TRAVELS OF PROMETHEUS Concerning The Social War in Greece and the End of an Over Here and Over There

ThiThe mirror of social peace begins to crack. The European social democratic management is expiring and the current political classes take notice of it. While in some other countries the legal bases for this shift have already been voted in the parliaments under relatively peaceful circumstances, the enmities in Greece took an unexpected width. This conflictuality could be put under the banner of the usual social movements against the dismantling of the welfare state, were it not that it is tending towards something very different. An agreement with the state in the logic of the old social pact seems to become less and less probable because there is no economic, political and social base left for it. We are experiencing something new. Accustomed to struggle against the social pacification and its consensus, we might now be facing a new form of management tending towards a climate of war. Therefore it is all the more necessary to develop new perspectives, to venture some new hypotheses on social war.

Other horizons

Risking a schematisation of the reality but aiming at sketching out a few analytical routes which permit a more precise intervention in this reality, we can state that a profound restructuring of the economy –but not only- took place at the end of the 70’s. A considerable part of the industrial complex on the European continent was dismantled and decentralised by the integration of new technologies, the transformation of the production processes and delocalisation. The existent rigid class relations were thoroughly turned upside down and torn apart. Thanks to the ever more deeper penetration of wares, capital started digging into ‘new’ markets related to the new technologies and strongly marked by the aspect of ‘services’.

Unfortunately, the restructurings after World War 2 and after the dictatorial periods in other countries have for years gambled on a social state which was assumed to accompany this capitalist reform and manage the social tensions accompanying it. From the 80’s onwards the so called ‘social achievements’ are under pressure and during the 90’s it are the international context and the local power structures which define the rhythm of its dismantlement and crumbling. The flexible labour market, the dismantlement of social welfare such as the pension system, the liberalisation and privatisation of the energy-, communication- and transport sector unsettle that which many had for a long time assumed being certainties.

The ‘financial crisis’ which started last year is in fact not a crisis but a consequence of these new restructurings. While many states have reserved big sums of money to ‘save’ an amount of banks, it was in fact mainly the selling out of ‘public’ institutions and industries that continued. However, the states remain to have massive deficits; a few recipes to replenish their coffers have already been used. They shall have to continue cutting in the human flesh. The current Greek situation gives us a preview of what is awaiting us in other countries.

The economic measures as they are being pushed through today in England, Spain, Italy, Greece and many other European countries are in fact diametrically opposed to what for decades used to be the paradigm of the ‘social state’: an acceleration of consumption on the interior market. On the one hand, the Greek state is reducing the access to consumption (reducing wages and pensions) and on the other hand it drastically increases the taxes on consumption wares hoping to get still some cash. It is clear that they do not longer practise the European model of ‘including the poor’, they openly declare that a whole part of the population which is already touched by misery, must now submit itself to an imposed exploitation and may be happy for it. For years this has been more or less the direction of the European immigration policy. In contrast to the ever more increasing immigration, the so called Fortress Europe manages the migration streams by means of regularisations and an acceleration of the deportation capacity, firmly connected to ever more precarious labour contracts. The existence of a lower layer in the population is clearly accepted and appreciated in function of the needs of the market.

Other conflicts from over the past years (just a few examples: Argentina in 2001 or Bangladesh, particularly in 2006) already pointed towards a harshening of the economical war, the current events in Greece are its objective European confirmation. State and capital are sensing a new horizon and they won’t offer their brutality on a golden plate any longer. Although hard times are announced, especially given the current weakness of the social and revolutionary critique, we have the intuition that for us as well new times might come, times which open up possibilities that we’ve often lost out of sight – and not because of the reasoning “the worse the better”. Although surprise gives us a pleasant feeling, we should make a big effort so that we will not experience the current challenges as being powerless commentators, sucked in the passive role which the domination is trying to sell us since years.

In the country of Prometheus

We have to go back a lot of years in history to find back a moment and space in which the revolutionary movement –moreover largely anti-authoritarian- was capable of being close to the social developments and social struggle as it is nowadays in Greece. It is the temporary result of many years of cross-fertilization between the Greek anarchist movement, in all her diversity, and a certain social combativeness. Many times the Greek anarchists have been standing next to the oppressed that revolted while they are as well able to struggle in times when the rest of society is looking towards the other side. Our enemies are aware of this as well. Not only was Greece assigned the role of the first eurozone country to take drastic social measures against the exploited and the up till now included in function of a new restructuring; not only is Greece an important operating base for the military management of the Balkans and at the same time an increasingly important passage through for eastern immigrants; it is as well the country facing ongoing social tensions and a fierce revolutionary activity.

