Anarchy Alive

“The Attack on Gaza is similar to the attack on Lebanon two years ago, that killed 2,000 but did not achieve Israel’s war aims. I think the assault on Gaza will be equally unsuccessful. A people under occupation will continue to resist in any way it can”.

“If Israel wants peace, it will have to talk to Hamas like Britain did with the IRA. Hamas are the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinian people, and cannot be ignored”.

“Israel’s response to the rocket attacks has been quite out of proportion. Almost a 100 Palestinians have been killed for every Israeli. The situation is like that in South Africa before 1990. It cannot continue”.

Stephen W. Hawking
January 2009

ROME: Initiative in support of the Anarchists Against the Wall, direct action initiative born in 2003 that fights with the Palestinian villagers against the wall of apartheid that Israel is building in the occupied territories of the West Bank.

Thursday 29 January 2009,
Aula Rasetti – Vecchio palazzo di Fisica – Università La Sapienza, Rome
Time: 4.30 pm: Projection of the documentary film “Bil’in Habibti” by S. Pollak to be followed by debate and fundraising aperitif.

Anarchists Against the Wall is a direct action initiative born in 2003 in answer to the wall that Israel is constructing in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank.

The group was born around the formation of a protest camp in the village of Mas’ha, where the wall was near and left 96% of lands of the village on the “Israeli side”. Their action then concentrated on the village of Bil’in, where the agricultural lands of the village were being confiscated by Israel, and on various other villages of the West Bank. Their action arises from the conviction that is possible to do something more than demonstrate within Israel or to participate in humanitarian aid actions. The Israeli occupation and Apartheid will not end alone – the action of the Anarchists Against the Wall tries to render it unmanageable in order to make the State end it. For this they physically oppose the bulldozers, soldiers and the occupying forces, in coordination with the local popular committees in the villages.

The action of Anarchists Against the Wall in coordinated self-organization between Israeli activists and the Palestinian popular committees demonstrates in practice the real possibility of cohabitation between the two populations, both of which are victims of the warmongering policies of the States or para-States that govern them.

Today more than ever the resurgence of the conflict highlights how solid grassroots organization is the only possible and effective answer to State or para-State politics that feed off war and separation.

Organized by:
Ciurma pirata antimilitarista – FdCA – CDA-Libreria “Anomalia”

External Link: http://fdcaroma.blogspot.com

A longish article, worth reading:
“Exterminate all the Brutes”: Gaza 2009
by Noam Chomsky
chomsky.info, January 19, 2009

Martin at Colonos recently distributed this highly critical study on social networking:

Fuchs, Christian. 2009. Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society. A Critical Case Study of the Usage of studiVZ, Facebook, and MySpace by Students in Salzburg in the Context of Electronic Surveillance.

Here is some Background Information

Asked about alternatives to Facebook, this was his reply:

Hi,

There is a wide range of alternative solutions – Facebook, MySpace etc. are all modelled on projects that came before them, some of which were less sophisticated, because they were early social networking. . Geocities was popular once upon a time

Orkut was making its rounds for years, but wasn’t promoted by a vulture capitalist (so didn’t make it big like Facebook) until it was then bought by Google.

Personally I am not interested in having all my communication protocols lumped together, so I don’t care much for a “Facebook alternative” as such. Like I don’t like the supermarket, but prefer small, independent shops. I want to choose, not be chosen. Hence, I don’t know too much about alternatives.

The thing about Facebook is that it is entirely unoriginal and only so damn popular because it hit a critical mass pushed by some very dodgy republican activist, whose designs are scary! Also, using it makes your enemy rich?

Facebook is the easy way out for the doped masses and the costs are hidden from view (for the ignorant). It is easy “because everyone is on it”. It is also easier to take a taxi than a bus, but the costs are not hidden, so most likely you take the bus? Why is the digital realm any different?

