A protest against that which will outlast the collapse of capital

“It’s like a friend telling you that he will stop smoking in 10 years,” said Jochen Stay, spokesman for the anti-nuclear body Ausgestrahlt (Radiated), which has mobilised protestors against the shipment.

“You are not going to congratulate them just yet.”

Germany, like the rest of Europe, has no permanent storage site for the waste, which will remain dangerous for thousands of years.

Infamy

That, by the way, is pepper spray, onto the faces and bodies of a university's students as casually as though watering a garden with pesticide.  Some of these students were hospitalized for chemical burns.

Read this and spread it widely.  It is tremendously important.

In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis...

A Pervert's Guide to Provocative Agents

"Police responses are not, in general, decided by individual police witnessing specific events, but by senior police and political leaders deciding how to deal with the protest as a whole. If the police attack protestors, it’s because they’ve decided to attack protestors, not because of anything the protestors did (this is also why worrying about police infiltrators is usually pointless; police may use provocateurs to stage-manage their intervention, but the form of their intervention is decided in advance and is independent of what either protestors or provocateurs do)."

Here 




By the way, small note on the pervy libidinal economy of the internet and the pre-selection of content...

... there is no way to google image search "agent provocateur" without receiving results that are almost entirely from luxury lingerie ads. 

Adding the word "police" calibrates the results to include the standard "use of circles to illustrate how you can, in fact, tell a cop by his shoes", but also to include a very Night Porter falange of lingerie models and a woman in bra and panties standing in front of a custom "Agent Provocateur" pink and black Police mini. 

 + "anarchist" gives the more familiar results....

while "+ communist" treats us to a first result of a champagne cork popping off.  At least it got something right.

+ "liberal" mainly shifts the optic toward the "non-West," plus the amping up of the spittle-rain of Tea Party hysteria.


But, more seriously: what "agent provocateur" truly indexes is the quintuple notion that

a) as Voyou notes, the fantasy that there is not already a state game plan in action, as if - notwithstanding the genuine, and vicious, decisions that get made on the ground on the basis of a general predisposition to treat people like that, such as the now-infamous of throwing of a flash-bang grenade into a crowd of people surrounding a man who would require brain surgery - the police were a neutral substance that responded solely on the basis of a catalyst such as "property destruction."

b) that there is a predetermined object - a "protest" - that already exists, that is capable of being "ruined."  The clusterfuck of predictable media condemnation and predictable "left" infighting over the minor chaos of Rome a couple weeks back entirely confirmed this: the discourse centered around the idea that there was a perfectly good demonstration and a few shits - "bad apples", of course, as if the harvest were ripe, untainted, yet subject to the transmission of decay - who went and spoiled this safe, edible, lovely thing.  What this implies, then, is a conception of a protest as something that "everyone" knows damn well how it should go: a set number of hours, the expected quantity of chants performed and flags waved, and a return home at the end, having put in a good day's work.  The echoes of labor time are far from incidental.  And who could blame some for wanting to ruin it?


c) conversely, that a situation itself neutral, undecided, not agitated but capable of being provoked.  A slim beam of contingency.

d) the correct assertion that there do exist, at times, agent provocateurs.

e) the incorrect notion that there are not amongst us who, God for-fucking-bid, might not wish to be provocative, that we might not want our days to end up exhausted, excited, confused, gutted as an abandoned building, taken over by something bigger than ourselves, blown away by how previous lines of adherence came apart, uncertain of what has or what may come to pass.  

It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose. (Letter of Solidarity From Cairo)

[via comrades in Egypt - please share widely]


To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it's our turn to pass on some advice.


Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call “The Arab Spring” has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years­long struggles by people and popular movements. The moment that we find ourselves in is nothing new, as we in Egypt and others have been fighting against systems of repression, disenfranchisement and the unchecked ravages of global capitalism (yes, we said it, capitalism): a System that has made a world that is dangerous and cruel to its inhabitants. As the interests of government increasingly cater to the interests and comforts of private, transnational capital, our cities and homes have become progressively more abstract and violent places, subject to the casual ravages of the next economic development or urban renewal scheme.


