ISSUE ONE - January 1987
EDITORIAL
In a reality that is opening up possibilities of revolutionary intervention or rather that is strengthening the thrust towards the desire for profound transformation, we need to give ourselves more adequate instruments that can be better understood by eventual users. A paper is always something limited, necessarily circulating within a predetermined circuit. We know this perfectly well. But we will not let ourselves be influenced by those who come out with a sentence of absolute condemnation.
So long as it is adequate to these claims and does not turn out to contradict itself or to be too unilateral. That is precisely what we thought we could see in the last series of Anarchismo. A contradiction caused by the fact that we wanted to kill two birds with one stone. One of the two ended up not biting the bait. The documentation and news articles ended up becoming (given the not exactly monthly regularity of Anarchismo) often too late, while analytical examination suffered from seeing itself constrained within the angust dimensions of a few pages.
So one ended up becoming unilateral. In fact, the informative model (or counter-informative) ended up deciding in the field of analysis as well, conditioning the latter to the affairs of the moment and preventing the task of analysis that always remains that of “seeing in order to foresee”. You can’t foresee much - so you cannot make your “surprise” actions of the future adequate if your analysis remains tied to affairs of the moment.
It is necessary to have the logical space of taking a distance in order to see better. In view of resolving, or rather of lightening, this task, we have given life to ProvocAzione which will come out monthly. More frequent therefore, and more news items. Also analyses. More circumscribed and condensed. Documents and accounts of struggle. Chronicle and considerations. Individuation of events and personages. The enemy and its counterpart. The class war and small actions.
A readable paper. At least, so we illude ourselves (and hope). But always readable by having recourse to one’s brain, not to scleroticised residuals of what the mechanisms of consensus have left us with. Our paper will be simple, not simplistic. No specialised language, but not for that will it be “reduced”. No concessions to fashion either, substantial or formal. No cohabitation with those who are killing our capacity to understand, starting from the use of language (written or spoken). Against manipulators and swindlers of all kinds. We have always been against those who illude themselves that they can solve any problem with just one more icon.
So much for the form.
For the content, the war continues against mystifiers of all kinds, a number of whom are more dangerous than danger in the same way in which every “hanger on” is more realist than the king. The enemy and surroundings. Prospectives and methods of domination and the management of the misery of consensus. Warders and prisoners in the new perspective where reciprocal acceptation of their roles as differences is being weakened, and the few revolutionaries still on the barricades see more and more spotlights on themselves. The projects of power. The places of power.
And then rebellion. Wherever it comes about, in whatever way it manifests itself. the revolt to breathe, not to die here and now, asphysixiated by repression or by simple piousness. Torturers or Red Cross nurses, both are our enemies.
Now rebellion is beginning to delineate itself for what it is: a permanent state of mind of whoever does not accept charity or cowardice. The pride of rebellion is no longer that of the slave who rebelled because he was constrained to choose between physical death or revolt. Now, at a time when the project of power is based on the prospect of consensus and not pure and simple repression, rebellion is a question of pride and dignity, and it will become so more and more.
Now is the time for a serene but firm distinction between revolt and dissent. The insecure and tepid will continue to say no while power prepares to use this no as a further element of government. For how long we have to continue to confuse the respectable pacifist with the decided antagonist of a death system which has disguised itself with progressive possibilism?
Is it possible to make this distinction? Or have the roles become so gangrenous as to be inseparable? Have we all become spineless animals? Looking around one sees nothing but beggars. Even comrades that we would never have imagined would have bowed to hypothetical negotiations with power are now talking about the end of the revolution, possible government concessions, a practice of platonic dissent thatdoes not suit the rigidity and firmness we considered them to possess. Disillusion? Perhaps. But also clarity in ideas.
The paper wants to unmask this reality, also going into the depths of the shabbiness of excuses and camouflage. The pathetic individual that hides behind formal dissent makes us vomit, but it is necessary from time to time to point to him if we do not want to be overwhelmed by a tide of chatter in all and for all, complying to the will of those who are setting up the dominion of tomorrow.
We must harden our hearts if we want to reply effectively as revolutionaries to the perspectives of the “new” rebellion. The time for tenderness has disappeared for good. Now goodness and tolerance towards whoever hesitates or openly collaborates, means betrayal. Yesterday we were considered excessive, but we were only logical. Today we need to be really cruel if we do not also want to become confused with the manifest heap of the utilisable.
We are decidedly for the attack on the class enemy and against the structures of power. We consider that today the roads of simple dissent and platonic respectable pacifism are leading into the palace of horrors. Anyone can fool themselves as they wish or manifest their clear conscience to refuse attack, either due to fear or opportunism. May this appear clearly.
May the charlatan intriguers and crows of ill omen put an end to their laments. If they have converted to collaboration, may they say so openly and stop trying to throw smoke in our eyes, talking of a presumed impossibility to do anything else.
We want to do differently. And along with us millions of men and women who want to struggle in the name of their own dignity.
Main articles
Editorial
Nuclear, never again
State Servants
Proposal for a National Demo
Police Shoot at Montalto
CONCEDE TO REPRESS (AMB)
Communique-Pentiti Mai
The Battle of Montalto di Castro
Infamity Explained to the People
THE RAILWORKERS’STRUGGLE (PLP)
Pasqua the Terrible
Arrests - France - Geminiani
The Mayor Loses Ground OV
Reply to Orestino Domenichelli’s Declaration
Chirac’s Face
Propulsive Utopia
Spain, China, Italy
Let’s Burn the School
“Action Directe”
The School Between Jumps and Projects
Functions of the Educational system
Military Nuclear - Two Unexploded Bombs
Vengeance -Alfa Romeo Showroom, Explosive Device
Hunting the Hunters
D.C. Robbed - Clashes at New Year
Homeless Defends Himself with Lions - A Doubt About Carlo Rubbia
Deja Vu (Not too much)
Attack on Carlo Rubbia
Attack on Methane Gas Duct
Foreigners and the CGIL
Chronicle
Olbia - Sardinia - data centre in Olbia. Town hall burned and documents and calculators destroyed. Mayor’s room and others destroyed. On the walls “Olbia is sad, we need work and dignity” “Perhaps the cat is sad”.
State servants: many ‘repentents’ and dissociated left prison - how defend them? - police escorts - and proletarian justice?
Arrests: comrades in France - including anarchist Roberto Gemigniani
Chirac: demos in France - students truncheoned - against Devaquet law
Burn the school: students try to set fire to school - a good citizen rings the police
Action Direct: 15 Dec. A.D. strike ex-minister Peyrefitte - against student demos - and “abolition of Devaquet law” bomb in car
Vengeance: 72 year old kills ex-PM who sentences him to 20 years in ‘55. Escapes in hired van then takes poison when police capture him.
Milan showroom: “Workers on the dole” claim attack on Alfa Romeo showroom in Milan
Hunt the hunters: Barbagia: 60 attacks in a month - hooded men take their arms and game and wallets. Over 100 arms taken
C.D. robbed: half a billion in cash stolen from safe in D.C. headquarters in Rome
New Year clashes: G.B. London, Liverpool, Leeds, special riot police - generalised illbeing - demos take up the right to joy, to play - new roads of liberatory violence. They must not be blocked.
Evicted man defends himself: Padova - englishman threatened with eviction puts three lions in garden.
Deja vu: “La Scala - demo like old times - slogans, eggs, spitting
Attack on methane duct : Christmas night - Palazzo Canavese, Ivrea - 2 detonators and 100 metres of fuse - duct main line explodes
Antimilitarist attacks: over 100 NATO tanks sabotaged over last few days at Sanem base in Luxemburg
Half ton explosive destroys barracks in Belfast. 6 employed in barracks woounded. IRA
Chile, December: national information central attacked - one killed, others wounded.
In a reality that is opening up possibilities of revolutionary intervention or rather that is strengthening the thrust towards the desire for profound transformation, we need to give ourselves more adequate instruments that can be better understood by eventual users. A paper is always something limited, necessarily circulating within a predetermined circuit. We know this perfectly well. But we will not let ourselves be influenced by those who come out with a sentence of absolute condemnation.
