MEXICO CITY – Founded in 1978 by the Spanish anarchist exile Ricardo Mestre, the Biblioteca Social Reconstruir (Social Reconstruction Library) is a pillar of the contemporary anarchist movement. It holds an extraordinary collection of anarchist books and magazines from Mexico and around the world and it is a place where comrades, both you and old, can meet, talk about ideas, and strategize to build a new world.
However, the Biblioteca is presently at risk of being shut down! The owner of the building in which it is located claims that they owe 2800 dollars in back rent and has initiated legal action against them.
Two lawyer comrades are helping the Biblioteca navigate legal issues and determine the best way to respond. They report that the legal process is likely to drag on for a number of months and that, during that time, Biblioteca supporters should do everything they can to raise as much of the money demanded as possible. This appears to be the best way to secure the future of this vital resource for the Mexican and global anarchist movement.
Please consider helping ensure that the Biblioteca Social Resconstruir does not meet its demise by making a donation. You can transfer the money directly through your bank and, to do so, you will need the following information: Swift Code – BCMRMXMMPYM; Account number: 012 180 00108388237; CLABE / CLAVE BANCARIA ESTANDAR; Bank: BANCO BBVA BANCOMER; Account Name: María Teresa Carvajal Juárez
Hey, all you writers out there The Journal for the Study of Radicalism is soliciting pieces for an upcoming special issue on anarchism. It’d be swell if the articles were written, y’know, by actual anarchists. Get typing!
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JSR—Journal for the Study of Radicalism—invites article submissions for a special issue on anarchism. We particularly are interested in articles that analyze a particular individual, group, or current within the broader subject. We encourage articles on lesser known aspects of contemporary or historical manifestations of anarchism, as well as contested areas within anarchism. Topics might include black bloc tactics, the history of Fifth Estate, Green Anarchy, and other periodicals, conflicts between anarchist perspectives, violence and non-violence in anarchism, histories of anarchism, anarchist communities, or international aspects of contemporary anarchism. Generally speaking, the journal’s historical focus is from the early modern period to the present, and the geographic range is global, so we’d be interested in articles discussing groups or individuals whose influence is international, though this is not essential. JSR is an interdisciplinary journal, and we encourage articles from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. We are especially interested in articles that include some original fieldwork, for instance, interviews or use of archival sources.
Submissions should be 20–30 pages in length and conform to the Chicago Manual of Style with endnotes. Please include a one-paragraph abstract, and a brief author bio. Images for possible use in an article should be 300 dpi, and authors are responsible for requesting and receiving permission to reprint images for scholarly use. Send queries, proposals, and articles to jsr@msu.edu. The deadline for submitting completed articles is September 1, 2009, and we encourage early submission to facilitate the review process. See http://www.msu.edu/jsr and www.msupress.msu.edu/journals/jsr for more information on the journal.
JSR—a print academic journal published by Michigan State University Press—is devoted to serious, scholarly exploration of the forms, representations, meanings, and historical influences of radical social movements. With sensitivity and openness to historical and cultural contexts of the term, we loosely define “radical,” as distinguished from “reformers,” to mean groups who seek revolutionary alternatives to hegemonic social and political institutions, and who use violent or non-violent means to bring about socio-political change.
Welcome to the June installment of AK Distro’s top ten list! Working in the warehouse, we can be overwhelmed (in a good way!) with all the new distribution items that come our way each month. Contrary to what you may have heard, neither print media nor anarchist publishing are dead, and we’ve got the catalog to prove it. This month’s barrage of fantastic new items is no exception, and as usual, we wanted to provide you with a small sampling, for your viewing, wearing, and reading pleasure. You’re also strongly encouraged to check out the “What’s New” section of our website, and to sign up to receive updates by email to make sure you never miss a new release!