Now that the institutional left is at power in Greece, she can no longer play her classical role of recycler and inhibitor of a growing social struggle. She has lost this chance when she was elected, on the basis of a ‘progressive program’ following the explosion of December 2008. So the margins of the Greek political class have been considerably reduced and two –nothing new seen from a historical perspective- roads are opening up: either does the hard right succeeds, making use of the demands of the international capital and the latent patriotism, with the aid of a technical administration to restore order which an iron fist, or the possibility of an insurrection rises at the horizon. There is a lot at stake.

During almost the whole of 2009, Greece has known a long series of strikes, blockades, manifestations and attacks against the power structures. The protests accelerated when the socialist government passed in fifth gear facing an increasing speculation against the Greek national debt (note that a big part of these debts is in hands of the ‘Greek’ banks) and the explosion of the budget deficit. It is not exaggerated to speak of a ‘climate of war’ on an economical as well as a political and social scale. From the beginning of 2009 up till now they’ve been cutting in the wages and pensions (from 10 to 30%), direct and indirect taxes were increased, education was restructured, public health care was almost entirely abolished. In order to maintain the structures of the state, the Greek political class and economic elite is obliged to turn Greece into a paradise of imposed exploitation, a spearhead in the European Union. The Greek state has declared war upon the lower classes and it solemnly tries to keep up the appearance of some “care about the people” by making use of patriotism and the spectacle of the “revolutionary terrorism”.

From an objective point of view the situation for the current Greek institutions is at a rather critical point and it has been a long time that a European state has felt the hot breath of a possible uprising. But let us not go too fast. Despite the meaningful but circumscribed disorder (on the manifestation of the 5th of May the trade union leaders of the GSEE could not even say 2 words before getting chased by hundreds of protesters), most protests maintain the directions of the social democrat unions, the Stalinist party KKE and a few leftist structures such as the PAME, because they are still at the base of a few formal initiatives such as the general strikes. Despite the many practical experiences of self-organisation in the street (during manifestations, occupations, and riots), the protests do not yet pick up the necessary confirmation of their autonomy. In combination with a fairly brutal police repression and terror of the media, there is the danger of getting dragged into a bruising battle. Without claiming that the general strike (as opposed to “action days” of 24 hours) would be the harbinger of an insurrectionary movement, it stands beyond doubt that it is necessary to paralyse the economical activity and the circulation of wares. For this, a decentralisation of the initiative is necessary, or in other words, an affirmed self-organisation of the struggle. One of the possibilities to wrest the initiative of the unions and create an empty space in which the seeds of self-organisation may flourish seems to move towards the paralysation of a few economic infrastructures (communication, energy, transport) in a decentralised but well-considered way. And this matter does not only concern the revolutionary minority as some might claim, but it is a practical proposal to everyone, which feeds itself with the many experiences from other pre-insurrectional moments and in which creativity and diffusion outweigh an economist or military way of viewing the proposal.

Insurrection is not the work of revolutionaries and anarchists on their own. It is social, not only because it includes a big part of the exploited, but mainly because it undermines the existent social roles by destroying the structures which support them. But just like it doesn’t shoot at the exploited in order to end with exploitation, but at the structures and the people who enable this exploitation, it can neither let itself being blocked in an apology of ‘the people’ or ‘the exploited’ whose consent in the end is the fuel which makes the machine turn round and round.

The insurrectional hypothesis which seems to emerge in Greece actually follows a very different logic than the paradigm of the urban guerrilla. At moments of an explosively growing social tension it suits the state very well to present the conflict as a duel between two ‘fractions’ (in this case, the state versus the adepts of the urban guerrilla with the population as spectators). Not that she would not on a certain moment be able use the anarchist movement as a whole for this extent and try to let it been swallowed in a big spectacle –this is even very plausible- but it does not seem too intelligent to make it more easier for them by – even if it’s not been made explicit- making hierarchies between the different forms of attack against the structures of state and capital. Insurrection does not need any advance guard or protectors, she needs nothing but – free from all fetishisms- the determination of blowing the wind of subversion through the society. Already today, when the insurrection is still a hypothesis, the question of weapons needs to be put in the perspective of arming everyone, of a generalized offensive with the weapons in hand. We cannot let the armed fact been pushed back to this or that group, letter word or fraction.