So long as it is adequate to these claims and does not turn out to contradict itself or to be too unilateral. That is precisely what we thought we could see in the last series of Anarchismo. A contradiction caused by the fact that we wanted to kill two birds with one stone. One of the two ended up not biting the bait. The documentation and news articles ended up becoming (given the not exactly monthly regularity of Anarchismo) often too late, while analytical examination suffered from seeing itself constrained within the angust dimensions of a few pages.
So one ended up becoming unilateral. In fact, the informative model (or counter-informative) ended up deciding in the field of analysis as well, conditioning the latter to the affairs of the moment and preventing the task of analysis that always remains that of “seeing in order to foresee”. You can’t foresee much - so you cannot make your “surprise” actions of the future adequate if your analysis remains tied to affairs of the moment.
It is necessary to have the logical space of taking a distance in order to see better. In view of resolving, or rather of lightening, this task, we have given life to ProvocAzione which will come out monthly. More frequent therefore, and more news items. Also analyses. More circumscribed and condensed. Documents and accounts of struggle. Chronicle and considerations. Individuation of events and personages. The enemy and its counterpart. The class war and small actions.
A readable paper. At least, so we illude ourselves (and hope). But always readable by having recourse to one’s brain, not to scleroticised residuals of what the mechanisms of consensus have left us with. Our paper will be simple, not simplistic. No specialised language, but not for that will it be “reduced”. No concessions to fashion either, substantial or formal. No cohabitation with those who are killing our capacity to understand, starting from the use of language (written or spoken). Against manipulators and swindlers of all kinds. We have always been against those who illude themselves that they can solve any problem with just one more icon.
So much for the form.
For the content, the war continues against mystifiers of all kinds, a number of whom are more dangerous than danger in the same way in which every “hanger on” is more realist than the king. The enemy and surroundings. Prospectives and methods of domination and the management of the misery of consensus. Warders and prisoners in the new perspective where reciprocal acceptation of their roles as differences is being weakened, and the few revolutionaries still on the barricades see more and more spotlights on themselves. The projects of power. The places of power.
And then rebellion. Wherever it comes about, in whatever way it manifests itself. the revolt to breathe, not to die here and now, asphysixiated by repression or by simple piousness. Torturers or Red Cross nurses, both are our enemies.
Now rebellion is beginning to delineate itself for what it is: a permanent state of mind of whoever does not accept charity or cowardice. The pride of rebellion is no longer that of the slave who rebelled because he was constrained to choose between physical death or revolt. Now, at a time when the project of power is based on the prospect of consensus and not pure and simple repression, rebellion is a question of pride and dignity, and it will become so more and more.
Now is the time for a serene but firm distinction between revolt and dissent. The insecure and tepid will continue to say no while power prepares to use this no as a further element of government. For how long we have to continue to confuse the respectable pacifist with the decided antagonist of a death system which has disguised itself with progressive possibilism?
Is it possible to make this distinction? Or have the roles become so gangrenous as to be inseparable? Have we all become spineless animals? Looking around one sees nothing but beggars. Even comrades that we would never have imagined would have bowed to hypothetical negotiations with power are now talking about the end of the revolution, possible government concessions, a practice of platonic dissent thatdoes not suit the rigidity and firmness we considered them to possess. Disillusion? Perhaps. But also clarity in ideas.
The paper wants to unmask this reality, also going into the depths of the shabbiness of excuses and camouflage. The pathetic individual that hides behind formal dissent makes us vomit, but it is necessary from time to time to point to him if we do not want to be overwhelmed by a tide of chatter in all and for all, complying to the will of those who are setting up the dominion of tomorrow.
We must harden our hearts if we want to reply effectively as revolutionaries to the perspectives of the “new” rebellion. The time for tenderness has disappeared for good. Now goodness and tolerance towards whoever hesitates or openly collaborates, means betrayal. Yesterday we were considered excessive, but we were only logical. Today we need to be really cruel if we do not also want to become confused with the manifest heap of the utilisable.
We are decidedly for the attack on the class enemy and against the structures of power. We consider that today the roads of simple dissent and platonic respectable pacifism are leading into the palace of horrors. Anyone can fool themselves as they wish or manifest their clear conscience to refuse attack, either due to fear or opportunism. May this appear clearly.
May the charlatan intriguers and crows of ill omen put an end to their laments. If they have converted to collaboration, may they say so openly and stop trying to throw smoke in our eyes, talking of a presumed impossibility to do anything else.
We want to do differently. And along with us millions of men and women who want to struggle in the name of their own dignity.
Main articles
Editorial
Nuclear, never again
State Servants
Proposal for a National Demo
Police Shoot at Montalto
CONCEDE TO REPRESS (AMB)
Communique-Pentiti Mai
The Battle of Montalto di Castro
Infamity Explained to the People
THE RAILWORKERS’STRUGGLE (PLP)
Pasqua the Terrible
Arrests - France - Geminiani
The Mayor Loses Ground OV
Reply to Orestino Domenichelli’s Declaration
Chirac’s Face
Propulsive Utopia
Spain, China, Italy
Let’s Burn the School
“Action Directe”
The School Between Jumps and Projects
Functions of the Educational system
Military Nuclear - Two Unexploded Bombs
Vengeance -Alfa Romeo Showroom, Explosive Device
Hunting the Hunters
D.C. Robbed - Clashes at New Year
Homeless Defends Himself with Lions - A Doubt About Carlo Rubbia
Deja Vu (Not too much)
Attack on Carlo Rubbia
Attack on Methane Gas Duct
Foreigners and the CGIL
Chronicle
Olbia - Sardinia - data centre in Olbia. Town hall burned and documents and calculators destroyed. Mayor’s room and others destroyed. On the walls “Olbia is sad, we need work and dignity” “Perhaps the cat is sad”.
State servants: many ‘repentents’ and dissociated left prison - how defend them? - police escorts - and proletarian justice?
Arrests: comrades in France - including anarchist Roberto Gemigniani
Chirac: demos in France - students truncheoned - against Devaquet law
Burn the school: students try to set fire to school - a good citizen rings the police
Action Direct: 15 Dec. A.D. strike ex-minister Peyrefitte - against student demos - and “abolition of Devaquet law” bomb in car
Vengeance: 72 year old kills ex-PM who sentences him to 20 years in ‘55. Escapes in hired van then takes poison when police capture him.
Milan showroom: “Workers on the dole” claim attack on Alfa Romeo showroom in Milan
Hunt the hunters: Barbagia: 60 attacks in a month - hooded men take their arms and game and wallets. Over 100 arms taken
C.D. robbed: half a billion in cash stolen from safe in D.C. headquarters in Rome
New Year clashes: G.B. London, Liverpool, Leeds, special riot police - generalised illbeing - demos take up the right to joy, to play - new roads of liberatory violence. They must not be blocked.
Evicted man defends himself: Padova - englishman threatened with eviction puts three lions in garden.
Deja vu: “La Scala - demo like old times - slogans, eggs, spitting
Attack on methane duct : Christmas night - Palazzo Canavese, Ivrea - 2 detonators and 100 metres of fuse - duct main line explodes
Antimilitarist attacks: over 100 NATO tanks sabotaged over last few days at Sanem base in Luxemburg
Half ton explosive destroys barracks in Belfast. 6 employed in barracks woounded. IRA
Chile, December: national information central attacked - one killed, others wounded.
THE STATE IS TERRORIST BY NATURE
[PROVOCaZIONE n. 26, p. 15]
The acquittal of the accused neofascists for the Bologna station massacre is the confirmation, if there ever was any need for it, that the State is the real terrorist.
The apparently inexplicable massacres that have taken place, beginning from piazza Fontana*, and which have deeply marked the development of social struggles in our country, bear all the unmistakable signs of power system.
Past and present history has demonstrated without a shadow of doubt that the State apparatus is behind the fascist puppets and all the sections of the secret services, ready to give orders, to provide means and coverups.
We are not particularly interested in finding out the names of those materially responsible for the massa-cres; nor do we intend to waste our time with the ritual antifascism that buds from every massacre. That only helps power, which in this way manages to deviate revolutionary antagonism from against itself, by deviating it on to the fascists, in this case, used to draw it into a trap.
