Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

UK: 4 new releases from green anarchist zine Return Fire (PDFs)

Just now we’ve sent out the PDF ver­sions of our recent releas­es, for down­load­ing and print­ing (for past issues, see 325).

https://en-contrainfo.espiv.net/2016/06/05/uk-4-new-releases-from-green-anarchist-zine-return-fire-pdfs/ for links to the PDFs

Just now we’ve sent out the PDF ver­sions of our recent releas­es, for down­load­ing and print­ing (for past issues, see 325). To sum­marise, there’s the full length edi­tion of Return Fire vol.3 (Win­ter 2015–2016), full of news, the­o­ry, poet­ry and antag­o­nism (down­load in low-res here); a com­pan­ion piece con­sist­ing of our ‘glos­sary’ entry for the issue, on Coloni­sa­tion; an imposed and print-ready ver­sion of ‘Smarter Prison?’ as a sup­ple­ment to vol.3, which we received from ‘Rad­i­cal Inter­fer­ence’ and released for Decem­ber of 2015; and last­ly, we’ve uploaded one of the fea­ture texts from vol.3, ‘The Veil Drops’, to theanarchistlibrary.org as a sep­a­rate file for read­ing and repro­duc­tion. Also, there is both colour and black-and-white ver­sions of the cov­er includ­ed, in case some com­rades want to do their own print­ing.

Return Fire vol.3

A con­tin­u­a­tion of our project to bring inci­sive anar­chic con­tent from around to world to an anglo­phone read­er­ship. New edi­to­r­i­al con­tent, reprints of things we’ve found use­ful, art­work, action list­ings, for­ag­ing infor­ma­tion, the usu­al.

There’s a few pre­vi­ous­ly-untrans­lat­ed arti­cles in this issue. For exam­ple, one is an extract from the lat­est cov­er sto­ry of Italy’s eco-insur­rec­tionary peri­od­i­cal Ter­ra Sel­vaggia, on ‘The Advance of Urban­i­sa­tion’ and, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, cracks open­ing in the con­crete which we could utilise… Annie Archet mean­while tells a life-sto­ry of evad­ing iden­ti­ty, in Por­trait of the Invis­i­ble Woman in Front of Her Mir­ror. To name some out of the texts we’ve assem­bled from selec­tions of pre-exist­ing ones, David King looks at the reduc­tion­ist and patri­ar­chal impli­ca­tions of mod­ern repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies in ‘Into Her Inner Cham­bers’, and Nico­la Gai speaks to act­ing with­in ‘The Max­i­mum That Our Abil­i­ties Allow’ (from his con­tri­bu­tion to the found­ing issue of the Croce Nera Anar­chi­ca).

The con­tent we have har­vest­ed whole includes The Inten­si­fi­ca­tion of Inde­pen­dence in Wallma­pu, John Severino’s poignant reflec­tions on a project with­in an indige­nous Mapuche com­mu­ni­ty; The ‘Wild’ as Will and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, about com­mod­i­fied and alien­at­ed approach­es in the urgent need for land recon­nec­tion, sim­ply signed M.; and Sean Dunohoe’s har­row­ing (if lim­it­ed) polemic against the Close Super­vi­sion Cen­tres with­in the British prison sys­tem. (We note that this year the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive for the June 11 project of sol­i­dar­i­ty with long-term anar­chist pris­on­ers has called for a focus on such units wher­ev­er they are in the world; hence we’d like to ded­i­cate this ver­sion in that direc­tion.)

As for our usu­al columns… We take a ret­ro­spec­tive look at some Glob­al Flash-Points of insur­gent activ­i­ty in the months fol­low­ing our last vol­ume. Rebels Behinds Bars cov­ers the State’s aggres­sions against our com­rades, and the latter’s thoughts on top­ics from sur­viv­ing incar­cer­a­tion or repres­sion to (anti-)organisation for the attack on author­i­ty. ‘To Cre­ate & Main­tain Their Wealth’ and ‘Sen­su­al­i­ty, Mag­ic & Anar­chist Vio­lence’ address gen­dered and speciesist dom­i­na­tion through reviews of Sil­via Fed­eri­ci, Arthur Evans and Jason Hrib­al.