The Greek state is beginning to insist on a fast militarization of the conflict, and hopes that the anarchists, maybe because of their generosity, will take the initiative in this. So the state is intensifying the specific repression and terror against the anarchist movement; in the meantime she has made clear as well that there will be dead bodies, that torture will not be hidden, that they are not afraid of an extreme militarization of for example Exarchia, that the fascist parastatal troops can hit fiercer and fiercer. The state does not only want to isolate the anarchists from the social struggle and break up their dynamics, but as well wants to drag them down into the spiral of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, entailing correct and brave counterblows of the anarchists but which could be at the extend of a subversive decline in the wider spheres of society. The state is consciously making use of the media with a contra insurrectional point of view trying to spread terror, making the population afraid (of the growing number of immigrants in Greece, the ‘anarchist terrorists’, the ‘blood thirsty robbers’,…). The state does no longer manage itself by using order, by calling for social peace and conciliation, but by declaring war on all who struggle. It’s difficult not to get trapped, not to get caught into the nets of a military conflict which is beyond doubt the bearer of death for any subversive project. Let’s be clear, the current situation asks for clarity: this is no call for putting down the arms, no discourse that says that the “insurrectional violence frightens the proletarians and therefore should be restricted”. On the contrary, this is the moment to give weapons to everyone who wants to use them; to share the necessity of attack as much as possible with all who don’t want to kneel down any longer in front of the altar of the Nation and the Economy; to give the attack the place that in fact should always be hers: as an act of wilful destruction of an enemy structure and not a vehicle for self promotion. Subversion looses strength when comrades only speak after firing.

About a here and there

Now that long stored possibilities are violently trying to storm into the reality in Greece, urgent questions are coming up for comrades from other countries. Not only because what is happening in Greece will most probably have an effect on all anarchists and revolutionaries somewhere else in Europe and beyond, but mainly because a possible contamination is becoming more probable every day. We don’t want to bring the classical domino theory back to life, but it seems to us that because of the ever deeper inter-national integration of the economic and stately structures on the old continent (having the project of the European Union as its formal structure) it would point out to be a self chosen blindness if we look at the borders of the areas where we live, of the national states where we struggle as a horizon that cannot be overcome. The old question of internationalism is coming back and asks for some new answers.

Mainly it are the same questions which have been knocking on the doors of many comrades in December 2008, with the difference that today the question is much more demanding. Although travelling to Greece can be very interesting to exchange and share experiences, we think the question is more of how we in our own context can go further than declaring our international solidarity and push the question further than a generous and encouraging pat on the back to our Greek comrades who at the moment have so much to loose, but especially so much to win.

Considering that, given the extension of the social war in Greece, all struggles and deeds of revolt will have a bigger importance. Not because they would in one way of another put direct pressure on the Greek institutions, but exactly because they could be the feared bearers of contamination. Partly objective and partly dependent of a voluntary effort, it is possible to entangle different ‘local’ struggles with the social war in Greece, and visa versa, exactly because it is the logical consequence of a social connection, a resemblance of the Greek situation which, as whispered to us by our intuition, could happen tomorrow in ‘our’ areas as well. And it is certainly not malicious to state that the forces of subversion in many countries are less strong than in Greece and dealing with an overall presence of a furious reaction (just think about Italy where racism and the political management is having totalitarian edges since there is a terrifying consent in broad spheres of the population). This is why the necessity is pushing itself to go further than solidarity and to really try to intertwine our struggles internationally. Every given blow, can have a meaning that surpasses it; and we have to work hard towards this direction. In this way we could stop the logic of a here and there in our perspectives.

Although the current economic restructuring seems willing to make a new area of accumulation out of a generalised instability (in contrast to a few decennia before), another destabilisation which doesn’t aid the domination is possible. It is necessary to think, to think seriously. Is it impossible to make some analyses which bind the local context to what will most probably touch the whole of the eurozone and in this way permit the evaluation of ongoing struggles in function of their potential destabilising effects? Maybe it is, maybe it is not. In any case it seems a challenge worth to be noted. To reinforce each other when a battle won in the drawn out social war could exceed its first concrete result; trying to develop our activities in light of their relation to the activities a few hundred miles away. Trying to go on these roads might help us developing insurrectional hypotheses, and as well avoid being caught up by surprise, to discover opportunities to push the discontent and anger present in many countries (and sometimes expressing itself in a confused way or lacking any libertarian perspectives) towards a social war against all forms of exploitation and authority.

