After WW2 the Tiergarten, the oldest city park in Berlin stretching between Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz, the River Spree and the Berlin Zoo, was almost entirely tree-free: out of the 200,000 that grew in the park before 1939, only 700 survived the heavy fighting in 1945 and the mass felling ordered by the Allies to provide heating material to the Berliners for the next winter.

On top of that, the area of the by then barren park was divided into almost 3,000 allotments or gardening plots: the trees were replaced by much more needed potatoes.

The first tree for the new Big Tiergarten park – a “Linde” (a lime tree) was planted on March 17th, 1949 by the Mayor of Berlin, Ernst Reuter.

The 250,000 trees that followed were a donation from the sponsors in West Germany. They arrived in Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, carried by the planes flying…

Engines of Domination
Mark Corske (2014)

Film Review

In Engines of Domination, filmmaker Mark Corske lays out a historical and philosophical argument for anarchism – a stateless society people run themselves via direct democracy.

He begins by comparing class society to sheep herding. The latter began around 10,000 BC. Class society began around 5,000 BC when institutions of power (initially kings and priests and later nations and corporations) began domesticating people as well as plants and animals. The goal of this kind of domestication is to capture the energy of an entire community. Initially chattel slavery was the primary mechanism employed to domesticate human beings.

Since no one agrees voluntarily to being treated this way, this has to be done through a combination of force and deception.  The methods employed were developed over centuries through a process of trial and error. “Engines of domination” are the historical institutions that…