Return Fire #2

Every day we’re told in a million subtle and blatant ways by the dominant culture that “our type” can’t and don’t exist. And yet we do.

Tearing up the billboards, breaking down the conditioning, deserting or undermining the battalions of work, burning out the occupying forces, claiming a stake within the wildness pulsing through the cosmos: raising the torch which illuminates these pages, from far-flung corners of the Earth. These antagonists generously shared their strength with this project as we feed our own tributary back into the churning waters that beat inexorably against a vast dam preventing our self-willed passage.

Greece: Major Arson Attack Against Gold Mine Owned by Vancouver Crooks

From Big Brother Corporation news:

Dozens of masked intruders have raided a gold mining operation in northern Greece, officials say.

The attackers used petrol bombs and flammable liquid to set fire to machinery, vehicles and containers, neo-Nazi police told the Associated Press.

The Hellas Gold site is due to open in 2015 and expected to create new jobs in the recession-hit Halkidiki region.

But it has faced protests from environmentalists who say development would cause irreversible damage.

Citizens’ groups have been trying to halt the project since 2011, when the Greek government allowed Hellenic Gold, a subsidiary of Canadian company Eldorado Gold, to dig in the region.

In January, hundreds of Greeks took to the streets of Athens to demonstrate against the new mine.

‘Barely exploited’

Up to 50 intruders raided the complex at Skouries after midnight on Sunday, fire fighters and police told AP on Sunday.

The arson attack caused extensive damage to machines, trucks and containers used as offices, authorities said.

A security guard was reported to have been injured in the attack.

Protesters say the mine will destroy forests and contaminate groundwater

Police detained 27 people, who were later released.

The Halkidiki area has a long history of mining for gold and other minerals, making it the centre of frequent bitter debates between residents and politicians.

Eldorado boss Eduardo Moura said the Hellas Gold project would « generate approximately 5,000 direct and indirect jobs in Greece ».

Authorities hope it will help to fight the crippling unemployment in the region as the country heads into its sixth year of recession.

« No-one doubts any longer that northern Greece is a source of mineral wealth, with a total wealth in metals exceeding 20bn euros (£17bn), » Deputy Energy and Environment Parasite Asimakis Papageorgiou said in a recent parliamentary debate on mining operations in Halkidiki.

« We can no longer accept this being left unexploited or barely exploited. »

Critics, however, say the mining operation will destroy forests in the area, contaminate groundwater and pollute the air with chemical substances like lead, mercury and arsenic.

Opponents argue this will drive away tourism and damage farming and fishing.

Last year, residents launched legal proceedings to try and to stop the project.

But the country’s highest administrative court ruled in favour of Eldorado, citing Halkidiki’s high unemployment rate.

Judges also said there were no environmental concerns stemming from the investment.

Taken from Occupied London:

An arson attack took place on the worksite of mining company Hellas Gold in the Skouries forest in north-eastern Halkidiki in the night from 16 to 17 February 2013. An initial report, posted by the pro-mining blog “Citizen of the Aristotelis Municipality”, stated that 50 to 70 individuals wearing full-face hoods and armed with shotguns and petrol bombs entered the site shortly after midnight and set equipments and vehicles on fire. The report further claimed that the assailants immobilized the two security guards who were on the site and held them hostage after dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire. The value of the shares of the majority owner of Hellas Gold, Canadian company Eldorado Gold, dropped by 6% in the Toronto stock exchange following news of the attack.

