rivista anarchica
anno 41 n. 366
novembre 2011


Italiano


 

Hungary
To the right

The increasingly obvious authoritarian tendencies in Hungary should not surprise too much.
The warning signs were not missed, particularly during a previous government of Viktor Orban. At that time the conservative right was supported from outside by the Magyar Igazsagés EletPart ("Party of Hungarian Justice and Life") openly anti-Semitic. Well-known relations of the leader Istvan Cusurka (former member of the conservative and populist Magyar Demokrata Forum) with the French National Front. Orban had given its support to the Cusurka campaign for the rehabilitation of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazi collaborators. This year, in late July, although the former Hungarian gendarmerie captain Sandor Kepiro, accused of having taken part in the massacre by the Nazis in Novi Sad in 1942, was acquitted for "lack of evidence." A verdict that the "Documentation Centre on Nazi war criminals Simon Wiesenthal" has called "outrageous." The participation of the Hungarian police raids of 1942 is historically proven. Thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Serbs were killed and their bodies thrown into the Danube. Recently, the new government of Viktor Orban has demanded the revision of the contents of the permanent exhibition of the Museum of the Holocaust as "Admiral Miklos Horthy's unfair." Regent of Hungary from 1920 to 1944, Horthy had introduced anti-Jewish measures in the legislation even before the arrival of the Nazis.

In 1999 one of Viktor Orban closest collaborators was the director of the Institute for the Study of the twentieth century, Maria Schmidt. During a conference she had called the Holocaust "a secondary consideration" in the history of the Second World War. Claiming that she considered worthy of Le Pen, the gas chambers "a detail" of the conflict. Orban, despite criticism, had confirmed Maria Schmidt in her post. Also in 1999, not coincidentally, Budapest was the location of two major international antisemitic events.


At the risk the freedom of the press

Today, with Orban back to power in May 2010, the situation seems to be getting worse. Those who attended the event organized by a handful of brave journalists can confirm this on July 13. No more than 250, led through the streets of Budapest, a coffin, a symbol of the fate of press freedom in Hungary. In June, the well 570 editors MTV television and Duna TV, radio and public agency MTI had been dismissed. Many should follow shortly, by the end of August. It was also fired the entire editorial staff that took care of the weekly broadcast of public television dedicated to the Gypsy minority. The opposition has denounced what he called a "political purge". Since the end of last year all the public media have been unified into a single central editorial office, the MTVA that produces all the information. Among those responsible for MTVA, a certain Daniel Papp. He had his moment of fame when it was discovered that he had completely falsified the statements of the European Greens in a press conference in order to discredit the MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

The new version of the media law took effect July 1. It looks even more coercive than that adopted in December 2010, it raised an outcry in Europe. At the risk of public sector enterprises, which may only be dissolved by the Media Council, in the hands of loyalists Orban. The Council will also not renew the contract of private radio and television. Be noted that Annamaria Szalai, president of the Council, an official organ of protection, even against children, had taken its first steps into the world of print publishing a pornographic monthly. The newly-established Council of the media does not seem to want to speak about openly racist and anti-Semitic comments on publications and websites popping Hungarian. Instead Népszava already come under fire, a leftist newspaper, guilty of not having censored a letter from a reader who was not allowed to criticize the president Pal Schmitt.


Mandatory work

With a reform passed in July, unemployment compensation was reduced to ninety days. Also on 1 September those who use public assistance will be engaged in "socially useful" work such as cleaning streets and parks or in the yards of two-stage construction, one in Budapest, the other in Debrecen. Anyone who refuses will lose the subsidy. To be involved in this project of compulsory work (taken from the program of far-right party Jobbik) will be particularly the Roma surveillance will be entrusted to members of the police sent into early retirement. One way to "put back to work at least 300 thousand people," Interior Minister Sandor Pinter the second. With the new regulations the municipal authorities will be able to "see if the beneficiaries of the subsidies they are worthy." We provide inspections to check the "cleaning their homes and their clothes." In addition to the ethnic, social racism crops up. Moreover, the Nazis persecuted Sinti and Roma as "antisocial individuals" (as anarchists) knowing that it was "pure Aryans" as Hitler himself admitted. Although reluctantly, it is assumed.