The Poems for Love, Loss & War are from Rydra Cos­mo, Hen­ry Zegar­run­do, Natasha Alvarez and oth­er appre­ci­a­tors of all things fer­al. For our Mem­o­ry as a Weapon seg­ment, we’ve used Unset­tling America’s spell­bind­ing telling of civilisation’s spread through Europe from the south and beyond, and sub­se­quent tra­jec­to­ry, in The Witch’s Child.

And of course, much more! (All pris­on­er address­es and also some court-case news is now up to date in the PDF ver­sion.)

Coloni­sa­tion

This time, we end­ed up print­ing the ‘glos­sary’ sep­a­rate­ly to the main body of the zine. This size­able essay could be a stand-alone on the sub­ject (one which we feel to be both key and mis­un­der­stood by anar­chists in much of the world) and dis­trib­uted as such, but is also rel­e­vant to sev­er­al items in con­tents of vol.3.

‘Smarter Prison?’

New­ly laid out in A5 imposed for­mat, this explo­ration of the ‘Inter­net of Things’ and the tech­no­log­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy which it advances was first sub­mit­ted to us dur­ing the Black Decem­ber mobil­i­sa­tion. (We’re hap­py that since then, Sil­via, Bil­ly and Cos­ta, who are ref­er­enced in ‘Smarter Prison?’, have been told they will not face tri­al again for their thwart­ed attack on the IBM facil­i­ty.) The strug­gle against the nano-world con­tin­ues…

‘The Veil Drops’

This is a read­er on counter-insur­gency through the lens of ‘cri­sis’, the social and de-civil­is­ing. It’s the longest edi­to­r­i­al piece from vol.3, and up on The Anar­chist Library for wider acces­si­bil­i­ty.

Until next time,
R.F.

Attacking UK’s coal transport system — Severing the lines that feed the machine

Sev­er­ing the lines that feed the machine is not impos­si­ble. When peo­ple take up civ­il upris­ing in the UK, if peo­ple are able to shove their oblig­a­tions to one side to open up an avenue, they main­ly have the abil­i­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ty to be able to grasp their will for some­thing new.

Sev­er­ing the lines that feed the machine is not impos­si­ble. When peo­ple take up civ­il upris­ing in the UK, if peo­ple are able to shove their oblig­a­tions to one side to open up an avenue, they main­ly have the abil­i­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ty to be able to grasp their will for some­thing new. The war is not over when those moments stop, it sparks up in lit­tle rap­tures here and there, show­ing that we are not crushed, things can be brought to a grind­ing halt again, even for a split sec­ond.

It just takes a few bright spir­its and we see it clear, when the smug con­fi­dence of author­i­ties is knocked, a few pins get hit out and things can be seen in a dif­fer­ent light. Out of synch and off bal­ance, every­thing no longer appears struc­tural­ly sound, life feels more up for grabs.

The new hori­zon peaked through our cloudy day, Sun­day 6th March, and we hope this uncom­pli­cat­ed act of sab­o­tage we have under­tak­en expos­es the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of their com­plex matrix.

We took a risk assess­ment and as night just start­ed to close in we entered the 1st rail­way tun­nel, we cut both lines with a portable disc cut­ter, we did­n’t imag­ine de-rail­ing a loco­mo­tive but wreck­ing dis­rup­tion and eco­nom­ic dam­age (time is mon­ey). We entered a 2nd and did a fur­ther two cuts, mark­ing them all with pink paint, and leav­ing a ban­ner as a warn­ing.

