The Great Green Rebellion: Farmers' Uprising Against the Quest for a 'Greener' Tomorrow

In a stunning turn of events that you might have missed (because let’s face it, it’s not on mainstream media, and who reads past the headlines these days?), farmers across Europe have decided they’ve had enough. No more Mr. Nice Farmer. From the picturesque fields of Germany to the romantic vineyards of France, the agricultural proletariat is rising against what they perceive as the tyrannical…

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ہو رہا ہوں میں کس طرح برباد

قدرتی آفات کے اثرات کو مختلف تدبیروں سے ہلکا تو کیا جا سکتا ہے مگر یکسر ٹالا نہیں جا سکتا۔ مگر بہت سی آفات محسوس تو قدرتی ہوتی ہیں لیکن ان کے پیچھے کسی نہ کسی عقلِ کل حکمران کی کارستانی ہوتی ہے جو فطرت کے ساتھ ساتھ چلنے کے بجائے اس کا بازو مروڑ کے فطرت کو یرغمال بنانے کی کوشش کرتا ہے۔ اس جینیس حکمران کا تو کچھ نہیں بگڑتا البتہ لاکھوں انسان اس کے اچھوتے ادھ بدھ تجربات کی بھینٹ ضرور چڑھ جاتے ہیں۔ سرِ دست مجھے اس تباہ کن افلاطونیت کے تعلق سے جو مثال فوری طور پر یاد آ رہی ہے وہ انیس سو تیس کے عشرے کے اسٹالنی سوویت یونین کی ہے جب نجی کھیتوں کو اجتماعی فارموں اور کوآپریٹوز کا حصہ بنانے کی بھرپور جبری کوشش ہوئی اور کسانوں نے اس کی جان توڑ مزاحمت کی۔ اپنے ہی ہاتھوں فصلوں کو آگ لگا دی یا عالمِ طیش میں لاکھوں پالتو جانور مار ڈالے۔ اس کسان مزاحمت کا سب سے زیادہ زور سوویت یونین کا غلہ گودام کہلائی جانے والی ریاست یوکرین میں تھا۔ کسانوں سے نہ صرف زمین چھین کر انھیں اجتماعی کھیتی باڑی کے نوکرشاہ نظام کا حصہ بننے پر مجبور کیا گیا۔ بلکہ مزاحمت کرنے والے ہزاروں کسان خاندانوں کو بطور سزا سائبیریا اور وسطی ایشیا کے بیابانوں میں منتقل کیا گیا۔

اس اتھل پتھل کے سبب یوکرین جیسی سونا اگلتی سرزمین میں قحط سالی نے لاکھوں انسانوں کو نگل لیا۔ گیہوں کا گودام کہلانے والی ریاست بربادی کے کگار پر پہنچ گئی تو دیگر سوویت ریاستوں میں بھی غلے کی شدید قلت نے اپنا رنگ دکھایا۔مگر اسٹالن نے پرواہ نہیں کی اور اجتماعی کھیتی باڑی کے نظام کو مکمل کر کے دکھایا ( بیس برس بعد چین میں بھی یہی اسٹالنی تجربہ دہرایا گیا۔ لاکھوں جانیں گئیں مگر خبریں بھی انسانوں کے ساتھ دبا دی گئیں ۔) اس سختی، راج ہٹ اور انسانی قربانی کے نتیجے میں ہونا تو یہ چاہیے تھا کہ کھیتی باڑی کے نئے نظام کے تحت سوویت یونین غلے کی پیداوار میں خودکفیل ہو جاتا۔ مگر ایسا ہونا تو درکنار الٹا سوویت یونین کو بیرونی غلے کی ضرورت پڑ گئی۔ انیس سو اسی کے عشرے میں جب سرد جنگ عروج پر تھی۔ سوویت یونین اپنے سب سے بڑے نظریاتی دشمن امریکا سے سالانہ پچاس لاکھ ٹن گندم خریدتا رہا۔ غلے کی عالمی پیداوار میں سوویت یونین کا حصہ محض ایک فیصد تھا۔

البتہ جب سوویت یونین ٹوٹنے کے بعد نجی شعبہ رفتہ رفتہ بحال ہوا تو کسانوں نے بھی گندم کو بطور نقد آور فصل دلجمعی سے اگانا شروع کر دیا۔ آج صورت یہ ہے کہ سوویت یونین کی جانشین ریاست یعنی روس گندم کی عالمی پیداوار میں اٹھارہ فیصد کی حصہ دار ہے جب کہ دوسری جانشین ریاست یوکرین کا گندم کی عالمی پیداوار میں حصہ سات سے آٹھ فیصد کے لگ بھگ ہے۔ یوں سمجھ لیجیے کہ دونوں ممالک گندم کی ایک چوتھائی عالمی پیداوار کی فراہمی کے ضامن ہیں اور دنیا کے لگ بھگ اسی ممالک کا دارو مدار اسی روسی یوکرینی گندم پر ہے، جب کہ مصنوعی کھاد یعنی فاسفیٹ کی ایک چوتھائی پیداوار بھی روس اور بیلا روس سے عالمی منڈی میں پہنچتی ہے۔ اور اس وقت روس یوکرین لڑائی کے سبب گندم اور فاسفیٹ کی قیمتیں آسمان سے باتیں کر رہی ہیں۔ سری لنکا کا شمار بھی انھی ترقی پذیر ممالک میں ہوتا ہے جو گندم اور مصنوعی کھاد کے معاملے میں مذکورہ تین ممالک پر انحصار کرتے ہیں۔ مگر گزشتہ برس مئی تک بھلے چنگے سری لنکا کو بھی قحط سالی کی کگار تک صرف ایک ذہین شخص یعنی صدر گوٹا بائیا راجہ پکسا کے اس خواب نے پہنچا دیا کہ سری لنکا دنیا کا پہلا ملک ہو گا جو مصنوعی کھاد استعمال کیے بغیر خوراک میں خودکفیل ہو کر ایک عالمی مثال بنے گا۔

جس وقت صدر گوٹا بائیا نے یہ خواب دیکھا تب تک سری لنکا اپنے دو کروڑ شہریوں کی بنیادی خوراک یعنی چاول کی پیداوار میں تقریباً خود کفیل تھا۔ مگر راجہ تو راجہ ہوتا ہے اور راج ہٹ بھلا کون ٹال سکتا ہے۔ راتوں رات قدرتی کھاد کا متبادل انتظام کیے بغیر مصنوعی کھاد اور کیڑے مار ادویات کی رسد معطل کر کے کسانوں کو ان کے حال پر چھوڑ دیا گیا۔ نیت یہ تھی کہ مصنوعی کھاد کے زہریلے اثرات سے زمین کو پاک کر کے شدھ صحت مند خوراک اگائی جائے جیسا کہ باپ داد کے زمانے کا دستور تھا۔ ملک کے بیس لاکھ کسان جو برسوں عشروں سے رعایتی مصنوعی کھاد کے عادی بنا دیے گئے تھے ان کی سمجھ سے بالا تھا کہ اچانک حکومت کو کیا جنون سوار ہو گیا اور ہمیں اعتماد میں لیے بغیر ہماری قسمت کا فیصلہ کیسے کر دیا گیا۔ اب اتنی بڑی مقدار میں قدرتی کھاد اور زمین کی زرخیزی بڑھانے والے دیگر قدرتی اجزا اور کیمیکل سے پاک کیڑے مار نسخے کہاں سے حاصل کیے جائیں کیونکہ ان کی درآمد کا تو پیشگی بندوبست ہی نہیں کیا گیا تھا۔

