#Worldwide #Information #Blogger #LucSchrijvers: #Part1 #Update: #anarchist #information from all over the #world - 28.04.2020

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL - UCL Economics
      Working Group, The indecency of Amazon, and other economic news
      (fr, it, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  cgt.org.es - No person is illegal (ca) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
  
3.  Britain, AFED, organis emagazine: Why I don't want you to
      clap for me | Current Events - from a community nurse in London
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
  
4.  Britain, AFED, organise magazine: Eco-fascism: The Rhetoric
      of the Virus | Theory And Analysis (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Britain. solfed: THE CORONAVIRUS LOCKDOWN SEES DOMESTIC
      VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN SURGE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
 
6.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #304 April is free in
      PDF (fr, it, pt)[machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
7.  ait russia: Protest of workers of a garment factory in
      Kaliningrad [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1



This note was produced by the UCL Economics Working Group, aimed at synthesizing essential data on the economic situation we are going
through with the coronavirus crisis. It is as sourced and factual as possible, and aims to link the main data on the economic situation with
more general political and social analyzes. However, it was carried out by activists who are not economic professionals. do not hesitate to
report any errors to the working group. ---- State of production and employment ---- Between March 29 and April 4, more than 105,000
applications for unemployment registration were recorded, ie + 7.3% compared to the same period last year. Two weeks earlier, it was + 31.4%
of registrations at pole job compared to the same period a year ago. Regarding partial unemployment, it has further increased and now
concerns 9 million people in France. Today, one in two employees is paid by the State provisionally. The number of companies applying for
partial unemployment now stands at 700,000, or more than one in two companies. In the USA, it is 22 million more unemployed in 4 weeks. For
the month of March, the number of business creations is down sharply across all sectors, but it is in accommodation and restaurants that we
see the biggest fall. In the information and communication sector, the decline is more moderate but no less real. According to INSEE, " the
sectors which contribute most strongly to the decrease in all creations[of businesses]are trade (contribution of -5.1 points) *, household
services (-3.9 points) and construction ( -3.4 points)  ".

On the employers' side, the situation of confinement is not tenable from the point of view of the sustainability of profits. This is why we
can read in the bourgeois press calls for recovery, even if it means putting the lives of workers at stake explicitly. An eloquent example
in a column by Eric Le Boucher, managing editor of the magazine supplement of Les Échos: "  This means that we have to go back to the
strategy of collective immunity and accept the deaths that go with it. We will adjust the exit speed to limit the number, test to identify
Covid-plus and Covid-minus, distribute masks, but not too much (people must catch the disease), infringe on freedoms by tracing patients
identified  "No comment.

Macron, in his speech, also encouraged the recovery before May 11: "When the safety of workers and entrepreneurs is guaranteed, they must be
able to produce". Except that the state and employers are unable to provide us with this, and yet companies are already resuming work. But
this is not inevitable: after a court decision (following the complaint filed by SUD) requiring the cessation of delivery of non-essential
products, Amazon decided to close its warehouses in France. The firm thus exerts pressure by blackmailing the job, although, as we will see,
it is not to be pitied ...



Situation of the financial sphere

On Wall Street, the big digital firms (and in particular the famous "  GAFAM  ": Google, Apple, Facbeook, Amazon, Microsoft) beat historical
capitalization records. This is not very difficult to understand, since the containment measures have greatly increased internet usage and
subscriptions to various services like Netflix. The Nasdaq, the main Wall Street index devoted mainly to companies in the IT sector, had the
best month in its history and "  probably the best monthly performance for a US index. " (By the way, Amazon has been cramming for several
weeks, which is reflected in stock prices and the fortune of its CEO, Jeff Bezos, whose already scandalous fortune has increased by $ 24
billion in the last four months. complaints from Amazon France following recent court decisions which are all the more indecent ...) The
Nasdaq is an interesting index for more than one reason: historically, it was the very first market to operate electronically, and this
since its foundation in 1971. It is also the second largest stock exchange in the United States (behind the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE),
and the fourth worldwide. It imposed itself by detonating many IT start-ups, but at the cost of major crashes such as the bursting of the
internet bubble in 2000. Today, there are GAFAMs and many companies such as Tesla, Texas Intstruments, Starbucks, Netflix, eBay, etc. This
index is therefore a symbol and a central indicator of the most high-tech financial capitalism. It concentrates its ambitions and
innovations but also the most deleterious flaws. Remember, however, that despite the euphoria of the past month, the Nasdaq is far from
having returned to its level of February 18, where it peaked at an unprecedented price of more than 9,700 points, against 8,500 today.

But, because there is a but, not all American and world markets are doing as well, far from it. And this is what is interesting in the
evolution of the financial markets in recent weeks: unlike 2008 or previous crashes, the immediate cause of the current crisis is not
primarily financial but can be explained by the cessation of a large part of world economic production. However, this stoppage is very
uneven depending on the sector: the building industry has suffered a spectacular fall, as has the automobile or oil. This uneven slowdown in
production is reflected in stock prices: the Dow Jones Index, the oldest index on Wall Street and around the world, is calculated to reflect
general trends in American finance, with a much greater variety of sectors than at Nasdaq. Gold, this index only recovered very timidly from
the collapse in prices in February and March. It even decreased slightly this week. The trend is the same for the CAC40, which also lost a
few points this week despite a sharp rise on April 17, which can be explained in particular by the timid American recovery. In a word as in
a hundred: we are still far from having finished it.