The Skouries forest is at the centre of a hot dispute between the mining company, Hellas Gold, which is owned at 95% by Canadian mining giant Eldorado Gold and at 5% by Greek public works company Hellaktor, and local communities. The company claims that a pharaonic plan for mining of gold and copper in the area will benefit the region through the creation of some 5,000 direct and indirect jobs, while local residents argue that not only the dubious terms under which mining rights were transferred to Hellas Gold mean that the Greek State will receive no financial benefits from the mining project, but also that activities planned by Hellas Gold will cause massive damage to the environment which will in turn lead to the loss of many more jobs in the existing sectors of the local economy (farming, animal husbandry, fisheries, beekeeping, food processing and tourism). The residents’ claims are supported by research conducted by various independent scientific institutions such as the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Technical Chamber of Macedonia. The fact that the company has the support of the government in the name of “securing foreign investments” has often resulted in extremely heavy-handed police tactics against protesting residents, for example during a demonstration on 21 October 2012. More radiobubble reporting on this issue is available on the tag Skouries (in English, French and Spanish) as well as here, here and here (in Greek).

There was considerable confusion as to what happened exactly on the mining worksite in the night of 16 to 17 February. The claim that the security guards were taken hostage, tied up and doused with fuel spread through the media even though it was not confirmed in the press release of Eldorado Gold or the statement issued by Hellas Gold. According to Greek news website TVXS, local media reported that police officers denied that there had been a hostage situation following the attack on the site, as security guards pulled back after seeing the group of 40 or so people who were coming. [1] The official statement issued by the Ministry of Public Order after Minister Nikos Dendias travelled to the regional capital of Halkidiki, Polygyros, did not mention any specific events; it merely reported that the Minister said: ” First, Greece is a European State with the rule of law. Second, we all have the obligation to secure the possibility of foreign investments in this country. It is well-known that this is the only solution to face the huge and dramatic problem of unemployment. Thank you.” Security camera footage of the attack, which was released to the media, also shows no evidence of a hostage situation. All indications are therefore that the claim that guards were taken hostage and doused with fuel by the assailants does not stand, even though it was repeated ad nauseam on TV talk shows and included in the statements of security guards to the police.

The police proceeded to a first wave of random detentions in the morning of 17 February. Local residents contacted by phone told us that, of the first 27 people who were detained in the moutain villages near Skouries, some were company employees who favour the implementation of the mining project. This first group was released before another group of 4 people was detained, who were also released within hours. Things became more serious however when an arrest warrant in flagrante was issued in the night from 17 to 18 February against three prominent community members who oppose the mining project, Lazaros Toskas, Tolis Papageorgiou and Maria Kadoglou. The warrant was based on statements by the worksite’s security guards to the police, which repeated the claims that they were taken hostage and doused with petrol by the assailants. At the end of his statement, one of the guards argued that these three individuals were the moral instigators of the attack, as “all three, in posts on the internet and statements to the media, incited opponents [of the mining project] to acts of violence.” Another one argued that “Tolis Papageorgiou said in a recent speech in Komotini that he opposes mining and doesn’t care if his struggle against it results in the loss of human life, Lazaros Toskas is present in every protest against the company and Maria Kadoglou, through the web page she administrates, incites people to protest against the company.”[2]

The police managed to locate and arrest Lazaros Toskas, who was taken to the Polygyros court for trial on 18 February (Papageorgiou and Kadoglou could not be located before the in flagrante arrest warrant ran out in the evening of 18 February.) His arrest generated an outpouring of solidarity on the internet due to the flimsiness of the charges brought against him. As a prominent member of the local chapter of opposition party SYRIZA, Toskas also had the full backing of his party, which expressed outrage at the fact that his arrest was clearly targeting the party itself. A large solidarity gathering of friends, neighbours, party members and fellow residents of Halkidiki was waiting for him outside the courthouse and broke into applause when he walked free after the trial. Upon his release, Toskas filed a counter-lawsuit against his accusers for false statements and diffamation.

The Polygyros prosecutor returned the indictment documents to the police, demanding that the investigation be continued and a stronger argument be made in order to continue pursuing the case. The case file has now been transferred from Polygyros to Thessaloniki, where an investigator has been appointed to determine if the attack on the worksite can be defined as an act of terrorism.

