Μετά το τέλος της συγκέντρωσης, επιλέξαμε να κάνουμε μια αυτόνομη αντιφασιστική παρέμβαση. Κατά τη διάρκεια της κίνησής μας, και ενώ αναγράφαμε συνθήματα, δεχθήκαμε λεκτική επίθεση από γνωστή ‘’αγανακτισμένη’’ κάτοικο. Τη στιγμή της λεκτικής αντιπαράθεσης, αντιλαμβανόμαστε να μας σημαδεύουν σε ευθεία βολή 2 φασίστες από το απέναντι μπαλκόνι κρατώντας όπλα- δεν γνωρίζουμε αν είναι αληθινά ή όχι. Μείναμε σταθεροί στη θέση μας και τους προκαλέσαμε να κατέβουν κάτω. Αυτοί δεν κατέβηκαν, συγκροτήσαμε το σώμα της παρέμβασης και αποχωρήσαμε συγκροτημένα.

Σαν Στέκι Δίστομο, θεωρούμε ως μια πρώτη κίνηση πολιτικής ανταπάντησης να καλέσουμε σε αντιφασιστική πορεία στις γειτονιές του Κολωνού και των Σεπολιών την Τρίτη 14 Νοεμβρη, ώρα 18.00 με σημείο συνάντησης το μετρό των Σεπολίων. Είναι πολιτικό μας καθήκον να απλώσουμε τον μαχητικό αντιφασισμό στο μητροπολιτικό πεδίο, στήνοντας ανάχωμα στους φασίστες και τους κρατικούς τους προστάτες.
Υ.Γ. 1 Κοροντζή και λοιπά σκουλήκια, Άγιος Παντελεήμονας- Κολωνός 1 τσιγάρο δρόμος.

Ενημερώσεις- Καλέσματα:

Α) Αντιφασιστική Πορεία στις γειτονιές των Σεπολιών και του Κολωνού, Τρίτη 14 Νοέμβρη, ώρα 18.00, μετρό Σεπολίων

Β) Πολιτική ενημέρωση για το περιστατικό στον Κολωνό και τα χαρακτηριστικά της πορείας, Δευτέρα 13 Νοέμβρη, 20.00, Σολωμού 13, όροφος 1ος

ΔΕΝ ΞΕΧΝΑΜΕ ΔΕΝ ΣΥΓΧΩΡΟΥΜΕ…

ΕΛΑΤΕ ΜΕ ΠΙΣΤΟΛΙΑ,ΕΛΑΤΕ ΜΕ ΜΑΧΑΙΡΙΑ,

ΦΑΣΙΣΤΕΣ ΘΑ ΣΑΣ ΣΠΑΣΟΥΜΕ ΤΑ ΠΟΔΙΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΧΕΡΙΑ

Αντιφασιστικό-Αντιεξουσιαστικό Στέκι Δίστομο

The post ΔΙΣΤΟΜΟ: Ενημέρωση για Κολωνό-Σεπόλια και κάλεσμα σε αντιφασιστική διαδήλωση στα Σεπόλια appeared first on Void Network.

“We can imagine a horizontal and happy future for everybody – but we cannot impose this on society. The society has to come towards us, talk about it, prepare the revolution and manifest the revolution, as a society, not as an anarchist political organization. The society will do the revolution, not the anarchists. The anarchists will be there to offer their power and bodies to this struggle, but society has to decide: do we want totalitarianism, or do we want anarchy? There is no other question at this time.”

Tasos Sagris and Void Network were featured in the New York Times article Anarchists Fill Services Void Left by Faltering Greek Governance.

Interview Transcript via Antidote Zine / source: THIS IS HELL Manufacturing Dissent Since 1996

Helping Refugees Means Fighting the State. And Vice-Versa.

Understand that this is not a struggle that we do for the refugees but with the refugees. The refugees can take care of themselves, and they can self-organize. If we help them and if the society around them is beneficial and helpful to them, then they can establish their own horizontal assemblies and create free spaces.

Chuck Mertz: Anarchists are providing services in Greece now that the government is not, due to austerity. Let me repeat that: anarchists are doing what government cannot in Greece, and that is provide the necessary services to survive. So what is happening in Greece and why? And what is the New York Timesgetting so wrong about anarchism and Greece?

Here to tell us, Tasos Sagris is a member of Void Network, a poet, a theater director, and for 28 years has been an anarchist cultural activist. Welcome to This is Hell!, Tasos.

Tasos Sagris: Hello, hello.

CM: How much is there an organized group right now within Greece of non-state actors not only providing the services one would expect from the government, but also the social guidance usually provided by the government? How much are the non-state anarchists defining what Greece is today?

TS: We could say that this is part of a struggle that has been going for decades now in Greece from anarchists. Of course, me personally, I cannot speak as a representative of the anarchist movement, because the anarchist movement is very pluralistic. It includes many, many initiatives and many groups. I can speak only from my own perspective.

Greek society faces austerity measures; the poverty of the people and unemployment is becoming worse and worse. At the same time we have had a great influx of refugees from different places, they were in war and now are in other countries. Of course the natural instinct among anarchists on this phenomenon is to help these people, and to work with them for a better life. We can’t say that we replace the state. The fight against the state continues and intensifies, also through the paradigm of our help and solidarity towards the refugees.

Anarchists defend areas, neighborhoods, and social centers, the occupied buildings of the movement. Anarchists also created refugee squats, occupied the buildings where refugees can have their own assemblies and practice their self-organization with the help and solidarity of anarchists and autonomous people, also far-left people. All these people can fight together for a better future.

CM: One of the amazing things I learned through doing research about Void Network and about anarchism in Greece is that this apparatus for helping out the poor and the people who had been affected by austerity had been put into place, and then when the refugee crisis came about, that same system was ready to help out the refugees who were in a very scary position.

How much are refugees right now dependent upon the anarchists to provide them with the services that they so desperately need?

TS: The state calls it the refugee crisis; it is just an effort of people to escape from the war and try to come into Europe. Anarchists established camps on Lesvos island and on the other islands where the refugees were coming. Anarchists established welcome centers on the islands. Then anarchists created an open camp in the central park of Athens, where the refugees were passing through on their way to the north in Greece, to the border, on their way to Europe. There were anarchists in the welcome centers in the beginning; there were anarchists in Athens; there were anarchists in Thessaloniki, in the north of Greece; and there were anarchists at the borders. So we created a network of people who welcome and help the refugees to continue their way to Europe.

When the borders closed, of course we had to create spaces in the big cities to accommodate and shelter the people, to self-organize. Understand that this is not a project or a struggle that we do for the refugees butwith the refugees. The refugees can take care of themselves, and they can self-organize. If we help them and if the society around them is beneficial and helpful to them, then they can establish their own horizontal assemblies and create free spaces. The only reason that the anarchists are around is to defend the neighborhood from the police and the Nazis, and from other possible problems that they cannot bear alone. It is a mutual help. It is the real practice of mutual aid.

