Förwilda-Camp in Sweden

“The summer in Sweden is cold and the sun never sets. That’s what we found out during our week-long stay in the diverse Forest ‘Vilseskogen’ near Gässjö in Angermanland in middle/north Sweden. There grow mostly pines and spruces, and some of them are 400 years old. Other characteristic species are mooses, different kinds of berries and lickens. When we went for inventory we found some red-listed species and our first wild orchid. The water of most of the lakes and springs is drinkable.
Our camp was set up on a hill in the middle of the forest. It was a small camp with a lot of different people, including locals from Gässjö. We had different workshops, self defence, practiced tree-climbing and learned how to build an instant platform. Furthermore we took long walks in the forest and talked about strategies to save forests in different local struggles.
But why did we meet here?

This forest is supposed to become toilet paper. The biggest private land owner in Europe, SCA, is planning to clearcut the entire ‘Viseskogen’. SCA is a company certified by FSC (Forest Stuardship Council) as an attempt to make them look clean and ecological. But under the logo of FSC forests are cut down in which red listed species are found. SCA only has to protect 5%
of the forest, but they can change the protected areas as they like over the course of time. This puts all of their forests at risk and does nothing to protect them in the long run. We now know the true face of the Satanic Clearcutting Assholes that they are.”

Continue ReadingFörwilda-Camp in Sweden

With Love, Gratitude and Solidarity from Hambi to Zad!!

As the reports of constant repression, violence and destruction in ZAD NDDL reach us in the Occupied Hambach Forest [blockaded against RWE’s Mega toxic lignite Coal Mine] many here also see and remember the constant stream of creativity, refuge, support, inspiration and solidarity that ZAD NDDL has provided and became for so many through out the years and continues to do so despite wave upon wave of State repression and violence that has been and continues to be thrown at it. Zad like countless other struggles, uprisings and revolution is the ultimate reminder of how much is possible with so little and how “so little” can signify so much.
That is why at this difficult time, also here in the Hambi (just reading the reports but also preparing for waves of deforestation and evictions this year beginning in October),a mega dose of Love, Solidarity and Constant Support is being sent to you from this ancient also endangered but also occupied, barricaded and defended for last seven years forest.

Continue ReadingWith Love, Gratitude and Solidarity from Hambi to Zad!!

Rainbow Action vs RWE Agenda of Climate Chaos


Celebrating 40 years of resistance to Lignite Mining in Rhineland the previous Sunday a “Rainbow Action” took place in the forest.  Starting with hundreds of bicyclist converging from both Cologne and Aachen bringing back a cheerful, colorful and busy feeling breaking the Forest monotony of constantly anticipating and dreading large police actions and evictions.  Anticipating or denying which has turned into such an art and sport in Hambi that perhaps bets should be taken with the winner who gets the date of next police action right getting as a reward a police baton or helmet from past actions that can be found at ZAD or at many infoshops.  Those not guessing right or not knowing would and will be hit with hundreds more batons, sprayed in the face with pepper spray during those more unwelcome visits that could happen today, tomorrow or day after and which more and more resemble large scale military maneuvers and exercises.

If the majority had any actual and not just simbolic say in aproving these actions not just everyone in those photos but most of the German and World’s population would choose to have those same resources invested in sustainable and ecological energy transition, re-training, education and not in Climate Chaos imposing repression of present day reality of RWE’s Energie-Reich of North Rhine Westphalia and of German and Global North’s Illusion of Coal Exits and energie transitions, while thermally nuking the Global South and destroying last remaining millenarian habitats left in all of Europe.

In the forest the continual insanity if lignite extraction and dumping of over 150 millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere from the mine destroying Hambi alone and the waves of brutality, arrogance and injustice that perpetuate it, all of it is also beginning to resemble less and less repression as we have known it and more and more feudal hunts in which the local peasants(the police) would form lines and funnel wild animals into awaiting feudal lords, in this case RWE, that would dispatch them with a spear or a crossbow, in our case locking-up and taking out of action forest and climate activists for months and months in prisons in ever greater numbers, stripped of any illusion of a due process while the whole habitat of Millenarian Hambacher Forest is being killed and erased: as if it were a hunting trophy in the Fossil Fuels Planet-wide safari keeping the whole Earth in the cross-hairs and not letting go of the trigger.  Slaughtering last of the last while going on an on about either about Cease Fire or about how dangerous those animals really are.

