There are three basic freedoms: freedom to say NO; freedom to move away; and freedom to change what does not work. Individual freedom requires social support. To say NO, you need others to respect your choice and not force you to obey. To move freely, you need others to support your movement and not erect walls and roadblocks. To change what does not work, you need others who are affected… …
Το Κενό Δίκτυο διοργανώνει για 32η συνεχή χρονιά το Indie Free Festival. Φέτος φέρνουμε το φεστιβάλ στα πανεπιστήμια συμμετέχοντας στους αγώνες του φοιτητικού κινήματος ενάντια στην πανεπιστημιακή αστυνομία. Καλούμε ελευθεριακά σχήματα να παρευρεθούν στο φεστιβάλ και να παρέμβουν με δικά τους ενημερωτικά κείμενα και πανό. Παραβιαστικές, βίαιες, σεξιστικές, ρατσιστικές ή ομοφοβικές συμπεριφορές δεν θα γίνουν ανεκτές. Παρακαλούμε όλες και όλους να συμμετάσχουν εξίσου στην περιφρούρηση της εκδήλωσης. Κάθε προβληματικό περιστατικό… …
Written by Dr. Susan Rosenthal MD, author of the book “The Social Sources of Sickness: What I Learned From 50 Years in Medicine”. ____ There are three basic freedoms: freedom to say NO; freedom to move away; and freedom to change what does not work. Individual freedom requires social support. To say NO, you need others to respect your choice and not force you to obey. To move freely, you… …
The following is a transcript of a talk delivered in Seattle on July 20, 2020, lightly-edited by the author for readability. A video recording produced by Red May is online here. This text was first published by Ill Will Editions. For a Greek translation see at Dialytiko magazine I want to begin with a shout-out to what happened here last night, and to the working class of the city of… …
“If we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and present, we will leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages.” – Emma Goldman, 1910 Humans are an extraordinary result of evolution. It is a great power to be the most highly evolved creature in our conceivable knowledge and, in that, each one of us has a great responsibility. Problem solving is something… …
written by Abigail Susik As the omicron variant sweeps through American communities, many of our workplaces and institutions are grinding to a halt. With nurses, teachers and other essential workers getting ill or quarantining, we are facing disruptions at schools and in hospitals. Some employers are seeking stopgap measures, trying to hire rapidly to fill open jobs, begging for community volunteers to help keep things running and even lowering requirements… …
In this talk Professor Ferguson engages the history of black queer diasporic formations in the 1970s as part of radical attempts to reimagine and eroticize socialist imaginations. The talk situates these formations within a social and political context in which various modes of difference were being mobilized to illustrate and expand the symbolic flexibility and the “writerly” potentials of socialism – particularly by the politically imaginative work of the Black… …
JAMES C. SCOTT is known as something of a hybrid scholar: part-political scientist, part-anthropologist, part-agrarianist; a “crude Marxist,” a cautious anarchist. While a young doctoral student at Yale University in the late 1950s, he had been warned by a colleague that his planned two years of fieldwork in a remote Malaysian village would prove suicidal for his career. But that experience provided the basis for Weapons of the Weak: Everyday… …
In 1932, right before the Nazis came to power, Brecht penned a brooding screenplay for a film, Kuhle Wampe, subtitled in English as Who Owns the World? The film follows a young pair of siblings, Franz and Anni, as they ride bicycles around Depression-era Berlin in search of work. Returning to his family’s apartment one day with no prospects, Franz eats, takes off his watch, and jumps out of a… …
Most utopian communities are, like most start-ups, short-lived. What makes the difference between failure and success? At 16, Martin Winiecki dropped out of school and left his home in the German city of Dresden to live full-time at Tamera, a 300-acre intentional community in the rolling hills of southwestern Portugal. His mother and father – a doctor and a professor of mathematics – were reluctant to let him go. ‘It… …
