117 million US adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation, while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong,” Piketty, Saez, and Zucman wrote.

Mishel points out that the vast disparity between CEO pay and average worker compensation, which EPI documents annually, “is a major driver of inequality.”

“Simply put, money that goes to the executive class is money that does not go to other people. Rising executive pay is not connected to overall growth in the economic pie,” Mishel argues. “We could curtail the explosive growth in CEO pay without doing any harm to the economy.”

EPI proposes several policies that would curtail executive pay and potentially put more money into the pockets of workers, including “higher marginal income tax rates at the very top” and higher taxes for companies with high CEO-to-worker pay ratios.

The Trump administration, however, has indicated that it intends to do precisely the opposite. President Donald Trump’s proposed tax policies, a recent analysis found, would provide massive cuts for the rich while hiking taxes for many middle class families.

For this reason—and simply because of “history and greed”—Mishel told The Guardian he “fully expect[s] CEO compensation to escalate in the near future.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

‘The Free’, original 1986 edition. now a free download

Recently a few people have asked for the original version of The Free in digital form so I took in the old book and the German version and had them scanned. This is the result. the scan wasn’t too good and I had to go through it all, fiercely resisting the temptation to improve the text, hopefully I haven’t missed too many typos.

https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/testing-downloads/

The Free (original short 1986 and 1990 edition) PDF 151 pages

The Free (original short 1986 and 1990 edition) Epub 1.6mb

‘This short, original version is the same tale but darker and more violent, focusing less on revolution and more on guerilla struggle’.

.Dr Daniel P. Jaeckle, author of ‘Embodied Anarchy in Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Dispossessed’ said this of the first version of The Free

I should add that the 1986 version has its own interest. It does not often engage in ideological statements, it ends with the more realistic deaths of some characters as opposed to the more romantic ending of the 2007 version, and the speed of the narrative is compelling. I encourage those who can find the 1986 version to read it as well.

from Imagining an Anarchist Revolution: M. Gilliland’s The Free

REVIEWS of original version

Continue reading “‘The Free’, original 1986 edition. now a free download”

Eco-villages… Tamera.. Future Blueprint or Escapist Adventure_

Thousands of inspiring ecovillages are being set up around the world. We travel with Jamie to Tamera for a critical look at a Portuguese permaculture Utopia

Photo by Laura Pazo (CC BY-NC-SA)

Yes, it has free love, vegan food, Wi-Fi and a low carbon footprint. But it also has unchallenged assumptions, ramshackle housing and a questionable belief system, finds social media analyst Jamie Bartlett.

by Jamie Bartlett As the sun rises over the Portuguese countryside, I find myself standing in a circle on top of a hill with a group of strangers, grasping hands, eyes shut. We are gathered around a collection of enormous stones, a candle, a ceramic bowl filled with water, and a crystal. A woman in white robes is humming, and we are trying to stop the war in Syria using our thoughts in an exercise called the Ring of Power.

I’m at the eco-village of Tamera, which is a two-hour train journey from Lisbon. More than 20 years ago, a band of Germans arrived here with little money and an ambitious plan to create what they called a “healing biotope,” a template of how humanity could live in harmony with themselves, their fellow humans and the environment.

The Ring of Power was one of the items on the agenda for the forty of us outsiders. Every several months, Tamera allows visitors to live here for a few days and learn how it works. It cost us €350 each to attend, plus €30 each per day for food and accommodations.

Tamera is split into two sites. On the western side is the Campus, where visitors stay. It has a bar, café, kitchen, eating area, cultural center, bookshop, guest house, male and female dorms and auditorium. On the eastern side are the 150 full-time Tamerians. They reside in small villages of 20 to 30 residents — who range from babies to octogenarians — who inhabit caravans, huts, yurts and shacks. The whole place has the feel of a half-finished holiday campsite.

The visitors are mostly well-off Westerners dissatisfied with what the modern world offers and looking for more meaning. Tamera is the brainchild of psychoanalyst Dieter Duhm. He’d been involved in the 1968 left-wing student movements but was confused by their failure to transform the world.

Like other ’68ers, Dieter concluded it wasn’t the material world that needed reshaping, it was the mental one. He came to believe that unresolved sexual desire, jealousy and a lack of trust were the reasons for our problems. Dieter, his partner (and a self-described medium) Sabine Lichtenfels, and a handful of others founded Tamera in 1995. Continue reading “Eco-villages… Tamera.. Future Blueprint or Escapist Adventure_”

Errekaleor is Alive!, the Epic Struggle of a Self-managed and Anticapitalist neighborhood.

we share an interesting interview with Estitxu Villamor, by Adrián Almazán for 15-15-15.org/webzine/ on the situation of Errekaleor, neighborhood of Vitoria.

Let’s start with the history of the Errekaleor neighborhood. In what year was it built? What kind of population lived in it and what was its role in the struggles of the city?

Errekaleor is a working district that was built in 1959 to house the workers who came from the whole peninsula to the factories of Gasteiz. This is a time when there is a very strong industrialization in the city and many workers come with their families.

The city grew and this type of labor districts were created, away from the center of the city. This, in particular, is built by a cooperative of the bishopric, totally on the periphery, without any services (the neighborhood initially comprised of the houses and a church), so that the life of the workers was reduced to the work and did not have the possibility of organize themselves in the workers’ struggle.

Even so, because of their workmanship, neighbors were very close and organized from the outset. Very involved in the workers’ struggle and in the defense of their own neighborhood, they themselves built a cinema, a bar and a grocery store; Also through their struggle they got the city council to equip them with services such as the social center, nursery, … Continue reading “Errekaleor is Alive!, the Epic Struggle of a Self-managed and Anticapitalist neighborhood.”

Emma Goldman’s ‘Living My Life’..read and download here

Emma Goldman’s amazing autobiography ‘Living my Life’ has just been uploaded to The Anarchist Library for all of us to read and copy!

Title: Living My Life Author: Emma Goldman

Date: 1931 Topics: autobiographical, Russian Revolution

. Read and download HERE ..http://theanarchistlibrary.org…

In appreciation.. by Emma Goldman

”Suggestions that I write my memoirs came to me when I had barely begun to live, and continued all through the years. But I never paid heed to the proposal. I was living my life intensely — what need to write about it?

Another reason for my reluctance was the conviction I entertained that one should write about one’s life only when one had ceased to stand in the very torrent of it. “When one has reached a good philosophic age,” I used to tell my friends, “capable of viewing the tragedies and comedies of life impersonally and detachedly — particularly one’s own life — one is likely to create an autobiography worth while.”

Still feeling adolescently young in spite of advancing years, I did not consider myself competent to undertake such a task. Moreover, I always lacked the necessary leisure for concentrated writing.

My enforced European inactivity left me enough time to read a great deal, including biographies and autobiographies. I discovered, much to my discomfiture, that old age, far from ripening wisdom and mellowness, is too often fraught with senility, narrowness, and petty rancour. I would not risk such a calamity, and I began to think seriously about writing my life. Continue reading “Emma Goldman’s ‘Living My Life’..read and download here”