Subterranean War

To see how power gets and uses its most basic physical resources – and the devastating processes involved – is instructive in itself. This is power, raw and material. But it also profoundly reveals the social relations that the great “march of progress” relies on. These pages will focus on some of progress’s raw nerves, on the root-systems streaming with the substances domination relies on to feed its expansion and increased strength. These roots penetrate deep into the earth’s belly, ripping through it, toxifying it, overheating it, laying waste to it. Innumerable human and non-human beings are sacrificed every day – enslaved, poisoned, killed by ever-more powerful and sophisticated weapons – for the possession of these subterranean materials, fundamental pillars of the global system of exploitation. The machine of devastation is highly dependent on the extraction of coal, oil, gas, minerals… giving rise to wars, bloody conflicts, but also to struggles and revolts across the world.