«It’s revolution or death»: Part 1 and Part 2 transcriptions

It’s revolution or death
Part 1: Short Term Investments
[video]

[Text overlaid on video]
subMedia and Peter Gelderloos present
It’s revolution or death
Part 1: Short Term Investments

Things aren’t like they used to be.

[Voiceover]
I mean, aside from a few wingnuts, people recognize that things are bad, climate change is real.
They’re doing something about it.
Yes.
Those in power are taking it seriously.
Every year, green investment and green energy production have been growing.
Thanks to proactive initiatives by politicians and policy makers around the world, and conscientious investment by major funds and companies like Blackrock, BP, and Tesla.
Every year the Conference of the Parties holds a summit to define the next steps needed to reach a carbon neutral economy and meet the goals set in the Paris Agreement of not exceeding 1.5C of global warming.
Global investment in clean energy grew to $1.7 trillion in 2023, the highest level yet.
From 2010 to 2021 renewable energy production in the US has doubled.
In 2022, the major economies of the world made renewed commitments to green energy.
The US government passed the Inflation Reduction Act, leading to $110 billion in private investments in clean energy manufacturing in one year alone, as well as a 52% increase in the sale of electric vehicles.
China added 160 Gigawatts of capacity to its renewable energy production, and the European Union added 50 Gigawatts to its capacity in wind and solar photovoltaic energy.
So things are getting better, right?
Right?
Continua a leggere «It’s revolution or death»: Part 1 and Part 2 transcriptions

The necessary socialist International

[Last edited on Tuesday, 22 August 2025]

Like Pëtr Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta, Emma Goldman and so many other anarchists, i think we need to take the means of production and the cultivated lands, in order to finally end it with this domination of exploitation, violence and death that patriarcapitalism is, and to save ourselves, our children and the future generations, because in addition to the usual exploitation and violence there’s the huge ecological problem, one of the most problematic elements of which is the average temperature of the world rising, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, mainly driven by energy production and consumption for which “renewables” are not a real alternative, despite the many decades of peaceful pressures on governments and companies that we acted in every sauce from below, and climate change is only one of the six of nine planetary boundaries we are far beyond.

A “forced-by-nature-degrowth” would happen when it would be too late for our species and so many others to not extinguish and, at the same time, “degrowth-by-our-will” is impossible as well: it’s impossible that the people in the US, in Europe, in China, in Russia, in all these “developed” countries, and particularly the upper classes, who are by far the greatest GHG emitters, will “degrow” in numbers high enough and in times short enough to get our species out of the very sorrowful extinction by famine, thirst, warfare and pandemics, that we are already living today in many territories. This is why i think there’s no alternative to taking the lands, to cultivate them without polluting, to take and close the industrial “meat factories”, to take the means of production and turn off all the polluting ones.

Agricolture today produces the second most important part of greenhouse gases, but it is possible to cultivate without resorting to fossil fuels burning, that today is mostly used to produce synthetic nitrogen, by practicing agroforestry and permaculture, that are more productive than industrial agricolture and don’t pollute, so it would be possible to start anew everywhere, more or less on the model of Kurdish democratic confederalism, as a world of small communities, that in the cities would be municipalities, and in smaller towns the town itself, where decisions would be taken and current rules would be abrogated or redefined and refined in assemblies that would be open to all, with the municipalities commercially relating one another by public assemblies as well – because it should be clear by now, also due to the historical experiences of “real communisms,” with their marxist nonsense of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which produced some of the worst nefariousness in history, that social justice and good levels of social equality require to be backed by the constant possibility of open and public verbal confrontation about what to do with common goods and common spaces, and about which rules to give ourselves.

This kind of social organization has precedents in history, and today it would be easier to achive, with global free access for all to lay, egalitarian education and knowledge of horrors of the past, with the abolition of licenses and patents, and with the possibility for all to sublimate their “dark sides” in creativity and lash them out in harmless ways through arts, frugal sports and free, respectful love.

Yet time is crucial, and it’s running out not least with respect to the risk of extinction by ecological issues (climate change, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification and so on), but especially with respect to the increasing probability that this umpteenth crisis of capitalism will end up again in an unfolded third world war, that would be an acceleration towards the extinction of our species and so many others, through the spread of worse and worse nationalisms and the already ongoing wars, that are still mainly driven by nationalist conflicting wills to hoard raw materials that we should have stopped using yesterday, such as fossil fuels and so many others.

This crisis of capitalism that we are living today is not only the umpteenth of a series of crises that have been increasingly damaging, but it’s also unprecedented, with its enormous ecological implications that are now, already tragic, with the amount of death and pain they have already caused and are causing now in the world, that would just get more and more tragic with the worsening of the already and since long ongoing crisis in the ability of the living to reproduce even in order to feed us, and with the worsening of water scarcity and drought that is already ongoing, and with so many other problems that patriarcapitalism has caused and is causing and that would certainly form a whole which, as if one or a few of its parts wasn’t enough, would be fatal for our species and so many others – unless we actually organize and do the socialist International we need to do, quickly, to transform what otherwise would certainly be a bitter and very painful end for most or all of us into the foundation and the beginning of a new and much more peaceful, just and happy world for all to live in. Because that which is holy and sacred is not much our individual lives, but life itself, that just can’t be stopped, and in order to be a living and healthy part of it, and to most peacefully live our individual lives in it, the upper classes, the higher they are, still have to understand that it is the only “god”, and that they are those who have the most to learn from it.