When winter came, they opened the first big squat in Exarcheia, on Notara Street, very near the park. Then other refugees were coming more and more, so the anarchists opened more and more buildings around Exarcheia square. Now there are around ten to fifteen buildings. Some of them are for accommodation areas; there is a building for kids; there is a community health clinic in the square that the refugees are using also. There is also a specific squat for men who are without family or without children, who stay alone in order to avoid problems with the families. So this network of buildings, they help each other and they coordinate their defense and everyday life.

In a society of inequality and exploitation, the organizing methods of anarchists look almost irrational. When you speak for horizontality, this doesn’t sound like “organizing.” The horizontal way of organizing among anarchists seems non-organized. But anarchist tools of organizing are becoming more and more popular all around the world.

CM: But all the actions that the anarchists have been taking, and the social services that they have been providing within Greece, as you pointed out earlier, date back to 1990. So this is not only in response to the current government, nor is this only in response to austerity, which is something that has just been imposed recently upon Greece.

So does it matter who is in government, or the policies that they implement, when it comes to anarchism and its social movement in Greece?

TS: As we have been saying for many years now: whoever is governing, we will be ungovernable. We continue a long struggle to try to communicate with society and to offer society the analysis that capitalism and the state destroy their lives. This is taking place with two different strategies. One strategy is attacks on the police and attacks on the state and capital: big demonstrations, public visibility, and of course riots and fights with the police. When there is political power that can confront and defend places, neighborhoods and social centers, then you can build social services from an anarchist perspective. As long as you do not have consistency of struggle and consistency of fighting the police in the city, then you cannot defend the public spaces, you cannot defend the squats.

It is crucial to understand that the effort that the comrades make and the risks that the comrades take to fight with the police in the city, in the streets, gives the anarchist movement the power to defend social centers and to defend occupied buildings. In these occupied buildings, we create revolutionary relations. We create horizontal assemblies where we put the revolution into practice. It’s in the streets and against the police, and against the state and against capitalism, that we fight the world as it is now. But inside the occupied spaces, inside the social centers, in the neighborhood assemblies, in the assemblies of the social centers, we have the existential experience of the revolution, of the anarchist society as we dream it to be.

So it is not that we wait for the future, for the anarchist society to appear. We create the conditions of the existential experience of the anarchist society now, and the social centers are open to everybody, to share this existential experience with us. So this is an experiment of the revolutionary anarchist society here and now, and this creates more power for the struggles in the streets and the fight against the police.

CM: When I saw the New York Times article back on May 27, headlined “Anarchists fill services void left by faltering Greek governance,” by Niki Kitsantonis, I was reminded of our conversation a couple years ago with Christos Giovanopoulos, of Solidarity for All, another activist group in Greece that is trying to provide social services for those who need them. Mr. Kitsantonis starts his story on anarchists providing services in light of austerity with this line: “It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before.”

What does it say to you about the author’s understanding of anarchism when he sees anarchism and organizing as paradoxical? And how are anarchism and organizing not necessarily contradictory?

TS: The thing is, in the eighties, the anarchists in Greece were seen by the public as more unorganized than they seem now. In every country, when the movement is young and new, and also small, it seems more antisocial because it seems much more against the common beliefs around anarchism. As the years go by, and more people come into the movement, and there are people who are older in the movement, and people from many different social backgrounds, from different workplaces, from different universities and schools, from different races or from different sides of life, the people also get a deeper analysis and more consistency.

In this way, you succeed in explaining directly to society more and more what the anarchists believe. Now in our times, after the struggle against austerity measures that included the participation of anarchists, and the analysis that anarchists offered to society through pamphlets, through postering—millions and millions of posters all around Greece, in each neighborhood—explaining the reasons for austerity measures, explaining to people why capitalism and the state destroys their lives…now society has an easier time understanding there is a lot of organizing behind all of these efforts.

Of course anarchists organize attacks against the state and capitalism. Anarchists use the methodologies of defense in the streets. Molotovs are the main tool of defense against the police, because it keeps the police away. When the police know that inside the big social demonstrations there are anarchists carrying molotovs, they cannot do whatever they want to the people.

When the movement is small and young and it’s just the beginning, the movement isn’t able to overpower the ability of the media to describe you as they want to. So in a way, the New York Times tried to offer this ‘paradoxical’ comment as the way that they want to describe the anarchist movement in America. The anarchist movement in America, though, as a historical movement, offered a lot of inspiration to us over the decades, from the First of May in Chicago up to today—the American movement is very inspirational to Greece. Even, of course, the struggle of the Black Panthers. The social services programs of the Black Panthers is something very influential to the anarchist movement in Greece. There were many, many activists listening to this paradigm and taking inspiration from it.

The New York Times is just trying to play with the popular idea about anarchists, that they are disorganized. But we have to understand that the anarchists are very, very organized. Still, in a pyramidical society, in a society of inequality and exploitation, the organizing methods of anarchists look almost irrational. In a society based on inequality, in an economy based on inequality, when you speak for horizontality, this doesn’t sound like “organizing.” When you have chiefs and bosses and prime ministers and all these hierarchies in society, the horizontal way of organizing among anarchists seems non-organized. But anarchists have their own tools of organizing: horizontality and solidarity.

We think very, very seriously that these tools, these methodologies, are becoming more and more popular all around the world, and they are becoming more and more logical all around the world. Because people are still really terrified by what governments do to their lives. So for sure they come to the point that they have to self-organize, and the only way to self-organize is the anarchist way to self-organize, the horizontal way.

CM: Here’s Kitsantonis writing in the New York Times again. He says, “Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, anarchists have joined leftist groups in occupying portions of Greek universities to promote their thinking and lifestyle. Many of those occupied spaces exist today, and some are used as bases by anarchists to fashion the crude firebombs hurled at police during street protests.”

How much are anarchists involved in firebomb-making? Because it seems to be something that the New York Times wants to make certain we know: that a big part of anarchist strategy in Greece is violence. How integral is violence to the anarchist cause within Greece?

TS: Of course I have to explain that because of the history of struggles in Greece, we don’t have this debate about violence and nonviolence. Greek society in the last hundred years, we’ve had four or five revolutions, and four or five civil wars. Violence and nonviolence is of course debated; liberals try to impose the conversation in the mainstream media, but in the general society, the violence and nonviolence debate is not very crucial.

To explain more: of course anarchists organize attacks against the state and capitalism. Anarchists are using the methodologies of defense in the streets. Molotovs are the main tool of defense against the police, because it keeps the police away. When the police know that inside the big social demonstrations there are anarchists carrying molotovs, they cannot come closer and do whatever they want to the people. This means that the use of molotovs produces distance between the people and the police. It also offers to all the normal people the opportunity to escape, to run away when the police attacks the people. The police uses unbelievable amounts of very strong tear gas against demonstrations in Greece.

