Therefore, it is not enough to see the case of Ukraine only through the actions of a Russian authoritarian leader, nor through the prism of a violation of international law. This is for three reasons:

First, because we cannot ignore the presence of NATO, which after the fall of the USSR and in the context of the emerging “neoliberal consensus” became both a military vehicle of consolidation and a police institution against centrifugal forces. Thus, on the basis of the role of the US in this new phase of “globalisation”, NATO became essentially a mechanism for consolidating the US-led empire of capital. To put it in paradigmatic (and largely rhetorical) terms, what exactly did a supposed “defense alliance” do by bombing Yugoslavia without the approval of the Security Council, carrying out one of the largest military operations on European soil? How can it be denied that Yugoslavia was devastated by NATO for the interests of the US and its “New world order” doctrine? Did that event constitute war – at least some form of war – or a “special military operation”? Even if it is not just a powerful military instrument of the Americans, NATO cannot be conceived outside the imperialist policy of the USA. It is worth noting, in this context, that the inter-state relations between Russia and the US over the last 30 years have been largely structured by the initial assurances of the NATO alliance that they did not intend to expand the alliance eastwards and the gradual breaking of these promises. That these assurances, as Spinoza reminds us, have no substantive force outside of actual power relations and their historical unfolding points to the heart of the matter (something we will return to).

Second, war between states in its modern form tends to involve the clash, and therefore the intensification of two or more nationalisms. This is because nationalism is the ideology of the contemporary nation-state and therefore one of the inevitable languages of justification for a state of war. As a determinate historical form, the modern state relied on war for its birth and the organization of society on the scale it proposed: the boundaries of the state as a legal order of sovereignty to coincide with the geographical boundaries of the nation. It is truly an outrageous idea that continues to leave humanity blood-drenched, to produce cultural difference, and to systematically lead to tragedies and ethnic cleansing. Linking soil with blood: a genius German conception! Even the republican conception of the nation that draws on the American and French revolutions, and which admittedly provided the language for an entire revolutionary tradition, inevitably tends, after the consolidation of the state form, to become a language of legitimation of domination, exclusion, violence and expansion.

In the case of the Greek state, nationalism led to the tragedy of Smyrna with the help of the great fantasy – yet one with entirely material consequences – that we called the “Great Idea”. Nationalism is also responsible for the tragedy that Cypriot society has been experiencing for so many decades on both sides of the island. Rhetoric about living space was indeed used by Hitler and is now being used by Putin. But the difference is that the former was a Nazi and as such burned anyone who was not  ‘of aryan race’ in the crematoria, while the latter is the authoritarian leader of a country that sacrificed 20 million people to stop the Nazis. The difference is staggering. And it is a difference of content as much as of form: for all the autocracy, corruption and constant human rights violations that define the dysfunction of official institutions and the huge democratic deficit in the country, Russia is not a fascist state. This, of course, does not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because whatever the context, it is an invasion. But we must be strict in the analogies and comparisons we make because they determine our perspective and therefore our political stance.

It is also worth pointing out that the identification of Russia with the USSR is untenable, at least in the ideological field. On the other hand, on the geopolitical and economic front, things are clearly more complex, since the USSR (from one point onwards) became to a considerable extent the continuation of the Russian state; thus the Russian Federation, together with its satellites, inherits the treaties left by the USSR. Putin’s rise to power is also the expression of this “continuity of the state”, against the aggressive (and destructive for the plebeian masses) disintegration that preceded it. Besides, apart from some fascists like Georgiades, who else considers “the communists” dangerous and still dreams of exile (really, “dangerous” for whom?). Despite the special symbolic weight of communism in the construction of various identities and perceptions, all countries, in one way or another, move to the rhythm of the capitalist organisation of the economy and society. So does Russia. Within this global system, nationalisms continue to develop and the great powers continue to compete with each other in national terms, without reference to the political-ideological differences of the past. The competition today, similar to some extent to the imperialist competition before the First World War, is about power within the globalised capitalist system. But political-economic competition is always conducted through a multitude of ideological-cultural mediations, de facto historically determined.

Thus, it is difficult to abandon the idea that the cultural representation of Russia in the ‘West’ passes through the imaginative conception (and constitution) of difference. At the state level, the hostility towards Russia clearly has as an objective basis, Russia’s independent hegemonic geopolitical and economic role and ambition (the political expression of which is precisely ‘Putinism’). Also, in the social imaginary (as mediated, of course, by spectacular media representations) the emerging suspicion and hostility towards Russia is due to Putin’s current attempt to regain the country’s old imperial power. On both (related) levels, however, the hostility is fueled by the stereotypical construction of Russia as a threatening authoritarian power coming from the barabaric East. It is within this cultural construction of otherness that the reflexive and endemic anti-communism that some Western military officers and diplomats have long since internalized, finds its functional place.

In this intense interface between the political and economic aspirations of the hegemonic centres and their ideological investments, obsessions and prejudices, international law can only be respected on a case-by-case basis and according to the interests at stake – sometimes invoked and sometimes ignored. Liberals and social democrats of all stripes and tendencies will retort that there is a whole material system of rules, deliberations, agreements, decisions, institutions and bodies which produces what we call ‘international law’, and which has a regulative role; even when it is ignored by some states, its actuality allows us to criticise this attitude while at the same time giving to Right an institutional and therefore practical status (i.e. clearly defining what ‘ought to be done’ and ‘how’ it can be done).

This is certainly not the place for an extended discussion of international law, which de facto presupposes a broader analysis of law in general. Its violation, however, as a fact systematically carried out by the powerful, makes the interpretation of reality on the basis of international law alone a symptom of a normative formalism that does not help explain a complex situation and the dynamics it contains. Founded on the liberal legalist logic that systematized it, international law is utterly incapable of both regulating the actual relations of states and providing a theoretical basis for understanding them. The same can be said differently: vis-à-vis ‘powerful players’, international law is a weak tool and therefore, especially in times of crisis, it is not sufficient either to dictate and organise the practical activity of the powerful, or to take it as the main unit of analysis in understanding complex historical processes, that shape inter-state rivalries and international balances. Unless we want to become the unhappy consciousness of this world, along with liberals and a significant part of the Left. 

The third reason why we need to be careful in our perspective is related to the collective self-identifications and the character of Ukrainian nationalism. It helps us to understand the complexity of Ukrainians’ perception of the Russian invasion, i.e. ultimately how they perceive the ethnic ‘self’ and the ethnic ‘other’ in this particular case. This clearly makes the way in which the invasion of Ukraine is presented by Western officials and the ‘Western’ media very problematic, i.e. as an attack by a foreign power on a fully distinct ethnic society. The empirical data that anyone who knows anything about Ukrainian society can cite suggests something quite different.

Between Russia and Ukraine there is a strong cultural affinity, with deep historical roots, reaching back to the very constitution of Tsarist Russia as the hegemonic political form of the Slavic ethnic group. Even today a large percentage of families in both Ukraine and Russia are mixed, and kinships spread beyond their borders. To this significant part of the population, this particular war seems rather like a civil war. Especially in the east, where there has been secession, a large percentage of Ukrainians have no particular problem with the political attachment to ‘Mother Russia’, which is why Russian forces initially met little resistance by advancing into the country.

On the other hand, colonial control and inequality has been a key index in this complex historical relation. Naturally, the Ukrainian nation-state de facto established its identity in against Russian domination, of which the USSR period was considered a part. This “anti-Russian” national narrative intensified after the events of 2014 in the country, when the balance was disturbed by the violent political shift towards the West and therefore NATO. In this context of geopolitical and economic restructuring, Ukrainian nationalism is becoming radicalized and seems to be gaining traction in the social sphere. Even so, until recently it is doubtful whether, outside the extreme nationalist circles, of which the neo-Nazis of the so-called ‘Right Sector’ (Pravyy Sektor) with their black and red flags or the even broader and more diverse ‘Azov Battalion’, which is part of the Ukrainian national army, most Ukrainians wanted to fight against Russia (which is also true in reverse). This is precisely what Russian expansionism is now decisively reversing, further fomenting Ukrainian nationalism.

In ‘Western’ media and in the mainstream discourse in general there is a deafening silence about the internal political balances and collective identity in Ukraine. In fact, the attack on Ukraine strikes at the pan-Slavic narrative – a central feature of ethnoromanticism there – replacing it with nationalist hatred. Is this not contradictory to the fact that Russia appears to be the main political exponent of this ethno-romantisism? But also, the hybrid character of the collective, national identity in Ukraine, or the fact that it is presented as ambivalent in terms of the distinction between ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’ nation and the related sense of collective belonging, is a catalyst for the attack. If, in terms of ethno-cultural relations and collective identities, similarity and affinity rather than ethnic difference prevail, without one group necessarily identifying or assimilating the other, the attack from Russia’s perspective ceases to be seen as an invasion. If, even more than in other countries of the former Soviet Union, Ukrainians are, in a sense, in an identity transition, since the process of Ukrainian nation-state building is unstable and ongoing, the attack on Ukraine may have had as an intrinsic purpose to radically interfere in the process. And the instability of the Ukrainian political system and the dysfunction of its democratic institutions actually contributes to this attempted rapprochement with Russia (for a country whose president is a former actor who played the president in a Ukrainian T.V series [!]). Therefore, in the face of the project of stabilising Ukrainian institutions and democracy within the EU. -which seems to have been the main claim of the 2014 protests and which necessarily took the form of anti-Russianism, thus opening up space even for nationalism drawn from the collaborators of the Nazi invasion- Russian imperialism, faced with the very real danger of Ukrainian attachment to NATO (i.e. the expansion of the latter), responded with an operation to strengthen the link with Russia. Of course, since the Russian surprise didn’t last long and the war drags on, it’s hard to see how a regime change could bring anything but instability.

Here it rather seems that we have two sides – Russia and the ‘West’ – that fear and perceive each other as a threat in terms shaped on the one hand by the history of conflicting expansionist nationalisms-imperialisms and on the other hand by the reality shaped by the capitalist economy in its modern globalised version. We will therefore support neither of them! A further reason for not supporting either one is evident from the fact that within the framework of once – but no longer – fringe theories like those of the 4th political theory, we are faced with the possibility of the creation of a deeply authoritarian informal coalition of disparate countries (from North Korea to Iran and China) on an ascending trajectory of conflict with the whole of a distinct civilization now defined in their eyes as “the West”.

Neutrality, by highlighting the community of those from below, with class characteristics and our dynamic peace-promoting practices is, in our opinion, the appropriate attitude in this case and therefore has nothing to do with an abstract refusal of war. This is all the more true since the consequences of such a war will affect us all. In this light, the revival of the international anti-war movement, which has been extinct for over 15 years (better proof of its total absence during the Syrian civil war) could perhaps have some positive influence on developments. However, judging by the content of public discourse, the low dynamics of collective action today and, above all, the proxy nature of the conflict between NATO and Russia, this possibility should not be considered particularly likely. Nevertheless, the anti-war demand for global nuclear disarmament is proving to be extremely necessary today.

Under the weight of developments in Ukraine there is no doubt that this is a moment of paramount historical importance. We are witnessing a direct violent challenge to the balance of power of the hegemonic centres, which is very interestingly linked to the economic challenge being waged by China. Something that has been discussed for a long time may be happening, but the outcome is really uncertain, especially since the ‘first move’ was made by the Russian military state. At a time when many people, while realising the role of planetary domination in the ongoing social and environmental decline, no longer have the courage to speak out, the conflict in Ukraine paints an extremely contradictory picture that has emerged particularly strong in the pandemic and is of immense value both for the left libertarian forces of our time and for radical forces in general. On the one hand we seem to not know how to survive without some kind of state organization, on the other hand the state leads us to social, health, economic and environmental destruction. How do we pragmatically manage such a complex reality?

The dystopia of a nuclear holocaust or a large-scale ecological (hence social) collapse may still seem distant (?), but we cannot ignore the fact that the forces that gave birth to these prospects as a technical possibility and political-military possibility are precisely the dominant forces today: capital, technocracy and all kinds of military-industrial complexes, nationalism and the modern state.