The line in ques­tion runs through the Avon Gorge from Roy­al Port­bury Dock over from Avon­mouth, it’s freight only (no pas­sen­gers), 70% of the UK’s import­ed coal for pow­er gen­er­a­tion comes through these docks. This line is a bot­tle-neck to the coun­try’s dis­per­sal. Most of it from USA where they blow apart moun­tains to get it out and Rus­sia from the Shor and Teleut ances­tral lands laid waste in Siberia, also places like Indone­sia which dri­ve back the forests for sprawl­ing mines and plan­ta­tions. That’s to keep fac­to­ries run­ning and city lights on, when we’ve got a feel­ing for escap­ing the work pris­ons and regain­ing the stars. Oth­er loads car­ried on the line include con­struc­tion aggre­gate and new built vehi­cles on their way to the show room. More high-speed train­lines are com­ing to the UK, more roads, more ancient wood­land and wildlife wiped out in the fren­zy of progress.

After see­ing the firey activ­i­ties against the coal flow in the Ham­bach for­est of Ger­many since New Years — don’t give up the fight!, or the cut­ting of the coal belt in Scot­land some years back by per­sons unknown when the bat­tles against coal min­ing raged, we realise we’re not orig­i­nal. It’s not even the first time for eco-sab­o­tage ambush­es on that line from Port­bury or the trou­ble­some car­go, over the years. We see attacks fol­low­ing attacks on train­lines in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, it’s with­in reach to hin­der the cir­cuits pow­er­ing the giant, we just have to har­ness our courage, keep an eye peeled for soft spots, maybe start­ing small but always dream­ing big. Right now we’re read­ing about eco­nom­ic dam­age this month from train­line sabo­teurs in the north of Spain, we affirm our sol­i­dar­i­ty and respect too for the anar­chists there with show­case court cas­es or police atten­tion oth­er­wise, we laugh to hear about the row­dy spir­its that keep up when repressed for the fight to reject domin­ion. Maybe the sparks kicked up in the train tun­nels even reflect­ed over the Alps and beyond to light the sky for those in dark cells for try­ing to stop high-speed cap­i­tal­ism and also its nano-world tech­nolo­gies.

Join­ing our strength with the near and dis­tant tribes, refusal and attack! Block the flows, up the fight­ers!

Toward a life that’s wild and free from coal, quar­ries, cars or cops. Avon Gorge sab­o­tage group “Sand In The Gears”, sign­ing out.….

actions in Paris at #COP21 & around the world

For all the lat­ests updates on cli­mate direct actions tak­en around the world, includ­ing in Paris par­al­lel to the UN cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions, see our twit­ter feed

For all the lat­ests updates on cli­mate direct actions tak­en around the world, includ­ing in Paris par­al­lel to the UN cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions, see our twit­ter feed

Sabotage at Hambach open-cast mine

On Mon­day night, we sab­o­taged some con­struc­tion machin­ery at the open-cast mine Ham­bach, Ger­many.

29.10.15

On Mon­day night, we sab­o­taged some con­struc­tion machin­ery at the open-cast mine Ham­bach, Ger­many. Five dig­gers, two bull­doz­ers, one road roller and one oth­er, expen­sive look­ing machine ahd their hydraulics and elec­tron­ic cables cut. the fuel and oil tanks were filled with sand, some mechan­ic parts dam­aged and all the win­dows were smashed. Despite the mas­sive secu­ri­ty-mea­sures RWE and the police put up against us, it was still real­ly easy to do seri­ous dam­age to these tools of destruc­tion.

This action is tar­get­ed against the mine’s oper­a­tor RWE and its accom­plices, which are destroy­ing the basis of life on this plan­et.

While the big mass of peo­ple in ger­many is sit­ting silent­ly in front of their tele­vi­sion screens, dis­tract­ed from the dai­ly destruc­tion of our lives by smart enter­tain­ers and prophets of con­stant growth, hun­drets of thou­sands of peo­ple are dying on the oth­er side of the world through the effects of cli­mate change.

While most peo­ple should be aware that we can’t go on like this, it is unfor­tu­nate­ly only a small minor­i­ty that is act­ing against this destruc­tion, risk­ing their health and free­dom in the process.

Three of these eco-defend­ers are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in Aachen and Cologne, for their attempts to stop the clearcut­ting of the Ham­bach for­est throughthe ener­gy-giant RWE.

