Anarchy Alive

Toronto venue now added

In these weeks I’m on a book-tour of the eastern US and Canada to promote “Anarchy Alive!”. If you have friends in any of these locations please invite them! All events start at 7pm. Please watch this spot for updates and additional venues!

Oct.5 – Black Sheep Books, Montpelier VT
Oct.8 – Cafe Cagibi, Montreal QC
Oct.9 – Exile Infoshop, Ottawa ON
Oct.10 – Toronto ON (hosted by Upping the Anti) — OISE, 252 Bloor St. West, Room 5-250
Oct.11 – SkyDragon Centre, Hamilton ON
Oct.12 – Empowerment Infoshop, London ON

A new report by the Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association Addameer exposes the Israeli authorities’ suppression of popular resistance against the Apartheid Wall.

Download Repression allowed, resistance denied: Israel’s suppression of the popular movement against the Apartheid Annexation Wall

From the executive summary:

It has been five years since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its advisory opinion on the Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory – where they held in a unanimous opinion that it was illegal and should be dismantled. No significant advance in the situation on the ground has been achieved, and the Wall construction continues relentlessly. Instead, since the Court started its hearings in February 2004, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have intensified repression of the affected villages struggling against the Wall, killing the first activists. The gaze of the international community must now turn not only to the illegality and injustice of the Wall, but also to the plight of those still attempting to resist its construction. In villages across the West Bank, local residents have formed committees and taken on a campaign of mass popular resistance to the Wall, engaging in weekly, and even daily, demonstrations. These communities have faced a staggering level of repression and violence from the Israeli authorities. It is the aim of this report to investigate that repression and to determine its true extent and nature.

That a blanket of fear and repression should be imposed on protesting communities largely defenseless against it is a logical extension of Israel’s security narrative. The fear felt in the communities discussed in this report are not an isolated phenomenon, but rather the mirror image of the ideologies at work in the Israeli discourse. The narrative of security and self-defense can be seen both in the Wall’s construction, and in the Israeli military’s statements on fatalities and injuries at Wall protests. Deliberate killings are narrated as accidents and misdemeanors under fire from rocks and chanting, grievous injuries as unfortunate byproducts of effective crowd control. Too often this version of events is accepted and projected by the international media.

In the course of this report we provide evidence to show that injuries and deaths inflicted by the Israeli military at protests and activity surrounding them are intentional, not accidental. The reintroduction and heavy use of live ammunition and fragmenting bullets is a clear indicator that Israeli policy is designed to harm and kill, as is the regular firing of metal tear gas canisters directly at demonstrators.

Furthermore, it is now increasingly clear that a significant proportion – if not a majority – of fatalities recorded in this report were the result of a qualitatively more extreme form of intent. The recorded shooting of fleeing demonstrators, the use of snipers and silencers, undercover soldiers opening fire with live ammunition, and the chasing down and assassination of children within a demonstration display an intent that is not only generally lethal, but precise and calculated. Such calculations are often racially selective. Violence at demonstrations is deliberately softened when internationals are present, and the brunt of the lethal measures are reserved for Palestinians.

Israel is engaged in low intensity warfare against Palestinian communities resisting the Wall. By targeting the entire community as well as individuals within it, the Israeli military aims to break and undermine the popular resistance. Collective punishment, which manifests itself in curfews, sieges, and destruction of property, aims at sowing divisions within communities, breaking villages’ support for resistance to the Wall. This layer of repression is accompanied by a campaign of threats, and the intentional injury and killing necessary in order to follow them through.

The effects of this campaign have been at once both devastating and counterproductive. It has wrecked the lives of innocent people, paralyzed communities, shut down livelihoods and taken the lives of villagers barely into their teens. Nonetheless, the popular protest movement has shown a remarkable ability not only to survive, but to grow and spread, cultivating a new generation of activists and leaders, and taking root in new areas. How this phase of the popular protest movement will end depends in no small way upon the resolve of the villagers and willingness of global forces to take action as laid out in the recommendations at the end of this report. The international community has a duty to bear witness to the crimes being perpetrated with the construction of the Wall, and to act to protect and aid those who resist it.