We conclude with some observations which will shed more light on the rationale that leads us to consider the neutrality stance in this war as the only appropriate option from the point of view of social emancipation. Like any authoritarian leader who wages war, Putin, by attacking Ukraine, is undermining, or at any rate endangering, his own power. However, its end will hopefully come with an internal uprising of the Russian people, especially the most oppressed social groups. Ukraine may of course be the occasion for this, but the battle for its downfall cannot be fought on Ukrainian soil. Among other things, because in this case national war and multilateral conflict signify not only the death of soldiers and civilians who have never supported Russia’s authoritarian regime, but also the nuclear threat. This, of course, implies that the phenomenon of Putin’s authoritarian rule cannot be reduced to the realm of individual psychology and personality, as the liberal position, that presents anti-democrats as ‘madmen’, deliberately and with artificial levity tries to sustain. The problem is not that Putin is “insane”. The problem is that the very juxtaposition of democracy and authoritarianism is now losing the formal validity it once had (which historically has always been more complex, of course).

Democratic political systems and their institutions all over the world, regardless of their specifically national versions, are subjected with undiminished intensity to the web of relations and practices that we call ‘capitalism’. So while states continue to be active forces, the contemporary globalised and interconnected world of transnational relations and antagonisms is regulated by the active presence of capital and the imperatives of accumulation and value valorization that define it. So along with a contradiction – transnational competition tends to undermine the capitalist totality that allows it to exist – there is also a truth that the adherents of liberal discourse cannot bear to hear, as it is a truth that calls for political displacement and personal engagement but also for the questioning of multiple cultural constants and perceptions. The configuration of democratic institutions and their articulation with the legal order and the economy allows for the simultaneous and perpetual reproduction, that is, the permanent co-existence, of representation, authoritarianism and inequality in many social fields and in decision-making. It is also a dynamic relationship that today is increasingly unable to take the formal form of democracy. Modern liberal democracies are technocratic oligarchies separated simply by the presence of a social liberalism (which is also challenged by the neo-right reaction).

The pacified societies of the ‘developed’ world in Europe and America are more likely to abandon Ukraine to the expansionist ambitions of a rising Russia than to fight for it. It is not only the experience of two world wars that is, fortunately, frightening. Material affluence, the ideology of producing and consuming infinite objects, the complete commodification of the world and the trivialization of multiple aspects of life by advertising – all of it, that is, which describe the hegemonic conception of ‘growth’ – guarantee (apart from ecological destruction) that war is removed from the range of culturally available options, not only for the sterile upper classes of ‘Western’ societies, but also for the lower classes and subordinate social groups.

And while we could not rule out the resurgence of European and US nationalisms in the face of a common antagonist, we can hardly imagine European citizens sacrificing themselves on the battlefields fighting against the Russians. Especially when everyone knows that the new ‘cold war’ we have already entered is exclusively a game of the powerful for the control of resources and wealth.

But unfortunately, it is even more difficult, to imagine the oppressed fighting an internationalist, anti-nationalist and anti-colonial battle for the equality of people in all corners of this world. This is despite the fact that from the pandemic and the impending ecological collapse to the devastating war in Ukraine, the great issue at stake is the power of the modern state and of capital, the complete inability to control and be controlled.

The question then becomes more crucial than ever and is this: at the dawn of a new ‘cold war’ and in the era of ecological crisis, will the left libertarian forces of our time be able to present a culturally convincing vision to make people believe again in a different way of organizing collective life that includes as its central point the symbiosis of all beings? Or will they forever distance themselves from people by adhering to simplistic rhetorical schemes that are of little interest to anyone? The questions, though theoretically profound, are primarily practical.

Active neutrality in the war raging in Ukraine is our position, the continuation of the global social war against all those who destroy life and freedom is our promise.

Solidarity with the antifascist anarchists in Ukraine and Russia.

DEATH TO TYRANTS –

LONG LIVE ANARCHY- FIGHT FOR GLOBAL FREEDOM

VOID NETWORK – http://voidnetwork.gr

The post The State, Nationalism and the War in Ukraine appeared first on Void Network.

We are facing a pernicious virus that terrifies the world. To comfort our anxiety, we say to ourselves, that if we take precautions, we will survive. In the meantime, we try to reduce the hours we watch television. In fact, watching the news has become an essential activity to get through the day. Our traumas from the fake news, and our lack of trust in the media, have been replaced by a deeper wound, that of the constant briefing on a pandemic affecting us all.

Each one of us, upon reflection, confronts his or her own fears, engages in a dialog with themselves and redefines the meaning of life under the current circumstances. We exchange thoughts and make an effort to find a solution, a way-out. A plethora of articles and analyses are getting written. No doubt, we are up against the limits of capitalism, the limits of the commercialized-consumerist world.

How can we manage our lives and help in the lives of our fellow humans? What steps need to be taken in the light of compassion and happiness? Besides the deadly virus, we ought to confront alienation and to accept the inability of the governments worldwide to provide love, health, care, warmth, healing. For, all of these are needed, when a person is scared, when one’s life is in danger.

In what way can we deter our fear, now that our world has changed abruptly in one day? When will this threat end? And when we go back to our jobs, will we be thankful that this system of exploitation and social inequality is working again until its next crisis?

THE REAL THREAT IS OUR WAY OF LIVING

A global concern, a global fear daunts people. Fortunately, there is black humor and all those who continue to observe and reflect upon phenomena, come-up with texts and analyses, videos, independent news, social media comments and guidance, bottom-up information; all sources of communication beyond the establishment media.

When society is in a state of panic, individuals experience panic too. When society is in prosperity, individuals barely fulfill their basic needs. When society faces a virus, individuals get sick.

Looking at the past and the future through the eyes of a tree or a bird living on the tree’s branches, we should only look for happiness, joy and health. Where is freedom in times of crisis? Society, institutions, laws, the lifestyle of the modern individual are reproduced in the consciousness and the sub-consciousness. What exactly is happening in the free market now that all we want is to live and all that matters is the health of our loved ones? The instinct of life and the understanding of death counterbalance, in our minds.

When a lifeline is destabilized and a living organism is weakened, then the feeling of insecurity and anxiety prevails. We must, by all means, protect our sense of harmony, our love for life, our ability to think and understand events. We need to make a decision: this is what we are living in now, and we are here united to face it and change it. It’s not absurd. Capitalists have for centuries threatened the lives of all living beings – global capitalism has been making this threat increasingly more dangerous worldwide. The industrialization and destruction of nature, the pain of the war refugees, poverty, the competition and the daily struggle for survival have spread over our lives as an epidemic, for some time now; we must finally learn new ways to resist and support each other.

The Romantics envision a social uprising carried out by the plebeians, with expropriations and secret encounters in secret parts of the city. Radicals look forward to the collapse of capitalism, and social-justice analysts predict a militarized society, a totalitarian world.

AND WE ALL WONDER: “But, What sort of life is this?”

Those of us who are passionate with love for social justice – and not just our own individualistic survival – are constantly looking for the wrong, for the broken cog of the machine. We are looking for another way of living, a new language, new meanings, new relationships and ways to relate to one another and ways to fight against injustice. What we experience today will surely change us. Let us change for the best, be more compassionate and not phobic and racist towards our fellow humans. Let generosity become a way of living. Ecological awareness is essential in order to be able to breathe in a suffocating world that kills life and industrialises the Earth. Rediscovering ourselves is interlinked with the political world. What have we understood and what are we going to understand about the social conditions of our existence? What are we going to understand about ourselves? Personal difficulties, problems and stress can all provide an opportunity to understand that:

Harmony is gained by emancipation.

And what does ’emancipation’ mean? Absolute self-determination – to make decisions for your own life and those decisions ought to be for the benefit of others – no one, after all, can be happy on his own. The purpose of helping one another, and attaining supreme joy, entails gratitude to nature and equitable cooperative relationships.

But what am I thinking of now? At the moment, the world is severely wounded, and I’m thinking about self-determination? Yes, because my body and soul are trying to fight this fear. I know that one relationship is necessary for our survival, the relationship between humanity and nature. Our body is the actual intersection between humans and nature. Now that our body is getting sick, the whole body of society has become ill; we must take care not to disturb our minds with thoughts that are utterly dystopian and suffocating. I hope that dignity is safe-guarded and strengthened for it cares for the sick and the virus carriers and does not treat them like pests. My hope is that we do not treat coronavirus patients, the same horrible way, as we treated war-refugees; and way we battle coronavirus will give us the opportunity to understand the pain of others including all others who are in pain and suffering.

WORKPLACES & PLACES OF CONSUMING ARE DEADLY TRAPS NOW AND EVER

How is it possible to achieve quarantine in a world where our basic needs depend on an economic system based on exploitation and the ownership of the means of production and the market supply of goods is owned by individuals, with a predominant profit motive? Getting our food right now requires a job and a supermarket. In the coronavirus regime, we are obliged – now and ever – to constantly throng around potential sources of virus-spread, work places and supermarkets – in any case, that is all we are allowed to do anymore.

To buy your food you are advised to wear gloves, keep a safe distance from other consumers and wear a surgical mask. But what if we all had a garden in our house, on our terrace, on our roof, in our neighborhood? How many of us have a small field, a farmland with vegetables, fruit, and spices – wasn’t this, anyway, the reason for the democratic uprising in ancient Athens? The modern man – or better from the era of feudalism onwards – is forced to bind himself to a one-sided order of things, a one-dimensional activity – that of labor and consumption for the sake of private profit and the suppression of the infinite possibilities of each one of us separately, and of our collective strength.

Now we live in this swamp of profit and control. And now we have to get used to the interior travel restrictions as the best solution for our survival. We got used to our work being a tormenting suffering and bittering, money is scarce and never enough, the time is hard to pass – our work has now become a place that puts our lives at risk. There are no ‘unnecessary strolls’ and walks, there are many, far too many, useless and pointless jobs, all of which we are forced to do, just to keep the profit engine running, destroying our land and our lives.

QUESTION THOSE WHO DESTROY OUR LIVES AND NATURE

It is not unreasonable at this moment to question the existing social system and seek the path to liberation. All of these virus protection measures the states are taking at a global level are cruel, coup d’état-like in some cases, frightening and incomplete on the other – since they do not cater for the care of those who are not considered first-class citizens (such as the homeless, the mentally ill, the poor, the prisoners, the refugees and the socially excluded), and work is repeated day after day within the boundaries of incarceration and insanity. Which are the people that are seen, by social institutions, as parasites, and for this are unable to access sanitary facilities and practices? Do they all have a house to stay in? Can everyone leave their work to stay at home or work remotely?

It is possible for all private and public sector workers, all freelancers and farmers to be protected from the virus. This can only be done if the state cuts down on all “unnecessary” spending, gives up “bullshit” jobs and allocates money – our money! – on the care and support of workers, young people, housewives, doctors, teachers, underprivileged artists and all who make up this society and their income is lost. There are European ‘culture’ programs – for example – that give millions and billions of euros to cultural enterprises and NGOs to implement ‘innovative ideas’, to promote ‘European values’ of ‘solidarity’ and ‘gender and race’ accessibility; all hypocritical slogans inviting million-dollar investors and sharks who live off the grants. Should we not demand that all these funds be distributed at once to those suffering from the plague of coronavirus and to social structures so that we will be able to take care of each other more effectively? There is no other way to save our civilization but to do all we can to help and save our fellow humans.

As regards the management of the spread of the virus, and its treatment the following question arises: What kind of management do we want? What kind of management can we have? Who will make the decisions? Surely we all wish to live in a society of well-being and prosperity, where we all are healthy and well-off. Have the states, the rulers, capitalism in recent years been able to offer this well-being without a catastrophic tradeoff? Are they now able to protect the population? Are they now able to create a safer, less tormenting way to deal with the virus? Is it not a sign of the total failure of the world capitalist system, the constant production of humanitarian, ecological, economic and social crises and disasters? How much more “austerity and patience” will we endure? How much more obedience will we show to politicians who hinder mankind from moving towards a fairer world?

OUR LIFE BELONGS TO US

A more all-round view of reality is needed. Human beings are facing a major health crisis and when at the same times are at the threshold of a totalitarian regime. Those who govern us choose – the one and only way to deal with this abundant crisis – to give orders and impose bans. This way, they shift the responsibility to us for everything they did and didn’t do all those years. Capitalism needs a state-suppressing machine to continue to destroy our lives. We need social structures of solidarity and mutual-aid; we neither need the state nor the capitalists.