Pen & Sword Sweatshirt and T-shirt: Over the years, AK’s “anniversary” design (you know, the one that says “15 years” at the bottom) has been a big hit. The problem is, just like “over the years” implies, the 15-year anniversary this design was created for has long since come and gone. So what to do? We couldn’t just give up on such a classy, eye-catching logo. So we changed it. Now it’s the Pen & Sword design, and instead of “15 years” bears the timeless inscription “publishing & distribution.” It’s what we do. Available in both t-shirt and zip-up hoodie forms, for all your layering needs. Small classic AK Press logo on the front, big ol’ pen and sword on the back.
The Federacion Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU): Crisis, Armed Struggle and Dictatorship, 1967–1985: As highly informative as the lengthy title leads you to expect. The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, founded in 1956, was one of the strongest anarchist movements in Latin America. In the 1960s, it faced a rising tide of repression, eventually culminating in the military dictatorship of 1973-85. As legal avenues of struggle were closed down, through the Worker-Student Resistance (ROE) and OPR-33 (People’s Revolutionary Organisation) it expanded its tactics to include armed struggle in defense of the workers movement. Banks were raided for funds, and factory bosses were kidnapped in support of workers’ demands. After Argentina became a military dictatorship in 1976, many FAU militants there were “disappeared” in joint repression by the Uruguayan and Argentine armed forces. Elements of the FAU were fundamental in the creation of the People’s Victory Party (PVP). The FAU is still active today. Newly translated by Paul Sharkey, this pamphlet collects writings on the FAU from the likes of Juan Carlos Mechoso, Jaime Prieto, Hugo Cores, and others.
Notes on Prison, Justice & Climate: A collaborative zine made up of the writings of American political prisoner Jeff “Free” Luers and Australian activist Lilia Letsch. The two struck up a friendship through letter writing, and eventually conspired together to create the pieces that comprise this zine. As the title states, subjects range from global ecological crisis to life in prison, with special attention paid to the ways we create bonds and solidarity between those behind bars and allies on the outside.
Free to Choose: A Women’s Guide to Reproductive Freedom: You know a compilation of writings about abortion and reproductive rights in which a quote from Emma Goldman appears on the first page is one of an uncommon sort. This is not just another pro-choice zine. It is an introduction to the history of abortion (and underground abortion), and a call to learn our history and to take matters in our own hands. It includes some information on menstrual extraction and a list of resources to learn more. Reproductive choice is not a “right” to be granted or withdrawn. “From tradition herbs to end or prevent our pregnancy to underground abortion services, women have always defended and exercised our ability to choose. The knowledge exists for women to exercise their reproductive freedoms in safe and empowering ways. The time has come to take it back.”—from the Introduction
Vegan Brunch; Isa has done it again. Everyone’s favorite chef and author of Vegan With aVengeance, Veganomicon, and the endlessly useful (and ever-present at potlucks) Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, brings us a fresh take on brunch, cruelty-free-style. More than 175 recipes, with Ms. Moskowitz’ typically funny and endearing asides, make up what is probably going to go down in history as the vegan brunch cookbook. From cherry sage sausages to lemon cashew crepes, there’s no better way to impress your friends on a Sunday morning (or afternoon).
Burning Fight: The Nineties Hardcore Revolution in Ethics, Politics, Spirit, and Sound: Picking up where eighties hardcore punk innovators left off, nineties hardcore sparked profound change and debate across musical, social, spiritual, and political landscapes. Many of the ideals that were ingrained in hardcore since its beginning were taken in new and often controversial directions. Inspired by the music and the community that developed around the scene, many immersed themselves in hardcore’s ethical and social movements such as straight edge, animal rights, DIY, spirituality, and a host of other issues. They debated these beliefs and implemented them in their own lives, eventually taking what they’d learned outside the hardcore scene to influence the broader culture. At the same time, many of the ideologies that united people ended up dividing them in the long run, which eventually led to the splintering of this era of hardcore by the decade’s end. Burning Fight draws upon the memories of many who played influential roles in the scene and examines what made this era of hardcore so unique in its ability to synthesize music and ideology into a powerful counter-cultural movement. Featuring, among many others: Avail, Earth Crisis, Los Crudos, Spitboy, Swing Kids, Trial, Unbroken and Vegan Reich.
