Black and Green Review *3

Description

• Opening Editorial: John Zerzan
• The Wind Roars Ferociously: Feral Foundations and the Necessity of Wild Resistance by Four Legged Human. No other essay embodies “wild existence, passionate resistance” more than this.
• The Sacred Sunrise by Ian Smith. Finding the sacredness of the wild in the beauty of everyday experiences. 
• Green Light of Life by Charly Aurelia. A short piece on Resurrection in the digital age. 
• Decadence and the Machine by John Zerzan: A look at the Decadent movement of the late 19th century and its correlations to contemporary malaise. 
• Hooked on a Feeling: The Loss of Community and the Rise of Addiction by Kevin Tucker. An in-depth overview and analysis of the role of community in mitigating tension and celebrating the wild and how it becomes supplanted in the domestication process leading to a rise of intoxication and how civilization is built upon addiction.
• Adding to the Noise by Ian Smith. Are we merely creating content for the machine?
• Some Thoughts on Civilization and Collapse by Jeriah Bowser.
• Zero Chill by Cliff Hayes. A look at the AI blunder of Microsoft’s Tay and what it says about the world that technology is creating. 
• Over the Barrel: An Interview with Richard Heinberg. An interview regarding peak oil, unconventional oil production and what $30 per barrel crude oil means about the collapse of civilization.
• True Crime Case Files: Sabotage Against the Natural Gas Industry. A look at Wiebo Ludwig’s war against sour gas as well as pipeline and well sabotage.
• Stop Waiting: An Interview with Josh Harper. Absolutely crucial interview with long time animal liberation activist Josh Harper on surviving prison and the Green Scare.
• Informants and Information: An Interview with Lauren Regan. Necessary reading on how the role of informants and snitches within the Green Scare by its most notorious attorney and activist-advocate, Lauren Regan. Exposes the role of informants, the failure of security culture and how social media is a playground for government agencies and corporate spies. 
• Wild Resistance, Insurgent Subsistence: an Interview with BC green anarchists. An in depth interview with green anarchists in British Columbia focusing on native pipeline resistance, its strengths over typical eco-activist campaigns, and the importance of community and wild subsistence in anti-civilization resistance.
• Field Work in the End Times, Part 3: An Anthropologist’s View of the Collapse. The last part of our interview with our anonymous anarcho-primitivist anthropologist friend on how collapse is playing out on the ground throughout the world and what it means to be an anthropologist during the collapse. 
• A review of Ted Koppel’s Lights Out by Story Teller. A lengthy examination of tips that Ted Koppel may have not intended on giving. 

Inaugurated only last year, the focus of BAGR seems already in need of adjustment. Kevin Tucker’s “Opening Editorial” announced that the Review would emphasize the promotion of critique and discussion within the anarchist milieu. That milieu, sadly enough, now appears undeserving of much attention.         A few years back, around Occupy time, 2011-2012, various voices proclaimed the ascendancy of anarchism. Its time has come, now is the opening to anarchism, etc. This has not blossomed into anything, and Occupy is one place to explore this failure.         The spontaneous outburst of Occupy energy was aimed at the excesses of capitalism. Even when militant, which was rare, it only amounted to more leftism. Occupy Oakland was its high point and anarchists were quite active there, but, fatally it seems, failed to add content to the Occupy energy. Supposedly post-Left and even anti-civilization, Bay Area anarchists apparently provided no voices along these lines.         A potential turning point of Occupy would have been, for starters, to rechristen it De-Occupy. But that would have constituted an actual turn away from the Left, in favor of waking up to the indigenous dimension, and how very much could be found there. Anarchists largely voted with the (rest of) the Left to reject such a proposed name change, having been easily fronted off by a few identity politics thugs who wanted to be in charge of the De-Occupy (or “De-Colonize”) position. Our post-Left anarchists gave no voice to that outlook overall and when Occupy fizzled out were left with the hangover of their non-presence. Even now, it seems, little insight and even less energy can be seen. A persisting postmodern haze prevails, where egoists and nihilists compete to now even deny that reality is knowable. How this is anarchist at all escapes me. It more resembles the insular scenes of cynical hipsters, offering no analysis, no inspiration.          The very ambitious To Change Everything tour in fall 2015 was a Crimethinc. production, involving speakers from various continents. Civilization, domestication, mass society, industrialism, and other institutions foundational to our immiseration and the systematic environmental devastation were never mentioned.         On the other hand, there certainly are those who confront the nature of things, how we got here. And put such concerns into practice, such as anarchists in British Columbia and Arizona who’ve striven to be “accomplices not allies” to Native people whose ties to the land have not been broken after all they’ve had to endure, who still resist. The DOA (Dine-O’odham-Anarchist) black bloc, Phoenix 2010, was one instance among many of collaboration in Arizona. Others find a helpful challenge in anarcho-primitivist ideas in lots of places, a phenomenon that seems to be steadily gaining ground. An indirect testimony along these lines is the Black Seed zine, which feels the need to call itself the successor to Green Anarchy, even though its overall agenda is egoist-nihilist-postmodern.
         Many things are at a low ebb these days and we don’t have a real clear picture of where the anarchist milieu is at. It is clear that everything’s at stake and that we are not interested in in-group parlor games. Anarchy seemed promising pretty recently, but lately too much of it has almost no bearing on what is going down, little interest in that, and not much relevant to offer. The conversation about technology, for example, is apparently ignored by anarchism. We are anarchists and in no way are we shutting the door on anarchists. But a mammoth challenge faces us all, so we haven’t time to waste.