Economic policy measures

The IMF predicts the worst global recession since 1929 (-3 % of world GDP). At the international level, the announcement of the suspension
of part of the debt of the poorest countries (of the order of $ 14 billion) cannot be interpreted as a sign of North / South solidarity.
Indeed, it remains provisional, partial, and only aims to partially preserve the exporting economies, particularly in Africa. In addition,
the new IMF loan ($ 11 billion) is a drop in the face of the real needs of the populations of these countries, and will no doubt be
accompanied by privatization requirements of which this organization has the secret. The proposal to simply cancel the African debt might
seem more generous. But it must be understood as a long-distance race against Chinese activism in Africa. It should not be forgotten that in
general, countries " in development  "pay their credits very expensive, to the point that it is not expensive to cancel their capital in
fine, especially in exchange for new credits to boost French exports... This main measure takes place in parallel with the the Trump
administration has announced a halt to funding to the World Health Organization, thereby accelerating the decline of international forums
and allowing China to strengthen its leadership there.

In addition, some countries are gradually deconfining (Iran), while the signs of a regression of the pandemic are long overdue and the
beginnings of a second epidemic wave in Southeast Asia are multiplying. These deconfinements, we guess, are attempts to save production more
than the health status of the population. In the poorest countries, the proletariat nevertheless suffers enormously from drastic containment
measures, which very often happen without the establishment of adequate supply or logistics systems, for lack of means. Globally, very few,
if any, governments adopt measures capable of significantly redirecting the distribution of wealth or the economic system towards a more "
virtuous " functioning On the contrary.

Monday, Macron announced first deconfinement measures from May 11, including the resumption of schools. We suspect that this decision is
taken above all to be able to send workers back to work. On Wednesday 15, the government announced a series of measures: strengthening the
emergency plan to 110 billion, which includes the extension of the solidarity fund for entrepreneurs, the funding of short-time working,
exceptional healthcare spending, but also a possibility of taking shares in "  vital " companies " On the other hand, no requisition or
nationalization has yet been announced while companies could be restarted for health needs (Luxfer, Honeywell). If the government says
publicly that companies should not pay dividends to claim aid, it seems that this is pure media display: many companies ignore the
instructions altogether. Finally, the payment of partial unemployment remains problematic since the company must advance the salary before
being reimbursed. These announcements were coupled with promises of premiums for caregivers (500 to 1,500 euros), civil servants (up to
1,000 euros), as well as measures intended for the most precarious (beneficiaries of the RSA and social minima). It goes without saying that
these ads are weak, well below the requirements of health workers for more than a year and what the social situation requires. One can
imagine that they will be more of the order of communication than truly effective, without forgetting that they will undoubtedly be
accompanied by authoritarian and pro-capitalist measures, such as forced holidays and longer working hours.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?L-indecence-d-Amazon-et-autres-nouvelles-economiques

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Message: 2



For years, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), among its many social struggles, highlights: the fight against racism, for the right to
decent housing and for Universal Public Health for all people without any distinction , especially since the Popular Party tried to
dismantle it with cuts. ---- In this fight, the great battle in which the CGT is involved is the one that refers to the refusal to grant the
right to health to migrants who live in the Spanish State in an irregular situation, that is, the calls "without papers". ---- With the
COVID 19 Pandemic that the entire population is suffering worldwide, the CGT demands more than ever that these rights be applied to
migrants, since they cannot and should not be excluded from any social or health measure that the Government it has determined for the
entire State, since an administrative situation can never be the excuse to deny the fundamental right of access to Public Health and its
benefits.

We are especially aware of the vulnerability of unaccompanied children, given that in the health crisis and the confinement we are
experiencing, it becomes much more evident and cruel. Caring for these people who are minors and defending their rights is a clear objective
for the CGT, which wants to extend it to the institutions of the Spanish State. It is everyone's responsibility.

During this socio-sanitary crisis caused by the COVID19, the previously invisible jobs are being made visible, such as cleaning,
agriculture, care for the elderly and / or dependents, delivery people, transporters, etc ..., essential jobs for the development and
well-being of the country, which, for the most part, are carried out by migrants, often in an irregular situation and in poor conditions.
For example, temporary people who are exploited in the workplace, who lack all kinds of rights and who live in subhuman settlements, without
sanitation, without basic services and suffering from social and institutional racism.

For all these reasons, the CGT requires the urgent Regularization of all migrants and asylum seekers, as well as the release of those locked
up in CIES and CETIS, authorization to work for those over 18 years of age, including those extuteladas , knowing In addition, there is a
shortage of labor at the moment to work in the fields, since more than 80,000 people are being requested for the various collections of the
season, and, of course, with measures that dignify working and living conditions. of the agrarian workers who live in the settlements.

https://cgt.org.es/ninguna-persona-es-ilegal/

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Message: 3



It's not that I'm not touched, to suddenly be receiving hero worship for doing the job I always did before. A little imposter syndrome
maybe, but touched nonetheless. The trouble is not the clapping. The trouble is that it's being performed in place of the meaningful steps
which would actually help me.Here's a day in my life: ---- I wake up at 6, ready for what's now going to be a very long commute on 3
different public transport vehicles because most of the stations and regular services are closed, make sure I have my ID to get onto the
train at the station, my hand sanitiser and put on a headscarf that's reminiscent of a culture I wasn't raised in. I've already cut off my
long hair, because I have to wash it every night the moment I get home. My nails are short and unpainted. My hands are dry and wrinkly, and
look twice my age from being stripped of oils with constant hand cleaning. At the front door is my makeshift ‘decontamination station' with
plastic bags for my clothes and spray bleach for the door handle. I'm trying not to bring this back with me.My little daughter has already
been sent away to the countryside weeks before lockdown to keep her safe. I don't know when I'll see her again.I cover my face with any sort
of makeshift cloth I can use- there are no masks for nurses travelling to work.I wear shades because there are no goggles or visors. I'm in
plain clothes because we are at risk of attack or robbery- for our ID or our imagined hand sanitizer (I've been given none for 3 months).

