The poetics of the Zapatistas should have been a perfect read. I’ve been fascinated by the Zapatista movement, ever since they stormed into San Cristobel in January 1994, and my sister Lucy (who lived in Mexico at the time) has often enthused of the literary quality of Subcomandante Marcos’s writing. So why was this book such a let down in parts?
Part of the problem was, I think, the author isn’t quite sure who his audience is. The title and front cover (a masked Zapatista doll…
“WHITE MAN DESTROYS CULTURE” is printed in big letters on a sticker at a venue in West Germany where we played. This phrase became my “theme” as we continued to tour throughout Europe. I realized how just reading about stuff or about people’s lives is simply not enough. There’s nothing more important than meeting people from different worlds. I talked a lot about how white man may have destroyed something in the past, but right now I felt that white people can give something back by…
One of the most amazing things that struck me was that 95% of all the shows were organized by people who were just hitting 40 or were beyond it. We were amazed to see such necessary collaboration between ages and sexes. I was sure we were going to be the only oldies (+37) at each show but in fact it is mainly “the oldies” keeping many underground venues and squats going.
I was totally inspired by that.
In one city in France I met three women who all played music or sang in at…
Much of my time in Europe was spent drinking… drinking tons of their best herbal teas and not-so-good chalky hot water. It was not until I got back to Nepal that I thought, maybe that chalky stuff all boiled up and hot probably didn’t help my voice recover one bit.
Drinking alcohol is big in Europe, I decided. There is no party without a drink. And there is no gig without drink. There are band names about drink; there are band names named after beer, or drinking, or about being drunk, or…
One of the most poignant moments of the conference so far was Samarendra Das’s cry to the audience: “We do not want your research! It is not useful to us. We have simple questions, such as: what should the price of bauxite be?”
The interesting things here are “useful research” and “we – you”. What is that polarity?
Before talking about that, I should explain about the pricing question.
Bauxite is often found on mountain tops; it’s the raw material for aluminium. In India…
“To exist as a band without the corporate music industry is in itself a political feat” – sticker stuck on a wall at a venue in North Germany
Sitting in a village on the edge of Kathmandu happily listening to the Subhumans, I had this yearning to go to Europe.
A good friend of ours from Holland calls the West “the fortress”; he said the people, the culture, and the way the whole place works is like a fortress, sealed and intimidating. I agreed with him and so why would I want…
Earlier this year, the Dongria Kondh, an indigenous Indian people dubbed “the real Avatar tribe”, won a major victory over the British mining company Vedanta which had hoped to turn the tribe’s sacred mountain into a bauxite mine (see PN 2520, 2526).
While the Na’vi people in James Cameron’s Hollywood epic defended themselves in a violent clash, the Dongria Kondh’s real-life victory was the result of a well-coordinated nonviolent effort by activists in India and Britain.
Living…
On 8 April, Britain became the first country in the world to ban profiteering in “third world debt”, in the final hours of the last parliament. The Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill restricts the activities of so-called “vulture funds”. These funds are (generally secretive) investment companies that buy up the bad debts of some of the world’s poorest countries at a discount, and then use the courts to demand full repayment plus costs.
Last November, the British high court…
Archbishop Oscar Romero addressed these words to the national guard in El Salvador, the day before he was brutally murdered in San Salvador on 24 March 1980: “Brothers, you belong to your own people. You kill your own brother peasants… the law of God should prevail that says do not kill! No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God.”
30 years on, this advocate of justice, nonviolence and reconciliation was remembered in services, gatherings and articles…
While the director of the Hollywood film Avatar, James Cameron, did not respond to an appeal from Indian tribal peoples in Orissa (see PN 2520), he has lent his support to tribal people in Brazil. Saying: “We’ve got a bit of a spotlight on us right now to raise awareness in certain key areas… and I think that is important,” Cameron visited the Xingu region of Brazil with Avatar actors Sigourney Weaver and Joel David Moore, to protest against the multibillion-dollar Belo Monte hydroelectric…
Founded in 1969, Survival is the only international organisation supporting tribal peoples worldwide. It works closely with local indigenous organisations, and focus on tribal peoples who have the most to lose.
As educators, Survival promotes respect for tribal peoples’ cultures. As advocates, they provide a platform for tribal representatives to talk directly to the companies that are invading their land. As campaigners, they were the first in this field to use mass letter-…
In the run-up to Hollywood’s Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in February, an advertisement was placed in Variety, the US film industry magazine, calling on director James Cameron to support a small people locked in struggle with a rapacious mining enterprise. [1]
Stephen Corry, director of the charity Survival, which campaigns on behalf of indigenous people, drew parallels between the plight of the Dongria Kond in the state of Orissa, India, and the fictional Na’vi people…
Venezuela Speaks! attempts to counter the one-dimensional focus of the Western media on president Hugo Chavez by highlighting the central role that grassroots social movements have played in pushing the Bolivarian Revolution forward.
As one activist explains: “With Chavez or without Chavez, it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Edited by three Venezuela specialists, Venezuela Speaks! is made up of in-depth interviews with 29 radicals and activists – from…
This rousing film – one of a series of seven films under the heading Have You Heard from Johannesburg? – documents the successful campaigns leading to the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa in the late 1960s and ’70s.
Following the launch of the “Stop the Seventy Tour” in September 1969, Fair Play highlights the coming together, in Britain, of students, trade unionists and committed citizens in mass, direct action against the South African rugby tour.
Only a few months…
At the War Resisters’ International Triennial in Ahmedabad, I met a 100%, thorough-going Indian unilateralist. He’s spent his life critiquing the Indian nuclear power programme and, since India acquired the Bomb, arguing for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
He’s the kind of person who, in Britain, would be fervently supportive of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and trying to use it as leverage to force the major powers towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. When…