When it comes to staying in touch with people there are many great tools out there (which I have also encouraged people in the past on this list to use, but no one has!) – one of the best ones, in my estimation, even predates the web and is still the preferred “staying in touch technology” by many. It is called Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and is used by millions of people (hackers, media activists, programmers, and a zillion interest groups). It is a great tool for chat and meetings and collaboration (Indymedia uses it a lot). Once upon a time “everyone was on IRC”, but back then “everyone” were the pioneers in cyberspace. With Facebook the frontier camp has become a shopping mall and all the city dudes are now connecting too – and killing the dream of the pioneers. Just a little bit of history repeating…

Then there is Jabber, which is a chat protocol. Using it with the Pidgin Instant Messenger programme you can chat encrypted.

Here are some lists [1], [2] of Free Software for social networking:

and some discussion

The point being that Facebook is like sitting in Starbucks all day long (doing immaterial labour for them, simply by being there and telling others how great an experience it is), which I doubt that anyone on this list would prefer over their local squat or social centre. Again, why should cyberspace be different?

All that said, when it comes to surveillance it is probably too late and when the time comes and “they come for us”, the first will be those *not* on Facebook, since they must have something to choose.

A friend said something with regards to surveillance and Facebook, which perhaps is interesting. He said “I don’t join any groups, because I don’t want to label myself like that”, but the fact is that Facebook is only useful once you connect to friends and if they are generally joining groups then a pretty “safe” estimate of your interests can be deduced as well. So, “If over half of your friends tend to join anarchist and radical groups, we come get you too”.

-martin

PS: All that said, the entire digital realm is problematic – cyberwarming is the new thing:

Here is some text from a draft

Gartner Research, in 2007, estimated that “global information and communications technology (ICT) industry accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation”. Cyberspace is now a bigger cause of carbon emissions than the aviation industry. Arriving at this conclusion, which to most must be rather surprising, “included all commercial and governmental IT and telecommunications infrastructure worldwide, but not consumer electronics other than cell phones and PCs.” (Gartner 2007).

Current research undertaken by Dr Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist from Harvard University, which has been strongly contested by Google, adds a series of numbers that can help further understanding of cyberwarming. Wissner-Gross estimates that a Google search generates 5-10 g of CO2 and that “browsing a basic website generates about 20 mg of CO2 for every second you view it”, while “complex websites with rich animations and video can be responsible for the emission of CO2 at up to 300 mg per second.” Google has responded and noted that these numbers are much too high and that:

“In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don’t reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.” (Google 2009)

The way Google figures it, however, appears to leave out external energy consumption, thus speaking at cross purposes: the very point of cyberwarming research is make visible the total energy consumption generated by cyberspatial activities, from peer-to-peer and from consumer to server and back. Wissner-Gros’ numbers are, more or less, corroborated by John Buckley, who estimates “CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not” (Buckley 2009).

In July 2008 Google handled 235 million searches per day and had a market share around 60-70% and given the growth of online activities meanwhile we can safely estimate that 300 million searches – at least – are currently handled every day, each generating approximately 10g of carbon emissions. That is 3000 tonnes of carbon, which is the equivalent of 2500 passengers taking a transatlantic flight.

Jim Thomas of the ETC Group puts the environmental cost of an Internet search in different terms, namely 11 watt hours or 40 kilo joule (Thomas 2009), which is more or less the equivalent of 2.5 minutes of walking at 5km/h. Matilda, a wind turbine which was decommissioned in 2008, has generated more renewable energy than any other source in its 15 years of activity. It came to 61,4GWh, which could power about 5.5 billion Internet searches or less than a month’s worth of current Internet search activity. These numbers are staggering and only begin to contextualise activities in cyberspace, which amounts to much more than simple searches. In fact, Youtube video watching is now more than half of all Internet traffic……..

Am I about to abandon Facebook? Or continue using it to stalk friends abroad?

Check out my other half’s review of Ed Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire” on the Anglo-Israeli environmentalist site Green Prophet”. Quote:

Abbey’s book is, however, more than just nature writing at its finest (a definition he personally hated); it is an urgent call to defend the canyon lands from encroaching development. For Abbey “Desert Solitaire” is both a memorial to “places already gone or going under fast” and “a tombstone or a bloody rock” to be hurled defiantly at “something big and glassy” such as the windows of a corporate headquarters.

While the blog was down for maintenance, my article on the riots in Greece appeared in Haaretz. Since then, it has been translated into French, Spanish, Turkish, Serbian and Finnish.