On the other hand, we have to understand that the mainstream media will try to use the violence on the side of anarchists as something that brings them outside the movement or brings them outside of the society. In the same moment, the society that has the experience of all these austerity measures, and also the experience of the lack of power to reply to all these measures, they see they benefited from the attacks of the anarchists against the police, because the police cannot do whatever they want in the city.

Of course, they can use massive militant power and kill us all. Or they can throw tons of teargas and produce asphyxiation in thousands of people, thousands of demonstrators. How much are they going to do this? How many are they going to kill? Somehow, the refusal of the anarchists and of Greek society to appear like pacifists puts the state in its place. It sends a message to the state that you cannot kill us all. We are here to fight.

Society has to come towards us, talk about it, prepare the revolution, and manifest the revolution as a society, not as an anarchist political organization. Society will do the revolution, not anarchists. Anarchists will be there to help and offer their power and offer their bodies for the struggle. But society has to decide: do we want totalitarianism or do we want anarchism?

CM: You’re quoted in the New York Times article saying, “People trust us because we don’t use the people as customers or voters. Every failure of the system proves the idea of the anarchists to be true.”

What’s wrong with voting? Is anarchism anti-voting? And does that make them anti-democracy?

TS: Democracy is a very big conversation. When I was traveling in the United States of America on tour for theWe Are An Image from the Future book, all the anarchists in America were telling me—and normal people from America, from many different parts of America—they were saying, “You Greeks, you gave us democracy, now you have to tell us what to do with it.”

The problem with democracy is that it creates inequality. It forms inequalities and continues to use them. Of course the terminology of democracy is that the people have the power in their hands, can take their lives into their hands. But we cannot speak about representative democracy in this way. Representative democracy today doesn’t even exist, you know. The parliaments are so entrapped by huge economic interests around the world, it is not the parliaments that govern. They become soldiers. Technocrats and people who cannot speak politically get votes and come to parliament to “represent the people.” The people don’t feel represented anymore. Representative democracy is dead. We have to face this problem.

When you realize that representative democracy is dead, there are two ways: fascism or anarchism. There is no other way. Society has to decide. Does it want more democracy, which means dictatorship? The other side of democracy is dictatorship, because democracy is there to defend the rights of economic interests. When people revolt, immediately democracy passes into dictatorship, passes into a state of emergency. This state of emergency, like we see now in Turkey for example, is a dictatorship.

People have to decide: do they want more dictatorship? Do they want totalitarianism? Do they want a technocratic capitalism as a monopoly on the mentality of the people? Or do they want to think about something more than this?

If they want to think about something more than dictatorship, something more than a technocratic totalitarianism, then we are here and waiting for them. Anarchists are open-hearted people creating horizontal assemblies with people to give them the chance to speak for themselves, to organize together, and to find solutions together. We don’t have a political way of manipulating people. We don’t want to manipulate people. That’s why we say we don’t want the people as voters, we don’t want the people as customers. We want people to participate, to share their experiences, to share their hearts, take care of one another, and to build communities that can fight capitalism and fight the state. This is the first step.

We have visions for the future. We can imagine a horizontal and happy future for everybody. But we cannot impose this on society. Society has to come towards us, talk about it, prepare the revolution, and manifest the revolution as a society, not as an anarchist political organization. Society will do the revolution, not anarchists. Anarchists will be there to help and offer their power and offer their bodies for the struggle. But society has to decide: do we want totalitarianism or do we want anarchism?

CM: Tasos, thank you so much for being on This is Hell! this week.

TS: Thank you very much, and I hope all the people in the United States will understand what anarchism is, slowly, investigate what anarchism is, and take part in the struggle, because we need all of them. I hope that slowly the people will get more used to political analysis, because the problems are getting so big that the people will have to understand where they are very soon. Thank you very much.

_____________________________________________

more info about Void Network: https://voidnetwork.gr international site in English and Greek

Void Network facebook page (mainly in Greek): https://www.facebook.com/kenodiktuo/

This is Hell is a weekly longform political interview program broadcast across Chicago on WNUR since 1996.

Every Saturday morning, Chuck Mertz works off his news hangover by talking to the journalists, authors and activists working to make this world a slightly less hellish place. Expect in-depth conversations about the forces that drive politics, and gallows humor about a world with more questions than answers.

This is Hell! broadcasts every Saturday, 9AM-1PM US Central on WNUR 89.3FM Chicago and podcast to the world shortly after.

A special, one-hour version of the show airs Sundays at 11AM Central on WLPN: Lumpen Radio and Sundays at 11AM Pacific on KRFP: Radio Free Moscow.

Want This Is Hell! on your local radio? Get in touch, it’s free. https://thisishell.com/

The post Not a struggle for the refugees, but with the refugees: Anarchism at work in Greece. appeared first on Void Network.

Έτσι, η πραγματική εξουσία, συνεπικουρούμενη από το προδιαμορφωμένο αίσθημα της λαϊκής θέλησης, εναλλάσσει συνεχώς κυβερνητικές μαριονέτες, ως την πλήρη τελική απαξίωσή τους. Για να έρθει την κατάλληλη στιγμή με “καθαρά χέρια” ο εκπρόσωπος μιας “πανάγαθης κοινωνικής τάξης”, να διοικήσει ως πληρεξούσιος της αγοράς την κοινωνία και το κράτος. Έτσι, η σιωπηλή αποσιώπηση της προοδευτικής απογύμνωσης του θεσμικού από τη εξουσία του, μετατρέπεται σε σιωπηρή κοινωνική συναίνεση υπέρ του πολιτικού αυταρχισμού.

Το πάνδημο ερώτημα “γιατί δεν γεννιούνται πια μεγάλοι ηγέτες;” κρύβει ακριβώς αυτή την επιθυμία ταύτισης με τον αυταρχικό κοινωνικό πατέρα. Η μετεξέλιξη του σύγχρονου καπιταλιστικού ολοκληρωτισμού της κρίσης σε ένα πεδίο όπου η διάκριση θεσμικών μορφών και μεγάλων επιχειρήσεων έχει πλήρως αρθεί (την ίδια στιγμή που οι θεσμοί αντιπροσώπευσης δεν εκπροσωπούν καμία άλλη κοινωνική ομάδα πέραν της απολύτως κυρίαρχης) οδηγεί στην εντατικοποίηση της αυταρχικότητας του κράτους με κοινοβουλευτικό ή μη μανδύα.

Αν το δίλημμα παγκόσμια είναι σήμερα “πουτινισμός” ή “μπερλουσκονισμός”, (δηλαδή η κυριαρχία του πολιτικού/γραφειοκρατικού επί του οικονομικού, διαμέσου μιας αυταρχικής πολιτικής προσωπικότητας που αναλαμβάνει να διευθύνει άμεσα το σύνολο της παραγωγής, ή αν αντίστροφα, η οικονομική ελίτ διαμέσου ενός ή περισσοτέρων εκπροσώπων της καταλαμβάνει και το κράτος). στην γειτονιά μας η πλάστιγγα έχει από καιρό γείρει υπέρ του δεύτερου.

