I have been thinking a lot recent about our effect on the planet, and the hilarious attempts to appease ourselves in order to feel like we are each doing our bit. Before we start I would like to point out my complicity in this murder / suicide pact, you will find my signature at the bottom.

It made me feel quite shit after it dawned on me: we are not only fucked, but we are actually incapable of changing our ways, as a society I mean.

BUY BYE PLANET!

The problem lies with the fact that we benefit so strongly from a system which is raping the planet and we literally don’t have any other choice but to suck at the tit of what system has to offer. We are told that if we just make small changes to OUR everyday lives that we can reduce our carbon footprint but this is simply bullshit, the same corporations that sold you the inefficient shit now have a (maybe) slightly more efficient product for you to buy, so naturally you sit back on your sustainably deforested wooden chair and feel warm and fuzzy inside like your purchase has turned you into an eco activist.

All the while industrial factories are still using upto 95% of the natural “resources” in our communities to offer us everything from coca cola to iPhones. 

WATER YOU ON ABOUT?

We are told not to use our hose pipes as there is a “shortage of water” yet all the while industry is using billions of gallons of water to refine, recycle and produce. They are complaining about us watering our PLANTS and VEGETABLES?? There is no shortage of water, where is this water going? In Gloucestershire we flood routinely yet a hosepipe ban has been in place for years. In less fortunate countries the water shortages are caused once again by industry contaminating water or damning it off in order to make coca cola or bottled water to flog to anyone who can afford it.

CIVIL WAR

Throughout history when civilisations are not destroying each other they are plundering the land bases of which they rely upon, seas, lakes and rivers have been fished to exhaustion, forests stripped bare and soil destroyed leaving uninhabitable masses of land. The only difference between us and past civilisations is we have fine tuned our own ecocide to be so efficient that we will barely be a footnote in the history books. Our technological era may well be the quickest civilisation to have come and gone in the entirety of history. To not be organising resistance is to sign a suicide pact with the whole of the human race, not just for humans but dragging every creature and ecosystem screaming into the noose with us.

SOMEBODY STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN

-So how do we change every single last man, women and child in the world and get them to stop participating in the rape of this planet? Realistically, we can’t. Whilst people are benefiting from a society where they don’t see the damage being caused why would they stop? Also even if every last person made some of the ridiculous pseudo activist changes like solar panelling and not using plastic bags we are still fucked.

But on the other hand, our communities aren’t the root problem here. Industry is using 95% of the raw materials and planetary resources so why the fuck are we allowing anyone to blame us as a whole? Consumer boycotts never affect big business anyone who can give examples to the contrary please comment!

KILL THE ROOT

Ironic, “KILL THE ROOT” being the tagline of “RoundUp” “weed” killer, made by Monsanto arguably one of the most unethical companies this planet has ever seen. [1] We must realise quickly that we aren’t the problem here, the corporations are. Their factories, warehouses, offices and operations can be sabotaged they can be destroyed and the people who are behind these corporations can be AT A MINIMUM intimidated out of fucking this planet and its inhabitants up any more. This is not violence, this is self defence we are talking about. This is our legacy being taken away from us and our children. I would like to say our children’s, children but it seems unlikely we will get to that historical bookmark with our current course.

HOW YOU LIKE THESE APPLES?

Capitalism is a bit like an apple with poisonous pips.

The apple is edible but the pips kill 2 in 5 people, makes two more people slightly ill for their entire lives and leaves one person eating the nutritious flesh loves the taste and lives to a ripe old age. 

The problem is no-one ever sees the two that die, and the two ill people never see how the one healthy person lives so they don’t know what it is to be healthy, and the healthy person is too healthy and happy to give a fuck about the ill.

At the moment most of western society is eating enough apple to stay barely concious leaving us too weak to ask for anything for ourselves, just sitting waiting for more of the apple. Whilst in the east people are dropping dead because they hardly even have any water never mind apples. Which leaves us with the rich and powerful who have all the apples they could ever need, so many apples that they are rotting and being discarded before anyone else can get to them.

LET THEIR APPLES ROT AND GROW INTO OUR ORCHARDS!