This is how I set out for work. I wait an unknown length of time for the bus. The buses are still opening by the front doors, the terrified
drivers swaddled in so many face scarves they look set for a mission to the Antarctic. People are scattered around the bus, some coughing.
Most with an unshielded face. Some wear advanced respirator-style masks; where they got them I don't know. They wear them pulled down over
their chin, nose sticking out. They nestle them over massive hipster beards, ensuring there is no seal and the apparatus is meaningless.
They pop them down to share sweets from a bag with a friend. They use surgically gloved hands to roll themselves a cigarette, which they
will stick straight into their mouth later.They press the red button to get off the bus. They bite their nails, rub their eyes, move their
hands straight from the railing to their shopping trolly. I try not to think of them as the walking dead but I know for a large number of
them this will in fact be the case in a few weeks.

I try to keep my distance- it's not possible. They come past me on all sides, sometimes brushing against me, there is nowhere I can stay
away from them. I wish I had a sign- ‘high risk of covid- stay back' or ‘stay away from me if you want to live' or some sort of audible
alarm or announcement like you get with large vehicles- ‘this key worker is turning left- please keep at least 2 metres distance'.

The trouble is, I look just like everyone else. I'm in trainers with a bag on my back.I don't let off a visible radioactive glow the way I
feel I should. I'm very aware that not only am I going to see patients who have virtually no chance of surviving covid- they won't even meet
the new criteria for acute care- but that my patients are already starting to drop like flies.

Let's be clear, by and large my patients aren't wilfully flouting lockdown. They've been self-isolating, more or less, for several years.
The reason I see them at home is because they can't get out. So how are they catching novel coronavirus? From the people seeing them.
Family. Carers. And yes, nurses.

We don't get tested. Unless we are admitted to hospital, if we have any sort of symptoms (and the symptoms can be so variable) we are told
to isolate at home for 7 days.I've already done this once, with a headache, sore throat and exhaustion. It seemed to go away after 3
days.There was no test during or after.Did I have it? Am I asymptomatically carrying it and shedding it everywhere? Have I picked it up on
my clothes on my way to or from work?I honestly don't know.The most recent estimates from Iceland where they've randomly tested a lot of the
population) show that 50% of all those infected show no symptoms at the time they are tested.My calculations of the current infection rate
in London based on the death statistics indicates that I'm currently exposed many times every day. So are all of you.

I disembark the bus, nobody keeping 2 metres from me, and try to pick my way through people in the labyrinth that the station has now
become. I get my NHS ID checked at the gate by uniformed police.A young woman decides to rush past me on the escalator, where I'm standing
to the right, trying to keep my balance without holding the rubber handrail.'10 points' my gallows humour suggests to me from deep inside my
brain.

I get on the overground, where I need to still push the button to embark and disembark.People are mostly spread out at alternate seats. It's
still not 2 metres, but they are trying. As more and more get on this becomes impractical. I wait at least 25 minutes for the train to move.

We are joined by someone begging for change, moving up and down the carriages. How he counts as a key worker I've no idea. He's still here
every morning, same person, same train. Despite announcements that the homeless were being put in hotels, I still see people sleeping rough
outside the station every morning. Not as many, but still a lot. The police stand nearby, with these people in full sight.I feel bad for
them. They are given responsibility without power. They aren't epidemiologists, virologists or microbiologists. They are given a
paint-by-numbers system of social distancing to try to enforce without proper knowledge of the science or backup from the courts.The
measures, by the letter of the law, do not go nearly far enough.If you follow the law, as it stands, you are highly likely to become
infected and die.

I disembark the train and walk to my next bus stop. There are dog walkers and joggers everywhere. There are people who were never there
before, crowding the streets. I perform my awkward, politely British social-distancing attempt down the street. It's a clumsy square dance
as people come at me from all directions, at all speeds. I'm trying to keep away from them. I politely stand far to the side to try to let
them pass. Others squeeze past me from behind.They walk two or three abreast down the pavement. They bring hoards of their progeny out, in
pushchairs, on bicycles and scooters, swerving all over, touching things, falling on the ground, brushing past me. I can't help but wonder
if they really don't like their children, or if they are so blind and bloody minded that they can't see the risk they are exposing them to.
They may as well send them out to play on the M25.