14 July 2021 – and the Great French Revolution still continues uncomplete. The aristocrats of the middle class took advantage of the revolts of the poor peasants and workers to kill the King and take control of the world- to create a system of exploitation and inequality that still destroys our lives and our societies. The revolution continues! Void Network _____ On the 5th of May last the celebration of… …
[W]e find that we endogenously produce our incapacity to even try, grow sick and depressed and motionless under all the merciless and circulatory conditions of all the capitalist yes and just can’t, even if we thought we really wanted to. — Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate ¤“HOW DO YOU throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” This question, formulated… …
A recent article published in Theory, Culture & Society proposes a “neuroecosocial” approach to understanding mental health. Sociologist Nikolas Rose of King’s College London, previously interviewed by Mad in America, and co-authors Rasmus Birk and Nick Manning explore alternative ways to understand the link between personal “lived experience” and things like “social determinants of health.” They look to an integrative theory that could go beyond a reductionistic focus on brains, toward understanding people’s experience in… …
The Italian Futurists praised invention, modernity, speed, and disruption. Sound familiar? IN 1909, A poet named Filippo Marinetti was driving along in his brand new Fiat when he came across two cyclists in the road. Marinetti swerved to avoid hitting his fellow travelers, sending his car into a ditch and completely destroying the vehicle. Here’s how Marinetti described the encounter: The words were scarcely out of my mouth when I spun… …
In an essay penned shortly before his death, David Graeber argued that post-pandemic, we can’t slip back into a reality where the way our society is organized — to serve every whim of a small handful of rich people while debasing and degrading the vast majority of us — is seen as sensible or reasonable. Before he tragically died at the untimely age of fifty-one in September 2020, the well… …
Σε αυτό το σύντομο δοκίμιο που γράφτηκε λίγο πριν από τον ξαφνικό θάνατό του, το Σεπτέμβριο του 2020, ο 59χρονος καταξιωμένος ανθρωπολόγος και δραστήριος αναρχικός David Graeber υποστήριξε ότι μετά την πανδημία, δεν πρέπει να επιστρέψουμε ξανά σε μια πραγματικότητα στην οποία θεωρείται λογικό η κοινωνία μας να είναι οργανωμένη με έναν τρόπο που εξυπηρετεί την κάθε ιδιοτροπία μιας μικρής χούφτας πλούσιων, ενώ απαξιώνει και ταπεινώνει εμάς, τη συντριπτική πλειοψηφία… …
Two parallel stories are escalating in the Greek news these days. Both are of historical significance, but with very different volume of coverage. They are stories of two very different men, who share no resemblance but their first name. The men are Dimitris Lignadis and Dimitris Koufontinas, and their trajectories, already connected by means of sheer timing, could end up affecting each other, in the vilest manner. The former was… …
A rational political evaluation of the present conjuncture has become a genuine rarity. Between the catastrophist homilies emanating from the most unwittingly religious sectors of environmentalism (we are on the brink of the Last Judgement) and the phantasmagorias of a rudderless Left (we are the contemporaries of exemplary ‘struggles’, of unstoppable ‘mass movements’, and of the ‘collapse’ of a crisis-ridden liberal capitalism), any rational orientation slips away, and a sort… …
Every campaign season, political parties publish platforms detailing their promises plank by plank. These platforms are not binding—politicians rarely fulfill their promises, and it’s often worse when they do—but they do offer an outline of the vision each party claims to represent. Anarchists take a different approach: rather than offering a prefabricated blueprint, we propose to work things out together, dynamically, according to the principles of self-determination, horizontality, mutual aid,… …
Ill Will Editions wrote to Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi to ask him what lessons the 1970s Autonomia movement had for our current struggles. His answer? Very little. In this essay, Bifo proposes we rethink autonomy from within the new horizon: that of our own extinction. * * * * * 1. The Invisible Hand is strangling us “The Invisible Hand is one of (neo)classical economics’ most enduring mythologies. Its magical power… …
