#uncultivated nation

[jhara-ivez]

3 days with my german family and I already realize that I hate all the german food.

So boring.

[tamamita]

hey sal feel free to ignore this but i got into an argument with a zionist who claimed that arabs sold their lands to them, is this true

This is interesting, because it ignores a lot of context. Keywords to remember is the Ottoman capitulation, the Felaheen, the Sursock purchase and the eviction of Palestinians that inhabited the area at that time.

The Sursock family was a family of Aristocratic landlords with strong ties to the Turkish and European nobility dating back to the 19th century. The Sursocks were known to have mass purchased land in Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. While they were absentee landlords, they hired Arab labours who inhabited the purchased land at that time. When the Turks capitulated following WW1, the Turks were pressured into allowing the land to be sold to the PLDC, the Palestinan (later Israeli) Land Development Company. The PLDC sought to purchase the Jezreel valley, which consisted of 20-25 Arab villages, from the Sursock. . Keep in mind that the Jezreel valley was the most fertile land of Palestine and close to the economic city of Haifa. Following the mass purchase of land by the PLDC, the Jewish landbuyers expelled Arab tenants and depopulated the Arab villages despite their usufruct, and right to toll on the land. This all came as a surprise to the Arab inhabitants. This was all part of the idea that cheap Arab labour should be replaced with Jewish labour, this despite the fact that Arab labourers had greater expertise on the agricultural field; the settlers were unfamiliar with the land. Keep in mind that according to JNF, the Jewish national fund, only 3% of the Palestinian land were uncultivated, destroying the myth that the land bloomed as a result of its settler colonizers. The Hashomer Hatzaeer would come to be the center of these kibbutzim and would establish over 30 kibbutzim built ontop of the Arab villages before 1948. As a result, the Arabs, or Felaheen (The Arab peasant class) put up a resistance against the JNF out of concrete material reasons and attempted to fight back against the expansion of these kibbutzim. This was the first instance of Arab resistance against Zionism.

All of these lands were purchased before 1948 and the Arabs were expelled and depopulated only for the kibbutzim to be established with the help of the money provided by the Jewish Colonization association and its organs. However, the British mandate did not require the landowners to compensate for the expelled Arab tenants. The Arabs were forced to migrate to slums and towns. In one of these towns, a notable Syrian resistance fighter would rise up, namely, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, and declare jihad on the British. When the Arabs resisted their dispossession by every means necessary, even violence, the Zionists used this as an excuse to fortify their colonizers and expand them due to "escalating security needs". Since the colonizers were too weak to face the resistance, they turned themselves to the British to gain their support in an attempt to expand their lands as means of security for the Kibbutzim. In a memondarium written by the Kibbutz Hazora (a settlement in Jezreel) to the Jewish Agency in 1936: "Our basic demand is for our own instutions to help us ugently in getting the British authorities to expand our territory--this is a vital issue for us.". A similar pretext is used whenever the colonized put up resistance against their colonizers, in which the same excuse is used to further expand and colonize the lands. This is the logic of the oppressor in any context, whether it is colonial or in the class struggle.

[ghelgheli]

Recognizing this central ambivalence in regard to so-called Western values—whereby they are cast out as “postmodern authoritarianism” only to be embraced as the “true spirit” of societies to come—is essential to understanding the strategic significance of the anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial language. This ambivalence sheds light on the fact that the superficial takeover frames the “gender ideology” colonizer not simply as the “West as such but [rather as] the West whose healthy (Christian) core had already been destroyed by neo-Marxism and feminism in the 1960s” (Korolczuk and Graff 2018: 812). Very often, the anti-gender misappropriation takes on a decidedly Islamophobic hue; for all their catering to anticolonial sentiments, anti-gender thinkers often claim that “gender ideology,” with its historical roots in anti-European “neo-Marxism and feminism,” goes hand in hand with the threat of (Muslim) immigration. A blatant example of this can be found in former Cardinal Sarah’s proclamation against the two unexpected threats of our times:

On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS.” . . . From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West [and] the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy [and] female subservience. (Sarah 2015)

Sarah aggressively draws up a dual picture of the true enemy—the biopolitical survival of the family is threatened on the one hand by excessive secularization and sexual freedom, and on the other by “ideologized Islam’s pseudo-family,” which marks the degraded and uncivilized counterpart to Christianity’s proper tradition. This discursive construction of “terrorist look-alikes” as possessing an excessive, uncultivated, and dangerous sexuality yet again plays into the same fundamental racialized mapping of progress that colonial gender undergirded (Puar 2007). This rhetoric is mirrored by Norwegian right-wing politician Per-Willy Amundsen (2021) when he writes that:

I will never celebrate pride. First of all, there are only two sexes: man and woman, not three—that is in contradiction with all biological science. Even worse, they are allowed access to our kids to influence them with their radical ideology. This has to be stopped. If FRI [the national LGBT organization] really cared about gay rights, they would get involved in what is happening in Muslim countries, rather than construct fake problems here in Norway. But it is probably easier to speak about “diversity” as long as it doesn’t cost anything. (Amundsen 2021; translation by author) Here Amundsen draws on the well-known trope of trans* and queer people “preying on our kids” while at the same time reinforcing the homonationalist notion that Europe, and in particular Norway, is a safe h(e)aven for queer people—perhaps a bit too much so. In his response to Amundsen, Thee-Yezen Al-Obaide, the leader of SALAM, the organization for queer Muslims in Norway, aptly diagnoses Amundsen’s rhetoric as “transphobia wrapped in Islamophobia” (as quoted in Berg 2021). Amundsen mirrors a central tenet of TERF rhetoric by claiming to be the voice of science, biology, and reason in order to distinguish his own resistance to “gender ideology” from the repressive, regressive one of Muslims. In this way, his argumentation, which basically claims that trans* people don’t exist and certainly shouldn’t be recognized legally, attempts to come off as benign, while Muslim opposition to “gender ideology” is painted as destructive and anti-modern. This double gesture, which allows Amundsen to have his cake and eat it too, is a central trope in different European iterations of anti-gender rhetoric. In France, for example, such discourse claims that, “while ‘gender ideology’ goes too far on the one hand, the patriarchal control of Islam threatens to pull us back into an excessive past. Here of course, ‘Frenchness’ is always already neither Muslim, nor queer (and certainly not both)” (Hemmings 2020: 30). Therefore the French anti-gender movement sees itself as the defender of true Western civilization, both from Western “gender ideology” and from uncivilized “primitives” who are nevertheless themselves victims of “gender ideology.” A similar dynamic plays out in Britain: “Reading Muslims as dangerous heteroactivists and Christians as benign points to how racialization and religion create specific forms of heteroactivism. . . . Even where ‘Muslim parents’ are supported by Christian heteroactivists, they remain other to the nation, and not central to its defence” (Nash and Browne 2020: 145). In the British example, it is clear that white anti-gender actors represent themselves as moderate, reasonable, and caring—often claiming that their resistance to the “politicization�� of the classroom has nothing to do with transphobia and homophobia.

Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism? Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang

[scotianostra]

On 15th September 1773 the emigrant ship “Hector” arrives in Pictou Harbour on Nova Scotia carrying 189 Highlanders, most loaded two months earlier in Ullapool.

Although they were not the first Scots to arrive in North America they were the vanguard of a massive wave of Scottish immigrants to arrive in what is now Canada. In the century following the landing of the Hector more than 120 ships brought nearly 20 000 people from Scotland to the port of Pictou. By 1879 more than ninety-three percent of the region’s rural property owners had Scottish names.

Ironically, very few of the Hector people stayed on the Pictou Plantation. They had been cruelly deceived by the shipping company that brought them out to Nova Scotia. The land was not ready for settlement as promised and supplies for the coming winter were meagre. Most of them moved on to settled parts of the province leaving an intrepid handful of their countrymen to fend for themselves in an uncultivated wilderness.

The Hector was owned by two men, Pagan and Witherspoon, who bought three shares of land in Pictou, and they engaged a Mr John Ross as their agent, to accompany the vessel to Scotland, to bring out as many colonists as they could induce, by misrepresentation and falsehoods, to leave their homes.

As they were leaving, a piper came on board who had not paid his passage; the captain ordered him ashore, but the strains of the national instrument affected those on board so much that they pleaded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share their own rations with him in exchange for his music during the passage. Their request was granted, scrolling through various passenger lists I have found out the Piper was more than likely a man called William McKay.

All those travelling that were aged over 8 were required to pay full fare for the passage, those between 2 and 8 were charged half fare under 2’s were free. It was bad enough that they were conned with the promise of land in Canada but conditions on board the Hector were said to be horrendous, the ship was barely sea worthy and has been described as a crumbling wreck. I can’t find any mention of how may survived the 11 week journey or how the passengers were related to one another it was a nine week journey over the Atlantic, Smallpox and dysentery took their toll on the infants and children on board. In all, eighteen died at sea, I think by that they mean 18 children, poor things. By the time the rotting hulk landed, people were picking at the planks to find worms to eat.

On arrival about all that they seen was the dense forest grew down to the water’s edge as far as the eye could see.

The unfamiliar customs and appearance of the natives inhabiting the area so terrified the settlers that they remained on board for two days despite their desire to walk again on dry land. Finally, on September 17, 1773, dressed in full Scottish regalia, with all pageantry of their kilts and the pipes, they went ashore

The “Hector” pioneers faced extreme difficulties during their first year in the New World, but with the development of a lively timber trade with Scotland and the finalising of land grants, conditions improved and the development of what is now Pictou County was under way. The land was rich, the rivers and oceans plentifully stocked with fish, and the timber of high quality.

Pics are of a stamp issued in 1973 to mark 200 years since the crossing and the Hector replica at Pictou. The Hector Heritage Quay is one of Nova Scotia's major cultural tourist attractions. The Hector is a full-sized replica of the original ship. A Highland Homecoming, a celebration of the strong Scottish spirit, takes place on-site every September. and kicking off today.