نتیجہ یہ نکلا کہ ایک ہی سیزن میں فصلوں کی پیداوار میں چالیس سے ستر فیصد تک کی کمی ہو گئی۔ سری لنکا بیٹھے بٹھائے ایک خودکفیل زرعی ملک سے منگتے فقیر میں تبدیل ہو گیا۔ پہلی بار بیرونِ ملک سے تین لاکھ میٹرک ٹن چاول خریدنا پڑا۔جب کہ اس سے پچھلے برس بیرون ملک سے صرف چودہ ہزار میٹرک ٹن چاول خریدا گیا تھا۔ جب معاملہ ہاتھ سے نکل گیا تب کہیں جا کے گزشتہ ماہ صدر گوٹا بائیا راجہ پکسے جن کا اپنا تعلق بھی زرعی خاندان سے ہے نے اعتراف کیا کہ ان سے غلطی ہو گئی۔ اتنی عجلت میں اتنا اہم زرعی فیصلہ نہیں کرنا چاہیے تھا اور حکومت اس کا ازالہ کرنے کی بھرپور کوشش کرے گی۔ مگر تب تک زرمبادلہ کے ذخائر ختم ہو چکے تھے۔ یوکرین روس تنازعے کے نتیجے میں مصنوعی کھاد کی قیمتیں دگنی ہو چکی تھیں۔ سرکار نے عالمِ گھبراہٹ میں مصنوعی کھاد خریدنے کے لیے عالمی بینک سے نیا قرضہ لیا۔ لیکن قرضہ آتے آتے بھی وقت تو لگتا ہے۔

اس دوران عوامی صبر کا پیمانہ لبریز ہو گیا۔ جنھیں پہلے ہی نہ دوا میسر تھی نہ خوراک اور نہ ڈیزل اور پٹرول۔ پھر یوں ہوا کہ صدر کے سگے بھائی مہندا راجہ پکسے کو وزیرِ اعظم کے عہدے سے مجبوراً مستعفی ہو کر بحریہ کے ایک اڈے میں خاندان سمیت پناہ لینا پڑی۔ ان کی جگہ رانیل وکرما سنگھے کو حکومت بنانا پڑی۔ رانیل صاحب نے آتے ہی بنا کسی لاگ لپٹ عوام کو حقیقت بتا دی کہ موجودہ زرعی سیزن کے لیے مصنوعی کھاد حکومت فراہم نہیں کر سکتی۔ البتہ اگلے سیزن کے لیے ضرور کھاد اور زرعی ادویات کی رسد یقینی بنائی جائے گی۔ اگلے چند ماہ بہت تکلیف کے ہیں مگر برداشت تو کرنا ہو گا۔ اس وقت سری لنکا میں بنیادی خوراک تین ماہ پہلے کے مقابلے میں پچاس فیصد مہنگی ہو چکی ہے۔ پٹرول خریدنے کی سکت نہیں تو سیاحت کا شعبہ بھی ٹھپ پڑا ہے۔ امریکی زرایع اور اقوامِ متحدہ کا اندازہ ہے کہ اگلے برس جن دو ممالک کو خوراک کے شدید بحران کا سامنا کرنا پڑ سکتا ہے وہ افغانستان اور سری لنکا ہوں گے۔ خدا دونوں ممالک کے حال پر رحم کرے اور دیگر ممالک کو ان دونوں کے حال سے سبق سیکھنے کے لیے عقلِ سلیم نہ سہی کامن سنس ضرور عطا کرے۔ (آمین۔)

وسعت اللہ خان  

بشکریہ ایکسپریس نیوز

They’ve built a “Great Wheel” on the Seattle waterfront [...].

The small timber village became a military outpost in the Puget Sound War [...], [and] soon evolved into a trade gateway, with timber tailings and other industrial trash from Henry Yesler’s mill used to fill in the marshlands [...], atop which migrant laborers raised tents and shanties [...] now working to feed raw materials into the furnaces of the Second Industrial Revolution burning in the East. [...] The first nationwide strike ripped across the country’s railways in 1877, but in Seattle the unrest took on a grim character, as thousands of unemployed white workers rioted against their Chinese counterparts [...]. Meanwhile, [...] local elites rebuilt [...] downtown [...] from scratch, hosting the tallest building on the West Coast alongside other new constructs [fueled] with money gleaned from the supply chains linking eastern capital to Alaskan gold. [...] Today the city - again rebuilt [...] - is seen as one of the primary beneficiaries of the “Fifth” Industrial Revolution in information technology, outshone only by California’s Silicon Valley. [...] The digital was increasingly thought of as somehow "immaterial," sustained by intellectual labor more than physical toil [...].

Silicon Valley myths of [...] "immaterial" labor disguise a more gruesome dynamic in which growing segments of the global labor force are being deprived even of the basic brutality of the wage, instead forced out into growing rings of slums, prisons, and global wastelands. [...]

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Perched alongside a downtown business corridor [...], Seattle's Great Wheel seems to peer out over [...] [the] prophesied “cooperative commons,” an infotech metropolis abutting the beauty of an evergreen arcadia. But travel below Seattle’s cluster of infotech industries and the image appears much the same as that of a hundred years prior - a trade gateway, squeezing value from supply chains by selling transport and logistical support. The southern stretch of the metropolis bears little resemblance to the revitalized urban core of the city proper. Instead of the “cognitive labor” of Microsoft, it is defined instead by the cold calculation of companies like UPS, founded in Seattle when the city was one link in a colonial supply chain built first for timber, then Alaskan gold, then World War. [...]

In south Seattle, this logistics empire takes the form of faceless warehouses, food processing facilities, container trucks, rail yards, and industrial parks concentrated between two seaports, an international airport, three major interstates, and railroads traveling in all directions. Meanwhile, the poor have been priced out of the old inner city, moving southward [...]. [T]hey can be found staffing the airport and the rail yards, hauling cargo in and out of two the major seaports, loading boxes in warehouses [...]. And, beyond them, the shadow stretches out to Washington’s rural hinterlands where migrant laborers staff a new boom in agriculture and raw materials [...] - and further still into America’s long-depressed interior, where the Great Wheel meets its opposite: Memphis, the FedEx logistics city, watched over by a great black pyramid [the infamous Bass Pro Shop pyramid]. [...]

Every Seattle is capable of creating an eco-friendly, “cooperative commonwealth” tended by apps and algorithms only insofar as there is a Memphis that can provide human workers to sort the packages, a Shanghai to build the containers that carry them, and a Shenzhen to solder together the circuits of the machines that govern it all.

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All text above by: Phil A. Neel. "The Great Wheel". Brooklyn Rail. April 2015. Published online at: brooklynrail.org/2015/04/field-notes/the-great-wheel. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, personal use, criticism purposes.]

Major Players in the War Against the Firmament

The Republic of Stauros

The Republic of Stauros is a global superpower that controls the Americas and much of eastern and southern Africa, its imperialist agenda funded by the exploitation of abundant natural resources. This influx of resources means that they have been able to rapidly advance technology, particularly in bio-science, engineering, and materials science fields, and their advanced technology in turn makes for political capital with which they can bully nations into being subsumed by the Republic.