Modern civilization as we know it faces a number of major threats. Escalating economic inequality and an increasingly atomized society could lead to large-scale social breakdown. The depletion of natural resources is having a profound effect on the environment. As climate change continues to worsen, the ecosystems upon which human and non-human life depend are subjected to intolerable conditions. States across the globe have long since acquired the means by… …
VOID NETWORK (Athens-Greece) written by Gene Ray and George Sotiropoulos “Seek ye first for food and clothing, then the kingdom of God will fall to you also” G.W.F. Hegel, letter to Knebel, 30 August 1807 We watch in horror, as the global explosion of the Sars-CoV-2 virus continues. The spreading medical emergency starkly reveals the real wages of neoliberalism and its extractive austerities. Gutted national healthcare systems that put profit… …
VOID NETWORK (Athens Greece) – written by George Sotiropoulos & Gene Ray – 4 / 4 / 2020 ____________________ “I didn’t think the Apocalypse would have this much admin” – A teacher from Hastings Setting aside the more technical and delicate issues of agency and intentionality, a virus, like the by now notorious Coronavirus (aka SARS-CoV-2), has a certain mode of being, with its peculiar rhythms and refrains. To a… …
The state and capital always attack the freedom of the social base, steal its labor and resources. In recent years we have experienced one of the most violent attacks through the massive impoverishment of people who are already oppressed and exploited. On the other hand, there has been widespread social resistance and solidarity. People have created a variety of self-organized spaces such as housing infrastructure, social medical centers, community kitchens, open parks and public spaces… …
Why Catastrophic Climate Change is Probably Inevitable Now – Sometimes, when I write scary essays, I encourage you not to read them. This one’s different. It’s going to be brutal, scary, jarring, and alarming. But if you want my thoughts on the future, then read away. It strikes me that the planet’s fate is now probably sealed. We have just a decade in which to control climate change — or goodbye,… …
Πλήθος πολιτών από πολλές περιοχές της Ελλάδας διαμαρτυρήθηκε το απόγευμα της Πέμπτης στο κέντρο της Αθήνας κατά των εξορύξεων υδρογονανθράκων, πετρελαίου και φυσικού αερίου. «Όχι στις εξορύξεις ποτέ και πουθενά, ελεύθερα να μείνουν δάση και βουνά», «Ενάντια στης φύσης τη λεηλασία, αγώνας για τη γη και την ελευθερία», «Από το Μεξικό μέχρι την Ελλάδα στις πετρελαϊκές θα φέρουμε ζαλάδα», φώναξαν μεταξύ άλλων οι συγκεντρωμένοι. Οι διαδηλωτές ζήτησαν ανάκληση των αδειών έρευνας… …
Anarchist Social Struggles in Greece- open public dialogue with anarchist members from Void Network from Athens Friday 25/1/2019–Cowley Club | Brighton Greece became a world news report center during the revolt of December 2008 after the assassination of 15 years old boy Alexis Grigoropoulos, by the Greek police in Exarchia square, the stronghold of anarchists and leftists in Athens for the last 40 years. The global economic crises brought Greece again in global news… …
Almost two months after their emergence the yellow vests are still here! The movement started attracting international attention and more extensive coverage after the events that took place on Saturday 1/12. This was expectable, since no matter what our political judgment may turn out to be, we are faced with a nationwide revolt, which has not simply prompted thoughts for a state of emergency, but led to its informal implementation,… …
In this in-depth analysis, Peter Gelderloos explores the technological and geopolitical changes that movements for liberation will face over the next several decades. How will those who hold power today attempt to weather the economic and political crises ahead? Will artificial intelligence and bioeconomics save capitalism? What’s more dangerous—governments refusing to address climate change, or the technocratic solutions they will propose? Will we see the rise of fascism, or the… …
DUB UNITY / earth S.O.S. festival REGGAE DUB | ROOTS | DRUM N BASS SATURDAY 24/11/2018 Occupied Self Organised Theater EMBROS http://embros.gr Riga Palimidi 2 / Psiris area Athens Μέρος των εσόδων του φεστιβάλ θα διατεθεί στην «Πρωτοβουλία Κατοίκων της Σαμοθράκης Ενάντια Στην Κατασκευή Αιολικού Πάρκου» για την στήριξη του αγώνα τους ενάντια στο καταστροφικό σχέδιο εγκατάστασης 39 ανεμογεννητριών στα βουνά της και την μετατροπή 35.000 στρεμμάτων του νησιού σε… …