Key findings of this report can be summarized as follows:

- The killing, maiming and punitive attacks are systematic and premeditated, not sporadic and accidental. They are tactically intended to create a highly visible spectacle, rendering victims as examples.

- Entire villages are targeted with the aim of inflicting damage on the community as a whole. Collective punishment complements spectacular violence by sowing divisions between villagers.

- The IOF explicitly inform villagers of the rationale behind their violence in order to maximize the effectiveness of these measures.

- Occupation forces consistently target protestors, predominately youth, with the stated intent of causing serious, at times permanent, injury. This involves the use of beatings, lethal ammunition, “non-lethal” ammunition and, more recently, 40mm high velocity tear gas canisters, in addition to threats, denial of permits, curfews and tear-gassing.

- Between 2005 and 2009, at least 1,566 Palestinians were injured in weekly demonstrations in four villages, namely Bil’in, Ni’lin, Ma’sara and Jayyous. Evidence suggests, however, that more injuries have occurred in other villages that were not included in this report. A further 16 people, half of them children, have been killed in villages protesting against the Wall since 2004.

- We have documented the cases of 171 Palestinians who have been arrested by the IOF in relation to Wall-related protests and activities in five villages since 2002: Budrus, Bilin, Nilin, Jayyous and Ma’sara. Interviews with activists suggest that many more activists are likely to have been arrested in other villages. Further research is needed to expose the extent of Israel’s arrest and detention policies.

- Children and youths are particularly targeted by the IOF during raids and arrest campaigns, usually under the false pretext of being stone throwers and ‘trouble-makers’, although they are by no means the only ones arrested.

- Members and heads of the Popular Committees in respective villages were also initially targeted by IOF during the first years of the Wall’s construction, in order to break up protests and create disunity, especially since these committees have been the most vocal in their non-violence protest and have been instrumental in coordinating and mobilizing weekly protests.

As of March 2009, there have been 129 indictments of Israeli activists protesting against the Occupation. Out of these, at least 41 were Israeli members of Anarchists Against the Wall who were directly involved in protests against the Wall, either in Israel or the West Bank.

Lastly, this report offers practical recommendations to: the United Nations; the international community, with a special focus on the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention; Palestinian and international human rights NGOs; and, international and local media. The aim of these recommendations is to establish protection mechanisms for inhabitants of Wall-affected communities, and, most importantly, Palestinian human rights activists leading the resistance against the Wall.

Out of a list of recommendations, both Stop the Wall and Addameer wish to emphasize that it is crucial for the international community to finally:

- Take real action to ensure that Israel complies with the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, as a step to fulfilling its wider obligations under international law. This would mean: (1) stopping the construction of the Wall in the occupied Palestinian territories; (2) dismantling the sections built to date; and (3) providing compensation for all damage, including for land confiscation caused by the construction of the Wall.

- Until then, establish mechanisms aiming at protecting the popular resistance against the Wall in their rightful protests against the Wall’s construction and land confiscation by (1) ensuring a permanent and institutionalized presence of international monitors in wall-affected villages to prevent the use of indiscriminate force – including arbitrary arrests – during weekly demonstration as well as acts of collective punishment at night – including raids, curfews, cases of threats and intimidation against protestors, and (2) interfering with the Israeli authorities in cases of arbitrary detention of Palestinian protestors.

My good friend James Horrox has finally released his masterful work A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement. Basing his research largely on newly-translated letters, diaries and essays by key figures and participants, James Horrox uncovers a deep and explicitly anarchist strain running through the movement’s early days. Not only does this illuminate a neglected aspect of Jewish history, it takes serious issue with Marxist and other historians, especially those who see the kibbutzim primarily as progenitors of the Israeli State. At the same time, it depicts anarchism as both an inspiring utopian ideology and a viable social practice.

