Anti-Capitalist

Rail Blockade Disrupts CP Rail’s Olympic Spirit Train

Deadline — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:12:01 -0400

BREAKING NEWS For Immediate Release
October 12, 2008

Rail Blockade Disrupts CP Rail’s Olympic Spirit Train
“Six Nations and solidarity activists resist Olympic theft of Indigenous
land, ecological destruction, and attacks on the poor”

Toronto, Ontario – Moments ago, a group of activists occupied Canadian
Pacific (CP) Railway’s train tracks by locking themselves down to the
tracks and hanging banners off of the rail overpass on highway 27 near
Elder Mills. The protest was organized in solidarity with the Olympics
Resistance Network (ORN) and their call to disrupt CP’s “Spirit Train”
that is traveling across Canada. Directions to the blockade site can be
found at the bottom of this release.

“We are here today to show the world what the Olympics really stands
for; capitalist greed and colonialist theft of Indigenous lands” said
Winnie Small. They continued, “In stark contrast to Canada’s cherished
reputation as a human rights advocate, our First Nations live in abject
poverty; casualties of Canada’s apartheid policy refusal to respect
Indigenous rights to their own land.”

Upping the Anti #5

ant — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:42:11 -0400

Issue #5 of Upping the Anti is now being distributed. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the journal or to distribute the journal in your community or organizations, please email uta_distro@yahoo.ca so that we can add you to our list of local distributors. This issue of the journal is 212 pages long and we are selling single copies for $10 including postage. If you want 5 or more copies for distribution, the journal is $5 per copy, and we'll cover the postage.

Our mailing address where you can send your $10 in well concealed cash to for a copy of the journal is: Upping the Anti, 998 Bloor St. West, P.O. Box 10571, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6H 4H9. If you live in the US or elsewhere, please order our journal through AK Press as it costs us too much to mail it to you from Canada. Please continue reading this post for the full table of contents of this issue and the introduction to this issue.

3rd Issue of Upping the Anti coming out in early November

ant — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:32:24 -0400

Dear friends,

We are happy to announce that the third issue of Upping the Anti will be going to press in late October of 2006.

This issue will feature a rich assortment of content focusing on anti-imperialist struggles. We are printing interviews with Aijaz Ahmad on the anti-imperialism of our times, William Robinson on contemporary anti-capitalist struggles in Latin America, and Taiaiake Alfred on colonialism and indigenous resistance in Canada today. Our articles include: Isabel McDonald writing on Canadian complicity in the occupation of Haiti, Tom Keefer reporting on the significance of the Six Nations struggle for anti-capitalist activists, Andrew Thompson engaging with the arguments of Richard Day’s “Gramsci is Dead”, and RJ Maccani assessing the rise of the Zapatistas and the lessons to be drawn from their experience in the changing political terrain of Mexico.

12 Reasons to take to the streets of Montreal-Nord this Saturday

kerspleb — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:35:48 -0400

Start: Oct 10 2008 - 5:30pm

End: Oct 12 2008 - 5:30pm

Timezone: Etc/GMT-4

The following excellent text is from the No One Is Illegal Montreal blog:

This coming Saturday at 2pm at Parc Pilon in Montreal-Nord, a diverse cross-section of Montreal groups and individuals are coming together to denounce police brutality as part of a child-friendly demonstration. This is a crucial protest for all those who oppose poverty, racism and police brutality, as well as support autonomous, grassroots organizing for real justice and dignity.

It comes just two months after the killing of Fredy Villaneuva in Montreal-Nord, one year after the tasering death of Quilem Registre in St-Michel, and more than two years after the unexplained shooting death of Anas Bennis in Côte-des-neiges. It comes in a context where 43 people have been killed by the bullets or electric shocks of the Montreal police in just 21 years.

There are three main demands for this Saturday’s demonstration: 1) a public and independent inquiry into the death of Fredy Villaneuva; 2) an end to racial profiling and to police abuses and impunity; 3) the recognition of the principle that as long as there is economic inequality there will be social insecurity.

read more

DERAIL THE SPIRIT OF THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT TRAIN

Deadline — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:09:50 -0400

DERAIL THE SPIRIT OF THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT TRAIN
ALL OUT ON OCTOBER 13 - THANKSGIVING MONDAY

MEET AT 12NOON !SHARP!
CORNER OF FRONT AND BAY/YORK (south-west corner)
FREE TRANSPORTATION
EMAIL NOONEISILLEGAL@RISEUP.NET FOR SEAT CONFIRMATION
OR AT COOKSVILLE STATION AT 1PM

On October 13, 2008, the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway)'s 'SpiritTrain' will be arriving at Cooksville GO Transit Station in Mississauga, here to continue its goal of spreading pre-Olympic "spirit".

The Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 are appropriating indigenous land, marginalizing the urban poor and exploiting migrant workers.

The 2010 Olympics spirit that this train carries is a spirit of racism and corporate greed. This spirit has met with opposition in each of its stops across the country.

This spirit of oppression needs to be met with our spirit of resistance.

When it stops in Mississauga, come out with pots, pans, whistles, flags and placards. As most of Canada gives thanks for the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples on Turtle Island, we urge all allies to mobilize their communities to disrupt the Spirit Train in solidarity with the call for Indigenous sovereignty.

To confirm a spot or to share your solidarity, please email
nooneisillegal@riseup.net before Sunday, 12 October.

NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND!

For further information, see: http://no2010.com/node/18

ZAPATISTAS-- ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT

Gary — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:38:53 -0400

Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN

Mexico,

September 15th and 16th, 2008

To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:

To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:

To the People of Mexico:

To the Peoples of the World:

Compañeras and Compañeros:

Brothers and Sisters:

Once again here’s our word.

This is what we see, this is what we are looking at.

This has come to our ears, to our brown heart.

Up there, they intend to repeat their history.

They once again want to impose on us their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.

When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.

They steal our work, our strength.

They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.

The cities pursue and expel us.

The countryside dies and we along with it.

Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.

In the world, we are illegal, undocumented, unwanted.

We are pursued.

Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.

And up there they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.

The APPO Two Years On: What Now For Social Movements in Oaxaca?

Gary — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:29:55 -0400

by Scott Campbell, MR Zine

This fall in Oaxaca marks a season of commemorations. Already marches for fallen APPO members Jose Jimenez Colmenares and Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes have woven their ways through the streets of the city, pausing at the spots they were murdered in 2006, holding ceremonies at the Cathedral. Twenty-four more such processions await Oaxaca in the coming months. That number will only grow as efforts are made to identify the (at minimum) eight bodies in hidden graves discovered recently in Oaxaca's main cemetery.

Is This The Fourth World War?

scottn — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:20:29 -0400

Is This The Fourth World War?
by Bill Weinberg, published here, found via Fourth World Eye's post of September 10, 2008.

On September 13, 2001, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman wrote: "Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead."

More sophisticated minds have since challenged this declaration as numerically incorrect. While sharing the pro-war consensus, former CIA Director James Woolsey is on the lecture circuit asserting that the global crusade against terrorism is World War IV--the Cold War having been III. "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us," Woolsey told a group of UCLA students in April. "Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."

The Fire and the Word: The Most Complete History of the Zapatista Movement

Gary — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:59:36 -0400

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Mexican journalist Gloria Muñoz Ramírez says that in 1997 she left her work, her family, and her friends to live in Zapatista communities. Her book The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement is the result of seven years of research, interviews, and—most importantly—listening in Zapatista territory.

Originally published in Spanish as 20 y 10: El Fuego y la Palabra in 2003 for the tenth anniversary of the Zapatista uprising and the twentieth anniversary of the EZLN, the book has since been translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Persian, and Greek. While English-speakers had to wait five long years to read it, Muñoz made The Fire and the Word worth the wait. The English translation updates the Spanish version, including new chapters and pictures of Zapatista history up through the Other Campaign in 2006.

The book itself is an artistic masterpiece. Domi, a Mazateca indigenous illustrator who helped Marcos tell The Story of Colors, and Antonio Ramírez, a Mexican artist and author of the Spanish-language children’s book Napí, illustrated the book. Graphic designer Efrain Herrera laid out the text to flow around, through, and between Domi and Ramírez’s illustrations.

The Clandestine Years

Nature, Neoliberalism and Sustainable Development: Between Charybdis and Scylla

Gary — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:31:20 -0400

Harry Cleaver's paper on the effects of capitalist development on the environment. A bit dated but still very relevant.

This paper was prepared for the 4th Ecology Meeting on "Economy and Ecology" held by the Instituto Piaget, Viseu, Portugal, April 17-19, 1997.

"And all this time, in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current, we rowed into the strait --Scylla to port and on our starboard beam Charybdis, dire gorge of the salt sea tide." (Odysseus)1

At this point in history, policy thinking about human relationships with Nature seems unable to escape either the whirlpool of Neoliberalism or the mist-shrouded dangers of sustainable development. On the one hand free-marketeers tout an overt subordination of every aspect of the world to private property, commodity production and quick profit making; on the other, the critics of such short term calculus search for ways to continue the same processes indefinitely. What a choice!

Neoliberalism