You can find all the details on their FB page here https://www.facebook.com/shiphector/

[dailyanarchistposts]

Section I: Preface to this Chapter

In a Capitalist system, there is — in fact — a constant and perpetual economic depression. In every period of history of the Capitalist nations of the world, there has always been the omnipresence of the ghetto, the masses on the fringes of starvation, the widespread effects of poverty, misery, want, and criminality. Unemployment of the millions is a marked trait of any stage of economic development in the Capitalist nations. A year never passes in these nations that thousands do not die from hunger, millions are pushed on to the streets as paupers and beggars, and hundreds of thousands of children become homeless. Economists may assert, one way or another, that the nation is going through a recession or a depression or a boom or a bust, whatever terminology that they can supply to others to get them to invest or sell out. But the boom and the busts are only relative. In one case, only forty million are unemployed, in the other, only thirty five million. The evidence again and again confirms one recurring fact when examining the an economy: the Capitalist system is in a constant and perpetual depression. Poverty is an intrinsic element of the “free” economy.

Why, one may inquire, is it that the system of Capitalism, and not the present situation, is blamed for the poverty and want of a nation? I can only answer in strict confidence that Capitalism may be blamed because it is an economical system, and in this respect, it is the method by which wealth is distributed throughout a society. There are and always have been vast, countless tracts of land, uncultivated and unused, while there are thousands and millions starving on the streets, without a home to live, without food to eat. But to a Capitalist, who serves only his desire of self-interest, these individuals — whom have no money or anything of value to offer — do not concern him. To argue that Capitalism is a system inherently stuck in a depression, one must not even bring up the uncultivated lands. There is enough food in this world presently to feed all that are starving, there is enough land to house all the homeless, there is enough wealth existing to give everyone luxury. There is enough work to be done, that if it were done productively, for the good of the whole instead of the good of a single individual, everyone would have a decent, respectable job, considerably shorter than our current eight hour day. It is the system of Capitalism, that funnels wealth to the rich and brings poverty to the masses; in its boom one out of ten million stops starving and its bust an additional ten million are brought to the fringes of misery and want.

Waste, too, is an inherent component of the Capitalist system. Under the desire to profit, those who own the means of production will do what they must in order to gain a revenue; it is in their own self interest. So long as there are empty mouths on the brink of starvation, there will be a Capitalist willing to poison enough of his food so that all cannot be fed — so long as there are people without homes and subject to the wretched abuse of nature, there will be a Capitalist willing to burn buildings so that all cannot be housed — and so long as there are people suffering from the pain of cold, there will be a Capitalist willing to destroy clothing so that all cannot be comforted. A decrease in supply will mean that demand will rise. While a Capitalist could sell 1,000 loaves of bread for $1 per loaf, making a total of $1,000 revenue and feeding everyone, he could sell 500 loaves of bread for $5 per loaf, making a total of $2,500 — but leaving half the population to die. All this will be done under the guise of “free trade” of “free enterprise,” and our economists have failed miserably to do anything worthwhile by blatantly using the word “free,” as it has not helped the majority of people escape from oppression.

[cliozaur]

- “Cosette had been taught housekeeping in the convent, and she regulated their expenditure, which was very modest.” That’s cool thing to be able to do when you are not even sixteen! (And that’s the skill that Thénardier obviously lacks, for he consistently squanders family’s fortune whenever he comes into his a substantial sum of money.) But on the other hand, Valjean’s reluctance to take charge as the “master of the house” and have a say in housekeeping matters is somewhat disturbing. He considers himself unworthy and shifts the responsibility onto Cosette. Which is a bit too much. While she is the mistress of the house, he is, well… the father—whatever it means. Valjean is aware that Cosette was raised and educated as a bourgeois girl in the convent, and now he’s creating an environment for her to continue feeling like one. It is so amusing to imagine him engaged in interior design of her rooms! How he was searching for and bringing into the house all those Persian rugs, canopied beds, silver-gilt dressing-case etc. While reading the description of Cosette’s rooms, I had a feeling that we have returned to the old Gillenormand’s house!

- Jean Valjean himself assumes the façade of a respectful bourgeois: he pays taxes and is even a member of the national guard (that’s how he obtains a national guard uniform to infiltrate the barricade and then to pass it along)! However, he conceals his true identity and date of birth from authorities. This dual life—appearing as a bourgeois during the day and as a working-class man at night (as Marius accurately guessed when he saw him disguised as a labourer)—shows the complexity of his existence.

- “Jean Valjean had left the garden uncultivated, in order not to attract attention.” It’s so bizarre that a man who had been tending gardens for many years, had to refrain from taking care of his own garden once he finally had one. Although, he hardly regards it as “his own” garden.