Stauros is a meritocratic oligarchy with republican structures, and presents itself as being a place where the best can rise to the top. It is centrally governed in its capital of Etorios, by a council of (what were originally) six departments that oversee facets of government such as treasury, military, agriculture, etc. These department heads are chosen from among a democratically elected parliament that makes up the upper levels of each department by the previous council. In short, the system rejects change very stubbornly as those who are eligible to lead have been entrenched in the system for a very long time. This entrenchment means that the Republic, while founded on progressive ideals, has now fully embraced the authoritarian streak that has haunted it since its inception.

Most prominent in Stauros's war against the Firmament is the ExoCorps, the executive arm of the Department of the Exterior. The Dept of the Exterior was created in order to protect Stauros's offplanet interests, however in the decades since they have come to rival the power of the Dept of Military, even surpassing it in many instances. The most notable example of this power imbalance is in the ExoCorps' development of Synaptic Transfer technology and the resulting Janissary program.

The Sophic Church

The Sophic Church originated as part of the Third Awakening, a reactionary revival in religiosity coupled with anti-Christian sentiment and strong undercurrents of paranoia brought about by a sharp rise in conspiratorial thought. What were several grassroots Gnostic revival movements came together to form a single ecclesiastical society, united in their desire to dismantle current institutions and build something new. These movements, originally different sects, syncretized their beliefs, though after several decades of transformation, their doctrine has evolved into a largely ahistorical conflation of Valentinianism and Sethianism alongside some entirely new ideas.

The Sophic Church played a key role in the formation of the Republic and rose alongside it, shaping it in the process, and as a result, within Stauros there is a strong presumption that most residents of the Republic are a part of the church.

Naturally, due to this relationship the Church has amassed a large amount of wealth and influence, and has invested this wealth into a number of corporate assets. The most prominent among these is Ascension, a corporation with child companies for mining, manufacturing, logistics, pharmaceuticals, and many other industries.

As a result, the Sophic Church has control over a substantial amount of the economy not just of Stauros, but the rest of the world as well.

The Stereomatos

In 2068, Olympia, Stauros's first permanent Martian research base, collapsed due to mismanagement. Due to the nature of the Stauros Dept of Research's control over the research base, while researchers lived permanent lives on base and even raised families there, leadership was not only appointed from a bureaucracy located on Earth, but also frequently rotated. As a result, most Directors of Operations viewed the position only as a temporary station, and ultimately failed to carry out their duties.

This culminated in 2067, when a failure in the water system caused dozens of people to become ill and 14 deaths. Civil unrest had already started to stir, but now was in full swing.

A nearby ExoCorps detachment was then stationed inside the colony to dissuade uprising, but the additional strain on resources that they caused served only to exacerbate discontentment. Before any violence broke out, the base was declared no longer fit for human habitation and disbanded, its residents either returned to earth or stationed in other colonies. The base was leveled shortly thereafter.

A mere two years later, Synesia was founded on Olympia's ruins. Synesia was intended to serve as a colony and an experiment in autonomous government, as well as a center for Stauros' civic operations offplanet. This quickly expanded into a semi-autonomous satellite state, granted nominal independence by Stauros in return for serving as the governing body for bases and offplanet stations too large and too distant from Earth in order to be effectively managed by a planetary bureaucracy.

In practice, the Stereomatos is a puppet state. Most of its leadership is either beholden or sympathetic to Stauros, and lives under constant threat of dismantlement. Stauros maintains exclusive trading rights with the Stereomatos, and uses the leverage of their monopoly on space infrastructure as means of controlling the nation.

The Firmament

The Firmament is a revolutionary movement across the Stereomatos with the ultimate goal of eliminating Stauros control over space.

The movement is comprised of several cells across both inner sphere and outer sphere colonies and stations, which frequently work together to improve the living conditions of Stereomatos citizens, smuggle goods and resources across planetary boundaries, and wage asymmetric warfare against Stauros.

The Firmament's immediate strategy is to hold Stauros at resource-point through piracy and targeted attacks on military installations so that they'll agree to several key conditions:

The right to self-govern independent of Stauros control, including reforming the government from a parliamentary republic into a syndical state.

Better access to tertiary industry, including the means to utilize synaptic transfer tech

Access to Stauros trade networks in order to carry out trade with other nations with minimal interference

The Stereomatos as a whole may be generally divided in their opinion on the Firmament's methods, however it is an unspoken rule to side with them whenever possible, because the Firmament represents hope for a freer future and an end to overcrowding and military police actions. Even those ideologically opposed tend to avoid speaking out, because the members of the Firmament are ultimately members of their community. A number of Stereomatos politicians have direct connections to Firmament leadership, and work to achieve the movement's aims through diplomatic means.

On Earth, however, the opinion is generally much more divided. Typically the details of their actions are largely reduced to the effect that they've had on Stauros, and are branded terrorists due to civilian casualties from their attacks. Within Stauros, media is sufficiently skewed that those who are aware of them despise them. Outside of Stauros, the Stereomatos is shown more sympathy, and even those who skew more conservative are open to the idea of free trade with the Stereomatos.

Federated Oceania

As climate change ravaged the global south, Aotearoa (formerly New Zealand) successfully pushed back the encroaching ocean with a sea wall, reclaiming additional land in the process. Having secured their new position as a safe haven for climate refugees, they pushed Australia into adopting a similar strategy. As a means of allowing displaced people to retain their sovereignty as well as protect against the threat of a subjugation-hungry Stauros on the horizon, the bloc of Federated Oceania was formed.

With a vested interest in environmental sciences and sustainable energy, Oceania rose to prominence by implementing the first viable fusion reactor and selling off excess energy from successive plants. This paved the way to further successes until it became the non-Stauros leader in technology on a global stage, and served as the first country to challenge Stauros's self-proclaimed "monopoly on space".

As a staunch rival of Stauros, Oceania is one of the few terrestrial nations to openly provide support the Firmament.

The Archon Program

The disappearance of the Caesarea is a mainstay of conspiracy circles system-wide. From independent blogs hosted on the clearnet to chatrooms on planetside LITEs to forums and message boards maintained on Firmnet servers in the belt, no hushed whisper passes through the internet's lips without mentioning its name, and the Caesarea is rarely mentioned without the words "Archon program" in its wake.

However, there is little consensus on what those words mean.  

They say that Archon Program is run by the Dept of the Exterior— no, by the Sophic Church— no, it's the secret Dept of Suppression— as a psyop— actually, it's in order to crush unions (the IPU has NEVER been able to touch Ascension)— no, to serve as a counter to the Firmament's dark matter bomb— and eventually, to dominate the world— utilizing heinous machines that are larger than any Cataphract, that bleed, that drive their enemies and pilots to madness.

When asked for proof, however, the stories converge. A would-be whistleblower from Ascension Aerospace, killed when lightning struck her complex as she was uploading the leak, severing the connection and her life at once. All that was uploaded was the first gigabyte of a single file, titled Archon Program, completely blank except for the image of an A with an ouroboros divided into seven pieces.

Nothing more is known by the public.

Spanish farmers plan protests in February - Reuters

Spanish farmers' associations said on Tuesday they were planning to take to the streets in February in protest against strict European regulations and lack of government support as unrest continues to spread across Europe.