Όσο η κοινωνία συναινεί στην οπαδοποίησή της που της προσφέρει απλόχερα ο θεαματικός ποδοσφαιρικός πολιτισμός, όσο αδυνατεί να αξιολογήσει τις ουσιώδεις τομές που επιφέρει η διαχείριση της διαρκούς καπιταλιστική κρίσης, όσο κυριαρχείται από το φιλοδέσποτο αίσθημα της υποτέλειας (το μόνο πραγματικό πάθος της εποχής μας), τόσο οδηγεί και οδηγείται στην επιτάχυνση της προδιαγεγραμμένης έκβασης· εκεί που το πλήθος της αρένας, σαν έτοιμο από καιρό, θα φωνάξει “νατος, νατος, ο Πρωθυπουργός!”

Σωτήρης Λυκουργιώτης– μέλος της συντακτικής ομάδας του περιοδικού για την θεωρητική επεξεργασία ενάντια στην κυρίαρχη αφήγηση “ΣΚΑΝΤΖΟΧΟΙΡΟΣ” (εκδόσεις Κουρσάλ)

The post ΝΑΤΟΣ ΝΑΤΟΣ Ο ΠΡΩΘΥΠΟΥΡΓΟΣ! – του Σωτήρη Λυκουργιώτη appeared first on Void Network.

Αυτή η εικόνα με το σκαμμένο πεζοδρόμιο και την ασπροκόκκινη κορδέλα είναι μια συνηθισμένη εικόνα για το Εμπρός. Την είδαμε όταν μας έκοψαν το ρεύμα τη βλέπουμε ξανά από χθες που μας ξανα-έκοψαν για πολλοστή φορά το νερό!

Είναι η εικόνα της κρατικής καταστολής.
Η εικόνα της “ασφυξίας” που μας επιβάλλεται ξανά και ξανά από το κράτος και την, κατ’ ευφημισμό αριστερή, κυβέρνηση.
Την ίδια αυτή κυβέρνηση που επιτίθεται, αξημέρωτα, σε ανοιχτούς κοινωνικούς χώρους και καταλήψεις στέγης προσφύγων!…

Πρώην αριστεροί “σύντροφοι” που απομύζησαν όλες αυτές τις αντιδομές για να σκαρφαλώσουν στην εξουσία παίρνουν τώρα πολιτικές αποφάσεις για την εξόντωσή τους, όπως ήταν αναμενόμενο, εξάλλου, αφού κάθε “άνοδος” στην εξουσία αποτελεί “κάθοδο” στην πολιτική ανηθικότητα.

Το Εμπρός χωρίς νερό, λοιπόν!
Εν μέσω καθημερινών παραστάσεων, προβών, μαθημάτων, συναυλιών, εργαστηρίων κλπ, και με εκατοντάδες κόσμου να το επισκέπτονται εβδομαδιαίως.

Το εγχείρημα του Εμπρός, στα 6 χρόνια διαρκούς, καθημερινής ανοιχτής, δημόσιας λειτουργίας του και διοργάνωσης εκδηλώσεων πολιτιστικού, κοινωνικού και πολιτικού χαρακτήρα με ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΗ ΕΙΣΟΔΟ, αξιοποιεί με τον καλύτερο τρόπο τη Δημόσια Περιουσία και αποδεικνύει πως υπάρχει ένας άλλος τρόπος να ζούμε, να δημιουργούμε και να συνυπάρχουμε. Αυτός ακριβώς ο τρόπος είναι ο λόγος για τον οποίο διώκεται.

Όλοι εμείς, οι χιλιάδες κόσμου (από καλλιτεχνικές ομάδες, συλλογικότητες, κοινωνικές αντιδομές, κλπ) που συμμετέχουμε και πλαισιώνουμε τα τελευταία χρόνια τα δρώμενα στο Εμπρός, δεν θα το επιτρέψουμε αυτό.

Το Εμπρός είναι μια ανάσα στο κέντρο της πόλης. Δεν θα μας την κόψετε.

Καλούμε όλες και όλους τους αλληλέγγυους στην ανοιχτή συνέλευση της Κυριακής 19/3, στις 8 μ.μ., για να συζητήσουμε και ν’ αποφασίσουμε, από κοινού, τους τρόπους δράσης και υπεράσπισης του Ελεύθερου Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενου Θεάτρου Εμπρός.

ΚΑΤΩ ΤΑ ΧΕΡΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΙΣ ΚΑΤΑΛΗΨΕΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥΣ ΑΥΤΟΔΙΑΧΕΙΡΙΖΟΜΕΝΟΥΣ ΧΩΡΟΥΣ!

ΚΑΤΩ ΤΑ ΧΕΡΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΕΜΠΡΟΣ!

Ανοιχτή Συνέλευση Ελέυθερου Αυτοδιαχειριζόμενου Θεάτρου ΕΜΠΡΟΣ– Ρ.Παλαμήδη 2- Ψυρρή

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[text: English/Greek]

Η καταστολή του κοινωνικού απελευθερωτικού κινήματος και των καταλήψεων προσφύγων και μεταναστών δεν θα μείνει αναπάντητη. Οι αστυνομικές επιδρομές  αποτελούν ιδανικό παράδειγμα για την πολιτική που επιθυμεί να επιβάλλει η κυριαρχία στην εποχή μας: όταν εμείς κοιμόμαστε το κράτος συνεχίζει να δουλεύει εναντίον όλων μας. Τα ξημερώματα της 13/3/2017 η Ελληνική αριστερή κυβέρνηση επέλεξε να εισακούσει τις εντολές της δεξιάς συντήρησης και τα νέο-φιλελεύθερα τσιράκια των Μέσων Μαζικής Εξαπάτησης και να επιτεθεί σε δύο καταλήψεις του ευρύτερου κοινωνικού κινήματος.

Η κατάληψη που εκκενώθηκε στο κτίριο του Δρακοπούλειου αιμοδοτικού κέντρου και βρίσκεται στην οδό Αλκιβιάδου 9, μαζί με την παραπλήσια κατάληψη της οδού Αχαρνών και Σουρμελή στην πλατεία Βάθης που συνεχίζει να αντιστέκεται, μπορούν να αποτελέσουν, με τις χαρές και τις λύπες τους, πραγματικά σχολεία για όλους τους αλληλέγγυους που πέρνουν μέρος στον τιτάνιο αγώνα προσφοράς βοήθειας στους πρόσφυγες έξω από καθεστωτικούς μηχανισμούς σαν άνθρωποι προς ανθρώπους. Οι καταλήψεις αυτές στο κέντρο της πόλης αποτέλεσαν και αποτελούν παράδειγμα άμεσης και αδιαμεσολάβητης αυτοργάνωσης των προσφύγων χωρίς την παρουσία και την συμμετοχή ντόπιων ακτιβιστών, αποτέλούν αυτοργανωμένους χώρους μεταναστών και προσφύγων  από τους ίδιους για τους ίδιους και για αυτό η κατάληψη της Αλκιβιάδου 9 χτυπήθηκε άμεσα από το κράτος.