[thebusylilbee]

Promising that the Zionists would develop and modernize Palestine and make effective use of its resources to transform an “uncultivated” and “undeveloped” land, the American Zionist Federation claimed that the Zionists did not seek separation from the Ottoman Empire and instead would only benefit the Turkish government. Completely ignoring the indigenous Arab population in Palestine, the American Federation of Zionists presented the Jewish colonization of Palestine as a solution to the problem of anti-Semitism in the West, a solution that would benefit Western civilization. [...] Some Zionists, however, warned that the Zionists, in promoting their movement, had failed to address the Arab question. In 1907, HaShiloah[note : a Hebrew journal] published Yitzhak Epstein’s speech directed toward the Seventh Zionist Congress in Basle two years prior. [...] Epstein, who migrated to Palestine from Russia in 1886, argued that “the question of our attitude toward the Arabs” was the most important question for Zionists to debate, but was “completely hidden” from them. For Epstein, the Zionist movement had largely forgotten “that there is in our beloved land an entire people that has been attached to it for hundreds of years and has never considered leaving it.” [...] Epstein observed that an overwhelming majority of the Arab population cultivated the land, which undermined the prevalent idea that “there [was] in Eretz Israel uncultivated land” due to a lack of population and “the indifference of the inhabitants.” Consequently, Epstein expressed concern about the fate of the Arab peasants if the Zionists purchased the land because Jewish land purchase often meant the eviction of Arabs whose families had lived on the land for generations. [...] For Epstein, the Zionists needed to act with caution and respect the ��national rights” of the Arabs so as not to “provoke the sleeping lion.” [...] While warning that the Zionists could not simply conquer and dispossess the Arab population, he argued that Zionists ought to “come to our land to take possession of what is not already possessed by others, to find what others have not found, to reveal for our benefit and for the happiness of all the inhabitants the hidden wealth under its soil and the concealed blessing in its skies and sun.” Zionists would capitalize on Western methods to purchase and develop uncultivated areas, which would cause no conflict with the Arabs. Additionally, Epstein argued that Zionist would purchase cultivated areas and introduce Western scientific methods to improve the lives of the Arabs tenants and allow for Jewish settlement on the land. “As enlightened owners” in the tradition of the civilizing mission ideology, the Jewish population would provide for the moral, physical, and spiritual betterment of the Arabs, gradually ameliorating Arab hostility and resistance to Zionism. In time, “our Arab tenants will recognize us as their benefactors and comforters and will not curse the day when the Jews came to settle on their land, but will remember it as a day of salvation and redemption.” [...] Epstein, however, represented a small minority of Zionists.

MacDonald, Robert, ""A Land without a People for a People without a Land": Civilizing Mission and American Support for Zionism, 1880s-1929" (2012). History Ph.D. Dissertations. 24.

[girlactionfigure]

Zionists stole no land

2 historical reports debunk this - the 1930 Hope Simpson report & Peel Commission report 1937. They identify 5 categories of land under Ottoman rule ( 1517 - 1917 ) & under British mandate Mulk Miri Waqf Metruke Mewat So what category of land was stolen & when / where it was land registered by the owner So few indigenous Arab Palestinians ever owned one square foot of land - why ? Hope Simpson identified that of the approximate 10000 square miles covering the total geography of Palestine the land category segregation was comprised thus . Mulk or freehold accounted only for approximately 1% of the total and Zionist , Jewish organisations and individuals had legally acquired all . Waqf also approximated 1% and this was land of religious or charitable organisation ownership such as mosques, churches and synagogues and is still under such ownership today . Metruke and Mewat accounted for about 78% of the total land area and was designated state land and wasteland and set aside for ownership ( under immutable legally binding agreement endorsed within codified international law ) for the Jewish people on achieving an independent nation state . No person nor organisation owned any of this land - uncultivated marsh , desert or land set aside for parks , gardens , roads , paths , highways , government or military use etc . Thus the notion that Arab Palestinians previously owned the majority of the land land had it stolen is a total fabrication as confirmed and established in government reports . We have already identified that 80% was not owned by Arab Palestinian individuals nor families . Thus we are left with the Miri category or leasehold . The reports identify that one quarter of the remaining 20% of the Miri geography was legally acquired by Jewish organisations, families or individuals and all such land was registered and leased for 50 years. That leaves a remaining 15% of leasehold land and the vast majority of this was returned to government and this is explained simply as follows. In order to retain cultivation over the leasehold status the Fellahin ( peasant farmers) had to establish three years continuing cultivation (the then customary term of the lease ) and prove land registration . The former was virtually impossible as Bedouin marauders and Arab armed factions from wealthy Arab families drove the Fellahin from their land and substituted their own families or other Fellahin forcing them to pay higher prices to them . Knowing this the Fellahin never had their land registered as it was expensive and in the knowledge that the criminal Arab families and Bedouin would’ve probably kicked them off the land as was customary. The main other reason which ensured that the Fellahin left before the short leases expired and were returned to Government was as a direct result of malaria and drought that ravished the geography from circa 1912 and damaged the land for the next three decades. Being unable to substain three years continuous cultivation as the lease demanded the Fellahin had no option but to leave and give up the land they were farming . New improvement in agricultural technology initiated by the Zionists ensured production enhancement and created work for thousands of Arab immigrants and Fellahin . Lastly under oath to Sir Laurie Hammond at the Peel Commission the leader of the Arab delegation none other than the Nazi collaborator himself the Grand Mufti, testified on oath when pressed over and over again on the subject of stolen land , that NO land had been stolen but all legally acquired. He even named the Syrian, Turkish and Lebanese families mainly responsible for selling to the Jewish organisations and individuals. Historical evidence debunks all current Arab Palestinian narrative alluding to the myth of stolen land .

