The local administration in Wuhan, the city of about 11 million people in China’s central Hubei province where cases of the new coronavirus were first recorded late last year, announced Wednesday that the eating of all wild animals was officially banned.
The city also banned virtually all hunting of wild animals within its limits, declaring Wuhan “a wildlife sanctuary,” with the exception of government sanctioned hunting for “scientific research, population regulation, monitoring of epidemic diseases and other special circumstances.”
Wuhan also imposed strict new controls on the breeding of all wild animals, making it clear that none could be reared as food. City officials said the local administration would take part in the wider national scheme to buy wild animal breeders out.
The national plan is the first time Chinese authorities have pledged to buy out breeders in an attempt to curb exotic animal breeding, animal rights activists say.
China had already banned the sale of wild animals for food as the coronavirus spread around the world, citing the risk of diseases spreading to humans, but the trade remains legal for other purposes — including research and traditional medicine.
Two central provinces have already outlined details of a buyout program to help farmers switch to alternative livelihoods.
Hunan on Friday set out a compensation scheme to persuade breeders to rear other livestock or produce tea and herbal medicines.
Authorities will evaluate farms and inventories and offer a one-off payment of 120 yuan ($16) per kilogram of rat snake, king ratsnake and cobra, while a kilogram of bamboo rat will fetch 75 yuan.
A civet cat — the animal believed to have carried Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) to humans in another coronavirus outbreak nearly two decades ago — would fetch 600 yuan.
Neighbouring Jiangxi province has also released plans to help farmers dispose of animals, as well as financial aid.
At the height of the Greek crash in 2011, staff at Viome clocked
in to confront an existential quandary. The owners of their parent
company had gone bust and abandoned the site, in the second city of
Thessaloniki. From here, the script practically wrote itself: their
plant, which manufactured chemicals for the construction industry, would
be shut. There would be immediate layoffs, and dozens of families would
be plunged into poverty. And seeing as Greece was in the midst of the
greatest economic depression ever seen in the EU, the workers’ chances
of getting another job were close to nil.
So they decided to occupy their own plant. Not only that, they turned it upside down.
For
a start, no one is boss. There is no hierarchy, and everyone is on the
same wage. Factories traditionally work according to a production-line
model, where each person does one- or two-minute tasks all day, every
day: you fit the screen, I fix the protector, she boxes up the iPhone.
Here, everyone gathers at 7am for a mud-black Greek coffee and a chat
about what needs to be done. Only then are the day’s tasks divvied up.
And, yes, they each take turns to clean the toilets.
When
the workers consulted the local community about what they should start
to produce, one request was to stop making building chemicals. They now
largely manufacture soap and eco-friendly household detergents: cleaner,
greener and easier on their neighbours’ noses.
Staff use the
building as an assembly point for local refugees, and I saw the offices
being turned over to medics for a weekly free neighbourhood clinic for
workers and locals. The Greek healthcare system has been shredded by
spending cuts, its handling of refugees sometimes atrocious; yet in both
cases, the workers at Viome are doing their best to offer substitutes.
Where
the state has collapsed, the market has come up short and the boss
class has literally fled, these 26 workers are attempting to fill the
gaps. These are people who have been failed by capitalism; now they
reject capitalism itself as a failure.
An important addition to this post, the Vio.Me factory has been cut off from the power grid by the government in April, and are running on generators at the moment, while producing soap and cleaning supplies that they donate to prisons and refugee camps that have been left to rot duting the pandemic by the same government.
We are asking for the help of the global movement in restoring the
power or acquiring a generator, so that we can continue the production
without obstacles and also help us become more independent. We therefore
call all unions, collectives, Greek, European and global comrades to
help in obtaining a generator with biodiesel capability. Solidarity is
our weapon!
— In solidarity, Workers at Viome Coop
VIOME won’t shut down for some power cables. The solidarity of the people already gave us an electric generator and we are running again, we are starting producing and we are preparing the restoration of power with every means available.
IMMEDIATE RESTORATION OF POWER WITH A BILL IN OUR NAME
FULL LEGALIZATION OF THE FACTORY FOR PRODUCTION WITHOUT HINDRANCES
WE URGE YOU ALL TO SHOW YOUR SOLIDARITY
You can support our struggle by purchasing VIOME products in the link: https://www.viomecoop.com
VIOME WILL REMAIN IN THE WORKERS’ HANDS
So, this post about extinction rebellion led to a conversation about how eco-fascists can infiltrate climate movements that claim to ‘welcome everyone’. So I thought I’d also make it a separate post about ecofascism.
Ecofascism comes in roughly two flavors: identitarian and openly racist.
Identitarian fascism generally calls itself ‘nationalism’, or ‘localism’ or ‘protecting our culture’ just identitarian. When dealing with the climate, it often connects ‘the people’ to ‘the land’ and claims that only
those that have lived on a piece of land for generations can properly
care for it. So it will claim that immigrants pollute more, etc. It draws parallels between nature and society, claiming that anything ‘foreign’, be it a plant or a person, upsets
the harmony of nature/society and so the best way to protect both is to keep foreigners out. A very prominent defender of this idea is
Marine Le Pen from the french far-right Front National.