It is important instead to be conscious of the fact that the massacres, like terrorism on a large scale, i.e. war, or large scale sackings and so on, serve to give States a stable solution to their crises, to their police order disturbed by the social struggles in course.
Moreover, thanks to indiscriminate terror, States manage not only to hide their true nature, attributing it to their most intransigent enemies, that is to say those who want to destroy them, but also present themselves to public opinion in the role of the victim: "Terrorism, by striking institutions and their men, want to force us to come into the same field, that of violence, to then demonstrate to us our presumed authoritarian and antidemocratic nature. But, as you can see, we are not capitulating in the face of this blackmail, we are combating terrorism keeping ourselves within the ambit of democratic legality". In this way States manage to render credible even their democratic mask.
There remains the fact that terrorism is a phenomenon that is natural to the State as such, therefore not attributable as it is claimed only to declaredly authoritarian, dictatorial States. The only difference consists in the fact that in dictatorial States terrorism is normal administration, it is the rule; while in the "democratic" States it is an episodic phenomenon.
All the same, looking into it, this difference turns out to be fictitious, being based on a reductive interpretation of the phenomenon, in the sense that it does not take into account the other aspect of terrorism: the less noticeable one as such in the ambit of sensitive experience and if we like which is conceptually more difficult to define, but not for this less ferocious and inhuman in its effects.
Because this other aspect of State terrorism, which we shall now speak of, manages to make itself "invi-sible", not have itself identified, so one is led to think that in the formally democratic States they do not constitute the rule. Because in its manifestation it does it not present the traits that immediately make one think of terrorism as it is commonly known.
In other words, because in people's imagination terrorism is only that which causes death and loss of blood.
It happens thus that this identification of terrorism in death and blood, i.e. in its outcomes that are available to the "naked eye", leads one not to qualify as terrorist the outcomes through which the other aspect of terror carried out by States, i.e. oppression and exploitation in general, daily phenomena, certainly not episodic.
Oppression and exploitation therefore: this is the true face of terrorism. And it is infinitely more cruel and devastating than any massacre, because it is unceasing, it acts constantly in time and space, sadistically scientific, causing individuals unspeakable physical and psychological suffering, because it obliges them to live in the terror of a precarious, injust, existence, dominated by the non values of the State and capital subtracted from individual and collective control. Terrorism therefore essentially consists in the exercising of dominion.
That is why those who make a distinction between a dictatorial State and a democratic one seem incongruous. These distinctions are extremely dangerous when made by anarchists, because they induce one to seeing violence a useful and legitimate means only if used against openly authoritarian regimes.
But we have seen that in democratic regimes people are also governed by terror. Consequently, it is really difficult for us to understand, for what obscure reason one should use two scales: yes to violence against the dictators, no to violence against the terrorism of the democrats.
The terrorism remains such no matter what form-State expresses it. And violence is not a choice that we have made, it is the terrorist State that obliges us to respond with revolutionary violence, an eminently defensive violence, even if that does not mean that we must stay with our hands folded waiting for aggression.
We can and we must attack too, in our own time and in our own way, in the perspective of the violent destruction of the State.
By definition revolutionaries are against any reformist logic, against any negotiation with the bosses, against any compromise with the institutions. They do not disdain the arm of critique but also want to go beyond that, struggling against all those who work in order to guarantee oppression and exploitation, under whatever form and whatever flag.
The acquittal of the accused neofascists for the Bologna station massacre is the confirmation, if there ever was any need for it, that the State is the real terrorist.
The apparently inexplicable massacres that have taken place, beginning from piazza Fontana*, and which have deeply marked the development of social struggles in our country, bear all the unmistakable signs of power system.
Past and present history has demonstrated without a shadow of doubt that the State apparatus is behind the fascist puppets and all the sections of the secret services, ready to give orders, to provide means and coverups.
We are not particularly interested in finding out the names of those materially responsible for the massa-cres; nor do we intend to waste our time with the ritual antifascism that buds from every massacre. That only helps power, which in this way manages to deviate revolutionary antagonism from against itself, by deviating it on to the fascists, in this case, used to draw it into a trap.
It is important instead to be conscious of the fact that the massacres, like terrorism on a large scale, i.e. war, or large scale sackings and so on, serve to give States a stable solution to their crises, to their police order disturbed by the social struggles in course.
Moreover, thanks to indiscriminate terror, States manage not only to hide their true nature, attributing it to their most intransigent enemies, that is to say those who want to destroy them, but also present themselves to public opinion in the role of the victim: "Terrorism, by striking institutions and their men, want to force us to come into the same field, that of violence, to then demonstrate to us our presumed authoritarian and antidemocratic nature. But, as you can see, we are not capitulating in the face of this blackmail, we are combating terrorism keeping ourselves within the ambit of democratic legality". In this way States manage to render credible even their democratic mask.
There remains the fact that terrorism is a phenomenon that is natural to the State as such, therefore not attributable as it is claimed only to declaredly authoritarian, dictatorial States. The only difference consists in the fact that in dictatorial States terrorism is normal administration, it is the rule; while in the "democratic" States it is an episodic phenomenon.
All the same, looking into it, this difference turns out to be fictitious, being based on a reductive interpretation of the phenomenon, in the sense that it does not take into account the other aspect of terrorism: the less noticeable one as such in the ambit of sensitive experience and if we like which is conceptually more difficult to define, but not for this less ferocious and inhuman in its effects.
Because this other aspect of State terrorism, which we shall now speak of, manages to make itself "invi-sible", not have itself identified, so one is led to think that in the formally democratic States they do not constitute the rule. Because in its manifestation it does it not present the traits that immediately make one think of terrorism as it is commonly known.
In other words, because in people's imagination terrorism is only that which causes death and loss of blood.
It happens thus that this identification of terrorism in death and blood, i.e. in its outcomes that are available to the "naked eye", leads one not to qualify as terrorist the outcomes through which the other aspect of terror carried out by States, i.e. oppression and exploitation in general, daily phenomena, certainly not episodic.
Oppression and exploitation therefore: this is the true face of terrorism. And it is infinitely more cruel and devastating than any massacre, because it is unceasing, it acts constantly in time and space, sadistically scientific, causing individuals unspeakable physical and psychological suffering, because it obliges them to live in the terror of a precarious, injust, existence, dominated by the non values of the State and capital subtracted from individual and collective control. Terrorism therefore essentially consists in the exercising of dominion.
That is why those who make a distinction between a dictatorial State and a democratic one seem incongruous. These distinctions are extremely dangerous when made by anarchists, because they induce one to seeing violence a useful and legitimate means only if used against openly authoritarian regimes.
But we have seen that in democratic regimes people are also governed by terror. Consequently, it is really difficult for us to understand, for what obscure reason one should use two scales: yes to violence against the dictators, no to violence against the terrorism of the democrats.
The terrorism remains such no matter what form-State expresses it. And violence is not a choice that we have made, it is the terrorist State that obliges us to respond with revolutionary violence, an eminently defensive violence, even if that does not mean that we must stay with our hands folded waiting for aggression.
We can and we must attack too, in our own time and in our own way, in the perspective of the violent destruction of the State.
By definition revolutionaries are against any reformist logic, against any negotiation with the bosses, against any compromise with the institutions. They do not disdain the arm of critique but also want to go beyond that, struggling against all those who work in order to guarantee oppression and exploitation, under whatever form and whatever flag.
Antonio Gizzo
ANTINUCLEAR DYNAMITE
Facts show the antinuclear saboteurs to be in the right. At the same time they show up the pointlessness of calling for referendums or petitions.
Within the framework of an uninterrupted ecological and antinuclear struggle carried out against the ENEL, on September l 10th 1990, two giant pylons linking the sorting plant of Albertville near Lyons to the same kind of plant in Rondissone were severed. The action was carried out in the region called Baldissero Canavese, 40 kilometres from Turin.
This is also the line most used by the ENEL for transporting energy through the Small San Bernard pass, electric power produced by the French nuclear station at CreysMalville, better known as the Superphenix. At the time of the action the station had been closed for two months for maintenance work.