I had the privilege of writing the book’s foreword, which I reproduce here.

Foreword

Fierce opposition to Zionism, and to the capitalist-military machine oppressing millions under its flag, is only emboldened by the encounter with the betrayed dreams of liberation and solidarity that lie shattered in its dustbin. For there is no question that things could have turned out very differently in this land, had the designs of the young Jewish men and women who landed on these shores during the first decades of the twentieth century come to fruition.

The communards of the early Kibbutz settlements in Palestine hardly shared what Emma Goldman called “the dream of capitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish state machinery to protect the privileges of the few against the many”. What carried them to Palestine was rather the desire to build here a classless society, a “commune of communes” based on self-management, equality and Jewish-Arab cooperation. At stake was nothing less than the opportunity to transform the Jewish mobilization around Palestine into a project for the social liberation of all peoples, a project that could only be achieved under the banner of stateless socialism.

Yet the defining influence of anarchist currents in the early Kibbutz movement has been one of official Zionist historiography’s best-kept secrets. In the retroactive absorption of the communards’ experience into Israel’s nation-building myth, only a few selective manoeuvres were necessary in order to obliviate its aspects which would have proved too subversive for the new state’s unifying republican ethos. Thus the first Kibbutzniks’ personal sacrifices, the emotional intensity of their relationships and their revival of Hebrew as a spoken language were all played up as paragons of dedication, and mobilised to generate a sense of historical debt. But other elements – especially their antagonism towards private capital, their calls for bi-nationalism, and the feminist struggles of women in the communes – were all left out of the historical accounts, school textbooks and public rituals, and excluded from the packaged narrative served up to subsequent generations.

It is against this background of induced collective amnesia that A Living Revolution makes its vital contribution. James Horrox has drawn on archival research, interviews and political analysis to thread together the story of a period all but gone from living memory, presenting it for the first time to an English-reading audience. These pages bring to life the most radical and passionate voices that shaped the second and third waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, and also encounters those contemporary projects working to revive the spirit of the Kibbutz as it was intended to be, despite, and because of their predecessors’ fate.

The early Kibbutz experience is of special interest to anarchists today, since the early twentieth century communes were the first large-scale movement emphasising the constructive, creative and spiritual aspects of anarchism – aspects which have become central to the movement in recent decades. Class antagonism was certainly present between the bourgeois Jewish owners of the first-wave colonies and the young new immigrants who initially sought work there. But the first communes were founded precisely in an attempt to carve out autonomous spaces of production that would subvert the initial stages of capitalist accumulation in Palestine. Rather than building up to an insurrection or a general strike – a strategy relevant to revolutionizing existing, mature capitalist societies – the communards sought to nip capitalism’s emergence in the bud, by constructing alternatives on the ground that would snatch the ground from under capitalist Jewry and take the lead in shaping the new society’s economic and social structure. The period between 1904 and 1924 marked a unique historical crossroads at which such a manoeuvre made perfect sense.

With this perspective in mind, there is a point to be made concerning the ambivalent response which A Living Revolution, by its very premise, may raise among those who (like ourselves) are committed to ending all occupation, militarism and social injustice in Israel/Palestine today. Unfortunately, the Zionist account has become so pervasive that the early Kibbutzim are almost universally seen as nothing but predecessors of the Israeli state, and therefore as fully partaking in responsibility for its eventual crimes against Palestinians and Jews alike. On such a view, the idea of holding them up to the light of Kropotkin and Landauer takes on an incongruous, even disingenuous air.

Yet this view only makes sense if one accepts the premises of black-and-white political correctness that pervade the contemporary Left. There is certainly room to question the validity of applying anti-colonial hindsight to people that any progressive would otherwise consider economic migrants or refugees. Rather it would seem that queasiness about the premise of A Living Revolution has nothing to do with historical impartiality, and everything to do with the fear of tarnishing anarchism’s good name (an oxymoron if there ever was one) by its association with early Zionism.

