by DGR News Service | Sep 18, 2019 | Property & Material Destruction
By Max Wilbert / Featured image: an oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, Planet Labs, CC BA-SA 4.0
On Saturday, September 14th, a “suicide drone” attack struck the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqayq, Saudi Arabia. The drones were destroyed in the attack, but at this time it is not believed that the operators were exposed or harmed in any way.
Abqaiq is the largest oil facility in the world, with the capacity to process 7% of global oil supplies. Before the attack it was refining around 6.8 million barrels of oil per day. The attack is believed to have reduced Saudi Oil production by 50 percent, or 6 million barrels per day. That’s equivalent to the national usage of India and Australia combined, or more than 1/3rd of the United States oil consumption.
Saudi Arabia produces 10% of the global supply of crude oil. Therefore, this single attack, believed to have been carried out with roughly 10 drones with a range of less than 100 miles, cut world oil production by 5 percent.
The use of drones in warfare has risen over the past five years. Initially, large UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) designed by U.S. weapons manufacturers dominated drone warfare. Increasingly, however, small and even off-the-shelf drones are being used in asymmetrical conflict to great effect. For example, in Syria, Daesh (Isis) and Hezbollah have both been recorded using inexpensive off-the-shelf drones to scout and direct fire for ground troops, to drop small bombs, and as “suicide bombers.”
Environmentalists should take heed. This one attack—albeit an attack unlikely to be motivated by concern for the planet and ecology—has been more effective than the entire environmental movement, which has failed to stop the growth in fossil fuel production and consumption. These new tactics change how strategies such as Decisive Ecological Warfare could be implemented.
Some people may worry about the environmental damage caused by such a massive fire. But we should remember that all the petroleum processed at this refinery would have been burned anyway. The only difference is that it would have been burned while powering cargo ships, mining platforms, tanks, and other destructive industrial infrastructure. It is always preferable to see petroleum burn all at once, with no application, than to have it all burned over time while aiding in the destruction of the planet. The destruction of the equipment also means that more fossil fuels will stay in the ground for longer, since if there is no nearby processing capacity for them, extraction must stop. With very few exceptions, the living world would benefit from any fossil fuel infrastructure being destroyed, no matter how “messy” that destruction is.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2018 | Movement Building & Support
by Internationalist Commune of Rojava
Presentation of the campaign in cooperation with the Democratic Self-governance of Northern Syria
Introduction
Five years have passed since the beginning of the Rojava Revolution. Beginning with the heroic resistance of Kobani, the YPG/YPJ have pushed the reactionary gangs of ISIS back again and again. At the same time, the people of Rojava have successfully resisted all hegemonical attempts to corrupt the revolution. Inspired and shaped by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan and the struggle of the Kurdish freedom movement, Rojava is a revolutionary project with the aim of challenging capitalist modernity through women’s liberation, ecology, and radical democracy. Despite the ongoing success of the Rojava Revolution, the people remain under pressure; the war against ISIS, the daily terror attacks by the Turkish state and the economic embargo, are obstacles for building up a new society. In this situation, Rojava needs worldwide support more than ever.
Internationalist Commune – learn, support, organize
For many years, we, internationalists from all over the world, have been working on many facets of the Rojava Revolution. Inspired by the revolutionary perspective of the Kurdish freedom movement, we are here to learn, and to support and help develop existing projects. It is our aim to organize a new generation of internationalists to challenge capitalist modernity. Supported by the youth movement in Rojava (YCR/YJC), we established the Internationalist Commune of Rojava in early 2017. To date, our projects have include organizing educational activities, delegations, language courses, and the construction of the first civilian academy for internationalists in Rojava.
A pillar of the revolution: ecology
People who are alienated from nature are alienated from themselves, and are self-destructive. No system has shown this relationship more clearly than capitalist modernity; environmental destruction and ecological crises go hand in hand with oppression and exploitation of people. The feckless mentality of maximum profit has brought our planet close to the edge of the abyss, and left humanity in a whirlwind of war, hunger, and social crisis. Because of this, developing an ecological society is a pillar of the Rojava Revolution, alongside women’s liberation and a total democratization of all parts of life. This is about more than just protecting nature by limiting damage to it; it is about recreating the balance between people and nature. It is about a “renewed, conscious and enlighted unification towards a natural, organic society” (Abdullah Öcalan).