The Nothing Factory: A zine-and-cd in one, with a pull-out centerfold (not that kind of centerfold) and hand-screened cover—it’s practically irresistible. Originally put together as an epic musical / shadow puppet performance, The Nothing Factory uses striking visuals, dramatic narration, and an avant-punk soundtrack to tell a dystopian allegory—the tale of a fictional world where everybody wanted everything, and no one was happy with nothing. Now you can experience The Nothing Factory in booklet form, complete with all the art and text from the show, two fold-out sections, a unique screenprinted centerfold, and hand-printed covers. The included CD contains the full soundtrack, with songs and incidental music by the Aetherial Underpants Orchestra and narration by Anissa Weinraub. Whether or not you’ve seen the live performance, you’ll be very impressed!
All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America: With the biting wit of Super Size Me and the passion of a lifelong activist, Joel Berg has his eye on the growing number of people who are forced to wait in lines at food pantries across the nation—the modern breadline. All You Can Eat looks closely at the problem of hunger in the U.S. today—one in eight Americans is food insecure—and the reality that America is becoming a country where people not only have a hard time advancing, but often find themselves working to exhaustion and still not meeting the expenses of everyday living. Berg takes to task politicians, the media, the food industry, and more—and shows how practical solutions for hungry Americans will ultimately benefit all of us.
What We Leave Behind: The latest from Derrick Jensen, author of the two-part radical-eco manifesto Endgame, this time teamed up with small-scale organic farmer Aric McBay. Together, they’ve worked to create this impassioned guide to living a truly responsible life on earth. Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. In What We Leave Behind, the authors weave historical analysis and beautiful prose to remind us that life—human and nonhuman—will not go on unless we do everything we can to facilitate the most basic process on earth, the root of sustainability: one being’s waste must always become another being’s food.
Criminal: Isabelle Eberhardt was a young radical stricken with wanderlust. She survived deportation, hard labor, and an assassination attempt, all the while embracing the pleasures of endless nomadic journeys. This pamphlet is a collection of her writings—a record of all the beauty, misery, and degradation of a life fully embraced. This gender deviant, kif-smoking, sufi anarchist traverses the Saharan desert, battles African colonization, and records it all in poetic prose.
As always, if you’d like to see more of our distributed items, you can check out our website, or send an email to info@akpress.org to request a copy of our latest print catalog (and you’re in luck—one just came out!) Also, don’t miss our sale page, where you’ll find countless worthy reads, most for only $5! Never doubt AK distro’s capacity to get you thinking and keep you busy…
Josh MacPhee: We put together Realizing the Impossible because we wanted to read a book that explored the relationships between art and anarchism in a myriad of diverse ways, but it just didn’t exist. That’s often the reason people put out books, because they want to read something and they can’t find it, so they try to bridge the gap. Relationships between art and anarchism are an under-explored subject. While there are a lot of anti-authoritarians producing artwork, there’s not a lot of intellectual work theorizing how that art exists in the world, and how it’s different from what other political cultures have produced.
As with all left social movements, in anarchist activism there is an antagonism towards art as a result of the idea that social transformation comes from the difficult and tireless work of organizing and activism, and art is something that needs to be pushed to the side when “real work” needs to get done. Realizing the Impossible is a collection of writings, art, and interviews that argue against that idea, and demonstrate that cultural work is not a side show, but a main event. A look at history will show that most dramatic social transformations have had strong cultural components.
When creating art, one of the things I have always tried to ask myself is, “is this effective?” I believe it’s valuable to express myself and I think that’s why most artists create art, but if we want to claim our art and culture as somehow leaving the realm of simple self-expression and intervening into the political landscape, then we need to ask deeper questions about what our art does, who it effects, why and how.
I want to quickly bring up a couple of examples in the book that raise these questions. First, in his essay on Danish anti-authoritarian art practice, Brett Bloom introduces us to Christiania, a squatted free city on the edge of Copenhagen that has been in existence for almost 40 years. Christiania largely came into being as a result of conversations started at an art show: its actual beginnings look and seem more like an art gesture than traditional activism or organizing, and its existence has always had an extremely aesthetic component.