The only suggestion that rulers dare to make to society is interior travel restriction. Enforcing upon us incarceration creates a sense of horror, vis-à-vis of the collapse of our personal freedom. What else does the future hold for us? Slavery cast upon all kinds, existing and non-existent enemies? Who is the one that chooses the enemies of this society every time?

Medical quarantine is necessary, at the same time though, it is a situation that is causing discomfort to an increasingly uncertain world. We are in a situation that perpetuates uncertainty and gives the government the right to decide on our every move.

We want a more humane civilization that respects our emotions. Mutual help can set us free from individualism and fear. It now becomes apparent that we are together in the same chapter of History, in the same boat, in the same stormy sea. We have to take on our responsibilities, protecting each other even staying away from each other for some time, until the cure and solution will be found. Let’s use these days to challenge the dominant way of thinking, to think about how a society could have a fully free Health System with thousands of beds and ICUs operating per city and per village, to help vulnerable groups of the population, to communicate our message all over the world, learning to spend time with ourselves, not to jeopardize the health of our fellow humans with our actions and choices, to discover new skills (reading, writing, painting, sewing), to cook for our neighbor in need, to learn new names of ancient medicinal plants, offer therapeutic massage to our partner, make love and talk to our loved ones.

And as I’ m all looking for what secret ritual will save my family and all of us from this pandemic. And I find only one:

Critical thinking is essential for all of us.

MUTUAL AID – LET’S OFFER EACH OTHER CARE AND POWER

Could the coronavirus destroy world capitalism? I don’t know, I don’t think so. But let’s at least question its structures and their content, let us pose tough questions to those in power and demand immediate answers. What takes over all of us, regardless of geographical hemisphere, is the anxiety for our daily survival; it makes us sick. This panic and anxiety that underlies every aspect of our social life reveals the inadequacy of the exploitative and authoritarian regimes to manage effectively the evil that has come upon us and all the rest that have forced us to live!

We would feel safer if we knew that our country and other countries had not destroyed public health for years, if we knew that we had free electricity, water and telephone in our homes, if we did not have to pay 80% of our wages each month for rent and bills. We would feel safer if we knew we had adequate Intensive Care Units, if we knew we had a large number of doctors, teachers, nurses, cooks, artists, poets and happy grandparents whispering to our children fairytales. There are many questions about how a society ultimately manages every health, economic and social crisis – what we consider important and what is insignificant. How do we meet the medical and living needs of the population? How do we protect the weak, the poor, the elderly from the speculators, the opportunists, the exploiters? How do we heal this world from social injustice?

Confronting the upheaving coronavirus epidemic cannot be a matter of restrictions, but of research for medication and for vaccines and of their free distribution for all; a matter of equipping the Health Care with the necessary medicines and protective equipment and the requisition of the private sector clinics, by strengthening the health system with human resources and new public hospitals. We need to produce and hand-out a completely free test for everyone – for, everyone has the right to know whether they are sick or not. Let’s be brave and think: Our living conditions are changing, today let us launch a new survival plan. Let society decide, not the rulers. Surely, from now on, anyone who talks about “private hospitals” will be considered a criminal. Surely, tenants must stop paying rent and bills until the crisis is over and demand a total rent reduction after the end of the pandemic. A huge rent strike is currently underway around the world. It is our duty to support it.

Let us express our deep gratitude and admiration to all medical staff, medical students, people working in welfare, those who participate in self-organized solidarity structures, and all those who will save human lives by risking their own, every single person in the neighborhoods who will help to alleviate the pain of others. Void Network as an affinity group promise that we will strive to be among those who will help in every possible way.

That’s what we need – care and treatment.

Long Live Human Freedom, Equality, Mutual-help and Love.

Each of us carries a story, of our own pain. Now we all have a common History. Let’s take these moments to get to know the world better. This whole adventure will be over, let us improve ourselves, let us create relationships and social structures for a more just and cooperative world – a world that stands against social injustice, inequality and the repression of liberties.

It takes patience; we need to look at life in a new way. We are sure we will meet again. Let’s prepare our future plans solely on the basis of love and kindness.

We will hug each other again!

LOVE – POWER

_____

Written by Sissy Doutsiou and Tasos Sagris

Translation in English:  Markos Bouketsides, Rodanthe Scourtelli

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts]

1990-2020 / 30 years of symbiotic fighting for Freedom

https://voidnetwork.gr

______________________________

READ ALSO:

https://crimethinc.com/2020/03/18/surviving-the-virus-an-anarchist-guide-capitalism-in-crisis-rising-totalitarianism-strategies-of-resistance

The post A message from Athens #Covid-19 appeared first on Void Network.

(The text published in french language at “A contretemps” at 17 November 2019).

The sudden attacks of freedom on the suffocating capitalist hydra, constantly make the epicenter of the seismic disturbances fluctuate. The territories of the whole world affected by the system of private benefits are exposed to the outburst of insurrectional movements. Consciousness is forced to run after successive waves of events, reacting to constant, paradoxically predictable and unexpected shocks.

Two realities struggle against each other in the face of the violence. One is the reality of lying. Taking advantage of technological progress, you try to manipulate public opinion for the benefit of established power. The other is the reality of daily life of the population.

On the one hand, there are the hollow words of corporate jargon which show the importance of numbers, surveys and statistics; which teem with false debates whose proliferation serves to hide the real problems: existential and social demands. The media windows-screens of deceit spill out each day numerous tricks and insignificant conflicts of interest which are of no interest to us, but whose negative consequences affect us. Their profitable wars of devastation are not ours; they have no other purpose than to dissuade us from waging the only war that concerns us, the war against the inhumanity prevalent in the world.

On the same side, according to the absurd truth of leaders, things are clear: to claim the rights of the human being is characteristic of anti-democratic violence. Democracy would then consist of repressing the people, throwing at them a horde of police officers who, by developing the impunity guaranteed by the government and the candidates of the opposition eager to succeed them, incites fascist inducing behavior. Just imagine the songs of the media zombies if it were true that the self-immolation of a victim of impoverishment by fire would lead to the fire of the system responsible for the poverty!

On the other hand, the reality experienced by the people is also clear. We will never admit that the meaningless of poorly paid work, that the bureaucratic pressure that increases interest rates and decreases the amount of pensions and social conquests, that the wage pressure which reduces life to strict survival, can be reduced for business transactions. The lived reality is not a number, it is a feeling of unworthiness, it is the feeling of being nothing in the claws of the State, a monster which shrinks like the skin of a shoe before draining of international embezzlement money.

Well, in the confrontation between these two realities – the one that imposes the fetishism of money and the one that speaks in the name of life – a spark, often tiny, came to light the fuse.

There is no futility today, however small, that is not capable of unleashing the violence contained in repressed life, in the life determined to break everything that threatens to extinguish it.

Secular inertia and lethargy, under the aegis of the ancient “bread and circus” recipe, are the basis of the tremendous power of voluntary servitude. Denounced in the 16th century by La Boétie, it remains our most ruthless enemy. By attacking us from the inside, voluntary servitude promotes an inclination among many that functions as if it were a drug: the will to exercise power, to assume the role of guide. Frequently, the morbidity of the authority of a few has infected the libertarian media, so we should congratulate the determination of the yellow vests and other insurgents of everyday life to constantly evoke their rejection of leaders, of self-appointed delegates, of masters of thought and of pond frogs of the holy water of politics and labour unionism.

Free are those who are happy to die in peace while waiting for death in the combined comfort of the coffin and of television, but we will not let their self-spoiling infect over our will to live.

We want the sovereignty of the human being, no more no less.

Impoverishment knocks on doors with increasing violence, threatening to bring them down. The hedonism of the recent past which crushed us with the consumerist and government slogan is over: “Take advantage of today, tomorrow will be worse!” The worst is already today, especially if we continue to welcome it. We must stop believing in the omnipotence of capitalism and the fetishism of money. We have noticed that the great macabre farce that makes the world dance is the result of a sordid motivation, that of short-term profit, that of the absurd rapacity of a bankrupt merchant scratching at the back of the drawers in the search for more.

I’m not talking about hope. It is only the lure of despair. I am referring to all the regions of the world where an insurrection of everyday life – call it what you like – is trying to dismantle the dictatorship of private profit and to overthrow the States which impose it on the people they claim to represent. What we want is not for tomorrow, but for today, as caregivers, nurses, emergency doctors, paramedics and doctors who deal with the economic management that dehumanises the health care sector so well expressed [in the ongoing general strike in france].

The system of exploitation of terrestrial and human nature goes beyond all horizons. The mantle of profitability, at all costs, closes off all expressions of the generosity of life and the human feeling that promotes its practice.

Obviously, the exploiters and the exploited are convinced that the pot is about to explode. Violence is unavoidable. The problem does not lie with it. The approach to resolve the matter without ambiguity is based on an alternative.

Will we tolerate the social explosion leading to a state of endemic civil war, a chaos of revenge and hatred which will ultimately only benefit multinational mafias, already at liberty to continue with impunity and even to destroy themselves with their lucrative desertification project?

Or are we going to create micro-societies freed from the tyranny of the State and commodities, federated territories where the intelligence of individuals can get rid of this herd individualism in search of a supreme guide who will lead them to the slaughterhouse? Are we finally going to take the reins of our own destiny and outline a clear plan for this social jungle, where the beasts of burden have no more freedom than that to choose the prey which will devour them?

In 1888, Octave Mirabeau wrote: “Lambs go to the slaughterhouse. They say nothing and expect nothing. But at least they don’t vote for the butcher who will kill them or the bourgeois who will eat them. Worse than animals, more crowded than sheep, the voter chooses his butcher and chooses his bourgeois. S/he made revolutions to conquer the right to do so.”

Have they not transformed you from generation to generation with the same indescribable currency: heads, the baton of order; tails, the humanitarian lie?

There is no “vote of the lesser evil”, there is only a totalitarian democracy, which only the direct democracy exercised by the people and for the people will revoke. I was amused by the passage of a slogan which, however rough it may be, calls for a further reflection: “Macron, Le Pen, Mélenchon, the same fight of fools! “(I would have preferred “the same fight of capons”; but the rejection of all forms of power and dialogue with the State is one of those little pleasures from which come the great waves of individual and collective enjoyment).

Autonomy, self-organisation, self-defence

The authorities in power will not tolerate the people being freed from their tyranny. We must prepare for a long struggle. That to be carried out against voluntary servitude will be such a struggle. The only foundation that despotism can take advantage of is the acrimony over security of the resigned, it is the suicidal resentment of a supposedly silent majority who screams their hatred of life.

The best defense is always offensive. To this principle, amply demonstrated by military tradition, I would like to substitute that of openness, because, to the advantage of breaking up of the encirclement is added the pleasure of breaking up the barracks in which we find ourselves.

The openness to life, we see it at work in the fierce determination of the current insurrections. Even if some of them die out, they start again more powerfully. We can see it in the festive nature of the protests which endure, despite the fact that they are met with the blindness, the deafness, the repressive rage of governments. It was on the basis of this openness that I spoke of insurgent pacifism.

Insurrectionary pacifism is neither peaceful, in the bleating sense of the term, nor insurrectional, if one understands by this the aberrations of urban and Guevarist guerrillas.

I have neither the vocation of a warrior nor of a martyr. I leave it to life and its poetry to overcome opposites so that they do not become nuisances, so that they escape the Manichean duality of pros and cons. I rely on the creativity of individuals to invent a revolution of which there is no example in the past. The disarray and the uncertainties of a civilization which is born have nothing in common with the disarray of a civilization which has only the certainty of dying.

Philosophers, sociologists, experts of thought, spare us your endless discussions on the malignity of capitalism which makes its agony profitable. Everyone agrees on this point, even the capitalists. The real issues, however, have not been addressed. These are those of the base, those of villages and urban neighbourhoods, those of our own body, which is all the same, it must be remembered, the real decision maker of our destiny, right?

The more the struggles spread worldwide, the more their meaning gains in radicality, in depth, in lived experience, the more they dispense with militant engagement, the more they mock intellectuals, specialists in subversive or reactionary manipulation (because manipulation deals with both like two sides of the same coin). It is both in their existential experience and in their social function that individuals discover themselves on the ground where their aspiration to live begins to undermine and clear away the wall which counting of profits confronts them with, as if their fate stopped there.