The dream

An insurrectional hypothesis is in need of more than analysis and activity. Even more, it remains a dead letter or a shot in the water when it is unable to communicate its why. Although it is a method, a practical proposal towards everyone, it nowadays cannot fall back on the presence of a series of vague, yet discussed concepts of liberation. The concepts which have been put forward in the social struggles and made it possible to communicate them no longer exist. We must dare ask ourselves how to revive a dream, not as a mirage, not as a myth, but as intentions alive. The revolutionary contribution to the social struggle cannot limit itself to some destructive hints, to incite revolt. Its insurrectional character becomes more real when it manages not only to indentify the enemy and pose a negativity which will definitely encourage all enraged that want to break their chains, but when it is able to communicate about what we are fighting for and is already cherishing it at this very moment. Two decades of eroding and ideologising have caused a lot of damage to the revolutionary thoughts. We are the orphans of ideas which have lost their thinkability. We need to come out of the corner in which we were pushed and stop making a pathetic apology of it. The coming conflictuality which might have a character different from what we have know until now, offers real possibilities to restart experimenting and breaking through the ideological encirclement. Subversions contradiction is hidden in the tension between on the one hand getting closer towards reality and on the other hand to break the dance, to communicate about what is considered impossible.

These words are an invitation rather than an accurate sketch of our current situation, yes, you could even say it is a call to open our heads and look the challenges straight into the eyes. Much can be at stake in the future and our only certainty is that inertia might have some heavier consequences in future times.

Some friends of Prometheus

May 2010-06-17 quelquesamisdepromethee@gmail.com
s Text was originally published in Frence a few weeks ago

Internet Monitoring Needed To Fight Homegrown Terrorism

Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday.

[nationalterroralert.com] As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

“The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet,” Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
Source: http://www.nationalterroralert.com

16th June 2010 San Carlos De Bariloche Argentina One Dead After Residents Attack Police Station For Murder Of 15 Years Old BY BY POLICEMAN

Violent clashes between police and protesters left a toll of the death of a man of 29 years and one serious injury. It was when residents attacked a police station after the death of a 15 years old at the hands of a policeman.
The cold evening in San Carlos de Bariloche was shaken by violent riots that left one person dead and several arrests. It all started around 16 hours when a group of about 150 people, mostly teenagers, shouted "justice" for the death of a young man of 15 who died after being shot at while being chased by police. The alleged victim of trigger-happy Bonefoi was named Dario. The tension during the demonstration was to increase until the riots started. Black River Police fired teargas and rubber bullets against the crowd, while the group of protesters set fire to one vehicle that was parked outside a supermarket. Injured in the scuffle a 29 year old man, surnamed Cardenas, who died just after 18 hours at a local hospital. In addition, eight policemen were wounded, including the chief superintendent of Station 28.
Judge Martin Lozada, called for the alleged abuse by police, came to the home the first of the victims where the wake was taking place the boy and the family of the victim severely rebuked him. "I do not mind that guy has a criminal record, I care who killed him. It's a shame this happens, the police can not control a situation with teenagers," said a neighbor in the very face of the judge. At that time the mayor came to the scene but, in the face strong public questioning, had to retreat quickly.
Meanwhile, the father of Bonefoi called on people to stop what it called "a war." "Please, let's stop the violence, let us watch over the body of my son in peace," he said.
The riots began around near the Escuela 278, San Carlos de Bariloche Five districts were affected by the riots and rioters torched a car parked outside a supermarket.
City residents say there have been no similar acts of violence in the city Rio Negro.

AROSN ATTACK AGAINST McDONALD'S Santiago Chile

Source: culmine

Thursday, June 10, at night, we attacked with Molotov cocktails a local McDonald's on the corner of Avenida Pajaritos and Calle Las Torres, in the municipality of Maipu.
We launched about 10 full bottles of sulfuric acid, gasoline, and in contact with the bottles, chopped heads of matches. As we were carrying out the operation, the law enforcement appeared from the darkness of the parking lot of the nearby pharmacy. For this we quickly removed ourselves from the area. Unfortunately, they managed to control the fire and avoid the place being burnt down.
With this incendiary gesture we wanted to remember our comrade Punky Mauri, killed in action May 22, 2009, claiming his way of acting, embracing it and wishing that the destruction of that space be complete.
We repudiate the daily torture practiced in prisons all over the world, as demonstrated by the video recordings made at the prison in Villarrica, with the same disgust we repudiate the more than 578 million invested in surveillance cameras, as announced by the government to preserve order.
We take advantage of this fire to greet Estela Cortez, prisoner at Antofagasta, Axel Osorio, Karina Germano and the 5 accused of having attacked the Greek Embassy in Buenos Aires, Sergio Maria Stefani held in Switzerland, Marco Camenisch in Italy and Gabriel Pombo da Silva in Aachen, Germany and all prisoners in war.
We also encourage the flight of Diego Rios about a year from onset of his insurgent decision, as we solidarize with Diego Alonso who has gone into hiding in Mexico.
At this time we give our strength to Esteban Huniguir, comrade held the Carcel de Alta Seguridad and tortured few days ago by the contemptible personnel of the Gendarmerie. That they know that he is not alone and that the punch that Esteban launched against the jailer is an invitation to respond with energetic violence to the humiliation served up by prison screws all over the world.
We solidarize with Esteban with multiple actions, so that they will think a hundred times before touching a comrade. When is now!
For the destruction of the prison society
Make anarchy live

