Full Marx to some cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, who have an interesting blog called La Bataille socialiste. It’s got some pages in English too, which is definitely useful to a mono-linguist such as myself.
A spectre is haunting Europe, and it’s being exorcised. A while ago it was Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, now it’s The Köpi in Berlin (Last Stand for the Far Left: Berlin Commune Fights the Property Developers, Stefan Berg and Marcel Rosenbach, Spiegel Online, December 21, 2007). Some body or other writes:
Berlin, end of December 2007: the situation in the city is continuously getting worse.
While until a few years ago this city stood as one of the fortresses of the squatter’s movement, nowadays we are reduced to the few remaining autonomous spaces. House projects, trailer-parks, autonomous youth clubs and so on are slowly disappearing – and sometimes without the slightest sound of resistance – under the pressure of State, capitalist relationships and its active servants.
The process known as gentrification keeps on changing entire neighbourhoods, fast and pitiless, in order to make place for yuppies, investors, alternative artists and generally all the people who feel themselves to be at home in mainstream society.
It seems as if, very soon, there will be no place left for self-organized, uncommercial and anti-authoritarian spaces. But despite this, there are still signs of active resistance all around.
The riots in Copenhagen last December, and the struggle for Ungdomshuset, brought forward – explosively and uncompromisingly – the somehow sleepy movement for autonomous spaces. In Germany, as on an international level, this movement is again on the offensive. As well as the fact that a lot of supporters travelled from Germany to Copenhagen to fight the battle there, solidarity actions happened in more than 30 German cities: among them, two long weeks of actions in Berlin.
Here, we also took back the streets for ourselves through a large, energetic and resolute demonstration, rocking the city and reclaiming public space once more for our uncontrollable, spontaneous and direct actions.
Rigaer94/Kadterschmiede, Köpi, Bethanien, Schwarzer Kanal, Liebig 14, Liebig 34/XB and the Infoladen Daneben, the Linienhöfe and the Brunnenstr.183/Umsonstladen, are some of the autonomous spaces under threat of eviction: these, as all the others, must stay, and this can be achieved only through a movement based on resoluteness, solidarity and active resistance.
We want to push forward offensively to keep our freespaces and to fight for the creation of new ones: to show the City that every eviction carries its own price.
We therefore call on everybody to join a demonstration on the 8th of December – almost one year after the “final battle“ in Copenhagen – in order to destroy together the winter lethargy of investors, yuppies and cityplanners and to show clearly and unequivocally our rage against the current situation ….Active solidarity with all threatened autonomous projects – in Berlin as worldwide! Fight and defend autonomous freespaces!
For autonomous spaces and self-organization against dominion and capitalism.
*sigh*
The naughty policeman who tried to bugger off following an assault upon a Jewish fella last year can now enjoy being named as such on the front page of today’s edition of The Age (Police ‘hindered’ race probe, Liz Porter, December 23, 2007). Apparently, another naughty policeman may have tried to subvert the course of justice: “Two versions of a statement by a witness who came to Mr Vorchheimer‘s aid have been viewed by The Sunday Age — showing that the original was edited to remove material suggesting the off-duty policeman tried to take offenders from the scene before police arrived”.
Ah. The sound of one wrist slapping.
Love & Rage is being published online: the newspaper, the network, the revolutionary anarchist federation (see also a proposal for a regional anarchist federation). When it died in 1998, L&R gave birth to a number of other groups, including the Fire By Night Organizing Committee. It eventually evolved/collapsed into the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation, a Maoist sect. That is the FRSO/OCSL, to be confused with the FRSO; both groups consider themselves to be the only legitimate Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Nowadays, the FRSO is sending fraternal greetings to the PFLP, which this year (December 11) celebrates its 40th birthday:
Dear Comrades,
We send you our warmest fraternal greetings, and salute you on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Popular Front of the Liberation Palestine. Your steadfastness and courage in the face of cruel and dangerous oppressors is an inspiration to people across the globe, including here in the United States. We are confident that the next 40 years will bring still more victories over imperialism and Zionism, and the compete liberation of every inch of Palestine…
And on another spotterly note, there’s a great family tree of Love & Rage online available here.
Crypto-fascist pop * Marko Perkovic and his band Thompson will be in town soon (Tour visa for ‘fascist’ rock singer attacked, Greg Roberts, The Australian, December 22, 2007), although it’s unlikely he’ll be reprising his version of the song ‘Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara’:
Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška,
That’s the house of Maks’s butchers.
There was a slaughterhouse in Čapljina,
Neretva carried away many Serbs (from there).
O Neretva, flow downhill,
And carry the Serbs into the blue Adriatic.
Through Imotski trucks rush,
Driving the black uniforms of Jure Francetić.
I am Ustasha and so was my father,
Father left the craft to his son…
Whoever said that Black Legion is not coming back,
May his father fuck him.
Lady Sinjska, if you can, take away Stipe and bring back our Franjo.
O Racan, may a dog fuck your mother, and the ones who voted for you.
Shining star above Metković,
Send our greetings to Ante Pavelić.
For a sympathetic account, see Who is Marko Perkovic “Thompson”? by Frano Budimlic.
Back in Berlin again, Neo-Nazi victim plans to kill himself in Berlin: report: “BERLIN (AFP) — A British man left paralysed after an attack by neo-Nazis is planning to travel to Berlin to kill himself, Bild newspaper reported on Tuesday. Noel Martin, a 48-year-old former builder who lives in Birmingham, told the popular German daily: “I will come to Berlin to die. Making it my last destination will close an open circle in my life.”