The assault on the Skouries worksite generated extensive coverage on Greek media on 18 February, giving the mining issue more exposure on mainstream media than it had for the several previous months. It must be noted however that evening talk shows essentially provided a platform to local and national politicians who support the mining project (in particular to the mayor of the mining region, Christos Pachtas, whom opponents accuse of being behind the dubious transaction through which the mines found themselves in the possession of Hellas Gold in 2003 when he was deputy minister of finance), while giving little air time to the grievances of local residents and to the damage the project would cause to the environment. TV talk shows also spent considerable time discussing the alleged hostage situation, despite the fact that all indications are that the allegations are false.

As of 19 February, the police is still conducting detentions of residents in the villages of Ierissos and Megali Panagia near Skouries, without however having been able to indict or arrest anyone on credible accusations. Local activists report that the police are demanding that detainees handover DNA samples and threaten them with prosecution for insubordination if they refuse to comply.

Update 20 February 2013 – 10:20am
A local resident we contacted on the phone confirmed that the police is taking DNA samples from detainees, threatening with arrest for insubordination if they fail to comply. Furthermore, there were police cars staffed with two hooded individuals outside the anti-mining coordination meeting in Ierissos yesterday, taking down the registration numbers of vehicles parked outside the meeting venue. The coordination meeting decided to hold an anti-mining demonstration in the village of Megali Panagia on Sunday 24 February.

Further reading:
– detailed liveblog of developments since 17 February on Alterthess (in Greek)
– background documentary on opposition to mining in the area: “Gold in the time of the crisis: the treasure of Cassandra” by the Exandas Documentaries team (in Greek, English subs to be available soon).

[1] The police made several statements to the media through its spokespeople and by e-mail but had not published any official press release on its website at the time of writing.
[2] The blog managed by Maria Kadoglou, Hellenic Mining Watch, is a valuable source of information about mining plans and activities in Greece (in Greek).

That’s about the only time when they clean up their mess.

The Corporate State’s reaction (taken from Greekreporter)

Greece’s government and major opposition party Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) are battling over blame after an arson attack on a gold mine in northern Greece that officials said could trigger fear by foreign companies to invest in the country.

A 54-year-old man has been charged in the aftermath of the fire on equipment at the Skouries mine in Halkidi, a project being developed by the Canadian company Eldorado Gold. Residents are divided between those who want the jobs it will bring and environmentalists who fear it will harm the environment and ruin tourism.

The man arrested was said to be the “moral instigator” and a local resident, while authorities said as many as 50 people may have been involved in the raid, which destroyed a number of vehicles. Two guards were also tied up and doused with a flammable liquid, police said. Four security guards were injured and a number of containers, vehicles and earth-moving machinery were destroyed.

The assailants are also alleged to have been carrying guns, which they fired into the air. A total of 33 people were detained, prompting residents of the nearby village of Ierissos to hold a public rally to protest what they saw as being random detentions by the police said.

Lazaros Toskas, a member of main leftist opposition SYRIZA’s prefectural committee in Halkidiki, was detained by police after he commented on his blog that he opposes the Halkidiki project and his alleged participation in protests opposing the mine.

A prosecutor returned his file to police, describing it as “incomplete,” according to sources, the newspaper Kathimerini said. Toskas and three of the security staff injured legal suits against each other – the staff against Toskas for allegedly being one of their attackers and Toskas against the guards for slander.

SYRIZA, which has backed opposition by local residents to the Halkidiki mining project, condemned the arson attack as “unacceptable” but expressed anger at the arrest of Toskas, referring to a “general attempt to stigmatize social struggles.” The government has accused SYRIZA of fostering political violence.

Sources told the newspaper Kathimerini that police collected evidence attack and are expecting the results of forensic tests. Officers have apparently gathered droplets of blood, a ski mask, cigarette butts, a torch and a surgical mask. Hellenic Gold, which is 95-percent owned by Canadian Eldorado Gold, insists that the mine is legal and has all the necessary environmental permits.

Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias stressed that authorities would do everything possible to protect crucial investments. “Greece is a European state of law and order,” he said. “We have a duty to safeguard the foreign investments taking place in the country. Investments are the only way we can confront the huge problem of unemployment.”