Η κατάληψη της Βίλλα Ζωγράφου και του περιβάλλοντος πάρκου στην περιοχή Ζωγράφου αποτέλεσε ένα κοινωνικό κέντρο μιας γειτονιάς με πολύ έντονη συμμετοχή στην εξέγερση του 2008 αλλά και στα κινήματα που ακολούθησαν έως την τελική εξέγερση της 12  Φεβρουαρίου 2012. Σε μια εποχή ύφεσης των κινημάτων και αδράνειας από μεριάς της κοινωνίας το κράτος έρχεται να πάρει πίσω κάθε γωνία που κατέκτησαν τα κοινωνικά κινήματα την εποχή που αποπειράθηκαν να δώσουν αγωνιστικές απαντήσεις στην καπιταλιστική, ληστρική επιδρομή που παραπλανητικά ονομάστηκε από τους καταπιεστές μας ως “ΚΡΙΣΗ”.

Η απάτη της εκπροσώπησης των λαϊκών συμφερόντων στα έδρανα της βουλής από γελοίους πολιτικάντηδες και ξεπουλημένα κόμματα τελείωσε στην πλατεία Συντάγματος το καλοκαίρι του 2011. Η μαζική αυταπάτη της απελπισμένης πλειοψηφίας πως ο Σύριζα «θα μας σώσει» τελείωσε και αυτή εδώ και καιρό. Η απόδειξη πως η αριστερή διακυβέρνηση  δεν είναι τίποτα άλλο από μια ευθυνόφοβη και αντικοινωνική σοσιαλδημοκρατία είναι μπροστά στα μάτια όλων μας. Ο Σύριζα είναι ένα ζόμπι ΠΑΣΟΚ που αργοπεθαίνει βάζοντας κάθε λεπτό που περνά υποθήκη το μέλλον αυτής της κοινωνίας για να γραπωθεί στην εξουσία. Το κοινοβούλιο βρωμάει πανούκλα και όσοι θέλουν να το στηρίζουν με τις πλάτες τους και να το ποτίζουν με το αίμα τους να ξέρουν πως ζουν εις βάρος των παιδιών τους και ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΘΑ ΔΩΣΟΥΝ ΤΙΣ ΑΠΑΝΤΗΣΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΣ.

Το Μέλλον θα υπερασπιστεί τα δικαιώματα του και ΤΟ ΜΕΛΛΟΝ ΑΝΗΚΕΙ ΣΕ ΟΣΟΥΣ ΑΓΩΝΙΖΟΝΤΑΙ.

Επανακατάληψη όλων των καταλήψεων που χτυπιούνται από το Κράτος – Δημιουργία καταλήψεων και κοινωνικών κέντρων σε όλους τους πιθανούς και απίθανούς τόπους σε όλη την χώρα- Απελευθέρωση της καθημερινότητας μας από όλες τις ηλίθιες κοινωνικές υποχρεώσεις και τις κυρίαρχες κοινωνικές συμβάσεις – Άρνηση της κυρίαρχης κουλτούρας – Στελέχωση των κοινωνικών κινημάτων της εποχής μας και στήριξη των χώρων του κινήματος με την καθημερινή μας παρουσία-
ΣΥΜΒΙΩΣΗ / ΙΣΟΤΗΤΑ / ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ

Να στηρίξουμε με λόγο και πράξεις τις καταλήψεις.

Να συμμετέχουμε στις κινητοποιήσεις που καλούνται.

Καλούμε όλο το λαό του Ζωγράφου και τον κόσμο του αγώνα να στηρίξει ΤΟ ΚΑΛΕΣΜΑ ΓΙΑ ΠΟΡΕΙΑ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΗΝ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΟΛΗ ΤΩΝ ΚΑΤΑΛΗΨΕΩΝ ΤΗ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΑ 13/3 ΜΕ ΠΡΟΣΥΓΚΕΝΤΡΩΣΗ στις 18.00 ΣΤΗΝ ΠΛΑΤΕΙΑ ΓΑΡΔΕΝΙΑΣ , 6η σταση (ΠΡΟΣΒΑΣΗ ΜΕ 230, 608,235).

ΚΕΝΟ ΔΙΚΤΥΟ [Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες] https://voidnetwork.gr

2 SOCIAL CENTERS IN ATHENS UNDER ATTACK / Solidarity Announcement

The repression of social liberation movement and the destruction of the occupied spaces of  refugees and immigrants will not be left unanswered. The Greek Left government chose at the dawn of 13/03/2017 to listen to the commands of the conservative right and the neo-liberal Media of Mass Manipulation and attack against two occupations of the broader social movement in Athens Greece. Police raids are an ideal example of the policy imposed by the domination during our era: when we sleep the State continues working against all of us.

The occupation at the beginning of Acharnon Street (Alkiviadou 9) as also the nearby occupied building at Acharnon and Sourmeli that still resisting, both of them very near to the old Villa Amalias squat  in the center of Athens are – with the joys and sorrows of the past year- real schools for all the local solidarity activists that took part in the titanic struggle offering solidarity and help to refugees outside the mechanisms of the regime as humans to humans the last years. The occupations of Acharnon are the first examples of direct, autonomous and unmediated self-organization of refugees without the presence and participation of local activists. They are self-organized spaces of immigrants and refugees by themselves for themselves and this is why the occupation of Alkiviadou street was hit directly by the state.

The occupied park and castle of Villa Zografou in Zografou area was an important social center of a neighborhood with very strong involvement in the uprising of 2008 and the movements that followed until the final uprising of February 12, 2012. At a time of recession for the movements and inaction of the society State comes to get back every corner conquered by the social movements at the time they tried to give answers to the capitalist, predatory raid misleadingly named by our oppressors as “CRISIS”. The fraud of representation of popular interests in the parliament House by ridiculous politicians and sold out parties ended at Syntagma Square in the summer of 2011. The massive illusion of the desperate majority that Syriza will “save us” ended long time now. Proof that the left government is nothing more than another form of antisocial- “social democracy” is in front of us. Syriza is a zombie PASOK dying and putting every minute that passes the future of this society as mortgage to remain grasped on power.
The parliament stinks as plague and those ones who want to support it with their backs and to irrigate it with their blood they have to know that they live at the expense of their children and CHILDREN WILL GIVE THEIR ANSWERS. The Future will defend its rights and THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE STRUGGLING.

Re-occupation of all occupations hit by the State – Create squats and social centers across the country in all possible and unlikely places – Liberation of everyday life from all stupid social responsibilities and conventions – Refuse the dominant culture – Recruitment of social movements of our time – Support of the movement’s spaces with our daily participation

SYMBIOSIS / EQUALITY / TOTAL FREEDOM

Participate at the demonstrations organised in defense of the squats and social centers

Monday 13/3 at 18.00 Gardenia sq. Zografou area / 6th bus stand – BUS 230, 608,235.

VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts] https://voidnetwork.gr

The post Επίθεση ενάντια σε 2 Κοινωνικά Κέντρα στην Αθήνα / Ανακοίνωση – 2 SOCIAL CENTERS IN ATHENS UNDER ATTACK / Announcement appeared first on Void Network.

Of course, to begin with, everything needs to be broached with caution. We need to remember to make distinctions
in our thought. To speak with tact is not always the same as silence even if in some situations the only real choice is a tactful silence. Yet this is not the case in a general manner. Thus in speaking in a general way,  we can avoid this first, no doubt common objection, of preferring silence to dialogue. Similarly, there will be the plea to avoid mixing in these affairs, because, as we ourselves have quite openly admitted, we are neither Greeks nor have we spent our whole lives in Greek Anarchy. If this is admitted, there is no real shame in that. On the contrary, our position as outsiders might be considered as a benefit, both in being more free from insular dynamics and also to aid us in having some space to view things. Besides, as we are outsiders, we have little to lose, and if we have a small influence, then here again this helps us, since we do not have the illusion that with one text we can resolve a practical issue. But to begin a practical process of change and advance, a small text from marginal figures might indeed be suited to its purpose.

* * *


source: http://thebarbarianreview.wordpress.com/

The post Intervention (to Greek Anarchist movement) by The Barbarians appeared first on Void Network.

“You can use the 600 Euros that you will find on me to pay our health insurance. I paid the rent yesterday. I am sorry, my daughter, I could not take more suffering just to put a warm plate on the table – a bloody plate. Make sure that our daughter goes to college and never
leave her alone. She should get the house that we have in the village.”

This is the suicide note of a 50-year-old woman to her husband. She jumped off a high wall in Crete, Greece, last week and is hospitalized in critical condition. She is one more victim of the deepening
financial crisis that is trying the limits of Greek people since 2008. According to the Greek Census Bureau, there has been a 43 percent increase in suicides in austerity-chained Greece since the beginning of the crisis. Unofficial accounts bring the number to 4,000 deaths so far.
Greece is the most recent and historically

unprecedented neoliberal experiment on a global scale. The neoliberal offensive is moving head on in the country and, if Chile “was the laboratory for the early phases, Greece has become the laboratory for an even more fierce implementation.”(1) What we have in place right now in Greece can be best described as the “downsizing of a country”(2) that brings profound changes in its social and economic fabric. Greece’s economy has shrunk by nearly one-third since 2007, and the debt has become unmanageable. Through cut-throat austerity measures, massive privatizations and cuts in the most sensitive sectors of public education and public health, the constant process of de-industrialization and the loss of sovereignty, it looks like “Greece will emerge as a poorer country, with a diminished productive base, with reduced sovereignty, [and] with a political class accustomed to almost neo-colonial forms of supervision.”(3)
I glance through snapshots in the news: grim faces, desperate eyes, angry gazes, frustration, and, most of all, fear. The city of Athens is slowly turning into a cemetery for the living. The transformation of the city, both as a physical and as a symbolic space, is shocking to the eye; as a public space and a habitat for its people, it now gets fragmented into deserted stores “for rent,” broken façades and abandonment apartment windows and balcony doors tightly locked behind iron bars for “extra safety,” carton beds and, along them, homeless people’s possessions: an old dirty blanket, oversized worn out sneakers, plastic flowers, empty water bottles, stale bread. Different parts of the city palpably illustrate a degenerating social fabric, as more Greeks are now joining the ranks of what Zygmunt Bauman has called “human waste”(4): unemployed, working poor, immigrants, all the outcasts, victims of “economic progress,” preys of rampant neoliberal policies, “casualties,” real victims to what the Greek prime minister has recently called a “success story” on the road to privatization and the wholesale of Greece’s national assets and sovereignty.
Greece is radically and violently transformed into the land field of “wasted lives” in the giant trashcan of global capitalism. Witnessing as I do this novel form of social necrophilia that eats alive every inch of human life, workspace and public space, I cringe at the sound of the words “sacrifice,” “rescue” and making Greece, according to the claims of Greek PM Antonis Samaras, a “success story.” Whose sacrifice and whose rescue? Who succeeds and who loses? Numbers are telling.
Unemployment rates are currently climbing to 30 percent, the same percentage Greece had in 1961. As a point of comparison, unemployment in the United States in 1929 was 25 percent, and in Argentina in 2001, it was 30 percent. More than 70 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than a year, leaving most to rely on charity after losing monthly benefit payments and health insurance. This percentage does not include young people seeking a job for the first time, employees without insurance and part-timers. Unemployment is up 41 percent from 2011, and for those 15-24, it has reached 51.1 percent, doubling in only three years (5) and setting a negative record for a Eurozone country.(6)
The IMF/European Central Bank recipe is generating wealth in the global financial casino, while 31 percent of Greeks live at risk of poverty, according to Eurostat (2012). These statistics put Greece in seventh place in poverty percentages among the 27 EU countries. More specifically, in Greece: 28.7 percent of children up to 17 years old; 27.7 percent of the population between ages 27-64; and 26.7 percent of Greeks older than 65 live in the poverty threshold.

There is an 11.8 percent increase in child poverty, raising the number of poor children to 465,000 in 2011.(7) The Greek social and welfare state has been collapsing through draconian cuts in wages and pensions, massive layoffs and the violation of vested rights, of labor laws and of collective bargaining rights. All collective bargaining expired on May 14, 2013, and it has been replaced by individual contracts where workers become hostages of their employers. Base salary went tumbling down to 500 Euros monthly (400 for young people) – not to mention a retroactive salary cut of 22 percent (32 percent for youth) in February 2012.
In March 2013, the government announced additional pension cuts of up to 20 percent. According to the Labor Institute of the National Confederation of Greek Workers (2012), new measures dictated by the Troika (the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund) will lead to at least a 35 percent deterioration of salaried employees’ and pensioners’ lives. As an example, since the beginning of 2011, 113,268 people have disconnected their telephone landlines to decrease expenses. With a 19 percent increase in the cost of electricity, 350,000 people now live without electricity in Athens. Additional taxes on property have ravaged the middle class that is now “paying rent” in their own houses through new taxes and fines imposed. Quality of life is radically deteriorating for Greek people.
This neoliberal experiment, as currently implemented in Greece, breeds destructiveness and death and resonates with forms of “social necrophilia.” By social necrophilia, I mean the blunt organized effort on the part of the domestic political system and foreign neoliberal centers to implement economic policies and austerity measures that result in the physical, material, social and financial destruction of human beings: policies that promote death, whether physical or symbolic. The goal of the ongoing capitalist offensive in the form of a neoliberal doctrine is to destroy symbolically and physically the most vulnerable strata of the population, to put the entire society in a moribund state to impose the most unprecedented austerity measures that generate profit for the most privileged classes internationally.
Erich Fromm, Frankfurt School philosopher, social psychologist and psychoanalyst, provides both a metaphor from the realm of psychiatry, as well as the tools to make the case for a reified market society that is being forced to start loving death: its own. In his seminal work on the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), Fromm defines necrophilia as “the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion to tear apart living structures.”(8)
In the case of the Greek neoliberal experiment, however, beyond destroying for the sake of destruction, there are real economic interests at stake. There are bets and speculations in casino capitalism, and the game is on in Greece for banks and other large financial organizations. Social necrophilia here can be understood as the state of decay, the material and social degeneration of society, and the destruction of social fabric, where illness and death loom for the poor as a result of an economy dying through specific political choices while profit goes to big banks and multinational corporations. Love of death or the politics of social necrophilia can be illustrated in Greece in a) the rise of fascism and b) the shocking increase in illness, suicide, addiction and spread of infectious diseases since the beginning of the crisis.
Fascism
In the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (9) Fromm makes the case that necrophilia is a product of fascist thought, as he discusses the example of Spanish Falangists who used to shout, “long live death.” Fascism finds expression both in government discourses and policies as well as in the rise of neo-Nazi Party Golden Dawn. Love of death is currently manifested in Greece in that rise of Golden Dawn.