No, we can no longer speak of abstract man, the only one recognised by statistics, budgetary calculations, the rhetoric of those who – laymen or religious, humanists or racists, progressives or conservatives – who have others beaten, blinded, imprisoned, massacred, while, lurking in their cowardly ghettos, they count on the arrogant cretinism of money to ensure their impunity and their security.

The dictatorship of profit is an aggression against the body. Entrusting in life the care of immunising us against the financial canker that corrupts our flesh implies a poetic and united struggle. Nothing like the fires of the joy of living to reduce the morbidity of the world to ashes! The revolution has therapeutic virtues, unsuspected until today.

Ecologists, why bother bawling at States for climate improvement when the same States taunt you by polluting more every day, and when it is urgent to act on a field where the questions have nothing to do with intellectual niceties. Questions such as:

How to move from land poisoned by the food industry to its renaturation by permaculture?

How to ban pesticides without harming the peasant who, trapped by Monsanto, Total and others, destroys her/his health by destroying that of others? How to rebuild on a new basis small village and neighborhood schools that the State has ruined and banned to promote concentration camp-like education?

How to boycott harmful and useless products that advertising harassment tells us to buy?

How to constitute local investment banks where the currency of exchange will compensate opportunely for monetary collapse and the planned financial crash?

How to cut short the tax levies that the State allocates to bank fraud, and undertake to invest them in the self-financing of local and regional projects?

Above all, how to spread everywhere the principle of a gratuitousness that life claims by nature and that the fetishism of money distorts. Free trains and public transport, free healthcare, free housing and self-construction, gradual free local craft and food production.

Utopia? Is there a worse utopia than the hodgepodge of absurd and deleterious projects unpacked, before the tired eyes of television viewers, these talented false actors who stir the specter of their wars of traveling salesmen, endlessly reiterating the antics of the combat of chiefs, veiling the real existential and social questions under false debates, overshadowing state terrorism by a terrorism of trivialities where suicidal madness grows with pauperisation and an increasingly unbreathable ambient air?

Have we not realised enough that, in their diversity, even in their divergences, the yellow vests and protest movements formed a formidable pressure group capable of boycotting, blocking, paralysing, destroying everything that pollutes, poisons, impoverishes, threatens our life and our environment? To make us underestimate our power and our creativity comes from the democratic mechanisms of state and market tyranny. More than its gendarmes, the illusory force of the State rests on a propaganda effect which urges us at every moment to give up the poetic power which is in us, this force of life which no tyranny will overcome.

Now, during this time …In Chile, the fight against the vermin which proliferates on the corpse of Pinochet has rekindled the awareness that everything must start from the base, that the representatives of the people are not the people, that the individualist manipulated by the gregarious spirit is not the individual capable of thinking for her/himself and taking the side of life against the side of money that kills. It is necessary to leave to the people the conquest of an intelligence which belongs to them and which the various forms of power endeavor to remove from them.

The same is true in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq. I trust Rojava to transform its temporary retirement into an offensive. The Zapatistas, for their part, responded to the socialist arguments of the socialist Lopez Obrador by increasing the number of their bases (caracoles) and their Councils of good government, where decisions are made by the people and for the people.

The obstinate demand for a democracy in Hong-Kong oscillates between on the one hand a blind anger, ready to be satisfied with a parliamentarism everywhere else put into questioned, and on the other hand a lucid anger which shakes and makes tremble by its persistence the gigantic pyramid of the totalitarian Chinese regime (which worries about the threat of a financial crash). Who knows? The ivy permeates everywhere, and the insurgent past of Shanghai is not far away.

Sudan shakes off the yoke of tyranny and military power, Iran falters. Lebanon is a wake-up call for Hezbollah and for Islamism, the defrocking of which no longer obscures the politico-oil objective. Algeria does not want a government face-lift. Iraq discovers that social reality outweighs the importance given to religious rivalries. There remain the Catalans, the only ones who want a state when the “coldest of cold monsters” is riddled with arrows everywhere. But it is not impossible that the separatists, engaged in an impasse by the standoff opposing the Madrid state to the no less statist Generalitat, suddenly breathe the ruffles of the Franco corpse that the nationalist spirit has taken out of its cemeteries. So it is not impossible that the memory of the libertarian communities of the revolution of 1936, where real independence was forged, will come back to them before the Communist Party and its ally, the Catalan State, crush them.

It’s only a dream but life is a dream and we have entered an era where poetry is the passage from dream to reality, a passage which marks the end of the nightmare and its valley of tears.

Opening a vital space to those paralyse the dismay and anxiety of the future, is it not poetic practice that makes the insolent novelty of the insurrection of everyday life? Do we not see it in the loss of militancy, in the erosion of this old military reflex which multiplies the little chiefs and their frightened herds?

Under the diversity of its pretexts, the only demand that is expressed today without reservation is full and whole life.

Who would be wrong? We are not in the tumult of foreseeable or unexpected revolts, we are in a revolutionary process. The world changes base, an old civilization collapses, a new civilization appears. Compassionate mentalities and archaic behaviors may be perpetuated under an ersatz of modernity, a new Renaissance is nevertheless emerging within a history whose inhumanity collapses into chaos before our eyes. And these eyes are slowly opening. They discover in women, men and children a genius to innocently experiment with incredible innovations, unusual energies, forms of resistance to death, universes that no imagination had dared to set in motion in the past.

Here we are! At the beginning of everything!

Raoul VANEIGEM, 17 novembre 2019

English translation: Autonomies.org

The post Raul Vaneigem: Here we are! At the beginning of everything! appeared first on Void Network.

Bouachrine wrote fierce editorials attacking the royal autocracy and what he calls Al Istibdad (despotism). In 2011, he was a leading partisan of the Arab Spring, during which he criticized Islamic leaders for their opposition to the protests. Pro-regime loyalists burned his newspaper in the streets and sought to fan the flames of division between Islamists and leftists. In 2017, Bouachrine was arrested a few months after he roundly criticized the king for having “ruled for eighteen bittersweet years” and being absent for much of his reign. After Bouachrine criticized and mocked Saudi crown prince Mohamed Bin Salman, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi warned him through WhatsApp that he had crossed a line and could be murdered. Instead Bouachrine was arrested on February 23, 2018 and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. Khashoggi was brutally killed in the Saudi Turkish consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.

Bouachrine is one of nearly a thousand Moroccan political prisoners facing Orwellian surveillance and repression. Female journalist Hajar Raissouni who also wrote for Akhbar Al Yaoum was recently sentenced to one year in prison for “having an illegal abortion and sexual relations outside marriage” despite the fact that she never had an abortion (with evidence backing her up).

Professor Maati Monjib, co-founder of the journalist rights NGO, Freedom Now, has endured more than a decade of political persecution. Political police agents continue to follow him and publish false private information that has made it increasingly difficult for him and his family to live in Morocco. His job at the university has also been threatened. In 2015, Monjib was one of seven people accused of helping create Storymaker, an app that gives citizen journalists the ability to publish content anonymously. Amnesty International reported that he is accused of threatening national security in an ongoing trial that has been postponed 17 times in four years. On September 16, 2015, authorities briefly held Monjib at the Casablanca airport, where he was informed of the travel ban against him. Two days before, he had been summoned by police because of his human rights activities. Monjib undertook a 24-day long hunger strike to protest illegal travel restrictions forbidding him to leave the country. Finally, on October 13, 2015 he was admitted to the hospital as a result of his fast. In October 2019, Monjib announced that one of the world’s premier cyber-mercenary firms, the Israeli NSO Group, had planted spyware on his phone. According to Amnesty International , Monjib and human rights attorney Abdessadak El Bouchattaoui were sent texts containing links to secretly install surveillance software able to monitor even encrypted Signal chats.

Lakome (For You) editor-in-chief Ali Aznouli was arrested on September 17, 2013 and falsely charged under the Anti-Terrorism Law, specifically for “providing support for carrying out a terrorist crime.” His arrest came after attacking what he called the king’s repeated, extended absences. In 2014, Aznouli explained that…“the arrest and charges are politically motivated, and have to do with Lakome’s independent editorial line and the series of articles and investigations that exposed the corruption within the Moroccan state and criticized the real ruling powers in the country and how they have handled major issues.” The police took advantage of Aznouli’s arrest to cut access to his newspaper’s web site, forcing him to develop a new, but similarly named site. Released on bail, Aznouli’s trial has been postponed repeatedly for five years continually putting him in a position where he feels jeopardized and insecure. Nonetheless, he continues to publish truthful exposes, such as, “Fifteen years of Mohammed VI’s rule has proven that the government has no political will to liberalize the public media and guarantee independent journalism, the economic basis of which has been eliminated. The government has yet to put in place a journalism code, to ensure access to information, and to protect the freedoms won so far in the field of journalism, expression, protest, and opinion. These freedoms have been won at a heavy cost, and to continue to benefit from them, one must be ready to pay it.”

These examples of prominent intellectuals kept in a constant state of insecurity are part of the reason why Freedom House rates Morocco poorly, and why Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 report ranked the country 130th in terms of press freedom, trailing countries like Afghanistan and South Sudan.

Most Moroccan political prisoners are from the Rif region, where nationalist ambitions were evident in the many Rif flags at a May 2019 protest in front of parliament. Mothers of prisoners traveled hundreds of miles and converged in the streets, many wearing all black from head to toe. Although the police presence appeared to be minimal, cameramen from all sides took images continually.

Beginning on October 28, 2016, the killing of a fish vendor by police was the spark that led to a wave of protests unmatched since the 2011 Arab Spring. In more than 40 cities, protesters called for an end to repression in solidarity with the oppressed. On June 11, 2017 a million people marched for “freedom, dignity and social justice” and solidarity with Rif prisoners, particularly movement leader Nasser Zefzafi. In many cities, demonstrators also waved the flags of the Amazigh, Morocco’s Berber community.

At the far reaches of both European and Arabic civilizations, Morocco is a unique combination of historical survivalisms. Combined with stunning natural beauty in mountains, beaches, and deserts that have become exotic tourist destinations, Morocco is the most stable country in North Africa and a close USA ally against Islamic radicalism. On the surface, new train stations and modern airports stand beside modern highways and high speed trains. Luxurious villas and tourist resorts with beautiful pools and golf courses witness steady streams of expensive cars. Dozens of palaces adorn the countryside, but at least 15% of the population live in abject poverty. About forty percent of Moroccans live on less than four dollars a day. As the king’s autocratic decisions have become increasingly repressive, the country’s future stability becomes increasingly questionable. The monarchy responded to the 2011 Arab Spring by making limited reforms, but the new waves of protest in 2016 and 2017 have been met with harsh measures. The regime continues to divide Islamic opposition from leftists, thereby isolating key figures who can then be targeted without unified opposition. Whether or not its divide and rule strategy will succeed depends on many factors, none no more important than the multifarious opposition’s capability to unite into a powerful movement.

_______________________

George Katsiaficas has been active in social movements since 1969 when he participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement. A target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program (Counterintelligence), he was honored to be classified “Priority 1 ADEX”.  For 11 years, he worked in Ocean Beach, California (as described at the end of Andre Gorz’s book Ecology as Politics) in a radical countercultural community that fought against war.  After living in Berlin for 1 1/2 years and learning first-hand about the autonomous movement there, he wrote about that movement (The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life). For years, he was active for the cause of Palestinian rights. A graduate of MIT and UCSD (where he studied with Herbert Marcuse), he wrote his dissertation about the global movement of 1968 (published as The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968). He has been teaching at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. In 2001, he did research at the May 18 Institute at Chonnam National University in Kwangju South Korea, especially focusing on the 1980 uprising. For 6 six years, he was editor of New Political Science and brought many unknown issues into public view, with special issues on the Sudan and one on the Black Panther Party (published as a book by Routledge–Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party–coedited with Kathleen Cleaver.) A peace advocate by nature, he is also unwilling to tolerate injustice and work incessantly for the realization of his ideals.

MORE INFO:

Moroccans protest prison sentences of anti-poverty activists

The post Moroccan Journalist’s Prison Sentence Increased on Appeal to 15 Years – by George Katsiaficas appeared first on Void Network.

Following the tragic events of the recent murders of 7 immigrant women in Cyprus we are calling for a March on Sunday 5th of May 14:00 starting from GSO Molos to the centre of the town in order to demonstrate our rage and disbelief to the State that let those women in despair. Domestic workers have Human Rights and those should be respected.