We cannot underestimate our societies reliance on the apple, however bad things are, their institutions are so deeply engrained into the fabric of our existence we cannot simply destroy without thought. We must create alternative institutions which reconnect with the needs of our ecosystems and nature AS WELL as the needs of our communities. As we cannot have one without the other. New communities which treat all life plant, animal and human with respect are needed in order to save us from certain failure.

Not easy huh?

Feel free to share, correct spelling or build upon this,

Chris Freeactivist (A)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hErvV5YEHkE

I thought I would share some of what is flying around my mind whilst sat at work this humid Tuesday after my return from Italy travels and the AR Gathering at Venaus.

Some of the comments I heard at the gathering during “emergency meetings” first hand at the gathering regarding sexism and alcohol were quite frankly disturbing, but some were also alien and new to me and with potential ignorance afoot here I would be grateful if anyone could offer more insight into how different feminist movements globally view this rambling.

After some drunken rowdy behaviour at the AR Gathering this year one evening there was an “incident” of which I was present to see and can categorically vouch that the details are 100% accurate.

Whilst playing a game of twister (without the actual game itself) with arms interlocked involving around 15-20 people a young male who was quite drunk ran around the group and removed the hats of one male and one female and shouted “Is this an orgy?”.

The next day an “emergency” meeting was called to discuss the effect that alcohol had the night before. To put it lightly the story of the evening’s events had become rather contrived. What now had happened was a man had groped a girl during this game of twister and screamed is this a lesbian orgy. Totally untrue.

So a meeting ensued which comprised of a few activists who like a drink and a large majority edgers. I have no issue with straight-edgers what so ever, in fact if I kind of respect them in a lot of ways. However, there was a clear agenda and rallying call to ban alcohol at the gathering and future events and some people were seriously fucked off that alcohol was even on sale at the gathering (regardless of the fact all the money supported a local sanctuary.) this story of macho men harassing women at the gathering was floated and the bullshit was pinned on alcohol.

Being one of the idiots who got drunk on wine and decided along with about four others it would be hilarious to make us look like English louts by shouting football chants one evening this clearly could have been classed as macho. Fine, but if you draw this to the conclusion that we were being sexist that makes you a fucking idiot.

Some idiot even had the stupidity to pipe up with “Drinking is a white European male thing”, I was so gobsmacked by this statement I almost spilled wine into my breakfast. Seriously though, sexism is a two way street, and yes the traffic on this street is very much one way but using sexism to combat sexism is a little problematic. Case in point, another comment in a separate meeting by some prat was “I was born male therefore I am automatically sexist”. No. You were born a fucking idiot, this came about regardless of that tube of meat between your legs.

Is there really a culture that thinks that men are automatically sexist? Patriarchy and sexist attitudes are usually engrained into the fabric of our society, this I can agree on. This is an extremely problematic viewpoint, what would be the point of a feminist movement if what women face is a male populous who have no conscious control over their own minds. What hope for any movement if are born without decision making capabilities because of our genitals?

A few of the other statements made in this meeting.

“There were around fifty women who did not attend the gathering because they were afraid of the sexist males who might attend.”

You have to respect people who refuse to empower themselves, make all the excuses you like, unless you are agoraphobic then you have no excuse to not want to network with other activists to help animals. If you honestly thought you were at risk at a camp of radical activists then I am truly shocked. What are you afraid of? Sexual attack? Sexist comments?

What the fuck do I know, being born with a penis I would surely have no control over myself and would probably just end up being some sort of depraved flasher.

“Some of us have had bad experiences and have been abused by people who were alcohol abusers”

Yes, this is obviously not right. Nor is it right to juxtapose everyone who wants a glass of wine with anyone who would abuse another person or animal. The animal abusers we are trying to combat and the police who protect them would routinely aim to hospitalise you and you worry about fellow activists who socially drink?

“Why don’t we ban alcohol at the gatherings it has no place here!”