These cheerfull and colorful photos are our own distraction from the  bleak, gray planet wide cloud of coal dust, its microparticles and carbon, concussion grenades and CS gas and in the Global South of live bullets that is beginning to engulf us and the rest of the planet like the dome of coal driven smog and smoke that now covers most of  Chinese cities.  None of which would not be possible without the present campaign of Green Scare Propaganda (latest Bild tabloid article with Hambi on front Page “Eco Terrorism out of Control” in which local police chief is quoted as saying that Hambi eviction would take two months) that projects a darker image of ecological activism. This image being more more conducive to keeping climate activists and occupiers of the forest in prison for months without transparent and just(if such thing ever existed in capitalist legal machine) legal process, keeping the environmental groups and experts out of coal exit talks as RWE would like and will get if the climate emergency it is causing will continue to cause more political polarization, more fear based politics and more corruptions and shortsightedness of those in power. Propaganda and lies that attempt to erode this support seen in those fotos, divide one group from another and finally limit the discussion on why so little is done to address this global emergency when so many resources are used instead to attack and imprison those that point out and fight against these systemic problems.

If there can be “No Jobs on a Dead Planet” then also all the pension funds, gifts, investments and positions that RWE is offering right and left to influence the status-quo “decision”-making and which it uses to enlarge its Climate-Change-Denying-Idiot-Bubble and to continue to get a free ride and to maintain their planetary criminality and terrorism(giving  actual criminals and freedom fighter world over a horrible rap)then all those perks and kick-downs that keep the capitalist machine oiled up and greased up are all pretty meaningless as well.  Breathing money can not be any more successful than breathing CO2 especially in a “Culture” that connects one to the other and finances and justifies its own suffocation.

As this year started with arctic melting and ice-cover break-up in mid-winter and continues with extreme weather all-time temperature records aready in April and May it will continue with some of the largest police actions in (Post?)Modern Germany  putting in place and reinforcing a global disaster that is so extreme, complete, irreversible and unprecedented that it will be especially the children and descendants of those who with wealth, privilege and arrogance are attempting to isolate themselves from this reality who will be wanting the answers the most.

The people in the Forest and many of those in those photos will not fall in the category of those that have done nothing or who helped to destroy all hope for stable and livable planet. It has been said that the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago and the next best time is now. This must be another thing that Fighting Climate Change and trees have in common.

Join us then here and everywhere to resist this toxic, waves of scorching heatwaves fueled by fossil fools reality that few would  be willing to accept if it wasn’t forced upon the population, and upon those in the forest and those on the barricades with tanks with helicopters, with platoons of cops with dogs and horses and then followed with criminalization and unjust non-transparent prison sentences. Forced by hierarchical patriarchal power structures that manage to convince those they co-opted and sucked into their sphere of influence that they do not have any individual choice, which might be the case but that does not absolve any of those involved from responsibility for their actions. Responsibility that they will have to face in the imminent future of food insecurity, climate destabilization and ecological collapse. Responsibility that they all will have to face especially from those closest to them they are pulling with them into violent and precarious reality in which the weather becomes our enemy and specie after specie vanishes at the fastest rate in the history of this planet, the gretest extinction not the 6th(chronological designation)of Life ever.  Hence once again the importace of Propaganda in redirecting the attention from, how State and power structures are imposing a reality of terror, huger and violence on the rest of the planet to focus on activists that are atempting to stop this globally suicidal machine.

Einstein said that if bees vanish(rather prophetic statement as colony collapse disorder managed to wipe out most of domesticated bees already) we are bound to follow.  It should take no Einstein to guess what the faith and effect of “business as usuall” mentality  on this Civilization, on humanity in general, and especially of this Planet as a whole will be and already is if more than half of all species are killed-off, climate turns each year more and more into an unstable nightmare and such vital resources as clean water and air become more and more scarce.