All three were heav­i­ly abused dur­ing their arrests, either by police or RWE’s pri­vate secu­ri­ties, with one per­son even get­ting their nose bro­ken and sev­er­al teeth smashed in. There­fore we want to ded­i­cate our action to the impris­oned peo­ple of Ham­bach and send our sol­i­dar­i­ty to them.

Also we want to make it clear that we will not be scared into sub­mis­sion and hope that more peo­ple will be moti­vat­ed by our action, to com­mit sim­i­lar acts of resis­tance against the brown-coal-death-machine.

 

The Chaos Engi­neer­ing Crew

Flood the System Organising Booklet is Now Available to Print or Download

Click here to down­load the Flood the Sys­tem organ­is­ing book­let! This 35 page book­let has every­thing you need to know about organ­is­ing an event to #Flood­TheSys­tem.

Click here for the same book­let as above, but set up so when you print it front/back, you can fold it into a book­let.

We envi­sion Flood the Sys­tem as a step towards build­ing the DNA of a robust move­ment that has the col­lec­tive pow­er to chal­lenge glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, racism, patri­archy, and oppres­sion.

This book­let is designed to give you a sense of why we need to esca­late, what Flood the Sys­tem might look like, and what struc­tures we will all use to orga­nize.

The authors drew inspi­ra­tion for this book­let from the 1986 Pledge of Resis­tance Hand­book, the 1999 WTO Direct Action Pack­et and the 2014 Fer­gu­son Action Coun­cil Book­let.

Reclaim the Fields International Gathering 2015

Reclaim the Fields

About the camp

Reclaim the Fields (or RTF) UK was born in 2011, as a star in a wider con­stel­la­tion of food and land strug­gles that reach­es around the globe. Since 2011, camps and oth­er RTF gath­er­ings have helped sup­port local com­mu­ni­ties in strug­gle, share skills, devel­oped net­works, and strength­ened the resis­tance to exploita­tion, in Bris­tol, west Lon­don, Glouces­ter­shire, Not­ting­ham and Fife among oth­er loca­tions.

Every two years there is also an inter­na­tion­al camp, where peo­ple from around Europe and beyond meet togeth­er to sup­port a local strug­gle (from gold min­ing in Roma­nia to open cast coal min­ing in Ger­many, for exam­ple). Peo­ple share share sto­ries and ideas about resis­tance and reclaim­ing our food sys­tem beyond nation­al bor­ders. This year, an inter­na­tion­al gath­er­ing will be held in the UK, in Dudle­ston, Shrop­shire, on the Welsh/English bor­der.

The aims of the camp are:

  • To sup­port local com­mu­ni­ties in the west and north west of Eng­land, and the north of Wales with their strug­gles against frack­ing
  • To increase par­tic­i­pa­tion in Reclaim the Fields
  • To demon­strate vis­i­ble, active oppo­si­tion to prison con­struc­tion
  • To sup­port Dudle­ston Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Camp build a gar­den and infra­struc­ture to become more self-reliant
  • To demon­strate the inter­con­nec­tion between these strug­gles
  • To inspire and rad­i­calise every­one involved

What’s taking place?

  • Two days of Action – Tues­day 1st & Wednes­day 2nd Sep­tem­ber – demon­stra­tions & actions against com­pa­nies involved in the con­struc­tion of the North Wales prison, as well as local frack­ing-relat­ed tar­gets.
  • Work­shops & Skill­shares – Over the bank hol­i­day week­end there will be abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn, share, dis­cuss and con­nect with oth­er peo­ple.
  • Build­ing & Grow­ing on the site – Be part of installing gar­dens & low impact infra­struc­ture at the com­mu­ni­ty pro­tec­tion camp. Learn about per­ma­cul­ture, agroe­col­o­gy, for­est gar­den­ing, mush­room grow­ing, pal­let con­struc­tion, com­post toi­let mak­ing, off-grid electrics and more.

Why this camp? Why now?