@baum_p

[mariacallous]

This investigation contains graphic images and footage as well as references to killing and mutilation that some readers might find distressing.

An image analysis by Bellingcat shows an infamous Russian neo-Nazi with ties to the controversial paramilitary Wagner Group may be involved in the staging of a photograph showing a man holding a severed head in Syria.

Alexey Milchakov oversaw the far-right Rusich Group, described by experts as a ‘contingent‘ of Wagner, the armed group that staged a rebellion against Russian authorities last year. Rusich has previously been implicated in war crimes in Syria and Ukraine, including torture and mutilation. According to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Milchakov has at various times shared command of Rusich with Yan Petrovsky. Both men are subject to sanctions by the US, EU and other governments.

On February 10, 2020, the Telegram channel of a prominent Russian military blogger posted an image of a man in uniform holding a severed head. Behind him was another severed head and a backdrop of hilly, uncultivated terrain as far as the eye could see, smoke rising from the horizon. Then, on January 18, nearly four years after the original post, Rusich’s official Telegram channel posted the same image before deleting it shortly thereafter. The face of the man holding the head had been censored in the image, which may have been taken in 2017. Although references to an unobscured image exist on social media, Bellingcat has yet to discover it. But by using open source research methods, even the obscured version of the image can shed some light on the identity of this uniformed man in the hills outside Palmyra. 

Since the photo was initially uploaded, further imagery of Rusich fighters in Syria has surfaced, providing further reference material against which to compare the image. We used the arrangement of camouflage patterns on the man’s uniform to conclude that his uniform is the same as that worn by Milchakov in multiple photographs seen on his social media accounts. It is, therefore, possible that the man holding the severed head is Milchakov himself, who is also known as ‘Fritz’ and ‘Serb’. 

This would not be the first time that Wagner or Wagner-affiliated soldiers have committed such acts in Syria.

In a statement posted to their Telegram channel after Bellingcat reached out for comment, Rusich wrote, “the acts depicted do not constitute a war crime because a) we’re not military and b) we were happy to do it.” Rusich did not directly address whether Milchakov was the man in the image or involved in the incident, though without any evidence or explanation suggested it could be a far right Belarusian national who fought alongside Ukrainian militants in the Donbas war. Bellingcat attempted to contact Milchakov via his VK account but received no response.

This image was published after a November 2019 article by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta identified a former Russian police officer as one of a group of Wagner mercenaries who recorded themselves torturing and mutilating a Syrian man in June 2017. The article and a follow-up from April 2020 are crucial pieces of evidence of atrocities by Wagner mercenaries in the country, though no charges have ever been filed. (Caution: these links contain graphic images of torture and mutilation.) Meanwhile, Rusich and Wagner Telegram channels have on several occasions posted other redacted images showing armed men wearing the same uniform as that worn by the man who held up the severed head. These were taken in the same area of Syria as the aforementioned beheading image. Severed heads and other images of extreme violence feature heavily in internal and external propaganda in Wagner’s online culture. In Syria, photos of heads on stakes and skulls were widely shared and, in some cases, turned into alternate logos for Reverse Side of the Medal (RSOTM), a mercenary culture brand. In Russia’s current war against Ukraine, Wagner fighters and their supporters have distributed similar imagery.

[newsandletterscommittee]

Just as the process of organizing the proletariat as a class is not, on the other hand, a gradual evolutionary fact, a slow and progressive maturing; it’s a tumultuous succession of qualitative leaps corresponding to violent and often bloody clashes between classes, through which the proletariat of the destitute overcomes in a single stroke the more coarse and immediate forms of organization, divided by locality and sector, discontinuous in time and space, breaks through the narrow limits of the parochial and company, subordinates the personal, local and corporate interests of individuals and groups to ever broader interests and aims, until in the political party every boundary of group, category, nation is obliterated and every act obeys the imperatives of the ultimate and general aims of the class.

A dialectical process that has nothing to do with the idealistic interpretation of history, whereby each stage is annulled by the next and, having reached the summit of “consciousness”, humanity enters once and for all the “reign of reason”.

The party, itself a product of material determinations, is a battle order, which, possessing superior theoretical and organizational weapons, is called upon not only to defend them against the converging attacks of capitalist society and even against the nagging of those material determinations to which it owes its life, but to carry them as instruments of decisive action within the immediate organizations into which they continually flow, driven by the pressure of the facts of capitalist society and the motion of incessant proletarianization of the middle classes, new levers of wage‑ earners; the party is therefore called to radiate therein what, in periods of reflux of class struggle, may be only the “light” of the historic revolutionary program but which is destined to become, in fiery periods of social conflict, the great “magnetic field” of polarization of all the subversive forces unleashed from the underground of the bourgeois social and political order.