The President of Vancouver mining company Eldorado Gold condemned an attack as “violent extremism,” according to the Vancouver Times. Paul Wright said the attack on the project should set operations back no more than two weeks.

Eldorado is developing a combination open pit and underground mine that has been a focal point of environmental protest in a region that has witnessed mining protests for over a decade. Wright said it is important to separate the violence, believed to be the work of political extremists, from legal protests (sounds familiar?). While the main local issue is that the mining is to take place in a forested area, Greece has been wracked by political violence focused on the broader unrest over austerity measures.

Surveillance camera videos of the attack

Antigold Greece blog (in Greek)

Hack Attacks Against Power Lines in France

A communique from a few people of the ZAD:

As a celebration of the New Year, during the fireworks against the cops at the crossroads of Rohanne Forest, a group of individuals went to an high-power pylon in the ZAD equipped with HACKSAWS. For half an hour, those few people calmly managed to cut halfway across two of the pylons feet.

This action aimed at reinforcing solidarity between the squatters of the ZAD and those who are fighting against the THT Contentin-Maine (a very high-power line project), and more generally against the centralization of energy production (especially nuclear).

It was about time to see the convergence of struggle being translated into action.

From now on, the pylons of the definitive autonomous zone are in danger.

For every eviction, one pylon attacked!

For every police aggression, one pylon attacked!

They can’t put a cop under every single pylon…

Contemporary art? With art galleries still un-smashed, who can tell?

An Early Christmas by the THT Contenti(o)n-Maine

Dear Mr. L.Prentout, P.Remy, P-L.Jacob et A.Colrat

One night, not long ago, we witnessed a curious phenomenon that I’d like to share with you. Near Saint-Martin-d’Aubigny, a garland of fireflies and several gloved hands activated themselves with joy in our merry countryside. The HACKSAWS went raging as the wrenches sang along through the nightly calm of our realm, still undisrupted by the buzzing of the new THT power line.

Albeit the precautions you’ve taken, it seemed that the same services, who made themselves looks busy, not long ago, surveilling our houses, controlling our cars and all those charming activities of which you hold the secret, couldn’t admire this fairy spectacle and even less put an end to it.

I assure you, gentlemen, that I did had my glasses on and that I was walking quite straight. Therefore it’s the day after that I was allowed to check that this was not dream. Those large steel bars have then taken elegant curves, and the prairie had bolts all over the place, as if Santa Claus’s sleigh crashed on

your great iron towers. For I imagine that those are indeed gifts, obviously a little in advance, by those little hands that busy themselves to not let you carry on with your crimes. And it seems so that those little fireflies have now become masters at making those gifts to you.

You shall assume, dear gentlemen, by admiring this spectacle, that your great work would gain charm if all the pylons of Contention-Maine would get to resemble this one. We hope that public funds will not be used to correct our work, and from Flamanville to Beaulion-sur-Oudon we still can enjoy the spectacle of screeching bars and a ballet of fireflies fluttering around your four hundred and twenty “Eiffel towers”.

Our very sincere sawlutations!

An admirer of the artists in becoming

translated from Indymedia Nantes

Development: target for a better future… or any future at all!

(Updated)

Today, the American continent is still the main front for the biggest operation of imperial conquest. Horizontal, or suburban development, is by far one of the worst ongoing ecological disasters, along with monocultures, the nuclear/biotech industries and the whole natural resources industry, all of these being the only reasons why our former colonies have sprung out of European empires; while imperialism was swept under the carpet in our History classes, while it has become viral, and exponential since the so-called post-war «decolonization movement», and especially the ongoing devastating military invasions carried by NATO abroad. More than this, the process of continuous invasion has gone into full battle mode here, right under the veil of social order, and one has to got to live in suburbia for not to see it, because everywhere else, it is an easily observable fact.

It's not just about that... but you get the idea.

Obviously, there is something bigger at play behind all the machines of destruction and their restless, mindless soldiers of the construction industry, tying them all together in a same never-ending process. 