I get to my office, in a building that has been ‘red zoned' throughout most of it, due to covid cases having been present there. It's now a
maze to get through.I have to push and pull 7 sets of doors to get through to my office. I sanitise my hands (with gel someone gave me last
week) put down my things and go wash my hands, before getting my visit list and assembling the supplies I'll need. Basic surgical face
masks, only available to us since last week, are counted out to us each day based on the number of patients we have to see. We get one per
patient, which we put on at the door, along with plastic apron, shoe covers and gloves. That's all we get.These are just people's houses.
There's no way to properly prevent cross-contamination of ourselves and our bags or coats. We do our best. We wash our hands, we sanitise,
we try to keep our distance.It's just not possible.

My patients, without fail, are afraid.They sit and watch TV all day. They fear for themselves and their friends and families. They swing
between panic and stoic acceptance of death.I'm not sure I would do much else myself.

I'm eternally grateful and appreciative of those family members who have taken it upon themselves to care for the people who are usually our
patients. Not only are many of the staff off with symptoms, or because their family have symptoms, but a lot of our workforce are working
from home.I have no idea how many of us are actually left on the ground. Those lucky few who have had their family step up and take over
their care have avoided the daily risk we bring to them with our visits. Even with PPE, even with every precaution we can take, we cannot
help but risk their death with each visit. I feel like Typhoid Mary. I have no choice.

As I try to get between patients on foot, the streets are bustling with the healthy and the asymptomatic. There is no visible difference
between them. I cut through the park, aware that each footstep I place on the grass is likely carrying novel coronavirus 19. The statistical
probability of it means the odds that I'm not spreading it are infinitesimally small. As are your footsteps and everyone else's.

Parents sit on park benches, lay blankets on the contaminated grass for their babies, then pick them up and put them back in their bags and
strollers. People do press-ups on the ground. Parents play tennis and ball games with their children and I see in my mind with each time the
ball hits the ground a cloud of coronavirus envelop it and land on the hands of your gleefully unaware children.Bikes zoom past me in every
direction, joggers brush past in clouds of exerted breath I can feel on my face.I want to scream at them to get away. To get inside. That
their determined ‘right to exercise' isn't worth my patients' right to breathe.Their own right to breathe. Their children and their parents'
and their grandparents'. The nurses' and doctors' and carers' and cleaners'. We are out in this because we have to be. Because it is our job
and our duty.I'd rather be inside. I'd rather be safe. I'd even rather be completely ignorant of the fact that anything less than 8 metres
is not a meaningful distance.Of the fact that every bit of ground, every surface, every airspace, is more likely contaminated than not now.

Two dog walkers chat from opposite sides of the pavement, their dogs crossing their leads in an x across the path. Cars and vans block the
roads that I'd normally walk out into to get past.I smile and ask to get round. The woman takes a small step. I smile and say ‘2 metres
please?' She takes umbrage and goes to ‘self-isolate in the car then'.

To miscontextually quote Watchmen, ‘I'm not locked in here with you. You are locked in here with me'.

When I'm avoiding you, when I'm asking to get past, this plain-clothes average-looking person who you assume is a germophobe and making a
fuss, what I'm actually doing is trying to save your life.

Please assume anyone you see is a key worker. We don't have sirens or a halo. Please give us space. We are aware we are a walking time bomb
of death for those who come close. Please stay away.That means more than all the clapping in the world. ?

http://organisemagazine.org.uk/2020/04/20/why-i-dont-want-you-to-clap-for-me-current-events/

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Message: 4



The history of eco-fascism is somewhat cloudy, but its origin draws from the previously existent eugenics movement and combines it with a
form of hideous ecological disguise that aims to justify its murderous elements. The eco-fascists, more or less, are the same people Murray
Bookchin described as ‘self-professed deep ecologists who believe that Third World peoples should be permitted to starve to death and that
desperate Indian immigrants from Latin America should be excluded by the border cops from the United States lest they burden "our"
ecological resources.' While there has been a great deal of trying to dress the movement up, often with deepening appeals to the sanctity of
nature, the beauty of the natural world, and the ugliness of industrial pollution, the roots of the movement are inescapable; the essence of
eco-fascism is the idea that the World is sick, and the illness is humanity. Therefore the eco-fascist claims that we should do our best to
eliminate as many people as necessary - or at least accept their deaths - to allow the World to ‘heal'.

It would be remiss to mention this without giving a brief mention to Thomas Malthus, the 19th Century English thinker who argued that the
‘power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or
other visit the human race.' That is, he argued that there were too many people (or at least, would be too many people) in relation to
available resources, causing an inevitable issue for humanity. Malthus' argument was, when boiled down to the most fundamental ingredients,
that the Earth could only support so many individuals and that there needed to be some boundary put on how many individuals could be allowed
to exist. Culminating in the idea that we should not seek to cure disease, should not seek to curb famine, and should encourage the poor to
live in overcrowded and unsanitary environments, and that we should even ‘court the return of the plague', Malthus' Essay on the Principle
of Population is not the first piece of eugenical writing, but is certainly one of those most responsible for popularising these
perspectives. Malthus' nonsense drew a response from early English proto-anarchist William Godwin, whose lengthy Of Population opens with
the claim that Malthus' theory is ‘evidently founded upon nothing'.

Why write about this? At least, why write about this now; isn't there a pandemic going on? Should I not be writing about that? The answer is
a simple one, although malignant in its purity; with the world thrown into yet another new flavour of turmoil due to the outbreak and
subsequent global spread of COVID-19, there has been an equal rise in opportunism designed primarily to take advantage of the fact that
people are scared and worried. Ever the opportunists, and ever the predators of the fearful, one of the most prominent factions in this has
been the far right wing, and even more specifically, the eco-fascist movement. Social media has made this even more prevalent, since
messages can be distributed widely very quickly and all it takes is a single share for a piece of carefully designed propaganda to leak out
from amongst one group into a much wider pool of people who will keep the message going without really being engaged with the original
sentiment. It's easy for somebody to stumble into spreading fascist adjacent ideas without ever really meaning it - but more on that later.