This is a MARCH AGAINST RACISM, A MEMORIAL MARCH FOR THE VICTIMS OF OUR INDIFFERENCE.

Texts, Posters and Leaflets. Ready to print and share – Κείμενα, Πόστερς και Τρικάκια για εκτύπωση και διαμοιρασμό:  https://www.dropbox.com

For almost two weeks now, the Cypriot society has been following the dramatic developments of finding dead bodies of murdered women, in a shaft at the Mitsero area and at a firing range at Orounda. Further Investigations are being carried out to find the missing body of the six-year-old daughter of one of the victims, as well as the bodies of a mother and her daughter from Romania.

Various analysts and experts appear daily in the media to explain these happenings and how we came across to witnessing the biggest crime in the history of this country. They talk about their analysis of the killer’s personality and actions, their analysis of how the victims were found in the shaft and in the firing range, their analysis of the total number of victims, the ways the offender approached his victims, the responsibilities of the police, etc., etc., etc.,…

We would like to raise a question that is not mentioned by ANY analyst… The so-called “Illegal People”, referring to the immigrants who, when fired for various reasons by their employers, are considered by this state as illegal. Because of their fear of being arrested and deported, they become “invisible”. People with no families or relatives in the country, without any security or protection, without papers. In many cases these are young women, single parents and all alone, trying to make it through under conditions of insecurity and terror. Such was the case of Marry Rose and her young daughter Sierra, quite similar was also the case of Livia and her daughter Helena, which were not only the victims of a serial killer, but “murdered” by the system itself and the society in general, who have exposed them and thus made them vulnerable and easy prey for exploitation and ultimately, for them being murdered, because of their class and origin.
Racism is a daily phenomenon for all immigrants living in Cyprus.

Devaluation in work and conditions of slavery, inhumane behavior, beatings, abuse, rape, humiliation, obsolescence, hostility, and ridicule are just a few examples of behaviors that immigrants are facing every day in Cyprus.

From the moment an immigrant decides to work in Cyprus, he or she has to pay the amount of around 4,000 euro to Human Traffickers. The Cyprus Republic is shamed to be one of the countries black-listed as a Human Trafficking destination. The immigrant’s debt takes years of labor to pay off. Countless times these workers get fired by their employers in a short period of time, as an example immigrants who are called to care for the elderly, with the result of not being able to pay off their debts and therefore left with a huge amount in a mortgage in their countries of origin.

Yes, the police bear enormous responsibility for what has happened. It is well proven and evidenced by various testimonials that there were repeated complaints about the missing women and children a long time ago. These pieces of evidence were in the hands of the police and for purely racist reasons, they had not acted to prevent the murders which followed. They did nothing, apparently because they were sure that these women and children had left Cyprus -without passports, salary, and other basics- because the racist Cypriot stereotype said “this is what these women do” and these words were taken as a fact by the police.
For many, Police is considered to be the protector of all citizens. But who do they really protect? The ones that have the power to control and to change it. The regime that ‘’feeds’’ the police and the governance that is called to service. For all the rest it has only one role, the role of repression for the benefit of the system! It has the role of suppressing immigrants and worker’s strikes maintaining segregation in privileged and non-privileged classes in the society. This is the police for all of us. A class repressive mechanism in the hands of the state.
All of the above-mentioned responsibilities burden everyone in the leading pyramid of the police, but also the political leaders and ministers. This totally racist negligence suggested by the state institutions leaves the Republic of Cyprus exposed to intense violations of basic human rights and cannot simply be restored by the resignation of certain officials.

Little Sierra and Elena just like the rest of the women, were not just killed by the murderer but also by the police. But all of us, through our indifference to the problems, the living conditions of immigrants, our tolerance to racists, to the patriarch stereotype in our home, in our work, in our neighborhood, for us not doing enough to eradicate the obscurantist perceptions in the society that we live in. If we want to call ourselves anti-racist, anti-fascist, PEOPLE! we shall participate in the memorial and solidarity march to the victims and immigrant communities in our country.

MARCH AGAINST RACISM, MEMORIAL MARCH FOR THE VICTIMS OF OUR INDIFFERENCE

Anarchist Group SPIRITHKIA

Ολόκληρη η Κυπριακή κοινωνία και όχι μόνο, εδώ και δυο εβδομάδες, παρακολουθεί τις εξελίξεις γύρω από την ανεύρεση πτωμάτων δολοφονημένων γυναικών, σε φρεάτιο στο Μιτσερό και στο πεδίο βολής της Ορούντας. Έρευνες γίνονται και για τον εντοπισμό της σορού της εξάχρονης κορούλας του ενός εκ των θυμάτων, όπως και για μια μάνα με την οκτάχρονη κορούλα της από την Ρουμανία.

Καθημερινά παρελαύνουν από τα ΜΜΕ αναλυτές και ειδικοί προσπαθώντας να μας εξηγήσουν τι συνέβη και πως φτάσαμε να γίνουμε μάρτυρες του μεγαλύτερου εγκλήματος στη χώρα μας. Αναλύσεις για την προσωπικότητα και την δράση του θύτη, αναλύσεις για το πως βρέθηκαν τα θύματα στο φρεάτιο και στο πεδίο βολής, αναλύσεις για τον συνολικό αριθμό των θυμάτων, για τους τρόπους που ο δράστης προσέγγιζε τα θύματα του, για τις ευθύνες της αστυνομίας, για, για, για…
Συμπληρώνουμε ακόμα ένα δεδομένο που δεν αναφέρεται πουθενά και από κανένα αναλυτή. Τους «Παράνομους Ανθρώπους». Δηλαδή τους εργάτες/τριες μετανάστες, που όταν εκδιωχθούν για χίλιους δυο λόγους από τους εργοδότες τους, θεωρούνται από το κράτος παράνομοι/ες. Μπροστά στον φόβο της σύλληψης και της απέλασης γίνονται «αόρατοι». Άνθρωποι χωρίς συγγενείς, χωρίς ασφάλεια, χωρίς προστασία, χωρίς χαρτιά. Πάρα πολλές φορές και νεαρές κοπέλες ολομόναχες, μονογονιοί που προσπαθούν να τα βγάλουν πέρα, μέσα σε συνθήκες τρόμου και ανασφάλειας. Τέτοια ήταν και η περίπτωση της Marry Rose και της μικρής Sierra όπως, με μικρές παραλλαγές, και η περίπτωση της Λίβια και της κόρης της Έλενα, οι οποίες δεν έγιναν μόνο τα θύματα ενός δολοφόνου, αλλά «δολοφονήθηκαν» προ πολλού από το ίδιο το σύστημα και την κοινωνία εκθέτοντας τες και κατ’επέκταση καθιστώντας τες ευάλωτες και εύκολη λεία για εκμετάλλευση και εν τέλει για την ίδια τους την δολοφονία, λόγω της ταξικής τους καταγωγής.
Η ρατσιστική αντιμετώπιση είναι καθημερινό φαινόμενο για όλες και όλους τους μετανάστες/τριες που ζουν στο νησί μας. Υποτίμηση στις δουλείες και συνθήκες σκλαβιάς, προώθηση εργαζομένων από συγγενή σε συγγενή ωσάν να είναι ιδιοκτησία τους, απάνθρωπες συμπεριφορές, ξυλοδαρμοί, κακοποιήσεις, βιασμοί, εξευτελισμοί, απαξίωση, εχθρικότητα και χλευασμός, είναι μόνο μερικά παραδείγματα συμπεριφορών που ο μετανάστης και η μετανάστρια αντιμετωπίζουν καθημερινά στη Κύπρο.

Ένας/μια μετανάστης/τρια από την στιγμή που αποφασίζει να εργαστεί στην Κύπρο είναι αναγκασμένος να καταβάλει ένα ποσό της τάξης των 3-4 χιλιάδων ευρώ σε Human Traffickers που “κανονίζουν” τα χαρτιά του και τις διαδικασίες “νομιμοποίησης” του. Η Κύπρος φιγουράρει ψηλά μέσα σε μαύρες λίστες Human Trafficking προορισμών, γεγονός άγνωστο στην κυπριακή κοινωνία. Για την εξόφληση του προαναφερθέν χρέους απαιτούνται χρόνια εργασίας. Πολλές φορές εργάτριες και εργάτες απολύονται από τους εργοδότες τους σε σύντομο χρονικά διάστημα, όπως για παράδειγμα οι μετανάστες/τριες που καλούνται για την φροντίδα ηλικιωμένων, με αποτέλεσμα να μένουν εκτεθειμένοι/ες λόγω των χρεών που έχουν στους traffickers τους και κατατρεγμένοι ως τις χώρες προορισμού τους.

Η αστυνομία φέρει τεράστιες ευθύνες για το ότι έχει συμβεί. Αποδεδειγμένα είχε μαρτυρίες και καταγγελίες για τις ελλείπουσες και για καθαρά ρατσιστικούς λόγους δεν ενήργησε για να αποτρέψει και άλλες δολοφονίες. Είχε καταγγελίες για σημαντικές λεπτομέρειες που αφορούσαν τις μητέρες και τα παιδιά τους, αλλά δεν έκανε τίποτα, προφανώς γιατί ήταν σίγουρη για το ότι μητέρες και παιδιά έφυγαν από την Κύπρο, χωρίς διαβατήρια, μισθό και άλλα βασικά, ήταν σίγουρη γιατί “έτσι κάμουν τούτες’’.

Αλλά ποια είναι η αστυνομία; Η αστυνομία για πολλούς έχει ρόλο προστάτιδας, αλλά προστάτιδας για ποιους; Για τους βολεμένους και το σύστημα που την ταΐζει, για το ίδιο το κράτος. Για όλους/ες τους/τις υπόλοιπους/ες έχει μόνο ένα ρόλο, τον ρόλο της καταστολής προς όφελος του συστήματος! Έχει τον ρόλο της καταστολής του μετανάστη, των απεργιών, των οπαδών, της διατήρησης του διαχωρισμού σε προνομιούχους και μη. Αυτή είναι η αστυνομία για όλους και όλες εμάς. Ένας ταξικός κατασταλτικός μηχανισμός στα χέρια του κράτους.

Όλες οι προαναφερθείσες ευθύνες, βαραίνουν όλους στην ηγετική πυραμίδα της αστυνομίας, αλλά και τους πολιτικούς τους προϊστάμενους. Αυτή η ολοκληρωτική ρατσιστική αμέλεια που υπέδειξαν οι θεσμοί του κράτους, αφήνουν εκτεθειμένη την Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία για κατάφορες παραβιάσεις βασικών ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων και δεν μπορούν να αποκατασταθούν με μια ή δυο παραιτήσεις προσώπων.
Τις μικρές Sierra και Έλενα όπως και τις υπόλοιπες γυναίκες, δεν τις σκότωσε μόνο ο δολοφόνος, η αστυνομία και οι θεσμοί. Αλλά όλοι και όλες μας με την αδιαφορία για τα προβλήματα, τις συνθήκες διαβίωσης των μεταναστών, για την ανοχή μας στον/ην ρατσιστή/τρια, στον πατριάρχη στο σπίτι μας, στην δουλεία μας, στην γειτονιά μας, για το ότι δεν κάναμε αρκετά για να ξεριζώσουμε τις σκοταδιστικές αντιλήψεις στην κοινωνία που ζούμε. Αν θέλουμε να ονομαζόμαστε αντιρατσιστές, αντιφασίστες, ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΙ! συμμετέχουμε στην πορεία μνήμης και αλληλεγγύης στα θύματα και στις μεταναστευτικές κοινότητες στη χώρα μας.

ΚΥΡ. 5 ΜΑΗ 2019- ΛΕΜΕΣΟΣ / ΩΡΑ 14.00- GSO Molos

ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΡΑΤΣΙΣΜΟ,
ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΜΝΗΜΗΣ ΣΤΑ ΘΥΜΑΤΑ ΤΗΣ ΑΔΙΑΦΟΡΙΑΣ ΜΑΣ

Αναρχική Ομάδα Σπιριθκιά

The post March Against Racism- SUN. 5/5/2019 Limassol Cyprus appeared first on Void Network.