The machine of development

The continuous need for expansion, progress, or growth, is the only rationale allowing imperialism to persist and prevail, if we understand this « need » as being firsthand the one of the class that profiteers from the empire, before everyone else. This is why outside of this primary necessity, development will forever be devoid of any substance or rationality, other than the vain hope of improving one’s living conditions, that merely derives from the industry’s marketing campaigns, as none really goes on such glorious adventure solely out of faith, or love for their empire, while expecting no gains in return.

Therefore, to give it a rationale, it’ll have to be supported by nationalism (or internationalism), faith in God (or the State), conservative (or liberal) values as well as even more blurry creeds, as the quest for Happiness or humanitarianism; all this acting as an ideology that provides an inclusive, generalist rationale to an invasion which in fact doesn’t have any. A unifying Grand Illusion that’s only there to fuel more production and further invasion by the masses while generating profits for the big parasites, and dividends for all the substrates. The accumulation of profit is the engine of growth, and this, even the craftiest of these professional liars, the economists, will admit it.

As in every dogma generated by the selfish decrees of industrial capitalism, at every age or location on the planet, there are no popes and bishops to instate and regulate the doctrine, and no priests working hard and steady to enforce it. There, are the center of the dogma, the one they have to answer to and work for, once they are done with their experimental years at college and university, where they could discover its value through domination and consumerism, is the very sacred principle of accumulation of capital. This what ties the disciples of Che Guevara, Noam Chomsky, Jean-Paul Sartres and Ayn Rand, from the most gruesome aspects of the Left to the most bloody fascistic of the Right, including all the flimsy and softy liberals in between. These are the intellectual caste, the higher-skilled proletarians. These, are the symbol manipulators, who later become dispassionate designers and conceivers of the capitalist dogma. Accountants, lawyers, designers, journalists, real-estate agents, speculators… the careers are countless, but the role is always the same. Throughout the rest of their lives, both golf-playing business people and the liberal artists chatting after theater plays will together come to serve this dogma with the same enthusiasm, but relatively reluctant self-awareness. In other words they’ll do it because it grants them wealth, power or social status, but not exactly out of passion, or love, since they cannot be expected to identify personally with their job. As with the rest of workers, they make their shift and go home for serving another day.

In comparison, priests of the distant past used to direct their religious devotees into building temples beyond human proportions -at Ur, Babylon, Luxor, Rome or Paris- as well as towns made of gigantic stones on steep, elevated mountain sides, mostly out of elevations of faith (even though it wasn’t always purely selfless). They were also torturing themselves and others to get rid of some « Evil », and seeing their condition of poverty as a form of wealth, and not exactly as a basic condition of happiness. This is the kind of insanity that the power of faith allows. But this faith had become so impersonal and profound that it couldn’t respond to the lesser material imperatives of the sex-food-and-drugs market, when capitalism became a dominant system and these things became pillars of the economy. When Rock’n’Roll and TVs came as flagships of the new dogma, it became the ultimate satanic blend to strike the final blows. This was later used against the “Red Menace” of communism, as TV tubes were sent all across the slums of the Third World as “humanitarian aid”… to evangelize the poor with “Dynasty” so they too learn the way of material success, through becoming crime lords and sex slaves. So the big winner in this industrial-era spiritual conflict, Capital, ends being a much more selfish -and self-serving- dogma, yet it is purely universal, as it already broke all boundaries, gives the biggest exploiters a World Citizen passport, and is now reaching to the stars for more savage exploitation. In a way, frees us from the old order of the Christian doctrine, although it puts us in a more pervasive form of slavery, as God, just like any good friend should, did not use to want us to perform, or be good-looking.