The socialist International could and would much better start from rich countries, where conscience of the huge inequalities of patriarcapitalism is more widespread and material and cultural conditions are still better than in those many countries where the vast majority of the people of the world lives. By putting an end to the domination of the masters and rulers in our countries we would not only save and free ourselves and our people, but also directly and greatly alleviate the semi-slavery conditions, that in many cases are materially worse than those of actual slavery, of people in the poorest countries, where the local rulers and masters would then no longer receive the more or less overt or covert support and the weapons they receive today from our rulers and masters, who are only interested in consolidating and extending their profits and power by obtaining at lower prices the raw materials to be used in the ecologically devastating production of tools that are so often overpowered, useless or damaging, and also designed, with planned obsolescence, to last much shorter than they could.

Finally: although it would still require being armed, if we managed to be many enough to take the means of production and the cultivated lands in our rich countries, maybe not even a single drop of blood, neither ours nor of our adversaries, would be shed. But time is running fast, and it’s very improbable that we will be that many soon enough. So, and in any case, we’d better start or continue with more conviction to organize ourselves secretly, in groups, on an operational level, while continuing to spread our knowledge and ideas publicly.

The Christ: Jesus’ twin

I think it’s probable that “the Christ” was the unknown twin brother of Jesus, and that he was kept imprisoned in Mary’s and Joseph’s poor home basement since not long after he and his brother Jesus were born, as per this previously stipulated contract between “the Magi”, which were actually some guys working for the early and then unknown Catholic Church, and Mary and Joseph themselves, until they pulled him out all of a sudden to let the romans put him on the cross and kill him instead of Jesus, to stage Jesus’ death, and then his resurrection.

Before that, Jesus, who was educated mostly by “the Magi”, and agreed to their contract and their plan very early in his life, also because Mary and Joseph made that contract before he and his brother were assigned to them by “the Magi” themselves, was mainly reciting “in sunlight”, with the oppressed, a plot and precepts which was written by “the Magi”, who based them on many more, selected madmen’s and “saints’” beliefs and, to some extent, even on his brother’s obviously growing madness, although it was probably mostly driven, in its development, and particularly in “the Christ’s” increasingly sincere conviction of being the son of “God”, by “the Magi” themselves, who were visiting him periodically in the basement.

After his brother died as one more poor christ on the cross in his stead, Jesus acted for the oppressed that last touching “bye, see you at the end of the world” scene that “the Magi” had written for him, and then he, Mary and Joseph got the big money that “the Magi” promised to them, and a permanent vacation far away from those territories, in exchange for their good services to the early Catholic Church, that was already planning to gain complete hegemony over the whole world.

The only christ i like is the one my father, who died in 2009, imagined and sang in 1979 and still tells in his Il sogno and Il cristè songs, which are as one song. You can read its lyrics in the video description, both in the italian original and in the translation i’ve done.

“The dawn of everything”, the “always turn the other cheek” Christian commandment, the Anarchic International and immersive fiction

In their The dawn of everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow prove with archaeological evidence that, in a relatively distant past, there were big cities where people already knew and practiced agriculture, and where, in some cases for more than one millennium, decisions and rules about the commons were taken in open assemblies; thus, they also had good levels of equality in distribution of wealth and resources.

At some point in the book they ask themselves, and obviously their readers too, why, at least now, there is no archaeological evidence of later examples of such big societies which worked that way, and they make an hypothesis: that when three issues or “traits” of centralized accumulation of power and wealth and resources, which i won’t summarize here (read the book! 🙂), intertwine in a given society (like our present societies, since very long time), it’s very difficult to get back, or forward, to equality in distribution of power, work, wealth and resources.

They also emphasize that it is an hypothesis, and that more studies should be done to prove it more, or modify it, or extend it.

Anyway, i have an hypothesis about something that has probably worsened the situation: the Christian commandment to “always turn the other cheek” when anyone treats you bad: although i guess nobody can sincerely tell to really always behave like that, i think it’s a commandment which worked and still works a lot as a moral condemnation of some of the most effective actions any oppressed people can implement against their oppressors, and as a self-justification of fear of implementing it or, sometimes, even of thinking about it.

