Operation Ardire
Texts distributed in Genoa in solidarity with the prisoners
Repression Is Chasing, Revolt Is Now!
The media have been trying to push our lives into a corner for years, by depriving us of any instrument of self-determination through the spectre of the financial crisis and all sorts of emergency, be them real or made up. Their goal is twofold and certainly is not exclusive of this historical period: on the one hand they want to legitimize further sacrifice in terms of lives sold or given for free to the bosses in order to guarantee their economic privileges; on the other hand they constantly try to force us to cede all personal or collective autonomy and delegate the management of our lives to the State and its apparatus so as to secure their position of legitimate power.
But while the TV shoots news at disarming speed and the press rattles on figures and laws that are unknown to the majority of people, real life goes on and things really happen. So it is only by ignoring media life that we can be aware of the social context in which we live.
It happens that some people, more than others, show they are really aware of this and decide not to be passive witnesses of the ‘spectacle’: so it ‘seems’ that every now and then the people, from Val Susa to Terzigno, rebel against the harmfulness imposed by governments and companies; that the CIE [immigration detention centres] are burnt down by those imprisoned in them; that people occupy houses and spaces in the cities and defend them with strength and direct solidarity; that workers and students occupy the places of their daily ‘detention’ and interrupt the specific daily alienation of these places; that the streets of Rome are put on fire at least once a year and the forces of order are attacked and pushed back by furious masses; that the hangmen of Equitalia are put in check by continuous attacks, explosions of anger and threats; that men, places and symbols of the political and economic power are targeted and hit.
Of course, all this cannot be tolerated! Even more so in a moment like this one when contagion appears as a real risk! During such difficult times of economic depression, movements of protest and the spreading of unrest inside society are endemic, but anything that happens with firm rejection of delegating and the use of direct action is inadmissible.
So, how to stop all this? Easy answer, it is there for this reason, it’s repression in its most obscure aspect: prison that legitimises socially its existence through the creation of fears, alleged dangers and emergencies.
And here it is, TERRORISM EMERGENCY: at 4am of 13th June an operation called ‘Ardire’ carried out by the prosecution of Perugia, conceived by public prosecutor Manuela Comodi (already known for her delirious anti-anarchist theorems in Umbria and the Meredith case) and coordinated by the even more famous Giampaolo Ganzer (a cocaine and Kalashnikov smuggler and ROS deputy commander during the G8 in Genoa) leads to 40 searches all over Italy, 24 investigation warrants and 10 arrests (of which one also in Genoa) against members of the anarchist movement who are considered the most intransigent. The charge refers to the usual article 270bis, that is to say conspiracy with terrorism aims.
Curiously, after terrorizing us all with ‘tears and blood’ recipes, with the armies in the cities, in Val Susa and in L’Aquila, after exterminating populations all around the world, after deaths in the streets and prisons perpetrated by cops and screws and correlated media campaigns, the State is now trying to direct fear and incertitude of all towards its sworn enemies, always guilty of holding their heads high.
Beyond any consideration and analysis, it seems that sometimes facts speak for themselves. The enemy of freedom, of our security and our lives is by now well known. Everywhere there is someone who has already decided to defend oneself and attack it, each in his or her own way and choosing his or her comrades, with his or her limits and passions. Those who live in true reality don’t need of so many demystifying words.
May this tendency stay alive, may the attempt at self-organization continue so that we can live, defend ourselves and counter-attack those who want to prevent us from doing so. May we act without delegating the State, political parties, unions or anyone else. May our struggle live out of its own reasons and not of the reproach of others’ struggles. May all prisons disappear from the face of the earth.
SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE ARRESTED, INVESTIGATED AND SEARCHED IN THE CONTEXT OF OPERATION ARDIRE
TERRORISTS ARE THE STATE, THE ARMY, THE FORCES OF ORDER AND THE MEDIA THAT SUPPORT THEM.
Against Media and State Terrorism
The role of the media has always been to create and manage public opinion. To create carefully mass information on the basis of specific choices according to the typology, the timing and the quality of the news that are spread. Not only is the very role of the media apparatus that of manipulating the understanding of social reality but the press and the TV are also an integral part of dominion. They prepare the ground for military and repressive operations with artful alarmism, and they justify these operations to the public.