Inversely, it’s rather among the enforcers of the dogma, these cold-blooded workers of this dominion -the cops, construction workers, nurses, ticket controllers, drug dealers, professional athletes- that we can observe such mindless, selfless passion. But mainly cops, without whom all this enforcement business would lose most of its serious; as we all know -or feel- how fear is still efficient as ever, to provide with a strong, irrational argument to the masses for submitting to the dogma. Cops, and the lesser private security guards, are the few ones willing to put their lives on the line for handing out a ticket or punishing a hobo for stealing a chocolate bar. As Christian priests used to police youngsters in the streets who dared kissing each other; cops, with their thunder-shooting devices and their threat of immediate damnation -to a Hell of concrete blocks, from one night to an entire lifetime- inherited this lowly, dangerous job of playing the Hero for a higher order they aren’t even supposed to understand. Capital surely doesn’t care about the fate of our souls after death -at least for now- but it works tirelessly to make us into soulless drones, who as they reach the adult age of production, may go as far as sacrificing themselves for a paycheck. The absolute nonsense of religion.

And for the workers who do neither of these businesses, well, they are just proles. Hired labor, unattached workers, legal prostitutes, wage slaves; as opposed to being purchased labor, those who are “bought” by the system through education, like the ones mentioned above.

Here’s for the individual aspect of its machinery. Of course, we do support development by other means than paid labor in our non-lives, but it’s always dependent, one way of another, on the efforts we do for the same system that feeds from it.

On the more general scale, accumulation of capital and expansion are two mutually inclusive and dependent variables in the capitalist industry, working in perfect symbiosis, the same way than breathing in and out are the vital basis of the cardiovascular system. If you happen to not understand this very intimate relation, please repeat that sentence everyday in your mind, by looking at how the world around you works, you’ll soon get it. This has got to be understood fully, before pretending to break down this system. Many revolutionaries of late, in fact, have only looked at one flip of the coin, without being aware that this dual polarity is what makes it so strongly persistent… just as with any other natural or unnatural system in the universe. This is understandable, since this system seems to have become fully reliant on the spectacle industry since the Cold War era, where the spectacle has replaced faith as a main drive for colonial expansion, and the older revolutionary paradigm couldn’t allow grasp this dynamic soon enough. Every single revolutionary who seeks to go onward the capitalist system should see how this system is desperately dependent upon development.

And just as in any unsustainable system, if it’s expansion is compromised, it begins to suffocate. This is why the traditional religious society did last for such a long time, because the void of its dogma became an absolute value -above all human spirit and flesh- that is the vacuous entity known as «God» (or Allah, of Yahweh); while the void of capital doesn’t convene any spiritual ardor, or model of enduring enterprise whose value goes beyond the one it creates on material goods. On the other hand, it systematically generates people like Anders Breivik, car and truck-driving psychopaths and other human slave bombs by the thousands -who not so surprisingly all turn out to be males- through its nihilistic, “one against all” models of performance and success; by first enslaving us to the “everyone for his/her own butt” mentality. In simpler terms, capitalism uses society against itself, and makes this social war profitable, as with any other war it has started in History.

Hence why no capitalism can ever be sustainable. In practice, it generates a collective mutually-assumed destruction, on a massive scale…

Hence why any form of development -industrial, humanitarian, spectacular/democratic, techno-scientific- has become the main war front of capitalism; its most sensitive, and surprisingly, yes, its most vulnerable…

Through the land grabs, Police State measures, military invasions, toxic mass-spraying of wild areas and the spread of cell phone antennas; expansion has become the central mechanism of war-profiteering. A mechanism which seems very abstract, intangible, but that is depending upon very concrete devices; these are all the instruments that allow the broadcasting of its own propaganda and to physically establish itself, formatting the land and building its many infrastructures -roads, buildings, pipelines, power/communications lines and so on- in the present and ulterior phases of expansion. These devices are diverse, although universally redundant, and are directly attached to a specific form of specialization in the whole process of development (real-estate, tourism, mining, oil, etc); but it’s obvious that the most important of all these are the fluxes of exchange that are the inevitable supports for expansion movements. The fluxes go also in straight parallel with the flow of investments in the means of production, from which profits are derived further down the line.