The largest farmers' groups - Asaja, COAG and UPA - share the same grievances as their peers in other European countries, saying environmental regulations imposed by Brussels are undermining the profitability of crops and increasing food prices.

Drought in southern Spain has also hit farmers, with production of several crops such as rice and olives dropping over the past two years.[...]

In neighbouring Portugal, the National Confederation of Agriculture, which represents small and medium-sized farms, said it too would organise protests, slow marches and other events. The dates are yet to be decided. Meanwhile, as protests in France have intensified, some 20,000 Spanish trucks that cross the border every day have struggled to transport fruit, vegetables and other goods. Spanish transport association, Fenadismer, estimates the blockades cause daily losses of 10 million euros ($10.84 million) for Spanish companies.

30 Jan 24

Farmers in Greece and Romania are protesting, joining a wave of unrest in the farming community that has affected several countries in Europe.

In Karditsa, Evros, Patras, Peloponnese, and in Serres, northern Greece, farmers took to the streets on Wednesday with tractors. They have also threatened to close highways, media reported.

A bigger demonstration is planned for Friday in Thessaloniki on the occasion of the 30th Agrotica, the largest exhibition of the agro-economic sector in the country. Farmers warn that if the government does nothing by next Monday, roads will be closed.

Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said things should not go to such extremes. “No matter how serious the demands of a professional group are, they must not lead to the punishment of all citizens and violate the rights of society. This government has proven that it is trying, without leading to extreme tension, to solve problems,” Marinakis told the public broadcaster ERT.

Farmers, among others, demand compensation for those who haven’t received it for the damage caused by Storm Daniel, which destroyed houses, businesses, animal and plant production and roads in Thessaly region in September.

They want the construction of infrastructure projects to protect against weather phenomena, reductions in production costs and a change in the Agricultural Insurance Organisation’s regulation so that the production and capital are compensated 100 per cent for all such risks.

The Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection has already granted 33.9 million euros to 16,400 agricultural holdings and livestock units that applied for “first aid,” with payments to be completed in the next period. PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said there will be a second cycle of aid worth 5,000 to 10,000 euros for farmers affected by the extreme flooding of September 2023 in Thessaly and other areas.

Farmers in Romania meanwhile continue to protest and demand relief from high fuel and insurance prices and better selling prices for their products. The government has devised some solutions to the demands, but many are unconvinced and continue to protest.

Large-scale protests took place on Tuesday in Brasov and Sibiu, central Romania, whwre farmers took 50 agricultural machines to the streets and staged a march. An authorized protest was also organised by farmers from Sibiu, who started in a column with tractors, trucks and cars across the municipality.

Such protests are taking place in all major cities in Romania, including on the ring road of Bucharest, where farmers have been protesting for weeks and hindering traffic. They were not allowed to enter Bucharest to protest in front of the government building to avoid disrupting the already heavy traffic in the capital.

Farmers in France, Belgium and Germany have been holding demonstrations blocking highways, with Reuters reporting that Spanish and Italian farmers will now join the movement.

They are complaining about EU measures to create “solidarity corridors” in order to provide Ukraine with income from agricultural exports, especially wheat. These products have flooded neighbouring countries and caused local production prices to fall.

The protesters also demand the cancellation of measures to limit agricultural production due to its carbon footprint and affect on climate change. They want the restoration of fuel tax exemptions. Far-right parties in Germany and in France have expressed vocal support for farmers’ demands.

1.5 C is coming. All the places in the world responsible for most of the food and (plant) fiber grown are deteriorating the fastest. Big agriculture will collapse (good riddance). Mass production will collapse (good riddance). Everything we do as humans generates heat-- we're mammals. Working is heat. Production is heat. Shipping is heat. All of it costs water and other precious resources. If you have to draw on the grid to keep your home livable in the Spring and Summer, that region is ALREADY uninhabitable.

It will be an overpopulated world of brutal heat waves, little food, little water, and little electricity. You need to make adjustments NOW. Move north NOW-- abreast of the arctic circle North. Find a way. Get it done. Whatever else it is you think you're doing doesn't matter. The wealthy are ABSOLUTELY banking on most of us dying or becoming their drudges. Mass migration from the danger zones (currently among the most densely populated) WILL cause extreme unrest.

I'll say it again. As women, THE BEST thing we can do to address all of this is to Separate from men and lock down land together. Preferably someplace where we can quickly take majority before men realize what's happening (like ALASKA). At the very least, shoot for California, Washington, and Oregon-- extremely expensive, overpopulated, and easily assailed by the Mad Max states next to them as well as particularly afflicted with wealth gap. Also on fire and becoming mostly desert.

Stop dating men, stop marrying men, stop living with men, stop bearing sons, get up and LEAVE. Learn about permaculture and locally sourcing every aspect of your life. Learn to fight.

I belong to a land where for centuries the communities of two religions had co-existed without any reported animosities. It was only when political interests crept into our societies that we've seen rancour spreading in the human hearts. Talking here about infamous Hindu/Muslim clashes that often end up with bloodshed which is sadly the most unfortunate thing to witness especially when the roots of these two religions originated from the single source of divine truth. The more I delve into any religion, the more I'm able to see the common thread that binds them all together in one unbreakable bonding, that it would be ignorant of anyone to have unholy assumptions of another's faith.

Let the subject be about the sacredness of the cow, which may be ridiculed by some, but every Indian knows how sensitive of a subject it is in these times. Don't we have greater global issues to speak about? Yes, but that doesn't underplay the relevance of this subject to every Indian for the sheer reason of how much spite & hatred has been injected into the human minds revolving around this subject.

It will be quite surprising to see that in the religion of Islam, the longest chapter in our holy scripture is named after this animal. If that isn't enough reason to imply the sacredness of this breed of cattle, then I don't know what is. It is also worth noticing how in the scripture the produce of milk from cattle within its bellies amidst the blood is depicted as a divine marvel. Scientifically speaking how the entire eco system shows a flow - the consumption of grass by the cattle, then the digestion of that food, then the formation of blood, then the transformation of the fluids amidst the digestive tracts into something so pure, so healthy and so white, as a blessed drink for human consumption.

And while the islamic scripture speaks so highly of the milk produced in the bellies, the Indian culture goes one step ahead and since times unknown has adopted the practise of even using the cow dung for enlivening the earth for agricultural purposes. Nothing that comes out of the cow is seen as a waste including its dung which has been scientifically proven as the most natural fertiliser for agricultural lands. It shows an entire ecosystem that's binding this sacred cow and its relation to human co-existence on earth in that even the food we eat comes from the soil where cow dung is used for enriching its nutrient content.

The whole point being that when there's such deep sense of sacredness connected to something, then it is common sense to honour it especially when that is tied and connected to a community's faith & belief. I even wonder why cow slaughter should be made such a hot topic when the religious texts of both communities have unanimously agreed to it. The goals are clear, to create political unrest and benefit out of it. I pray the common man wakes up and don't fall into such traps. The truth is as plain as daylight...

Random Xpressions

Chapter 2: The Birth of Zionism and Shifting Tides in Palestine

In the 1900s, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. It was a land where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in peace and harmony. Meanwhile, in Europe, a movement called Zionism was gaining momentum. Led by Theodore Herzl, its purpose was to establish an independent Jewish state in the Middle East, specifically on Palestinian land.

