This is our chance to re-imagine social media, and our relationship to it. To rediscover the lost promise of the Internet. To construct new digital worlds in the burning shell of the old. And to do it together.
The old paradigms are dying. It’s long past time that those who want to overthrow this miserable system break our addiction to data-mining surveillance platforms, built and maintained by our enemies.
Kolektiva.social is a Mastodon instance built by and for anarchists. It is just one small node in a larger decentralized network called the Fediverse. Unlike other Twitter alternatives like Koo or Hive, the software and apps that power this network are all open source, with each server setting its own rules, free from the influence of ad-driven algorithms and billionaire tech-bro CEOs.
There is great potential here, but whether we realize that potential depends on all of us. That’s why we’re calling on you to get involved.
What Happened: An analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data by the Actuaries Institute showed that an additional 15,400 people died in the first eight months of the year in the country.
Actuaries said that number includes around one-third of those having no link to COVID-19, but 97.3% of the population have had at least one and many up to 4 injections against the largely inoffensive virus.
Some on social media have suggested Covid vaccines are behind the rise in excess deaths.
“Deaths are 17 per cent higher than normal in Australia,” Queensland LNP senator Matt Canavan wrote on Twitter earlier this year. “I don’t know what it is but it is about time we got serious about asking why.”
At the time, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) told ABC Fact Check it was “false and unscientific to automatically conclude that vaccines caused these deaths”.
“There is no credible evidence to suggest that Covid-19 vaccines have contributed to excess deaths in Australia or overseas,” the TGA said.
Ms Cutter also rubbished those claims.
“There is zero evidence that vaccines are causing these deaths as far as I’m concerned, but I cannot prove it,” she said.
13% was an “incredibly high number for mortality,” and it was “not clear” what was driving the increase, said Karen Cutter, spokeswoman for the institute’s Covid-19 Mortality Working Group.
Organic systems achieve 3-6 times the profit of conventional production and 40% higher yields during stressful drought periods, according to the longest-running investigation comparing organic and conventional grain-cropping approaches in North America.
The longest-running — four-decade — investigation comparing organic and conventional grain-cropping approaches in North America is reporting impressive results for organic.
Organic systems achieve 3-6 times the profit of conventional production.
Yields for the organic approach are competitive with those of conventional systems (after a five-year transition period).
Organic yields during stressful drought periods are 40% higher than conventional yields.
Organic systems leach no toxic compounds into nearby waterways (unlike pesticide-intensive conventional farming), use 45% less energy than conventional and emit 40% less carbon into the atmosphere.
EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade as Vladimir Putin’s war threatens to destroy Western unity.
BY BARBARA MOENS, JAKOB HANKE VELA AND JACOPO BARIGAZZI, NOVEMBER 24, 2022 “………………….. Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer..
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO.
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.
EU officials attack Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales and trade .
“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.2
a.valentin.val@gmail.com y rosset@globalalternatives.org
Nos proponemos un ensayo en el sentido de experimento, exploración, tanteo. Una reflexión en voz alta; una invitación al diálogo para, como nos enseñan lxs zapatistas, escuchar y aprender en el caminar colectivo de transformación. Nos inspiramos aquí en los principios y aprendizajes que lxs zapatistas, en su lucha por la vida, aportan a la construcción de un movimiento global de transformación agroecológica.
Luego del levantamiento zapatista el 1° de enero de 1994, muchxs intentaron desacreditarlo calificándolo como un levantamiento contra el progreso, la modernidad, el futuro. Se les acusó de ingenuidad, ignorancia, utopismo, de naífs y hasta de ser un movimiento “polpotiano” arcaico y sectario.
Hoy, a más de 25 años de ese ¡Ya Basta!, de aquel “aquí estamos y estaremos” y “somos lo que somos”, de ese ejercicio de resistencia y rebeldía, de esa declaración de principios, valores y vivires, podríamos decir: “sí… sí fue un levantamiento contra el progreso, la modernidad y el futuro”.
Fue un levantamiento contra una modernidad capitalista, racista, patriarcal, heteronormativa y excluyente; un progreso de la ideología neoliberal y su necropolítica agro-hidro-extractivista; y un futuro de privilegios para una minoría y de muerte para las mayorías. Fue un levantamiento por el pasado, por el presente y, sobre todo, por futuros y mundos otros.
Que nadie se equivoque, lo que lxs compas representan no es el pasado, ni un utopismo neorromántico, ni una autonomía aislada y endogámica. Lxs compañerxs zapatistas, desde su ser y estar en el mundo, nos están mostrando que existen otras posibilidades: de futuro(s) y mundo(s) donde quepan todxs, sustentables, de comunidades, de relaciones sociales y ambientales justas y centradas en la reproducción de la vida.