  • This camp has been organ­ised to sup­port the local com­mu­ni­ty in Dudle­ston to resist frack­ing in their area (as well as work­ing with oth­er local anti-frack­ing groups & pro­tec­tion camps in the North West who have been resist­ing extreme ener­gy devel­op­ments for a num­ber of years). To find out more about their strug­gle vis­it: http://frack-off.org.uk/blockade/dudleston-community-protection-camp/

Practical Information about the Camp

Click on the links below to find more prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion about the camp and how to get involved:

Getting involved

This is a DIY camp and every­one is need­ed to get stuck in to make it hap­pen. Peo­ple are need­ed to:

  • Sup­port with pub­lic­i­ty before the event – shar­ing the gath­er­ing online, putting posters up, encour­ag­ing your local group to get involved. Peo­ple are also need­ed to help design the pro­gramme, respond to emails & plan facil­i­ta­tion.
  • Help­ing with site set up & build­ing infra­struc­ture (plan­ning this in advance & being on site a few days before the gath­er­ing)
  • Sign­ing up to a shift over the week­end to help with cook­ing, site set up & safe­ty, being on the wel­come tent & so forth
  • Sup­port­ing local groups to organ­ise actions

If you can help with any of these tasks please email info@reclaimthefields.noflag.org.uk

Who are Reclaim the Fields?

We are a group of peas­ants, land­less and prospec­tive peas­ants, as well as peo­ple who are tak­ing back con­trol over food pro­duc­tion.

We under­stand “peas­ants” as peo­ple who pro­duce food on a small scale, for them­selves or for the com­mu­ni­ty, pos­si­bly sell­ing a part of it. This also includes agri­cul­tur­al work­ers.

We sup­port and encour­age peo­ple to stay on the land and go back to the coun­try­side. We pro­mote food sov­er­eign­ty (as defined in the Nyéléni dec­la­ra­tion) and peas­ant agri­cul­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young peo­ple and urban dwellers, as well as alter­na­tive ways of life. In Europe, the con­cept ‘food sov­er­eign­ty’ is not very com­mon and could be clar­i­fied with ideas such as ‘food auton­o­my’ and con­trol over food sys­tems by inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ties, not only nations or states. We are deter­mined to cre­ate alter­na­tives to cap­i­tal­ism through coop­er­a­tive, col­lec­tive, autonomous, real-needs-ori­ent­ed, small-scale pro­duc­tion and ini­tia­tives. We are putting the­o­ry into prac­tice and link­ing local prac­ti­cal action with glob­al polit­i­cal strug­gles.

In order to achieve this, we par­tic­i­pate in local actions through activist groups and coop­er­ate with exist­ing ini­tia­tives. This is why we choose not to be a homo­ge­neous group, but to open up to the diver­si­ty of actors fight­ing the cap­i­tal­ist food pro­duc­tion mod­el. We address the issues of access to land, col­lec­tive farm­ing, seed rights and seed exchange. We strength­en the impact of our work through coop­er­a­tion with activists who focus on dif­fer­ent tasks but who share the same vision.

Nev­er­the­less, our open­ness has some lim­its. We are deter­mined to take back con­trol over our lives and refuse any form of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and hier­ar­chy. We respect nature and liv­ing beings, but will nei­ther accept nor tol­er­ate any form of dis­crim­i­na­tion, be it based on race, reli­gion, gen­der, nation­al­i­ty, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or social sta­tus. We refuse and will active­ly oppose every form of exploita­tion of oth­er peo­ple. With the same force and ener­gy, we act with kind­ness and con­vivi­al­i­ty, mak­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty a con­crete prac­tice of our dai­ly life.

We sup­port the strug­gles and visions of la Via Campesina, and work to strength­en them. We wish to share the knowl­edge and the expe­ri­ence from years of strug­gle and peas­ant life and enrich it with the per­spec­tives and strength of those of us who are not peas­ants, or not yet peas­ants. We all suf­fer the con­se­quences of the same poli­cies, and are all part of the same fight.