Yet it is a grave mistake to interpret, let alone pass judgment on, the efforts of the past in light of the injustices of the present. Such an approach partakes of a retroactive historical fatalism, one that has no place in the analysis a movement that declares: “Anything can happen”. Historical movement is never deterministic. There is never a single, linear and inevitable course of affairs charted out in advance. What would have happened in Palestine had the October revolution been more successful in spreading to central Europe? Or had Jewish workers more effectively resisted the British-sponsored takeover of their institutions by Ben Gurion and his men? Or, for that matter, had Hitler been killed in the Great War? Anything could have happened, just as it can today.

Acknowledging this is crucial if we are to encounter and assess the early Kibbutz movement on its own terms, and from the perspectives of its own protagonists, as A Living Revolution so successfully does. Let their story and the sense of an open future inspire all those who struggle for freedom and justice on this Earth.

Uri Gordon
Kibbutz Lotan, May Day 2008
www.anarchyalive.com

"Code, Regulatory and Systemic Barriers Affecting Living Building Projects"

(download report here)

Buildings are getting greener but building codes and regulations often stall progress

Breakthrough report from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council tackles building regulations

(August 4, 2009) Tucson, AZ, USA & Toronto, ON Canada – The enthusiasm for Living Buildings continues unabated, but a key stumbling block in the shift toward truly sustainable projects is the existing set of codes and regulations. Federal stimulus funds for green building and infrastructure projects are important drivers of the shift in how buildings are designed and constructed, but there needs to be a “greening” of the regulatory systems to fully meet sustainability goals.

Stepping in to help resolve the impasse is a new report published by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council entitled Code, Regulatory and Systemic Barriers Affecting Living Building Projects, which presents a case for fundamental reassessment of the regulatory sphere related to the built environment.

“This report will reframe the conversation about building regulation and what is required to safeguard public health, safety and welfare,” says Jason F. McLennan, CEO of Cascadia and the creator of the Living Building Challenge. The Challenge is a call to those in the design and construction industries to create buildings that function like plants and are net-zero in energy, water and waste.

Greg Kats, Managing Director of Good Energies, notes, “This report is both timely and important. There are widespread obstacles to adopting green design. This report maps out these obstacles in detail and provides a series of integrated recommendations to eliminate them and replace them with a regulatory environment that supports smarter, greener healthier design.”

Report authors David Eisenberg of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology and Sonja Persram of Sustainable Alternative Consulting researched the issues surrounding regulatory barriers in the US and Canada. These included examining the range of regulatory and other approvals required for leading-edge projects, as well as surveying Living Building project teams and interviewing experts throughout North America.

According to lead author David Eisenberg, “Though people speak of the building regulatory system, it isn’t a system. It was never designed as one, and so it is not based on over-arching societal goals or system principles. Instead, what we have today emerged from thousands of reactions to problems serious enough to require a regulatory response. We need a comprehensive regulatory system that enables best practices, instead of simply preventing the worst from happening.”

Recommendations also include the creation of an integrated regulatory process that would embrace Living Building goals, explicitly considering human and ecosystem health today and tomorrow. This process would formalize regulatory relationships between the traditional regulatory spheres for the built environment and those in the finance, real estate, investment and insurance sectors.

“Green building has reached a tipping point,” notes Sonja Persram. “There is a growing recognition in the insurance and investment communities that organizations have a fiduciary responsibility to address climate change. An increasing body of research links specific green building practices with mitigating these ecological risks and adding enormous triple-bottom-line benefits. This means money now spent on conventional projects rather than on these green measures could be seen as money at risk.”

Kats concurs: “The gravity of climate change requires that we move quickly to embrace deep improvements in energy efficiency and in use of renewables to achieve zero net CO2 buildings. Building green is cost effective and provides both financial returns and a reduction of risk for owners and tenants. This report provides an important roadmap toward buildings that cut costs, cut risk, improve heath and allow us to live within our earth’s increasingly imperiled environmental means.”

The project was made possible through funding to Cascadia from the Summit Foundation and King County.