Monoculture, water shortage and air pollution: colonialism against humanity and nature
The results of the capitalist mentality and state violence against society and the environment are clearly visible in Rojava; the Baath regime was and remains uninterested in an ecological society throughout all of Syria. The regime always focused on maximum resource exploitation and high agricultural production rate at the expense of environmental protection, especially in colonized West Kurdistan. Systematic deforestation made monoculture possible: wheat in Cizire Canton, olives in Afrin, and a mixture of both in Kobani have altered the landscape of Rojava. For several decades it was forbidden to plant trees and vegetables, and the population was encouraged by repressive politics and deliberate underdeveloppment of the region to migrate as cheap labour to nearby cities like Aleppo, Raqqa and Homs. Energy production and use (fossil fuels), senseless waste management policies, and careless over-reliance on chemicals in agriculture, damaged the ground, air and water. But the Rojava Revolution and the Rojavan people struggle not only with the ecopolitical heritage of the Baath regime, but also with the ever-present and grave threat of the hostile policies of Turkish State. Beside military attacks, the constant threat of an invasion, and an economic embargo, we also face the problems caused results by Turkish goverment dam construction in occupied North Kurdistan, and the consequent uncontrolled use of groundwater by Turkey for its agriculture. This aggressive siphoning reduces the flow into Rojavan rivers and lowers the whole region’s groundwater level. We are witnessing how Turkish State is systematically closing Rojava’s water tap.
Between war and embargo – ecological works in Rojava
The attempts of the Turkish and Syrian regimes to strangle the revolution in Rojava by military, political and economic attacks, the war against ISIS, and the embargo, supported by the South Kurdish KDP, are creating difficult circumstances for ecological projects in Rojava. Although there are many current projects, including reforestation, creation of natural reserves and environmentally-friendly waste disposal facilities, the infrastructure of the Democratic Self-Administration is still in a difficult material situation, making these goals harder to achieve. The projects of most regional committees are either just beginning or in the planning stage. The ecological revolution, within the larger revolution, is still in its infancy. It lacks environmental consciousness among the population, expert knowledge, necessary technology, and a connection to solidarity from abroad.
Our contribution to the ecological revolution: Make Rojava Green Again
We, the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, want to contribute to the ecological revolution in Northern Syria. To this end, we have started the campaign “Make Rojava Green Again”, campaign in cooperation with the Ecology Committee of the Cizire Canton. The campaign has three aspects:
- Building up the Internationalist Academy with an ecological ethos, to serve as a working example for comparable projects and concepts for the entire society. The academy will facilitate education for internationalists and for the general population of Rojava, to strengthen awareness and environmental consciousness, pushing to build up an ecological society.
- Joining the work of ecological projects for reforestation, and building up a cooperative tree nursery as part of the Internationalist Academy.
- Material support for existing and future ecological projects of the Democratic Self-administration, including sharing of knowledge between activists, scientists and experts with committees and structures in Rojava, developing a long-term perspective for an ecological Northern Syria Federation.
The first two concrete projects of the “Make Rojava Green Again” campaign are:
- Realization of the concepts of an ecological life and work in the Internationalist Academy, partly with the building up a nursery as a part of the Academy. In the spring of 2018, we will plant 2,000 trees in the area of the academy, and 50,000 shoots in the nursery.
- Practical and financial support for the Committee for Natural Conservation in the reforestation of the Hayaka natural reserve, near the city of Derik, in Cizire Canton. Over the next five years, we plan to plant more then 50,000 trees along the shores of Sefan Lake.
The collective work in the nursery will also be a part of the education in the internationalist academy, as well as a concrete expression of solidarity with the communes, institutions, and structures of the population.
‘Make Rojava Green Again’ as a bridge for internationalist solidarity
These are some of the ways people can support the the campaign ‘Make Rojava Green Again’, the ecological work in Rojava, and revolution in Northern Syria.
