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Category: Social Control

Berlin, Germany: Update on the legal situation of Rigaer94 EN/DE

Posted on 2025/07/20 - 2025/07/20 by darknights

There hasn’t been a legal update by us in the past 10 months. Now a lot of stuff is happening again and we are not sure how this will all turn out. What we are sure about is that the enemies of the house are continuing their actions in order to destroy the house. We will not stop fighting them. Here is a brief overview of the legal status of the house right now and the changes which have been going on.

What is the current situation?

Since most of the remaining rent contracts were canceled last summer, the vast majority of the flats are right now without those rent contracts. There are just five rent contracts remaining in the whole house. It seems like our enemies are trying to get rid of the rent contracts bit by bit, in order to create a legal base for a complete eviction of the house.

Court cases that happened in the last months (or didn´t)

  1.  On September 4th 2024, there should have been an appeal about some of the rent contracts from 1992 in the back house and against the people who were added to these lawsuits, as a result of the raid in October 2021. Before that, the Amtsgericht dismissed those eviction lawsuits against the rent contracts. The court date was postponed because the so-called lawyer of Lafone, Bernau, sent some documents too late to the judges to include them. Since then there has been no new date scheduled for this.You can find a more detailed description here.
  2. The lawyers of Lafone lodged a disciplinary complaint against judges of the 66th chamber of Landgericht II, accusing and suing the judges for allegedly delaying the trials. This disciplinary complaint was declined. We can only laugh at both our enemies fighting each other.
  3. As we published last year, in three proceedings about two apartments in front house as well as one room in the attic of back house, the legitimacy of the letterbox company Lafone was not questioned by the judges anymore. The apartments in front house still did not get eviction orders, though for one of them a person is supposed to pay their alleged ‘rent debts’, about 20.000€. For the room in the attic on the other side, the judges actually seem willing to issue an eviction order. Since we published this information, all those decisions were confirmed by the Kammergericht – therefore, the highest court in Berlin now seems to accept the legitimacy of this letter box company.

Leonid Medved is the “Owner” of Lafone 

Part of this change is also that Leonid Medved is now officially listed as owner of Lafone (and therefore R94) on Companys House. He is described as an “individual person with significant control”. It is said that he directly or indirectly holds 75% or more of the shares in the company. (PDF) Medved became registrable as shareholder on 06/04/2016, but the entry note was just published on 25/04/2025. With this first listing in an official document of the company we now have proof of what we have known for a long time.

Info on upcoming eviction court cases

There are a lot of trials regarding our house coming up in September. Besides attempting to get eviction titles for the squatted flats and those who had rent contracts since 1992, Lafone is trying to get rid of the remaining renters of front house by cancelling their rent contracts.

On 17th of September, all of the rented flats of front house will have appeal hearings. The first lawsuits that attempted to cancel those rent contracts were rejected years ago. Aditionally, some of the trials against people who were added to the lawsuits following the raid in October 2021 will happen that day in the same court room. These hearings will happen at Landgericht II.

Also on 17.9., there will be a court case against the Kadterschmiede and Keimzelle. The last eviction lawsuit against Kadterschmiede and Keimzelle was rejected by the Kammergericht. Bernaus appeal against that was declined by the federal supreme court (BGH) in November 2023. In the end of last year, Bernau filed another eviction lawsuit against Kadterschmiede and Keimzelle, starting from scratch.

For all the court cases all the affected parties have to come. That means the accused, but also Lisa Close, the director of Lafone Investments, will be there. Let’s give her a proper welcome!

Call for participation in the court cases

We call for participation in solidarity  at the upcoming court cases. The courtcases will be public (bring ID if you want to go inside).

(Wednesday) 10.09.2025 at 13.00. Littenstr 12-17 room 3705 (3rd floor). Lawsuit against the last existing rent contract in backhouse.

(Wednesday) 17.09.2025 at 10.30. Tegeler weg 17-21. room 148 (1st floor). Lawsuit against Kadterschmiede and Keimzelle.

(Wednesday) 17.09.2025 at 13.00. Littenstr 12-17 room 3705(3rd floor). Lawsuit against the rented flats in front house and some other eviction lawsuits.

For more context read our last two texts “Rigaer94: Sommergewitter in meinem Block – “thunder storms on my block” and “Rigaer94: Return of the Phoenicurus. News from a letterbox“

More infos will follow soon.