On this occasion the media went to town, giving much space to the news of what had happened, supported by technical details that were quite impressive.
We know just about everything about the way this antinuclear sabotage was carried out, then, from the time, about 6.20am, to the fact that three charges of explosive were used a few seconds from each other, that they completely uprooted giant pylons 223 and 224 about 300 hundred metres from each other, pulling down about a kilometre of electric cables.
The first to fall to the ground was the one near the plain. After having rendered it invalid, ie sawn the two downhill legs, the other two upstream were carefully mined with 200 grammes of gelatine explosive of the kind used in quarries. In this way the poor thing did not remain in that uncomfortable position for long, in most unstable equilibrium. The explosion, a liberation for both pylons, reduced them both to the same condition thirty seconds later. The latter, fallen into the valley below, fell on to a secondary 15,000 volt line, putting it out of use. The latter was used for supplying electricity to the surrounding villages.
The damage caused to the ENEL by this antinuclear sabotage was considerable: over a million pounds. For those interested in statistics, this is the fourth sabotage that has been carried out against that parti-cular electric line which was built in spite of the many protests by people of the area and which began functio-ning in 1987.
The first attack took place on September 18 1988 at Vallo Caluso; the second, on September 10 1989 at Settimo Torinese; the third on March 3 1990 at Are di Caluso. The first two attempts failed as the pylon, although sawn copiously and ingenious precautions were taken, had resisted. In the attack at Settimo explosives were used for the first time. In that carried out in the Are di Caluso area, a flat area, the first maxi-pylon, 45 metres high, weighing 6 tons, similar to the one at Baldissero, was successfully slain. One should remember that in '88 and '89 the electroducts that start out from the nuclear station at Caorso were also attacked. The same technique was used.
For those who like to know the best tested and most likely to succeed technique used to slay the pylons: two of the four supports are sawn at the base and the other two are mined. The explosion cuts them in half and the weight of the cables completes the work making it smash to the ground.
For once modern technology seems to have worked against itself. It has produced a kind of electric saw fed by an electrogenic group that can be silenced. The most commonly used explosive, according to the experts, is common gelatine with a nitroglycerine base contained in cartridges, better known as sticks of dynamite, with a slow combustion detonator and fuse. According to one expert, to cut through an ENEL 45 metre support a 250-300 gramme charge is sufficient.. Probably to be sure, still according to the same expert, the antinuclear saboteurs who made the two giant pylons go crashing to the ground, seem to have used double that amount. A crude technique in his opinion. But quite an effective one, given the results that who put them into practice, obtained.
The importance that this antinuclear sabotage has is due to the fact that this plant is a key link for transporting energy from abroad to Italy. About 40 per cent of the electric power acquired by the ENEL yearly in Europe. Its transporting capacity is three thousand megawatts a year.
This has undoubtedly been a heavy antinuclear sabotage, in that it struck one of the nerve cells of the interconnection network, putting the whole national electricity supply in crisis for a number of hours . The transport system of electric energy used by the ENEL comes from the construction of a network, which makes it possible to bypass the breakdown and link up to other suppliers who in this case might be Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Austria.
Once again, after this event, a number of newspapers with little imagination, linked the sabotage to the review Anarchismo.
We remember that this constant reference to the review concerns the fact that in 1988 it was "guilty" of having published a recipe of anarchist culinary skill concerning sabotage. In practice it was instructions for felling pylons, signed by an anarchist group operating the sector.
We should not forget, finally, that on the wave of the recent rise in petrol prices due to the armed conflict in the Persian Gulf, the use of nuclear energy in Italy has been discussed by various parties. In November the government itself, through its prime minister Andreotti, made it known that it intended to reconsider the plan laid out on energy policies, leading to believe that it was no longer tabu to say yes to nuclear energy. On the same track, the present industry minister Adolfo Battaglia communicated that 150 billion lire had been taken from the budget to be destined to the ENEA exclusively for research, which is already, being spent on safe (sic) nuclear power. There are also industrial agreements with the Ansaldo for the restructuring of 16 soviet power stations with gas turbines, this in the framework of an electricity supply from the USSR .
Finally, the counsel of ministers foresees an amendment of the law on saving that is being discussed in the senate for another 1300 or 1400 billion, especially with a tax on anhydride carbon. At the same time an energy and ecology tax. Often concerning the ENEL who then puts it on the consumers.
But perhaps all this is a good thing as it tears away the veil of hypocrasy that had been created by the referendum.
Nuclear power has never been stopped in the research laboratories. By financing the ENEA in this way, nothing is done but make public this research that has been carried out unofficially in the meantime. Just as not much time will pass before the construction of a new nuclear power station with second generation reactors, naturally passed off as "ultra-safe".
It is obvious, after what has been said, that the struggle carried out by the antinuclear saboteurs against the ENEL is the only valid methodological choice against those against the institutionalist one of the pacifists. Contrary to what the newspapers and those working for the conservation of this system of domination, what we have been talking about is turning out to be, without any doubt, the only practical method for putting the death production out of operation.
The use of sabotage as direct revolutionary action is the dividing line that separates coherent antinuclear ecologists from the whole parainstitutional mire that aims through petitions or public referendums to render inoffensive any real opposition against the projects of dominion put into act on the territory of State and capital.
Within the framework of an uninterrupted ecological and antinuclear struggle carried out against the ENEL, on September l 10th 1990, two giant pylons linking the sorting plant of Albertville near Lyons to the same kind of plant in Rondissone were severed. The action was carried out in the region called Baldissero Canavese, 40 kilometres from Turin.
This is also the line most used by the ENEL for transporting energy through the Small San Bernard pass, electric power produced by the French nuclear station at CreysMalville, better known as the Superphenix. At the time of the action the station had been closed for two months for maintenance work.
On this occasion the media went to town, giving much space to the news of what had happened, supported by technical details that were quite impressive.
We know just about everything about the way this antinuclear sabotage was carried out, then, from the time, about 6.20am, to the fact that three charges of explosive were used a few seconds from each other, that they completely uprooted giant pylons 223 and 224 about 300 hundred metres from each other, pulling down about a kilometre of electric cables.
The first to fall to the ground was the one near the plain. After having rendered it invalid, ie sawn the two downhill legs, the other two upstream were carefully mined with 200 grammes of gelatine explosive of the kind used in quarries. In this way the poor thing did not remain in that uncomfortable position for long, in most unstable equilibrium. The explosion, a liberation for both pylons, reduced them both to the same condition thirty seconds later. The latter, fallen into the valley below, fell on to a secondary 15,000 volt line, putting it out of use. The latter was used for supplying electricity to the surrounding villages.
The damage caused to the ENEL by this antinuclear sabotage was considerable: over a million pounds. For those interested in statistics, this is the fourth sabotage that has been carried out against that parti-cular electric line which was built in spite of the many protests by people of the area and which began functio-ning in 1987.
The first attack took place on September 18 1988 at Vallo Caluso; the second, on September 10 1989 at Settimo Torinese; the third on March 3 1990 at Are di Caluso. The first two attempts failed as the pylon, although sawn copiously and ingenious precautions were taken, had resisted. In the attack at Settimo explosives were used for the first time. In that carried out in the Are di Caluso area, a flat area, the first maxi-pylon, 45 metres high, weighing 6 tons, similar to the one at Baldissero, was successfully slain. One should remember that in '88 and '89 the electroducts that start out from the nuclear station at Caorso were also attacked. The same technique was used.
For those who like to know the best tested and most likely to succeed technique used to slay the pylons: two of the four supports are sawn at the base and the other two are mined. The explosion cuts them in half and the weight of the cables completes the work making it smash to the ground.
For once modern technology seems to have worked against itself. It has produced a kind of electric saw fed by an electrogenic group that can be silenced. The most commonly used explosive, according to the experts, is common gelatine with a nitroglycerine base contained in cartridges, better known as sticks of dynamite, with a slow combustion detonator and fuse. According to one expert, to cut through an ENEL 45 metre support a 250-300 gramme charge is sufficient.. Probably to be sure, still according to the same expert, the antinuclear saboteurs who made the two giant pylons go crashing to the ground, seem to have used double that amount. A crude technique in his opinion. But quite an effective one, given the results that who put them into practice, obtained.