For the same reason we don’t ban people who make rash decisions for others based on music subculture like straight-edge… Because frankly I don’t consider straight edge a radical movement anymore than punk is a radical movement. If you want to not drink and keep your edge that is great but If I want to have a drink with my friends in the evening I will do it. I won’t have someone tell me what the fuck I can and can’t do. I won’t get into the violence against drinkers and smokers at various hardcore gigs over the years because it paints the wrong picture is frankly unfair right?

…

Alcohol and drugs can be a real problem within radical circles, it can quickly become a crutch to deal with the shit we deal with when coming up against the abusers and system. It can also turn previously active groups into a bunch of people getting pissed all the time. But alcohol does not make people sexist or racist, it does not make them rape, abuse or murder. These traits exist under the surface anyway. Alcohol problems are not a cause of problems but a symptom of a wider social illness.

Emma Goldman mentions in her essays regarding women’s lib movements that woman should seek to emancipate themselves from suffrage. She talked of the risks of seeking the same hierarchical powers than men had and becoming part of the problem. Sexism does exist within every movement, but feminist activists groups need to accept that if it is true equality that we are seeking then comments that seek to associate genetics and gender with sexism really will negatively impact on the hard work of real feminists.

Rant over… feel free to share and distribute or change it to make me look bad… or correct my terrible spelling and grammer.

Love and Rage (A)

Chris Freeactivist
veganarchist.tumblr.com
chrisfreeactivst@gmail.com

Sad Happy Angry

We all feel like shit sometimes and life has a good way of making you feel terrible when you least expect it. I thought I would share how I deal with some of the crap we all have to deal with in life. If it helps someone else put things in perspective then I would be well chuffed. If you think I’m being emo, I’ll beat you into submission and drown you in your own pain-tears.

“This is Stefan, his name is Stefan, harden the fuck up Stefan!” - Chopper Reid

Step 1. Clean your fucking life.

If you have just been knocked back, your ego bruised and your confidence battered you need to get get your life in order by starting fresh. Tidy your shit up nothing makes you feel more depressed than not having any clean clothes or living in a shit pit. Rid yourself of reminders of anything that makes you feel like shit, if you are have split with your partner get put their stuff in a box and store it away out of sight, at least until you are in a mental place where you can deal with it. Fresh environment = fresh start. 

2. Accept things you cannot change.

One thing is true, you will be happy again keep this in mind always. This is definitely not an easy step to recognise and will take time if you have just split with someone. It is not unusual to cling onto the tiniest hope of changing things that you have no control over, the longer you hold on the longer the healing process will take to start. If you fuck up, just remember how bad you feel, tell yourself it was stupid and don’t do it again. Don’t do what I did and change your ex’s number to your brothers number when drunk and then think she is texting you.

“Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional.” - Some proverb said by Buddha or some shit.

3. Exercise

Exercise so hard that your emotions get a punch in the face. Exercising releases endorphins which will make you feel much better, not to mention getting in shape makes you feel more confident and being happy with your appearance IS important. If you want to lose weight, do it, start doing something new, running and cycling are good things, you can think about things without feeling like you are sat in a dungeon, it helps you put things in perspective whilst the pain of working out takes the lions share over the emotional. If you feel like you are getting depressed go for a run, nothing works better to break the spiralling I’ve-just-been-punched-in-the-solar-plexus feeling.

4. Do something new

I know it sounds cliché but start a hobby: a new language, go climbing, get out to more gigs, travel, its OK to think about your problems for a while but don’t stew. Occupy your time with positive new things, meet new people. We all have things we want to do but let them sit on the back burner, this is a good opportunity to sort your shit out and travel round the world or do something spec-fucking-tacular.

“I will always appreciate bad days like this, Because they grant me a point of reference in regards to my happiness.” - Andrew Jackson Jihad

5. Staying posi

Need to keep on track? Read this post again whenever you are feeling shit, its good to remind yourself of the points and reasons you have to be chuffed with yourself. 

Think of the awesome stuff in your life, accept the past for what it is and realise that nothing is forever and the future is going to be seriously fucking awesome. Stop fucking about and DO what you want, if you fuck up on the way to making your life better then you will feel even better when the good shit happens!

“Buy the ticket, take the ride” - Hunter S Thompson. 

International AR Gathering AHOY!

http://www.argathering.net/