- Share this campaign with activists, scientists, and experts from fields such as ecological agriculture, forestry, water supply, and sustainable energy production.
- Contact and liaise with activists, journalists, politicians and others who would be interested in this campaign.
- Write, publish and share articles and interviews about the campaign.
- Share information with friends and family. Spread the word about the growing ecological revolution in Rojava.
- Establish contacts between persons/groups/organizations and the Internationalist Commune of Rojava.
- Work in Rojava itself.
- Support the work financially.
Contact: Mail: makerojavagreenagain@riseup.net Web: www.internationalistcommune.com Facebook: facebook.com/CommuneInt Twiter: twitter.com/CommuneInt
Donations to: Rote Hilfe IBAN: CH82 0900 0000 8555 9939 2 BIC: POFICHBEXXX Post Finance Reference: “Make Rojava Green Again”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 5, 2018 | ANALYSIS, Strategy & Analysis
Featured image: ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
Editor’s note: The following is from the chapter “Other Plans” of the book Deep Green Resistance: A Strategy to Save the Planet. This book is now available for free online.
by Lierre Keith / Deep Green Resistance
Russia is a country with a negative population growth caused by “a collapse of the birth rate and a catastrophic surge in the death rate.”64 The country has a 0.6 percent population decrease, which means it will lose 22 percent of the population by 2050. That adds up to thirty million fewer people.65
One reason for the decline is that Russia has an extremely high involuntary infertility rate. Somewhere between 13 and 20 percent of married couples are infertile, and that number may be rising.66 For women, one of the main causes was a society-wide reliance on abortion as a form of birth control, abortions often done under substandard medical conditions. The literal scars of such procedures have left many women unable to conceive or carry to term. Sexually transmitted diseases are also a culprit—rates of syphilis are literally hundreds of times higher in Russia than in other European countries.67 Marriage rates have dropped and divorce rates risen, and 30 percent of Russia’s babies are being delivered to single mothers—this in a country too poor to offer public benefits. Women can’t afford to have more children.
Add to that a mortality rate that is “utterly breathtaking.”68 Tuberculosis, AIDS, alcoholism, and the disappearance of socialized medicine have pulled the numbers up. The main two causes of death, though, are cardiovascular disease (CVD), which in thirty-five years increased 25 percent for women and an astounding 65 percent for men, and injury. The increases in CVD is traceable to smoking, poor diet, sedentarism, and severe social stress. The injury category includes “murder, suicide, traffic, poisoning and other violent causes.”69 The violence is so bad that the death rate for injury and poisoning for Russian men is twelve times higher than for British men. And both CVD and the violence are helped along by vodka, which Russians drink at an extraordinary rate, equivalent to 125 cc “for everyone, every day.”70
Population in Russia is dropping dramatically without a cataclysmic event or a Pol Pot–styled genocide, which the authors of this book are often accused of suggesting. Though each individual death is its own world of tragedy, the deaths have not collectively brought daily life—or even the government—to a halt.
Russia may best illustrate the kind of slow decline of which Greer writes; and Russia’s disintegration is not even based on energy descent, as oil and gas are still abundant. The former USSR may give us good insights into people’s responses to economic decline, and how best to survive it, but as an example it does not address the conditions of biotic collapse that are our fundamental concern.
Except in one instance: Chernobyl. Ninety thousand square miles were contaminated with radiation; 350,000 people were displaced; and there is a permanent “exclusionary zone” encompassing a nineteen-mile radius and the ghosts of seventy-six towns.