Rigaer 94 stays!

Continue reading “Berlin, Germany: Update on the legal situation of Rigaer94 EN/DE” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Berlin, Eviction, Gentrification, Germany, Lafone, Leonid Medved, Rigaer Straße, Rigaer94, Squatting

DFW Support Committee Denounces Abuse of Prairieland Defendants (USA)

Posted on 2025/07/14 by darknights

Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas — A week after the arrest of 10 protestors at a demonstration at Prairieland ICE Detention Center and the subsequent arrest of the spouse of an arrestee, Johnson County Jail is obstructing the defendants’ access to legal representation and retaliating against them for exercising their 5th and 6th amendment rights pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. These constitutional violations have occurred in conjunction with a far-reaching investigation that has included numerous instances of excessive force and intimidation by various police agencies, friends and family of the defendants reveal. Continue reading “DFW Support Committee Denounces Abuse of Prairieland Defendants (USA)” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Dallas, DFW Support Committee, ICE, Prairieland Defendants, Repression, Texas, USA

Prairieland Defendants – 11 charged after July 4th shooting at North Texas ICE facility (USA)

Posted on 2025/07/13 by darknights

Prairieland Defendants Support Group Releases Statement and Begins Fundraiser

Dallas-Fort Worth, TX — Today, members of the DFW Support Committee, a group supporting the 11 Prairieland Detention Center arrestees, released a public statement and legal support fundraiser. On July 4th, a group of people protested against the kidnappings and renditions of ICE at the Prairieland Detention Center. By the next day, 10 people were arrested and their loved ones and friends were scrambling to locate them and find out what had happened to them. On July 6th, the spouse of one of the defendants was arrested by the FBI and later charged with obstruction of justice. The police’s story did not make sense to the arrestees’ loved ones and friends, so they began organizing to free the arrestees. Recognizing a need to raise funds to support the defendants and to address the political context in which this is occurring, the DFW Support Committee is releasing a statement and starting a fundraiser for defendants.

The committee’s statement has been released after the arrestees were subsequently charged by the US Department of Justice in a charging document that frames the protest as a violent ambush. Additionally, the spouse of one of the initial defendants was detained by the FBI. The statement categorically rejects this narrative and suggests instead that, “The glaring inconsistencies in the official narrative and the alarmist accusations are a clear attempt to bolster the Trump administration’s claims that the United States is on the verge of chaos, warranting a dramatic increase in militarized police action.”

In addition to the statement, the committee has launched a fundraiser for the defendants. This fundraiser’s description states that it is intended to “raise legal fees and living expenses for all those facing repression connected to the protest at the Prairieland Detention Center.” At the time of release, over $11,000 has been raised. Continue reading “Prairieland Defendants – 11 charged after July 4th shooting at North Texas ICE facility (USA)” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Dallas, DFW Support Committee, ICE, Prairieland Defendants, Repression, Texas, USA

Information about the new prosecution and court case against Lambros & Panagiotis Vougiouklakis and Fotis Daskala (Greece)

Posted on 2025/06/26 - 2025/06/26 by darknights

This is an English-language translation of the following text by comrades Lambros and Panagiotis Vougiouklakis and Fotis Daskalas on Athens Indymedia.

Human dignity is a term we meet in the dictionary, and it defines the choice of a person to act based on solidarity, punctuality, consciousness and the uncompromising struggle against the enemies of freedom.

The history of all hitherto societies is the history of struggles for dignity, a social – class war. Free man or slave, patrician or plebeian, invader or resistance fighter, in one word: oppressor or oppressed, are in constant opposition to one another. A continuous struggle which is expressed either covertly, or openly.

The ruling classes of each age use justice and the legal system to neutralise those who, with their struggle, question the status quo of those above, those who choose to react to the unjust. Justice is but the expression of a power balance, and that is why it was always used to force revolutionaries into silence, to imprison the rebellious, to compel insurgents to renunciation.

Bourgeois justice is the natural result of a society of people who want to deceive as much as possible, since deception is the only path towards power and wealth. Continue reading “Information about the new prosecution and court case against Lambros & Panagiotis Vougiouklakis and Fotis Daskala (Greece)” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Fotis Daskalas, Greece, Lambros Vougiouklakis, Letter, Panagiotis Vougiouklakis, Repression

Fundraiser: Support Bristol Defendant Solidarity – UK

Posted on 2025/06/26 - 2025/06/26 by darknights

Bristol Defendant Solidarity (BDS) is calling for your support and solidarity in a crucial time of need.

https://chuffed.org/project/bds

For years, BDS has been a steadfast ally to those battling with the legal system due to their involvement in protest, resistance, and direct action. We also support those who have been arrested and targeted by violent, discriminatory policing or suffered other state repression.