Access the report from any of these weblinks:
Development Center for Appropriate Technology: www.dcat.net/about_dcat/announcements.php

Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc.: www.sustainable-alternatives.ca/Cascadia_Code_Report_Eisenberg_Persram.pdf
Cascadia Region Green Building Council: http://ilbi.org/resources/research/CodeStudies/09-0729%20code%20paper%20Eisenberg.pdf

About the Authors:

David Eisenberg, Co-founder and Director of the non-profit Development Center for Appropriate Technology (DCAT), has pioneered efforts to create a sustainable context for building regulation since 1995. He served two terms on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Green Building Council where he founded and chairs the USGBC Code Committee. He has written and presented extensively on sustainability and building regulation in the U.S. and abroad. He was recently selected to serve on the new International Code Council Sustainable Building Technology Committee. David and DCAT were recipients of the International Code Council 2007 Affiliate of the Year Award and the 2007 USGBC Leadership Award in the category of Organizational Excellence.

Sonja Persram, BSc, MBA, LEED® AP is President of Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc., a policy and market research firm that aims to catalyze green building sector expansion, focusing on triple-bottom-line alternatives. Sonja’s publication credits include: Green Buildings: A Strategic Analysis of the North American Markets for Frost & Sullivan; the USA segment of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s International Sustainable Building Policy Initiatives; and lead author of two Canada Green Building Council projects, Marketing Green Buildings for Owners/Tenants of Leased Properties. She is a Corresponding Committee member of the USGBC’s Code Committee and served on the USGBC Social Equity Task Force.

About Cascadia:

The Cascadia Region Green Building Council is a non-profit organization in both the US and Canada. Cascadia promotes the design, construction and operation of buildings in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon that are environmentally-responsible, profitable and healthy places to live, work and learn. Cascadia is one of the first chapters of the US and Canada Green Building Councils, and is the only international chapter in North America. It is also the originator of the Living Building Challenge. For more information, please visit www.cascadiagbc.org.

Media contacts:

Authors:

David Eisenberg, Development Center for Appropriate Technology
strawnet (at) aol.com / 520.624.6628
www.dcat.net

Sonja Persram, Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc.
sonja (at) sustainable-alternatives.ca / 416.324.9388

www.sustainable-alternatives.ca

Publisher:
Jason McLennan, Cascadia Region GBC
jason (at) cascadiagbc.org / 206.223.2028
www.cascadiagbc.org

The coming Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 have generated a wide interest. Tens of thousands of activists, conference delegates and lobbyists will converge in the city for the 15th Conference of the Parties, COP 15, in the UN negotiations on a climate agreement.

There is a wide range of initiatives calling for everything from direct actions world-wide and in Copenhagen, to demonstrations and alternative conferences during the summit, media events and lobbying. Many of the initiatives have similar names and at the same time a very different character. To enable a critical overview the association Aktivism.info have made this compilation of commented and politically structured information. Aktivism.info is a Nordic organisation to support experience exchange on activism and between popular movements started by a working group in Friends of the Earth Sweden.

Apart from the initiatives below claiming to get people in common involved there are also numerous G8 meetings, business and other initiatives influencing the negotiations.

Popular actions in relation to the Climate Summit:

November

28 Demonstration at WTO Summit in Geneva

30 International protests against trade and climate actions, Seattle +10

December

4 The Trade to Climate Caravan starts from Geneva to Copenhagen

7 Climate Forum and COP starts

11 Protest against business day in Copenhagen

12 Nörrebro Flood Action am, FOE

12 Demonstration pm, in Copenhagen on global climate action day

13 Hit the production direct actions, NTAC

16 Creating spaces for climate justice demonstration at the Summit, CJA

18 Final Climate Forum and COP day

Some other days of interest:

August

14 Zero Carbon Caravan starts in Wales towards Copenhagen

September

21-22 Global premiere of the Age of Stupid

21-28 Mobility week, Europe

October

12 International Day in Defense of Mother Earth and Indigenous Peoples

24 UN Day and 350 ppm international climate action day

Organizations and networks who have initiated the activities in Copenhagen:

Climate Forum 09
Alternative summit for civil society organisations with the aim to produce a joint statement and provide space for numerous discussions on climate justice with strong participation from the South.

