SENZA CENSURA N.24

november '07 - february '08

EDITORIAL

A state of war

We said it in many occasions: there is a process of reorganization that, with steps of a giant, is trying to transform radically the rules and to redefine the limits of the social dialectics.  A process that, quite beyond a return to fascism, we believe that represents rather the structural adaptation of a political , economical and social system directed strategically to the war.  Therefore, a new development for our generation that like such has to be analyzed, understood and, when it’s possibile, it has to be fought.  In this situation it shouldn’t surprise us the continuous constant trickle of attacks and repressive and legislative exacerbations we assist to since time, but that particularly in the  last period seems to have recorded a worrying acceleration.  Everyone knows that in a situation of war it is in force the martial law: what is difficult to understand, at least from the political and ideological point of view, is the fact that today we are already objectively in war.  Too slowly, in fact, it is reorganizing in the collective conscience the illusion (or the hypocritical certainty) that war is something of ugliness but that pertains alone distant worlds, distant people, to which is sufficient oppose with the moral engagement of whom, from his own democratic "safety", thinks that peace in the world is a right thing. 

Surely, bombs are still falling on those unluckier, all over the world, even if sometimes someone "crazy" tries to make us taste a piece of war even in our countries…

But like every good respected army, we are beginning to measure  with the harshness and the martial law typical of every preparation and management of war.

 And with its costs.  Sure, because war has go a cost.  And not only for the enormous quantity of money that the military equipment sucks every year from the pockets of millions of workers for missions, armaments, bases, military reserach etc.  It has got an enormous cost also from the political point of view.

 Exhausted since decades, the hope to be able to give infinite continuance to the economical development and  to be able to manage the dominion, at least in the capitalist west, across a shrewd distribution of richness, the war has remained the only  business able to draw a system irreversibly in crisis and that allows at the same time to catch more and more important resources in the hope to guarantee a future.  This, in extreme synthesis, can be defined the strategy on which are based the present lines of government of imperialism, drawn by the American lobbies. 

To be it outside today, for a state or for a government, it is not possible without putting in discussion the whole system.  It is not more only a problem of "alliances" : the only possibility is to accept  the game sharing till the bottom the common objective and wanting to draw the greater possible advantage from the available cards.

This imposes to every "gambler" to pledge himself only on the strategic plan, to concentrate all the actual efforts and all the actual resources on this objective.  There is not therefore more space for particular interests or for the autonomies, and everything is reasoned mainly on international level (European level, as minimum).  In this situation, we confirm it,  it has now lost objectively sense every  "reformist" perspective, as do not exist practically more spaces of action, nor from the political point of view neither from the economical one, out of the guide-lines defined on the general plan.  The present center-left government is the more obvious demonstration, like as much obvious is the extreme acrobatics to which are compelled the forces of the so-called institutional "political left", intent to cover in a demagogic sense with the square (see October 20) the actual wicked alignment to the choices of government and owners. 

To this point appears clear that the reduction of the spaces of political agibility and the control of every type of opposition becomes for the dominion a not to be ignored priority to all the levels, from the international one to the iper-local one.  And in this sense we are interested in emphasizing another aspect of this process, more specific, that however is characterizing now daily the political life of a lot of territories and the practice of the experiences of re-composition that to their inside want to move themselves: the so-called “safety campaign".  Our impression is that, from the point of view of the local governments, the "crusade for security" of some mayors is carrying to same results to those obtained the past years on the legal plan, where they have passed from the large  anti-terrorist actions on national level during the 80s  to the consolidation on the local plan of assault “pools” involved in repression to territorial level.  This development derives not only from a requirement of protagonism of the various "first citizens", but rather from the concrete necessity to support the work of magistracy and forces of police to the action of propaganda and control inside of the territorial "community", that justifies politically and socially their work.  This is translated in an increase of direct powers of some mayors, in continuous media campaigns on the matter "Safety", in the introduction of rules and local dispositions more or less crazy.  And this obviously opens the doors also to the real repressive actions, how testify the wave of  summer evacuations and the legal measures of constant trickle of these last months.  Beyond the immediate effects on the persons directly hit, the hyper media and leagl measure of these countries has like concrete objective that to work as deterrent inside of the social corp, creating a climate of intimidation and  distrust on the real possibility to develop shapes of critic to the present state of things.  Further, this type of countries favor structural and system transformations, legitimizing the approval of new restrictive normatives that, at first introduced on specific cases, are progressively extended to the whole society. 

And if the political and union militants of the antagonist area are, like always, the natural target of cops & co. You can note as in reality the impact of these operations involve more and more also other social fields, attached more or less directly from the present process of reorganization and that for this they are preventively monitored and dissuaded. 

In conclusion, the repressive and “security”politics  become an appearance more commune in the countries of the capitalistic west, pledged with determination to support the actual politics of aggression on the international plan an internal front not to be ignored for their stability.  And in fact it is possible to verify a substantial homogeneousness and continuance between the economical unpopular politics, the various processes of institutional reform, the repressive strategies that develop themselves in the different European countries and the progressive extension of the outside political projectionof the Imperialist European Pole  Therefore it is not surprising if we find a substantial affinity between Cofferati’s words (Bologna is sincealways an advanced repressive laboratory…) and the repressive actions of Garzon that seeks to put down with arrests the claims of the basque independentism.  Or if there is not much difference between the preventive actions against the anti-imperialist militants in Germany and the legal questions, based on the associative offenses, that continue to hit hundred of political and union soldiers here in Italy.  Or if the CPT here at home is not different from same present structures in the other European countries.  Or if the weighing process of reorganization, of deregulation and "precarization" of the wage relation in the "world of the work", from the factory to the public area, pass everywhere above the workers of millions of head with the accomplice covering of the union organizations of regime. 

They could be done many other examples… In this number we have tried to deepen some of these aspects, with interviews and direct contributions that to our warning are able to be interesting to develop in a concrete sense this type of reflection.  Good reading and… good work!