IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Wanneer: 14/06/2012 - 00:00

Text appeared in Florence June 14th, 2012

Between daring and arming
“it's the answer of the state”
Annamaria Cancellieri, minister of internal affairs, june 13th 2012

We don't know of any anarchist demanding anything from the State, however the State feels the need to answer back. At dawn of the 13th of june the ROS unit of the carabinieri carried out 10 arrests and many house searches in all of Italy (and beyond) during the operation “Ardire” (“to dare, to be bold” ndt.) Is this cynical title meant to describe a brave impulse or an imprudent excess?
It's the latest repressive/ preventive maneuvers launched in the recent times against those who are not willing to adapt to the role of obedient slaves, in other words a spectacular warning towards potential future insurgents. This means that, beyond the single individuals that are involved or of the specific charges of their revolts, it is the general context that has given birth to this judicial inquiry to deserve some attention.

If public debt has reached new heights, the answer of the State is to increase taxes. If banks and speculators cripple the economy, the answer of the State is to give way to privatizations.
If work becomes a privilege and its absence provokes waves of suicides, the answer of the State is to facilitate lay offs.
More. If the officials of institutions are responsible for the worst vileness, the answer of the State is to put their “crimes” on a statue of limitation.
If the barrels of oil are about to run dry in international conflicts, the answer of the State is to throw themselves into war.
If the damned of this world are forced to flee their own country to arrive to our coasts, the answer of the State is to lock them up in a foreign detention centre.
And still more. If local populations don't want toxic projects built on their lands (High velocity, incinerators, dumps of waste), the answer of the state is to massacre the demonstrators and to militarily occupy the territory.
If the rich always become richer and the poor always poorer, the answer of the State is to protect the luxury of the former and repress the desperation of the latter.

Taking into account these examples that could become uncountable, it is not surprising that in dealing with anarchists who have decided to take action against the power that reveals itself day after day more miserable and rotten, the answer of the State is a raid.
To give the orders was the public prosecutor of Perugia, Manuela Comodi, who was looking for renewed support after the “Meredith case” was no longer putting her in the spot light (Meredith Kercher, and the murder trial against Amanda Knox ndt). For the occasion she unleashed the carabinieri of the Ros at the command of general Granzer (the one that was condemned to 14 years in prison for drug trafficking by the same State he serves). The frame of the charges is the same one as always, the only conceivable one of those who are used to obeying in silence. You have to take a few specific cases and then you proceed in the same way as you would a lottery. However, it sort of works like a reverse lottery, where those who win actually loose: in a hat you put many balls with different numbers, to each one corresponds the name of someone who is well known by the authorities. In each round one number is picked- which obviously means that the responsible ones are identified and the investigation is quickly concluded. This is made even more easy in this case by the reduced number of balls that are still in the game, which are getting less and less. Those ones that correspond to anarchists who refuse to have friends or even dialogues among city councilors and sorts (not even if lefties) or priests (not even the street ones), to fill out petitions to prove one's innocence or to wave it around to legitimize your protest, but who persist in thinking that direct action is not a strategic variant within politics, but rather its negation. Autism can also be an error of autonomy, but political opportunism is certainly its perversion. In any way the final lottery of the “Ardire operation”, blown up by the media, who provides the public with their daily distraction, has “discovered” many “informal anarchists”- so informal to all be part of the same organization(!?), and who often don't even know each other. Which then said in passing, all this “daring” was not that visible. We only need to take into consideration that the carabinieri did not even go to visit the direct suspects to carry though their searches, opting on dragging out of bed their parents or those who had the unfortunate idea of renting them an apartment. In many cases, while anarchists were peacefully sleeping in their own houses, the carabinieri were harassing their families or landloards by casually digging through their houses and having their way in the spaces rented to anarchists.
All of this is so grotesque that it even irritated the repressive branch, Digos et co, who in the afternoon of the same day stopped and searched two of the people that had been raided in the morning, in the attempt, not fulfilled, of showing off to their rival-collegues how things should be done. Has this opened the race between the professionals of handcuffs to see who gets there first?

Our last thought goes out to the arrested, and our solidarity to the investigated.

We owe you one.

Text distributed in Florence, June 14th, 2012.