Read this in: French, Ger­man, Span­ish

 

Activists Disrupt Hearing over Fast Track for Trans-Pacific Partnership

Froman

Jan­u­ary 27th, 2015

Froman

Jan­u­ary 27th, 2015

U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michael Fro­man was greet­ed with protest at Tuesday’s Sen­ate and House Hear­ings on Capi­tol Hill, as peo­ple raised con­cerns about the President’s trade agen­da and “Fast Track” Trade Pro­mo­tion Author­i­ty. Activists with signs and ban­ners chant­i­ng “No TPP!” and “No Fast Track!” were escort­ed from the Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee hear­ing room short­ly after the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive took the micro­phone.

The leg­is­la­tion, which Oba­ma request­ed from both par­ties dur­ing last week’s State of the Union address, would lim­it con­gres­sion­al over­sight of the Administration’s free trade agree­ments and is wide­ly opposed by hun­dreds of envi­ron­men­tal, labor, pub­lic health, food safe­ty, and faith groups nation­wide.

Pro­test­ers wore shirts read­ing “No Fast Track” and held signs stat­ing “Fro­man lies,” a response to the Ambassador’s recent claims that Fast Track is the “best tool to ensure that Con­gress and the pub­lic have ample time to give our trade agree­ments the pub­lic scruti­ny and debate they deserve.” Past ver­sions of Fast Track leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing one intro­duced with lit­tle sup­port last Jan­u­ary, lim­its the amount of time Con­gress has to con­sid­er agree­ments and sus­pends their abil­i­ty to make amend­ments to the texts.

Fast-Track-disruption-300x229

Dr. Mar­garet Flow­ers, co-direc­tor of PopularResistance.org, held a sign that said “Trad­ing away our future” to high­light the dev­as­tat­ing impact that the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship will have on many issues that peo­ple care about such as food safe­ty, the cost of med­i­cines, Inter­net free­dom, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, finan­cial reg­u­la­tion and democ­ra­cy.

Richard Ochs, a retired steel­work­er from Bal­ti­more, and Kevin Zeese, Esq also from PopularResistance.org, held a ban­ner that read “TPP Fast Track: Job Killing Act,” which sought to draw atten­tion to the dev­as­tat­ing impact past free trade agree­ments have had on U.S. jobs. While Obama’s State of the Union claimed that the author­i­ty would “pro­tect Amer­i­can work­ers,” unions includ­ing the AFL-CIO, Team­sters, CWA, and more have instead spo­ken out against it.

In fact, there is broad oppo­si­tion to fast track­ing the TPP across the polit­i­cal spec­trum and across issues. “Fast Track is far from a ‘done deal’ in the Unit­ed States and for­eign nego­tia­tors ought to be cau­tious before accept­ing pro­vi­sions that will harm their pop­u­la­tion.” said Kevin Zeese.

from Pop­u­lar Resis­tance

Earth First! Winter Moot (Bristol): 20th-22nd February 2015 /full programme

A week­end gath­er­ing for peo­ple involved or want­i­ng to know more about eco­log­i­cal direct action around the UK includ­ing fight­ing open­cast coal, frack­ing, GM, nuclear pow­er, new road build­ing and quar­ries with dis­cus­sions and cam­paign plan­ning — empha­sis on the tac­tics and strate­gies, com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty and sus­tain­able activism.

Shar­ing sto­ries, skills, tac­tics, updates & analy­ses of the rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal move­ment

Cost scale £20 to £30 . This includes full veg­an meals and accom­mo­da­tion. Arrive Fri­day evening (pro­gramme starts at 7pm), leave Sun­day (ends by 4pm). It will be an indoor floor sleep­ing space so bring a warm sleep­ing bag and mat to…

Kebele Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre 14 Robert­son Road Eas­t­on Bris­tol BS5 6JY
Train—To Sta­ple­ton rd , two stops from Bris­tol TM then 7min walk —

Earth First! is a net­work of peo­ple and cam­paigns who fight eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and the forces dri­ving it. We believe in non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing of Direct Action, to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants. EF! is not a cohe­sive group or cam­paign, but a con­ve­nient ban­ner for peo­ple who share sim­i­lar philoso­phies to work under and doing it our­selves rather than rely­ing on gov­ern­ments or indus­try.

