January 2008

Is non-extraction the answer?

Date:

In response to growing discussion of ‘zero growth’ ideas among some environmentalists, Alan MacSimoin asks Is non-extraction the answer?

In recent years, with climate change dominating headlines regularly, it has become popular among some environmentalists to propose non-extraction of fossil fuels as a viable way to reduce the effects climate change. But if this idea was taken up what would be the result? Less oil & gas being processed means what is available will rise in price. That’s the logic of capitalism. And having to pay even more for home heating and cooking is not going to change the habits of the wealthy but would have a big impact on most of our pockets. Making things even more expensive than they are at present will not exactly endear environmentalists to most people.

Protest - Justice for asylum seekers

Date:

Protest
Dáil Éireann
Kildare Street, Dublin
1 pm, Wednesday 30 January

Belfast Shell To Sea protest

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On Friday 1st February Shell Oil will announce their profits for the year (last year they announced that they had made £20 billion). To mark this Shell to Sea in Belfast will be holding a candlelit vigil outside Belfast City Hall to remember the victims of Shell's money grabbing and to ask why they can't afford to send their gas refinery in Mayo offshore.

Book review: 'How non violence protects the state'

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“Pacifism simply does not resonate in people’s lives everyday realities, unless those people live in some extravagant bubble of tranquillity from which all forms of civilization’s pandemic reactive violence have been pushed out by the systemic and less violence of police and military forces.”

“Ultimately, nonviolence is created and encouraged by the State, and antithetical to anarchist revolution”

Week of action for Iranian oppositionsts

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We have received this appeal from the Worker-communist Party of Iran.

Week of Action in support of jailed students and political prisoners in Iran (2–9 Feb 2008)

Feminism, Class and Anarchism

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It is quite common these days to hear criticisms of “mainstream” or “middle-class” feminism from anarchists or others on the revolutionary, and even the not-so-revolutionary, left. In particular, anarchists are often quick to criticise any feminist analysis that lacks a class analysis. This article argues that feminism in its own right is worth fighting for and that when it comes to ending sexism an insistence on always emphasising class can end up merely distracting from the fact that as anarchists we need to be unambiguous when it comes to supporting feminism. Rather than distancing ourselves from other feminists or seeking always to qualify our support, our emphasis should shift to developing and promoting our own brand of anarchist feminism.