The party is neither the Spirit hovering above the waters of biblical mythology, watching from on high the confused moving and stirring of a humanity imprisoned in the fetters of the flesh, nor the Demiurge who, at the X hour, descends into the arena and single-handedly changes the face of the world: it’s a material force whose decisive action in the great unfoldings of history is possible on the sole condition of meeting with the gigantic thrust that comes “from below”, raw and “uncultivated” as a natural and physical phenomenon, not directed and not determined by conscious ideologies or distinct concepts (Engels 1890: “it will be the non‑ socialists who will make the socialist revolution”), but led irresistibly to move on the terrain of the program which, even in its darkest hours, the party will have been able to proclaim and defend against all and in spite of all, in the ranks and organizations of the wage‑ earners struggling against capital.

Firm Points of Trade Union Action, Il Programma Comunista, no 19 (1962)

[paleodictyoptera]

I'm curious if this a uniquely north american problem, or if this conversation is just unaware of other continents-

And I just remembered how thorough the use of fire by Aboriginal peoples was in the process of completely reshaping Australia's landscape. The rainforest flora was pushed to the absolute wettest parts of the coast where fires don't really take hold anymore, resulting in like 90% of the continent being fire-dominated due to human influence. And they've had much longer to experiment with shaping the community if western archaeology is to be trusted (50-60k years for Australia vs. 12-25k years for North America), so it's likely even more adapted to human influence.

This has to be a global issue, wilderness is defined largely in the context of white people history; in many cultures there's no equivalent concept. I heard about conflict over rewilding in Wales, one part of which being the initial translation of rewilding from English to Welsh was more like "making a wasteland" than any form of restoration. People have been shaping the land they live in since there've been peoples and lands; 'wilderness' in western cultural carries all the political baggage of colonialism and seeing other cultures and nations as savage and the land they gain sustenance from as uncultivated.

And it needs to be smashed.

If you can recognize how much of North America was cultivated over thousands of years by indigenous people, then you also need to recognize that a significant chunk of "wilderness" here is dependent on human intervention to thrive.

There are countless plants and fungi, from mushrooms to grasses to trees, that have been proven to do best when regularly harvested, whether it's because harvest makes them release seeds or clears away dead growth or provides more light to younger plants, cultivation means that harvesting is often to the benefit of the plant.

Which means that you also have to recognize that locking those plants away from people, even with the best intentions, can actually do horrible damage to their populations and to existing ecosystems.

There isn't an easy solution to this problem. Proper foraging isn't something that most people are taught anymore and many of these plants do not have significant enough populations right now to survive excessive harvest.

But going forward, as we work on restoring ecosystems and helping our planet (and our relationships to the land) heal, then we need to acknowledge that humans and nature are not separate entities and that we've always been dependent on each other.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.17 (after 1930)

1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law. 1932 – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits. 1933 – Union Station massacre: In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash. 1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is executed in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison. 1940 – World War II: RMS Lancastria is attacked and sunk by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 3,000 are killed in Britain's worst maritime disaster. 1940 – World War II: The British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces. 1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union. 1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic. 1948 – United Airlines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board. 1952 – Guatemala passes Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land. 1953 – Cold War: East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion. 1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing 18 ironworkers and injuring others. 1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty. 1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8–1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools. 1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm announced the Joint Communiqué to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed. 1967 – Nuclear weapons testing: China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon. 1971 – U.S. President Richard Nixon in a televised press conference called drug abuse "America's public enemy number one", starting the War on drugs. 1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee during an attempt by members of the administration of President Richard M. Nixon to illegally wiretap the political opposition as part of a broader campaign to subvert the democratic process. 1985 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-G mission: Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a payload specialist. 1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct. 1989 – Interflug Flight 102 crashes during a rejected takeoff from Berlin Schönefeld Airport, killing 21 people. 1991 – Apartheid: The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth. 1992 – A "joint understanding" agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II). 1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. 2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. 2017 – A series of wildfires in central Portugal kill at least 64 people and injure 204 others. 2021 – Juneteenth National Independence Day, was signed into law by President Joe Biden, to become the first federal holiday established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

[jimresorts12]

Dhikala Forest Lodge Packages immerse by hand in wilds

Nestled within the heart of Jim Corbett National Park lies an oasis of stillness and adventure — the Dhikala Forest Lodge. Bounded by dense plants and swarming with varied wildlife, this quiet lodge offers companies a unique chance to immerse themselves in the wild beauty of nature. With Dhikala Forest Lodge packages, adventurers can go aboard on a trip of discovery, forging memorable reminiscences amidst the wilderness.

At Dhikala, the regularity of life slows down, allowing visitors to reconnect with the natural world in ways that are both thoughtful and inspiring. As you step into the backwoods, you will find yourself enveloped by the tourist attraction and sounds of the jungle — the moderate rustle of leaves, the harmonious cheeping of birds, and the distant roar of a tiger deep through the forest.