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, an unknown level of catastrophic, inescapable, runaway warming is inevitable. The reality is: we’re probably not going to make it. It’s highly dubious at this juncture that humanity is going to win the fight against climate change.

Yet that is for a very unexpected — yet perfectly predictable — reason: the sudden explosion in global fascism — which in turn is a consequence of capitalism having failed as a model of global order. If, when, Brazil elects a neo-fascist who plans to raze and sell off the Amazon — the world’s lungs — then how do you suppose the fight against warming will be won? It will be set back by decades — decades…we don’t have. America’s newest Supreme Court justice is already striking down environmental laws — in his first few days in office — but he will be on the bench for life…beside a President who hasn’t just decimated the EPA, but stacked it with the kind of delusional simpletons who think global warming is a hoax. Again, the world is set by back by decades…it doesn’t have. Do you see my point yet? Let me make it razor sharp.

My friends, catastrophic climate change is not a problem for fascists — it is a solution. History’s most perfect, lethal, and efficient one means of genocide, ever, period. Who needs to build a camp or a gas chamber when the flood and hurricane will do the dirty work for free? Please don’t mistake this for conspiracism: climate change accords perfectly with the foundational fascist belief that only the strong should survive, and the weak — the dirty, the impure, the foul — should perish. That is why neo-fascists do not lift a finger to stop climate change — but do everything they can to in fact accelerate it, and prevent every effort to reverse or mitigate it.

But I want to tell you the sad, strange, terrible story of how we got here. Call it a lament for a planet, if you like. You see, not so long ago, we — the world — were optimistic that climate change could be managed, in at least some way. The worst impacts probably avoided, forestalled, escaped — if we worked together as a world. But now we are not so sure at all. Why is that? What happened? Fascism happened — at precisely the wrong moment. That shredded all our plans. But fascism happened because capitalism failed — failed for the world, but succeeded wildly for capitalists.

Now, this will be a subtle story, because I want to tell it to you the way it should be told. Let me begin with an example, and zoom out from there.

The world is in the midst of a great mass extinction — one of just a handful in history. Now, if we had been serious, at any point, really, about preventing climate catastrophe, we would have made an effort to “price in” this extinction — with a new set of global measures for GDP and profit and costs and tariffs and taxes and so on. But we didn’t, so all these dead beings, these animals and plants and microbes and so on — strange and wonderful things we will never know — are “unpriced” in the foolish, self-destructive economy we have made. Life is literally free to capitalism, and so capitalism therefore quite naturally abuses it and destroys it, in order to maximize its profits, and that is how you get a spectacular, eerie, grim mass extinction in half a century, of which there have only been five in all of previous history.

But biological life was not the only unpaid cost — “negative externality” — of capitalism. It was just one. And these unpaid costs weren’t to be additive: they were to multiply, exponentiate, snarl upon themselves — in ways that we would come to find impossible to then untangle. (And all this was what economists and thinkers, especially American ones, seemed to whistle at and walk away, anytime someone suggested it.)

You see, capitalism promised people — the middle classes which had come to make up the modern world — better lives. But it had no intention of delivering — its only goal was to maximize profits for the owners of capital, not to make anyone else one iota richer. So first it ate through people’s towns and cities and communities, then through social systems, then through their savings, and finally, through their democracies. Even if people’s incomes “rose”, cleverly, the prices they paid for the very same things which capitalism sold back to them with the other hand, the very things they were busy producing, rose even more — and so middle classes began to stagnate, while inequality exploded. Let’s specify the unpaid costs in question: trust, connection, cohesion, belonging, meaning, purpose, truth itself.

These were social costs — not environmental ones, like the mass extinction above. And I will make the link between the two clear in just a moment. First I want you to understand their effect.

A sense of frustration, of resignation, of pessimism came to sweep the world. People lost trust in their great systems and institutions. They turned away from democracy, and towards authoritarianism, in a great, thunderous wave, which tilted the globe on its very axis. The wave rippled outward from history’s greatest epicenter of human stupidity, America, like a supersonic tsunami, crossing Europe, reaching Asia’s shores, crashing south into Brazil, cresting far away in Australia. Nations fell like dominoes to a new wave of fascists, who proclaimed the same things as the old ones — reichs and camps and reigns of the pure. People began to turn on those below them — the powerless one, the different one, the Mexican, the Jew, the Muslim— in the quest for just the sense of superiority and power, the fortune and glory, capitalism had promised them, but never delivered.

The capitalists had gotten rich — unimaginably rich. They were richer than kings of old. But capitalism had imploded into fascism. History laughed at the foolishness of people who once again believed, like little children hearing a fairy tale, that capitalism — which told people to exploit and abuse one another, not hold each other close, mortal and frail things that they are — was somehow ever going to benefit them.

Now. Let me connect the dots of capitalism’s unpaid social and environmental costs, and how they are linked, not additively, 2+2=5, but with the mathematics of catastrophe.

When we tell the story of how capitalism imploded into fascism, it will go something like this: the social costs of capitalism meant that democracy collapsed into neo-fascism — and neo-fascism made it unlikely, if not outright impossible, that the world could do anything at all about climate change, in the short window it had left, at the precise juncture it needed to act most. Do you see the link? The terrible and tragic irony? How funny and sad it is?

The social costs of capitalism weren’t just additive to the environmental costs — they were more like multiplicative, snarled upon themselves, like a great flood meeting a great hurricane. The social costs exponentiated the environmental, making them now impossible to reduce, pay, address, manage. 2+2 didn’t equal 4 — it equalled infinity, in this case. Both together made a system that spiralled out of control. Wham! The planet’s fate was being sealed, by capitalism imploding into fascism — which meant that a disintegrating world could hardly work together anymore to solve its greatest problem of all.

Let me sharpen all that a little. By 2005, after a great tussle, much of the world had agreed on a plan to reduce carbon emissions — the Kyoto Protocol. It was just barely enough — barely — to imagine that one day climate change might be lessened and reduced enough to be manageable. Still, there was one notable holdout — as usual, America. Now, at this point, the world, which was in a very different place politically than it is today, imagined that with enough of the usual diplomatic bickering and horse-trading, maybe, just maybe, it would get the job done. And yet by 2010 or so, the point of all this, which was to create a global carbon pricing system had still not been accomplished — in large part thanks to America, whose unshakeable devotion to capitalism meant that such a thing was simply politically impossible. So by this point the world was behind — and yet, one could still imagine a kind of success. Maybe an American President would come along who would see sense. Maybe progress was going in the right direction, generally. After all, slowly, the world was making headway, towards less carbon emissions, towards a little more cooperation, here and there.

And then — Bang! America was the first nation to fall to the neo fascist wave. Instead of a President who might have taken the country into a decarbonized future, Americans elected the king of the idiots (no, please don’t give me an apologia for the electoral college.) This king of the idiots did what kings of idiots do: he lionized, of all things…coal. He questioned whether climate change was…real. He packed the government with lobbyists and cronies who were quite happy to see the world burn, if it meant a penthouse overlooking a drowned Central Park. He broke up with allies, friends, and partners. Do you see the point? The idea of a decarbonizing future was suddenly turned on its head. It had been a possibility yesterday — but now, it was becoming an impossibility.

Before the neofascist wave, the world might have indeed “solved” climate change. Maybe not in the hard sense that life would go on tomorrow as it does today — but in the soft sense that the worst and most vicious scenarios were mostly outlandish science fiction. That is because before the neofascist wave, we could imagine nations cooperating, if slowly, reluctantly, in piecemeal ways, towards things like protecting life, reducing carbon, pricing in the environment, and so on. These things can only be done through global cooperation, after all.

But after the neofascist wave, global cooperation — especially of a genuinely beneficial kind, not a predatory kind — began to become less and less possible by the day. The world was unravelling. When countries were trashing the United Nations and humiliating their allies and proclaiming how little they needed the world (all to score minor-league wins for oligarchs, who cashed in their chips, laughing )— how could such a globe cooperate more then? It couldn’t — and it can’t. So the neofascist wave which we are now in also means drastically less global cooperation — but less global cooperation means incalculably worse climate change.

So now let’s connect all the dots. Capitalism didn’t just rape the planet laughing, and cause climate change that way. It did something which history will think of as even more astonishing. By quite predictably imploding into fascism at precisely the moment when the world needed cooperation, it made it impossible, more or less, for the fight against climate change to gather strength, pace, and force. It wasn’t just the environmental costs of capitalism which melted down the planet — it was the social costs, too, which, by wrecking global democracy, international law, cooperation, the idea that nations should work together, made a fractured, broken world which no longer had the capability to act jointly to prevent the rising floodwaters and the burning summers.

(Now, it’s at this point that Americans will ask me, a little angrily, for “solutions”. Ah, my friends. When will you learn? Don’t you remember my point?

There are no solutions, because these were never “problems” to begin with. The planet, like society, is a garden, which needs tending, watering, care. The linkages between these things — inequality destabilizing societies making global cooperation less possible — are not things we can fix overnight, by turning a nut or a bolt, or throwing money at them. They never were. They are things we needed to see long ago, to really reject together, and invest in, nurture, protect, defend, for decades — so that capitalism did not melt down into fascism, and take away all our power to fight for our worlds, precisely when we would need it most.

But we did not do that. We were busy “solving problems”. Problems like…hey, how can I get my laundry done? Can I get my package delivered in one hour instead of one day? Wow — you mean I don’t have to walk down the street to get my pizza anymore? Amazing!! In this way, we solved all the wrong problems, if you like, but I would say that we solved mechanical problems instead of growing up as people. Things like climate change and inequality and fascism are not really “problems” — they are emergent processes, which join up, in great tendrils of ruin, each piling on the next, which result from decades of neglect, inaction, folly, blindness. We did not plant the seeds, or tend to our societies, economies, democracies, or planet carefully enough — and now we are harvesting bitter ruin instead. Maybe you see my point. Or maybe you don’t see my point at all. I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a tough one to catch sight of)

The tables have turned. The problem isn’t climate change anymore, and the solution isn’t global cooperation — at least given today’s implosive politics. The problem is you — if you are not one of the chosen, predatory few. And the solution to the problem of you is climate change. To the fascists, that is. They are quite overjoyed to have found the most spectacular and efficient and lethal engine of genocide and devastation known to humankind, which is endless, free natural catastrophe. Nothing sorts the strong from the weak more ruthlessly like a flooded planet, a thundering sky, a forest in flames, a parched ocean. A man with a gun is hardly a match for a planet on fire.

I think this much becomes clearer by the year: we have failed, my friends, to save our home. How funny that we are focused, instead, on our homelands. It would be funny, disgraceful, and pathetic of me to say: is there still time to save ourselves? That is the kind of nervous, anxious selfishness that Americans are known for — and it is only if we reject it, really, that we learn the lesson of now. Let us simply imagine, instead, that despite all the folly and stupidity and ruin of this age, the strongmen and the weak-minded, in those dark and frightening nights when the rain pours and the thunder roars, we might still light a candle for democracy, for freedom, and for truth. The truth is that we do not deserve to be saved if we do not save them first.

Umair Haque- October 2018

source: Eudaimonia & Co

The post How Capitalism Torched the Planet by Imploding Into Fascism- by Umair Haque appeared first on Void Network.

Jovenel Moïse, the corrupt US backed president of Haiti, is faced with a rapidly spreading insurrection. The population had resoundingly rejected his claim to authority by repudiating the voting process, rising up during the elections, and now fighting for the president’s immediate removal.

The people in Haiti have been in near constant revolt since colonization and slavery. Resisting the French, the Americans, and the Duvalier dictatorship, Haitians have resisted all forms of subjugation, colonial and indigenous. After the US kidnapping of popular president, Aristide, the Haitian political system has been generally unpopular and, ultimately, a client of the US government.

Moïse was “elected” under the shadow of rebellion. Each step he took closer to political power was met with widespread popular disdain. His party, the right wing Tèt Kale (PHTK), was renowned for its corruption and incompetence. Moïse declared, “I alone have the solution for the question of corruption,” while he assumed power under an indictment for money laundering. He put several new PHTK politicians in positions of power while they were suspected of financial transgressions.

Last summer, the government implemented an IMF austerity program that raised the price of gasoline, diesel, and kerosine to almost 50%. This draconian attack was met with fierce resistance.