The importance that this antinuclear sabotage has is due to the fact that this plant is a key link for transporting energy from abroad to Italy. About 40 per cent of the electric power acquired by the ENEL yearly in Europe. Its transporting capacity is three thousand megawatts a year.
This has undoubtedly been a heavy antinuclear sabotage, in that it struck one of the nerve cells of the interconnection network, putting the whole national electricity supply in crisis for a number of hours . The transport system of electric energy used by the ENEL comes from the construction of a network, which makes it possible to bypass the breakdown and link up to other suppliers who in this case might be Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Austria.
Once again, after this event, a number of newspapers with little imagination, linked the sabotage to the review Anarchismo.
We remember that this constant reference to the review concerns the fact that in 1988 it was "guilty" of having published a recipe of anarchist culinary skill concerning sabotage. In practice it was instructions for felling pylons, signed by an anarchist group operating the sector.
We should not forget, finally, that on the wave of the recent rise in petrol prices due to the armed conflict in the Persian Gulf, the use of nuclear energy in Italy has been discussed by various parties. In November the government itself, through its prime minister Andreotti, made it known that it intended to reconsider the plan laid out on energy policies, leading to believe that it was no longer tabu to say yes to nuclear energy. On the same track, the present industry minister Adolfo Battaglia communicated that 150 billion lire had been taken from the budget to be destined to the ENEA exclusively for research, which is already, being spent on safe (sic) nuclear power. There are also industrial agreements with the Ansaldo for the restructuring of 16 soviet power stations with gas turbines, this in the framework of an electricity supply from the USSR .
Finally, the counsel of ministers foresees an amendment of the law on saving that is being discussed in the senate for another 1300 or 1400 billion, especially with a tax on anhydride carbon. At the same time an energy and ecology tax. Often concerning the ENEL who then puts it on the consumers.
But perhaps all this is a good thing as it tears away the veil of hypocrasy that had been created by the referendum.
Nuclear power has never been stopped in the research laboratories. By financing the ENEA in this way, nothing is done but make public this research that has been carried out unofficially in the meantime. Just as not much time will pass before the construction of a new nuclear power station with second generation reactors, naturally passed off as "ultra-safe".
It is obvious, after what has been said, that the struggle carried out by the antinuclear saboteurs against the ENEL is the only valid methodological choice against those against the institutionalist one of the pacifists. Contrary to what the newspapers and those working for the conservation of this system of domination, what we have been talking about is turning out to be, without any doubt, the only practical method for putting the death production out of operation.
The use of sabotage as direct revolutionary action is the dividing line that separates coherent antinuclear ecologists from the whole parainstitutional mire that aims through petitions or public referendums to render inoffensive any real opposition against the projects of dominion put into act on the territory of State and capital.
ANARCHIST BOMB AGAINST VATICAN RADIO
Christmas 1990 was characterised by various attacks against the catholic church in Italy. From Vatican Radio to nativity scenes, to the churches, the objectives for anyone who desires to express their militant anti-clericalism is certainly not lacking.
December 25 in Piazza Pia, Rome, not far from the Vatican where people gather like sheep to pay ho-mage to the nativity scenes that the church constructs every year, anarchist comrades placed a bomb in the building that hosts the Vatican radio station, Radio Vaticana.
The explosion caused some structural damage to the building and windows were shattered. At the same time it damaged the offices of the USSO (United States Services Organisation) the American armed forces circle, and the St Cecilia Academy auditorium. The action was claimed in a communique sent both to the Ansa press agency and to the anar-chist paper ProvocAzione. It reads as follows: We too have celebrated 'Holy Christmas' in the way we like most: by attacking Radio Vaticana, that pusher of ideological drugs, with dynamite.
A(encircled)
However, this was not the only action of dissent and struggle against the religious mystification that Christmas represents.
In Udine, persons unknown set fire to the nativity scene in piazza St Giacomo, after having cut the fence sur-rounding it. In this way the "great work" was destroyed. It had been built five years earlier by an architect doing military service in the town, and was donated to the population by the army. An example of goodwill by an institution whose main task is that of perpetrating legalized massacres and repression.
Still the same night, in Padova, fire started by who knows who reduced life-sized papier mache statues that were part of a nativity scene, to cinders.
And finally, another act of sabotage to Christmas festivities was carried out in Cortina. This time the usual "unknown" used the telephone as a means of attack. They announced the presence of an inexi-stent bomb in a church where 800 PEOPLE WERE WAITING TO HEAR THE PRIEST’S SERMON. The service was interrupted and the church evacuated.
THE MODERN CHURCH AND TV
Religious propaganda in the computer technology society is being put out through the methodical use of advanced mass communication technology. There is now a need to relaunch an anticlerical struggle that is capable of short-circuiting this massive work of indoctrination.
Religious propaganda is making giant leaps forward in modern capitalist society by using increasingly advanced technology.
In recent years the ecclesiastical hierarchy as well as individual parishes, priests and other expressions of the christian religion in its many forms, have thrown themselves on to the radio waves. In Italy alone there are over 500 religious radio stations, and 50 TV studios. If one also considers that the catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana has the highest publication rate of all magazines in Italy, and that all the churches from those in tiny villages to many of the city ones, bombard the surrounding population with amplified records of bell ringing and mass, one can see the effort the church is making to gain a place within the present day dimension of manipulation and control using information technology.
Information is only the most recent field in which the catholic (but not only) church is continuing to de-velop its ramifications in society. But we should not forget that it has al-ways played a fundamental role in the economy (Vatican Bank, etc), politics, social control (there are more churches than carabinieri barracks in Italy), and in the so-called social services (centres for drug addicts, Aids victims, social centres, etc). All this gives an idea of the influence of religion and the Church within the mo-dern capitalist process, and this should push us to review the problem of religion within our radical struggle for the demolition of the state of present things.
The very practical, material nature of the churches' ramifications in social reality should make us think about our approach as anarchist revolutionaries concerning the problem of the struggle against clericalism and religion.
Atheism and anti-clericalism must not simply concentrate on a ritual opposition to the formal aspects of religion. Opposition to religious rites like christening, communion or marriage ceremonies, or to religious teaching in schools, leads to forms of antagonism that are just as formal and dependent on faith ( albeit an anti-religious one) such as de-baptising, civil marriage ceremonies, demands for `free' religious studies, non-payment of taxes destined to the church, etc.
A radical and materialist opposition to religion cannot but be anarchist insurrectionalist, moving in the direction of attacking and throwing into disorder the bases where the church has grown roots, i.e. in its concrete expressions in the social field, and sabotage certainly becomes one of the most effective instruments in this struggle without boundaries or intermediaries. A struggle within the most total war against capital and the State.
p.r.
December 25 in Piazza Pia, Rome, not far from the Vatican where people gather like sheep to pay ho-mage to the nativity scenes that the church constructs every year, anarchist comrades placed a bomb in the building that hosts the Vatican radio station, Radio Vaticana.
The explosion caused some structural damage to the building and windows were shattered. At the same time it damaged the offices of the USSO (United States Services Organisation) the American armed forces circle, and the St Cecilia Academy auditorium. The action was claimed in a communique sent both to the Ansa press agency and to the anar-chist paper ProvocAzione. It reads as follows: We too have celebrated 'Holy Christmas' in the way we like most: by attacking Radio Vaticana, that pusher of ideological drugs, with dynamite.
A(encircled)
However, this was not the only action of dissent and struggle against the religious mystification that Christmas represents.
In Udine, persons unknown set fire to the nativity scene in piazza St Giacomo, after having cut the fence sur-rounding it. In this way the "great work" was destroyed. It had been built five years earlier by an architect doing military service in the town, and was donated to the population by the army. An example of goodwill by an institution whose main task is that of perpetrating legalized massacres and repression.
Still the same night, in Padova, fire started by who knows who reduced life-sized papier mache statues that were part of a nativity scene, to cinders.
And finally, another act of sabotage to Christmas festivities was carried out in Cortina. This time the usual "unknown" used the telephone as a means of attack. They announced the presence of an inexi-stent bomb in a church where 800 PEOPLE WERE WAITING TO HEAR THE PRIEST’S SERMON. The service was interrupted and the church evacuated.