ON STAGE TERRORISM AND SOME SUBVERSIVES ON TRIAL Florance Italy

The Italian media repeat the same refrain: your life is under threat, you must be scared. The ideology of security places all of us in a world of ghosts. Punks, foreigners, vandal kids are other actors in this comedy of horror. Journalists recruited by various bosses instil the fear of the diverse and encourage the lynching of the poor. The victims of this murderous ideology follow one another like in a war bulletin: extremely overcrowded jails, murders committed by cops, torture in police stations, detention camps for immigrants, fascist aggressions. No surprise, then, if the journalists of capital yell the need for security and their desire for cameras in every street and soldiers in every piazza.
It is them, the bosses, who need security. This rotten society, where millions of people do not even have the certainty to make ends meet, generates anger against the responsible of the generalized disaster: politicians and capitalists. Social control, therefore, is the last resource left to this totalitarian democracy in the hands of multinationals. There’s nothing else they can offer.
Rightwing politicians invoke the use of truncheons, whereas the leftists make appeal to an abstract legality. On the one hand, businessmen and administrators ‘s financial crimes are tolerated; on the other, there is no mercy towards all the poor and undesirable, “criminals” guilty of passing a border without documents, of occupying empty buildings, of selling counterfeit goods. And sometimes – which is even worse! – guilty of organising themselves in order to struggle against the arrogance of the powerful engaged in a total war on everything that smells freedom and life.
As a consequence, the gang of the PD [the major centre-left political party] in Florence threaten the eviction of all occupied spaces and call upon the police to suppress all those passionate people who cannot resign to the dirty games of power, such as the clearance sale of public spaces, the eco-devastation aimed at high speed railway projects, the construction of a new immigration detention centre. Great transformations and huge interests, which need the elimination of the poor, the subversive and the angry people. On July 1 2010, in Florence, a jury will decide whether to charge with conspiracy (subversive association) some of these angry people.
Accused of committing a series of actions, occupation of buildings and non-authorized demonstrations, 19 anarchist comrades risk a trial based on the anti-terrorism law: the infamous article 270bis of the Italian penal code, which has allowed the State to lock up its sworn enemies on a number of occasions.
Beyond penal codes, tribunals and laws created to divide, criminalize and dominate the exploited, we re-confirm what we have always said: the real terrorists are those who terrorise in order to preserve power and profit.
THE REAL TERRORIST IS CAPITAL, THE REAL TERRORIST IS THE STATE!
Anarchists

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE. FUCK THE POLICE!

THE TWO COPS OF MURDER OF ALEXANDROS GRIGOROPOULOS FREED ON BAIL 6/1 GREECE.

The two police officers on trial for the murder shooting of teenager Alexis Grigoropoulos in december 2008 received conditional.
Release from custody yesterday. The judge in the Amfissa Court where the trial of
Epaminondas Korkoneas and Vassilis Seraliotis is bein held has ruled that the two suspects should be freed on bail as they have completed 18 months in custody.
The central Greek town and will have to report to the local police station regulary until a verdict is delivered.
they have been on trial. Korkoneas for shooting Alexis, Seraliotis for being an accomplice since february.
NO JUSTICE NO PEACE FUCK THE POLICE!

SONGS OF THE GREEK RESISTANCE

Political songs of the Guerrilla Resistance against fascist and democratic Imperialism (1941-1949) and not only.
First recorded in vinyl at 1974.
you can download: http://anniesanimal.blogspot.com/
http://spirosmp3.blogspot.com/