But other ghosts have come back from the dead. Because despite the cesium-137 that’s deadly for 600 years and the strontium-90 that mammal bones mistake for calcium, Chernobyl has become a miracle of megafauna: the European bison have returned, as well as, somehow, the Przewalski’s horse. There are packs—that’s plural—of wolves. There are beavers coaxing back the lost wetlands. There are wild boar. There are European lynx. There are endangered birds like the black stork and the white-tailed eagle, glorious in their eight-foot wingspans. All this even though ten years after the accident, geneticists found small rodents with “an extraordinary amount of genetic damage.” They had a mutation rate “probably thousands of times greater than normal.”71 Yet twenty years after the accident, and with multiple excursions into the contaminated area, the same researcher, Dr. Robert Baker, said flat-out, “The benefit of excluding humans from this highly contaminated ecosystem appears to outweigh significantly any negative cost associated with Chernobyl radiation.”72 Witnessing the return of bison and wolves, who could say otherwise? Even a nuclear disaster is better for living creatures than civilization. And the real, if fledgling, hope: this planet, made not by some Lord God but instead by the work of all those creatures great and small, could repair herself if we would just stop destroying.
Bison in the Chernobyl exclusion zone
There are better ways to reduce our numbers than through alcoholism, syphilis, and nuclear accidents. We don’t need to wring our hands in helpless horror, stuck in a wrenching ethical dilemma between human rights and ecological drawdown. In fact, the most efficacious way to address the twin problems of population and resource depletion is by supporting human rights.
One of the great success stories of recent years is Iran. People’s desire for children turns out to be very malleable. Even in a context of religious fundamentalism, Iran was able to reduce its birthrate dramatically. In 1979, Ayatollah Khamenei dissolved Iran’s family planning efforts because he wanted soldiers for Islam to fight Iraq (and n.b. to those who still think they can be peace activists without being feminist). The population surged in response, reaching a 4.2 percent growth rate, which is the upper limit of what is biologically possible for humans. Iran went from 34 million people in 1979 to 63 million by 1998.73 Let’s be very clear about what this means for women. Girls as young as nine were legally handed over to adult men for sexual abuse: for me, the word “marriage” does not work as a euphemism for the raping of children.
The population surge proved to be a huge social burden immediately, and Iran’s leaders “realized that overcrowding, environmental degradation, and unemployment were undermining Iran’s future.”74 Health advocates, religious leaders, and community organizers held a summit to strategize.
They knew that free birth control was essential, but it wouldn’t be enough. All the major institutions of society had to get involved. Family planning policies were reinstituted and a broad public education effort was launched. Government ministries and the television company were brought into the project: soap operas took up the subject. Fifteen thousand rural clinics were founded and eighty mobile health care clinics brought birth control to remote areas. Thirty-five thousand family planning volunteers were trained to teach people in their neighborhoods about birth control options, and there were also workplace education campaigns. The government got religious leaders to proclaim that Allah wasn’t opposed to vasectomies; after that, vasectomies increased dramatically. In order to get a marriage license both halves of the couple had to attend a class on contraception. And new laws withdrew food subsidies and health care coverage after a couple’s third child, applying the stick as a backup to the carrots.
The biggest social initiative was to raise the status of women. Female literacy went from 25 percent in 1970 to over 70 percent in 2000. Ninety percent of girls now attend school.75
In seven years, Iran’s birthrate was sliced in half from seven children per woman to under three. So it can be done, and quickly, by doing the things we should be doing anyway. As Richard Stearns writes, “The single most significant thing that can be done to cure extreme poverty is this: protect, educate, and nurture girls and women and provide them with equal rights and opportunities—educationally, economically, and socially.… This one thing can do more to address extreme poverty than food, shelter, health care, economic development, or increased foreign assistance.”76
There is no reason for people who care about human rights to fear taking on this issue. Two things work to stop overpopulation: ending poverty and ending patriarchy. People are poor because the rich are stealing from them. And most women have no control over how men use our bodies. If the major institutions around the globe would put their efforts behind initiatives like Iran’s, there is still every hope that the world could turn toward both justice and sustainability.
Photo by Jaunt and Joy on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 10, 2013 | White Supremacy, Worker Exploitation
By Adon Apamea / Deep Green Resistance Middle East & North Africa
Dubai is an interesting city. A thriving futuristic metropolis in the heart of the desert considered to be the crown jewel of modernity with indoor ski resorts, gulf courses, fully computerized metros, giant air-conditioned shopping malls, and the tallest skyscrapers in the world.
