So far in Fear Of A Punk Decade, I’ve been going year-by-year through the ’90s, tackling the progression of punk and hardcore in tidy, 12-month chunks. In September I covered 1992, which means this installment ought to cover 1993. It doesn’t. Instead, I’m taking October off from our regularly scheduled FOAPD program to wander down a tangent—or create a sidebar—to the rest of the series. This month, let’s talk zines.

Neonics, systemic pesticides that work through a neurotoxin, which is applied to the seed of a plant and taken up into all its tissue so that the insect is exposed at every turn to a new vehicle bearing the same poison, work in a very orderly manner indeed. Poisoned food crops and the honeybees that pollinate them are perfectly efficient bearers of the values of the Big 6 - Monsanto, Dow, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and DuPont. The empty beehive isn't mysterious. It is no magician's cabinet. The bees aren't disordered - they are designed. There is, that is, no Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

The views I have been peddling to various audiences (without notable success) are: (1) The academy is a world of its own, complete with rules, protocols, systems of evaluation, recognized achievements, agreed-on goals, a roster of heroes and a list of tasks yet to be done. (2) Academic work proceeds within the confines of that world, within, that is, a professional, not a public, space, although its performance may be, and often is, public.

Becoming an activist can be an incredibly positive experience: creating community, inspiring change, feeling empowered. While most humans choose instead to use their meager time chasing money, collecting possessions, and obsessing over pop culture, the activist sees a bigger picture, a longer view, a deeper connection.

After three women were injured by an SWN vehicle on Monday Dec 2, and 11 people arrested by the RCMP, Mi’kmaq warriors established several burning tire blockades on Highway 11. The fires burned into the night and served to delay SWN vehicles from proceeding with their exploratory testing. Because it has been an effective tactic, another burning tire blockade has been established today.

Women warriors at a tire fire blockade on Hwy 11, Dec 2, 2013.

As an invulnerable tween, Chris Huegerich, the child of a prosperous farming family, wiped out on his motorcycle in tiny Breda, Iowa. Forty years on, folks still call Huegerich “Crash.” And though he eventually went down a conventional path (married, divorced) and bought out his parents’ farm, Huegerich has recently reverted to his daredevil ways — at least when it comes to choosing what kind of corn to plant.

Noam Chomsky: The term neoliberal is a bit misleading. The doctrines are neither new, nor liberal. As you say, big business and the rich rely extensively on what economist Dean Baker calls "the conservative nanny state" that they nourish. That is dramatically true of financial institutions. A recent IMF study attributes the profits of the big banks almost entirely to the implicit government insurance policy ("too big to fail"), not just the widely publicized bailouts, but access to cheap credit, favorable ratings because of the state guarantee and much else. The same is true of the productive economy. The IT revolution, now its driving force, relied very heavily on state-based R&D, procurement and other devices. That pattern goes back to early English industrialization.

Victor Serge (1890-1947) is experiencing something of a revival. This is understandable, given the power of Serge’s prose and the events and people he wrote about. A complete translation of his Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Memoirs[1]) was published in 2012 while collections of his earliest pro-Bolshevik writings (Danger[2]) and discussions with Trotsky (Papers[3]) appeared in the 1990s to supplement Serge’s Year One of the Russian Revolution (Year One[4]) which has been available since the 1970s. Now the (updated) paperback version of Susan Weissman’s much praised biography of Serge has appeared.

Yolanda is one of the most destructive typhoons to have visited the Philippine archipelago. It pummeled the Visayas region, particularly Leyte and some parts of Cebu and Panay areas. Super typhoon Yolanda left the archipelago with thousands of dead people, commercial and residential structures destroyed, power knocked-out; agriculture and livelihoods are washed-out that caused billions of losses. Destruction is so extensive that it caused unimaginable effect to the survivors.

Edward Snowden is one year older than I am. Thanks to the information he released, my SSSS designation has started to make far more sense within the context of the massive surveillance network we inhabit within the United States. Snowden’s leaks have revealed a network of contractors who can monitor every aspect of an individual’s internet activity and determine who is and who is not a threat. My own activity has brought me into a vast social network that is perceived to be a threat by the NSA and their employees.

A recently released survey of American writers conducted by PEN America Center in October found that government surveillance is having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

Dave Ramsey probably wasn’t expecting this much pushback when he shared a piece by Tim Corley contrasting the habits of the rich with those of the poor. In her response on CNN, Rachel Held Evans noted that Ramsey and Corley mistake correlation for causality when they suggest (without actually proving) that these habits are the cause of a person’s financial situation. (Did it never occur to them that it might be the other way around?)

Two political prisoners: one past, one present, both lay dying. Two heroes of the Black liberation movement: one revered, one maligned, both endured decades of solitary confinement. Two men: one African, one African-American, both fought for the rights of African peoples. Two names: one internationally known, one unknown to many of his own countrymen. Both names echo the journey to overcome apartheid and segregation.

Following violent clashes over the decision to dismiss hundreds of unionized workers and replace them with unaffiliated workers, locals in the Odisha region of India have forced the closure of seven large open cast coal mines, and two railway stations. 1,000 local workers ransacked the management offices and fought running battles with workers who remain loyal to the bosses.

Like the Mi-kmaq people’s fight in New Brunswick, the people of Pungesti together with activists from all over Romania fight against big oil and the police state against the unlawful and unjust fracking of their lands for profit. After several days of clashes, Chevron has decided, for now at least, to suspend operations there, handing activists another victory in the global fight for Earth’s rights. Today I got to talk with leading Romanian activist, environmentalist and overall badass Brianna Caradja about her battles in Pungesti and the fight to save Earth:

On Thursday the 28th of November, the Lenin district court of the city of Tyumen upheld the request of the prosecutor of said district in
recognizing five articles of the journal Avtonom as “extremist.” Of these, two are available in English: “Notes of a co-conspirator” is
an obituary written by a friend in memory of Moscow anti-fascist and anarchist Ivan Khutorskoy, who was murdered in November of 2009. This text was published in issue 32 of the journal, and according to experts, it was “instigating hatred against the social group of right-wing radical skinheads.” Another of the banned texts which is available in English is “On anarchism and violence” by Antti Rautiainen, originally published under a pseudonym in the 33rd issue of the journal in the fall of 2011, and translated for this occasion.