ABOUT SOCIAL WAR IN GREECE

The interpretations have been given… Time for our desires to speak.
During the trial of the 17th November armed group we witnessed a spectacular performance, which amongst others, attempted with the application of the upgraded law concerning criminal acts- “anti”-terror law- to earn also social legitimization. The law’s elaborately vague and extended framework (with the possibility for DNA testing, with the article on criminal conspiracy… with the depoliticisation of the history, the theory and the actions of the group) appeared to secure in the legal arsenal that necessary method which is able to strike every existent or attempted project of subversion of bourgeois democracy, without having to accept the political status of its enemy.
[Article 48, par.1…”in the case of war, military mobilization due to external dangers or of immediate threat to national security, as well as in the case of manifestation of an armed movement with the aim of overthrowing democracy, the Parliament, by its decision, which is taken following the proposal by the government, sets in motion across the whole territory or a part of it the law concerning state of siege, introduces exceptional courts and suspends the power of the whole or parts of the provisions of the articles…concerning amnesty, political crime…” ]
So the stake was as much historical oblivion as the ramming of consciousnesses with the message that democracy has not had and will not have enemies. In addition, the acceptable boundaries of political expression had to become clear to every direction. To conclude, we saw and experienced that the law not only acts arbitrarily but that arbitrariness is the law. As a position, we did not pursue to waste our energy denouncing their legal ploys from within institutions, we did not go about attempting to manage the level of repression accepted. We projected with integrity our anti-systemic action and word against the only terrorism that of the state, the mass media and the bosses. Our ideological differences with the group were not an obstacle to our solidarity. Now from their position, the summer of 2002 seems to have consolidated a new era, to have been the springboard from were the “anti”-terrorist unit wants to star in new episodes by pointing the finger at modern “terrorism” within the anarchist milieu. The continuous re-definition of the enemy within, gave the possibility to put into practice an informal state of emergency. A state of emergency which, through its continuous presence, warned of its application depending on the circumstances. Their legacy was also the catalytic, as they themselves admitted, cooperation of the ministry of public order with the mass media, the by now well known terror-spectacle with suitable injections of terror-hysteria, pursuit of snitches etc. From then on this tested recipe became the norm, overall police presence was intensified, criminalization was specified to the “bad” anarchists that commit unlawful acts. We witnessed the persistence in their strategy with the attempt on the case of the three with the riot shields, the case of Yiannis Dimitrakis, the case of Botzatzis and the three in Thessaloniki, in the scenarios concerning “criminal-political” interconnections with the kidnap of Milonas…up to the badly set out show with the “safe-house” in Halandri and the series of spectacular arrests.
With the return of the CIA illuminated Chrisohoidis, the strategy was accelerated in order to yield results in a now official state of emergency. Assisted by the economic crisis and the necessity of even a violent extraction of social consent, in the last six months Athens has become a police city and Exarchia an occupied territory with patrols of riot police squads parading, motor- gangs of Delta accelerating, charging into protesters, going on rampages while setting up road blocks everywhere, comrades are “wanted”, the mask-law is applied and of course proclamations are made concerning neighborhood cops, cop dogs, anti-riot tanks and whatever else is necessary to counter the non-acceptable. In regards to the vexed subject, the war on “neo-terrorism” could not only concern the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. The CCF is as equally indifferent and interesting as any grouping that puts its negation into practice. What we deem is every action detached from its creator, the word that accompanies it, its contribution and not only. A part of their war is however the exploitation of its actions, based on a similar formula to the false construction of the Italian ORAI. Hinting at future surprises, the presentation of indications at their disposal report of 50 individuals- members of the organization, of 100 fingerprints and of how many others thus creating a hostage situation. So after every attack carried out by the conspiracy the anti-terrorist division seems to be producing results by rummaging through its bag of goodies, putting on a show with arrests that do not lead to any substantiated charges, leaking “profiles” in newspaper articles that attempt to incriminate persons and spaces, with rumors of arrest warrants suited to push people “underground”.
We say that anarchy is the bulwark of repression. If this is true it’s because it has fought to be in the position of constituting the strongest element of resistance, without taking on the role of a vanguard. A sticker showing a sketch of armed- to- the- teeth cops invading a house and arresting someone said “if today they came for me, tomorrow they will come for you”. Each situation concerns everyone, whether it weighs on one particular person and the collective doesn’t feel it or whether it weighs on the collective and it has a slight effect on each one apart. To what extent however can the previous descriptions concern those who eulogize theory separating it from action, those who understand but do not share the feeling. To what extent can it concern a fixation which deems as defensible only violence that originates from the “movement”. To what extent can it concern parts of society who cash in their contracts and would passively accept their fate. Every situation can always concern someone else when it is far from us ourselves. The infinite universe of stupidity has countless arguments in order to direct our gaze somewhere else. The attention that this text seeks concerns those who feel without needing a number of arguments to be convinced. Those who even if they have not burned their hands, who even though are not waiting for someone to break down their door or who are not connected through relationships of friendship with the imprisoned comrades, are convinced that it absolutely relates to themselves. They take the absence of each comrade as an absent part of their own body. They say it and they mean it that “when even one is imprisoned none are free”, that the distinctions guilty-innocent, good-bad are distinctions and concepts of dominion, completely alien towards our ethic.
