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Eviction threat for the Villa Vegan Squat, MilanoIn mid-July, 2012, patrols of the carabinieri appeared at the residences of two inhabitants of the Villa Vegan Squat in Milano, to deliver “closure of the investigation” papers related to the occupation of the Squat. The Villa Vegan is an anarchist vegan space that has existed for the past 14 years, serving as a venue for countless events, benefit concerts, mobilizations and ongoing debates and dialogues over many aspects of antiauthoritarian struggle and resistance. The space and its inhabitants have supported feminist and anticapitalist struggles, animal and earth liberation, prison abolition, opposition to the CIE (detention centers for immigrants), anti-civilization movements, and resistance to all forms of repression. The Villa has also operated as an DIY community resource with a bicycle workshop, rehearsal space and recording room, and served as a locus for other forms of underground and non-market cultural production.For 14 years this place has been the crossroads for many comrades from all over the world, and its walls have reverberated with the energy of all those who have passed through or stayed a while, exchanging political experiences, sharing affection, and building affinity on an international level. In short, the making of politics.
Continue READING:Britain’s top universities are still capable of churning out top-rank arseholes, despite recent attempts to force the odd prole through their doors.
That’s the claim made by bursars at Oxford and Cambridge universities, home to colleges with a proud history of arsehole production. In fact, many of the arseholes who have graduated from the region widely regard themselves to be ‘the envy of the world’.
‘It’s not all inspirational Olympians and dedicated research scientists,’ insisted Dr Jeremy Hogg, chair of Oxford’s St. Windolene’s college. ‘We’re still knocking out the sort of bore that orders breakfast in Latin. For every scientist researching cancer there’s a misunderstood director making wilfully difficult ballet about the fagging system. They’re both arseholes, but only one of them makes a song and dance about it.’
We are standing on a crossroad, where we were led by an on going long procedure during the last three years. The riot of 2008 was followed by an open public discussion in the squares of greek cities, where a huge part of greek society showed an active participation. Before the riot of December 2008 the state devaluated life by murdering a 15 year old boy (Alexandros Grigoropoulos), while during the summer of 2011 life devaluated the state by breathing free and fresh air in the squares, without and against the state’s authority.
The idea of direct democracy came in public discussion and managed to crack once and for all the “wall” of representation. The path is now open, but the question still remains, who is going to walk this path?
The topics of this festival deal with
the update of the meaning of direct democracy he presentation and networking of the new projects of a social and solidarious economy that [...]
"So let us take off our crosses
And leave them in a tin
Let our weakness become virtue
Instead of sin."
Continue READING:Almost a hundred years ago, the Russian revolution saw a transformation in the status of women. Yet in the country of Kollontai, who foretold a land free of both marriage and prostitution, where sexual relations were as simple as sipping a glass of water and women could not be bought, and of Armand, who oversaw the introduction of mass canteens, laundrettes, factory creches, and nursery schools to eradicate gender differences in domestic labour, the position of women has suffered a dramatic contraction.As Russian society descended into chaos in the early 90s with soviet era industries sold off for pennies, the influx of Western currency saw young women in demand for the sexual services that they could provide. In the 90s “The Hungry Duck”, one of Moscow’s most notorious nightclubs thrived on young Russian women hoping to pick up a rich Westerners or newly minted member of Russia’s emerging kleptocracy. The soviet era dining halls and communal childcare facilities evaporated while municipal heating systems faltered and women were thrown back on their own resources to get by, finding that the sale of sexual services could give them cash in a country no longer paying wages.
There is, however, very little positive doctrine in Cynic preaching: no direct affirmation of good or bad. Instead, the Cynics refer to freedom (eleutheria) and self-sufficiency (autarkeia) as the best criteria by which to assess any kind of behaviour or mode of life. For the Cynics, the main condition for human happiness is autarkeia, self-sufficiency or independence, where what you need to have or what you decide to do is dependent on nothing other than yourself. As a consequence -- since the Cynics had the most radical of attitudes--they preferred a completely natural life-style. A natural life was supposed to eliminate all of the dependencies introduced by culture, society, civilization, opinion and so on. Consequently, most of their preaching seems to have been directed against social institutions, the arbitrariness of rules of law, and any sort of life-style that was dependent upon such institutions or laws. In short, their preaching was against all social institutions insofar as such institutions hindered one's freedom and independence.
Continue READING:Olympic dream and reality
It’s exactly a year since inner-city riots swept London and other parts of the country. They were sparked by bottled-up anger at the arrogance of the police and rapidly spread into a brief orgy of looting and general destructiveness that took many, including the police, by surprise.
As the medals stack up, politicians backed up by the tabloids are hailing the London Olympics as a great British success story draped in endless Union Jacks. So does the hiatus as millions are drawn into the spectacle mean that the alienation which lay behind the riots has been replaced by a new sense of community, as some would have it?
It’s true that the London Olympics are a showcase for aspects of the British character and mass behaviour not normally apparent in the hardscrabble struggles of daily life. In addition to the prowess of the athletes, thousands of young people have made it as a chance to be friendly and helpful to visitors.
It may be asked where has this great surge of sporting talent and determination, which saw British athletes win six gold medals in one day, come from?
----And, yet! I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press. It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.
As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.