In respect to this function of the media, the repressive operation against anarchists called ‘Ardire’ is exemplary. On the morning of 13th June it led to 40 searches, 24 investigation warrants and 10 arrests, one of which here in Genoa. The charge refers to art. 270bis, conspiracy with terrorism aims. Besides the usual but not for this less annoying and factious practise of splashing the monster across the front page, in this case the media spectacle of the events has created strong endorsement and legitimization of this operation, thus remedying the real inconsistency of the theorem of the accusation.
It is not surprising that the State intervenes in a social climate of increasing unrest like that we are living. In a situation that is very likely to get out of its hand, in front of an economy unable to go on, made of speculations and calamities to be managed, the State pursues the militarization of the territories in order to keep the latter under its control and management.
After having spread terror with several strategies, from that of tension to that of hunger, from that of blackmail to that of the pillory, the State is trying to direct fear and incertitude of all towards those who oppose openly this system and place themselves against dominion with anger and determination.
When people, after losing their certitudes and democratic freedoms start turning their exasperation into anger, and their anger into rebellion, thus creating moments of disruption of the social order through direct action, power tightens its repressive grip and peppers its codes and prison rules with new and fanciful articles limiting freedom and totally criminalizing opinion, thought and action as it fears these can be reproduced. As it is in its interests, power is trying to split up, categorize, isolate us, thus stirring the war between the poor, crash us and impoverish us on a human and social level, inside the jails and outside them like a big prison under the sky.
In front of all this we can only reaffirm our opposition to this rotten and faltering system, and constantly engage to its overthrow, as we are far from all logics of taking distance and making distinctions, logics functional to power.
Repression and media terrorism won’t stop the struggle nor will they extinguish solidarity with those who struggle against the status quo.
Our solidarity to those searched, investigated and arrested.
FREEDOM FOR GABRIEL, MARCO, PEPPE, SERGIO, KATIA, ALESSANDRO, PAOLA, GIULIA, ELISA AND STEFANO.
Anarchists from Genoa
Who the Plague-spreaders Are
Last May two main stories hit the headlines: the bomb at the school in Brindisi, which caused the death of a girl and the wounding of another three, and the shooting of Ansaldo manager Adinolfi.
All newspapers wrongly defined both events as terrorist. If this is true for the first one, when a man hit at random involving people extraneous to his deliriums and spread terror in the city, in the second case a public character was hit, who had precise responsibilities, as he was the promoter of the current nuclear power program in Italy, and no one else was involved.
If the assault on the school triggered a spontaneous reaction from the people, who took to the streets in the following days with a march of thousands, as they felt really hit by an unidentified event they could not comprehend, this did not happen for the shooting of the Genoa manager.
In spite of the call from parties and unions for mass mobilization against ‘terrorism’, people’s participation was minimal because the majority of them clearly didn’t feel involved or frightened by this kind of attack (even if some didn’t agree with the action), as it was addressed to a precise person and was not indiscriminate.
It is not surprising that in moments like these ones, when people’s dissent is being increasingly expressed, even if in different ways, because of widespread precarious life conditions, power tries to attract the greatest possible number of people by talking of terrorism when no one is terrorized and by exploiting real terror in order to instil incertitude and to point at possible responsible, even among those who are considered the enemies of the State.
For this reason we are not surprised if at the beginning of June ten anarchists are arrested and forty searched with the charge of conspiracy with terrorist aims, fancifully accused of having indirectly contributed to the realization of some attacks carried out from 2009 on and claimed by the anarchist informal federation. The reasons for these arrests are based on the management of internet sites of counter-information, and on the fact that some of those investigated wrote to anarchist prisoners.
But what is terrorism? It is when you endure something that completely overcomes you and makes you feel powerless: wars, nuclear catastrophes, devastations that characters like our manager largely contribute to realize – but also detention in prisons and migrants detention centres, the militarization of the territory, conditions of life becoming increasingly unbearable.
By now it is even too obvious that it is this whole system that is rotten and is keeping itself alive only thanks to a mechanism of repression and media manipulation.
Solidarity to Peppe, Elisa, Alessandro, Katia, Giulia, Francesca, Gabriele and Marco.
FREEDOM FOR ALL! THE TERRORIST IS THE STATE!