Over the past few years, we’ve supported almost 100 people targeted following the ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstration on 21st March 2021. The community’s response was phenomenal: your support and donations have been a powerful display of collective defiance and solidarity. But we still need your help to enable us to provide consistent, ongoing and meaningful support to many defendants facing state retribution.

Four years on, the repression remains relentless. So too must our solidarity. KTB defendants are still facing court cases and serving lengthy sentences, while the police enjoy their impunity. Continue reading “Fundraiser: Support Bristol Defendant Solidarity – UK” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Bristol, Bristol Defendant Solidarity, Kill The Bill, Kill The Bill Bristol Riot, Repression, UK

Athens, Greece: Beneath the concrete, something is burning. Statement regarding the occupation of a building and creation of Rasprava Squat

Posted on 2025/04/19 - 2025/04/20 by darknights

Following the end of the event “Revolutionary memory and perspective of the struggle” in Mesologgiou street, a crowd of comrades descended to Kolettis and Themistokleous streets to defend the liberation of the building.
The following is the self-introductory communique of the occupation:

The silence of the metropolis weighs like a stone on our shoulders. The streets are filled with worn-out stares, bodies crawling out of habit, out of fear, out of submission. The world moves along predetermined paths, without a second thought, tempering its dreams. Everything is programmed to work exactly as they want: work, consumption, obedience. Yet, always, beneath the surface, something is boiling.
History is not written by the obedient. A few choose to bear the burden of disobedience. To crack the concrete of normality. To confront the invisible hand of power that chokes every aspect of our lives. Refusing to submit is not a mere stance. It is a call to question, to overturn, to take back everything that belongs to us.
We are comrades, anarchists who derive from different political and ideological backgrounds, but we have found ourselves in the very same fires of struggle. It is there, where our common struggles and collective experiences united us, that we recognized the vital need for the creation of a space for meeting, political maturation1, exchange of views and organizational empowerment.
At a time when isolation is imposed and communities of struggle are being dismantled by repression, the formation of such spaces is not only necessary – it is crucial.
The repressive blows of recent years have not come by accident. The authorities are attempting to eliminate any focus of resistance, to crush any form of self-organisation and to extinguish the flame of contestation.
Great achievements have been lost, the movement has been put on the defensive, the recession is now on the horizon. But we know that history is written by those who do not fall back, by those who are not afraid to confront reality.
To remain on the defensive is to accept defeat. And that is not going to happen.
The time is now to turn words into action, to move from defense to attack.
So let’s make it clear that the enemy will not get rid of us so easily.
We must define our own field of struggle, reclaim our space and time.
To liberate territories from domination, to create a vibrant centre of resistance, a radical cell for mobilisation2 both in theory and action.
We perceive the occupation as an integral part of the movement and the movement as an organic element of the occupation.
The existence of territories of struggle is not just a practical question, but a deeply political one.
Squats are not just places to hang out, they are not just places of hospitality.
They are strongholds of resistance, laboratories of radical practices, cracks in the normality they try to impose on us.
And this is a non-negotiable reality.
Every neighbourhood, every street, every square is not a neutral ground. It is a vibrant map of oppositions, conflicts and claims. Cities are built on the basis of discipline, policing and the sterilization of public space. Squares are filled with surveillance cameras, walls are painted grey, buildings become inaccessible bastions for those who cannot afford to pay the price of existence in a world where everything has a tag price.
Dominance is implementing a strategic plan of universal control of the metropolises, crushing any source of resistance.
Armed with black propaganda and ideological warfare, it attempts to shape consciousness, while the deliberate degradation of neighbourhoods through the spread of organised crime and the violent expulsion of the local population is paving the way for its complete absorption by capital. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Beneath the concrete, something is burning. Statement regarding the occupation of a building and creation of Rasprava Squat” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Athens, Communique, Exarcheia, Gentrification, Greece, Insurrectional Anarchism, Rasprava Squat, Repression, Revolutionary memory, Squatting, “Revolutionary memory and perspective of the struggle”

Massa, Italy: The Inquisition at work. Requested from 5 years 6 months to 7 years imprisonment for the accused in the Massa trial derived from the Operation Scripta Scelera

Posted on 2025/04/07 - 2025/04/07 by darknights

On Tuesday, April 1, one of the most relevant hearings in the trial involving four anarchists indicted in the operation Scripta Scelera for editing and distributing the internationalist anarchist fortnightly “Bezmotivny” was held in Massa. Starting at 12:00 noon in Palma Square there were microphone speeches and a leafleting, and from 3:00 p.m. there was a presence in the courtroom by the solidarity comrades present.

