In the
talk that opened this conference, Salvo Vaccaro analyzed the
Maghreb addressed, stressing its predominantly political, that
is, contrary to what has occurred so far, and what one might have
expected, pushing the masses, mainly youth , to rise up and
rebel, was neither hunger - the problem of daily sustenance,
namely poverty - nor was religion, Islamist pressure. This was a
riot for the dignity, who placed the request in the center of
freedom, it was political revolts. It occurs to me how this theme
of human dignity here in Italy, and especially in the South,
continues to remain secondary, irrelevant; the pot here, although
it has long since reached the correct pressure, does not burst,
and the task of revolutionaries is to identify reasons that
hinder the social explosion, then set its full realization in the
sign of a general objection to the system for real change. It has
been said of the great role that have played the media and
internet in particular, in the coordination and communication
that has encouraged the development of slogans and accompanied
the riots in the Arab world. Perhaps a reflection on the role
that must be made are of the same tools in our society. Apart
from certain minority sectors that they serve well to promote
initiatives in the fight, I see that in our part of the masses of
young people using the internet as a substitute or facebook
relations, as a place of their release, as a short alienating.
Maybe in a few years in North Africa it will use the same, who
knows. Meanwhile, now they have served to raise his head. Before
the outbreak of the Arab riots, he knew that in Egypt, for
example, had taken a great persuasive power some Islamic
televangelists, who, in true American style, were able to capture
millions of viewers with their religious sermons, all of which
are openly pro-government, inciting resignation and obedience. If
a few months after the Egyptian society has managed to rebel in a
way that we know, we must assume that it is successful, at least
in part, to shake off even the religious influences, and this is
taking a more deeply political (and secular) the events. While we
were traveling to Palermo, we phoned a fellow Chilean exile for
years in Italy, and knew that they went to an initiative on
September 11, we asked: what? In fact, we remember that there is
September 11 in Chile, the Pinochet coup, not to be obscured on
the other we are here today. Francesco Lo Cascio questioned in
his speech that addresses the contradictions unionism-war jobs,
environmental / toxic-work, defending the work, and I do not know
if there is a syndicate based in the factories of arms, I know
for a fact that a fracture Authentic occurred several years ago
between different forms of trade unionism based on membership of
the security guards, and this I believe was an element of
clarity. I can say to be directly involved, who for many years
the platforms of general strikes always contain points against
military spending, and military missions against anti-war.
Certainly, the contradiction Work / pollution often occurs, but
the union base, and the Cub, of which I am part, has always led
fierce battles against the toxicity of certain productions,
fighting for the conversion and the environment. A union movement
with clear ideas on these points, it is a good traveling
companion of the antiwar and anti-war movements.
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Palermo,
Living Valdese -10 September 2011 - Conference "Time
of War. From 11 September to the present day." From
left, Francesco Lo Cascio (the MIR), The Albert
Street (Sicilian Anarchist Federation), Salvo
Vaccaro, Pippo Gurrieri and Antonio Mazzeo
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The crisis as alibi
Since 11 September 2001, to be more precise, since 2003, the
theme of war has lost its centrality to Western peoples and
movements of these countries, has ceased to be a priority. The
causes of this change in strategic, cultural, psychological, are
different. A in the habituation can be traced to the wars:
virtually the last ten years there has been no period without
wars, have been ten long years of one war fought on several
fronts. This movement has gradually switched off before they are
spent to prevent intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan, remember
the thousands of peace flags hanging from balconies everywhere?
Let's say that most of the protagonists of that season of
struggle was struck by a sense of helplessness and resignation.
This discourse on the sense of helplessness took it out for the
first time Franco Leggio in Comiso, at the end of 1983, after
construction began on the construction of the missile base. We
went outside with various anarchist pamphlets and newspapers
which did appeal to overcome the sense of helplessness that had
taken over the movement and the population itself, producing
fatalism and resignation. History repeats itself. Returning to
the present, since these movements were composed in a substantial
and militant elements of the institutional left as "extreme",
has influenced the decline of the mobilizations also the policy
of those parties who voted for military missions abroad, barter,
to time of the last Prodi government, with the seats governmental
decisions that have baffled the mass of voters and members of the
left, making away from the commitment. Certainly a big part is
having the current economic crisis, which has shifted the main
political focus on economic issues, income, employment, forcing
millions of workers and not to worry about their daily lives, and
see, if anything, more first, the armed forces, as employment
opportunity. The crisis has served as an alibi to the warlords
and powerful to distract people from their military enterprises
and their plunder of the resources of the countries attacked.