What’s all this about? The Hambach Forest, which one could call the last “primeval” forest in Central Europe, is being stubbed for Europe’s biggest climate pollutant – the Rhenish lignite mining area of RWE (Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier), in which RWE mines brown coal. Whole villages and the health of human beings are destroyed in this process. To prevent all of this we squatted the Hambacher Forest and take part in other… …
Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.” I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always… …
During the last 10 years, a lot of comrades in different countries have participated in the struggle around the question of migration, whether it be about the struggle of paperless people to get regularized, the struggle around housing in poor neighbourhoods, the struggle against raids on the street and on the public transport or the struggle against the detention centres. Often these have led to a repetition of certain impasses… …
From Occupy to Ferguson, whenever a new grassroots movement arises, pundits charge that it lacks clear demands. Why won’t protesters summarize their goals as a coherent program? Why aren’t there representatives who can negotiate with the authorities to advance a concrete agenda through institutional channels? Why can’t these movements express themselves in familiar language, with proper etiquette? Often, this is simply disingenuous rhetoric from those who prefer for movements to limit… …
A new study finds an alarming rise in a novel form of psychological distress. Call it “neoliberal perfectionism.” A new study by Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill in the journal Psychological Bulletin finds perfectionism is on the rise. The authors, both psychologists, conclude that “recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves.” When identifying the root cause of… …
For two thousand years, the peoples residing in Zomia — the mountainous region that stretches from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India — have fled the organized state societies in the valleys. Far from being ‘remnants’ left behind by civilizing societies, they are “barbarians by choice”, peoples who have deliberately put distance between themselves and lowland, state-centers. James Scott, director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale… …
ΚΥΚΛΟΣ ΔΙΑΛΕΞΕΩΝ μέρος 7ον: ΧΡΟΝΟΣ και ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΗ στο έργο του Αντόνιο Νέγκρι. Οι εποχές , οι πράξεις τα συμβάντα και οι προοπτικές Ομιλητές: Νίκος Πρατσίνης (Μεταφραστής) Παναγιώτης Καλαμαράς (Εκδότης) Γιώργος Σωτηρόπουλος (διδ.Πολιτικής Φιλοσοφίας- Κενό Δίκτυο) Παρουσίαση– συντονισμός Γιάννης Ραουζαίος– Κενό Δίκτυο (κριτικός κινηματογράφου, συγγραφέας) Πέμπτη 26/4/ 2018—ώρα 20.30 Ελεύθερος Κοινωνικός Χώρος ΝOSOTROS Θεμιστοκλέους 66 Εξάρχεια Η ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΗ όπως και ο Χρόνος, είναι δύο σημαίνοντα τα οποία αναζητούν στην πολύπλοκη και… …
By BEN VICKERS and HANS-ULRICH OBRIST Ain’t no party like a decentralised party In one sense, the rave scene has always been encrypted. In its heyday, when news of illicit parties spread by word of mouth, you just needed to know the right people. But new technologies are adding another layer to this. Throughout the last year, rumours of a crypto-enabled rave revival have been rife on the dark net and in closely… …
«Στον κόσμο που ζούμε […] τα τείχη δεν είναι στέρεα και σίγουρα δεν διαρκούν για πάντα· είναι ιδιαίτερα κινητικά και θυμίζουν στον ταξιδιώτη της ζωής χάρτινα διαχωριστικά ή καλύμματα, που σκοπός τους είναι να αλλάζουν συνεχώς θέση σύμφωνα με τις διαδοχικές αλλαγές των αναγκών και των γούστων» (Zygmunt Bauman) [1] Από τη δεκαετία του ’70 έως και σήμερα, κεντρική πολιτιστική επιταγή είναι η σχετικοποίηση των πάντων και μια τάση ριζικής… …
After the initial wave of terror and fury, my post-election tactic has mostly been dissociation. Out of safety, out of self-protection. I know that ignoring these truths won’t save me- that I need to engage, to stand in solidarity with the homies- with the scientists- with the immigrants and children of immigrants- with the Muslims- with the Mexicans- with the queers- with the artists.. but something about the way the… …