As the resistance tapered off the scope of the capitalist attack on the poor became clear. The Venezuelan government established a fund called PetroCaribe that offered revenue for Haiti. The program was promoted as a program of “economic solidarity,” valued at $3.8 billion dollars. The fund was supposed to help restore the country after the hurricane, and generally increase the standard of living for the poor. This money, in actuality, was squandered and embezzled. The resistance to the state immediately intensified and has never subsided. What began as a movement against state corruption has now morphed into resistance against the president and his party. Militants are not articulating piecemeal demands but are calling for the overthrow of the ruling party.

On February 9th revolutionaries blocked the roads to the president’s home and stoned his property. Thousands of people poured into Port-au-Prince demanding the overthrow of the regime, and the state has begun killing protesters.

Anarchists, revolutionaries, and internationalists have a responsibility. When the poor is under assault, fighting to regain dignity, and overthrow right wing forces revolutionaries must move in tandem. As the US state is impulsively trying to organize a coup, and destroy the communal/revolutionary process in Venezuela it is also propping up a corrupt, far right government in Haiti that is directly looting the oil revenue that was gifted from Venezuela.

Revolutionaries have an opportunity to increase international connections, participate in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, and combat the fascist momentum in the Americas.

Revolutionary action against Haitian state institutions is of utmost importance now, and small acts of solidarity can have a huge impact. The time to act is now!

source: Abolition Media Worldwide 

READ also

The Haitian Times

Mass Protests In Haiti, Like France’s Yellow Vests, Threaten Modern Oligarchic Structure

by Whitney Webb

MintPress News 

Haitian Authorities Arrest Americans Transporting Cache of Weapons amid Uprising

“President Jovenel Moise has brought home mercenaries to assassinate not only a desperate people who are clamoring for his resignation by demonstrating peacefully but especially his political opponents.” — Haitian online publication Vedeth

The post Haiti: Prelude to a Revolution-Mass Protests, Like in France, Threaten Modern Oligarchic Structure appeared first on Void Network.

Other criticisms confuse a theoretical thesis for a political standpoint, waiting for the famous contradiction between “capital and labor” to go out in the streets in pure form, in a class-struggle devoid of grey areas. Alongside come the expected accusations of being “petty-bourgeois” and “inter-classist”, as if it is possible to have a mass uprising which is not heterogeneous or as if it is impossible to have problems, demands and claims which may not be strictly “proletariat” but nonetheless concern an important part of the working class.

Even more so today, where the generalization of phenomena like indebtedness and precarity have created a wide gamut of common affects and impasses among the middle and lower stratums of capitalist social formations. There are of course critiques which are sensible and insightful, highlighting real contradictions and problems, like the presence of far-right groups, which is enabled by some identifiable features of the movement. It is also astutely stressed that despite the intensity of riots, on the level of political discourse, there is no critique or questioning of the state as the guarantor of right and wellbeing, nor of capital as a social relation. Having said that, it needs to be stressed that the “populist” rhetoric about privileged elites and a disenfranchised people or about the division between rich and poor is not “wrong” in some descriptive sense, that is why after all it has proved time and again successful as a discursive representation of social divisions. The problem with this type of discourse rather lies on the analytical and political level, that it does not pose the issue of the relations and forms that constitute the material presupposition of the separation between people/elite and rich/poor. Here though is the real quandary: even if they are correct, the externality of these critiques relative to the struggles and what is at stake for those who participate in them, reveals the weakness of those who do the criticism to have any meaningful influence in mass movements. Thus, the critique acquires a two-way direction, returning to its source. In fact, the problem does not concern only the ultra-left, but spreads throughout the left hemisphere, since what has become manifest once again is the weakness of the Left and of Anarchy to exercise real hegemony, that is, to affect (political) culture.

To be sure, it is necessary here to move beyond a prescriptive standpoint and try to understand this weakness as a historical phenomenon. Nonetheless, if a small leftward turn can be traced, it has partly to do with the fact that leftists and anarchists did participate in the yellow vests instead of simply passing judgments on them. Regardless how we would like things to be, the fact that red and black flags have not been waving in the thousands does not make the yellow vests movement reactionary by default.
The same is true for the presence of national flags, so much so of the French flag which concentrates multiple and conflicting significations and meanings. This is not to say that the presence of national symbols is not potentially problematic, especially in the sense that it tends to assert the division between native citizens and foreigners upon which the modern national state rests. Having said that, the presence of xenophobic elements must not be overstressed. Neither the identity nor most of the demands and claims of the movement are xenophobic or nationalist. Everyone can on principle become a yellow vest, which is why it has been relatively easy for different social groups to flow into the movement. Moreover, the latter addresses issues which concern many people regardless of their ethnic identity. For is there a wage earner that does not want a better wage or anyone living in a given community who would not benefit from greater access to decision making?

It is such economic and political demands and aspirations pertaining to social justice and civic recognition that provide the material ground for an international/polyethnic unity on a mass scale, and without which calls for such unity remain evocative but idealistic declarations of what should happen. Even if from our perspective such demands and aspirations are not enough, radicalization can only happen as a dialectical process immanent to the movement.

The yellow vests are a popular uprising – plebeian is an equally valid term – in the full sense of the term: a representative part of “the people” have risen against a life that becomes increasingly difficult to live. Obviously, at a first level, the expectations and demands of the movement cannot but express the reality of the people who compose it, since this very same reality is determined by an established economy of desire. Indeed, the fact that – despite the extensive mechanisms of consensus and integration that exist in modern capitalist societies – social experience is never unitary, nor even within the same class, helps explain the plurality of desiring flows permeating the movement, thus also its inner tensions and contradictions. Yet even if the yellow vests remain for the most part attached to a social reality against which they rebel but beyond which they cannot see, the core claims and aspirations of the movement are not reactionary. Nor has the far-right been able to acquire hegemony, no matter if after the end of the movement Le Pen or other rightwing groups will be able to draw votes from it. Moreover, as long as they exist social movements are by definition not static. Apart from the already manifested and noteworthy capacity for mass scale, horizontal direct action, there has been also a marked radicalization as well as a move towards a more “leftwing” direction.

Where can the whole thing lead to? It cannot go unnoticed that the movement has forced Macron, self-styled as a hard-poised reformer who will “not back down”, to make concessions and (perhaps even more crucially) recognize the movement and its concerns. On the other hand, there are signs of fatigue and demassification and it is possible that the yellow vests have started encountering the same limits that other movements in the recent cycle of struggles have stumbled upon. We cannot fail to notice especially that no organs and institutions capable of acting as “dual power” have emerged. Thus, while their persistent refusal to enter negotiations and be represented is a strength of the movement and a source of potential, the lack of representative organs leads to an impasse, since the current structures of representation are not challenged on the level of an alternative. Again, balancing between critical comprehension and a prescriptive standpoint is the key for an effective political intervention. We cannot of course simply will a movement to follow our desired course and if the revolt in France shows something, just like the anti austerity movement in Greece (not to speak of the much more minoritarian movements in other western countries), is that a revolution is not in the ordre du jour. Having said that, the transformation of social relations is a macro-historical process, which passes though failed expectations, mass unrest and uprisings of wide intensity and extensity.

The yellow vests are such an uprising. In fact, they have a crucial characteristic, which adds to their significance: their class composition is nothing less than the social backbone of contemporary capitalist societies. To this extent, they indicate the depth of the current crisis. Equally important, the movement has managed to reveal the non-correspondence between a people and its state/juridical representation. This has further verified that the greatest threat for a state is always its population. It follows that although in the short-term the yellow vests may not be the harbingers of spring, or worse they may be the spasms of a long winter, they nonetheless foretell of a possible revolutionary outbreak. After all, no matter what the content of a revolution may be, it will concern much more than the actions of small and ideologically compact groups. Not because everything that is of mass scale is necessarily positive and experiments on the molecular level irrelevant, far from it. But it is politically absurd to advocate revolution and dismiss mass movements that fight for an improvement of life and also have horizontal/egalitarian qualities and conversely valorize small and ideologically homogeneous spaces as prefigurations of a grand communist future. Instead of an either/or logic, the question should be how the latter political milieus can positively contribute on the former movements. Nor can revolutionary change be reduced to a wave of irregular attacks from “the excluded”, as fantasized by romantic representations of the marginalized proletariat living in the ghettos, banlieues and slums of the modern metropolis. While, the latter groups obviously must be empowered, we simply cannot talk seriously about a social transformation of wide scale – and in face of what takes place but also of what is coming is there anything less needed? – that does not embrace broad segments of the middle and working classes. It is from this viewpoint that we insist that the yellow vests, both in what they have done as well as in all those things that they could (not) have done, are not only a sign of the times but an image of an uncertain future which germinates with hope.

In all events, from a distance, every judgment, praise and critique are easy. However, because many of us have found ourselves in a similar position, the question faced by the politicized minorities that still raise red and black flags remains: can we participate in something that exceeds us, in struggles that pose the problem of organization and justice on the level of a historical stake, to find ourselves next to people that we do not agree nor identify with, to risk, to err, to be disappointed? If the answer is negative, we can verbalize about revolution, but we will not be one of its productive vectors.

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Text by Void Circle – political assembly of Void Network / member of Anarchist federation in Greece

VOID NETWORK (Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts) https://voidnetwork.gr

The post VOID NETWORK- Signs of the times / Images from the future: Thoughts on the “yellow vests” and the revolt in France. appeared first on Void Network.

NEW DELHI: Nov. 21, 2018 — After Twitter CEO and Co-Founder Jack Dorsey was pictured in India holding a poster reading, “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy,” pundits across the internet exploded with comparisons of anti-Brahminism to anti-Semitism.

Last week, Dorsey attended a meeting with female journalists, activists, and writers in Delhi. During the meeting, Dalit activist Sanghapali Aruna gifted him the poster. After the meeting, Dorsey posed for a group photo while holding the poster; subsequently, Indian journalist Anna Vetticad, who was present, shared the photo via Twitter.

The photo soon created a firestorm as several prominent pundits asserted that the poster was “inciting hatred” against a specific community. Arguing that Brahmins are a persecuted group analogous to European Jews, former business executive Mohandas Pai asked, “If Jack is given a poster with anti Semitic messages in a meeting, will his team allow him to hold it up?” David Frawley, who writes about Hinduism, stated, “Anti-Brahminism is a prejudice like Anti-Semitism.” The Hindu American Foundation (HAF), a US-based nonprofit, issued a statement claiming that the term “Brahminism” is an anti-Hindu slur which “has roots in white and Christian supremacy, and anti-Semitism.”

“Brahminism traps people in a caste system of artificial social hierarchy,” remarks Arvin Valmuci of Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI) “It specifically seeks to control women because they are viewed as the gateways to protecting caste purity. This new effort to annihilate caste by challenging Brahmanical patriarchy demonstrates that the outrage of upper-castes only emerges in response to anti-caste action. These same individuals and organizations are silent when it comes to the starving children of India, gang-rapes of women and girls, murders of men and women who marry outside of caste. Their only true interest lies in protecting the system of Brahminism.”

“Brahminism is an ideology which constructs a society where a caste known as Brahmins are taught to be and treated as superior to all other people,” explains South Asian affairs analyst Pieter Friedrich. “It is the practice of caste, a system that categorizes the vast mass of humanity as subhumans whose presence or touch can pollute a Brahmin. It literally teaches that a Brahmin ‘is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings.’ Anti-Brahminism is focused on deconstructing this supremacist ideology by teaching equality, encouraging inter-marriage, inter-dining, and other social interactions which are prohibited by Brahminism, and ultimately annihilating the caste system. Guidelines for Brahmins, many of which are related in the ancient verses of the Manusmriti, are very close in spirit to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws as they mandate ghettoization and oppression of non-Brahmins for the purpose of maintaining racial purity.”

Manusmriti (or “Laws of Manu”), an approximately 2,000 year-old text considered the social code of conduct for Brahminism, details how the body of a god, Brahma, was broken into four pieces, with Brahmins (the highest caste) created from his head and Shudras (the lowest caste) from his feet. “There is no code of laws more infamous regarding social rights than the Laws of Manu,” wrote Dalit civil rights champion Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. “Any instance from anywhere of social injustice must pale before it.”

The rights and privileges of Brahmins — who are considered “twice-born” — are explicitly detailed in Manusmriti’s hundreds of laws. Some of these include:

– “Other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the Brahmin.”