One of the most pernicious roots of eco-fascism is in the eugenics movement that preceded it. While there are clear differences, they are
largely differences in tactics rather than sentiment; the eugenicist seeks to sacrifice given groups of individuals to the altar of genetic
superiority that they have in their heads, arguing that the existence of whichever group being discussed is a flaw in the species. The
eco-fascist seeks to sacrifice groups of individuals to the altar of the environment, arguing that the existence of whichever group is being
discussed is a core ingredient in ecological disaster. To return to Bookchin, it can't be ignored that the groups under discussion are
almost always the same in either case; the poorer people, the people of colour, the people who are differently abled.

COVID-19 has drawn much of this discussion into the public sphere. Whereas it's generally seen as poor taste to refer to groups of people as
infections, diseases, and plagues - for good reason - this seems to be forgiven when the group being referred to is non-specific. Hand
waving at humanity in general, as if being vague is ethical bulletproofing, gets a pass. It is relatively common today to find another viral
tweet with tens of thousands of likes gesturing towards the clearing waters of Venetian canals, or the wandering deer of Japan navigating
neon-lit city centres and declaring that the Earth is healing itself; the smog-cleared skies of California receive a probing enquiry -
perhaps we were the real virus all along?

Strange as though it may seem, musings of this kind have become more and more common as the weeks have gone by and the evidence of nature
‘reclaiming' previously populated areas has begun to accumulate. Suffice it to say, there is more than a little of the eco-fascist ideology
floating around in the assumptions of that question; when somebody asks if humanity is the ‘real virus', they set up a system in which the
Earth is a being and humanity a problem that needs to be solved. The solution being proposed is rarely stated outright, but it doesn't have
to be because it's implicit in the question; you cure a virus by getting rid of it. Beneath the surface level wonder at seeing a wild boar
shuffle across Italian cobblestones, there is a lurking belief that maybe the world would be better off without us. Or, more commonly, the
world would be better off without some of us, with who that some is being left as a blank to be filled in by the subconscious of the
questioner. Unquestionably, whoever that somebody is, will be someone else.

It doesn't take long to see the correlation between the eco-fascist ideal and the underlying logic of this line of reasoning.

Something that is vital to note is this; despite the fact that many of the assumptions of the ‘humans are the real virus' rhetoric are
shared with eco-fascists, not everyone who has spread it or internalised it is necessarily a fascist. Reality is sometimes difficult to
parse, especially when so much is happening with such frequency. The difficulty is compounded by modern media, which bombards everybody with
a deluge of barely intelligible nonsense composed of equal parts guesswork, blatant lies, misrepresentations, and government stenography.
The baseline intuitiveness of the eco-fascist assumptions at work are easy to understand. For an individual lacking a systematic critique
but searching for answers, it can be easy to adopt elements of this thought - this means that even people who would ostensibly baulk at the
idea of outright genocide being discussed openly, such as liberals or social democrats, are able to buy into and spread the auto-virality
meme without ever truly realising the dangerousness that underwrites the entire concept. So what's the trick? How can this horrible concept
become so natural that even relatively pleasant individuals can spread it and accept the logic at its base?

Simply put, there has been a piece of rhetorical trickery here; a bait and switch. We are constantly being told that these apparent
ecological recoveries are the result of human beings receding from the world; the more of us that are quarantined or in self-isolation, the
fewer of us that there are out and about causing environmental issues. On the surface, this appears to make some kind of sense; the fact
that this formulation isn't immediately and obviously nonsense is the hook that eco-fascists use to draw in even the well-meaning liberal.
The trick is to realise that what has primarily changed is not humanity at all - the death toll of COVID-19 is growing, and it is both
tragic and politically infuriating, but it hasn't yet killed the millions, or potentially even billions, that would be required for the
change to be attributed to fewer humans. The fact is that there are almost as many human beings today as there were months ago: what has
changed is the behaviour of those human beings. That is to say, what has changed, to some degree, has been our modes of social organisation.

The language of the eco-fascist claims that human beings are the problem, and that with their self-isolation - that is, their removal from
the system - has come ecological recovery. Such individualised and atomised analysis prevents the ever-important systematic approach; the
real problem is capitalism, and it is with the interruptions and staggerings of capitalism that recovery has come along. Deeply embedded in
the language of the right wing, the misattribution of the worst elements of capitalism to the mere existence of human beings exists as a
dual weapon.

Firstly, it allows them to turn their vitriol upon individuals. Which individuals are chosen as targets is obvious beyond discussion; in
this case, the virus has been racialised by members of the right as the ‘Chinese Virus', a horrible formulation that has come with a rise in
anti-Chinese racism and (as a simple visit to the front page of various popular newspapers will reveal) a desire to punish. This has leaked
out even into supposedly left-wing and liberal discussions of the subject: a recent collection of essays published by the editorial iniative
ASPO bears the name Sopa de Wuhan, (Wuhan Soup), and features essays by the usual list of left and liberal thinkers: Slavoj Žižek makes an
appearance, alongside Georgio Agamben, Judith Butler, David Harvey, and Franco Berardi. Secondly, it allows them to imply a connection
between the two; to link the existence of capitalism to the existence of individuals and bind them together ideologically; to present
capitalism as human and therefore inevitable and inescapable.

