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| Protest to protect the skies from satellite pollution, techno-militarism and war held in Nantes, France (Click on photo for better view) | |
Below a timely and fascinating conversation between two activists - one from France (Bernard) and the other from French-Canada (Jean).
Hi Jean,
The meteorologists are worried too. We're going to have our work cut out for us on this one!
We had already demonstrated in Nantes in March 21 against 5G and “Elon Musk madness”. We had been the only ones in France with a small town on the department's coast, Le Pouliguen, following us. So there was a lot of progress made (66 supporting communes large and small). To shake up our tired country - towards Christmas and in political crisis - we mentioned Musk's role as de facto co-president of the USA, champion of mega-constellations, and the recently announced European IRIS 2 project, “behind the curve” in the grim competition between nations in space (and elsewhere). So we've been supported this time (more than we'd hoped), and our friends in the north of the country have helped us out.
In 2025, we're going to concentrate our efforts on obtaining a universal - constitutional - right of non-connection/disconnection. This should be an international campaign, as it seems to us so urgent and fundamental.
Our analysis is that we must not separate health - freedom and ecology in the most material sense. The madness of an all-connected world imposed on populations goes hand in hand with a high-tech electro-numerical world of absolute population control, ecologically and materially unsustainable. Never before have we extracted so many metals as we have since the advent of digital technology. More than 50 metals for a smartphone, which requires 183 kg of mining waste, at the cost of neo-colonial bloodshed in the Congo and elsewhere. Often among indigenous peoples, whose territories are ransacked and whose soils and rivers are polluted. One of the co-presidents of our association, sociologist Fabien Lebrun, lectures on this subject and has just published a book: Barbarie numérique, une autre histoire du monde connecté [Digital barbarism, another story of the connected world].
Electro-numerics is a fossil fuel for the greed of the great capitalist war imperialists. They want us to believe in the immaculate conception of matter and the harmlessness of the Holy Spirit's waves. It's a veritable fanatical religion whose intangible dogmas of infinite growth, over-consumption of electro-numeric objects and technical “Progress” must not be questioned, without reflection or public debate - the Holy Trinity of ecocidal and liberticidal global imperialist capitalism, in addition to the health and psychic damage on many levels.
And since this predatory frenzy will soon run out of material nourishment (in 20 to 30 years), and since it's impossible and costly to bring back materials from space, the bloodbath will take place in our oceans, and it's already begun.
How can we stop the infernal machine? For us, there's no other way than to fight for a universal right to non-connection/disconnection. And to defend our age-old civilization of the BOOK and therefore of PAPER, which can be recycled several times, is much less polluting and is not solely obtained from trees.
If you want to “do something for the planet”, then put the brakes on as much as possible on electronic devices and connected objects that are hyper-polluting and fossil-fuel extracted, and very little recyclable (or polluting and hyper-energetic in their recycling processes).
Finally, there is very little reaction against the “European Digital Wallet”, where all our personal and administrative data will be concentrated. It's a liberticidal monstrosity worthy of Chinese “democracy”.
If I may use a religious metaphor: the Devil exists, and he has created the object of addiction and absolute subjugation, of mass destruction of the individual: the smartphone. And it's clever. In French, we call the Devil “le Malin”. That's probably why.
If the smartphone didn't exist, there'd be no need for the mega-constellations whose purpose is to shower every corner of the deserts, the Amazon and the Antarctic with radio waves from the sky. Nothing will escape the attention of the Big Brothers (American, Chinese, Russian, European….). We have all gone dangerously mad.
Good break to you in these festive times. The guerrillas could use a rest too,
Hi, Bernard!
What a passionate tirade. I recognize myself in your passionate verve and your use of metaphors to shake the apathy of slumbering consciences.
Everything you denounce about the excessive use of rare minerals, the colonialist conditions of their extraction and the gigantic waste that the global craze for smartphones fosters, me and Kate [Kheel] have also denounced.
However, both you and she and I have to use technological tools, such as the laptop I'm writing to you on, which also requires increasingly rare-earth minerals.
We must not lose sight of this paradox in our work and in the formulation of our statements. Of course, I don't own a cell phone as a matter of principle and because it would be completely useless to me, but we all depend on modern technologies and the global Web, and even satellites in Kate's case, because a satellite connection in the isolated place where she lives is the only available means of accessing the internet.
So I think we need to be at least a little consistent, and avoid recommending solutions that are too far-fetched to ever materialize.
However, claiming the right to retain paper-based means of communicating or receiving monthly bills (which is my case) makes sense in order to keep the option of less destructive alternatives open for as long as possible.
But let's be realistic too. The younger generations have no problem with everything being digitized and transmitted electronically. They'll never post a love letter to their beloved. They'll just use an emoji of a heart to do it.
When the members of our generation are all 6 feet under or reduced to ashes in funeral urns, when the last printed newspapers and magazines cease to be printed for lack of subscribers, when even paper books become as rare as the ancient papyrus scrolls preserved in museums, the age of paper will be no more than a vague memory of a bygone era.
It will happen. Inevitably. Trying to stop it is futile. It's better to adapt to civilizational change and try to steer it in a more viable direction for nature than to dream in black and white. ;-)
It's this delicate balancing act on the tightrope of all our paradoxes that we'll have to perform in our fledgling approach to trying to ensure that the expansion of our civilization outside its earthly cradle takes place in compliance with balanced and applicable ethical and ecological standards, but also without intolerable compromises when it comes, for example, to protecting the ozone layer and the collective well-being of our species and the millions of others living on Terra Gaia.
Au plaisir cher cousin français.
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