Paranoia and terror as models of governance – Alèssi Dell’Umbria
A 2011 essay on Mexico’s descent into chaos under the blows of NAFTA and the “drug war”, whose purpose is not only to transform northern Mexico into a security zone for the U.S., but also to hasten “primitive accumulation” (driving peasants off their land—which is then handed over to agribusiness or extraction industries—and into the “colonias” where they will be prey to the drug war and intensive police and military repression) by destroying the surviving communal social forms in “a war against society” that is traumatizing the population but also generating a largely indigenous, assembly-based autonomous movement that is forming militias to defend its communities (e.g., Chiapas).
Aléssi dell’Umbria’s Istmeño—The Winds of Revolt: a documentary film about resistance against dispossession – Argelaga
A review of the 2015 documentary film about the resistance struggle against the construction of gigantic arrays of industrial wind turbines to generate “clean” energy in Oaxaca (southern Mexico), discussing the resistance movement’s historical background in Mexico’s precipitous descent into the nightmare of the accelerated expropriation of the agrarian population by the economic impact of NAFTA since 1994 and the “police-military narco-state violence” that has been used as a convenient screen for repression and elimination of dissidents, as the country is integrated into the world market and its resources are further opened to foreign exploitation.
R.I.P. Jacques Mesrine - Alèssi Dell’Umbria
Submitted by Alias Recluse on Feb 14 2014 21:49
A 2010 essay on the life, death and continuing appeal of the legendary French bank robber, kidnapper and escape artist, known as “Public Enemy No. 1” and “the man of a thousand faces”, Jacques Mesrine, the author of The Death Instinct, assassinated by the French police in 1979, who, despite his notoriety, said, just before he was killed: “some people want to transform me into a hero, but there are no heroes in crime. There are only men who have been marginalized and do not accept the laws because they are made for the rich and the powerful.”