THE MODERN CHURCH AND TV
Religious propaganda in the computer technology society is being put out through the methodical use of advanced mass communication technology. There is now a need to relaunch an anticlerical struggle that is capable of short-circuiting this massive work of indoctrination.
Religious propaganda is making giant leaps forward in modern capitalist society by using increasingly advanced technology.
In recent years the ecclesiastical hierarchy as well as individual parishes, priests and other expressions of the christian religion in its many forms, have thrown themselves on to the radio waves. In Italy alone there are over 500 religious radio stations, and 50 TV studios. If one also considers that the catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana has the highest publication rate of all magazines in Italy, and that all the churches from those in tiny villages to many of the city ones, bombard the surrounding population with amplified records of bell ringing and mass, one can see the effort the church is making to gain a place within the present day dimension of manipulation and control using information technology.
Information is only the most recent field in which the catholic (but not only) church is continuing to de-velop its ramifications in society. But we should not forget that it has al-ways played a fundamental role in the economy (Vatican Bank, etc), politics, social control (there are more churches than carabinieri barracks in Italy), and in the so-called social services (centres for drug addicts, Aids victims, social centres, etc). All this gives an idea of the influence of religion and the Church within the mo-dern capitalist process, and this should push us to review the problem of religion within our radical struggle for the demolition of the state of present things.
The very practical, material nature of the churches' ramifications in social reality should make us think about our approach as anarchist revolutionaries concerning the problem of the struggle against clericalism and religion.
Atheism and anti-clericalism must not simply concentrate on a ritual opposition to the formal aspects of religion. Opposition to religious rites like christening, communion or marriage ceremonies, or to religious teaching in schools, leads to forms of antagonism that are just as formal and dependent on faith ( albeit an anti-religious one) such as de-baptising, civil marriage ceremonies, demands for `free' religious studies, non-payment of taxes destined to the church, etc.
A radical and materialist opposition to religion cannot but be anarchist insurrectionalist, moving in the direction of attacking and throwing into disorder the bases where the church has grown roots, i.e. in its concrete expressions in the social field, and sabotage certainly becomes one of the most effective instruments in this struggle without boundaries or intermediaries. A struggle within the most total war against capital and the State.
p.r.
THIRD WORLD
PROVO N. 12 PP 1-5
THE ECONOMIC and social situation in the countries of the Third World has in no way changed from the beginning of the eighties, in fact it has regressed frighteningly, accentuating the inequality between rich and poor countries more and more. Underdeveloped countries exist where the income, consumerism and investment have gone back to the level of the seventies, and others, such as the poorest African countries, have even sunk back to the level of the sixties.
The situation is tragic from every point of view for the peoples living in these territories. This was brought up in a UN report (November 1987) that was drawn up concerning the world food situation, and in the latest annual report of the World Bank in Washington, where they speak of the "debts" contracted by these countries and their economic development.
From an examination of what is contained in these two reports - even though for obvious reasons they are very "contained" so as not to alarm world public opinion - one can get some idea of the dramatic level of the social and economic conditions that Third World populations are living in.
At the same time the progressive and humanitarian democrats of the opulent Western World are boasting on various fronts of the aid being given to these populations to fight famine. They promote vast campaigns of public opinion and solidarity which are in fact more useful to the States, parties, unions, Church and capital itself as they create social consensus by exploiting the disasters that have been brought about by the structure of dominion itself.
The extermination of entire populations continues in the Third World. This is not only due to the extension of the problem of hunger and the spreading of infectious diseases new and old - some, such as AIDS, deadly gifts from capitalism - but to the very aid sent by the Western countries, in reality a scientific way to assassinate them more quickly.
In fact any "help" given is no more than a way to increase these countries' dependency on the more powerful ones. The richer countries resupply the Third World with goods of primary necessity that are not sufficient for a correct alimentation given the different climatic conditions that these populations live in and that the food supplied contains a high fat content. The same goes for agriculture: what is promoted is based on indiscriminate deforestation which is leading to the irreversible process of desertising the planet, increasing the already torrid temperature and limiting the natural production of oxygen. An ecological disaster of immense proportions is already taking place in some areas of the African sub-continent.
It should be added that the plan for "progress" and development in these countries is nothing more than a model for the systematic destruction of every previous internal rural economy. This is aimed at installing an industrial process based exclusively on the production of death, carried out by multinationals such as Union Carbide, responsible for the death and maiming of thousands of people, and one of the greatest ecological disasters produced by capitalist industrialisation.
Moreover, while they are amassing huge profits due to the very low cost of labour and the indiscriminate looting of the raw materials which these countries contain, the opulent and advanced western capitalists are getting even richer, and are accelerating the process of impoverishment of these countries. These crimes are being carried out by capital daily, with the complicity of the various States, to the injury of these peoples all over the world.
This picture perfectly fits the logic of dominion that is at the basis of the modern cynical democratic conviction concerning progressive, humanitarian and "civilising" man.
To come back to the figures, the UN reports that in the African subcontinent 25 per cent of the population is undernourished: this means one hundred million people. Infant mortality from 0 to 5 years is 4 million children every year. In southern Asia, excluding China, 15 per cent of the population turns out to be undernourished, 160-170 million inhabitants out of a population of 800 million altogether.
This UN report, drawn up to tame world public opinion, cynically considers undernourished those people who manage to assimilate the minimum number of calories required in order not to die of starvation and to be able to move slightly. The statistical tables used in this report bring to mind those used in the nazi concentration camps. In fact, such a report covers up the true conditions that exist in the poorest countries, as the number of people who die of hunger is far higher. If one started off by considering a greater number of calories to be necessary, enough to allow the development of any activity that requires even a very modest dispensation of energy, the figures would soar vertiginously. Above all, all the areas of the world are not examined: for example, Latin America is not even mentioned as well as some areas of Africa and Asia.
The World Bank report begins with a reference to the debt contracted by the Third World, increased by 6.25 per cent, which corresponds to the hyperbolic figure of 1.190 billion dollars, which could become 1.245 before the end of this year. All this is in spite of the fact that in 1987, for the fourth consecutive year, the countries that are poorest and most in debt have sent increasingly high sums of money to the creditor countries in payment of interest: more than they have received in new loans.
Here again the kind of "help" given by the most industrialised countries to their poorer "brothers" emerges.
All the same, what worries the World Bank is not so much the abnormal in-crease in Third World debt, so much as its level of internal development which, as well as not having shown any improvement, has regressed in some cases. If this is the situation in which the poor nations are living in a period where the world economy is going full sail ahead - they ask - what will happen in a period of recession'? It is particularly on this point that the problem lies.
The World Bank director for international economy, Jean Baneth, points out that it would take only a simple moment of stasis in the process of economic development of various countries to bring about a fall into a state of poverty for wide sectors of the population. He adds “it is also potentially disruptive at the social and political level. It threatens the survival of many new and fragile democracies and, more widely, of regimes which favour cooperation rather than conflict”
In simple terms what this means is that it would take only a period of crisis in the world economy to provoke a chain reaction within the countries involved, that could open up tensions and vast areas of social and political conflict. The extension of this would mean great difficulty for the institutions in controlling the situation: the result could be the overturning of the present capitalist order.
Their main preoccupation is therefore that of exorcising the spectre of "social disorder", of a radicalisation of the class conflict within the countries that, once involved in such a situation, could make their world and their economic order based on the fragile equilibrium established by State terror, crumble down around them.
It is also in this sense that the proposal of the entry of the USSR into Western capital's international organisations should be seen. In fact an improvement of relations between the two superpowers, not only in political but also economic, financial and commercial terms, would undoubtedly create conditions of major instability for the whole world economy, as well as that within the individual States. The support that the US government is giving to their entry into the International Monetary Fund is based exclusively on reciprocal economic and political interest, not the ideological questions that are talked about so much to deceive the unprepared.