It has long been argued that one of the worst impulses of capitalism, and really the one which puts a firm cap on how long it can last, is
the requirement for continual growth and expansion. Capitalism, to put it lightly, is greedy and constantly demands more; more production,
larger markets, more factories, more profit, and therefore more extraction, more waste-product, more fuel burned, et cetera. When left in
the hands of governments and corporations, this tendency is indulged as often and as wantonly as possible. COVID-19 is a virus, and it is
not beholden to capitalism, and therefore it doesn't care that its proliferation puts a spanner in the works. People self isolate, the
amount of work that's being done slows; ‘it's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR
researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs, or legal consultants to[...]vanish', David Graeber writes in his book Bullshit Jobs, and
mass quarantine and self-isolation has answered the unasked question: humanity would not suffer. These jobs are entirely superfluous and
could be done away with; so much of the work humanity does is done purely to keep people occupied, and it has become abundantly clear that
this occupation is no good for most people.

Further, with self isolation and the closing of so many workplaces, the number of cars on roads drops, the amount of fuel being burned
drops, and the result is some measure of ecological bounce-back. But we all know, and anarchists have argued for a very long time, that
nobody needs to die for this kind of thing to happen. Observations that the world has begun ‘recovering' since the introduction of mass
quarantine would be premature - you don't ‘fix' the environment in a few weeks - but it's hard to argue that visibly clearer air isn't good
on at least some level. It would be entirely within the bounds of imagination to do away with millions of cars on the road in any given day
and to replace them with better forms of public transport, which serve more people and vastly reduce environmental damage. The abolition of
nonsense work and the re-structuring of transport are just two examples of improvements to our lives that are realistic and easy; we simply
need to re-organise our society.

Slightly more than a decade ago now, British writer, theorist, and music critic Mark Fisher published his now classic book Capitalist
Realism, an attempt to diagnose and decipher the cultural environment of modern capitalism and begin thinking about how we might escape its
grasp. To cut a relatively short story - Capitalist Realism is a very brief work - even shorter, Fisher argues that capitalism has been
perceptually fused with ‘reality' in such a way that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism; that
capitalism is the ‘only game in town'. He also argues that one of the best ways to point out how artificial and potentially changeable this
kind of social organisation is, is to look towards the un-ignorable crises that appear to rip into the fabric of capitalist realism. Fisher
chose, in 2009, to use mental health issues, bureaucracy, and incoming climate catastrophe as his examples. Today, these examples loom ever
larger, with mental health having been largely ignored and the horrors of apocalyptic climate change bearing down on us with an increasing
rage. It is now commonplace to hear statistics claiming that vast swathes of the population have serious issues with depression, anxiety,
and a host of other conditions. Similarly, it's not unusual to turn on the news or (more commonly) open up Twitter and see how yet another
wildfire has ravaged yet another country, leaving smoking forests and smouldering corpses behind.

However, we can now add another example to the list of things which lift the veil and expose the levers and pulleys working behind the
scenes; COVID-19 has, if nothing else, shown that a pandemic can do much the same as any wildfire. Suddenly a way of life that we were told
was inescapable is swept to the side; jobs that we were told were vital become meaningless as offices and executive suites get abandoned and
huge portions of the workforce either become unemployed or begin to work from home - workers that have previously been treated as scapegoats
or ignored and dismissed as menial and unskilled become ‘essential workers' without whom no country could stand. This is, of course, the
message anarchists and the left in general have been pushing for well over a century; so much of the work we do is unnecessary, and so much
of the work that is necessary is demeaned and under-compensated.

Given this perspective, it becomes obvious that the eco-fascist framework in which any given human is part of a planet-wide disease is
flawed at the core. Similarly, the diluted and diffused version of their discourse that gets spread around by largely well-meaning people is
based on a misconception that confuses a social system with those individuals who take part in it. The outbreak of COVID-19 has, to return
to Mark Fisher, thrown aside many of the claims that there is no alternative to our current system, revealing a variety of ‘fractures and
inconsistencies in the field of apparent reality' that make its contingency and fragility all the more obvious. Whatever the government and
popular consensus might like us to think, it's impossible to look at a world where workplace populations can drop so drastically without
damaging any vital services and then fail to imagine that things could be different.

The right wing and the state has already taken advantage of this, of course; opportunists, as mentioned earlier, are on top of this kind of
thing. Governments across the world have taken this opportunity to hand out enhanced police powers, to enforce lockdowns and punishments for
people who might be out of their home too often; Hungary has already managed to skip straight into out-and-out dictatorship, using the
pandemic as an accelerant to Orbán's bigoted fire. As the surface of political discourse shifts, forced into motion by the earthquake that
has caused decades of neo-liberal consensus to show the cracks in the foundations, the right wing has taken every chance it can get to push
towards its own goals; the left should do the same. Undeniably, there has already been a start; rent strikes have broken out in various
countries; General Electric workers have demanded their factories be converted to build ventilators, and mutual aid networks have emerged in
their hundreds. Those who consider themselves to be unconcerned with ideology have found that ideology is extremely concerned with them, and
the already shaky grip that the centre has had on mainstream discourse for some time has become even more tenuous.