Here we can record one of our greatest problems: not being able
to connect the economic crisis, and then the tears and blood all
government operations, the state of permanent war, in which we
invest 12 million euro in one F35, or makes us spend 3,600 euro
per minute, for years, in military missions. And so, while the
"pacifist" people, anti-militarist, anti-war, lowered
their guard, increased the militaristic propaganda initiatives,
from funerals to "heroes" killed in combat missions,
and its patriotic rhetoric, the military presence in schools and
in society, the increase of perceived media pressure to act as
the wars in the "right", or even make it invisible to
the most tragic and destructive. But also continuously raised the
militarization of the territory, from Vicenza in Sigonella, up to
Niscemi, with the construction of MUOS, one of the central
control of NATO's global communications. And so, when it began
military action in Libya, with all the usual rhetoric and
falsehoods humanitarian media, here we found ourselves faced with
a sense of loss has advanced to such a liability rooted, with the
result that the goal of freeing the people of Libya from the
Gaddafi regime has been delegated to the government. Certainly,
in recent years have fallen a few strongholds of warmongering
deception, which the impartial role of the UN, with its
resolutions that gave coverage to the war and provided delegation
to NATO or other military coalitions, as well as come to drop the
civilizing missions of cheating (just look at the Afghanistan
today, fundamentalist, corrupt, or the oil contracts in Iraq,
etc..). But this clarity did not produce a response more direct
and hard, because they have established themselves in a manner
inversely proportional to the resilience of the movement. So when
the war came directly to our house, with the landing of tens of
thousands of his victims on the run from the global South, this
was seen as a humanitarian problem, a problem of rights to claim,
an issue of racism and then as an internal problem for the
reception, CIE detention and in CARA refugee camps, all important
and sacrosanct, but isolated from the context from which they
spring: the infamous decade of permanent war. Not to mention
that, in turn, the war is not a problem in itself, but the
expression of capitalism and domination of the world super-rich
classes, and is thus connected to all the themes that
characterize human exploitation.
Against the war lords
We are anti-military, because we dispute and reject the army even
in time of “peace.” I believe that today even pacifism is an
ambiguity to be overcome. Many peace activists there have been
and are fellow travelers, but the ideology of peace has created
confusion and bewilderment: peace, social peace, peace army. I
think going noted the inadequacy of pacifism in dealing with the
dynamics of today's conflicts in the world. At this stage it
rebuilt a strong anti-militarist, since the “crisis”. The
crisis is not a metaphysical entity, nor are those who represent
the cause and which drive the destiny of the world from their
financial chicanery. The crisis is a tool of the classes that
dominate the world subjected to hold all the other classes, and
especially those who may rebel, since the crisis is to bring out
the very close links between the military strategies (war,
weapons factories, trade arms, dictatorial regimes, the conquest
of energy resources) and the massacre social classes but is
becoming weaker, and these are the physical terminals of the
crisis. To emphasize the importance of these “terminal” may
challenge the standard solutions that governments take against
them, because their crises are not paid and must also reject the
great works (from TAV in Val Susa to the Strait Bridge) as a
result of the same policies. But also fighting against the
militarization of labor, through new rules that are imposed, both
in terms of usability cancellation of trade union rights. We need
to re-open levels of conflict against the warlords, from all the
moments in which we celebrate militarism (schools, streets,
etc..). But above all we must reposition ourselves in the
territories contaminated by military bases, here we have three in
particular those currently in the foreground in the strategies of
war: Sigonella / Lentini, the center of expansion programs and
shifting of troops from the US-Born Center-North Europe and the
operational base of the Predator unmanned aircraft used
experimentally in Libya with thousands and thousands of hours of
flight, with direct and indirect bombardment (guidance of
missiles launched from other aircraft); MUOS / Niscemi, that
after the consent given by Governor Lombardo to the construction
of the powerful radar station-satellite, would take off at any
moment; Trapani airport, and base of the Western coalition
fighter-bombers in the war in Libya, but also civil airport is
experiencing rapid growth, sacrificed to the demands of war of
aggression to grab the oil resources. In these places, and also
in all other known, plan medium and long term interventions
trying to build popular grassroots committees, structures of
resistance, direct action that actually hinder the process of
militarization and war plans. The example of Comiso, with all the
work done on the ground, even after thirty years, can teach us
something.
Pippo Gurrieri
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