As the first wave of European Jews started migrating to Palestine, things began to change. World War I came to an end, and the Ottoman Empire collapsed. Palestine fell under British rule, and in 1917, Britain declared its support for a Jewish state in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. Tensions between Arabs and Jews escalated, leading to violence and unrest.

In February 1947, the United Kingdom offered to give up its mandate over Palestine and presented the question of its future to the United Nations. In November of the same year, the UN approved a plan to divide Palestine into two separate states: Jewish Israel and Arab Palestine. However, Jerusalem, a city sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, was placed under the control of the UN as an International Zone.

While the Jewish population accepted the UN partition plan and declared independence as the state of Israel on May 15, 1948, a tragic event occurred. Over 800,000 Palestinians were violently expelled from their homes, resulting in their displacement and the day known as "Al-Nakba," or "the catastrophe" in Arabic.

Neighboring Arab countries strongly objected to this forced takeover of land, which eventually led to the first Arab-Israeli War. Israel emerged victorious and seized the land intended for the Palestinian state under the UN's partition plan. The land was divided, with Jordan occupying the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Egypt occupying Gaza, and the state of Israel taking 78% of historical Palestine, including West Jerusalem.

Fast forward to 1967, amidst ongoing tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the Six-Day War broke out. At the end of the war, Israel fully occupied Palestine. Though there was no formal peace treaty, Israeli settlements expanded in Gaza and the West Bank, causing further Palestinian resistance and the emergence of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Their goal was to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation using any means necessary.

As the years went by, the conflict persisted. Frustrated Palestinians initiated the Intifada, an uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It was during this time that Hamas, a political movement, was born. Hamas was determined to fight against Israeli occupation and gain freedom for the Palestinian people.

In 1993 and 1995, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords, aiming to reduce tensions between them. These agreements led to the splitting of the occupied West Bank into three sections: Area A, which was under full Palestinian control, Area B, under joint Israeli-Palestinian control, and Area C, under full Israeli control. However, this solution created a problem. Area C contained the majority of the West Bank's valuable agricultural land, water resources, and minerals, which limited Palestinian access and created further frustration.

Despite these peace talks, a lasting resolution remained elusive. This led to the second Intifada in 2000, with Israel responding by constructing separation walls and checkpoints to control and restrict Palestinian movement. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza but continued to build illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The divide between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority grew, resulting in separate leadership for Gaza and the West Bank.

Gaza faced severe challenges as violence erupted, leading Israel to impose a blockade on the enclave in 2007. This blockade restricted any form of movement by land, air, or sea. In the following years, Israel carried out multiple military assaults on Gaza, causing immense suffering and loss of life for the Palestinian people.

As time went on, 2022 became the deadliest year for Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank since 2005. In 2023, Israel carried out brutal attacks on Gaza and deadly raids in Jenin. Finally, on October 7, 2023, Hamas launched their largest attack on Israel yet, known as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Israel responded by declaring war against the Palestinians, focusing its military campaign on bombarding the besieged Gaza Strip.

Throughout the decades, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lost their lives, been violently displaced, and forced to live under a brutal occupation.

Following quote is from gleaning the welfare fields this is just a really nice succinct history of peasant revolt under communism

"Resistance to State Extraction during the Socialist Period (1959-1978)

The current character of rural resistance has its roots in the socialist era. This cycle of struggle begins in 1959, the first year of the Great Leap Famine, when a rupture occurred between peasants and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had developed widespread support in the countryside to various degrees over the previous three decades. Many members and even leaders of the party came from the peasantry, and the CCP’s guidance had proven successful at winning struggles against local elites that poor peasants had already attempted unsuccessfully on their own. Peasant support grew throughout the 1950s as CCP policies (such as land reform and cooperativization), coupled with the end of civil war, led to improvements in living standards.

All this fell apart with the return of famine in 1959, following the first year of the CCP’s Great Leap Forward campaign.[12] Many peasants soon began to regard the party-state as an alien, extractive and oppressive force, and to act individually or collectively against it by hiding grain from state collectors, stealing from collective fields, looting granaries, going to cities to demand food,[13] and in some cases taking up arms and engaging in local “power seizures.”[14]

The post-Leap retreat to more conservative agrarian policies (partial decollectivization, restoration of markets) mitigated peasant unrest, but the damage was done. Henceforth it would be more difficult to mobilize peasants for mass campaigns or even everyday work. The inefficiency that Dengists[15] and liberals alike attribute to the nature of collective production in general actually stemmed, in this case, from peasants’ resistance to state extraction and what they interpreted as alien, often irrational attempts to control the production process. In the 1970s (following more moderate recollectivization in the mid-1960s), many peasants again pushed for partial decollectivization, and others welcomed the Dengist state’s forced decollectivization in the early 1980s—less because of peasants’ inherent individualism or “petty bourgeois mentality,” and more because they wanted less extraction and more control over production.[16]

 

Resistance to Price Fluctuations during the Period of Transition (mid-1980s to early 1990s)

The early 1980s was a golden age for most Chinese peasants, comparable to the 1950s in optimism and surpassing it in terms of livelihood. Several decades of peace and gradual improvement of food intake combined with post-1968 improvements in rural health care managed to double life expectancy between 1949 and 1980. Meanwhile, two decades of collective projects to improve rural infrastructure (bringing new land under cultivation, expanding irrigation systems, building roads, etc.) and state modernization of agriculture (mechanization, production of agrochemicals and high-yield varieties of seed and livestock) finally came to fruition in the late 1970s.[17] This was coupled with the first significant state increase in prices for agricultural products, supplemented by subsidies for peasant entrepreneurs who reorganized their household farms and privatized collective equipment to specialize in certain commodities, leading to the most rapid increase in agricultural productivity and income that China had seen since the Ming Dynasty—especially for those able to benefit from the entrepreneurial subsidies available from 1978 to 1984.

By the mid-1980s, however, a combination of new factors caused these increases in productivity and income to decline. The increase attributable to modernization on tiny plots of land soon reached its limits. The state then decreased its subsidies and price controls for agriculture as part of its general strategy of marketization, and in order to balance the budget and lower the price of food for urbanites. These changes spelled disaster for peasants who specialized in certain cash crops when prices fell below the cost of production, leading to the first significant round of peasant unrest in China since the Great Leap Famine,[18] beginning in the late 1980s.

There is little data available on this sequence of struggles due to media censorship and the preference of researchers to focus on either decollectivization or anti-corruption struggles, but it is memorialized in Mo Yan’s novel The Garlic Ballads.[19] Based on news reports and interviews, the novel recounts a 1987 uprising against the falling price of garlic and the government’s refusal to buy the surplus, after local officials had encouraged peasants to specialize in garlic and then pocketed the state subsidies, alongside fees they had charged for farming a cash crop instead of grain. If this case is any indication, the marketization of agriculture at this time was already intertwined with local state corruption, which became the focus of peasant resistance in the 1990s.

 

Resistance to Local State Expropriation in the 1990s and early 2000s

It was during this period that many young peasants began migrating to coastal cities for temporary jobs, incentivized by expropriation in the countryside and increasing employment opportunities in the Special Economic Zones, both occurring just as returns from modernized small-plot agriculture had reached their limits. The struggles of peasants thus bifurcated into the rural struggles dealt with here, and the struggles of ruralites as proletarians, including conflicts in the wage relation and riots against social exclusion discussed in “No Way Forward, No Way Back” (also in this issue).