-1- Fascism in the 21st century has direct continuity to the insurgent movements that tore apart Europe, culminating in the Second World War. The methods, tactics, and strategies have changed, but the potential of the genocidal-racialist machine remains, and the ideologies are linked through history. -2- Fascism does not necessitate a specific type of statecraft (or a state at all), nor does it require a particular party apparatus, a fixed demographic… …
For all its small size and general impoverishment the libertarian socialist movement actually runs a surprisingly large amount of real estate around Britain, all on non-hierarchical lines, by and for the people of the cities and towns we’re in. Housing co-ops, bookshops, bike collectives, archives, distros, printers and the like are all part of the collective mix. Below, Freedom News briefly rounds up some goings-on at 15 radical social centres… …
What if it’s not us who are sick, asks Rod Tweedy, but a system at odds with who we are as social beings? Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness, and four million people take antidepressants every year.… …
What you are about to read is a real life horror story. It is a tale of tear gas, bloodshed, and fascists burning a black man alive; it is a tale of overwhelming imperial aggression against a people who pose no threat to their invaders, a calculated strike of pure barbarism that would give Attila the Hun pause and Andrew Jackson the willies. It is the story of Venezuela, America’s newest… …
I will start from the knot between two of the concepts that are proposed to the reflection of our panel: equality and emancipation. I will briefly recall the two main points that are implied for me in the idea of emancipation. The first one is that equality is not a goal to be reached. It is not a common level, an equivalent amount of riches or an identity of living… …
It’s not every day that one of the world’s largest publishing companies is awarded $15 million in damages for copyright infringement against a site set up by a Kazakh neuroscientist. That makes the almost total lack of wider coverage of Elsevier’s win in New York against Sci-Hub surprising. But it is only the latest development in a saga that is of great interest for the deep flaws it exposes in both scientific publishing and… …
** [text: Eng./ Ελλ.] Η ομιλία θα είναι στα αγγλικά με ομιλητές από την Ισπανία και την Κένυα και μετάφραση στα ελληνικά. ΤΕΤΑΡΤΗ 21/6 ώρα 21.00 Ελεύθερο Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενο Θέατρο ΕΜΠΡΟΣ (Ρ.Παλαμήδη 2 – Ψυρρή) Τhe talk will be in English with activists from Spain and Kenya at Occupied Self Organized Free Theater EMBROS (Riga Palamidi 2- Psiris Area Athens Το Grassroots Economics Foundation (Ίδρυμα Οικονομικών Από Τα Κάτω) είναι μία… …
Anarchists are against nationalism; everyone knows that. Instead of solidarity across borders and anti-hierarchical antagonism within them, nationalism engenders loyalty to the state with its armed forces and public symbols, encourages the oppressed to identify with their compatriot oppressors, scapegoats minorities, and pits workers of different countries against one another in economic competition or open warfare. Opposition to nationalism is an almost trivial starting point for anarchist politics, reflected in… …
Text: Ελληνικά / English. It may seem paradoxical, but Greece ’s anarchists are organizing like never before. Seven years of austerity policies and a more recent refugee crisis have left the government with fewer and fewer resources, offering citizens less and less. Many have lost faith. Some who never had faith in the first place are taking matters into their own hands, to the chagrin of the authorities. Tasos Sagris,… …
Climate change, a crippled welfare state, the financial crisis, skyrocketing income inequality, political disappointments reaching back decades, terrible superhero movies grossing billions of dollars, Facebook and Tinder—these are just a few of the sins attributed to neoliberalism. But what exactly is neoliberalism? An economic doctrine? The revenge of capitalism’s ruling class? Or something even more insidious? Booked is a monthly series of Q&As with authors by Dissent contributing editor Timothy Shenk. For this… …