Built upon the oil money and over the desert’s sands starting from 1970s, Dubai is rootless more than any other city in the world. With a few thousand original natives, Dubai attracts millions of people today from around the world who come to live and work, or to just take a look at the legendary city.
The dispossessed, like yours truly, come to Dubai for work when all other possibilities are blocked. Some of the latter enter the city with the dream of doing big money. Some come out of desperation while the rest are forced into cheap labor or sold as slaves for the sex industry.
The possessed – those who have loads of money and are possessed with making more money and power, also come to Dubai. Most of them come to squeeze the life out of the first group for profit while some just want to show off their fortune or discover what the fuss is about.
The dispossessed sit on the bottom while the possessed sit on top. The hierarchy looks something like this: native Emirati men – specifically those possessing money, power and oil – sit on top, white western men sit right next or beneath them managing the growth of one of the fastest cities in the world. Some brown men, mainly from Pakistan and India, sit in the third row, and more whitish people and some Arabs sit somewhere in the fourth row making the middle management and landlords of the city. East Asians sit on the fifth row doing all the blue collar jobs, answering phone calls, making deliveries, and fixing air conditioners. And last a majority of Pakistanis, Indians, Bengalis and Sirilankans sit in the last row, building the city in the scorching heat, cleaning houses, and opening doors. In the shadows, an unknown number of women, from all nationalities of the third world are sex slaves, without passports or means to escape their slavery.
In any work, being a white westerner ensures you get a salary four or five folds the one that any person of a brown nationality would get for exactly the same job. An IT engineer of Indian nationality might get a salary of 1500 USD. A British would get 6000 USD for the same job in the same company, just for being white. This is how the system works. Everyone knows it; brown people make jokes about it. White people rarely laugh. In Dubai you discover that racial hierarchy isn’t a theory in a book.
The dispossessed, however, largely share an illusion absent amongst the possessed, that they can join the upper class if they work hard enough. The banks are especially fond of fostering this hope: it just takes a few weeks of living in Dubai to become eligible for a fat bank loan. Agents will knock on your door, call your phone, and come to your office trying to sell you easy loans and premium credit cards. You can wake up a poor man in the morning, and in the afternoon walk from the doors of a bank with a small fortune.
And thus the mighty machine continues its march onward, greased by the sweat and blood of poor people… and by their dreams as well.
Being in the desert, everything in Dubai is imported and packaged in neat plastic or metal containers: water, food, cars, buildings, furniture, and people. The world’s most exotic fruits and foods are available at any supermarket year round, but everything tastes the same. High-tech electronics and the most sophisticated cars in the world are all here too. Even portable ACs, in case you wanted to sit on the balcony in the summer’s desert and you disagree with the temperature. One building in Dubai for example, Burj Khalifa, spends the equivalent of 29.000.000 lb (13.000 tons) of melting ice in one day on cooling. Dubai has 80.000 multistory buildings.
You don’t even have to go to the grocery store or any place else to buy your stuff; the bottom strata of the dispossessed class will cycle in the scorching heat to deliver anything you need to your front door so you don’t move your ass one inch from the sofa. The dispossessed then get a killing tan and skin diseases. The possessed get fat. Doctors and personal fitness trainers make more money.
People who spend a long time here speak of Dubai as a city designed to take back everything it gives to a person. If you don’t have what it takes, the attractions and the marketed lifestyle in the shiny city will invite you to put all the money you made on doing and buying stuff you don’t need before you step your foot again on a plane. Many people leave Dubai in debt.
Dubai is described as the highest expression of civilization, and it really is. It’s a money making machine, and it does a hell of a good job at it. The people who can see the truth, however, would call it for what it is: a monster. A monster devouring the desert, once filled with delicate ecosystems and countless animals and plants. A monster devouring the world, one packaged fruit at a time. A monster devouring its people, one broken spirit at a time.