Gianni Sartori

 

 

Chile
Finally a springtime of fights

These days there is much talk in the spring of the Chilean people.
For three months, students in Chile have created a movement that was initially characterized with claims that they had to do with the school system and education in general is very expensive that fall on the parents and families in general.
You must know that in Chile there is no public school, everything is privatized, the schools are run by municipalities and therefore the parents must pay the high rate of common, because it assumes that the same common teachers, who are paid with installments which are required for parents. The same thing happens in the middle schools and high schools and universities
All this happens because the Pinochet dictatorship system of education was given to individuals who are owners of the university, schools and colleges.


Today there are millions of Chileans who live with the nightmare of installments that must be paid to these banks and masters of education. There are very strong group of middle-class Chilean who have invested in this deal is a deal where the only round to earn these are private groups that take advantage of all Chileans.
Today, students with their mobilization were able to involve most of the people because they are repealed these laws giving privileges to individuals. They ask that in Chile there is a free public and state school, these are the initial reasons for the protest.
From May to now there have been protests, demonstrations and occupations that have seen students at all school levels occupy all the institutions in Chile This meant that the whole people sympathize with the students bringing food to the occupations, parents are organizing associations to support the struggle of their children.
In large cities such as Santiago, Valparaiso Concetion, Temuco, Antofagasta.

In three months of stirring, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Pinera has responded to requests from students only repression, provocative and indiscriminate beatings every time he took to the streets. The highlight was the starts in August, when they launched a national demonstration and the government has prohibited for reasons of public policy. Students took to the streets anyway, but this time they had next to them the support of all the neighborhoods, associations and human rights committees. That event had managed to bring out students from the isolation in which the government wanted to confine them.
There were 870 boys, thousands of injured and therefore most of the detainees were tortured in prisons and barracks (which is why the G8 in Italy in the period 2001 to call the night the Chilean repression that had been the movement) but in Chile something permitted by impunity enjoyed by police so they can torture, kill, destroy homes and get into everything without ever being prosecuted or expelled from the service, everything is permitted to them.
In August there was a general strike of the single central trade unions of workers who brought hundreds and thousands of people to the streets in all major cities of Chile and took part in the strike not only workers but with a strong involvement of students and residents of neighborhoods.

Only in Santiago there were more 'than 800,000 people who have demonstrated and clashed with police for two days. The repression was strong, there were 1,400 arrests, a 14 year old boy was killed by police who fired wildly in the Macul district. All this has done nothing but increase the support of the struggles of students and workers.
Today in Chile it is normal to see the red and black flags in protest, and the flags of the Mapuche people. On one hand, today the Mapuche have earned their own political space because it is more than twenty years carrying on a struggle to recover their lands. Despite the repression, violence and destruction of villages and the imprisonment, the Mapuche have continued this fight for the sacrosanct right to exist.
The government gave the only answer to the Mapuche is to accuse them as terrorists, applying for this anti-terror laws of the Pinochet dictatorship. Dozens of Mapuche were jailed, some sentenced to 10 years and the last 4 have been sentenced to 25 years. In these days there will be another process that involves 9 Temocuicui Mapuche community, they also face a heavy sentence.

There is also the Chilean anarchists who undergo repression that in 2009 there was a big crackdown that has seen the closure of the social centers and occupied the house and the detention of 14 comrades who are known for a process called "bomb case". Many of them were 180 days in jail, have also long hunger strikes ensure the recognition of their innocence. Today, most of them are under house arrest, some with the obligation to sign on every month, others with a prohibition to leave in the evening. All are awaiting trial. The prosecutor is asking for two of them life sentence and for the other a sentence of 10 years. Today, adding up all these things (Mapuche anarchist workers and students) is forming a large unit of struggling with economic and political content have to do with the interests of all the people, struggling with all his might forever change the situation that Chile carries from the time of the dictatorship. We must also point out that what was now the Chilean Left does not have any sympathy from the people, this battle came from below and to do with the true interests of the Chilean people. So right for this movement is very difficult to remove because there are the usual so-called left-wing parties to mediate and ready to betray the struggles that so hardly the Chileans are carrying out.