Capitalism and Statism are two realities that are not instituted at planetary level. They differ only in their exterior forms and in the way they are applied in the various countries, but their substance is identical. In the West as in the East, for the proletarians of the whole world, these concepts will always mean exploitation and oppression. The imperialist wars of conquest between the two superpowers have been over for some time. They have already colonised the whole planet. Their present interest is to come to an agreement and cooperate at all levels to guarantee themselves a painless and ordered management of their dominion within their respective areas of influence having recourse to their smaller collaborators who, in exchange for services rendered, receive welcome compensation in political terms.
But just as there is a precise social hierarchy within States, there is also another between the State "extras", which one knows, are always in the pay of the powerful, and are treated as such by their bosses. Basically the wellbeing that is shown off by the economically and technologically more advanced countries has come about and continues to come about through the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat internally, and through the impoverishment of the populations in the underdeveloped countries in the Course of development.
Further confirmation comes from the same World Bank report when it states that under the weight of the debt and the interest paid in the 80s, the middle range pro capita income in Latin America was reduced by a seventh and at least by a quarter in the poorest African countries. This is causing serious economic and social differences within them and an increase in tension between those countries that find themselves in the same situation.
In their report the experts are therefore trying to find palliatives to resolve some of these problems, without obviously facing them at the roots. The situation of the economic crisis in Mexico is illuminating for example. Inflation there has reached the level of 140 per cent. Well, among the proposals of the World Bank there is the recent one to cover a part of the Mexican debt with special US treasury bonds, and there is also that formulated in 1985 by the secretary of the American treasury Baker, who fore-sees new loans but excludes any moratorium on loans given in the past. It was the World Bank itself who recognised the inconsistency of both these proposals, in that, if these solutions had been applied they would only have had the effect of slowing up the degenerative process, reducing the foreseeable negative effects which would consequently bring heavy repercussions on the world economy.
Beyond the figures and statistics, from our point of view, the revolutionary one, it will take quite different and radical measures to solve these problems that seem enormous and insurmountable.
Even between the lines of the reports of all these "experts" we are able to read what their main worry is, i.e. to find a plan which will put a brake on all the thrusts of revolt that naturally animate the exploited in every part of the world. It is always the latter who pay the cost of the world social and economic "crisis" that exists in their own countries. That is why the "solutions" that revolutionaries all over the world must search for can only be those aimed at accelerating a process of social subversion for the destruction of capitalism and all States on a planetary scale. But this leads us to another discourse!
Pierleone Porcu
THE ECONOMIC and social situation in the countries of the Third World has in no way changed from the beginning of the eighties, in fact it has regressed frighteningly, accentuating the inequality between rich and poor countries more and more. Underdeveloped countries exist where the income, consumerism and investment have gone back to the level of the seventies, and others, such as the poorest African countries, have even sunk back to the level of the sixties.
The situation is tragic from every point of view for the peoples living in these territories. This was brought up in a UN report (November 1987) that was drawn up concerning the world food situation, and in the latest annual report of the World Bank in Washington, where they speak of the "debts" contracted by these countries and their economic development.
From an examination of what is contained in these two reports - even though for obvious reasons they are very "contained" so as not to alarm world public opinion - one can get some idea of the dramatic level of the social and economic conditions that Third World populations are living in.
At the same time the progressive and humanitarian democrats of the opulent Western World are boasting on various fronts of the aid being given to these populations to fight famine. They promote vast campaigns of public opinion and solidarity which are in fact more useful to the States, parties, unions, Church and capital itself as they create social consensus by exploiting the disasters that have been brought about by the structure of dominion itself.
The extermination of entire populations continues in the Third World. This is not only due to the extension of the problem of hunger and the spreading of infectious diseases new and old - some, such as AIDS, deadly gifts from capitalism - but to the very aid sent by the Western countries, in reality a scientific way to assassinate them more quickly.
In fact any "help" given is no more than a way to increase these countries' dependency on the more powerful ones. The richer countries resupply the Third World with goods of primary necessity that are not sufficient for a correct alimentation given the different climatic conditions that these populations live in and that the food supplied contains a high fat content. The same goes for agriculture: what is promoted is based on indiscriminate deforestation which is leading to the irreversible process of desertising the planet, increasing the already torrid temperature and limiting the natural production of oxygen. An ecological disaster of immense proportions is already taking place in some areas of the African sub-continent.
It should be added that the plan for "progress" and development in these countries is nothing more than a model for the systematic destruction of every previous internal rural economy. This is aimed at installing an industrial process based exclusively on the production of death, carried out by multinationals such as Union Carbide, responsible for the death and maiming of thousands of people, and one of the greatest ecological disasters produced by capitalist industrialisation.
Moreover, while they are amassing huge profits due to the very low cost of labour and the indiscriminate looting of the raw materials which these countries contain, the opulent and advanced western capitalists are getting even richer, and are accelerating the process of impoverishment of these countries. These crimes are being carried out by capital daily, with the complicity of the various States, to the injury of these peoples all over the world.
This picture perfectly fits the logic of dominion that is at the basis of the modern cynical democratic conviction concerning progressive, humanitarian and "civilising" man.
To come back to the figures, the UN reports that in the African subcontinent 25 per cent of the population is undernourished: this means one hundred million people. Infant mortality from 0 to 5 years is 4 million children every year. In southern Asia, excluding China, 15 per cent of the population turns out to be undernourished, 160-170 million inhabitants out of a population of 800 million altogether.
This UN report, drawn up to tame world public opinion, cynically considers undernourished those people who manage to assimilate the minimum number of calories required in order not to die of starvation and to be able to move slightly. The statistical tables used in this report bring to mind those used in the nazi concentration camps. In fact, such a report covers up the true conditions that exist in the poorest countries, as the number of people who die of hunger is far higher. If one started off by considering a greater number of calories to be necessary, enough to allow the development of any activity that requires even a very modest dispensation of energy, the figures would soar vertiginously. Above all, all the areas of the world are not examined: for example, Latin America is not even mentioned as well as some areas of Africa and Asia.
The World Bank report begins with a reference to the debt contracted by the Third World, increased by 6.25 per cent, which corresponds to the hyperbolic figure of 1.190 billion dollars, which could become 1.245 before the end of this year. All this is in spite of the fact that in 1987, for the fourth consecutive year, the countries that are poorest and most in debt have sent increasingly high sums of money to the creditor countries in payment of interest: more than they have received in new loans.
Here again the kind of "help" given by the most industrialised countries to their poorer "brothers" emerges.
All the same, what worries the World Bank is not so much the abnormal in-crease in Third World debt, so much as its level of internal development which, as well as not having shown any improvement, has regressed in some cases. If this is the situation in which the poor nations are living in a period where the world economy is going full sail ahead - they ask - what will happen in a period of recession'? It is particularly on this point that the problem lies.
The World Bank director for international economy, Jean Baneth, points out that it would take only a simple moment of stasis in the process of economic development of various countries to bring about a fall into a state of poverty for wide sectors of the population. He adds “it is also potentially disruptive at the social and political level. It threatens the survival of many new and fragile democracies and, more widely, of regimes which favour cooperation rather than conflict”
In simple terms what this means is that it would take only a period of crisis in the world economy to provoke a chain reaction within the countries involved, that could open up tensions and vast areas of social and political conflict. The extension of this would mean great difficulty for the institutions in controlling the situation: the result could be the overturning of the present capitalist order.
Their main preoccupation is therefore that of exorcising the spectre of "social disorder", of a radicalisation of the class conflict within the countries that, once involved in such a situation, could make their world and their economic order based on the fragile equilibrium established by State terror, crumble down around them.
It is also in this sense that the proposal of the entry of the USSR into Western capital's international organisations should be seen. In fact an improvement of relations between the two superpowers, not only in political but also economic, financial and commercial terms, would undoubtedly create conditions of major instability for the whole world economy, as well as that within the individual States. The support that the US government is giving to their entry into the International Monetary Fund is based exclusively on reciprocal economic and political interest, not the ideological questions that are talked about so much to deceive the unprepared.