Here’s the original text.

A road to revolution?
By Uri Gordon

Three weeks have passed since the unprovoked police murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Athens, and the riots engulfing Greece show no sign of abating.

While the student occupations of the capital’s three universities (Economics, Polytechnic and the law faculty) are expected to end soon, a major student demonstration has been called for January 9, and the protests, street clashes and seizures of television and radio stations are set to continue in full force.

A Greek blogger wrote this week: “We have a duty to move here, there, anywhere but back to our couches as mere viewers of history, back home to the warmth that freezes our conscience.”
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The international ripples are also tangible. Solidarity demonstrations and attacks on Greek embassies have taken place around the globe, from Moscow to New York and Copenhagen to Mexico City. Declarations and manifestos issued by student assemblies at Greek schools are almost immediately translated and posted online in English, French, Italian, Turkish and Serbian.

In the first few days of the revolt, bloggers were trying to put together a list of all the solidarity actions taking place, but the task proved impossible: There have been literally hundreds of them; thousands of people have taken to the streets. Last Saturday, a global day of action against police violence saw raucous demonstrations in over 30 cities worldwide.

The corporate press has trotted out various theories to explain the cause of the unrest – frustration with a corrupt government, the global financial crisis, and discontent among Greece’s youth, who face meager prospects of secure employment or welfare rights – the riots being a blind reaction to objective conditions.

But all these explanations are in fact decoys intended to silence and ignore the rebels’ own declared motivations.

A declaration by the students occupying the Athens School of Economics was quite clear about how they see the issue: “The democratic regime in its peaceful facade doesn’t kill an Alex every day, precisely because it kills thousands of Ahmets, Fatimas, Jorjes, Jin Tiaos and Benajirs: because it assassinates systematically, structurally and without remorse the entirety of the third world ….

“The cardinals of normality weep for the law that was violated from the bullet of the pig Korkoneas [the policeman who shot Grigoropoulos]. But who doesn’t know that the force of the law is merely the force of the powerful? That it is law itself that allows for the exercise of violence on violence? The law is void from end to bitter end; it contains no meaning, no target other than the coded power of imposition.”

Or, in another declaration, this one anonymous: “What do we seek? Equality. Political, economic, social. Between all people. Our possibility of convincing the servile consumers to refuse being commodities and subjects is rather limited. What can we do? Ravage and plunder the market, distribute the goods to everybody, dissolve the myths that support inequality.”

These are no single-issue protests or vague grievances. This is full-blooded revolutionary anarchism.

The mainstream media simply cannot stomach the notion that what is happening in Greece is by now a proactive social revolt against the capitalist system itself and the state institutions that reinforce it. It is time to acknowledge that the Greek anarchist movement has successfully seized the initiative after the killing of one of its own, framing the issues in a way that appeals to a larger – albeit mostly young – public.

Few people realize that the Greek anarchist movement is appreciably the largest in the world, in proportion to its country’s population. It also enjoys wide social support due to its legacy of resistance to the military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974. Highly confrontational demonstrations are a matter of regularity in Greece. It is practically a bimonthly occurrence for anarchists and police to engage in fiery street battles in Thessaloniki or Athens. The current events are only marked by their breadth and duration, not by their level of militancy.

Another rarely appreciated factor is that Greece is a country in which the security apparatus is normally kept on a relatively tight leash. For example, Privacy International’s 2007 assessment of leading surveillance societies found Greece to be the only country in the world with “adequate safeguards” against the abuse of government power to spy on its citizenry. The legacy of the dictatorship has created a lasting image of the police as inherently oppressive, even among the middle class.

Will the riots in Greece lead to an anti-capitalist revolution? Only if the opening they have torn in the social fabric widens and deepens, involving ever-growing sections of society and creating new grass-roots institutions alongside the destruction of the old. This seems unlikely in the short term, as bureaucratic labor unions and the Communist Party attempt to domesticate the revolt and cut their own political coupon with their demand to disarm the police.