Solidarity is not an antiauthoritarian idiom; it must go beyond political identities and connections, beyond compassion. Nonetheless, it is a word that has been used a thousand times. It has been worn down by the thousands mouths of subjects with contradictory morality, by their selfish offerings. Individualization in the metropolis scattered every element of commonality, also washing away its ethical code. The meaning of solidarity is lost when one employee is fired and the rest continue with their business as usual. When we don’t have domino effects, like what happened in cases after the fall of the dictatorship and the changeover to democracy, when the strike in one company was followed by others. When in order for us to evoke it, our own interests must be at stake. Solidarity is a word on which we must persist in order to maintain its meaning in our own vocabulary. It comprises one of our primary projects, basically as an integral element of the future social organization. One of the weapons that hold together and strengthen the class of the oppressed, the proletarians and the rebels. The names of our comrades have a meaning only for us, mainly due to our interpersonal relationships. Yiannis, Yiorgos, Polis and Vaggelis, Ilias, Alfredo and Christos, Haris, Manos, Takis signify a war and its continuation. A series of names that are interchanged and fill the prisons mapping the political prisoners of democracy, lending an extra weight that becomes imperative for structures in regards to a revolutionary solidarity movement.
Ideological fixation, correct logic, has proved capable of placating passions and desires. Even though they are defenders of solidarity, the anarchists express their own ideological fixations. Of course as critical beings we must make a critique if an attack was out of time or place, if it contributed to what is already happening or whether it has manifested new realities, perspectives of struggle…a series of issues, objections that however do not function in an inhibitory way. Violence is not immune to critique. But a certain kind of stiffness derives from other areas. Bitterness and spite arising from personal relationships become the cause for non activity but also for proposed shrugging off of cases. Something more persistent through time is internal “antagonism”. The majority of the anarchist milieu does not emit its own light. They deem violence to be fertile when it is drawn from the collective, when it is the product of procedures and surfaces from within a quantitative- social participation. It defends this kind of violence carving out the boundaries of the acceptable. Insurrectional informal struggle does not lie with quantitative criteria, does not entrench itself but has its subjective responsibilities for an equal antagonism with that expressed by “collective” ideological fixation. It is possible as an outcome of all these but particularly the notion concerning the defensible violence of “movement” origin someone arrested for a “non-movement” case (whatever is not consists in the centrality of the movement and is non part of the movement, peripheral, hostile?) to be of no interest, to not be a cause for the movement. If to go beyond our ideological fixations, on a number of issues apart from solidarity, is seen as impossible it is certain that slowly, even if we deny it, we will speak the language of the unthinkable, we will speak the language of innocent-guilty, good-bad.
Dominion’s intentions are known, our estimations will not be far from the obvious. So, the state from now on will not drench us in chemicals, but will separate us and feed us new habits. Familiarity will breed contempt and vice versa. The diffusion of insecurity and many other unknowns that are intentionally left hovering in the air, shape the convenient psychology of the defendant, of the contested in order to render himself inactive. A reserved position with the feeling of ignorance about something that you always have to wait for in order to remain bound down. What appears to be or is implied about the future, is realized in this moment, in the present while we, looking into the distance in our attempt to guess what the future beholds, suffer from farsightedness. Dazzled, we could comment on the vulnerable points of the spectacle, interpret the economic stranglehold, analyze the utility of their propaganda for consensual self-flagellation, the spectacle-loving audience, the intensifying oppression of wage slavery. We could count as wounds on our bodies names of our comrades, calculate the “invulnerable” castles and dominion’s armies of occupation. We could speak the language driven by habit and then… with our gaze to the ground in front of their weapons we could ask them to loosen our cuffs. A reading of reality is necessary, but it is not the objective. The procedure is not fertile on its own accord if you interpret events and facts without apprizing, without eliciting their functional use. If we diagnose the signs of our times to the point and with theoretical clarity we should not obtain the verification of the prophecy…when you analyze the obvious you end up with the tragedy of an already familiar truth, you illustrate by sitting down the futility of moving. When everything remains still they march on with audacity.
Removing every foreclosure that might provide a political cost for them, taking into account that a witch-hunt is better paid for and counting on arbitrariness as something granted, that which we have to do, amongst other things, is to continue to produce destructive projects- results based on…. Cartesian coordinates! Determination is the magic elixir of life.
“There are two cardinal human sins from which all others derive: Impatience and Laziness. Impatience expelled them from Paradise, laziness kept them from making their way back.”
-F. Kafka-.
An action always has its causes, of course it involves us experientially with life, it gives us life, it raises our adrenalin and however much that is underestimated, it also has its importance, but is and should be perceived as secondary. Besides, the same adrenalin exists also in the cops. So we overcome dilemmas and hesitations, we honor practical theory, words are good we say, but what is meaningful is action. The meaning however of an action is not always given by its cause, we ourselves also give the meaning. Readily desires scream attack, easily they are deceived and channeled into spontaneities, into short reflections. Naturally programs and formulas do not exist, if they did we would have changed the whole history of humanity. We can however be more careful, shrewd, insightful. There is simultaneously a question of ethics and politics, which cannot build paths by its markings, cannot become specified, does not want to dictate but rather each has to become conscious of it on their own. There are elements that are not consistent with our culture, that reproduce a peculiar behavior that corresponds more to what in theory we are enemies of. Attack can come in contradistinction to inaction, can grant self-confidence, but conceit is the secret poison, capable in its intoxication to diminish the sense of reality, to excuse every thing we do in correlation to the permanent presence of a rival force. Arrogance, self-reference around our name, glorifications apart from reproducing identities and roles also underestimate the enemy lines. Creators should remain inconspicuous. Under the hoods there are no faces, there are no names, ideas are not the ones persecuted but their practical application is. The reason laid out in writing following an attack is the reason of the attack, its objective and only up to there. It is good if the reader is defined by the writer. Hypophora is a rhetorical schema during which the orator poses questions and then proceeds to answer them himself. If what we want is this, then let us speak to our mirrors and if what we want is to show ourselves off then let us go to some game-show.

