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.
Asylum seekers beaten and sexually assaulted before being illegally removed, says Border Violence Monitoring Network
Migrant rescue operation off the island of Crete. The report alleges asylum seekers from Syria were beaten, sexually harassed and then illegally removed from Greece. Photograph: Reuters
Thousands of migrants and asylum seekers are facing “an unprecedented rise in violence” at the EU’s border, including beatings, forced undressing and sexual assaults, according to a report exposing thousands of alleged illegal expulsions in harrowing detail.
Activists interviewed 733 individuals trying to reach Europe in 2021 and 2022, who provided grim testimony of group pushbacks that affected more than 16,000 others. The work updates the 2020 edition of The Black Book of Pushbacks, offering a total compilation of 1,633 individuals telling of illegal expulsions affecting nearly 25,000 people since 2017.
The dossier is suffused with misery and desperation, recounting beatings…
28 migrants fled from a plane en route from Casablanca to Istanbul that made an emergency landing in Barcelona after a false birth announcement. The passengers fled at night down the runway from a flight from Morocco at El Prat airport. The security forces have finally located half of those who escaped, but at least 14 are still free.
A plane from Casablanca (Morocco) had a forced landing this Wednesday in El Prat (Barcelona) after the false emergency of a woman giving birth. With this distracting event, 28 migrants have escaped from the plane. The security forces have already located half of those who have fled along the airfield runway.
Sources from the Government Delegation have explained that the plane, with 228 passengers, had the planned destination of Istanbul (Turkey) and asked to land in Barcelona at 4:30 a.m. to attend to a supposed medical emergency.
The usual protocol has been activated and two patrols from the Civil Guard, one from the National Police and the medical services have come to the track. When the woman disembarked, a group of 28 people left the plane trying to flee.
The agents on the runway have intercepted 14 people, including the pregnant woman: five have been returned to the plane – “because they want to and the plane’s staff accepts them”, according to the aforementioned sources – and eight have begun a process of inadmissibility and return to Morocco.
The other 14 escapees have disappeared and may be hidden by pro migrant organisations
For her part, the woman who ‘suffered birth symptoms’ has been treated at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Barcelona, but no “indications of being in labor” have been found, for which she has been discharged but vwas then arrested for an alleged crime of public disorder by allegedly pretending to be in labor.
The authorities are looking for the other 14 passengers who have gotten off the plane but that the Police have not intercepted on the runway.
humanity 1
Italy only allows a dozen migrants to disembark from two ships and threatens to return hundreds to the sea
EFE
This is a case with similar characteristics to the one that occurred a year ago in Palma, Majorca.
In that case, 22 passengers on an Air Arabia flight that had landed in an emergency at Son Sant Joan due to a supposed medical emergency escaped from the plane. In the case of Palma, the investigation is already closed with those involved prosecuted for crimes of sedition and coercion.
Closely mirroring Wednesday’s escape, 24 people pushed past crew members and fled the plane, with cellphone footage showing men running across the airport tarmac. Police ultimately arrested half of them, who were Moroccan citizens along with one Palestinian man, but 12 others were never found.
Spain and Morocco are now collaborating strongly in enforcing stopping migrants at source and thousands have died trying to cross in boats, scale giant fences or swim.
Spain has done a dirty illegal deal with Morocco at the behest of the US and Israel to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over occupied Western Sahara, contradicting the UN, and leading to future great extraction profits from oil, gas and minerals, despite the ongoing resistance by the Saharawi people, recognized by Algeria, African countries and the UN.
Un grupo de migrantes huye de un avión que aterrizó de emergencia en Barcelona tras un falso aviso de parto
Varios pasajeros han huido de un vuelo procedente de Marruecos en el aeropuerto de El Prat. Las fuerzas de seguridad han localizado ya a la mitad de los que escaparon.