But there is no doubt that a new benchmark has been set for what can be expected in Western countries during the coming era of economic depression and environmental decay. European governments will no doubt ratchet up their policies of surveillance and repression in anticipation of growing civil unrest. But that may not be enough to keep the population subdued, as crisis after crisis calls the existing arrangement of power and privilege into question.

Uri Gordon is the author of “Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory” (Pluto Press); www.anarchyalive.com.

Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a US official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians’ fault, due to their violent nature.

The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song.

And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.

Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government’s heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.

The steps it has taken are those of a classic military war of conquest: first an intense mass bombing in order to destroy “strategic” military points (that’s how the military manuals put it) and to “soften” the resistance’s reinforcements; next a fierce control over information: everything that is heard and seen “in the outside world,” that is, outside the theater of operations, must be selected with military criteria; now intense artillery fire against the enemy infantry to protect the advance of troop to new positions; then there will be a siege to weaken the enemy garrison; then the assault that conquers the position and annihilates the enemy, then the “cleaning out” of the probable “nests of resistance.”

The military manual of modern war, with a few variations and additions, is being followed step-by-step by the invading military forces.

We don’t know a lot about this, and there are surely specialists in the so-called “conflict in the Middle East,” but from this corner we have something to say:

According to the news photos, the “strategic” points destroyed by the Israeli government’s air force are houses, shacks, civilian buildings. We haven’t seen a single bunker, nor a barracks, nor a military airport, nor cannons, amongst the rubble. So–and please excuse our ignorance–we think that either the planes’ guns have bad aim, or in Gaza such “strategic” military points don’t exist.

We have never had the honor of visiting Palestine, but we suppose that people, men, women, children, and the elderly–not soldiers–lived in those houses, shacks, and buildings.

We also haven’t seen the resistance’s reinforcements, just rubble.

We have seen, however, the futile efforts of the information siege, and the world governments trying to decide between ignoring or applauding the invasion, and the UN, which has been useless for quite some time, sending out tepid press releases.

But wait. It just occurred to us that perhaps to the Israeli government those men, women, children, and elderly people are enemy soldiers, and as such, the shacks, houses, and buildings that they inhabited are barracks that need to be destroyed.

So surely the hail of bullets that fell on Gaza this morning were in order to protect the Israeli infantry’s advance from those men, women, children, and elderly people.

And the enemy garrison that they want to weaken with the siege that is spread out all over Gaza is the Palestinian population that lives there. And the assault will seek to annihilate that population. And whichever man, woman, child, or elderly person that manages to escape or hide from the predictably bloody assault will later be “hunted” so that the cleansing is complete and the commanders in charge of the operation can report to their superiors: “We’ve completed the mission.”

Again, pardon our ignorance, maybe what we’re saying is beside the point. And instead of condemning the ongoing crime, being the indigenous and warriors that we are, we should be discussing and taking a position in the discussion about if it’s “zionism” or “antisemitism,” or if Hamas’ bombs started it.

Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we’re lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there’s a professional army murdering a defenseless population.

Who from below and to the left can remain silent?

Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?

We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don’t stop a bomb and our word won’t turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters “IMI” or “Israeli Military Industry” etched into the base of the cartridge won’t hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it’s heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.

We don’t know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.

I don’t know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it’s as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.

As for everything else, what will happen will happen. The Israeli government will declare that it dealt a severe blow to terrorism, it will hide the magnitude of the massacre from its people, the large weapons manufacturers will have obtained economic support to face the crisis, and “the global public opinion,” that malleable entity that is always in fashion, will turn away.

But that’s not all. The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause.

And perhaps a boy or girl from Gaza will survive, too. Perhaps they’ll grow, and with them, their nerve, indignation, and rage. Perhaps they’ll become soldiers or militiamen for one of the groups that struggle in Palestine. Perhaps they’ll find themselves in combat with Israel. Perhaps they’ll do it firing a gun. Perhaps sacrificing themselves with a belt of dynamite around their waists.

And then, from up there above, they will write about the Palestinians’ violent nature and they’ll make declarations condemning that violence and they’ll get back to discussing if it’s zionism or anti-semitism.

And no one will ask who planted that which is being harvested.

For the men, women, children, and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army,

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January 4, 2009.