Now, those are the ecofascists that run for elections. On the more
extreme violent side of this same ideology you’ll find the openly racist, who sometimes call themselves fascists or strategically hide that word, depending on their audience. When dealing with the climate, these fascists will claim that the
earth’s population should be very much reduced to restore the balance
between humans and nature.
They’re often primitivist,
romanticizing a world without technology, where manly men chop
wood in the forest while obedient women have white babies etc. You get
the idea.
They often infiltrate deep ecology spaces and conversations. They’re also often involved in paganism…
but like… a very conservative gendernormative all-white interpretation of it.
Generally focused on nordic/viking traditions. They’ll use the words ‘nordic tradition’ and ‘boreal culture’ as code for white/’ayran’. When they’re being less subtle, they’ll use the term völkisch and the term ‘blood and soil’ (your race ties you to the land, everyone should live in the same place forever, foreigners should die, etc.)
Once you’ve accepted their view of depopulation and are hooked by their romantic images of man in harmony with nature, they’ll reveal that of course this means that only the best white genes should be allowed
to survive the great dying of climate change. A common claim is that the ‘ship’ of humanity is sinking and there is only one lifeboat, so the best people should get on it and they should, in the words of eco-fascist Pentti Linkola:
take the ship’s axe and sever the
extra hands that cling to the sides.“
Which is what they’ve of course wanted all along:genocide.Even if they genuinely believe their own eco-fascism, the main thing they were always warming you up for is genocide. To them, the
fact that climate change is mostly killing people of color is exactly
what should be happening and if it doesn’t all happen naturally, it
should be carried out by mass murder. And ecofascists are already putting these plans into action: The Christchurch and El Paso
schooters were both ecofascists who believed this.
Recognize ecofascism within a movement:
The idea that those born in a place are more motivated to care for it than those that moved there
An obsession with people as being ‘rooted’ in a place where they have lived for generations
Anti-import and export as a way to cut carbon emission (but really they just don’t want anything to cross borders)
If
you mention meat eating, they’ll probably change the topic to Muslim
traditions of halal meat.
Localism
Paganism, but like… a very conservative all-white interpretation of it.
Primitivism + gender norms.
A love of things ‘nordic’ or ‘boreal’
The term völkisch
The term ‘blood and soil’
The idea of white people being replaced by immigration
Don’t be fooled if you have some things in common. Some ecofascists are vegans, some ecofascists are squatters, some ecofascists live zero-waste lives, some love organic gardens and DIY green energy projects. They’re still fascists whose ultimate goal is genocide.
What you can do:
Make your climate activism loudly anti-fascist.
Make your climate activism loudly anti-racist.
Prioritize the voices of indigenous people and people of color from the regions hardest hit by climate change, which are directly experiencing the impact of climate change in ways that white people couldn’t imagine. If you want to have a climate movement that isn’t shit, you should be doing this anyway, but the fact that it’ll also make your movement less attractive to fascists is a nice bonus.
Address fascist talking points for what they are. Talk to those that don’t know what they’re reproducing and kick out those that continue to sympathize with fascism.
Don’t participate in calls to ban ritual slaughter of animals. This is just another way in which fascists push their bigotry into climate activism. Recognize that the meat industry is violent at every stage and don’t single out religious minorities. Be suspicious of people in your movement who support this.
Resist the normalization of the ‘overpopulation’ narrative.
Make sure everyone knows that the richest 10% are responsible for 49% of
CO2 emission while the poorest 50% are responsible for 10%.
If you see someone romanticizing a future in which most of the world
population is dead, don’t give that an inch of space.
Make it very very clear that the 'population control’ narrative lays the
foundations for genocide. Destroy those foundations wherever you find
them.
If you’re involved in paganism, make your paganism
loudly anti-fascist.
Know which symbols and practices are most popular among fascists and be ready to kick out fascists in your communities.
Correct me if i’m wrong but another thing is that while they’re really keen on the idea of being 'rooted’ in a place and belonging to a place, they also don’t give a fuck about indigenous people in western colonised countries, like Australia, NZ and the Americas. They want them gone, and think only white people deserve to live on that land. So watch out for anti-indiginous rhetoric about 'primitive’ people and references to issues that disproportionately affect indigenous groups like alcoholism and incarceration as 'evidence’ that they’re not the right people to care for the land.
Jup, they tend to contradict themselves here a lot, claiming that you must be 'rooted’ in a land for generations to live in harmony with it and that we should return to the 'world as it was’ with all humans and nature in their rightful place, (obvious such a time has not existed and is a fascist white supremacist fantasy) which just means ‘migrants go home’.
At the same time they think that since white people are superior, they can take root anywhere. In fact, they need 'living space’ (a literal classic nazi term) to realize their low-population-density we’re-all-farmers-and-forest-dwellers fantasy. And of course inferior races need to be murdered and replaced to achieve that.
So according to this fascist way of thinking white primitivism is 'rooted’, 'natural’, 'a return to as it should be’ and good for nature’, while people of color living in nature are 'inferior’, unfit to care for the land and probably the ones that left that trash over there. They’re also likely to target indigenous hunting practices while glorifying white hunters.
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