Capitalism and Statism are two realities that are not instituted at planetary level. They differ only in their exterior forms and in the way they are applied in the various countries, but their substance is identical. In the West as in the East, for the proletarians of the whole world, these concepts will always mean exploitation and oppression. The imperialist wars of conquest between the two superpowers have been over for some time. They have already colonised the whole planet. Their present interest is to come to an agreement and cooperate at all levels to guarantee themselves a painless and ordered management of their dominion within their respective areas of influence having recourse to their smaller collaborators who, in exchange for services rendered, receive welcome compensation in political terms.
But just as there is a precise social hierarchy within States, there is also another between the State "extras", which one knows, are always in the pay of the powerful, and are treated as such by their bosses. Basically the wellbeing that is shown off by the economically and technologically more advanced countries has come about and continues to come about through the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat internally, and through the impoverishment of the populations in the underdeveloped countries in the Course of development.
Further confirmation comes from the same World Bank report when it states that under the weight of the debt and the interest paid in the 80s, the middle range pro capita income in Latin America was reduced by a seventh and at least by a quarter in the poorest African countries. This is causing serious economic and social differences within them and an increase in tension between those countries that find themselves in the same situation.
In their report the experts are therefore trying to find palliatives to resolve some of these problems, without obviously facing them at the roots. The situation of the economic crisis in Mexico is illuminating for example. Inflation there has reached the level of 140 per cent. Well, among the proposals of the World Bank there is the recent one to cover a part of the Mexican debt with special US treasury bonds, and there is also that formulated in 1985 by the secretary of the American treasury Baker, who fore-sees new loans but excludes any moratorium on loans given in the past. It was the World Bank itself who recognised the inconsistency of both these proposals, in that, if these solutions had been applied they would only have had the effect of slowing up the degenerative process, reducing the foreseeable negative effects which would consequently bring heavy repercussions on the world economy.
Beyond the figures and statistics, from our point of view, the revolutionary one, it will take quite different and radical measures to solve these problems that seem enormous and insurmountable.
Even between the lines of the reports of all these "experts" we are able to read what their main worry is, i.e. to find a plan which will put a brake on all the thrusts of revolt that naturally animate the exploited in every part of the world. It is always the latter who pay the cost of the world social and economic "crisis" that exists in their own countries. That is why the "solutions" that revolutionaries all over the world must search for can only be those aimed at accelerating a process of social subversion for the destruction of capitalism and all States on a planetary scale. But this leads us to another discourse!
Pierleone Porcu
WHAT BETTER SOLIDARITY
What better solidarity can a comrade who finds himself in prison receive than that of learning first from the media, then from the papers of the movement, that the struggle against injustice and exploitation is attacking in first person.
For a comrade who finds himself in prison, all actions such as this, or of another kind but which however support an irreducibility against power, are the best attestations of active solidarity, and also against all those who with paternalism and gradualism theorise and put into practice an illusory counterposition that maintains oppression intact.
Who knows why I, on the contrary to the OACN/FAI, never had any doubt that the authors of these actions were comrades? It is in individual autonomy, united to a continuous critical development both of oneself and the group one belongs to, that one finds the means for avoiding taking positions or making congressual proclamations...
It is due to their instinct of conservation that structures of synthesis have recourse to these systems. Free people do not need structures of synthesis that transform organisation into an institution whereby the latter, initially conceived to increase freedom, becomes an instrument that limits it.
The informal organisation does not have, nor does it want, strategies drawn up at a table, but
organises itself in affinity groups which meet and disband according to the needs of the moment, because they recognise their common action on concrete political presuppositions, basing their methods on an insurrectionalist logic...
Gradualism, anarcho-syndicalism, social ecology a la Murray Bookchin are nothing more than invitations to desist, propagandists of mental schemas that accustom the proletarian masses to accept the logic of slow change or quantitive illusions of the kind "if there are only a hundred of us we cannot do anything, if there are 56 million, then that's all right".
...As good christians for Libertarian socialism, those of the OACN/FAI are trying to reconcile interests so far removed from each other that only those whose are brains are polluted with the myth of the working class can affirm such a thing. But these impavid ones do more, taken as they are by the fear of falling into the hands of the repression, these villains want to confuse comrades comparing attacks of a fascistic kind aimed at terrorising and killing people indiscriminantly with the endorsement of the secret services, with sabotage which speaks for itself as revolutionary and antagonistic on the basis of the objective struck. The choice of objective shows that they are comrades. What would be the point otherwise of making counterinformation about nuclear power, militarism, or about revolutionary solidarity, against everything that the media invent, or publishing lists of Italian companies that have relations with South Africa? Isn't it an implicit invitation to comrades to act, also possibly in the line of attack? What other aim could this list have?
There is no separation between theory and practice. Only in the logic of inconclusive chatter poses these problems to dig the grave of those who de not conform, failing to show active solidarity with those comrades who at an informal level and autonomously decided, in their own specific situation, to attack, believing that it is right to strike now right away without waiting....
It is more incisive to organise in one's own situation. Self-organised forms of struggle based on permanent conflictuality, against delegating and above all for the direct action of all the exploited. As anarchists are also exploited in first person they must be the first to do what they advise others to do....
Any action that concretely upsets power or that hinders the project of social control, any action that demonstrates that in Palestine, as in all the other places in the world, anyone who rebels against power is in the right. If we begin to draw distinctions, then it is the usual tune, that of an organisation of synthesis, which for its way of relating, that is of approaching the reality of the struggle in order to synthesize it within the organisation, becomes an obstacle on the path to social revolution.
Pippo Stasi
For a comrade who finds himself in prison, all actions such as this, or of another kind but which however support an irreducibility against power, are the best attestations of active solidarity, and also against all those who with paternalism and gradualism theorise and put into practice an illusory counterposition that maintains oppression intact.
Who knows why I, on the contrary to the OACN/FAI, never had any doubt that the authors of these actions were comrades? It is in individual autonomy, united to a continuous critical development both of oneself and the group one belongs to, that one finds the means for avoiding taking positions or making congressual proclamations...
It is due to their instinct of conservation that structures of synthesis have recourse to these systems. Free people do not need structures of synthesis that transform organisation into an institution whereby the latter, initially conceived to increase freedom, becomes an instrument that limits it.
The informal organisation does not have, nor does it want, strategies drawn up at a table, but
organises itself in affinity groups which meet and disband according to the needs of the moment, because they recognise their common action on concrete political presuppositions, basing their methods on an insurrectionalist logic...
Gradualism, anarcho-syndicalism, social ecology a la Murray Bookchin are nothing more than invitations to desist, propagandists of mental schemas that accustom the proletarian masses to accept the logic of slow change or quantitive illusions of the kind "if there are only a hundred of us we cannot do anything, if there are 56 million, then that's all right".
...As good christians for Libertarian socialism, those of the OACN/FAI are trying to reconcile interests so far removed from each other that only those whose are brains are polluted with the myth of the working class can affirm such a thing. But these impavid ones do more, taken as they are by the fear of falling into the hands of the repression, these villains want to confuse comrades comparing attacks of a fascistic kind aimed at terrorising and killing people indiscriminantly with the endorsement of the secret services, with sabotage which speaks for itself as revolutionary and antagonistic on the basis of the objective struck. The choice of objective shows that they are comrades. What would be the point otherwise of making counterinformation about nuclear power, militarism, or about revolutionary solidarity, against everything that the media invent, or publishing lists of Italian companies that have relations with South Africa? Isn't it an implicit invitation to comrades to act, also possibly in the line of attack? What other aim could this list have?
There is no separation between theory and practice. Only in the logic of inconclusive chatter poses these problems to dig the grave of those who de not conform, failing to show active solidarity with those comrades who at an informal level and autonomously decided, in their own specific situation, to attack, believing that it is right to strike now right away without waiting....
It is more incisive to organise in one's own situation. Self-organised forms of struggle based on permanent conflictuality, against delegating and above all for the direct action of all the exploited. As anarchists are also exploited in first person they must be the first to do what they advise others to do....
Any action that concretely upsets power or that hinders the project of social control, any action that demonstrates that in Palestine, as in all the other places in the world, anyone who rebels against power is in the right. If we begin to draw distinctions, then it is the usual tune, that of an organisation of synthesis, which for its way of relating, that is of approaching the reality of the struggle in order to synthesize it within the organisation, becomes an obstacle on the path to social revolution.
Pippo Stasi
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