During the hearing, Public Prosecutor Manotti of the Genoa District Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate delivered his indictment, and then set out the requests for conviction against the defendants in reference to both counts of the trial: incitement to commit crimes with the aggravating circumstance of the purpose of terrorism (as well as apology for terrorist crimes) and offense to the honor or prestige of the president of the republic. He did not, however, seek conviction on the aggravating circumstance of having committed the act through computer or telematic means.

These are the requests: 7 years in prison for Gino, 6 years for Luigi (with revocation of the suspended sentence for a previous conviction imposed on him by the Ravenna court), 5 years and 6 months each for Gaia and Paolo. A hearing with defense arguments and sentencing will be held on Tuesday, April 8, also at 3 p.m. in the court in De Gasperi Square.

Before making a few brief remarks, let us recall that this trial-excluding the associative crime initially charged-involves four of the defendants in the proceedings, those for whom this trial with immediate trial was precisely ordered in January 2024 and who were under restrictive house arrest at the time, while as for the other six defendants the proceedings remained in the investigation phase.

The repressive apparatus has long been forcibly trying to “stop” anarchists. With the prosecutions in recent years against certain newspapers we are basically being “reproached” for being what we are, and in particular with Scripta Scelera the state would like to strike at anarchist agitation and propaganda. The shameless willingness to dumb down revolutionary publications as well as to demonize actions of attack against the state and capitalism show the real consistency of the permissive face of the state and its “freedoms of expression” especially in times of war. Seven years in prison for the mere publication of a newspaper-the sixty or so issues of “Bezmotivny”-we understand to be the highest sentence demand ever made in a trial against anarchists in reference to what, objectively, are “crimes of opinion.” Anarchist ideas are evidently dangerous because they overflow with an urgency of life, because they exhort us not to spend our existence on our knees, because they speak of the will to radically overthrow this old world, because they suggest a method of struggle, because…

What else to say? The warning of the new inquisition headed by the anti-terrorist prosecutors’ offices and the prevention police is clear: when faced with the theoretical-practical combination of anarchism, it is either silence or condemnation. Yet if they think they are convincing us that the game is not worth the candle, they are sorely mistaken….

3 April 2025

Posted in Social ControlTagged "anti-terrorist law", Anarchist Newspaper, Anti-anarchist, Bezmotivny, DNAA (Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Antiterrorismo), Italy, Massa, Operation Scripta Scelera, Solidarity Gathering, Trial

ITALY: GATHERING IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANARCHISTS ACCUSED IN SCRIPTA SCELERA OPERATION – MASSA, APRIL 1, 2025

Posted on 2025/03/28 by darknights

Posted in Social ControlTagged 41 bis, Alfredo Cospito, Bezmotivny, DNAA (Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Antiterrorismo), Italy, Massa, Operation Scripta Scelera, Repression, Solidarity Gathering

“The Possibility of a Historic Moment is Now” – Burkhard Garweg

Posted on 2025/03/18 - 2025/03/18 by darknights

… from the German newsite “nd” …

Below we document a letter from Burkhard Garweg, which was sent exclusively to »nd«. Garweg is one of the most wanted people by German police authorities because of suspected RAF membership and several robberies in which millions of euros were stolen. His letter is a critical outline of the history of the Red Army Faction (RAF) and at the same time a response to Caroline Braunmühl, daughter of RAF victim Gerold von Braunmühl, who in January in the »nd« was critical of her brother’s »call for clarification« , but also responded to a previous letter from Burkhard Garweg. Burkhard Garweg now addresses Braunmühl’s statements in his current text. He criticizes the RAF for a phase lasting from 1977 to around 1990 in which the urban guerrillas made military confrontation with the state the focus of their politics and neglected social revolutionary struggles. The author, born in 1968, comes from the autonomous squatter movement and now lives illegally, alternates between two levels in his text: one that analyses and evaluates from today’s perspective and a second, in italics, that speaks very personally from the past and his youth. Burkhard Garweg’s contribution is fully documented below.

“The possibility of a historic moment is now”

On the history of the RAF and the question of the reconstruction of an anti-capitalist, social revolutionary, anti-patriarchal and internationalist movement in the present day.

 

“The possibility of a historic moment is now”

On the history of the RAF and the question of the reconstruction of an anti-capitalist, social revolutionary, anti-patriarchal and internationalist movement in the present day.

In her text in »nd.Die Woche« of January 18, 2025, Caroline Braunmühl presents an alternative position to the bourgeois attitude that attempts to depoliticize the history of militant and armed resistance by reducing its content to violence and negating a political conflict.

In my statement of December 2024, it was also important to me to present resistance to capitalism in the context of the relations of violence – exploitation, the rule of man over man, nationalism, militarism and war – and thus to conduct the debate according to historical reality and to counter the historiography of the rulers and their attempts at manipulation.

The aim of bourgeois historiography is to delegitimize and criminalize anti-capitalist resistance and its history. Its elites have a fundamental interest in maintaining the conditions of exploitation and oppression and in being able to continue to make profits. This is what the proclamation from the ranks of its elites in the 1990s, which has gone down in history, stands for: “there is no alternative.”

Caroline Braunmühl associates the RAF and other militant groups, such as the Rote Zora, with radical resistance against the “violence of socially dominant groups and individuals against socially subordinates – such as class justice, patriarchal violence or transnational relationships of exploitation, oppression and war, from which the economic elites in the Federal Republic of Germany have profited and continue to profit today.” She identifies the justification for militant resistance against violent relations and at the same time denies the legitimacy of targeted assassinations by the RAF in its history.

She criticizes my statement from a feminist perspective and for lacking criticism of the RAF.

I agree with her that a reflective picture of the history of the struggles with the ability to see their weaknesses is necessary. The main thing is to be able to draw conclusions for the struggles of the future.

The world of the dominant capitalist system is moving at an increasing pace towards social and global erosion: war, poverty, displacement and the destruction of the planet’s ecological basis for life. The bourgeois state – and this affects the entire capitalist center of Europe and the USA – is increasingly using right-wing and authoritarian means. It uses the construction of a “national community” to differentiate itself from migrants, Muslims, refugees and the poor. It uses racism, nationalism and rapid militarization both internally and externally. This has repercussions – some of which are also intended – on bourgeois society.

This is becoming radicalized by the deeply rooted racist, patriarchal and social forms of differentiation, exclusion and oppression within society. The world is unmistakably moving towards an infernal tipping point of social, ecological and military erosion.

Capitalism offers no solution to this. It would also be a contradiction in terms. The elites’ solutions to the crisis are now authoritarianism, fascism, war and the process of unifying bourgeois and fascist politics. This is nothing other than a journey into the possible abyss with clear parallels to the historical crises that culminated in the world wars of 1914 and 1939 – albeit with an extremely increased global destructive potential in modern times.

Anyone who wants to prevent this should focus less on the hopeless rescue of bourgeois democracy as a facet of capitalism and the associated retention of the fundamental relations of violence, but rather on social revolutionary alternatives that can only be achieved as a result of social revolutionary and emancipatory struggles.

Existential questions arise: In which steps, initiatives and processes can the reconstruction of an anti-capitalist, social revolutionary and internationalist left be achieved?