Despite frequent news reporting and a sizable academic literature, the only attempt at a comprehensive history of rural struggles in China since the 1980s is a pair of articles by Kathy Le Mons Walker published in the late 2000s.[20] The following sections center on summarizing information from those articles, supplementing it with other sources and engaging critically with Walker’s analysis.

Among the many targets of peasant resistance from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, most could be characterized as direct expropriation. These included:

the issuing of IOUs in lieu of payment of cash for crops by local officials, who used the funds for speculative real estate and business deals[…]; cadre diversion of state-allocated inputs for agriculture; the pocketing of TVE [“collective” township and village enterprise] profits by local and mid-level cadres; the imposition by local cadres of a host of ‘illegal’ or ‘unaccounted for’ fines, fees, and taxes to pay for ‘development’ projects and/or for personal use; the forcible confiscation of the land, belongings, and food of peasants who could not or would not pay the extra taxes and fees; the expropriation of arable land without adequate compensation (for highways, real estate development, and personal use, or to attract industrial investors through the creation of ‘development zones’); the issuing of inferior and fake chemical fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and other supplies by corrupt cadres; and finally the pollution of local water supplies by development projects, which has not only angered peasants but affected agricultural production as well.

This expropriation was not mere “corruption,” as both the Chinese state and liberal critics usually describe it.[21] In some cases it resembles proto-capitalist “primitive accumulation” in Marx’s classical sense, because it played a key role in the transition to capitalism.[22] In others, especially more recently, such expropriation might be better understood as specifically capitalist “accumulation by dispossession” in David Harvey’s sense—Walker’s preferred category of analysis.[23] It transferred products of peasant labor into capitalist enterprises and the infrastructure necessary for its operation. It also took the form of capitalist rents, as opposed to the tributary and socialist rents in rural China prior to marketization. Investment in this period often took the form of “collectively-owned” TVEs, but many of these functioned as profit-oriented joint-stock enterprises, while others were eventually appropriated by their managers or cheaply purchased by capitalists. During China’s reintegration into the world market in the 1990s, these privatized TVEs became the initial vehicle through which Chinese and transnational capital exploited local and migrant peasant-workers—the vehicle of their expropriation often becoming the source of their exploitation."

On the first day of Bihu -- Assamese New Year, in April -- [...] [t]he objective is to gather 101 different wild, edible plants in celebration of the beginning of the new harvest year. The oldest woman in the group, in her early sixties, can distinguish the edible plants from the nonedible ones and knows most of them by name. [...] A large handful of garlic cloves is peeled, ginger is sliced, and then a few potatoes are mixed in. One of the women heats up some mustard oil, fries the garlic, ginger, and potatoes, and then adds the large bowl of greens. [...] Wild herbs are a central part of the cuisine of Assam, a state in northeast India. Foraged, wild herbs are eaten with garden-grown vegetables [...]. Here, herbs are more than food; they are also used as herbal medicine in the local healing tradition, bon-oukhodi. Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” In Assam, this is a literal, quotidian practice. In addition, herbs are a key ingredient in local rice beer. People drink the homemade rice beer with their meals, as nutrition, as medicine, as part of rituals, and for merriment.

In Assam, wild herbs are more than just nutritious dietary supplements or even Indigenous medicine. They are central to local traditions, identities, and Indigenous mythology.

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Plants in Places

Northeast India [...] is known for having some of the most diverse flora in the world. The state of Assam shares a border with Bangladesh to west and is separated from Bhutan, Tibet, and Myanmar by narrow strips of land [...]. Assam’s borders with Bangladesh and with Nagaland are both fraught. [...] The state is home to many different ethnic and Indigenous communities who mainly live in communal peace, but recent political unrest has targeted Bangladeshi communities -- often refugees -- as outsiders, with the purpose of othering [...]. In recent years, “mainland” Indian politics has made inroads into Assam [...].

Foraging for plants took place in small forests between fields and rivers, and near peoples homes in the villages. It was done on foot, and the plants were collected by hand with the help of a small sickle. Contrary to most agriculture and gardening, in these villages ingredients are collected from wild, uncultivated lands that are not tended in any way to support their flourishing.

The most popular foraged plants to eat are dhekia (fern), manimuni (pennywort), and kosua (taro). They are eaten lightly wilted, boiled and/or fried with mustard oil, garlic, and ginger, or added to dahl and meat dishes.

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Rice-beer brewing is common among Hindu and Indigenous communities in the region. Within these groups, rice beer is consumed by everyone, men and women alike. It is valued for its medicinal properties, as a beverage, and sometimes as part of rituals. Rice beer is not something that is ever purchased; it is only ever homemade. Making the beer requires a starter culture called pitha, which is either made at home or purchased.

The pitha is said to be made of 99 wild herbs, and those who make their own forage the herb fresh before preparing the starter.

The most highly regarded pitha makers are elderly men and women who can recognize hundreds of wild plants and know their medicinal properties. They’re able to select certain plants to give the rice beer particular flavors and medicinal properties. Different plants are also known to influence the preservative qualities of the pitha; for example, adding chili to the pitha is known to protect the beer against rice bugs. 

The forests and fields where people like to forage in Assam are shrinking due to the privatization of land for development and urbanization. This is leading to a loss of tradition and identity.

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Deforesting Identity

Wild herbs have a spiritual dimension that is connected to identity. Communities from the Boro ethnic group in Assam say that at “the beginning” (of life, of the universe), there was algae. Then a sijou (Indian spurge) tree arose. Over time, people arrived, but “they didn’t know how to live.” Gods then materialized eighteen times to teach people things, like sewing, playing the flute and the drum, and making rice beer. Rice beer, then, is also a sacrament. At celebrations, offerings of rice, fermented areca nut, herbs, and rice beer are made to the sijou, as well as to other deities and ancestors by other communities. [...]

The loss of foraging space has implications for identity. One of my interviewees explained: “If you lose your cultural connectedness to your forest, your ecology, then you lose your identity. Now the ruling party has spoken about it very openly for everyone to hear.” Plants are seen as central to identity, to “who we are.” But plant knowledge is being lost, partly because the knowledge-holders are aging; younger and urban people don’t have the time or interest to forage. Moreover, in India it is not only food culture that is being homogenized, with foraged plants no longer having a role; identity is also being homogenized. The elimination of Indigenous and minority group via intimidation, conversion, and the deportation of those without citizenship papers has led to the systematic eradication of Indigenous groups and Muslim communities.

Food is not just food. It also involves stories, intimate connections with the environment, and the politics of how we find sustenance. Questions of destructive modernization and structural violence are inseparable from the smells and textures of herbs and fermented produce.

-------

Image and text published by: Salla Sariola. “Wild Herbs and Rice Beer in Assam.” e-flux Notes. 26 August 2022.

Saint Andrew’s Day is one of most importance for the Romanian People, and for the Christians as well.  Saint Andrew is believed to be the first apostle to have spread Christianity in the area that is now Romania, was associated with the spirit of the wolf, worshiped by Romania’s ancestors as the guardians of our people. Therefore many legends with mystic flavor picture the wolves as symbolic characters among this part of the world.

