Copenhagen, January 1st 2010

Something is rotten (but not just) in Denmark. As a matter of fact, thousands of people have been considered, without any evidence, a threath to the society. Hundreds have been arrested and some are still under detention, waiting for judgement or under investigation. Among them, us, the undersigned. We want to tell the story from the peculiar viewpoint of those that still see the sky from behind the bars.

A UN meeting of crucial importance has failed because of several contradictions and tensions that have shown up during the COP15. The primary concern of the powerfuls was the governance of the energy supply for neverending growth. This was the case whether they were from the overdeveloped world, like the EU countries or the US, or from the so-called developing countries, like China or Brazil.

At odds, hundreds of delegates and thousands of people in the streets have raised the issue that the rationale of life must be (and actually is) opposed to that of profit. we have strongly affirmed our will to stop anthropic pressure on the biosphere.

A crisis of the energy paradigm is coming soon. The mechanism of the global governance have proven to be overwhelmingly precarious. The powerfuls failed not only in reaching an agreement on their internal equilibrruim but also in keeping the formal control of the discussion.

Climate change is an extreme and ultimate expression of the violence of the capitalistic growth paradigm. People globally are increasingly showing the willingness of taking the power to rebel against that violence. we have seen that in Copenhagen, as well as we have seen that same violence. Hundreds of people have been arrested without any reason or clear evidence, or for participating in peaceful and legitimate demonstrations. Even mild examples of civil disobedience have been considered as a serious threath to the social order.

In response we ask – What order do we threaten and who ordered it? Is it that order in which we do not anymore own our bodies? The order well beyond the terms of any reasonable “social contract” that we would ever sign, where our bodies can be taken, managed, constrained and imprisoned without any serious evidence of crime. Is it that order in which the decision are more and more shielded from any social conflicts? Where the governance less and less belongs to people, not even through the parliament? As a matter of fact, non-democratic organisms like the WTO, the NB, the G-whatever rule beyond any control.

We are forced to notice that the theater of democracy is a broken one as soon as, one approaches the core of the power. That is why we reclaim the power to the people. We reclaim the power over our own lives. Above all, we reclaim the power to counterpose the rationale of life and of the commons to the rationale of profit. It may have been declared illegal, but still we consider it fully legitimate.

Since no real space is left in the broken theater, we reclaimed our collective power – Actually we expected it – to speak about the climate and energy issues. Issues that, for us, involve critical nodes of global justice, survival of man and energy independence. We did marching with our bodies.

We prefer to enter the space where the power is locked dancing and singing. We would have liked to do this at the Bella center, to disrupt the session in accord with hundreds of delegates. But we were, as always, violently hampered by the police. They arrested our bodies in an attempt to arrest our ideas. we risked our bodies, trying to protect them just by staying close to each other. We value our bodies: We need them to make love, to stay together and to enjoy life. They hold our brains, with beautiful bright ideas and views. They hold our hearts filled with passion and joy. Nevertheless, we risked them. we risked our bodies getting locked in prisons. In fact, what would be the worth of thinking and feeling if the bodies did not move? Doing nothing, letting-it-happen, would be the worst form of complicity with the business that wanted to hack the UN meeting. At the COP15 we moved, and we will keep moving.

Exactly like love, civil disobedience can not just be told. We must make it, with our bodies. Otherwise, we would not really think about what we love, and we would not really love what we think about. It’s as simple as that. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

How the COP15 has ended proves that we were right. Many of us are paying what is mandatory for an obsessive, pervasive and total repression: To find a guilty at the cost of inventing it (along with the crime perhaps).

We are detained with evidently absurd accusations about either violences that actually did not take place or conspiracies and organizing of law-breaking actions.

We do not feel guilty for having shown, together with thousands, the reclamation of the independence of our lives from profit’s rule. If the laws oppose this, it was legitimate to peacefully – but still conflictually – break them.

We are just temporarily docked, ready to sail again with a wind stronger than ever. It’s a matter of love, justice and dignity.

Luca Tornatore – from the Italian social centres network “see you in Copenhagen”.
Natasha Verco – Climate Justice Action
Stine Gry Jonassen – Climate Justice Action
Tannie Nyboe – Climate Justice Action
Johannes Paul Schul Meyer
Arvip Peschel
Christian Becker
Kharlanchuck Dzmitry
Cristoph Lang
Anthony Arrabal

To support our prisoners, visit Cop-enhagen.

As millions come to grips with the claimed agreements emerging from the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, it’s impossible to resist the suspicion that politics can provide no solution to the serious environmental and ecological problems facing the earth.

Despite the absurdity of shout shows which daily disparage global warming, it is a fact that sea ice in the Arctic is melting, as are Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets. This, coupled with melting glacial ice in places like the Himalayas, spells climate change that threatens disaster for millions of people in the region of Bangladesh, and the Indian state of West Bengal.

It means both flooding and drought, increased heat, more disease and the destruction of human habitat.

Politicians, speaking for their nation states, pledge a lessening of carbon emissions by 2020, thereby ignoring the view of many scientists that if all such emissions ceased today, the deleterious effects would be devastating.

Eleven years from now, very few of the politicians making today’s agreement will be in office. As Bush showed, it’s relatively easy to abrogate a treaty obligation — just ignore it.

Politicians are overwhelmingly the hirelings of the corporate class; they often do their bidding, as it is usually them — and only them — who can afford them!

When the Tuvalu Islands, low lying atolls in the South west Pacific, go underwater; when rivers burst their banks in Bangladesh; when drought threatens millions in India and Africa, will we look back at Copenhagen and think, ‘well done?’

I think not.

/Mumia Abu-Jamal

Listen to Mumia’s essay at Prison Radio.

Take action in support of the activists in Copenhagen facing a police state on wednesday!

Free all the climate justice Prisoners in Copenhagen!
Stop a police state and a repressive capitalist summit!
For our autonomy on the streets!

Take simultaneous actions on wednesday 16th December.

During the ‘Global Day of Action’ in Copenhagen on Saturday, were up to 100,000 climate justice activists were protesting against the failed UN climate summit, Danish police indiscriminately made a mass arrests of 968 activists. They have expressed severe physical discomfort and have no access to water, medical attention or toilet facilities. Many are reported to have urinated themselves while detained on the ground.

The next day, during the “Hit the Production” demo on Sunday. Without any provocation, the police charged violently at the crowd and began more than 250 arrests, forcing people to sit on the ground in 2 degree temperatures while cuffed. The scenes seem to be an exact repetition of the human rights violations from the day before.

Why the 16th?

In Copenhagen, the 16th will be the day for a mass action at the Summit itself! Our goal is to disrupt the sessions and open a space inside the UN area to hold a People’s Assembly. The assembly will give a voice to those who are not being heard, it will be an opportunity to change the agenda, to discuss the real solutions. After 15 years of negotiations and no real solutions to the climate crisis, we say enough! No more markets based solutions, no to corporate greed and short term politics deciding our future! No to colonialism and the land-grabs taking place in local and indigenous communities!

Join us and take action anywhere you are to reclaim power over our future! Protest against unjust arrests, police violence and capitalist summit.

See you on the streets!
/Climate Justice Action

For the latest news in Copenhagen, go to:

*iCop15.org, a site that gathers feeds, tweets, images and more.
*Climate IMC, the climate indymedia.
*Indymedia Danmark, the Danish indymedia.
*Modkraft, freelance journalism covering Danish activism and more.

NO BORDERS DAY OF ACTION

Today, 14th of December, is the No Borders Day of Action and in Copenhagen activists march to the ministry of defence. The last days unprovoced mass arrests and police violence, serves to illustrate the importance of connecting the fight for climate justice with the struggle for solidarity with migrants. Here follows the call to action from Climate No Borders.

The debate over climate change and global warming management at the UN is a struggle among the national ruling establishments for their own interests on the international diplomatic stage. While there is concern that climate change can have unforeseen political and economic consequences, these competing capitalist states have no means of seriously addressing the issue, other than making preparations for cracking down on social unrest.

Elites globally have pushed the criminalization of the movement of people for years now. Their latest excuse for this is climate change. They talk about people migrating for survival and better lives as a security threat that justifies border repression and moves towards a more defined global apartheid. Their reckless pursuit of profit has caused the climate crisis, and now they want to criminalize those who are absorbing the effects of their greed.

The military industrial complex is the epitome of their hypocrisy. The majority of wars fought in the last decades have been resource wars fought to secure government and corporations access to the planets resources. Their exploitation of resources is the cause of the climate crisis. Now climate change has joined their wars as the two major causes of forced migration. At the same time, the war machine is the instrument of the criminalization of migration.

In addition, “The Stockholm Programme”, which is set to be passed in december will foster more surveillance of the internet, common access to European police databases and more cross-border police collaboration to fight “illegal migration”. It will force countries outside the EU to take back their citizens who enter the EU without a visa and it will push the use of biometrics and radio-frequency identification (RfiD) and enlargement of the police agency Europol and the EU border watchdog Frontex.

In the face of this, refugees act in defiance of the borders when they move for survival and a better life. They migrate and in doing so refuse to comply with laws that put profit and control above life and dignity.

To counter this act of defiance and hope, governments, corporations and elites foster and promoted racism globally. The COP 15 is another instrument for this. Their definition of a ‘good target’ already displaces hundreds of thousands of people. Their false solutions condemn millions more to suffering to maintain their profits.

It is fitting that Denmark hosts such a conference as COP15. The Danish state actively fostered racism in order to justify the eviction and deportation of the Iraqi’s who occupied a church in Copenhagen for three months earlier this year. But like many of the other governments participating in the COP the Danish elites are not confining their racism to the Danish context. The recent Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen is now the leader of NATO. He has been pushing for ’security crackdowns’ and reinforcement of fortress Europe to prevent migration from places more immediately effected by elite caused climate change. To the NATO alliance an array of threats exist in today’s uncertain world, from terrorism and transnational crime to unrest following food crises, extensive migration to the countries of the NATO alliance and social conflicts as a result of climate change. On a just planet- his job would not exist. The war machine would fold and so would borders.

On December 14th we will take action to create this world. In the context of the COP 15 we will take on the most potent site of their sickness here in Denmark- the Ministry of Defense. We want to breakdown their control, disrupt their surveillance and confront their repression. We will open their offices to the weather they are changing and to the people they lock out. Our action starts at 11am at Rådhuspladsen and will march to the Ministry of Defence!

/Climate No Border