Dhikala Forest Lodge packages are intended to cater to a variety of preferences, offering amazing for every type of traveler. Whether you are looking for an awe-inspiring wildlife safari, a serene nature walk, or simply a quiet retreat amidst the wasteland, there’s a package that’s just right for you.

For nature enthusiasts, the emphasis of any Dhikala package is undoubtedly the safari experience. Led by practiced naturalists and safari guides, these excursions offer guests the chance to come across the park’s resident fauna up close and personal. From imposing tigers to indefinable leopards, from cheerful elephants to elegant deer, every safari promises a new and exciting escapade, with each instant spent in the wilds overflowing with the likelihood of an awe-inspiring wildlife sighting.

In addition to the safari experience, Dhikala Forest Lodge packages often comprise guide nature walks, as long as guests with the chance to travel in the region of the park on foot and find out its concealed resources. Led by well-informed guides, these walks offer insight into the park’s ecology, flora, and fauna, allowing visitors to gain a deeper approval for the wonder of the natural world.

For those looking for a more immersive practice, some Dhikala packages also take account of overnight stays at the lodge itself. Nestle amidst the backwoods, the lodge offers comfortable accommodations and up-to-the-minute amenities, allowing guests to let everything go and invigorate after a day of adventure. As night falls, the jungle comes alive with the work of art of the night creature, providing a magical location for a memorable stay.

But possibly the most allure of Dhikala Forest Lodge packages lies in the occasion they provide to separate from the stress of contemporary life and reconnect with the beauty and tranquillity of nature. In a world where constant connectivity has developed into the norm, Dhikala offers a welcome respite — a possibility to step off the compressed path and engross oneself fully in the wilds, if only for an instant.

In conclusion, Dhikala Zone Packages offer adventurers the opening to immerse themselves in the uncultivated beauty of Jim Corbett National Park and forge unforgettable reminiscences amidst the wilds. Whether you’re looking for breathtaking wildlife encounters, serene nature walks, or a quiet retreat amidst the jungle, Dhikala has amazing to offer everybody. So why wait? Get on your journey of detection today and experience the magic of Dhikala by hand.

Source link:- https://medium.com/@seo.jimcorbettresorts/dhikala-forest-lodge-packages-immerse-by-hand-in-wilds-c07ec7a52aa6

[whileiamdying]

How a Dream Came True: Young Jane Goodall’s Exuberant Letters and Diary Entries from Africa

BY MARIA POPOVA

When Jane Goodall (b. April 3, 1934) was a little girl, she was given a stuffed toy chimpanzee, whom she named Jubilee. From that moment on, little Jane and Jubilee became inseparable, but she especially enjoyed sitting with him on a tree branch in her family’s backyard, where she would read the Tarzan novels for hours on end. Like most children, Jane transformed the toy and the books into raw material for dreams — in her case, the dream of going to Africa to study the curious lives of monkeys. Unlike most children, she spent the next two decades turning that childhood dream into a reality by becoming the world’s most influential primatologist and the most celebrated woman in science since Marie Curie.

When she boarded the S.S. Kenya Castle one chilly spring day, 22-year-old Goodall was burning with exuberant enthusiasm for the work she was heading to Kenya to do. But she had no idea that this work, at first met with enormous resistance, would revolutionize not only our understanding of chimpanzees — her lifelong locus of curiosity and expertise — but our understanding of the complexities of all animal consciousness.

Jane Goodall with the young chimp Flint at Gombe (Photograph: Hugo van Lawick, Goodall’s first husband, courtesy of Jane Goodall Institute)

In a letter to her family penned aboard the Kenya Castle in March of 1957, found in the altogether magnificent Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters (public library), Goodall writes:

Darling Family, It is now 4 p.m. on Thursday and I still find it difficult to believe that I am on my way to Africa. That is the thing — AFRICA. It is easy to imagine I am going for a long sea voyage, but not that names like Mombasa, Nairobi, South Kinangop, Nakuru, etc., are going to become reality.

The first page of Goodall’s letter to her family from aboard the Kenya Castle

On April 3 — her twenty-third birthday — Goodall finally arrived in the dreamsome reality of Nairobi. Her first letter home brims with uncontainable gusto for the life she was about to begin — a life she had purposefully pursued since childhood:

I really do simply adore Kenya. It’s so wild, uncultivated, primitive, mad, exciting, unpredictable. It is also slightly degrading in its effect on some rather weak characters, but on the whole I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.

Illustration by from ‘Me … Jane,’ a picture-book about Goodall’s childhood. Click image for more.

But the most fateful date in Goodall’s journey came more than three years later: On July 14, 1960, she arrived in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, where she would spend many years conducting the groundbreaking research for which she is celebrated today, and to which she still returns frequently in the course of her tireless environmental conservation work.

It was there that she met, named, and befriended the now-famous David Greybeard — the first chimp to overcome the fear of human contact and the generous gatekeeper who made possible Goodall’s research amid the chimpanzee community.

