Fortis est veritas: Oxford Climate Campers Take Over Carfax Tower!

Well done to all concerned (especially those who did such an excellent banner)!

And particularly good timing, as so many people in the Oxford area are suffering the effects of climate change in the form of flooded homes, cancelled trains and blocked roads - it ISN'T just something that harms people living on little islands a long way away.

"Any attempt to solve the ecological crisis within a bourgeois framework must be dismissed as chimerical. Capitalism is inherently anti-ecological. Competition and accumulation constitute its very law of life, a law . . . summarised in the phrase, 'production for the sake of production.' Anything, however hallowed or rare, 'has its price' and is fair game for the marketplace. In a society of this kind, nature is necessarily treated as a mere resource to be plundered and exploited. The destruction of the natural world, far being the result of mere hubristic blunders, follows inexorably from the very logic of capitalist production." - Bookchin

...eco-anarchists, like all anarchists, reject appeals to state power as this "invariably legitimates and strengthens the State, with the result that it disempowers the people." They note that ecology movements "that enter into parliamentary activities not only legitimate State power at the expense of popular power," they also are "obligated to function within the State" and "must 'play the game,' which means that they must shape their priorities according to predetermined rules over which they have no control." This results in "an ongoing process of degeneration, a steady devolution of ideals, practices, and party structures" in order to achieve "very little" in "arrest[ing] environmental decay." [Remaking Society, p. 161, p. 162 and p. 163] The fate of numerous green parties across the world supports that analysis.

from...  http://www.infoshop.org/faq/secE1.html

This was indeed an excellent banner at just the right time.

Our anarchist friend complains that ordinary Greens have no control over the rules which govern our democratic system and our society in general. But nor has he. The Greens are very much nearer winning signifcant poplular support than he is. They achieve real political goals. Anarchists are unrealistic.

It seems to me that a camp at Heathrow is certain to end in tears, but perhaps this is the intention. With the present terrorist alerts at airports, nothing like this will be tolerated by the police or wanted by the public, and understandably so.

CLF

Anarchists who, like Bookchin tends to, propose totalized, universalisable solutions to the problem of power are unrealistic, perhaps.

However, greens who think that they can reform capitalism or state power to deal with the problems inherent to those structures are unrealistic, too. Each partial victory yields another often more severe problem, especially for those at the periphery of the global economy. And each victory leads to further consolidation of state and capitalist domination over another aspect of our lives.

Its the same with lefty vanguardists who think they can force the working class to be free by rebuilding the state power relationship with them, that is the vanguardists, at the top. Same failure to acknowledge that reinforcing structures of domination and oppression is going to result in those structures becoming more powerful and all-pervasive.

People working to overcome oppression without appealing to state power are more realistic; they can participate in actual change that doesn't increase state power or defer change until after the revolution.

Anyway I'm ranting.

On indymedia? Imagine that!

Fucking ace action, props to all involved!

" ....reinforcing structures of domination and oppression is going to result in those structures becoming more powerful and all-pervasive. "

You know, the working class is not what it was. A lot of the little devils have cars, and they like having cars too, and going on holiday to Spain. This is what emits the carbon dioxide. I really don't see how domination and oppression come into it. If their faces were being ground, they wouldn't emit so much carbon dioxide centrally heating their houses, either. They would buy a few lumps of coal and keep it in the bath, where it belongs. If they were lucky enough to have a bathroom: and the less hot water they use the better.

These environmental issues are new ones requiring persuasion, technical innovation, and, yes, an efficient capitalist system to get the marketing and technology off the ground, rather like the internet and your cheap powerful computer. You aren't going to develop efficient wind-powered generators by killing off the enemies of the revolution, any more than you are by sitting in a circle communing with Mother Earth.

For those of you keen to see the story of the Ark Builders, check out this page...  http://curioustheatrecollective.blogspot.com/2007/08/ark-building.html

"You know, the working class is not what it was. A lot of the little devils have cars, and they like having cars too, and going on holiday to Spain. This is what emits the carbon dioxide. I really don't see how domination and oppression come into it."

You clearly haven't visited the Niger Delta lately, then.

Working class leisure travel equates to about 10% of total flights taken through the big london airports.  http://www.parliament.uk/post/e3.pdf

Average income of households using Gatwick for leisure flights is £52k according to the CAA,  http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=14&pagetype=65&appid=7&newstype=n&mode=detail&nid=1362

Around 35-55 percent of all flights are taken by business travellers. At Heathrow their average income is about £79k.

This sounds to me not like "they" are going on holiday to spain, but that the rich are flying all over the place whilst the poor nationally and more particularly globally have to deal with the effects of climate change.


"... an efficient capitalist system to get the marketing and technology off the ground, rather like the internet ..."

Which was invented by a state-funded monopoly (ARPA), not by the "free" market at all ;-P

"You aren't going to develop efficient wind-powered generators by killing off the enemies of the revolution, any more than you are by sitting in a circle communing with Mother Earth."

I didn't suggest either. Though both are preferable to the constant pursuit of profit and "economic growth" (aka the pumping of the Earth's resources upwards to the wealthiest in society) which is driving climate change.