In 1990 he returned to civilian rule in Chile after 17 years of dictatorship, the government has reached a coalition called the Concertation, made by Socialists and Christian Democrats. This Consultation has sunk forever expectations of Chileans who thought that once the military left would return to democracy and the rule of law. All this has happened, has gone ahead with the same policy of the military, the economic neo-liberalism and the Chilean constitution of 1980 set to be one of the most ferocious dictatorships in Latin America on record.
In twenty years has not changed anything, the capitalists go on undisturbed, the state is increasingly oppressor against anyone who wants to challenge the system inherited from the military. It is as if the dictatorship in Chile still continue, whoever resists (both Mapuche and students, workers, anarchists and movements in general) is charged as a terrorist, the repression is very strong, the frames are on the agenda, the torture is a daily thing, but despite all this, students have the same life as a national day of protest for September 8.
A portion of the population is asking for a referendum to change the damn constitution that for almost 30 years has given the total impunity of those responsible for genocide against the people of Chile and gave a free hand to the middle class, military and corporations to loot and plunder all Chile's natural resources, leaving the people in misery.



Associazione Comitato Lavortori Cileni Esiliati
for further information see these blogs: wwwsrhostil.org/elsurco (anarchist newspaper), wwwliberdadlos14a.blogspot.com .blogspot.com

 

 

Remembering
Rocco Ventre

Tuesday, September 6, at 7 am, died in Sulmona Rocco Ventre, the lawyer who was very close to the anarchists in the dark days of the Massacre of State who was a member of the Political-legal Committee, formed for the defense of fellow pursued by law enforcement officers immediately after the tragedy of the Agriculture Bank of Milan and contemporary attacks in Rome.
I met the lawyer for the first time. Belly to Palazzaccio of Rome, if I remember correctly in the fall of 1966. I was with Mario Mantovani Attorney to respond to an injunction relating to an article in A, unwelcome and liable to power by virtue of a scelbiana law.
That day, Rocco (let me call it that, with the first name alone, more than forty years for the friendship that bound me to him) defended a lanky young man in his early twenties, charged with a petty theft. Apologists argue with an absolutely free of rhetoric, but with a human tension that affected me deeply.
Palermo, like me, like me and the whole generation lived in the dramatic period of the Second World War, grew up, as we say among ourselves, on bread and cake, to allude to a food extremely poor, suitable only to alleviate the hunger of atavistic wretched time.
He moved to Rome and completed his law studies, he opened a law office in the Avenue of the Militia, which, in the hard times of the seventies, the garrison was safe for everyone, young and old, who suffered repression and provocation of the homeland institutions. His active participation in the protest movement was to push the police and judiciary to mount against him a trap that led him to jail but that was soon dismantled.

Rocco had lived through the rift between the PCI group and the Magri-Rossanda-Natoli which was soon edited the Manifesto, which was for a long sheet of legal time.
I still have vivid memories of our participation in the largest gathering of Bologna in the autumn of 1977, a gathering that, in many ways, marked the decline of the immense movement in conflict.
I remember the great sadness that we took out of the room a cinema center of Bologna, where, with the presence of Franca Rame and almost all the garrisons of the legal opposition front, there was discussion on how to continue the defense of all the protagonists of the pursued extraordinary season across the country. We noticed, in the many actions of the defendants, a power failure, a sense of discouragement, a weakening of the items, an overall taste of defeat that would have haunted all the way back and beyond.
A short time passed before the remaining hopes drowned in craxismo and decent people were expelled from politics.
Rocco could not withstand the impact, gave the study to its employees and retired to his home in Rome, until, a little less than two years ago, he decided, with Tweety, his companion of all time, to move in Sulmona: Rome unlivable now - told me over the phone.
The last time I called him into the new residence, because he insisted were to visit with my family which was always linked. But I had my ailments. But then, her discomfort to exist - which was also mine - was the one insisted on bass and deep bass note, which did not admit complicity comforting.


Antonio Cardella

 

 

A as Archives,
At Lisbon

I admit to leaving to Lisbon I was wondering what the FICEDL was. The acronym is dissolved in the Fédération Internationale des Centres d'Etudes et de documentation libertaires, but the original question was left open. A fixed point we can still put it on its origins: the first meeting dates back to 1979, since then the international meetings are continuing at a more or less every two years.