 

You want to imagine the future? Imagine a Coal Power Plant’s Smoke Stack that perpetually collapses on each being and each habitat that exists and that will ever exist on this Planet, and that keeps collapsing and crashing down on them all forever……

Ok a little admission of guilt for all of those who did not spot it: the previous sentence is a total rip off of Orwell’s quote. He said that if you want to imagine the future imagine a Jack-boot that steps on a human face forever.  With both police chief of Duren: Winesbach(sp?) who quadruples at least every estimate of activists in the forests in his frequent especially tabloid interviews and not any less surreal Rhine Energie board of advisors member and police minister of North Rhine Westphalia Herbert Reul, both in a big hurry to change their sneakers and office shoes for army boots with the new draconian police laws that they are attempting to put in place and which they have already been testing on Hambi prisoners  for awhile with minimal public outcry outside of anarchists communities. Will all of that this quote like that of Einstein’s warning about the bees is turning to be another self-actualized prediction.  So until at least the army boot and munitions factories get buried by the collapsing-coal-power-plant-chimneys of climate-chaos get ready for one bumpy ride.  Get a guitar and/or gas mask, crypto up, form a reliable affinity group, don’t forget to tell all un-solidaric assholes to fuck-off and no matter what have fun.  Poetry, music and art have always been a crucial part in the arsenal of protest and resistance…

On a finite planet not just all good things but also the bad ones must come to an end and how and when they end is decided especially by those who have not buried themselves in the virtual media and industry manufactured “realities” and who for every connection to life and solidarity that is severed forcefully and intentionally form at least two in their place, two that become much stronger than ever before as their importance finally is realized.

For the Earth, For the Climate, For Hambi!!

 

 

 

Continue ReadingRainbow Action vs RWE Agenda of Climate Chaos

Sun. 29.4 Bike actions from Cologne and Achen: 40-year Anniversary of Ati-Coal Struggle

Reposted from www.fuerhambi.org

On Sunday, the 29th of April, we will head back to the Hambacher Wald – by bike demo from Cologne and Aachen as well as on foot from the train station Buir: We will be at the edge of the open pit between the trees of the Hambacher forest and the coal excavators of RWE gathering together, forming a bikeline and unfolding a 100 m rainbow banner: our protest is colorful, peaceful and diverse – full of hope and determination([Hambi Blog]: we include this statement without distancing ourselves from Earth-defenders world-wide who have chosen militant tactics, especially such as Zadists, Zapatistas and other indigenous groups fighting as well for their lives, communities and the Planet). For 40 years there has been persistent resistance on the ground: from the citizens’ initiatives to the forest occupation that has been going on for six years #HambiBleibt. Together and in solidarity, we will continue to fight, save this forest and thus usher in the end of fossil energies!

The Hambacher Wald must no longer be cleared for the burning of lignite. Its centuries-old pedunculate oaks and hornbeams are the home of many endangered plant and animal species, eg. B. the strictly protected Bechstein bat. The forest belongs in public hands, under nature conservation and under the control of a democratic forest council elected by citizens.

The Rhenish lignite mining area is Europe’s largest CO2 sling and thus one of the central locations where the climate crisis is made. We live in a world that has already become warmer. This global warming is already having devastating consequences for the people of the global South. At the beginning of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn in May 2018, we are therefore calling for an exit from coal power with all clarity. We stand for consistent climate protection and internationally lived climate justice. As a population, we assume responsibility where the federal government fails.

And our dispute for climate protection does not end with lignite. Also in the transport sector, we have to get out of the health and climate damaging combustion of diesel and gasoline: We demand a change in mobility! The future of cities belongs to walking, bicycles and high-performance public transport. In doing so, we protect people’s health, create a more socially just city and make an important contribution to global climate protection. Therefore, on April 29, a bike demo will make its way to the Hambach Forest.
Bicycle Demo – Meeting Point and Route:
April 29, 2018, 09:30 clock, Cologne, Roncalliplatz
Rainbow Banner Action on Hambi – Meeting Point:
April 29, 2018, 13:00 clock, Morschenich, open pit edge

 

Continue ReadingSun. 29.4 Bike actions from Cologne and Achen: 40-year Anniversary of Ati-Coal Struggle