For info or offers southwest.earthfirst@riseup.net www.earth­first.org.uk

Down­load the (ready-to-print) fly­er

 

Pro­gramme sub­ject to change:

Starts 7pm Fri­day with din­ner, fol­lowed by films & an intro to EF!

On Sat­ur­day, break­fast is before the 9:30am start with cam­paigns round-ups and legal & secu­ri­ty work­shops.  After lunch we’ll be look­ing at strate­gic think­ing (see below) and at 5 explor­ing the rela­tion­ship between Reclaim the Pow­er and EF!

On Sun­day we’ll con­tin­ue those explo­rations from 10am.  After lunch, there’ll be a work­shop on sus­tain­able activism, and a chance to get involved in organ­is­ing the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing.  Please stay for that if you can and get involved. 

 

Work­shops include:

“Intel­li­gent Resis­tance: strat­e­gy and its imple­men­ta­tion in the mod­ern world”

Sum­ma­ry: Strong strat­e­gy has always been a key ele­ment of suc­cess­ful resis­tance move­ments. Whether it be the anar­chist move­ments of rev­o­lu­tion­ary Spain, or the con­tem­po­rary fight against frack­ing, a sol­id strat­e­gy is proven to be indis­pens­able.‘Intel­li­gent Resis­tance’ is a basic intro­duc­tion to strate­gic thought and action and looks to pro­vide those in atten­dance with a prac­ti­cal set of the­o­ret­i­cal tools to take away and apply to their own move­ments and prac­tice.

“Sus­tain­ing Resis­tance: avoid­ing ‘Burn out”

This is a taster work­shop from a much longer ten day work­shop and offers a range of tools, col­lec­tive and per­son­al, which can make our activism more effec­tive and help us avoid burn out stay­ing in for the long haul.

Reclaim the Pow­er meets Earth First!”

How can Earth First! and Reclaim the pow­er coex­ist in the future strug­gles and is there a need for col­lab­o­ra­tion between oth­er camps or a con­sol­i­da­tion of resources?

Legal Defence Mon­i­tor­ing:

A taster ses­sion in how to be an effec­tive LDM on actions and demos.

Cam­paigns go-round:

Dates for your diary and what resis­tance is going on around the world and your back yard..

Direct actions against open cast mines in germany 2014 – mobilisation for a big blockade/action simultaneous to the COPs in Paris in 2015

On the 1st of August this year sev­er­al actions took place against brown coal min­ing in the rhineland in ger­many.

On the 1st of August this year sev­er­al actions took place against brown coal min­ing in the rhineland in ger­many.

One of the biggest open cast mines of europe are locat­ed in the mid­west of ger­many. Near to Cologne RWE, the biggest ener­gy provider of ger­many runs three open cast mines with an area of 160 km². With an emis­sion of ca. 100 mil­lion CO2 per year RWE is the biggest emit­tent of CO2 in whole Europe. Enough Prof­it for the high­ly indept­ed enter­prise, the loss of nat­ur­al resources for mil­lions of peo­ple of the glob­al south

The local con­se­quences of the brown-coal-minig are desas­trous. High­ly fer­tile soil gets digged away. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple get reset­tled. Impor­tant ecosys­tems like the ham­bach for­est get cut down. To pre­vent the mines from flood­ing the ground­wa­ter gets pumped down. The neg­a­tive effects for the agri­cul­ture and wet­lands can be locat­ed even in the nether­lands which are ca. 60 km away. The grit and fine dust which are pro­duced by the biggest dig­gers of the world, which work 24/7 includes even radioac­tive par­ti­cles.