Another essay in the book is a critique of contemporary adbusting techniques written by Anne Elizabeth Moore. In the essay she demands that people attempting to critique corporations semiotically need to do more than create self-serving parodies of corporate logos, but dig much deeper. We need to really study and understand how corporate semiotics and branding works, and we need to build a resistance practice that we can assess is having an effect on corporations, not inadvertently supporting their world view. I think these are both good places to start a conversation about art and politics.
We just got our most recent (Summer 2009) catalog back from the printer. It lists new, forthcoming, recent, and recommended titles that we’ve published, as well as a hefty sampling of the more than 3500 titles we distribute for other anarchist and radical publishers.
Readers of this blog get the first chance to (virtually) flip through its pages. Just click here for the PDF. If you’re old-school enough to prefer a tangible ink-on-paper version, send an email to info@akpress.org and ask for one. Don’t forget to tell us where to mail it!
And, if you’re interested in staying up to date about new titles we release bewtween catalogs, or the various events we sponsor and/or table at (in the bay area and beyond), click here to sign up for one or more of our mailing lists.
[By the way, the cover of this catalog is based on the cover of our upcoming book Suffled How It Gush. The photo was taken by Boogie, and it was turned into a book cover by John Yates. Click on their names to see more of their great work.]
Last Friday, AK Press held what turned out to be an amazing event in our warehouse. “Confronting the Police State and Imagining Alternatives” was an open strategy discussion, masterminded by the Friendly Fire Collective, to discuss organizing against police power in the Bay Area. The plan was for representatives from police accountability groups in San Francisco, the East Bay, San Jose, Sonoma County, and Watsonville to sit down together to share ideas and experiences, including current campaigns, strategies for fighting police violence, and improving our response capacity, with the ultimate goal of a) figuring out what’s working and what isn’t and b) building community self-determination.
The questions posed to the panelists by moderators included (to quote dave id’s indybay coverage of the event):
1) What tactics, strategies, or campaigns have your groups deployed that have been effective in combating police presence and abuse?
2) In what ways does your group relate to the communities in which you work? Do you experience resistance to your organizing from parts of these communities and how do you respond to that resistance? How do you hope to include more people from these communities in your projects?
3) How do you envision communities decreasing the presence of law enforcement and increasing their capacity for self-determination over time? Knowing that there will always be various conflicts and degrees of violence within our own communities with or without police, can you envision alternative models for resolving community conflicts without the police?
The results were inspiring and very productive. Thanks to the ever-resourceful dave id of Indybay (who has been a long-time pal and supporter of AK Press, even though, sadly, he no longer lives upstairs from us), we can provide audio of the event below. It’s also available on Indybay’s website here. Dave also provided one of the photos.
It is with a heavy heart that AK Press notes the death of Edgar Rodrigues, an anarchist militant and historian who authored more than fifty books in his eighty-eight years. He died of a heart attack on May 14, 2009 in Rio de Janeiro.
He was an inspiration to comrades in Brazil, where he lived since 1951, in his native Portugal, and around the world. He will be missed deeply.