La agroecología es una de esas apuestas por la vida, y lxs compañerxs zapatistas tienen muy claro que la soberanía o autonomía alimentaria, el trabajo colectivo, el respeto a la Madre Tierra, son pilares fundamentales en la construcción de la autonomía (Barkin et al. 2020, Rosset y Barbosa 2021).
Este es el sentido profundo de esta agroecología que nos gustaría explorar en este ensayo. Una agroecología colectiva, emancipatoria, organizada en torno a valores comunitarios de cooperación y reciprocidad que descentra la mercantilización de las relaciones sociales y ambientales.
Para ello, creemos que es primeramente necesario explorar críticamente el escenario de disputas contemporáneas en torno a las nociones de agroecología, los riesgos de cooptación y apropiación por parte de los Estados, instituciones y corporaciones.
A continuación, señalamos algunas características de las agroecologías emancipatorias, sus potenciales y desafíos en la consecución de la soberanía alimentaria, la construcción de autonomía(s) y el caminar de los pueblos hacia el horizonte heterotopístico de una vida digna, social y ambientalmente sostenible, con justicia, equidad, libertad que se encuentran en diversos procesos de organización, caminando hacia la autonomía en abierta resistencia y rebeldía al capitalismo y su proyecto de muerte.
Hacia el final reflexionamos sobre cómo, además de un faro político, lxs zapatistas constituyen también un faro agroecológico (Altieri 2001) para las agroecologías emancipatorias. Es otro de los ejemplos —vivo, tangible, dinámico— que lxs zapatistas le dan al mundo.
The founding of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world1, was commemorated in Dublin at the site of Wolfe Tone monument in Stephens Greeen, in song and speech on 23rd November 2022.
CYM speaker beside the Wolf Tone Monument (by Edward Delaney) which was blown up by Loyalists in 1969; it was recast and the surviving head incorporated. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Organised by the Connolly Youth Movement, the other participating organisations represented were the Irish Communist Party, Independent Workers Union, Lasair Dhearg2 and Welsh Socialist Republican Solidarity (Ireland) – the Irish branch of the Welsh Underground Network.
In addition, a number of independent activists were also present.
THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
The Irish Citizen Army was founded on 23rd November 1913 on a call from Jim Larkin and James Connolly, both leading the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in its titanic struggle against the federation of Dublin Employers’ plan to break and disperse the union.
The call for the formation of the ICA arose due to the attacks of the Dublin Metropolitan Police on the workers and their supporters; already in August 1913 the DMP had killed two workers by truncheon blows and injured many, including a youth who would die later as a result.
The ICA’s initial organiser was the writer and dramatist Seán O’Casey, later succeeded by Boer War veteran Jack White.3 In addition to requiring its recruits to be union members, the ICA enrolled women as well as men and some of the former were officers commanding both genders4.
While the ITGWU was defeated in the eight months of the Lockout, it was not smashed and came back stronger in a relatively short period. The ICA faded away then but was reorganised over following years and approximately 120 took part as a unit in the 1916 Rising, alongside other units.5
SPEECHES AND SONG
A small crowd had gathered at the advertised location, the Wolfe Tone Monument in Stephen’s Green and the chairperson of the event called people to order.
Diarmuid Breatnach, an independent activist, was asked to sing one of Connolly’s compositions, ironically titled Be Moderate, often referred to instead by its refrain, “We only Want the Earth”.
An older man with a Dublin accent, Breatnach told his audience that Connolly published the lyrics in New York in 1907, going on to sing the five verses to the air of Thomas Davis’ A Nation Once Again6, using the chorus part to repeat the refrain that “ … we only want the Earth!”7
A representative of the Independent Workers’ Union, a young man with an Ulster accent, spoke about the need for workers to have a trade union and for that union not to align itself with employers or with the State.
In order to truly represent the interests of the workers, the union needs to be independent, he maintained and also democratic in its decision-making.
In conclusion, the speaker said that the IWU is the union that is needed and called on people present to join it and to support it.
“MAKE THE VISION A REALITY”
Amy Margaret, a young woman, also with an Ulster accent, delivered a speech on behalf of the organisers of the event, the Connolly Youth Movement.
“The Citizen Army was a direct response to the brutality carried out by the RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police during the Dublin Lockout” she said; “the police killed two workers, injured hundreds more with baton charges, and frequently ransacked the tenements where strikers lived.”
“The Citizen Army fought back with some succes” she continued “and as one pointed out, a hurley has a longer reach than a baton. It was in the Citizen Army that the working-class stood up to the RIC and employers,” she continued.