Dubai though, is not an exception. If you really think about it, Dubai is every city in the world…
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 15, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Saleh Hijaz / Amnesty International
In the small hours of Sunday, more than 500 Israeli police surrounded around 130 Palestinian activists at a protest camp on the hills opposite the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
The camp, which the activists called the village of Bab al-Shams (Gate of the Sun), was set up on privately-owned Palestinian land two days before to protest against the Israeli occupation and continued expansion of illegal settlements, which goes hand in hand with forced evictions in the West Bank.
Heavily armed police moved into the village to remove the peaceful activists on orders from the Israeli government, despite a High Court ruling on Friday not to remove the camp.
Eventually the video stream I was watching was cut off, but it was still possible to follow Twitter, where activists reported on the arrests and eviction moment by moment.
When I woke up in the morning, I began making phone calls to check on the activists.
I reached Zaid, an activist I met last year when he was beaten up by Palestinian Authority police forces for peacefully protesting in Ramallah.
He asked me to call later as he was in the hospital with his brother who was suffering internal bleeding near his eye because of police violence during the eviction; so much for the media reports and Israeli claims that the eviction had been carried out “peacefully”.
I tried others and eventually talked to Sameer via a video link. It was about 6 pm Jerusalem time and he had just woken up.
“I feel my body is one large bruise,” he said. “They beat me hard and the cold only made it worse.” He groaned with pain as he reached to grab a cigarette before describing what happened. He blew smoke and said:
“It was completely dark and extremely cold. There were hundreds of small lights – flashlights the riot police were carrying, coming from all directions. It was surreal, as if we were in a sci-fi film.
“At about 2 am they began to remove us. There were hundreds of riot police. With their equipment and body armour they looked like super cops, and there were only 130 of us huddled in the middle of the village.
“We did not resist the eviction, but we did not cooperate either. The soldiers began to remove us one by one, they kicked to separate us and then four to six soldiers would carry each of us away.
“I was repeatedly kicked so hard on my left leg that I felt it had broken. Three soldiers dragged me away, and when I was out of the journalists’ sight they started beating me with their elbows and kicking me on the back and then threw me on some rocks. Two of the soldiers kicked me while I was on the ground. I was hit on the neck and on my left leg again, and on my back.
“I was then put in a police bus with around 40 others activists, we were all on top of each other and some of us needed urgent medical attention. I could see the ambulances next to the detention bus, but they refused to treat anyone despite our repeated calls.”
Sameer lit another cigarette and continued:
“I need to go for a meeting now to discuss our next steps, but let me tell you: we will return to Bab al-Shams. Just like all Palestinian refugees since 1948 should return to their homes. This is only the beginning,” he said.
“The village represents non-violent and meaningful resistance – a practical challenge to Israeli oppression and injustice. It was created by young Palestinians without affiliation to any group or party. It is only natural that Israel wants to stop us. We expected the eviction, but this will never stop us from defending our human rights.”
The action was indeed inspiring. It presented a new and creative example of how Palestinians are peacefully defending their human rights. But the story of Bab al-Shams also reflects the wider experiences of many other Palestinians.
Near Bab al-Shams, in scattered communities in and around the area known as E1, live around 2,300 Palestinian refugees from the Jahalin Bedouin tribe. They have been there since they were forcibly displaced by Israel from their original homes in the Negev desert in the early 1950s. Some of them were also forcibly evicted again in the late 1990s to make way for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
Today, the Jahalin live in the fear of forced eviction yet again as Israel announced in 2011 a plan to transfer them from the area to make way for new settlements. The majority of their houses, their schools, and other infrastructure have demolition orders which can be executed at any time.
The eviction of Bab al-Shams reflects the fate that the Jahalin tribes may face very soon if Israel goes ahead with its plans, confirmed last November and again on Sunday morning, to build more settlements in the E1 area.
The eviction of Bab al-Shams is a stark reminder that although Palestinians, and not Israeli settlers, have the right under international law to build and plan villages in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, every day the Israeli government continues to deny them those rights.
The international community should take this as a warning that if action against the expansion of illegal Israel settlements – especially the E1 plan – is not taken immediately, whole Palestinian communities will be forcibly evicted from their homes. Amnesty International will continue supporting these communities, and Palestinians’ right to peaceful protest.
From Amnesty International:
