A-Infos (en) France, Alternative Libertair #220 - Marine pollution: Stop walking disaster + Dico anticapitalist: What syndicalism? (fr) [machine translation]

Marine pollution: Stop walking disaster ---- Most coastal or surface is threatened by 
human activities. Pollution from activities on land, transport and oil spills, global 
warming and overfishing combine to degrade massively oceans. ---- According to UNEP [ 1 ], 
about 80% of marine pollution resulting from toxic substances spilled on land, whether of 
industrial origin (hydrocarbons, heavy metals, radionuclides), agriculture (fertilizers, 
pesticides) pollutants (water treatment waste and landfills). Nitrates and phosphates, 
used extensively by intensive agriculture or sewage treatment plants, leading to the 
proliferation of green algae. This is a prime example of the local creation of "dead 
zones" where most marine organisms disappear. In 2004, the UN reported more than a hundred 
dead zones in bays, estuaries downstream and seas.

This phenomenon continues to grow, now reaches four hundred coastal nearly 245,000 km2 of 
ocean pollution that kills this all plants and animals living in the seabed. These 
phenomena are amplified by the massive releases of CO2 in the atmosphere, resulting 
mechanically by acidification of the oceans and affect planktonic organisms at the base of 
the food chain with the cascading effects that can be imagined.

Overfishing deadly

And entire ecosystems, such as coral reefs are threatened by the consequences of human 
activity. If they cover only 0.2% of the ocean floor, they collect about 25% of marine 
species. Their possible disappearance - including those in the Caribbean - has been the 
subject of a scientific report presented by UNESCO on 28 January 2008. According to the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an increase in average global 
temperature of 2 ° C would lead to widespread death of corals worldwide. The other big 
issue is overfishing. The United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) 
estimates that 77% the proportion of fish species impacted to varying degrees: 8% would be 
exhausted, 17% and 52% overexploited exploited to their fullest. Capacity of fish catches 
reached levels totally incompatible with the productivity of the oceans. Fish catches had 
already reached a maximum of 100 million tonnes in 2000. And although the fishing capacity 
are increasing, production has stagnated since the 1990s. Industrial vessels cover long 
distances and fishing deep with very sophisticated technical means. The seabed is 
devastated by weighted nets that capture more benthic life possible [ 2 ], each year 
affecting an area of seabed twice that of the continental United States!

Scarcity

Since 1950, industrial fisheries down south at the rate of depletion of stocks, ie 0.8 ° 
per year. Only the most heavily subsidized fleets remain competitive, creating a cleavage 
increasingly important with poor countries. Ten to fifteen percent of the global ocean is 
directly affected by overfishing, according to the UN, but with impacts that affect or 
will affect at least three quarters of the main fishing areas in the world. The causes of 
the disaster in motion are known as climate change, pollution and overfishing. The 
depletion of fish stocks [ 3 ] and the significant number of people dependent on these can 
only lead to economic, social and political. Surpassing the immediate interests of the 
capitalist minority who raided these resources is a necessary condition for an early 
solution which we will detail the aspects in the next issue.

Jacques Dubart (AL Agen)

[ 1 ] UNEP: United Nations Environment http://www.unep.org/french/

[ 2 ] The benthos is all aquatic organisms near the bottom of the seas and oceans, lakes 
and rivers.

[ 3 ] Living resources (flora and fauna) of marine or freshwater aquatic (freshwater) used 
by man (fishing, aquaculture).

-----------------------------------------------------

Dico anticapitalist: What syndicalism?

It may seem surprising today to many workers and workers to attach the term union than 
revolution. Is that revolutionary syndicalism no longer has the audience he could have and 
often the unions merely accompany employee-es in their daily struggles to defend without a 
radical break with the capitalist society by revolution.

What we must realize is that unionism is not always prudhommales elections, small 
arrangements in EC signatures agreements soft (remember the CFDT in 2003) calls to resume 
strike after not having won anything, calls for a strike framed one day, from time to time 
to show that we are not happy ... Anyway, so that many activists and revolutionary 
activists are pulling their hair. There are still a form of unionism which favors direct 
action, fighting not only to ensure that workers and workers rights, but also to overthrow 
the existing system and build a new society. As for the other currents of revolutionary 
thought that we cover in this dictionary, it is not a question of making a comprehensive 
history of trade unionism-revolutionary prehistory to the present day, it would take too 
long, and above all it would bring not much. We just have to remember that this form of 
unionism today minority was until the year 1914 or 1930 in some cases, a current major 
trade union action in many countries. Thus, the claims to the French CGT trade 
union-revolutionary (or SR for short) until the First World War, it continued after the 
CGT-SR (the forerunner of the National Confederation of Labour present French). Argentina 
is the Fora (at least until its congress in 1915), in Italy Usi, the Netherlands Nas, the 
CNT in Spain, the IWW in North America, is demanding a trade union direct action, which 
should help workers to improve their working conditions, but also help in the organization 
of the future society. Another feature, the SR rejects any political affiliation and 
considers that trade unionism is sufficient in itself to bring the revolutionary project. 
The influence of the Charter of Amiens is paramount to understand this relationship to 
political organizations [ 1 ].

Seriously affected by the First World War (which undermines internationalism) and the 
birth of the various communist parties (which calls into question the independence of 
association), the revolutionary syndicalist movement was gradually weakened, even if its 
influence can still be important in some areas. Although the SR does not claim 
specifically anarchism and one should not confuse this with the current 
anarcho-syndicalism, many anarchists or anarchist communists are in this vision of 
unionism direct action, emancipatory and horizontal.

[ 1 ] On the Charter of Amiens see Libertarian Alternative No. 151, May 2006
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en