“The same RIC that torched farmer’s homes during the Land war, the same employers who often owned the slums where workers lived; it was here at Stephen’s Green (and elsewhere in the city) that the Citizen Army stood up to the British Empire, alongside comrades in the Irish Volunteers.”
She told her audience that when, during a dockers’ strike in 1915, scabs were imported and police harassed picketers, Connolly sent a squad of the ICA with fixed bayonets to the scene, resulting in the dispute’s resolution with “a considerable increase in wages to the dockers concerned”.
“The Citizen Army was not simply workers armed with guns,” the speaker said, “but also armed with culture” and referred to weekly concerts in Liberty Hall (the ITGWU’s HQ) and to the dramatic acting history of Seán Connolly and whistle-playing of Michael Malin, both 1916 martyrs
“What the ICA stood and fought for in their own words, “… is but one ideal – an Ireland ruled and owned by Irish men and women, sovereign and independent, from the centre to the sea.”
“Connolly was clear however that such a Republic would have no place for the “rack-renting, slum-owning landlord” or the “profit-grinding capitalist”, but should rather be a “beacon-light to the oppressed of every land”.
“The most fitting tribute for the ICA then is to make that Republic a reality. To do so we must learn from the past and their examples. We can learn from them to never be cowed by the odds against us, we can learn from their comradeship to each other.
We can learn from how they combined political, economic and cultural methods to advance the cause of a worker’s republic. But more importantly we must be able to learn from their shortcomings.
After the Rising and the loss of its leadership the ICA began to devolve into a social club and whilst some members played an important role during the Tan War, the ICA was not the revolutionary workers’ army it once was.
Therefore we must build a truly mass movement – not just a committed core of activists, and we must build a movement not reliant upon key personalities so that it can function no matter what.
We all know that things must change in Ireland, and so we reaffirm the principle that the Citizen Army stood by; only the Irish working class is capable of waging the revolutionary struggle necessary to change things; not capitalists and landlords.
Helena Molony of the ICA, said, “We saw a vision of Ireland, free, pure and happy. We did not realise that vision. But we saw it.”
As the socialist-republican youth of today, we commit ourselves to make that vision a reality and to build a Republic that the men and women of the Citizen Army would gladly call their own.”
Some of the gathering at the Wolfe Tone Monument (out of shot to the right) to commemorate the creation of Irish Citizen Army (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
MARKIEVICZ: “RESOLUTION, COURAGE AND COMMITMENT“
Breatnach was called back to the microphone and talked about the lessons to be learned from Constance Markievicz, co-founder of Na Fianna Éireann, the Irish Citizen Army and of Cumann na mBan, born in Britain “as were a number of our national and class heroes”, he said.
“Constance was born into a settler landlord family, the Gore-Booths”, he told the audience and her experience of witnessing deprivation, along with her sister Eva, during the Great Hunger, had a strong effect on both, inclining them to social reform and they became also suffragettes.
The speaker said that in that latter aspect and as a poet Eva became well-known particularly in England but Constance was better known as a revolutionary and for her allegiance to the working class and to the Irish nation.
Conservation narratives about protected areas and local people are not telling the whole story
A new study highlights flaws in stories that conservation organizations often tell about how protected areas can improve the wellbeing of local people. It shows that some of the most entrenched narratives lack evidence and need more nuance. But it found stronger evidence for narratives that centre the rights and roles of indigenous people and local communities.
The findings are timely as the global community is striving to agree a new plan for conserving the planet’s biodiversity and securing the benefits it provides us. That deal, set to be agreed at the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in December 2022, could include a target of increasing protected areas to 30% of the world’s land area, from about 17% today.
The target has the backing of more than 100 countries and some major conservation organizations. But groups focusing on human rights, such as Survival International, Amnesty and the Rainforest Foundation UK say it is a “disaster” waiting to happen.
“Should it go ahead, it will constitute the biggest land grab in history, and rob millions of people of their livelihoods,” said Fiore Longo of Survival International in a press release on 1 December. “If governments are really meaningful about protecting biodiversity, the answer is simple: recognize the land rights of Indigenous peoples.”
The new study on conservation narratives, in the journal UCL Open: Environment, lends weight to that argument. The researchers investigated evidence for each of five common narratives about protected areas and human wellbeing in countries that the World Bank defines as low- or lower middle-income.
These narratives are prevalent. One or more of them appears on 138 of the 169 websites of conservation organizations that the study team reviewed. More than 70 percent of these organizations used the “conservation is pro-poor” narrative.
The Free 