Climate Justice Action
Network for organizing action demanding climate justice and no to false solutions

FOEI Friends of the Earth International
International social movement organisation with one member group in each country

GCC Global Climate Campaign
A political initiative to mobilize a global climate action day each year

NTAC Never Trust a COP
Anti-capitalist activist network

Other networks and organizations initiating activities towards Copenhagen and beyond, a limited list of initiatives.

Danish:

Peoples Climate Action
Danish main stream NGO project, WWF etc. ”Peoples Climate Action will develop a new model for how citizens are involved and engaged in the common global challenge: to create a sustainable world, where politicians, scientists, energy and climate experts and manufacturers give people new products and options, and where people give politicians , researchers, energy and climate experts and producers backing to create a better world”. The purpose is to ”Create space and good environment for effective and engaging mobilization of civil society in the democratic process before and during COP15.” and ”To assist in Denmark appearing to be an open, democratic and hospitable country, giving the whole world of positive possibilities for civil society inclusion, expression and participation in democratic decision-making center.” translated from the Danish text on the website.

International:

350.org
International Day of Climate Action in more than 100 countries October 24 to support reduction of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.

CAN Climate Action Network
Climate lobbyist network of over 450 NGOs working ”to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. CAN members work to achieve this goal through information exchange and the coordinated development of NGO strategy on international, regional, and national climate issues.”

CJN! Climate Justice Now!
”A network of organisations and movements from across the globe committed to the fight for genuine solutions to the climate crisis … for social, ecological and gender justice.” Built on principles of climate justice, which were elaborated during the UNFCCC climate talks in Bali 2007. See also on blogspot and riseup lists

Climate Camp movement
Direct climate action camps in Russia, India, Australia, Europe and North America

GCCA, The Global Campaign for Climate Action
Main stream NGO coalition organizing TckTckTck campaign ”a global movement for a unified voice against climate change. The combined efforts of millions of people, including you, and our member organizations will deliver a clear message that we demand meaningful leadership and action against climate change.” – the same campaign that is also called The Global Alliance for Climate Justice, see below.

People’s Movement on Climate Change
The People’s Protocol on Climate Change is a global campaign that aims to provide venue for grassroots, especially from the South to participate in the COP15 process

The Age of Stupid
Film on climate change and the need for action which will have its global premiere with more than 700 screenings in more than 40 countries on September 21/22. The film describes the climate conflicts all over the world and claim consumerism and capitalism as root causes to global warming.

The Global Alliance for Climate Justice
”an open, democratic club of climate heroes founded by Mr. Kofi Annan. Become a Fan and join us in the fight for Climate Justice!!” Global social media campaign

Zero Carbon Caravan
14th August The caravan will start from Climate Camp Cymru, protesting against the Ffos y Fran Open Cast Coal Mine, and also demonstrating sustainable solutions, with workshops on sustainable living, all organised according to consensus based decision making. It will continue towards Copenhagen aiming a showing that ”it is perfectly possible to have a zero carbon lifestyle, and that it’s fun, by getting to the talks without fossil fuels, visiting inspiring places like the Centre for Alternative Technology and holding zero carbon conferences, festivals and concerts on the way.”

Photo by Chris Bertram)

I’m still in shock, having just received news of the sudden death of Jerry Cohen, apparently from a massive stroke. He was only 68.

Of all the people I had the privilege to meet in Oxford, Jerry was by far the most brilliant. He had an amazingly incisive intellect and was always able to get down to the precise sticking point of every debate. He was also the funniest philosopher ever, and his lectures were always the best show in town.

Jerry was an inspiration to me, and his untimely loss is just devastating.

Here is an audio clip of Jerry in action.