“What we are speaking of is a new war, a new guerilla. Without lines or uniform, without an army or decisive battles. A guerilla which will evolve far from commodity flows, even though it will be connected on them. We are speaking of a latent war… a war of position…in the name of no one. In the name of our own existence, which has no name.”
-TIQQUN 2-
SAPERE AUDE: dare to know. We must become maximalists, greedy, we must insist on a plan to take back everything. In the insurrection we had the decision to attack and to fight and that’s what happened. Now the political leadership leaves the impression of kneeling only to regroup. They ask for consent but their dogs growl in the streets. Their war is now, it is realized every day, here. At this moment they are from their side the assaulters. In the arena of the economic crisis the field of class polarization is arising? There is no time for opinion polls, let’s provoke, forcing each one to take a position. We do not bow our heads, we do not hope for the resurrection of the dead, we advance. There is nothing symbolic. To attack means to get involved, to take risks. The world of power horizontally extends everywhere. Islands are poor of life, poor of fire. We must set fire to the sea. We must rip out stone by stone all its avenues. Knowing that however many glass windows are smashed, however many banks burn to the ground it is not enough. Let’s seek the practical applications of our negations, the overthrow of this world; the spectacles that will abolish the spectacle. Let’s destroy what destroys us…
Freedom for Haris, Manos, Takis
Solidarity to those prosecuted for the same case
(Pamphlet circulated amongst comrades in Athens, Spring of 2010)

LET'S DESTROY WORK!

leaflet given out by anarchists on Lisbon demo 29 MAY 2010


We are not concerned with the political problems of those who see unemployment as a danger to democracy and order. We do not feel any nostalgia for lost professionalism. We don’t want better wages or the continuation of subsidies. Nor are we for the abolition of work, the discovery of alternative ways of life, or the reduction to the minimum to live happily.
We want the destruction of this system that makes us beg for a minimum to not to starve to death.
We want the destruction of work and this society, of what we do during the day and it’s continuation that extends until night, a perpetuate circle that never seems to end; prisoners in this prison without bars or walls, but whose objective is exactly the same: the resignation to what they tell us to accept, to the bosses’ orders and to the police that protects them and protects what we want to destroy.
We want the destruction of this rule that makes us continue like this, prisoners of a job that takes us all: our time, our creativity, our energy.
The destruction of work is above all the destruction of survival, demanding a step into the unknown and, above all, extreme creativity.
Destroying work means attacking, attacking that in which work is based on and that which it produces. The attack does not affect profit indirectly, as a strike does, but hits the structure directly, either the means of production or the end product. And the object to be destroyed, although it is property, it is also work, because it is something that results from work.
For the liberation of our lives, let’s destroy work and all this society.