Here is an incomplete list of his books:
*Na Inquisição de Salazar (1957) * A Fome em Portugal (1958) *O Retrato da Ditadura Portuguesa (1962) *Portugal Hoy (1963) *Socialismo: Síntese das Origens e Doutrinas (1969) *Socialismo e Sindicalismo no Brasil (Movimento Operário 1675/1913) (1969) *Nacionalismo e Cultura Social (1913-1922) (1972) *Violência, Autoridade e Humanismo (1974) *Conceito de Sociedade Global (1974) *ABC do Anarquismo (1976) *Breve História do Pensamento e da Lutas Sociais (1977) *Trabalho e Conflito (Greves Operárias 1900-1935) (1977) *Novos Rumos (1978) *Deus Vermelho (1978) *Alvorada Operária (Os Congressos 1887-1920) (1980) *Socialismo: Uma Visão Alfabética (1980) *O Despertar Operário em Portugal (1834-1911) (1980) *Os Anarquistas e os Sindicatos em Portugal (1911-1922) (1981) *A Resistência Anarco-Sindicalista em Portugal (1922-1939) (1981) *A Oposição Libertária à Ditadura (1939-1974) (1982) *Os Anarquistas – Trabalhadores Italianos no Brasil (1984) *Os Trabalhadores Italianos no Brasil (1985) *ABC do Sindicalismo Revolucionário (1987) *Os Libertários: Idéias e Experiências Anárquicas (1988) *Quem Tem Medo do Anarquismo? (1992) *O Anarquismo na Escola, no Teatro, na Poesia (1992) *A Nova Auroa Libertária(1946-1948) (1992) *Entre Ditaduras (1948-1962) (1993) *O Ressurgir do Anarquismo (1962-1980) (1993) *Os Libertários (1993) *O Homem em Busca da Terra Livre (1993) *O Anarquismo no Banco dos Réus (1969-1972) (1993) *Os Companheiros – 5 volumes-de A a Z (1994) *Diga Não à Violência! (1995) *Sem Fronteiras (1995) *Pequena História da Imprensa Social no Brasil (1997) *Os Companheiros (1998) *Notas e Comentários Histórico-Sociais (1998) *Pequeno Dicionário de idéias libertárias (1999) *Universo Ácrata – Volume 1 e Volume 2 (1999) *Rebeldias (quatro volumes, 2005 – 2007) *Um século de História político-social em Documentos (Vol.1 e 2 – 2006 e 2007). *Lembranças Incompletas (2007) *Mulheres e Anarquia (2007)
For many in the Bay Area radical scene, the departure of Entartete Kunst later this month will mark the passing of an era. It certainly will for me.
EK is a collectively-run, anarchist a record label that has released and co-released twenty records and CDs in the last ten years. They began producing mainly electronic beats and pieces, but have recently added more rap to their repetoire. I first got to know Marco and Melissa (and others from EK) shortly after I started volunteering with AK Press (almost a decade ago). Their hard work, generous support, and comradely gestures haven’t been celebrated enough over the years. We wish them the best. If you are in Europe this summer, catch their tour dates.
Drowning Dog: “Mix Tapes and Cotton” is a song about racism through the eyes of a child. When I was kid (in Florida), the KKK burned a cross in our yard, stabbed our dog and used to fuck wit us. So it’s really a personal story. It’s sayin’ that we are capable of dealing with racism and sexism together as a class and it’s the institutions—Government and Corporate—putting it on us that’s the real issue. It’s about how the working poor who are uneducated/brainwashed can funnel their anger into stupid acts like crossburning and talking shit, and how we (also the working poor) can deal with ignorant people Together. But when the institutions (middle and upper class) use racist ideas, and create policies that dehumanize and destroy lives or have money and power behind these ideas, it gets fucked up, dangerous, and deadly (i.e. prison industrial complex, military, housing, pollution, health, etc.). That’s kind of what I’m sayin’.
What’s happening with Entartete Kunst these days? Can you give us a brief history of EK and what you’ve been up to recently?
DJ Malatesta: We (Drowning Dog and Malatesta) are about to start a thirty (or so) date tour of Western Europe (Crunch The Creditors Tour 2009), thanks to the anarchist movement and our hard work over the years touring/building solidarity with some great people/collectives/groups/crews/etc. And we have, as you mentioned, a new 7” out now, available through AK Press and others like NatterJack Press, London Class War, Les Creations Du Crane, Irregular Rhythm Asylum, and many more.
I started this group along with two friends who had no anarchist education. We put out a compilation of electronic bits and pieces that had some political undertones, and then they moved on to do various other projects. At that point I started working with many diy producers/artists, mainly in the bay area, editing and compiling vinyl and cds and putting them out under the “Entartete Kunst” label—typically comps but some solo projects too. Breaks, poetry, weird beats, noise, etc.
The name “entartete kunst” means “degenerate art” in German. [We’re named] after an art exhibit called entartete kunst that was used by the German government in the 30s to try and ridicule radical art. We use the name for the label because we’re aware that we are thought of as degenerate by our Bosses…of all kinds: political, financial, social.