An entire generation across the globe has grown up realizing, rationally and emotionally, that we have no future in the current order of things. Living under structural adjustment policies and the supposed expertise of international organizations like the World Bank and IMF, we watched as our resources, industries and public services were sold off and dismantled as the “free market” pushed an addiction to foreign goods, to foreign food even. The profits and benefits of those freed markets went elsewhere, while Egypt and other countries in the South found their immiseration reinforced by a massive increase in police repression and torture.


The current crisis in America and Western Europe has begun to bring this reality home to you as well: that as things stand we will all work ourselves raw, our backs broken by personal debt and public austerity. Not content with carving out the remnants of the public sphere and the welfare state, capitalism and the austerity­state now even attack the private realm and people's right to decent dwelling as thousands of foreclosed­upon homeowners find themselves both homeless and indebted to the banks who have forced them on to the streets.


So we stand with you not just in your attempts to bring down the old but to experiment with the new. We are not protesting. Who is there to protest to? What could we ask them for that they could grant? We are occupying. We are reclaiming those same spaces of public practice that have been commodified, privatized and locked into the hands of faceless bureaucracy , real estate portfolios, and police ‘protection’. Hold on to these spaces, nurture them, and let the boundaries of your occupations grow. After all, who built these parks, these plazas, these buildings? Whose labor made them real and livable? Why should it seem so natural that they should be withheld from us, policed and disciplined? Reclaiming these spaces and managing them justly and collectively is proof enough of our legitimacy.


In our own occupations of Tahrir, we encountered people entering the Square every day in tears because it was the first time they had walked through those streets and spaces without being harassed by police; it is not just the ideas that are important, these spaces are fundamental to the possibility of a new world. These are public spaces. Spaces for gathering, leisure, meeting, and interacting – these spaces should be the reason we live in cities. Where the state and the interests of owners have made them inaccessible, exclusive or dangerous, it is up to us to make sure that they are safe, inclusive and just. We have and must continue to open them to anyone that wants to build a better world, particularly for the marginalized, excluded and for those groups who have suffered the worst .

What you do in these spaces is neither as grandiose and abstract nor as quotidian as “real democracy”; the nascent forms of praxis and social engagement being made in the occupations avoid the empty ideals and stale parliamentarianism that the term democracy has come to represent. And so the occupations must continue, because there is no one left to ask for reform. They must continue because we are creating what we can no longer wait for.


But the ideologies of property and propriety will manifest themselves again. Whether through the overt opposition of property owners or municipalities to your encampments or the more subtle attempts to control space through traffic regulations, anti­camping laws or health and safety rules. There is a direct conflict between what we seek to make of our cities and our spaces and what the law and the systems of policing standing behind it would have us do.


We faced such direct and indirect violence , and continue to face it . Those who said that the Egyptian revolution was peaceful did not see the horrors that police visited upon us, nor did they see the resistance and even force that revolutionaries used against the police to defend their tentative occupations and spaces: by the government's own admission; 99 police stations were put to the torch, thousands of police cars were destroyed, and all of the ruling party's offices around Egypt were burned down. Barricades were erected, officers were beaten back and pelted with rocks even as they fired tear gas and live ammunition on us. But at the end of the day on the 28th of January they retreated, and we had won our cities.


It is not our desire to participate in violence, but it is even less our desire to lose.


If we do not resist, actively, when they come to take what we have won back, then we will surely lose. Do not confuse the tactics that we used when we shouted “peaceful” with fetishizing nonviolence; if the state had given up immediately we would have been overjoyed, but as they sought to abuse us, beat us, kill us, we knew that there was no other option than to fight back. Had we laid down and allowed ourselves to be arrested, tortured, and martyred to “make a point”, we would be no less bloodied, beaten and dead. Be prepared to defend these things you have occupied, that you are building, because, after everything else has been taken from us, these reclaimed spaces are so very precious.


