Partito Democratico

Italy: Statements of Alfredo Cospito & Anna Beniamino at the hearing on June 19, 2023 at the Turin Court of Appeals

Posted on 2023/06/25 by darknights

We are circulating Alfredo Cospito’s statement at the June 19 hearing in the court of appeals in Turin on the calculation of sentences against Alfredo himself and Anna Beniamino as part of the Scripta Manent trial. The comrade was connected via video-conference from the Bancali prison in Sassari (as known, the regulations do not require in-person presence). Replications and sentencing against the comrades are postponed to a later hearing scheduled for Monday, June 26, at 12 noon, also at the Turin court.

Alfredo Cospito: Statement at the June 19, 2023 hearing at the Turin Court of Appeal

This statement of mine is closely related to the trial because it goes into the merits of the sanctioning treatment you imposed on me. Sanctioning treatment that is unconstitutional and contradicts your own laws. Sanctioning treatment, 41 bis, that distorts the very meaning of my imprisonment, imposing on me a senseless censure that limits my right to defense.

It is obvious to all how my trial affair has been used as a sort of cudgel by one political party, “the government,” against another political party, the so-called “opposition.” My last-minute transfer from one section to another in anticipation of the arrival of PD parliamentarians is a striking example. Which shows how the DAP and 41 bis have been exploited for political purposes.

These facts are closely related to this trial because they are the product of past political dynamics that led to our disproportionate prosecution and conviction for political slaughter. To shut my mouth now, at the only time I can defend myself would mean endorsing this dangerous and totalitarian drift. Before talking about Fossano and the so-called “massacre” (although there is little to say, it would be enough to look at the images of the damage of the tremendous explosion) for just two minutes I will have to mention three deaths, two of which I am somehow responsible for, the third death that of Cosimo occurred at the clinical center of Opera, ward 41 bis. Continue reading “Italy: Statements of Alfredo Cospito & Anna Beniamino at the hearing on June 19, 2023 at the Turin Court of Appeals” →

Italy: ‘The homeland of Beccaria? A homeland of gravediggers’ – Anna Beniamino

Posted on 2023/02/21 - 2023/02/21 by darknights

The homeland of Beccaria? A homeland of gravediggers

So many people are digging for a corpse, but no one takes the responsibility of being the executioner. At the same time, it’s full of gravediggers ready to throw shovels of mud preparing the grave for the anarchist. A confused and dishevelled ballet around the gallows with many bit players: ‘zero tolerance’, institutional blame-game, audience depending changes of course, the spectre of anarchy that keeps the government, or rather the state, ‘under checkmate’, and then the ‘mass-murdering’ anarchists colluding with the mass-murdering mafiosi, with the appearance on stage of the PD [Partito Democratico, “Democratic Party”].

A poorly written and poorly acted theater, a scramble of ignorant ‘experts’, of professional and compulsive liars, of low journalism, sloth and cowardice that does nothing but reveal what is the potential of an individual waging a struggle alone against the state moloch. A moloch, by the way, that by its own makers claim must be very fragile if a few writings on the walls, broken shop windows and a few burnt cars are enough to put it in ‘danger’.

Whichever way you look at it, the struggle of an anarchist thrown into a torture regime has broken the prevailing narrative. Despite the ridiculous attempt to credit him as colluding with (or, even worse, directed by…) the Mafia, despite the ridiculous attempt to misrepresent his acts and words, it would seem that a little critical sense prevails, and that the attempt to undermine his credibility and integrity achieves the opposite effect of bringing out the linear coherence of anti-authoritarians and revolutionaries who continue to defend their ideas and practices without being distracted by the fireworks of post-modern media politics. And that unite, whereas repression would divide.

Shifting the focus away from the smokescreen that has been raised, which forces one to respond to low-grade rubbish, it would suffice to sustain oneself on the cornerstones of anti-authoritarian thinking: to talk of a weld between anarchists and the Mafia (and its corollary: that antagonism in the streets supports the ‘mafiosi’) is an oxymoron, just as it would be to speak of a weld between anarchists and the State for who, in case anyone had forgotten, has always made the rejection of political delegation a bulwark against the representative drift and the trafficking that underlies it. Exactly why opposing imprisonment and torture does not mean sanctifying the people inside, who are often enslaved subservients (and/or also applying) the same political and authoritarian dynamics.

Anarchism is guilty of having been swept aside and mistreated by official historiography or swallowed up in the vortex of inculture of 21st century digital illiteracy, yet its contribution to the development of the tensions and revolutionary path of the last two centuries has been fundamental, although often overexposed to the risk of instrumentalisation, internal purges or self-dissolution, unable to make the results obtained bear fruit in the long term.

However, anarchism has the virtue of being a mala erba, tenacious and difficult to uproot, which relapses more powerfully if one tries to eradicate it. That is what we are experiencing. Its mercurial ability to unite and divide, its fluidity and unpredictability have given it the ability to raise one of the thorniest, most censored and misrepresented issues: prison and torture regimes.

So much needs to be discussed, in the immediate term and in perspective. Now there is a man to support, all the way to the end, since too many are playing without restraint on his very life.

Anna
February 5th, 2023

Translator’s note: Cesare Beccaria was a Lombard enlightened man of the 18th century who was particularly concerned with the punitive system. He is considered advanced because, among other things, he opposed the death penalty.

[Translation received via e-mail and published at https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2023/02/20/the-homeland-of-beccaria-a-homeland-of-gravediggers/]

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(IT) La patria di Beccaria? Una patria di becchini
(EN) The homeland of Beccaria? A homeland of gravediggers
(ES) ¿La patria de Beccaria? Una patria de sepultureros

Italy: ‘The winter of capital’

Posted on 2022/10/01 - 2022/10/14 by darknights

The winter of capital

This weekend’s elections were very important for the fate of Europe. No, we are not talking about the miserable staging of the Italian round of elections, but about the referendums held in some occupied territories of Ukraine for annexation to the Russian Federation.

With them, the proxy and regionalized “world war” being fought between Russia and NATO takes a formal turn with important practical consequences. From the moment the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye officially become part of Russia, Putin’s regime can claim that any Ukrainian attack in these territories will be read as an attack on Russia itself. The result is the order for general mobilization, the proclamation of martial law, and the transformation of its industry into a war economy to defend the homeland.

With this strategic shift, the Russian government moves away from the rhetoric of Special Military Operation – a neologism taken in inspiration from “international police missions,” “peacekeeping missions,” “humanitarian wars,” and other fanciful Doctor Strangelove sorties of the much-hated West – to the declaration of outright war. Demonstrating the farcical nature of any electoral mechanism, which always photographs the power relations between dominants and never an abstruse as non-existent “popular will,” Putin ordered partial mobilization even before knowing the referendum outcome, recalling the first three hundred thousand reservists.

From now on, all those states that have been arming the Kiev regime for months and that have enabled it to resist so effectively and to counterattack with unexpected successes become cobelligerent. Those who arm a state to which war is formally declared are also (almost) at war. Europe and the United States will now have to take responsibility for a conflict that they have fueled by all means, with the aim of bleeding the Russian enemy dry, hoping to achieve maximum results with minimum effort, i.e., by sending Ukrainian ascari1 to their deaths.

Rather than expire in the partisan readings of the court pen-pushers and opposing supporters, which as internationalists and enemies of every state we cannot but reject, reiterating our hostility against all sides in the war, it is worth dwelling on a couple of thoughts. Continue reading “Italy: ‘The winter of capital’” →