In the context of the Greek crisis, a new form of political domination has emerged, a renewed model of fascism, or another example of “proto-fascism.(10) The elected Greek coalition government has been systematically violating the Greek Constitution and shaking the foundations of parliamentary democracy by establishing a “side system” of legislation. Using “urgent legislative decrees” indiscriminately and regularly, the coalition government is bypassing Greek legislation to facilitate privatizations and sellouts. In addition, there is an institutionalized instability: Laws keep changing, and many laws are voted in and implemented with retroactive effect.
Beyond the constant constitutional violations, the disappearing public space is a central feature of Greek proto-fascism. The landscape taking shape since 2009 is not too far from the kind of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt wrote about: a “totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; . . . It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom, which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space.”(11)
Motion is not only inhibited and/or prohibited, as for example, in the case of prohibiting demonstrations in the center of Athens when Troika officials visit, a practice reminiscent of the curfews during the German occupation of the ’40s. Furthermore, what motion there is, is watched, with heightened surveillance and cameras installed throughout Athens. In a necrophilous state of affairs, the system in charge operates with the conviction that the only way to solve a problem or a conflict is by force and violence, both symbolic and material, usually failing to see other options. This also explains the increased exponential violence employed by the state the last five years as manifested in shutting down protests, criminalizing dissent and activism and torturing arrested protesters as well as pre-emptive arrests in every mobilization.
Alongside symbolic violence manifested in economic, political and discursive form, there is an intensified move toward militarization and authoritarianism. To this end, and while massive layoffs are taking place in the public sector, the Greek state spends more money on hiring and training law enforcement officers. More interestingly, there are close ties between the police and the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, whose members are nostalgic of Hitler and the 1967 Colonels’ Junta. Golden Dawn – now pronounced a criminal organization – is involved in running “paramilitary operations that systematically attacked migrants, leftists and gay people.”(12) Eighteen of its MPs are already incarcerated, and a number of its members have been involved in violent attacks, gun possession and even murder as in the fatal brutal beating of Pakistani immigrant Shehzad Luqman and the cold-blooded murder of Pavlos Fyssas, a young leftist anti-fascist activist and rapper.
The “public” is being abolished in favor of the private, through a process of devaluation, vilification and degradation. A case in point is the ongoing demonization of public functionaries, public school teachers and university professors, and doctors working in the public system of health as lazy, incompetent, in need of constant evaluation and with the Damocles sword of investigation should they dare to disagree. Everything “public” is left to decay, by cutting off funding, staff and support and creating a fertile space for corruption and violent competition.

Public schools lack books and other materials, and in many areas in the north of Greece, children stay at home on very cold days because schools cannot afford to heat the classrooms. Teachers are suffering terrible cuts in their salaries, and universities barely meet their minimum functional needs with cuts in laboratory and support staff that hinder the appropriate working of the departments.
The Decaying Body
“It’s simple. You get hungry, you get dizzy and you sleep it off,”  said the mother of an 11-year old boy who has been suffering hunger pains at school.(13)
Necrophilia is further manifested in physical terms in the ways the human body is degenerating, ravaged by illness, malnutrition, drug abuse, HIV and suicide. People looking for food in the trash. There are homeless people in every corner; mini slum communities all over downtown Athens. Walking south, toward the center, thousands of people wait in line to be served food by soup kitchens that provide over 30,000 free meals a day. Plenty of people queue up for possibly the only meal of their day. Welcome to the “human waste” line.
The Greek governments that assumed the role of the executioners of IMF/EU directives since the beginning of the crisis in 2008 have demonstrated a particularly necrophilous character, and they have done so unapologetically. Αn increasing number of children have been passing out in schools because of malnutrition; there are embarrassing shortages in public hospitals, where patients often have to buy their own gauze and medication from an outside pharmacy while admitted. People without health insurance with severe illnesses do not have access to treatment. Malaria, a disease officially eliminated 40 years ago, also made a comeback in 2012, with cases being noted in eastern Attica and the Peloponnese.
There are increasing numbers of suicides (close to a 43 percent hike) that rank Greece number one worldwide in suicides the past five years. There are alarming new cases of depression and mental illnesses. A recent study conducted by the University of Ioannina found that one in five people facing financial problems presents psychopathological symptoms. There is also a 200 percent increase in HIV cases.(14) At the same time, significant funding is cut from psychiatric hospitals, public drug rehabilitation centers and other social and welfare provisions while the system tries to “abort” vulnerable social groups such as HIV-positive women, drug users and people with mental illness.
With the 40 percent surcharge the government has slapped on heating oil, thousands of households have remained cold during the winter while people are returning to wood stoves, the out-of-control use of which has generated poisonous toxic smog over the city of Athens. Bodily decay goes hand in hand with environmental destruction: Greek soil is ravaged as mineral resources are overexploited in the name of profit. Large forest areas, such as the Skouries forest in Halkidiki, are turning into vast mining sites, where private companies exploit the natural wealth of the country, while poisoning the soil, the air and the water.