By way of concluding then, our only real advice to you is to continue, keep going and do not stop. Occupy more, find each other, build larger and larger networks and keep discovering new ways to experiment with social life, consensus, and democracy. Discover new ways to use these spaces, discover new ways to hold on to them and never give them up again. Resist fiercely when you are under attack, but otherwise take pleasure in what you are doing, let it be easy, fun even. We are all watching one another now, and from Cairo we want to say that we are in solidarity with you, and we love you all for what you are doing.

Comrades from Cairo. 24th of October, 2011. 

I have not been writing words because I have been talking them until my tongue is thick with the leftover of things said.  This to be rectified soon.

I am leaving soon, four days, after the quieter time after a more wild winter, before things look to ramp up in weeks to come.  So the time I've been here has seemed a coalescence, a gathering itself up for those weeks ahead.  That said, still struck from earlier tonight: in the EMA march, a single line of sight back from ten yards ahead caught, at once, a set of mouths, the same neon green worn by march stewards and the line of police four steps ahead,  the worn chant WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS, and the fact of a cop rolling tranquilly ahead on the motorcycle that was leading the way for the march on those very streets.  The jelly-thick medium in which no particle movement is possible.

Worse, the fact that this is only worse because it reveals what is generally the case.  I understand in full that no one wants to be "responsible" for the kettling/beating of high school kids nor should such an outcome be invited or produced.  Understand more in full that such a category of responsibility has to be entirely run off the road, right with its slow-rolling pace-bike, and fast, if things are to fall apart better.

HM Statement of Support

Historical Materialism statement of support for some historically situated material interventions happening these days in the UK.

Logic of the worse and worse

Goldsmiths, this long weekend.  Go.

The pen may or may not be mightier than the sword, but these books are shields, and from behind them fly things that stain

[informazione cui]

A rabble of rouse and snow

New maths:

Conservative leader of the local authority, Keith Mitchell, said via a tweet: "County Hall invaded by an ugly, badly-dressed student rabble. God help us if this is our future."

              [Rabble a pack, string, or swarm of animals or insects; a crowd or array of disorderly people, 1513; the low or        

                    disorderly part of the populace; a disorderly collection; a confused medley.

Examples: rabble of appetites, passions and opinions, 1768; of bees; of books, 1803; of butterflies; of ceremonies, 1562; of licentious deities, 1741; of discourse, 1656; of dishes; of flies, 1847; of friars, 1560; of gnats; of insects; of monks, 1560; of murderers, 1792; of opinions, 1768; of passions, 1861; of people, 1635; of mean and light persons, 1568; of pictures, 1581; of scholastic precepts, 1589; of priests, 1529; of readers, 1691; of reasons, 1641; of remedies, 1633; of schoolmen, 1671; of strangers, 1840; of uncommanded traditions, 1545; of womenhood, 1847; of words, 1388.]

+

[one of several holdovers of the "rabble of womenhood" from 1847]

+

 "Snow fell like ash."

=

God damn us if this is not our future

It is thought other 'revolutionary' propoganda was transmitted, including a cryptic message from a M. Danton, ''The world is chaos. It will give birth to a god called “Nothingness”', that has left police 'baffled'.

Tachyon-burst wave carriers and messages from beyond the half-dug revolutionary grave, as Ben explains what really happened yesterday.

Despite the widespread agreement of historians that there were no English Jacobins police were taking seriously the threat of 'unactuated revolutionary possibilities' as a new tactic by radicals, and were especially interested in interviewing 'Walter Benjamin', a German radical who may have had a role in transmitting the carrier wave from his desk in the Bibliotheque Nationale in the 1930s.

A metaphor proves its relative aptness

When you heat material up inside a closed vessel or try to enclose self-heating material inside an enclosure, its potential energy will turn kinetic and, upon the opening of that vessel, escape with velocity and force, and it need not stop to think about why.