The Federation is actually very little federation and is characterized, for better or for worse, for the extreme informality: there is no secretariat, there are rumors about the existence of a document containing the pact semi-clandestine associations, even difficult to say with sure who arranged for members and under what criteria and how a study center, archive or library can join it. Yet, as only they can do the anarchists (or, perhaps, as only they know how to tell if the anarchists) everything works perfectly. In fact there is no denying that this 15th meeting was an excellent opportunity for debate and discussion, with small steps forward in the coordination of activities.

Mário Rui Pinto, the Portuguese fellow classmates and guests with warmth and generosity of the three days (September 16 to 18) which was held in the historic rooms of BOESG, library founded in 1947 as a center for popular reading and recently renamed from Library operários dos and empregados by Sociedade Geral dos estragos from Observatorio to Library sociedade globalizada. Few but good the attendance. About a dozen participants arrived in Lisbon from Brazil, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland to represent the following centers: E. Archive and Library Travaglini (Fano), Germinal Archive Library (Carrara), Library and Archives T. Claramunt (Soria), Terra Livre Library (St. Paul), Libertarian Cultural Centre (Lille), Centro de libertarian culture (Almada), Libertarian Studies Centre / Archive Pinelli (Milan), CIRA (Lausanne), Fundación S. Follows (Barcelona). Instead, they did get a greeting BFS of Pisa, Marseille CIRA, Centro de St. Paul's social culture, social F. Library Luz in Rio de Janeiro and Eutopic Library in Athens.
The technical discussion has focused primarily on the treatment of the posters, records from libraries in the past considered as "lesser material", often relegated to the dust of the stores, but today is becoming more and more their historical, artistic and communicative. Frederic de Lausanne outlined the rules adopted by CIRA on preservation, digitization and cataloging, and Claude de Lille presented http://placard.ficedl.info site. Although it is still in experimental phase, the project expects to make an international collective catalog of anarchists and libertarian posters, based on a single database where each center, according to standard criteria, can add their own posters or locate if it is already loaded by others.
The evening continued on Friday with a screening of the documentary Memória Subversive, collection of oral testimonies of elderly Portuguese militants, and the whole day on Saturday is slipped between two stimulating discussions proposed by the "Milan". The first, coordinated by Lawrence Pezzica, has raised a number of fundamental questions about the present and the future of the archives libertarians, starting with the bitter realization that the self is almost never sufficient to ensure adequate conservation and availability of collections documentary. If the generation output from the seventies has been used with some success to save the scattered pieces of memory of the movement, now you are facing the problem of managing this heritage, aware of the risk that failing to ensure that public use is equivalent to condemned to oblivion.

And then, such as roads go? Different positions of these centers, makes no secret of who to accept public funding to those who categorically excludes cash money to put into institutions, by the Spaniards who can appeal to the support of the anarcho-syndicalist unions provocative idea, this time unanimously rejected , to indulge in indiscriminate fund raising strategies. But the discussion points were also many others: how to reconcile, for example, the need for quality professional archival work and librarian with the voluntarism that characterizes daily life of our centers? How to store memory for today, from the time when e-mail and digital communications have taken the place of the materiality of paper? How to properly convey to younger generations the importance of the preservation of memory? And so on. The second discussion, introduced by Andrea Staid by Raimondi and Gaia, the center has placed the concept of "revolution" and its translation into practice, taking arguments already explored in the seminar organized by the collective A.sperimenti in November 2010, of which they are acts were presented. Also here is not a long and meaningful debate, well dropped at a meeting of archives and libraries that are meant to be founding purpose of the collections held in current projection, which centers not only of conservation but also for reflection on practice libertarian. The evening ended with a birthday cake to celebrate 70 years of Amedeo Bertolo, while the next day, the Assembly welcomed the proposal by Mimmo Pucciarelli to keep in Lyon, a city where FICEDL had gathered in 1980, the next international meeting in 2013. For the time will soon be turned on a mailing list link at ficedl@ficedl.info.

Luigi Balsamini