– “Let (the first part of) a Brahmin’s name (denote something) auspicious… but a Shudra’s (express something) contemptible…. (The second part of) a Brahmin’s (name) shall be (a word) implying happiness… and of a Shudra’s (an expression) denoting service.”

– “A Brahmin who takes a Shudra wife to his bed, will (after death) sink into hell; if he begets a child by her, he will lose the rank of a Brahmin.”

– “One whose (only or first) wife is a Shudra female, the son of a remarried woman… he who instructs Shudra pupils and he whose teacher is a Shudra… he who has contracted an alliance with outcasts either through the Veda or through a marriage… he who gains his subsistence from Shudras… a shepherd, a keeper of buffaloes, the husband of a remarried woman, and a carrier of dead bodies, (all these) must be carefully avoided.”

– “Let him always delight in truthfulness, (obedience to) the sacred law, conduct worthy of an Aryan, and purity.”

– “Let the king, after rising early in the morning, worship Brahmins.”

– “Let him daily worship aged Brahmins who know the Veda and are pure.”

– “To honor the Brahmins, is the best means for a king to secure happiness.”

– “A Brahmin who subsists only by the name of his caste (jati), or one who merely calls himself a Brahmin (though his origin be uncertain), may, at the king’s pleasure, interpret the law to him, but never a Shudra.”

– “When a learned Brahmin has found treasure, deposited in former (times), he may take even the whole (of it); for he is master of everything. When the king finds treasure of old concealed in the ground let him give one half to Brahmins and place the (other) half in his treasury.”

– “A once-born man (a Shudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin…. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmins their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears.”

– “A man who is not a Brahmin ought to suffer death for adultery (samgrahana); for the wives of all the four castes even must always be carefully guarded.”

– “A Shudra who has intercourse with a woman of a twice-born caste (varna), guarded or unguarded, (shall be punished in the following manner): if she was unguarded, he loses the part (offending) and all his property; if she was guarded, everything (even his life).”

– “No greater crime is known on earth than slaying a Brahmin; a king, therefore, must not even conceive in his mind the thought of killing a Brahmin.”

– “A Brahmin who approaches unguarded females (of the) Kshatriya or Vaishya (castes), or a Shudra female, shall be fined five hundred (panas); but (for intercourse with) a female (of the) lowest (castes), one thousand.”

– “A Brahmin who, because he is powerful, out of greed makes initiated (men of the) twice-born (castes) against their will do the work of slaves, shall be fined by the king six hundred (panas). But a Shudra, whether bought or unbought, he may compel to do servile work; for he was created by the Self-existent (Svayambhu) to be the slave of a Brahmin. A Shudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from servitude; since that is innate in him, who can set him free from it?”

– “The property of a Brahmin must never be taken by the king, that is a settled rule; but (the property of men) of other castes the king may take.”

– “A Brahmin, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity.”

– “To serve Brahmins (who are) learned in the Vedas, householders, and famous (for virtue) is the highest duty of a Shudra, which leads to beatitude. (A Shudra who is) pure, the servant of his betters, gentle in his speech, and free from pride, and always seeks a refuge with Brahmins, attains (in his next life) a higher caste.”

Born as a Dalit, which is the self-adopted term for those historically treated as Untouchables or outcastes (those considered below Shudras), Dr. Ambedkar was educated at Columbia University and London School of Economics before leading a civil rights movement in India. One of his most famous protests was the December 25, 1927 public burning of copies of Manusmriti.

In his book, The Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar denounced “the penal sanctions of the Manusmriti.” Suggesting a legal framework was necessary to counteract Manu’s laws, he wrote: “The priestly class must be brought under control by some such legislation as I have outlined above. This will prevent it from doing mischief and from misguiding people. It will democratize it by throwing it open to everyone. It will certainly help to kill the Brahminism and will also help to kill Caste, which is nothing but Brahminism incarnate. Brahminism is the poison which has spoiled Hinduism. You will succeed in saving Hinduism if you will kill Brahminism.”

Concluding that “we must uproot Brahminism,” Ambedkar explained in a 1938 speech:

“Brahminism is an enemy which must be dealt with. By Brahminism, I do not mean the power, privileges and interests of Brahmins as a community. That is not the sense in which I am using the word. By Brahminism, I mean the negation of the spirit of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. In that sense, it is rampant in classes and is not confined to the Brahmins alone, though they have been the originators of it. This Brahminism which pervades everywhere and which regulates the thought and deeds of all classes is an incontrovertible fact. It is also an incontrovertible fact that the Brahminism gives certain classes a privileged position. It denies certain other classes even equality of opportunity.”

Furthermore, in a 1943 speech, Ambedkar identified Brahminism as a supremacist ideology. He stated, “Long before Nietzsche was born, Manu had proclaimed the gospel which Nietzsche sought to preach. It is a religion which is not intended to establish liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a gospel which proclaims the worship of the superman — the Brahmin — by the rest of the Hindu Society. It propounds that the superman and his class alone are born to live and to rule. Others are born to serve them, and to nothing more. They have no life of their own to live, and no right to develop their own personality.”

According to a November 17 report by The New York Times, “The Dalit population, now estimated at more than 300 million, has been abused for as long as anyone can remember.” Although India’s 1950 constitution abolished the practice of Untouchability, it remains widespread and the practice of caste remains legal. The Times further reports, “95 percent of Indians still marry within their caste, experts say. And recent studies show income and education levels correlate very closely with caste…. The number of caste-based crimes has increased 25 percent since 2010, reaching nearly 41,000 cases in 2016, the last year on record.”

Speaking about the poster, Thenmozhi Soundararjan says, “The act of giving was an act of sharing our struggles and also the urgency of gender-based violence against Dalit women in India.” The Executive Director of Equality Labs, a South Asian community outreach organization, Soundararajan is also the co-creator of the “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” poster. In an interview with The Indian Express, she states, “We have just opened the conversation with #MeToo India and yet no one is talking about Tamil Nadu’s Raja Lakshmi the 13-year-old who was decapitated by her perpetrator for speaking out about her harassment. How many Raja Lakshmis must die before our cries are heard? Sharing art that reflects our urgency and our pain is a way of connecting the world to our vital movements of justice, healing, and accountability related to caste apartheid. Only the most cynical troll would try to pervert the call for justice. For me, if these casteist trolls spent even one ounce of this time raising the issues of caste and gender atrocity instead of this faux outrage we would not have to create posters like this.”

At a 2015 conference co-hosted by OFMI to examine “pan-Brahminism in South Asia,” ethnic studies professor Dr. Amrik Singh noted, “Our belief systems make us what we are. So, all humans are created equally, including Brahmins…. It’s the ideology, not human beings — human beings, all are created equally.” Valmuci agrees with Singh, adding, “The same subjugation of people upheld by Brahminical patriarchy is unfortunately present in every community in the world. Even Dalits fall prey to practicing Brahminical patriarchy. Smashing Brahminical patriarchy means nothing less than persuading the whole world of the truth of equality, liberty, and fraternity. We want a future where the names of the four castes — Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra — are abandoned and forgotten along with the hierarchy based on birth which those names create.”

Responding to allegations that use of the term “Brahminism” is analogous to anti-Semitism, Friedrich says, “HAF banks on American ignorance of the finer details of Indian religion and politics to propagandize dissent against religious nationalism, cultural supremacy, and Hindutva (a term with which most Americans are entirely unfamiliar) as ‘Hinduphobic’ — a strategy to corral and isolate nonconformists.” Opposition to Brahminism, he says, must be understood as a rejection of supremacy. “Comparing anti-Brahminism to anti-Semitism is not only logically absurd and intellectually dishonest, but it’s a real insult to those who suffered under the Holocaust. Anti-Brahminism is more accurately compared to anti-Nazism. Brahminism is a branch in the same tree as Nazism. Both are rooted in the philosophy of Aryanism, which focuses on dehumanization of others, social stratification and segregation, and belief in a supreme, pure race. The supposed superiority of Aryans is advanced by both ideologies to justify subjugating others and treating supposed non-Aryans as inferior. That’s exactly the belief system which led to the persecution of the Jews just as it leads today to the persecution of Mulnivasi Bahujans.”

HAF claims that “Brahminism was invented by 18th and 19th century European Indologists to describe and define Hinduism.” However, according to sociopolitical activist and analyst Dr. Manisha Bangar, the battle against caste traces back for thousands of years. “The argument given by mischievous Brahmin pseudo-historians that the caste/varna system is a British or Western construct or, at best, was created by Muslim invaders, is untenable and steeped in falsehood,” explains Dr. Bangar. “If that is true, then against what social order was Siddhartha Gautama Buddha fighting over 2,500 years ago? What were Kabir and Ravidas and Guru Nanak speaking against when they exposed caste discrimination and called for a society of equality?”

“This week we celebrate the birthday of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru,” says Balbir Singh Dhillon, the president of West Sacramento Sikh Gurdwara. “Our Guru worked to liberate the downtrodden from the shackles of Brahminism and other teachings designed to exploit people. He taught us a new path where there is no Hindu and no Muslim, where we reject castes and classes, and where we recognize the Lord’s light within all. Our Gurus brought the Order of the Khalsa to the Shudra and the Dalit in order to uplift the lowest of the low. Following their example, we call for an end to Brahminism, patriarchy, and every system of oppression.”

Bhajan Singh, the founder of OFMI, states, “Denial of the existence of Brahminism is part of the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to rewrite history.” The RSS, a nationalist paramilitary in India whose members include the Prime Minister, President, and Vice President, has a stated goal of declaring India a Hindu State. In recent years, it has aggressively pursued revision of school textbooks; most recently, Rajasthan State Education Minister Vasudev Devnani presented books produced by the RSS as models for new curriculum.

“The RSS isn’t confining its efforts to distort history to India, but extending its reach even into American classrooms,” notes Singh. He points to the years-long California textbook controversy which concluded in 2017 with adoption of a multitude of changes demanded by HAF and affiliated lobbyists. “The Hindu American Foundation worked to erase all references to how Guru Nanak challenged the authority of Brahmins and the caste order, as well insert claims that Bhagats like Kabir did not actually oppose caste. Their efforts were funded by RSS agents. HAF hired Murali Balaji as their Director of Education and Curriculum Reform in 2013 with money from the Uberoi Foundation. The Uberoi Foundation is chaired by Ved Nanda, who is director of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh in America. The HSS is the international wing of the RSS.”

In conclusion, Singh points to a passage by Kabir, a weaver who lived in Uttar Pradesh in the 15th century. Kabir wrote:

“In the dwelling of the womb,
there is no ancestry or social status.
All have originated from the Seed of God.
Tell me, O Pandit, O religious scholar:
since when have you been a Brahmin?
Don’t waste your life by
continually claiming to be a Brahmin.
If you are indeed a Brahmin,
born of a Brahmin mother,
Then why didn’t you come by some other way?
How is it that you are a Brahmin,
and I am of a low social status?
How is it that I am formed of blood,
and you are made of milk?”

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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 University, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination.

The event was Cornell’s eighth Frank H. Golay Memorial Lecture.

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You can READ the book The art of not being governed : an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia – by Scott, James C here:

https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/LTW-Scott.pdf

Zomia is a new name for virtually all the lands at altitudes above roughly three hundred meters all the way from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India and traversing five Southeast Asian nations (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma) and four provinces of China (Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and parts of Sichuan). It is an expanse of 2.5 million square kilometers containing about one hundred million minority peoples of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety. Geographically, it is also known as the Southeast Asian mainland massif. Since this huge area is at the periphery of nine states and at the center of none, since it also bestrides the usual regional designations (Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia), and since what makes it interesting is its ecological variety as well as its relation to states, it represents a novel object of study, a kind of transnational Appalachia, and a new way to think of area studies.

My thesis is simple, suggestive, and controversial. Zomia is the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states. Its days are numbered. Not so very long ago, however, such self-governing peoples were the great majority of humankind. Today, they are seen from the valley kingdoms as “our living ancestors,” “what we were like before we discovered wet-rice cultivation, Buddhism, and civilization.” On the contrary, I argue that hill peoples are best understood as runaway, fugitive, maroon communities who have, over the course of two millennia, been fleeing the oppressions of state-making projects in the valleys—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare.

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More books about Anarchism in Void Network Library: https://voidnetwork.gr/library/

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