• paul__lewis: Rampaging students running thru west end past bemused theatre goers. Cops in tow in a Cat + mouse #demo2010
  about 5 minutes ago
• 
  mrmatthewtaylor: A few hundred protesters broken free of kettle now running through central London trying to smash windows #demo2010
  about 16 minutes ago
• 
  paul__lewis: Windows of buses, taxis and shops around Trafalgar Sq being smashed to chants of "our streets".

Once more into the frayed

Massive education protests across the UK: university occupations flaring up, a crowd in London kettled once more (last time, the occasion for the murder of a man passing through and the humiliation of those stuck inside an illegitimate system of checkpoints, at last I heard they're setting up port-a-potties and handing water to the crowd to keep them comfortable in their pen and keep them from getting loose on the city), crowds in the streets everywhere, "violent scuffles," and no matter what the paper and commentators and a sizable portion of the population will say, this is no stunt, no "hijacking," no bratty posh activists, no fringe element.  This is what we call getting done.

(Oh, yes, and a  slight object lesson: leave something like this unattended and surrounded by a crowd, and you just may get a sense of what they think about it, about you, and about the class violence you support.)

To all my friends and comrades there: watch your back, run those streets, stay safe, and make it unsafe for all the stewards, advocates, wardens, and defenders of this most recent instance of what has gone on, what does go on, and what needs to be brought to a screeching, collapsing, hissing halt.

'My dead lady, where is the State which guaranteed those securities to you? It is dead.'

In the large banking hall a great deal of business was being done... All around me animated discussions were in progress concerning the stamping of currency, the issue of new notes, the purchase of foreign money and so on.  There were always some who knew exactly what was now the best thing to do!  I went to see the bank official who always advised me.  'Well,wasn't I right?' he said.  'If you had bought Swiss francs when I suggest, you would not now have lost three-fourths of your fortune.' 'Lost!' I exclaimed in horror.  'Why, don't you think the krone will recover again?' 'Recover!' he said with a laugh... 'Just test the promise made on this ao-kronene note and try to get, say, 20 silver kronen in exchange.' 'Yes, but mine are government securities: Surely there can't be anything safer than that?' 'My dead lady, where is the State which guaranteed those securities to you?  It is dead.'


...


the large numbers of unemployed, their passions fermented by the Communists, are seething with discontent... a mob has attempted to set the Parliament building on fire.  Mounted policemen were torn from their horses, which were slaughtered in the Ringstrasse and the warm bleeding flesh dragged away by the crowd... the rioters clamoured for bread and work... Side by side with unprecedented want among the bulk of the population, there is a striking display of luxury among those who are benefiting from the inflation.  New nightclubs are being opened.  These clubs have the effect of greatly intensifying the class hatred of the proletariate against the bourgeoisie.


excerpts from Anna Eisenmerger's diary, in Adam Fergusson's When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Hyper-Inflation, a book which, perversely, both Warren Buffet and I recommend, albeit for drastically different reasons

Oakland, we do mind dying

35 years later.  The location changes, but all can be said, beyond words, is Oakland, we do mind dying.  Got baited breath from a continent and an ocean away.  Rage, Oakland, deliberately against any deliberations, furiously against what will apologize only when it's scared of what it deserves.

The Good, The Bad, and The Riotous Canine

Time for a remake, indeed.  (Song is "The Ecstasy of Gold" from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, not from Once Upon a Time in the West, though.)



However, give Loukanikos a Bronson harmonica, and we're there...

The streets run white, the dogs run with them

Kanellos doesn't cry over spilled milk. He drinks it right up.

A winter, a thousand Decembers, year two

[Updates on the Greek situation, via Retort.]

