Statement About Amazon

Dear Reader

Today I removed all links to Amazon Corporation from this website. It was like flicking a particularly irritating imp from my shoulder and kicking it out of the door. It’s still out there, grinning and rubbing its hands together and, if I listen hard enough I can hear its execrable voice squeaking, “I still have all your readers, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

It’s time to silence the imp for good. On behalf of independent book stores everywhere, writers who have decided to devote themselves to a cause or just the love of writing, readers who want to reject the most virulent corporate cancer in the publishing world, and anyone who prefers “Small is Beautiful” over “Big is Best”, I am going further.

Today I will be contacting the publishers of both Underminers and Time’s Up! and asking them to do everything in their power to remove the listings of those books from every Amazon database, and cease sales of those titles through Amazon Corp. and its regional equivalents.

I may not succeed, but I will have done my best. It is still my desire to ensure as many people as possible get to read these books, which is why I have always offered online equivalents to read on web pages or downloadable text. But I appreciate that many people, like me, love the tangible quality of the book – its feel in the hand; the sound of turning leaves and echo of a dialogue between author and reader; even the smell of the book, the memories of its last resting place, resident in the fibres of every open page.

You deserve that choice: new, used, old, infirm and falling to pieces, or cherished on a shelf waiting for the next reader to come along and see what is inside.

Can I ask that we make a deal? I will do what I can to de-Amazon my books; and you, please tell everyone not to use this corporate behemoth, and give the little people, the people who are like us, a chance.

Yours

Keith Farnish

Author and Campaigner

Update 28 June: My publishers have responded and are trying their very best, but hamstrung by the wholesalers, who have no qualms about selling to Amazon because they are also massive companies. However, UIT have withdrawn “Time’s Up!” from direct sale via Amazon Advantage, which is a start…

Signed Books Available

underminers_click_here
I have a limited number of signed copies of Time’s Up! A Guide to Subverting The Machine available. The book can be signed with any message you like (so long as I agree with its sentiments), and posted to anywhere you like.

The cost is just £10 + postage (cost depends on distance). If you are interested in a copy then please contact me via the Contacts Page, tell me where you live and I’ll give you the total cost and how to pay.

Go on, you know you want to :)

Resisting Together : Full Programme Announced

It is with great pleasure that I can now provide the full programme for the Resisting Together event, taking place just over a week away in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland (as if you didn’t know where Edinburgh is). It has taken a huge amount of effort to pull this programme together, so it would be great to have a packed room listening to interesting people, taking about the present and the future, and most important, prepared to act as a result of what they have experienced.

Full details of the event are on the special Resisting Together page; it is very important to book ahead using the online form so we know how many people are coming along and whether to allow people entry on the door – we may well run out of space the way things are going.

See you there!


Full Programme

Introduction by Sandi Hunter

DIVERSITY OF TACTICS
Adam Herriott & Lou Dudley

Adam Herriott has worked as a Parliamentary Manager for the legislators organisation GLOBE International/UK. He has been involved in Transition Brixton and Edinburgh. He has volunteered at a number of organic farms and intentional communities around the UK, and also lived at an eco intentional community in SW Wales. He has studied Permaculture with a particular interest in People Care. He is the Deep Green Resistance UK coordinator and is involved in anti-nuclear and anti-biofuels campaigns in and around Bristol. He currently works for a local organic veg box scheme in Bristol.

Lou has been a member of DGR for nearly a year now. She studied environmental education and science. She has worked with UNESCO on a local Biosphere reserve in the past, amongst other things. Lou is currently
involved with local food resilience and local currency campaigns.

TRANSITION
Eva Schonveld

Eva Schonveld has been involved in community work for many years. She was an enthusiastic founder member of the local Transition group in her home town, and helped set up community food growing spaces and a local market there. She also had the opportunity from 2009-11 to support communities around Scotland who wanted to use the Transition approach, and still loves to do so given the chance! She’s passionate about the need to build a resilient, fair and truly sustainable food system and is now working for Fife Diet, a local eating project.