We cannot, however, allow ourselves to be fooled that a crisis will, with some minor coaching from a rent strike, end capitalism or the
state. If any credit can be given to apparatuses such as these, it's that they have demonstrated a remarkable tenacity and the ability to
worm their way into surviving nearly any disaster. Anarchists can't rely on the state to crumble under its own inadequacies; it must be
pushed. Mutual aid networks are a fantastic start, despite how many of them have faced internal disruption from party political actors
seeking to subvert them into hierarchical structures. The rumblings of worker solidarity found in factory walk-outs, and the backlash
against landlords, too, are brilliant beginnings. But true change doesn't come with a few good signs; there must be increasing pushback
against the state, and it must be continuous. COVID-19 has torn a hole in the veil of capitalist realism; what we knew for a long time -
that things can be different - is now becoming common knowledge to those who have had their world rocked by this pandemic. Anarchists and
other leftists cannot allow any avenue to remain unexplored, or to be reclaimed by the right; the ecological aspect is included in this.

For years, ecological catastrophe has been one of the few continually inescapable tears in capitalist hegemony. For years, it has been
looming as a threat, with each news story growing increasingly alarming; scientists have been issuing dire proclamations of end-days
deadlines for a long time, and there has been little reason to doubt the legitimacy of these claims. Damage caused by industrial capitalism
is there for anyone to see. Visiting a beach, seeing the endless stretches of logged forest, watching species after species vanish into
extinction; all of this is undeniable to anybody willing to engage legitimately with the evidence. Capitalism is at extreme contradiction
with ecological sustainability. For the eco-fascist, it has been trivial to marry these obvious observations with COVID-19 to introduce a
form of self-destructive hippydom; at the core of fascism lies a desire for the end - as the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote, it is
a ‘war machine that no longer had anything but war as its object'. Usurping the language of the environmentalist, the eco-fascist sees an
opportunity to mask the violence and overt misanthropy of their ideology, but is only that; a mask. Fascism is, at its core, ‘a line of pure
destruction', to return to Deleuze, and any attempt to claim that the true motive is environmental sustainability is transparently absurd.
The only true environmentalism is liberatory.

What needs to be enforced by the anarchist movement, at every turn, is the reality of the situation: COVID-19 and the subsequent shuffling
of society has not proven that humanity is a curse with which to be done away; it has proven that capitalism is nothing but a series of
choices and structures that we make and reinforce everyday, and those choices can be made differently; those structures can be torn down.
Claim this moment and these apparent ecological recoveries as ideological, but claim them correctly; if there is something that needs to be
sacrificed for the ongoing health of the planet and its inhabitants, it's capitalism. ?

Jay Fraser is an anarchist, poet, amateur philosopher, and basketball fan. He can be found on Twitter or anywhere that has good coffee.


http://organisemagazine.org.uk/2020/04/24/eco-fascism-the-rhetoric-of-the-virus-theory-and-analysis/

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Message: 5



Abusive men are using coronavirus as an excuse for domestic violence, campaigners have warned, as horrifying new figures reveal men are
killing women and girls at a rate of almost one a day since the lockdown began. This represents a doubling of the average rate of deaths and
highlights the extreme danger faced by women and girls trapped in the same house as violent partners and other male relatives. ---- These
figures only go to highlight the dangers faced by women during the lockdown. Nor is violence the only issue they face. Domestic violence
impacts all aspects of women's lives. It is estimated that around three women a week commit suicide as a result of domestic violence. Women
who experience domestic violence are twice as likely to experience depression, far more likely to suffer from substance abuse, more likely
to lose their jobs, more likely to lose their homes and end up homeless, and more likely suffer from long term health problems such as
arthritis and chronic pain.

Figures show that almost one in three women aged 16-59 will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Meanwhile, reports from those
countries worse affected by the coronavirus show that domestic violence is increasing. This is hardly surprising, as women and girls will
find themselves at an increased risk of all forms of abuse-based violence, as they are trapped with perpetrators and there is a lot less
scrutiny. There is also clear evidence that financial hardship caused by the coronavirus will increase levels of domestic violence; for
example, during the Greek financial crash in 2011 there was a 53.9% increase in family violence.

Given these horrors, there is much to be done, from trying to support women that may be experiencing domestic violence through to putting
pressure on the government to release emergency funds to hard pressed domestic violence support services. Once the crisis has passed, there
must be no return to the austerity that has done so much damage to women trying to escape abusive relationships, not least in the brutal
cuts to government funding of women's refuges.

Part of this has to be raising the issue of domestic violence in the workplace. Domestic abuse does not stop once women leave home. Surveys
show that up to 53% of women suffering from domestic violence have reported that the violence has continued at or near their workplaces.
This can take the form of abusive emails and phone calls through to partners turning up at work and making threats or stalking women outside
their workplaces. In extreme cases, women have been killed by their partners or ex-partners in the workplace.

Domestic violence also impacts on women in the workplace in ways that often result in them losing or leaving their jobs. In a TUC survey, 80
per cent of women who had experienced domestic violence reported that the violence had affected their work performance due to being
distracted, tired or unwell. Other research has found that 56 per cent of abused women arrive late for work at least five times a month and
53 per cent miss at least three days of work a month.