But also: What do we take with us into the future from the struggles and concepts of history, from the attempts to overcome the thoroughly violent capitalism and imperialism? How do we as revolutionary leftists discuss and write history from below and appropriate it for the struggles of today and tomorrow and against the propagandistic, depoliticizing and criminalizing historiography from above? Continue reading ““The Possibility of a Historic Moment is Now” – Burkhard Garweg” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Action Directe, Andreas Baader, Anti-capitalism, Anti-imperialism, Anti-patriarchal, Apartheid, Birgit Hogefeld, Brigate Rosse, Burkhard Garweg, Caroline Braunmühl, Daniele Klette, East Germany, Elisabeth Von Dyck, Georg Von Rauch, Germany, Gerold von Braunmühl, Gudrun Ensslin, Günter Sonnenberg, Hans Martin Schleyer, Heidelberg US Army HQ Bombing 1972, Holger Meins, Holger Meins Commando (RAF), Hunger Strike, Internationalism, Jan Raspe, June 2nd Movement, Letter, Lufthansa Hijacking 1977, May 1968, NATO, Nazis, Offensive ’77, Peter Lorenz, Petra Schelm, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - PFLP, Red Army Faction, Repression, Reunification of Germany, Rolf Heißler, Rote Zora, Siegfried Buback shooting 1977, Siegfried Hausner, Sigurd Debus, Social Revolution, South Africa, Springer Press, Stammheim, Stockholm German Embassy Attack 1975, Tommy Weisbecker, Ulrike Meinhoff, Urban Guerrilla, Vietnam War, Weiterstadt prison bombing, West Germany, White Cells, Willy Brandt, Willy Peter Stoll, Wolfgang Grams, World War III, “Fourth Reich”, “May Paper”, “The Possibility of a Historic Moment is Now.”, “Urban Guerrilla Concept”

Thessaloniki, Greece: Against anthropocentrism and metropolitan domination, on the occasion of the Flyover

Posted on 2025/02/18 by darknights

“Flyover” is part of a programme of 30 projects aimed at transforming Thessaloniki into a “metropolis of the Balkans”. Through it, a complex of environmental destruction, capitalist expansion and tightening social control is revealed. Opposing this design through a radical perspective allows us to attribute a material basis to a system that would like us to believe is unmistakable.

The project includes the overhaul of 13.5 km of Thessaloniki’s regional road and the addition of a 4 km Flyover, for which 187 hectares of the Sheih Su forest will be destroyed. To ensure social acceptance of the Flyover project, managed by the AVAX-Mytilineos consortium, a conscious green-washing practice is used. Its main argument is better regulation of traffic to reduce CO2 concentrations in the city. However, it is proven that larger transport infrastructures tend to increase traffic. In addition, Flyover will further cement the nature of the area, harming fauna and flora and favouring the ‘heat island’ effect, i.e. the rise in local temperature due to the heat-absorbing property of the cement.

In other words, this is all bullshit! But even if the project was viable, it would remain problematic. This is an issue with important socio-political implications which should not be dealt with solely from an environmental point of view.

Control: the spacetime of the metropolis

Capitalism needs infrastructure to ensure its enforcement and maintenance. Infrastructures like Flyover help to further control the movement of people and therefore define the relationships we build with each other.

In recent decades, global capitalism has been reorganized around regional metropolises. A network of production units that destroy the earth, exploiting the lives of humans and non-animals. With rural reforms and the use of land for infrastructure, quality of life and employment opportunities are becoming increasingly scarce in rural areas, forcing their inhabitants to move to cities. And in turn, this exponential growth of metropolises leads to further destruction of natural areas. The continuous expansion of the metropolises strengthens the power, strengthening our dependence on the capitalist-state system.

As the metropolis expands, city centres are refined and standardised. What used to be a place of residence, meeting and organisation, it is now becoming a showcase for attracting business and tourism. In the metropolis, the city itself is a product. Those who disturb the superficial ideal, the “undesirables”, the working class, the immigrants and the squatters, are pushed to the periphery. This ‘cleansing’ is made possible as roads, the metro and other modern means of transport allow displaced people to move daily from the degraded neighborhoods where they live to the shops, offices and factories where they are exploited. And as the metropolis expands, so does the portion of their day devoted to commuting. As a result, leisure time is constantly being reduced, absorbed by overtime work and transport.

At the same time, public spaces become smaller, more controlled, uninviting (when they simply do not disappear), or are replaced by cafeteria terraces, parking lots or Christmas markets. The “third places” are exhausted, with every corner of the city being used for financial profit. There is no place for socialisation without honor, let alone political organisation, which is increasingly difficult as spaces that offer alternatives (squats, universities, squares, etc.) are attacked. The only form of protest that is accepted is not only the non-violent, but the one that either does not disturb the production-consumption cycle or actively feeds it. Political discussions are transferred to the online world, social media posts replace our presence on the streets and walls of the city. We are building our own surveillance. Our opposition to the system is expressed solely through our lifestyle, from where and what we consume. Therefore, activism, as it lacks its necessary social character, turns into individual consumer practice, supplying dominant systems instead of opposing them.

So, through the control of space and time facilitated by roads and modern transportation, governments direct our behaviors to prevent any disruption to the capitalist machine.