Saint Andrew’s Day marks the beginning of winter and according to popular belief, is the moment in which dark and maleficent forces unleash upon Earth, represented by werewolves and vampires. This night (29th-30th November) is one strongly marked by sacred, supernatural and mystical manifestations, whom bring devastating effects upon the ones who do not strictly obey to popular customs and rituals, reasons for which St. Andrew’s night can be easily assimilated to the more occidental Halloween legend..

In the Romanian traditional culture, spirits of the dead get out of their graves and start fighting themselves on borders, crossroads and other unholy places, using tools stolen from people’s households. This fight lasts till daybreak when the sun purifies earth and all bad spirits go to where they came from. These kinds of creatures and manifestations are bad for all people because they affect the fertility of the land, agricultural cultures, bring diseases and a lot of bad luck. To counter the effects of these unrestful spirits, various rituals are fulfilled, involving salt, poppy, hemp, basil, incense and, of course, a lot of garlic.

According to more ancient beliefs, the spirits of the dead are now allowed to re-enter, just for one night, into the world of the living. As the cosmic order is now profoundly disturbed, other malefic forces might slip through. So, along with wolves and spirits, the vampires and the moroi are also enjoying this moment of chaos, dancing and haunting abandoned houses, tormenting people and animals. 

Animals are said to be given the gift of speech but whoever hears their secrets will be cursed. It is also believed that wolves are able to speak like humans in the night of St. Andrew, saying terrifying things. Moreover, those who get bitten by these wolves will turn into werewolves.

However, according to local superstitions, people can keep the evil spirits and ghosts away with the help of garlic. Thus, they put garlic on the windows or doors, or even inside the animal stables.

The miracle properties of garlic are spoken of in almost all rituals and superstitions from the popular Romanian believes. On the night of St. Andrew’s, garlic is used both for the protection of humans and their homes as well as for unwedded women who want to foresee their future husband:

“The guarding of the garlic” is an ancient ritual that takes place at night, where young people party, having in the center of the table a few cloves of garlic surrounded by incense and lit candles. The vase is then guarded by an old woman while the young people dance and eat and enjoy the party until morning. Then, the garlic is shared to all participants and each keeps it all year long in the most sacred place of the house, near the icons, to be used only in time of need as the garlic now is invested with magical and healing properties.

In order to determine the future, unmarried girls knee a ring of dough in the middle of which they put a clove of garlic. This dough is then left for a week in a warm place. If the garlic sprouts, the girl is lucky.

Girls who want to see their future husband, prepare the “Dough of Indrei”, made of water, flour and salt in equal amounts, measured in a nutshell. Girls who ate of this mixture are supposed to dream their future husband. Also, to learn about their marriage, there are often used charms that include mirrors, candles or basil placed under the pillow.

On this holy day, people do not work in the household, they do not swipe nor sew, because St. Andrew’s Day represents the beginning of winter and people want to have fortune throughout the coming year. To find out about the fortune and the fertility of the fields, wheat is sown in a bowl, and if the wheat grows green and beautiful, the year will be wealthy.

Some elders used to observe the sky during St. Andrew’s night while predicting if the upcoming year is poor or wealthy, rainy or dry, and even if it’s peace or war.

The traditional customs related to the night of November 29 to 30 are a blend of Christian religion with old Dacian rituals. Legends all across Romania talk about the last Zalmoxis priest, whom he met Jesus and the Apostle Andrew, people then making the transition to Christianity. Saint Andrew is considered the one who brought Christianity on our land, thus becoming the patron and the protector of Romania.

Title: The Essentiality of Environmental Rights: Safeguarding Our Planet and Our Future In the light of rising ecological calamities and the unavoidable depletion of our planet's resources, the call for environmental rights has never been more urgent. Environmental rights cover the essential privileges and obligations that maintain the integrity of our natural world, ensuring its preservation for present and future generations. In this blog, we'll look at the functions, benefits, and serious implications of ignoring environmental rights. Functions of Environmental Rights:

Legal Protection: Environmental rights establish a legal framework for protecting ecosystems, wildlife, and natural resources. They empower individuals and communities to hold governments and companies accountable for environmental damage.

Public Participation: These rights allow residents to engage in environmental decision-making processes, ensuring that their voices are heard on issues that directly affect their communities. This participation encourages transparency, accountability, and democratic governance.

Access to Information: Environmental rights provide access to information on environmental policy, initiatives, and potential hazards. This transparency encourages educated decision-making and gives communities the ability to advocate for environmentally sustainable practices.

Environmental justice seeks to overcome differences in environmental protection and pollutant exposure. They want to make sure that everyone, regardless of color, ethnicity, or socioeconomic level, has equal access to a clean, healthy environment. Benefits of Environmental Rights for People: 1. Environmental rights protect human health by limiting exposure to pollutants and toxins. Clean air, water, and soil promote physical and mental well-being by reducing the number of respiratory diseases, waterborne illnesses, and other health risks. 2. Economic Prosperity: Long-term economic growth requires a healthy environment. Environmental rights encourage the conservation of natural resources, the preservation of biodiversity, and the development of eco-friendly companies that generate jobs and support economic growth. 3. Cultural Preservation: Indigenous and underprivileged populations frequently have strong cultural ties to their land and environment. Environmental rights contribute to the preservation of traditional knowledge, cultural legacy, and sacred sites, hence promoting diversity and resilience. 4. Climate resistance: Environmental rights play an important role in reducing climate change and raising awareness of its effects. These rights help to create a more resilient and sustainable future for everyone by encouraging clean energy, sustainable agriculture, and climate adaptation strategies. Damage Caused by Neglecting Environmental Rights: 1. Ecological Degradation: Failure to protect environmental rights causes widespread ecological degradation, such as deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction, and ecosystem collapse. This degradation disturbs nature's delicate balance, harming biodiversity and risking the planet's ability to support life. 2. Public Health Concerns: Environmental neglect causes air and water pollution, chemical contamination, and the spread of infectious diseases. These environmental health concerns disproportionately affect those with limited resources, compounding health inequities and endangering human welfare. 3. Resource Scarcity: Ignoring environmental rights depletes scarce resources like clean water, agricultural land, and fossil fuels, resulting in scarcity, competitiveness, and conflict. Resource depletion worsens poverty, food shortages, and social unrest, endangering global peace and security. 4. Climate Catastrophes: Disregard for environmental rights promotes climate change, resulting in harsh weather, rising sea levels, and ecological disruptions. These climatic calamities have a severe impact on vulnerable areas, displacing people, worsening poverty, and increasing humanitarian crises. At last, environmental rights are essential for safeguarding the health, well-being, and prosperity of current and future generations. By defending these rights, we can conserve our planet's ecosystems, promote social fairness, and lessen the terrible effects of environmental destruction. For the benefit of our world and all its inhabitants, governments, corporations, and individuals must continue to honor their duties to respect, defend, and fulfill environmental rights.

TODAY, TOMORROW

Finally, in 1996, May Day was proclaimed as a public holiday in Botswana. However, many problems remain. May Day has subsequently been used to fan the flames of discontent. In 2001, for instance, the MWU reiterated the demand that ILO standards be adopted.