Un avión procedente de Casablanca (Marruecos) ha tenido un aterrizaje forzoso este miércoles enEl Prat (Bacerlona) tras la falsa emergencia de un parto de una mujer. Con este suceso de distracción, 28 migrantes se han escapado del avión. Las fuerzas de seguridad han localizado ya a la mitad de los que han huido por la pista del aeródromo.
Fuentes de la Delegación del Gobierno han explicado que el avión, con 228 pasajeros, tenía el destino previsto a Estambul (Turquía) y pidió aterrizar en Barcelona a las 4.30 horas para atender una supuesta emergencia médica..
Se ha activado el protocolo habitual y han acudido a la pista dos patrullas de la Guardia Civil, una de la Policía Nacional y los servicios médicos. Al desembarcar a la mujer, un grupo de 28 personas ha salido del avión intentado huir.
Los agentes en la pista han interceptado a 14 personas, incluida la mujer embarazada: cinco han sido devueltos al avión -“porque ellos quieren y el personal del avión los acepta”, según las citadas fuentes- y a ocho se les ha iniciado un proceso de inadmisión y retorno.
Por su parte, la mujer ha sido atendida en el Hospital Sant Joan de Déu de Barcelona, pero no se le han encontrado “indicios de estar de parto”, por lo que se le ha dado el alta y ha sido detenida por un presunto delito de desórdenes públicos al supuestamente fingir que estaba de parto.
Las autoridades buscan a los otros 14 pasajeros que han bajado del avión pero que la Policía no ha interceptado en la pista.
Se trata de un caso de características similares al ocurrido hace un año en Palma. En este caso, 22 pasajeros de un vuelo de Air Arabia que había aterrizado de emergencia en Son Sant Joan por una supuesta urgencia médica se fugaron del avión. En el caso de Palma la investigación está ya cerrada con los implicados procesados por delitos de sedición y coacciones.
(+note: This excellent exposé frames the Covid Crimes against Humanity as only affecting the ‘American People’. We add that these corrupt policies are still being repeated slavishly throughout the US-controlled West, killing and disabling millions of us.)
Patients commonly ask me why their other doctors push COVID-19 vaccination so hard still to this day with alarming safety statistics, loss of efficacy, and now a complete lack of human trial data with the bivalent boosters?
The answer may come by following a money trail from HHS and CDC called “COVID-19 Community Corps” that early in 2021 made undisclosed individual payments to hundreds of organizations to promote mass vaccination.
There were notable medical groups including the American Medical Association, American Association of Family Physicians, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Student Association.
$13,000,000,000 funding
More investigation is likely to reveal that federal money received was temporally linked to e-mail blasts, town hall meetings, and many other activities pushing mass vaccination.
Could COVID-19 Community Corps money to the AMA have been the reason why the AMA launched its campaign to “abolish” the use of ivermectin in 2021 so the public would be panicked into taking more shots?
Yes, it’s a good idea to bribe people to get vaccinated | CNN – May 13, 2021 “Over the past few months, public and private innovation in America has coalesced around one goal: bribe people in order to get them vaccinated against Covid-19. Getting people vaccinated is lofty and noble…“
How could the pediatric associations take federal money before the clinical trials for their patients were completed or the vaccines approved via EUA?
Just 2 Days after the Terrorist Turkish state delayed its 4th genocidal invasion of North Syria, part of which has US bases, it gets unconditional permit to buy 120 lethal F16 jets. Another criminal bargain between a War Criminal Dictator and the declining US War State
Türkiye on Wednesday hailed the recent US move to exclude certain provisions in the final text of the US defense budget on the sale of F-16s to Ankara.
Speaking at a joint press conference with his Moldovan counterpart Nicu Popescu in Istanbul, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: “In the end, the absence of a negative element (in the bill) is a positive development. We welcome this.”
Amendments introduced in the US House of Representatives, making sales of F-16 fighter jets to Türkiye contingent on a series of conditions were removed in the final defense spending bill.
Approval of this bill and completion of purchases would serve “everyone’s interest,” Cavusoglu said, adding that the process needs to be finalized “as soon as…