Clearly then, domestic violence is not just about the home; it is also a workplace issue and there is much that can be done in the workplace
to support women suffering from domestic violence. One of the biggest barriers to break is the isolation and stigma felt by victims. This
can be done by simply raising the issue of domestic violence in the workplace, approaching those you suspect to be victims of domestic
violence, offering support and accompanying them in disciplinary hearings and sickness reviews.

Ultimately, the best way to support victims is to organise your workplace and make domestic violence an issue as a means of forcing
employers to act. Demands can be made to bring in paid leave for victims and introduce safety policies, such as changing or screening work
phone numbers or emails, providing a security alarm, providing transport to and from work, or alerting security staff to potential threats.
All of this creates a supportive workplace culture in which victims feel they can begin to talk about the abuse they are suffering.

If you want to get involved fighting domestic abuse, Sisters Uncut takes a direct action approach to campaigning. They can be contacted at
http://www.sistersuncut.org. In the North West Safety4Sisters support migrant women, they can be contacted at http://www.safety4sisters.org

If you are suffering from domestic abuse there are a number of helplines including a 24/7 helpline0808 2000 247. And there is also LGBT
Domestic Violence Helpline - 0300 999 5428

If you are interested in organising in your workplace the Solidarity Federation run a number of training courses including a training course
aimed at women who wish to organise in their workplaces. For more information email solfed.training@gmail.com

http://www.solfed.org.uk/manchester/the-coronavirus-lockdown-sees-domestic-violence-against-women-surge

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Message: 6


Special feature Covid-19: by fighting the virus, transforming society ; the coming financial crisis ; ecological causes and consequences of
the pandemic ; right of withdrawal from Amazon ; against anti-Asian racism. Back on the strike in refineries ; discrimination against women
with disabilities ; safe city and social control ; RN results at the municipal level ; libertarian communists and the self-determination of
peoples ; Gustav Landauer and the German Revolution ; wild socialism ---- This month, for the first time in almost thirty years, Alternative
libertarian is not published in paper format. ---- Because of the coronavirus, our printer stopped its machines, and we have no guarantee of
distribution in kiosks.

However, we have completed this issue and are ensuring the widest possible distribution in digital format.

Click to open it !

In summary:
Editorial
  We are here

Spotlight
  on the crisis: transforming society by fighting the virus
Crisis of the coronavirus: grain of sand in world capitalism

  Media actions policy: a good image is worth 1000 words

Antifascism
Pandemic: the awakening of anti-Asian prejudices
  Municipal election: the RN is taking root

Digital
Big Brother: Out of our cities and our schools !
  Decentralization: the coronavirus brings down Framatalk

Unionism
Refineries: the strike has taken, not the Amazon blockage
: epidemic and right of withdrawal at Lauwin-Planque

Antipatriarchy
Discrimination: disabled women, feminist bodies
  Sexual assault: victims, we believe you !
  Reissue of a fundamental book: our body, ourselves

International
Orientation: libertarian communists and the self-determination of peoples

Ecology
Useless projects: in the west, politicize the ecological struggle
  Pesticides: compromise of the government with agrochemistry
  Deregulation: green, the virus ?

History
A hundred years ago: Gustave Landauer, in the heat of the German revolution

Culture
Essay: getting stuck does not harm socialism
  Essay: commitment in an obscure period
  Rirette Maîtrejean and individualist anarchism
  BD: 3,000 years to get there

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/-AL-d-avril-est-gratuit-en-PDF-486-

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Message: 7


Employees of the TUP-Kaliningrad sewing enterprise, after the landlord disconnected electricity, went to a protest rally, demanding that
they be given the opportunity to work. The story continued in a day: because of the commentary under this news in a local public, they came
to a local resident from Center "E". ---- On April 20, employees of the sewing enterprise were unable to continue working, as the owner of
the premises was de-energized due to an overdue lease payment. About 70 seamstresses staged a spontaneous rally on the territory of an
industrial site on the Brave Alley in Kaliningrad. A record of this appeared in the public New Kaliningrad, according to which, the
protesters demanded "give them the opportunity to continue to work."

Employees of the TUP-Kaliningrad sewing enterprise, after the landlord disconnected electricity, went to a protest rally, demanding that
they be given the opportunity to work. The story continued in a day: because of the commentary under this news in a local public, they came
to a local resident from Center "E".

On April 20, employees of the sewing enterprise were unable to continue working, as the owner of the premises was de-energized due to an
overdue lease payment. About 70 seamstresses staged a spontaneous rally on the territory of an industrial site on the Brave Alley in
Kaliningrad. A record of this appeared in the New Kaliningrad public, according to which, the protesters demanded "give them the opportunity
to continue working." On Monday, April 20, under this news, a comment by a local resident Diana Zabrovskaya appeared in the New Kaliningrad
public. Its content is quoted by Mediazona: "Kaliningraders, these people set an example for us, we must unite, we are all in that position.
Today, protests began in Vladikavkaz and here. " The next day, an employee of the Center "E" came to her and demanded to delete the comment
on VKontakte. According to Diana, she refused to let him into the apartment. "He asked me to remove it differently, if people go out, they
will bring me to criminal responsibility as an organizer," said Diana Zabrovskaya.

http://activatica.org/blogs/view/id/9779/title/k-kaliningradke-prishli-iz-centra-je-iz-za-kommentariya-pod-novostyu-o-pikete-shvey

https://aitrus.info/node/5453

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