The energy fluxes above all else, even before the land, air and sea routes. For if there is no flow of energy vectors -such as water, electricity, communications signals and fuels- there simply can be no industry in any given area. And the root condition making these develop like a cangrene through healthy cell tissue, is none else than demand. It can be considered as an energy vector, but an energy of void, or antimatter. One that attracts, and then radiates all the flows of energy through its many different tentacles,

Both demand and its consequent fluxes can be eradicated, or at least incapacitated, from the start, without too much need for tiresome or dangerous warfare against more evolved phases of development. Because both aspects are often found to rely on infrastructures that are easily sabotaged or subverted. As through human affairs, it is, as opposed the naive misconceptions -or fraudulent lies- of economists, a completely artificial, created factor. It so appears dynamic, to a point where religious devotees of capital would describe it as “natural law”, because it is systemic; generated through an organized, standardized, regulated production process.

Demand is generated by the symbols of the spectacle and its industry. This is what sweet dreams are made of: symbolic links, to what is not, but what could or should be. This is the marketing side of it, without whom, as we have seen earlier, development wouldn’t gather many crowds into its destructive processes of production. These symbols can be found at every place where capitalist civilization is to be found, and they are an imagery of the non-existent, of what isn’t there. It always tries to be a projection of an idealized existence, no matter how realistic it may or may not pretend to be at all. It is in a film theater, on a advertisement panel, through the insipid acting job of some radio host, the overwhelming display of brutality by the police, or in the obvious mechanical smile of a waitress (to waiters-esses: sorry to be harsh… I know you don’t like it as much as it looks).

Deriving from the main topic, this is how a significant part of the East Berlin autonomous squatters movement of the ’90s was bought into becoming liberal artists and social programmers; they designed the very conditions of their own posh enslavement, through adjusting their demand(s) to the conditions of defeat imposed by the State. So in about 10 years, the situation has gone from +900 autonomous occupied buildings and spaces to a handful of State-sanctionned hausprojekts, that now serve as beds for the most vile and violent reactionary agents (commonly known as “Nazi punks” or “fascist metalheads”), hidden in plain view from their gentle pseudo-antifascist roommates. Just as in the romanticized Berlin of the ’20s, where social-democracy had produced sinister comfort beds were sexy and trendy liberal leftists slept with the disgusting, bloody freikorps, out of the public eye.

This shows how dreams of emancipation through compromises turn idealists into treacherous, mindless whores. True revolutionaries and struggling souls aren’t impressed by ideals, and don’t bow into compromise with the “powers-that-be”.

Destroying the machine of development

Not only for the survival of our species and the ones targeted by it, but for life itself. It creates possibilities for life by protecting them from what negates it, and in this aspect, it is far more creative than reproduction, especially when many of our progenies are bent on becoming mindless enforcers of the dogma and nature destroyers. At this point, we’re allowed to realize how freedom and life equate to the very same thing.

Above all this, it is also for unleashing a process of radical change in our relation towards nature. To force the idea that the land, air and sea simply cannot be owned, first of all, no matter the bureaucracy and police violence involved to justify this purely abstract idea of ownership. It’s the biggest mind job ever created by the Grand Illusion of capitalism, especially for making us believe it is a fact of human nature.

So how can we destroy something so vapid, so abstract as “development”, or “expansion” of industrial capitalism? At first glance this sounds crazy… a bit like trying to attack a god by standing on the roof of a church with a bow and shooting arrows at the clouds. But since what drives development is created though concrete devices, it is also where you can find its points of materialization; its frontier between the abstract ideals, and the material conditions of their fulfillment.