Jane Goodall with David Greybeard at Gombe

On her very first day at Gombe, Goodall saw her first chimp. It was a highly unlikely occurrence — at that point, scientists considered chimpanzees mysterious creatures at once wild and timid, nearly impossible to sight, let alone approach. In a diary entry from that first day, preserved by The Jane Goodall Institute, the young scientist captures the tremendous thrill of that miraculous event — a visceral affirmation that she was indeed living her childhood dream:

We woke at dawn … Left about 9 and arrived about 11. The fisherman were all along the beaches frying their dagga fish. It looked as though patches of sand had been whitewashed. Above, the mountains rose up steeply behind the beaches. The slopes were thickly covered with accacia and other trees… Every so often a stream cascaded down the vallys between the ridges, with its thick fringe of forest — the home of the chimps. The lake water was so clear I could scarcely believe it. Our tent was up in no time, in a clearing up from the fisherman’s huts on the stony beach. We had some lunch together, and then Ma and I spent an exhausting and hot afternoon setting things in order. I say exhausting because I had a foul sore throat, turning into a cold. Then, about 5 o’clock, someone came along to say some people had seen a chimp. So off we went and there was the chimp. It was quite a long way -too far to tell its sex or even see properly what it looked like — but it was a chimp. It moved away as we drew level with the crowd of fishermen gazing at it, and, though we climbed the neighboring slope, we didn’t see it again. However, we went over to the trees & found a fresh nest there. — Whether that day’s of the day before I couldn’t tell. We returned to the beach and walked back. We all had dinner together, and after long chats, & helplessly endeavoring to hear the news, Ma and I thankfully retired to bed.

Although 26-year-old Goodall was accompanied by her mother at Gombe — a requirement by the park’s chief warden, who was concerned about the young primatologist’s safety, and a reflection of what women scientists had to grapple with in that era — she continued corresponding with her relatives at home. On day three at Gombe, she writes in a picturesque letter to her grandmother Danny and the rest of the family:

We got here, Danny, on your birthday & mentally had tea with you — just after I had seen my first chimpanzee! I could hardly believe I could be lucky enough to see one on my very first day. We were quite far away, but at least close enough to know it was a chimp & not a baboon. There are lots of Baboon here — one Troop comes very close to the tent each morning to watch us. I went out yesterday afternoon to do a little exploring on my own and saw a beautiful bushbuck — a smallish animal, lovely reddish gold colour. He flew away almost from under my feet, barking like a dog.  The country here is quite beautiful, but very rugged. The little stream behind the tent rushes down the steep rock valley, gurgling and splashing down steppes of waterfalls. The water is pure and sweet — doesn’t even have to be boiled. 16 such streams flow down the valleys between the mountain ridges, & along their banks are the forest galleries, the home of the chimps. In between the mountain slopes are fairly bare — really it is ideal country for my job, though at the moment the task seems of a huge magnitude. We got here, Danny, on your birthday & mentally had tea with you — just after I had seen my first chimpanzee! I could hardly believe I could be lucky enough to see one on my very first day. We were quite far away, but at least close enough to know it was a chimp & not a baboon. There are lots of Baboon here — one Troop comes very close to the tent each morning to watch us. I went out yesterday afternoon to do a little exploring on my own and saw a beautiful bushbuck — a smallish animal, lovely reddish gold colour. He flew away almost from under my feet, barking like a dog.  The country here is quite beautiful, but very rugged. The little stream behind the tent rushes down the steep rock valley, gurgling and splashing down steppes of waterfalls. The water is pure and sweet — doesn’t even have to be boiled. 16 such streams flow down the valleys between the mountain ridges, & along their banks are the forest galleries, the home of the chimps. In between the mountain slopes are fairly bare — really it is ideal country for my job, though at the moment the task seems of a huge magnitude.

To see the passion and perseverance with which Goodall has dedicated her life to the accomplishment of that monumental task is nothing short of breathtaking.

Jane Goodall with David Greybeard at Gombe

Complement the altogether exhilarating Africa in My Blood, a trove of Goodall’s contagious enthusiasm and goodness, with the beloved scientist on empathy and our highest human potential, her answers to the Proust Questionnaire, and a lovely children’s book about her childhood.

[saintlydior]

all about reinvention

i pray that this will never be

my last bloom

i waited for this growth

yet

i still want to grow more

tall like a balete tree in national highway

as durable as acacia

and rare like lapnisan in the deepest jungles of southeast asia

i do not fear reinventions

but

i fear that i won't be able to keep

the people i have right now

in the process

of morphing myself into

something that'll benefit me

and my peace

at some point

i do not want to reinvent

myself constantly

perhaps i want to be better

scattering my roots freely

and bloom

& bloom

&& bloom

like a wildflower uncultivated

by the world's incongruities

[big-cat-safari]

Unveiling the wonder of Dhikala Canter Safari: A Wildlife journey Like No additional

Explore the uncultivated wonder of Jim Corbett National Park with the Dhikala Canter Safari. Bystander stately Bengal tigers and other varied wildlife in their natural surroundings. Pass through lush forest and scenic grasslands on the ship open-roof canter vehicle, creating etched in your mind moments in the heart of this iconic Indian animal’s refuge.