This bugs me a lot, also because i think that today it would be much easier to build equal societies, after an Anarchic International like this, i.e. after taking the lands to cultivate them without polluting, and the industrial facilities to shut down the polluting ones and build the sustainable alternatives while consuming less and better, which would also save our species and many others from the already ongoing decimation and the otherwise very probable future extinction caused by the current ecological catastrophe and-or the equally severe risks of the ongoing and future wars that the ecological catastrophe itself is very intertwined with: after an Anarchic International like this, in the liberated context it could foster (i.e. a global context of many federated little-to-medium sized communities where decisions and rules about the commons would be defined and refined in open assemblies, and thus we would have very good levels of equality in distribution of work, wealth and resources too, and where two or more communities would settle about exchanges of resources and products with inter-communal assemblies which could be made through the internet), tomorrow we would also have a hugely wider possibility to access and share all knowledge, and to build fictional worlds, with or without fictional stories, using open hardware and software produced by the communities, and to virtually live some time there, and to play and fight and love and build there, with or without other avatars of others’ selves, thus sublimating our dark sides in creativity and lashing them out in almost or totally harmless ways to an extent and with an immersivity that we, as a whole, never had before.

This is what arts have always been about, and tomorrow it would be just freely accessible for all.

Azoto di sintesi

Da Il dilemma dell’onnivoro, di Michael Pollan

La scoperta dell’azoto di sintesi ha rivoluzionato molte cose: non solo nella coltivazione del mais, non solo nella catena alimentare, ma nel modo stesso in cui si svolge la vita sulla terra. L’azoto è fondamentale nei cicli biologici, perché è il mattone con cui in natura si costruiscono aminoacidi, proteine e acidi nucleici: l’informazione genetica che dirige e fa replicare i viventi è scritta con questo elemento (ecco perché si dice che l’azoto rappresenta la qualità della vita e il carbonio la quantità). Ma le riserve di azoto disponibili sul nostro pianeta sono limitate. Anche se costituisce circa l’ottanta per cento dell’atmosfera, l’azoto allo stato naturale si trova in forma di molecola inerte, costituita da due atomi strettamente legati tra loro, e dunque inutilizzabile. Nelle parole del celebre chimico ottocentesco Justus von Liebig, l’azoto atmosferico è «indifferente a tutte le altre sostanze». Per essere di una qualche utilità a piante e animali, questi atomi egocentrici devono essere separati e uniti all’idrogeno, in modo da poter formare molecole sfruttabili dagli esseri viventi: in chimica, questo processo si definisce «fissazione». Fino al 1909, quando Fritz Haber, un chimico tedesco di origine ebraica, scoprì il trucco giusto, tutto l’azoto sfruttabile sulla terra era stato sicuramente fissato da certi batteri che vivono sulle radici delle leguminose (come ad esempio i piselli, l’erba medica o la soia), o più raramente da un fulmine, la cui corrente è in grado di spezzare gli atomi di azoto nell’aria, facendoli ricadere al suolo come una fertile pioggia.

«Non c’è modo di far crescere piante o uomini senza azoto» scrive il geografo Vaclav Smil nella sua affascinante biografia di Fritz Haber (intitolata Enriching the Earth). Prima del 1909, la quantità totale di vita che la terra poteva sostenere – ossia l’estensione delle aree coltivate e il numero di esseri umani – era limitata dalla quantità di azoto fissata dai batteri e dai fulmini. All’inizio del Novecento, in Europa ci si accorse che se non si fosse aumentata la disponibilità di questo elemento la crescita della popolazione umana avrebbe presto subìto una dolorosa battuta d’arresto. Qualche decennio dopo la Cina arrivò alle stesse conclusioni, ed è probabilmente per questo motivo che decise di aprirsi all’Occidente: dopo il primo viaggio di Nixon nel 1972, il governo cinese commissionò subito alle ditte americane l’apertura di tredici colossali fabbriche di fertilizzanti, senza le quali, forse, il paese si sarebbe ridotto alla fame.

Ecco perché Smil potrebbe non essere così lontano dal vero quando afferma che l’invenzione più importante del ventesimo secolo è stata il processo Haber-Bosch (Carl Bosch ebbe il merito di rendere sfruttabile commercialmente l’idea di Haber). Secondo le sue stime, senza l’invenzione del chimico tedesco due abitanti del pianeta su cinque non sarebbero vivi, oggi. È possibile, dice Smil, immaginare la terra senza computer, o energia elettrica, ma senza i concimi di sintesi miliardi di individui non sarebbero neppure venuti al mondo. Anche se, come suggeriscono questi numeri, quando Haber ci ha dato il potere di fissare l’azoto abbiamo forse stretto con la natura un patto faustiano.

Continua a leggere Azoto di sintesi

L’ultimo capitolo di “La penultima verità”

Da La penultima verità,
di Philip K. Dick

Capitolo 29

All’una di quel pomeriggio Carol Tigh effettuò con successo l’operazione di trapianto del pancreas sul corpo ancora congelato di Maury Souza; poi, grazie alle risorse mediche più sofisticate del formicaio, ripristinò la circolazione sanguigna, il battito cardiaco e la respirazione del vecchio. Il suo cuore cominciò a pompare sangue da solo, e subito, con cautela e abilità, gli stimolatori artificiali delle funzioni vennero rimossi uno dopo l’altro.

Continua a leggere L’ultimo capitolo di “La penultima verità”