To: Retort

From: AP

One year after the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos, Greece is in turmoil. The last days have seen many and recurrent demonstrations: Athens (apprx. 13,000 people), Thessaloniki (8000-10,000), Patras (2500), Ioannina (1500), Heraklion, Xanthi, Zakynthos, Paros, Volos, just to name a few. Police have responded with numerous arrests and heavy use of chemical gasses. The demonstrations have been battlegrounds. On many occasions, Delta forces deliberately ran their motorcycles into crowds hitting and injuring people, severely wounding a sixty-year old woman in one instance; images and videos can be seen in the links below. According to some estimates (occupiedlondon.org), from Saturday 5 December until Monday 7 December at least 823 people have been detained; 159 have officially been arrested and charged, including comrades from abroad. Comrades in Athens reached by telephone and indymedia report that those detained have been refused their right to see a lawyer. Detained foreigners were also unable to seek legal advice and are kept in the Immigration/Alien police department.

The university asylum has been repeatedly undermined in recent days, while the government is pressing for a ban on university asylum through its ministers and mainstream media. Apart from preventing students from entering university buildings and detaining them, special forces entered university premises on several occasions without reason or provocation, most notably in Thessaloniki, making several arrests.

The raid by special forces at the autonomous political/social space Resalto (http://anarxiko-resalto.blogspot.com/) on 5 December led to the arrest of 21 comrades under the Terrorism Act. There is the intention to charge them with the formation of a criminal organization and with making and distributing weapons. Exaggerated mainstream media reports paint the picture of a terrorist cell rather than the open social centre that it actually is. The raid at Resalto at Keratsini led to a spontaneous occupation of the Keratsini Town Hall, which was eventually broken by police forces: 41 people were arrested during the eviction and received misdemeanor charges. Both the raid at Resalto and the arrests have been condemned by Keratsini Municipal Council in a statement, asking for their release.

There has been a lot of talk in mainstream media about the injured rector of the Athens University. According to these reports, the rector was hit and suffered a mild concussion and a minor cardiac episode when demonstrators entered the University Administration Building. A comrade who witnessed the scene states that the rector appeared in a state of shock but was not hit by anyone. This much emphasized injury could still be used as a pretext by the government to allow police into the university.

There are occupations throughout the country including the Athens Polytechnic, Thessaloniki Theatre Department, Kozani Town Hall. More actions and solidarity demonstrations are scheduled in the next days.

A

December 8, 2009

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu06paWOF2I&feature=player_embedded

(see minutes 3′07” and 5′32”, where the “delta force” motorcycle cops run two demonstrators over on purpose.)

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=en&article_id=1202042

http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1202616

http://katalipsiesiea.blogspot.com/

Tomorrow happens today

In this winter of our discontent, let's crank up the heat a little...

derrière les décors des restaurants chics parisiens, ce sont aussi les sans-papiers qui tiennent les coulisses

Piece over at The Commune on the migrant cleaners in Paris, some of whom occupied the chic top-floor restaurant of the Pompidou Center. (Article from Libération here.) This is pretty damn powerful, even in its incipient stage, with real lessons to be learned for us here. Demands like, "We are not on strike just for ourselves, we want papers for all workers, including those working illegally" change the game. It's necessary - for us here, for all - to strive to find that precision of something concrete and comprehensible, yet the fulfillment of which would entirely rupture the ruling order of the day. (In this case, the regularization of sans-papiers would fundamentally alter the class and political composition of France.) The singular demand becomes universal...

The smoke rising to the sky

By shooting priests and firing churches, the Spanish workers and peasants were not merely seeking to destroy their enemies and the symbol of their power but to rid Spain once and for all of everything that, in their view, stood for obscurantims and oppression. A fervent Catholic, the Basque minister Manuel de Irujo, confirmed such an interpretation when he stated: "Those who burn churches are not thereby exhibiting anti-religious feelings; it is just a question of demonstration against the state, and, if I may say so, the smoke rising to the sky is merely a sort of appeal to God in the face of human injustice."

- from Broué and Témime's The Revolution and The Civil War in Spain