Wages remain low, causing strikes in the mines and unrest in the state sector. Despite a growing economy, inequality remains high. In agriculture, land and cattle are often centralised in few hands, pushing more people into waged labour. Privatisation plans remain dominant and, as in the SADC region more generally, the 8-hour day is still not a reality.

At Home Time & 136 Reaping

In the six months following the conclusion of the 135th Games, tensions between the Capitol and the Vox rise to a boiling point in Panem.

January

At the close of the Games in January, travel restrictions are increased significantly between Districts. Movement between, and somtimes even within, Districts becomes very difficult. Those who try are subjected to interrogation, searches, and extensive surveillance.

February & March

During February and March, the Vox numbers grow regardless and the territory of Free Eleven grows with them.

The Capitol significantly increases the Peacekeeper presence in Districts neighboring Eleven to prevent them from following suit, particularly Eight, Ten, and Twelve.

As Eleven continues to be the nexus of conflict, the remainder of Panem experiences the economic disruption ripple out. Fresh agriculture dwindles from Twelve to the Capitol, and by late March, supply in the Capitol is extremely limited. Fruits, vegetables, coffee, sugar, and more are scarce, and if they can be tracked down, they are extremely expensive.

April

In early April, the Vox fully take the district center of Eleven, and Eleven is declared a sovereign territory, ceded from Panem.

By mid April, the pared down fare is very noticeable at the Victor's Ball and in the festivities throughout the Victory Tour. The day before the Tour is intended to go Eleven, Linden is announced to be ill, and they skip the stop under this pretense of "allowing her time to recover".

At the Victory Ball, Nerissa Snow announces that 136 will make all District citizens eligible for reaping, regardless of age. It is speculated that Vox will be targeted.

May & June

Through May and June, the Vox continue to push into the District boundaries of Two, but it proves significantly more difficult and slow-going than taking Eleven had been.

July

The fighting is as intense as ever as the 136th Games open in July. District Two can't train Peacekeepers fast enough. The Vox continue to fight an uphill battle against Capitol resources and surveillance.

THE NEW DISTRICT ELEVEN

District Eleven, officially taken by the Vox, is now under rebel control. From early April through July, things are chaotic in the District, as skirmishes at the borders continue to happen with Peacekeepers attempting to reclaim the land. A significant amount of Vox forces remain to protect the District.

There is no central leader but rather a group of rebel leaders who take over governing the new territory. It continues to be referred to as Free Eleven, this time truly earning its name.

The mayor was killed in the fight to take the central city, and the Vox leaders have inherited a difficult situation: Panem's economy depends on each District exporting their goods and, to a lesser extent, importing everything else they need. Now cut off from the rest of the country, the people of Free Eleven start to grow their own food and begin an economic system based on trading. This does lead to fighting and some general unrest between the people.

There is uncertainty as to what to do with the government- or Capitol-owned orchards, but production must continue, so the Vox encourage citizens to continue their work as normal, but with the workers splitting the produce among themselves. Things are chaotic and confusing, but this is freedom.

Some who don't want to be part of a rebel-run country flee the District, falling into the arms of the Peacekeepers on its border, and the Vox let them leave, but with the promise that all of Panem is soon to be free, just as Eleven is.

The Vox themselves are working round-the-clock to make the District livable and viable, but are stretched thin due to the continued push toward other Districts. However, their numbers increase every day, as the major rebel victory has brought more people than ever from other Districts to join the fight in the rebels' favor.

🚨IMPORTANT NOTE:🚨

OOC Note: 136 will be a no Death Draw games as a ONE TIME opportunity to play out a larger rebellion plot! You may still bring new tributes and choose for them to die as normal, but you can also keep them after the Games if you'd like, or you can reap an existing character for these Games. Things will return to normal in 137-- the Death Draw will be back. (We just won't give away why or how all of this will happen yet-- that will be a surprise! Trust us 😉 )

In 2023, the relentless increase in global heating will continue, bringing ever more disruptive weather that is the signature calling card of accelerating climate breakdown. 

According to NASA, 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded on Earth. This is extraordinary, because the recurrent climate pattern across the tropical Pacific—known as ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation)—was in its cool phase. During this phase, called La Niña, the waters of the equatorial Pacific are noticeably cooler than normal, which influences weather patterns around the world.

One consequence of La Niña is that it helps keep a lid on global temperatures. This means that—despite the recent widespread heat waves, wildfires and droughts—we have actually been spared the worst. The scary thing is that this La Niña will end and eventually transition into the better-known El Niño, which sees the waters of the equatorial Pacific becoming much warmer. When it does, the extreme weather that has rampaged across our planet in 2021 and 2022 will pale into insignificance. 

Current forecasts suggest that La Niña will continue into early 2023, making it—fortuitously for us—one of the longest on record (it began in Spring 2020). Then, the equatorial Pacific will begin to warm again. Whether or not it becomes hot enough for a fully fledged El Niño to develop, 2023 has a very good chance—without the cooling influence of La Niña—of being the hottest year on record.

 A global average temperature rise of 1.5°C is widely regarded as marking a guardrail beyond which climate breakdown becomes dangerous. Above this figure, our once-stable climate will begin to collapse in earnest, becoming all-pervasive, affecting everyone, and insinuating itself into every aspect of our lives. In 2021, the figure (compared to the 1850–1900 average) was 1.2°C, while in 2019—before the development of the latest La Niña—it was a worryingly high 1.36°C. As the heat builds again in 2023, it is perfectly possible that we will touch or even exceed 1.5°C for the first time.

But what will this mean exactly? I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the record for the highest recorded temperature—currently 54.4°C (129.9°F) in California's Death Valley—shattered. This could well happen somewhere in the Middle East or South Asia, where temperatures could climb above 55°C. The heat could exceed the blistering 40°C mark again in the UK, and for the first time, top 50°C in parts of Europe.   

Inevitably, higher temperatures will mean that severe drought will continue to be the order of the day, slashing crop yields in many parts of the world. In 2022, extreme weather resulted in reduced harvests in China, India, South America, and Europe, increasing food insecurity. Stocks are likely to be lower than normal going into 2023, so another round of poor harvests could be devastating. Resulting food shortages in most countries could drive civil unrest, while rising prices in developed countries will continue to stoke inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.

One of the worst-affected regions will be the Southwest United States. Here, the longest drought in at least 1,200 years has persisted for 22 years so far, reducing the level of Lake Mead on the Colorado River so much that power generation capacity at the Hoover Dam has fallen by almost half. Upstream, the Glen Canyon Dam, on the rapidly shrinking Lake Powell, is forecast to stop generating power in 2023 if the drought continues. The Hoover Dam could follow suit in 2024. Together, these lakes and dams provide water and power for millions of people in seven states, including California. The breakdown of this supply would be catastrophic for agriculture, industry, and populations right across the region.

La Niña tends to limit hurricane development in the Atlantic, so as it begins to fade, hurricane activity can be expected to pick up. The higher global temperatures expected in 2023 could see extreme heating of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico surface waters. This would favor the formation and persistence of super-hurricanes, powering winds and storm surges capable of wiping out a major US city, should they strike land. Direct hits, rather than a glancing blow, are rare—the closest in recent decades being Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which made landfall immediately south of Miami, obliterating more than 60,000 homes and damaging 125,000 more. Hurricanes today are both more powerful and wetter, so that the consequences of a city getting in the way of a superstorm in 2023 would likely be cataclysmic.