EARTH FIRST!
Indra Donfrancesco

Indra’s been with Earth First! for over 20 years, an activist for 25 years and an Anarchist her whole life. Involved with anti-motorway camps in the 90’s, countless other environmental campaigns, arrested 9 times including by the Counter Terrorism Unit, raided and infiltrated. Indra, a single mum, studied Social History in Brighton, became a development worker, started a pirate radio station and an activist sailing co-op. Still deeply passionate and entrenched in the Environmental movement, she now supports eco Housing co-ops where she lives in Derbyshire.

SALMON AND CIVILIZATION
Arthur Sevestre

A piece of paper says I’m a Master of Science, specialised in ecology and environmental biology. My heart says I didn’t really learn about ‘nature’ until I immersed myself in it to try and become one with it. Sevestre means ‘of the woods’. Born in overdeveloped Holland, I’m on my way back to the woods. I moved to Skye in 2008 and am trying to help build a permaculture woodland community. Being part of a community is to defend it, and the community where I live needs urgent defending against, amongst many other things, salmon farming.

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Alastair McIntosh

Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, academic and activist.He was brought up in Leurbost on the Isle of Lewis and now lives in Govan. He is involved with Scottish land reform especially on Eigg, where he helped establish the Isle of Eigg Trust, and campaigned successfully against the Harris superquarry in Lingerbay. He is a fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology, an Honorary Fellow of the Schumacher Society, and helped to set up the Govan based GalGael Trust, an organisation which provides learning experiences anchored in practical activities that offer purpose and meaning to less socially advantaged people.

Alastair will lead a discussion on Community Resilience after his talk

UNDERMINERS – BOOK LAUNCH
Keith Farnish

Keith Farnish is a writer, volunteer and activist who, in a former life, was economically viable. He lives in southern Scotland with his wife and two children, making, growing, organising, listening, talking and being. His first book, “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis” was put online for free in 2008, and published in 2009. His second book, “Underminers” was completed in October 2012 and, again, put online for free in the expectation that no publisher would be brave enough to touch it. Unexpectedly, it was released by New Society Publishers in 2013.

NEXT STEPS : ACTS OF RESISTANCE
A floor discussion facilitated by Sandi Hunter

Sandi is a long-time activist, campaigner and mother of two fully-grown people, who has recently cast off her settled existence for a possession-light life somewhere in Britain. Originally from South Africa, she was until very recently an inhabitant of Edinburgh. Sandi is the founder of non profit organisation Green Nation UK, who’s main objective is to purchase land in the UK to rewild as well as set up co-sufficient communities.

The event will be followed by a drink and a meal for those who wish to explore the social side of Edinburgh and carry on talking…

Interview with Rob Kall of OpEdNews

A few weeks ago the culmination of even more weeks of communication finally resulted in me being interviewed by Rob Kall. Some of you may know Rob, who is the editor in chief of OpEdNews, an excellent repository of original and reposted items ranging from the mildly political to the kind of things writers etc. like me post.

The interview took the best part of 2 hours, carried out over Skype (Rob is in Pennsylvania, I’m in Scotland) and so was bound to have a few problems. So, there was my coughing fit as I was recovering from a cold, a phone call that wouldn’t stop ringing, the complete drop-out of the connection, quite a few crumbly bits from Rob’s end and a few clanks and grinds as I moved things about. The recording was made using a Zoom H2 perched on my laptop next the the speakers relaying Rob’s questions; it was edited over the last two days by me, using Audacity, the free sound editor from Sourceforge.

Phew!

So here’s the recording – warning, it’s 1 hour and 40 minutes, but I think we ended up drawing quite a few new and interesting strands from the ongoing dialogue…

MP3 Download Link (40MB)

You can also stream the interview, and embed it by going to The Internet Archive.

Resisting Together and A Book Launch

At last, it looks as though there will be something like a book launch for Underminers.  Six months late, and nothing at all resembling a media circus – in fact the mere presence of media would not be very welcome, as this is going to happen at an event that is really a coming together of ideas and people who want to do something far outside the mainstream. Here’s the blurb, and a poster:

Resisting Together is an event of many ideas focussed on a single aim – the dissolution of Industrial Civilization through acts of resistance. There are countless numbers of radical individuals, groups and movements operating both in the open and underground; we don’t agree on everything, but at our core we all seek to free humanity from the yoke of the industrial machine, the horror-play that the civilized world acts out every day, degrading the natural world and enslaving people in the pursuit of material wealth and power.resisting_together_poster
A mixture of talks and discussions, the much-aborted launch of Underminers and probably a bit of music too, Resisting Together will be a chance to share, exhort, emote and learn from others how we can move towards a world where we are in control of our destiny, unfettered by the shackles of the industrial machine.

