INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST WAR, SURVEILLANCE AND REPRESSION

More and more police, surveillance cameras on every street corner, a permanent toughening of laws, more prisons, a sophisticated record-keeping on individuals, military operations everywhere in the world, "anti-terrorism"-laws... our society is militarising more and more. As technological innovations accelerate, it is more and more easy for modern industrial states to watch and to oppress in total liberty.

And all that is meant to be against "international terrorism" which the State says it is protecting us against?

What really lies behind all this?

IS THE STATE ON OUR SIDE?

States pretend to administer citizens to guarantee security, wellbeing and the freedom of all; in reality they characterise themselves by a tendency to increase their power and control over individuals, to guarantee security, wellbeing and freedom for just a minority. The capitalist economic system, from which this minority profits, has created growing unemployment and poverty, because less and less people are necessary to produce more. As a result, the conditions of life of the majority of the population are diving. In order to continue in the future to exercise their control over the growing mass of populations robbed of a future and increasingly becoming poorer, the States are arming themselves.

 

Can the State be a means of struggling against terrorism and criminality?

 

The most common form of terrorism is State terrorism. This terrorism is seen in the "War against terrorism", in the torture of "terrorist suspects" or in the repression of movements of opposition. Entire countries are destroyed when they dare to avoid control and exploitation by the most powerful in the world. Constantly, to guarantee our freedoms and fight terrorism, the State attacks our freedoms and resorts to terror. The so-called Western democracies are evolving into police States and surveillance States, in which it will soon be possible to spy on the acts and deeds of the whole population, at any time of the day or night. Those on the margins of society, because they are out of work, come from another country, or want to resist this system, are criminalised and oppressed, even accused of terrorism and menaced with prison, torture or murder. The system backs down to nothing to ensure its power and to extend it.

There is another type of terrorism, which in general is a counter -reaction to the politics of governments, like for example terrorist resistance in occupied Iraq.

Most crimes take place because of government measures and prohibitions, or are the result of injustices and of want which are created by the capitalist economic system, defended with all force by the state.
States and capitalism create more crime and terrorism than the state and private security measures can prevent.

 

IS THERE NO OTHER SOLUTION?

 

They explain to us, again and again, in school, in the religious establishments, in the media and during electoral campaigns, that we need someone to look after us, to practice surveillance over us, to protect us and to rule our life in our place. All they expect of us is, work, consumerism, obedience, and to turn ourselves into murderers and cannon fodder in their wars, when they ask! From the moment we say we want a different society, their conditioned reflex is to say to us that another system would not work. There is no other solution.

Some people ask if our ideas are realistic.  We don't claim to have a blueprint or all the answers.  Neither are we arrogant enough to want to tell people how to live.  However, there are enough examples of self-organisation, without hierarchy, that tell us we are on the right line. And, what we are certain of is that the existing system is not working for the majority of the world, witness the millions of starving and refugees. Even the climate is worsening because of capitalist production, the environment is being polluted, there are continuous wars, prisons full to the brim and surveillance cameras installed at a furious rate of knots in the last few years. The system has its back to the wall, it is reduced to desperately attempt to keep under its control the masses of those who have lost out, in putting into place growing means of repression and surveillance. The state and capitalism are at a dead-end. To attempt to maintain them by reforms or by violence has no sense.

The more we realise this, the more we will be able start to build something new. It's not something any of us can do on our own, we have to do it all together.

 

 What we want: a society without domination, well being for all, co-operation, mutual aid and the preservation of the environment

 

The question to which neither the State nor capitalism can answer is this: is it possible to provide everyone with what they need without destroying the environment and without exploiting and oppressing populations, and to live freely and in peace?

We say that it is possible: by the means of a society built on mutual aid and free association, in which individuals take control of their own lives, and where  there will be no place for bosses, cops and the military.

INTERNATIONAL ANARCHIST DAY OF ACTION

18 MARCH, 2007