It is a challenging and complicated task to try to explain Greek people’s lack of massive organized resistance the last five years given the radical deterioration of their living conditions. There is almost a reconciliation with death looming everywhere; people are slowly getting used to terror. The initial manifestations – gatherings in squares, protests and other acts of disobedience – did not acquire a more organized and consistent character, despite small local victories and the existence of a movement that daily struggles on many levels and sites. The power elites used the initial shock and paralysis to spread fear through what Naomi Klein has termed the “shock doctrine.” It is common practice for business interests and power elites to exploit shocks in the form of natural disasters, economic problems, or political turmoil, as an opportunity to aggressively restructure vulnerable countries’ economies. In this vein, popular resistance and dissent are squashed through symbolic and material fear and violence ranging from “catastrophic” discourses in the media to very real torture and repression.(15)
Shock helps the system implement antisocial and harmful policies that citizens would normally object to. Being in a state of shock as a country, says Klein, means losing your narrative, being unable to understand where you are in space and time. The state of shock is easy to exploit because people become vulnerable and confused. They are robbed of their vital tools for understanding themselves and their position in the sociopolitical context. People become unalive things and the market becomes alive. While people are slowly losing their humanity, with the government abandoning its social and welfare functions, “markets” become the new referent people should care and worry about, as if they were something alive.
Although lifeless things, markets acquire a soul and a character in the neoliberal discourse. One can observe an interesting phenomenon in the official government discourse, loyally reproduced by mainstream media: a continuous attempt to ascribe human properties to markets. The “market” as a noun, subject or object, is projected as the overarching authority, above and beyond everybody, the entity that should be kept happy and satisfied – another manifestation of necrophilia as people have to die to keep the market alive. The anthropomorphism of the market is illustrated when “markets” are used in the mainstream media in sentences such as “the markets showed satisfaction today” or “the market is struggling,” and “we need to convince the markets,” “we should appease the markets,” or “let’s wait and see how the markets respond.” The invisible market’s “reactions” give legitimacy to the “human sacrifices,” as all “market feelings” depend on increasing antisocial austerity measures that relegate a large part of Greek productive population to the unemployment trashcan. The more human qualities are attributed to the markets, the more real people are robbed of their own human substance. It seems as if the system needs to dehumanize people to “humanize” the market and then, possibly re-humanize them in the new market society, as a new kind of people robbed of any sense of agency.
In the Greek people’s quest to find their lost narrative, to “renarrativise” themselves in a collective way (16), the ability to consciously disobey and to fill the concept of hope with a real, feasible political project are two very important imperatives. To paraphrase Fromm, at this point in Greek history “the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey”(17) may be all that stands between the future for this country and its end. In articulating a political project and a narrative against capitalist necrophilia, there is a need to put at the core critical and radical thought that, when blended with the love of life, may take the struggle to the next level. Instead of getting confined to reforming or amending the current situation, people need to strive to imagine that which is not, desire it and work hard to make it happen.
* This article draws on my forthcoming book chapter “Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: Erich Fromm and The Politics of Hopelessness in Greece” to appear in Miri, S., Lake, R. & Kress, T. Reclaiming the Sane Society: Essays on Erich Fromm’s Thought. Boston: Sense Publishers.
1. Hall, S., Massey, D. & Rustin, M. (2013). After Neoliberalism: Analyzing the Present. In Hall, S., Massey, D. & Rustin, M. (Eds.) After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto; London, UK: Soundings, p. 12.
2. Sotiris, P. (2012). The Downsizing of a Country. 
3. Ibid.
4. Bauman Z. (2004). Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts. Cambridge, UK: Polity, p. 4.
5.INE GSEE/ADEDY. (2012). Greek economy and employment: Yearly Report 2012. Athens, Greece.
6. Eurozone Unemployment Reaches New High (2013, January 8). BBC 
7. Greek National Committee of UNICEF. (2003). State of Children in Greece 2013. Athens: Greece.
8. Fromm, E. (1973). The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Henry Holt, p. 369.
9. Ibid
10. Giroux, 2008, p. 21-22). Giroux, H. (2008). Against the Terror of Neoliberalism Politics Beyond the Age of Greed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
11. Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism (1973, p. 466)
12. The Guardian

13. Alderman, L. (2013, April 17). More Children in Greece are going Hungry. The New York Times.
14. Henley, J. (2013, May 15). Recessions can hurt but Austerity kills. 
15. Klein: Klein, N. (2008). The Shock Doctrine. New York: Henry Holt.
 16. Edmonds, L. (2013, April 26) “Is Greece in Shock?” Naomi Klein tells Enet how her bestseller The Shock Doctrine relates to Greece. Eleytherotypia Online.
17. Fromm, 1981

The post “Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: The Case of Greece” By Panayota Gounari appeared first on Void Network.

As the far-right government in Greece is preparing a new law that allows the destruction of Greek coast-line by private interests and all kinds of capitalist’s investments we publish here a serial of photos from Spain where anyone can see clear the destructive effects of capitalistic development in Mediterranean environment. We are asking all people of Europe to fight for the defense of Greek coast-line and the paradesiac Greek beaches from destructive Greek government and private interests.

To understand what they try to do in Greece you can see the total destruction of coast-line in Spain.

Καθώς η ακροδεξιά κυβέρνηση στην Ελλάδα ετοιμάζει νόμους που θα επιτρέψουν την καταστροφή της Ελληνικής ακτογραμμής από ιδιωτικά συμφέροντα και κάθε λογής καπιταλιστικές επενδύσεις δημοσιέυουμε εδώ μια σειρά από φωτος από την Ισπανία έτσι ώστε να γίνει ξεκάθαρο στον καθένα το απόλυτα καταστροφικό αποτέλεσμα της καπιταλιστικής ανάπτυξης στο περιβάλλον της Μεσογείου. Ζητάμε από τους ανθρώπους όλης της Ευρώπης να υπερασπιστούν τις παραδείσιες Ελληνικές παραλίες από την καταστροφική Ελληνική Κυβέρνηση και τα ιδιωτικά συμφέροντα.

The destruction of Spain’s coastline / Η Καταστροφή της Ισπανικής ακτογραμμής

In the past two decades the once-beautiful Spanish coastline has been ravaged by the construction of hotels, apartment blocks and second homes. Here are some of the worst examples.

Τα τελευταία 20 χρόνια αυτό που κάποτε ήταν οι πανέμορφες Ισπανικές παραλίες και ακτές έχει κακοποιηθεί από την κατασκευή ξενοδοχειακών μονάδων, συγκροτημάτων διαμερισμάτων και εξοχικών. Εδώ μπορείτε να δείτε κάποια χαρακτηριστικά παραδείγματα:

2005: The Azata del Sol complex on the Algarrobico beach in the Cabo de Gata park in Almeria, southern Spain

2005: Το οικοδομικό συγκρότημα Azata Del Sol στην παραλία Algarrobico στην Νότια Ισπανία

 

The post S.O.S Greek coastline is destroyed by private interests and Greek government. The paradigm of the destruction of Spain’s coastline / Η Καταστροφή της Ισπανικής ακτογραμμής παράδειγμα για το μέλλον των Ελληνικών ακτών! appeared first on Void Network.

This is the transcript of a public lecture by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben delivered to a packed auditorium in Athens on November 16, 2013 and recently published by Chronos e-magazine.

A Permanent State of Exception

Governing the Effects

The De-politicization of Citizenship

Rise of the State of Control

From Politics to Policing

Rediscovering a Form-of-Life

The post The talk of Giorgio Agamben in Athens: “From the State of Control to a Praxis of Destituent Power” appeared first on Void Network.