There was Resis­tance against the gigan­tic project for the whole time of RWEs eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty since the begin­ning of 1900. Some­times big­ger some­times small­er the resis­tance more­over col­laps­es because of the pow­er RWE devel­ops with lob­by­ism, cor­rup­tion and the under­cut­ting of admin­is­tra­tions, courts and local social com­mu­ni­ties.

For about 4 years a con­stant­ly grow­ing grass­rootsmove­ment tries to pow­er up the resis­tance against the pow­er gen­er­a­tion of coal on a local and nation­wide scale. With con­stant crys­talli­sa­tion points like the ham­bach for­est occu­pa­tion and a house project in the area, with cli­mate camps and help­ing to empow­er the local resis­tance move­ment with sup­port­ing cit­i­zen ini­tia­tives.

 

Embed­ded in the cli­mate camp this year a pow­er­ful action day took place.

The coal train which trans­ports the coal from the ham­bach open cast mine to the pow­er plant was blocked two times. On the the first block­ade chained them­selves to the rails of the coal train which trans­ports the coal of the mine called ham­bach to the pow­er plant and the sec­ond time two peo­ple roped down from a bridge above the rails.

Near­ly at the same time about 80 peo­ple moved the oth­er big mine Garzweil­er to block the infra­struc­ture. 2 Dig­gers were blocked 3 times with lock-on-actions and squattings.From 8 o’clock in the morn­ing to 10 in the evening the dri­vers of the dig­gers and the oth­er per­son­al in the mine had no calm minute.

It seems that more and more peo­ple want to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves to pro­tect ecosys­tems and nat­ur­al resources and begin to stop the worst effects of cli­mate change with direct actions against fos­sil infra­struc­ture.

 

Pho­tos of the action day:

Lock-on-action and climb­ing action (with oth­er pho­tos of the ham­bach for­est occu­pa­tion)

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/hambacherforst/with/14797606761/

Block­ade of dig­gers:

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/100963658@N02/sets/72157645681194248/

 

Mobil­i­sa­tion for a big infra­struc­ture block­ade simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to the COP21

Accord­ing to the next COP-meet­ing in Paris 2015 we want to invite peo­ple from all over europe to think about what to do. As we don’t want to have such a big depres­sion after the COPs 2009 in Copen­hagen again there is a ten­den­cy to organ­ise a big block­ade of infra­struc­ture of fos­sil fuel ener­gy pro­duc­tion simul­ta­ne­ous­ly some­where cen­tral­ly locat­ed in Europe. If you have ideas and want to dis­trib­ute them you can come to Cologne/Germany from the 3rd to the 5th of octo­bre. There will be acco­mo­da­tion and board.

Eng­lish call­out for the action ple­nary:

http://ekib.blogsport.eu/2014/08/23/invitation-action-plenary-meeting‑3–5‑oct-2014-in-cologne/

 

 

Earth First!

An activist from ausgeco2hlt

 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the web­sites are not in eng­lish or the eng­lish blogs are not well oper­at­ed

www.ausgeco2hlt.de

www.hambacherforst.blogsport.de / http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

http://ekib.blogsport.eu/

www.klimacamp-im-rheinland.de

 

 

Week of Action against the NATO Summit in Newport

The world’s lead­ing war­mon­gers will meet this sum­mer in Wales.  A week of action is planned to oppose and stop them, from August 30th to Sep­tem­ber the 5th.

The world’s lead­ing war­mon­gers will meet this sum­mer in Wales.  A week of action is planned to oppose and stop them, from August 30th to Sep­tem­ber the 5th.

Two organ­i­sa­tions are plan­ning actions against the sum­mit, inclus­ing mass demon­stra­tions and days of action on dif­fer­ent aspects of mil­i­tarism.  This promis­es to be a mas­sive focal point for the move­ment against mil­iarism this sum­mer. Details of can be found here:

https://network23.org/stopnatocymru/

http://www.nonatonewport.org/

Please get involved and spread the word!  Help raise our pro­file by link­ing to stop­NA­TO­Cym­ru on blogs etc., and more impor­tant­ly, come along to the events and show your sup­port.