Date: Saturday 29th March, 2014

Time: 1pm-7pm

Cost: £donations

Venue: The Canons’ Gait, Royal Mile, Edinburgh

The initial idea for the venue was a discussion between myself and a member of DGR UK, along with a couple of other people in related groups. Early forays into an event pointed to a 2 day conference-type thingy, at a location in southern Scotland; but for various reasons that fell through, not least because the venue would be too difficult to get to, and also they were worried we were a bunch of anarchists (got that partly right). A contact in Edinburgh did some looking around and found the Canons’ Gait, which has ended up being the venue for an afternoon event, which could turn into an evening session.

I apologise if it’s difficult to get to; everywhere will be wrong for most people, but we have put it close to the railway station in the middle of a busy and (not something I say about many urban areas) often stunning city. It’s certainly an interesting location, being just a stone’s throw from the “under city” and the site of so many historical urban horrors that underline why humans should never live like this.

The exact lineup and agenda is still being settled – details will be posted as they happen on the event page: www.underminers.org/resisting-together, which is also where you can reserve a place or four. Even better, entry is free, with donations only asked to give the speakers and organisers a meal afterwards. I might bring a few books along if anyone wants to buy them, but at a kilogram each, probably not that many. I do want to be able to walk from the bus stop…

New Contact Page

Just a quick technical update to the Underminers web site – I have added a new contact page with a short biography and information about the potential for speaking engagements and suchlike. The page can be found via https://underminers.org/contact-invite/ or by using the menu at the top of the page. Unlike some writers, I don’t travel far, even by special engagement, but could be persuaded to Skype or speak over the telephone.

In fact I’m happy to speak to anyone who has interests similar to my own or is willing to be talked round. I have no interest in (a) trying to “convert” people or (b) helping businesses or governments “become greener”. Both are oxymorons, and I have better things to do with my time – like help my community become closer and stronger.

So, please get in touch if you wish. I don’t bite…unless you get on my wrong side.

All Kickstarter Money Gone

Because I’m very careful with what I do with other peoples’ money, I’ve been keeping detailed accounts of exactly what I have done with the funds from the Kickstarter project, which many of you kind people helped happen last year.

For quite a while there was £11.63 sitting in my bank account, waiting for something useful to be used on, and then Paul Kingsnorth announced that the Dark Mountain website had been catastrophically hacked so I had to help out in some way – Paul is a good man, and the Dark Mountain Project is very important.

To cut a long story short, three signed copies of Underminers have been auctioned off and sent to the winners, and the cost of the postage (the books were comps from my publisher) was £11.65! Ok, 2p out, but if I ever wanted to ignore the horrors of civilization, I could always become an accountant…

Planning A Gathering

This is quite exciting: I’m in the process of planning a gathering of ideas and groups in Scotland in March 2014. Initial response from various groups has been enthusiastic, but for obvious reasons I don’t want to say which ones. One thing I’m certainly wanting to avoid are any “stars” – anyone who comes to run a session or speak is going to be on the same level as everyone else; we all have things to offer and must never presume any of us know better than anyone else.

Anyhow, that’s the basic idea and a lot more will be announced in weeks to come. You’ll even be able to buy tickets!

Reviews Please

If anyone has read Underminers and wants to write an honest review on the Amazon or Barnes & Noble websites in North America, then I would really appreciate it. Please be honest, I would rather not have a pile of slushy reviews because you are being nice, the more critical and well-reasoned the more likely people will take an interest in the book – I never intend to brainwash anyone, just make people think for themselves.

The links are: http://www.amazon.com/Underminers-Guide-Subverting-The-Machine/dp/0865717540

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/underminers-keith-farnish/1114863922?ean=9780865717541

I don’t know if you can review in the UK yet, as it’s just out, but feel free to try: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Underminers-Keith-Farnish/dp/0865717540

Thank you very much, K.

Here Comes The Flood

And if we break before the dawn, they’ll use up what we used to be…

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