Moreover, for this transport system to work, it requires a high level of organisation and specialisation of work that only the state can provide. It creates a vicious circle where it is at once the means, the consequence and the source of capitalist expansion. It operates in every aspect of the economy: urbanisation, fossil fuel extraction, agribusiness and nature management. A chain reaction, where the capitalist-state system spreads like a virus until it consumes every living creature, every piece of land and wildlife.

Disconnection: the nature of the metropolis

To assert and maintain its dominance, the capitalist-state system must appear as the logical evolution of our civilisation, inevitable if not desirable. And to trap our consciousness, it shapes our horizon.

In the world of the metropolises, the ground is covered by behemoths and shopping malls, motorways and railways, parking lots and data centres. People penetrate the mountains with tunnels and dig the land for minerals. They mix the limestone and the clay they get with sand from exhausted beaches to make cement and concrete. Containers and giant fishing boats empty the seas, while planes fill the skies. And as capitalism colonises wildlife, the smell of fresh air, the sense of grass and the songs of the birds disappear from our daily lives. In the smell of exhaust fumes, in the sounds of car horns and in the hasty crowd of the city-worker, we find isolation and alienation. By separating us from the natural world, the capitalist-state system separates us from each other.

In the name of the god of profit, it plunders fauna and flora, reducing them to resources that are sacrificed on the altar of civilisation. Non-human animals become meat, winds become kilowatts, trees become oxygen, soil becomes building materials, people become labour. Everyone and everything becomes a commodity.

Although capitalism has driven ecosystem destruction to unprecedented levels, most civilisations have been promoting human domination over other species for centuries. Anthropocentrism, the idea that human civilisation is separate from nature, that man comes first, allowed them to naturalise the unbridled exploitation of the rest of the living beings. A multitude of dipoles runs through our world to ensure the machine runs smoothly: male-female, white-non-white, civilisation-nature.

Many environmental discussions don’t question anthropocentrism and therefore don’t challenge the system. But it is not about “conserving our natural resources” to ensure the future of humanity, nor about “defending nature” as an unattainable ideal separated from us. It’s about refusing to stay on paths that others have mapped out for us. The non-human world is not ours to destroy or protect.

WE ARE NATURE DEFENDING ITSELF

THE DEFENSE OF THE FORST IS SELF-DEFENSE

Defend Seih Sou

defendseihsou@espiv.net

Source: Blessed Is The Flame

Posted in Eco Struggle, General, Social ControlTagged anthropocentrism, Anti-Civilization, Defend Seih Sou, Greece, metropolis, Thessaloniki

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  • Kontrapolis (Germany)
  • La Nemesi (Italy, World)
  • Legiun (Indonesia, World)
  • MTL Contre-Info (Canada)
  • North Shore Counter-Info (Canada)
  • Philly Anti-Cap (USA)
  • Resistenze al nanomondo (Italy)
  • Rote Hilfe CH (Switzerland)
  • Rote Hilfe DE (Germany)
  • Sans Nom (France)
  • Secours Rouge (Switzerland, World)
  • Squat.net (World)
  • Switch Off (Europe)
  • Takku (Finland)
  • Unoffensive Animal (World)
  • Urban Guerilla - Archive (1960s-1980s)

Security

  • Tails USB
  • TOR Project
  • Ears and Eyes
  • No Trace

Anarchism

  • Edzioni Anarchismo
  • Elephant Editions
  • Anarchist Libraries
  • Anarchist FAQ
  • AK Press UK
  • Active Distribution
  • Anarchist Black Cross Federation USA - Guide
  • Solidarity International
  • Prisoner Solidarity
  • ABC Brighton - Guide

Anti-State Radio Broadcasts

  • 1431AM (Thessaloniki, Greece)
  • A-Radio (Vienna, Austria)
  • A-Radio Berlin (Germany)
  • Radio Kurruf (Chile)
  • Radio Libertaire (France)
  • B(A)D News Radio (Worldwide)
  • Channel Zero (USA)
  • Frequenz A (Leipzig, Germany)
  • It's Going Down (USA)
  • Anarchy Radio/John Zerzan (USA)
  • The Final Straw (USA)
  • Radio Blackout (Italy)
  • Radio Onda d'Urto (Italy)
  • Radio Bandito (Italy)
  • Radio Ondarossa (Italy)
  • Black Hole (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
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