As an example, to merely vandalize a bunch of real-estate advertisement panels in a region is in itself a way to turn a bunch of “Yes! You can colonize here” road signs to a “No. Fuck off and go home”, thus destabilizing the demand in this area, especially when it’s being carried during “peak” times (tourist season, some holiday, public events, etc). The second potential of such tactic is that -just as with the glass-breaking of chain stores, ATM-smashing and molotov-ing of banks or police infrastructure (cars, stations, CCTVs)- it can be easily reproduced to eventually become a culture of counter-offensive, allowing anyone out there who shares the same anger at the system to reproduce it and spread the message further, without the need of any direct contact with co-conspirators, thus building a “virtual” movement of resistance. In order to have a stronger, deeper effect on this machinery, you would probably have to sabotage more important infrastructures -like offices or fluxes, or spaces higher up In the social hierarchy- but this may demand a lot more in terms of organizing with others, since of course we can’t expect everyone to be a Don Quixote, or it’s modern version Ted Kaczinsky. What matters is to attack where it hurts, where we can, and to twist the knife!

Because the nature of this empire -a cybernetic one- is that it no longer has a physical center. It actually stopped having one long ago, perhaps during the purported fall of the great monarchic empires, or more likely under the bipolar world order of the Cold War. No matter when or how it happened, its getting fairly obvious that civilization has completely lost its heart, socially, morally and geopolitically. It relies upon a multitude of poles, turntables, energy capacitors that ensure the recirculation of capitals and their multiplication in a given area. These generators also provide with the structures of reinforcement and manipulation of symbols as described above. These poles can be as much techno-industrial/spectacular urban pivots such as Tokyo or New York, or the “Republic of Kosovo” for their heroin trafficking in Europe, just as the corporate universities, military bases planted in every region on the planet; and let’s not forget the Vatican octopus head, as well as all these sacred temples of global capitalism, banks. In the parallel “criminal” underworld, the prisons play the exact same role of capacitance, feeding off the mafia gangs until their capitalists integrate into the higher exploitation hierarchy. As opposed to a common misconception, there aren’t really borders between organized crime cartels and financial/political “business” networks; if there would be, the drugs and humans trafficking markets wouldn’t be around, or not so noticeable. It is how capitalism became global, by developing capacitors everywhere, interconnected into always wider and stronger networks of State-supported gangsterism.

How long will it take for us to aim higher next time?

This is why the rich are always on-the-move, with their posh residences and more temporary resorts spread all over the world; so are their continuous meetings, covering several distant locations in a same week, as they fly or roll in high-speed trains. The wealthier and more influent they are, the farther their homes are away -or up above- from the social Roman hypogeum they conceived for us, and the faster they move freely above the constraints of bureaucracy and police control; as opposed to the vast majority of plebeians below, who are fed to their lions and gladiators (the cops and the military) or work on others to be sent to this daily spectacular massacre. Being world citizens is the only trait they share with revolutionaries and terrorist organizations.

Since it is completely rotten to the core, the empire has now become ex-centric; depending not on a central kernel of power but rather on a eggshell-like superstructure, and this is the only structure holding it together, and allowing its existence to perpetuate. It does make sense that a global corporate empire that goes all around a planet needs to be structured accordingly, like a gigantic web that seeks to crush the world in its grasp. This is the face of capitalist oligarchy, which uses nets to distribute wealth, to be later concentrated in gigantic safes, somewhere in Switzerland, Hong Kong, Dubai or the City of London. These concentrators of capital are theoretically unbreakable fortresses (although, like it’s been proven with the burning of the Rabobank skycrapers in early 2011, it’s always a relativity), but everything that ties them with the large system is much weaker, and harder to keep secure.

This is in itself the concrete reflection of the decentralized nature of the current capitalist power structure. Since there is no imperial city or throne room to raid or bomb, the comfort lairs of the higher caste are spread all over the world. It is a benefit, in a way, for their posh areas of tranquility are closer to our arm’s reach -sometimes right under our nose- strangely guarded not often at their doorstep, but down in the streets where we survive within the walls and the fences of their society of control. These are the binding conditions -concrete, inevitable, terrible- of our enslavement, build through the imaginary social contract between ourselves and the State, but still we all have the freedom to break out of these. It only has to be shown to the entire mankind that it is possible, and that it creates a new situation that overcomes the bars and trappings of the very system we created.

In solidarity with all the oppressed animals of this world.

By Anabraxas