This Week on Connexions.org

New generation: Growing up reading Rachel Carson, scientists unravel risks of new pesticides

Like biologist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring warned about the devastating effects of DDT, a new generation of scientists is trying to figure out if new pesticides -- which are being used in ever-increasing numbers, quantities, and combinations -- are harming living things they’re not intended to kill, including birds. Read More

Keywords: Agricultural Chemicals - Pesticides

Corporate front-man recorded explaining how to use dirty tactics to attack environmental and labour groups

Rick Berman, the king of corporate front groups and propaganda, has been caught on tape detailing his attacks on public interest groups in the labor and environmental movements. Berman specializes in setting up pro-corporate front groups to attack grassroots citizen groups. Berman advocates and practises a range of dirty tactics and propaganda techniques. Read More

Keywords: Propaganda - The Right

The No State Solution: Institutionalizing Libertarian Socialism in Kurdistan

In what many outside of the territory are referring to as the Rojava Revolution, a major shift in political philosophy and political programmatics has taken place in Kurdistan. Yet, this shift is not limited to the region of Rojava, or what many call Syrian or Western Kurdistan – a region where the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has taken an active part in this change. Read More

Keywords: Kurds, Kurdistan - Democratization

'When I Go to Work, I Expect to Be Killed:' The Terror of Being A Fisherman in Gaza

Approximately 4,000 Gazan fishermen rely on access to the open waters of the Mediterranean to make a living. Because of punitive restrictions imposed by Israel, the Gazan fishery has virtually collapsed. Over 90 percent of Gazan fishermen are living in poverty and dependent on international aid for survival. To pursue fish beyond the permitted range means to risk arrest, the confiscation of fishing boats, or even shooting by the Israeli navy. Read More

Keywords: Gaza - Occupation of Palestine

'Enough is enough!' Corruptopolis board game satirizes sleazy Spanish politicians

A Spanish student has created a new board game, Corruptopolis, satirizing the corrupt practices of Spain's economic and political elite. In Corruptopolis, players work in teams to answer questions about major corruption scandals to have rocked Spain over the years. Read More

Keywords: Corruption - Spain

Bringing Books and Seeking Peace in Colombia

A teacher, two donkeys, and a big pile of books are working to enrich the lives of the children in a small community in Colombia. Luis Soriano hopes in doing so to help bring peace to his violence-prone country.teacher, two donkeys, and a big pile of books are working to enrich the lives of the children in a small community in Colombia.Read More

Keywords: Colombia - Books

Treasures From the Archives

The Red Menace

A libertarian socialist newsletter published in the 1970s and early 1980s. A complete archive is available at Connexions.org. Articles on socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, jargon, prostitution, obscenity, science fiction, and terrorism. Read more

Root & Branch

A libertarian socialist journal published in the 1970s and 1980s. Some issues have been archived at Libcom.org. Articles on working class activity, old left and new left, ecology, workplace experiences, trade unions, Rosa Luxemburg, anarchism, Marxism. Read more

People's History News

Germany and Britain: Memory and Myopia

Ernst Barlach was one of Germany’s great expressionist artists of the early twentieth century. A virulent nationalist in the run-up to the First World War, Barlach found that his experience of the Western Front stripped him of his jingoism. Much of his subsequent work explored the sorrow and suffering that he saw as the human condition.
In 1927, he created for the cathedral in Güstrow, a small town north of Berlin, a war memorial called Der Schwebende (the Floating One). The sculpture featured a figure with a haunted, grief-stricken face cast in bronze and suspended from the ceiling, as if hovering, angel-like, over the fields of Flanders. Ethereal and transcendent, Barlach’s sculpture is far from the monumental structures that usually commemorate the fallen, and yet captures so starkly the loneliness and terror of war.The Nazis declared Barlach’s work ‘degenerate’ and melted down Der Schwebende to make ammunition to fuel the next World War. Thankfully, a new figure was cast from a secret copy and after World War Two it was installed at Güstrow. Read more

Keywords: Collective Memory - German History

A Network of Indigenous Language Digital Activists in Mexico

The Internet has emerged as a space where many in Mexico can communicate online using indigenous languages, as well as to create new digital content instead of being just consumers of content. More importantly many are becoming more active advocates by encouraging and supporting others to be part of this movement. Their digital activism is part of an overall strategy along with academic research, documentation, and the introduction of language learning in schools, which can help build a foundation for a new generation revitalizing indigenous languages. Read more

Keywords: Aboriginal Languages - Language Preservation

Topic of the Week: Libertarian Socialism

Libertarian socialists hope to bring about a fundamentally different world, one in which capitalism, which distorts and destroys human lives and the planet we live on, is replaced by a free and truly democratic society. Libertarian socialism seeks to expand the realm of freedom to the greatest possible extent in creating a society based on cooperation mutual aid. Read more

Website of the Week: Libcom

An extensive website featuring current articles and resources as well as many historical documents from the various currents of libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalism. “Libertarian communism is the political expression of the ever-present strands of co-operation and solidarity in human societies. These currents of mutual aid can be found throughout society.”
The site is designed as “a resource for all people who wish to improve their lives, their communities and their working conditions. We want to discuss with one another, learn from experiences of the past and develop strategies to increase the power that we, as ordinary people, have over our own lives.” . Visit Website

Keywords: Libertarian Socialism - Mutual Aid

Book of the Week: Class Notes: Posing As Politics, and Other Thoughts on the American Scene

Adolph Reed argues against the solipsistic approaches of cultural or identity politics, and in favour of class-based political interpretation and action. Class Notes moves on to tackle race relations, ethnic studies, family values, welfare reform, the so-called underclass, and black public intellectuals. Read More

Keywords: Class - Race Relations/Racism

Flim of the Week: Even the Rain (También la Lluvia)

2010. Directed by Icíar Bollaín. Starring García Bernal, Carlos Aduviri, and Luis Tosar.

A Spanish film crew comes to Bolivia to make a feature film about the Spanish conquest of Latin America, focusing especially on the central figures of Christopher Columbus, the radical priest Bartolome de las Casas, and Hatuey, the Taino chief who led an uprising against the colonizers. Daniel (Carlos Aduviri), the actor playing Hatuey, is simultaneously involved in protests against the privatization of the water system in Cochabamba. As the protests are met with police repression which in turn causes the protests to become more widespread, filming is interrupted and crew members are forced to decide where they stand on current-day struggles against oppression. Read More

Keywords:Bolivia - Colonialism - Water Rights

Connexions Calendar

November 13-17, 2014
Conspire
Toronto, ON

November 15-16, 2014
Canadian Labour International Film Festival
Singapore

November 23, 2014
Rally in Solidarity with Migrant Detainees: United Against Raids & Detentions
Toronto, ON

Read more →

Seeds of Fire

November 13, 1775

An American army captures and occupies Montreal. The American goal is to conquer Canada, a campaign which fails when the American forces are defeated at Quebec City on December 31. In Montreal, there is widespread resentment as the occupying forces arrest Loyalists and threaten to arrest and punish anyone opposed to the American cause, while paying for goods with paper money that is seen as worthless

November 13, 1862

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who writes stories under the name ‘Lewis Carroll’ starts writing “the fairy-tale of Alice,” eventually published as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

November 13, 1974

Karen Silkwood (1946-1974), a technician and union activist with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers’ Union at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, dies in a suspicious one-car crash.

Read more →

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