We really love it when people review our books! And we especially love it when reviewers use our books to ask important political and strategic questions, and to really try to think through the issues our books raise. This review does just that. It appeared on the American Leftist blog on April 28.
In the near future, The book’s author, Diana Block, will be posting a response to this review. Stay tuned for some fruitful discussion!
Oh, by the way, don’t miss Diana Block’s event at the AK Press warehouse this Thursday, May 21, at 7pm. It’s free! More info here.
In the post-9/11 world, people like Diana Block have been forgotten. Recollections of the social struggles of the 1960s and 1970s that exploded into violent domestic conflict have been suppressed, infrequently rising to the surface as farce, most recently with the belated celebrity of Bill Ayers. Through the publication of her memoir by AK Press, Block provides us with an opportunity to reflect upon the personal and political strengths and shortcomings of radicals such as herself as they sought to transform the American political system.
Block was, and remains, first and foremost, an anti-imperialist in the broadest sense of the term. Just as the German director Fassbinder recognized the inward and outward manifestations of coercion and control, emphasizing the fascism of everyday life in many of his films, Block attempted to integrate the personally liberatory dimension of feminism and gay rights while drifting towards the confrontational leftism of the Weather Underground, and its successor, the above-ground Prairie Fire. Her initial forays into activism in San Francisco in the early 1970s centered around confronting violence against women within the larger context of the brutality of the American state. As the title of the book indicates, she later went underground in the late 1970s, aligning herself with the violent attempts to bring about an independent Puerto Rico, but I will examine that aspect of the book in a subsequent blog entry.
During this period, Block was sorting out her sexual identity while simultaneously trying to create viable Marxist-Leninist organziations capable of absorbing the energy of civil rights and national liberation movements. One the one hand, she strongly identified with a feminist program that included gays and lesbians, with an emphasis upon a communal social life as a substitute for the family. On the other, she was, like many others on the left, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, and, thus, accepted the practice of democratic centralism, described by Lenin as freedom of discussion, unity in action, as a means of creating a revolutionary vanguard.
Block candidly describes her entangled relationships, romantic and political, as she embraced her bisexuality within a turbulent life of contentious activism, a life where the most minor doctrinal disagreements could mean the end of a friendship, the need to find a new place to live, and the collapse of yet another promising group. Her narrative is engrossing as she relates the interwoven personal and political events in her life in an straightforward, intimate voice. She is rarely arrogant, placing successes and failures within a collective and contingent context.
Our most recent book back from the printer is Barry Sanders’s The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism. It’s a detailed examination of the environmental impact of US military practices—which identifies those practices, from fuel emissions to radioactive waste to defoliation campaigns, as the single-greatest contributor to the worldwide environmental crisis. We think it’s a powerful book, especially considering the fact that the Obama regime’s efforts to save capitalism through new, “ecological” modes of production—disingenuous and doomed as they are—won’t even begin to address the environmental and climactic havoc wreaked by the planet’s most destructive enemy: the US military.
Below is a short excerpt from Barry’s Introduction…
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Over the years, my family has bought three or four little books on how to lead the greenest life possible. We’ve all seen those well-intentioned pamphlets at the checkout counters of bookstores and grocery stores: Fifty Ways to Save the Planet; Going Totally Green; Making a Difference; and so on. While they may pale these days considering the enormity of the environmental crisis, we nonetheless still take the advice to heart, choosing low-energy light bulbs, installing low-flush toilets, turning down the thermostat, refusing to warm up the car’s engine for extended periods, and on and on. Every little bit helps, as the experts tell us, and, besides, we need to feel that we are doing something. But no list in any of those books addresses the largest single source of pollution in this country and in the world: the United States military—in particular, the military in its most ferocious and stepped-up mode—namely, the military at war.
In a nation like ours, where military might trumps diplomatic finesse, the supreme irony may be that the planet, and not human beings, will provide the most stringent corrective to political overreaching. The earth can no longer absorb the punishment of war, especially on a scale and with a ferocity that only the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world—no, in history—knows how to deliver. While the United States military directed its “Operation Iraqi Freedom” solely against the Iraqis, no one—not a single citizen in any part of the globe—has escaped its fallout. When we declare war on a foreign nation, we now also declare war on the Earth, on the soil and plants and animals, the water and wind and people, in the most far-reaching and deeply infecting ways. A bomb dropped on Iraq explodes around the world. We have no way of containing the fallout. Technology fails miserably here. War insinuates itself, like an aberrant gene and, left unchecked, has the capacity for destroying the Earth’s complex and sometimes fragile system.
So we can act like honorable and conscientious citizens, conserving all the energy we can. We can feel good about all those glossy magazine ads from Shell and Exxon Mobil telling us how their companies now treasure the environment, producing their fuels in the cleanest ways possible. We can fall for Detroit’s latest news, too, convincing us of a revolutionary breakthrough in fuel efficiency: 300 horsepower cars that get still 30 or 32 miles per gallon on the highway. But that’s just insanity wearing a green disguise. None of those advertised boasts and claims really matter. They still cling to fossil fuels and further our campaign to kill off everything on the planet with our addictive need. But, even if those claims did make a slight difference, even if we could slow down global warming, ultimately it would not matter. For, in the background, lurking and ever-present, a giant vampire silently sucks out of the Earth all the oil it possibly can, and no one stops it. And so here’s the awful truth: even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the Earth would still be headed head first and at full speed toward total disaster for one major reason. The military—that voracious vampire—produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most immanent danger of extinction.
As we contemplate America in the opening years of the twenty-first century, then, let us reconsider George Washington’s farewell warning that “overgrown military establishments…under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.” Today, our own military has grown beyond an institution hostile to liberty and has wrapped its arms of death around life itself. And, from all the available evidence, it will not let go. Unlike most animals, the military has no surrender mechanism. Unless we all summon the strength to confront the military—no easy task—it will continue to work its evil.
I write as a citizen, not a politician; as a layman, not a scientist; as an outsider from the academy, not an insider from the Pentagon. Most of the information that I present here is deliberately withheld from the general public, made intentionally obscure, folded inside arcane reports, or hidden on hard-to-find governmental websites by the Department of Defense (DoD), or the Pentagon, or the General Accounting Office. Researching the military is like trying to uncover the truth in the former Soviet Union. Governments always conduct a good deal of their business in clandestine ways. The Bush administration, however, enjoyed the well-earned reputation as particularly deceptive, tight-lipped, secretive, and downright hostile to the most routine questions and probes—and especially over things that appeared so obviously illegal, like spying on citizens through wiretapping telephone calls and intercepting international e-mail messages, all without the legally required warrants. We will see how eager the Obama administration will be to reveal its inner workings. Transparency was one of the goals of Obama’s campaign, and he repeated that mantra over and over again….
But before we rejoice too soon in the new administration, recall that, directly before the election, Obama sounded very much like the old administration when he announced that he would probably need to send two more battalions into the foothills of Afghanistan. Bin Laden is still the prize; victory is still the illusion. War is still the way. The impulse toward war transcends parties: Republicans defend their war in Iraq; Democrats defend Kosovo. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and practiced genocide on the Kurds. Slobodan Milosovic is a tyrant and practiced genocide on the Albanians. The names change, the nations shift, but the war drums reverberate with their same incessant and insistent beat. And almost everyone listens—conservatives and liberals—and almost everyone responds.
MEXICO CITY – Founded in 1978 by the Spanish anarchist exile Ricardo Mestre, the Biblioteca Social Reconstruir (Social Reconstruction Library) is a pillar of the contemporary anarchist movement. It holds an extraordinary collection of anarchist books and magazines from Mexico and around the world and it is a place where comrades, both you and old, can meet, talk about ideas, and strategize to build a new world.
He was an inspiration to comrades in Brazil, where he lived since 1951, in his native Portugal, and around the world. He will be missed deeply.
