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Leaflet on London Bombs distributed in Edinburgh

anonymous | 08.07.2005 19:55 | G8 2005 | Repression | Social Struggles

Spontaneous leaflet distributed on a spontaneous gathering in front of Edinburgh train station

London Bombs and G8-Politics - Terrorist Acts of a System in Crisis

From the gigantic police cordon know as Edinburgh:

In the last days the development of this society has been symbolised and accelerated in the streets of Edinburgh and London: the political leaders of the world's ruling nations hide away in the Scottish countryside, planning future terrorist attacks such as extension of their wars, privatisations, welfare and wage cuts, while their police forces turn the region into a gigantic police cordon and the media applauds the repression of all protests which are not toothless marching. Then the bombs in London, a terrorist answer to the terrorist politics of the G8 nations by those who are only other rulers-in-waiting...

The Crashing Sound of a System in Crisis
The 'drop the debt'-show can't disguise the reality of the last decade: extension of mass poverty from Capetown to Novosibirsk, longer working hours, lower wages and redundancies (lately at IBM, General Motors, Rover...). The EU countries continually announce breaches of the stability pact, which results in a deep political crisis (e.g. the constitution debacle), governments in Germany, France and Italy are finished without being beaten by a parliamentary opposition. In Latin America the neo-liberalist / free-market model is in a deadlock situation, not least due to social unrest in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil. The USA and Russia try to export their internal crisis by prolonged bloody warfare in Chechenia and Iraq, but can't win these wars on either a military or political level. All in all, the abyss between the potentials that we have to create a better world (the material wealth, increased social knowledge, communication, productivity) and the actual use of these potentials (production for profits instead of needs, war,
impoverishment) is widening rapidly and noisily...

Terrorism - Warfare of the Unrecognised Statesmen
The crisis causes political disintegration of many states (Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan etc.), political power has to be reinstalled, borders re-defined. The creation and maintenance of nation-states has always been a bloody business of war and repression. The difference between an official army and 'terrorist groups' is their official recognition, but they have in common means (bombs, fear and social repression) and goals (control over the resources and work-force of their territory). Mandela and Arafat were brandished as 'terrorist' before they became accepted as statesmen, western governments supported all kind of 'terrorists', the Bin Laden-Clan and the Bush-family have been business partners behind the stage of their military conflicts. With the increasing impoverishment both can count on recruitment from the economically devastated areas, suicide bombers from Gaza strip or freshly drafted young people from the Ghettos of US cities. For the exploited and their struggle for a better life the most dangerous aspect of 'terrorism' at the moment is it's counterpart, the state's anti-terrorism.

'War on Terror' on the Deathbed of Social Partnership
In Europe and the USA the profit squeeze crushed the possibility of appeasing social conflicts by offering something in exchange for increased exploitation. In the 90s all 'Labour' Parties in Europe used their social credibility in order to enforce unprecedented cuts in the welfare system and workers rights. They lost their credibility. The unions have only been able to negotiate how bad the wage cuts and dismissals will be. Tied to their weak position at negotiation table they lost the trust of many workers, in many recent conflicts they even turned against them (e.g. the wildcat strike at GM in Germany). People realised that their mass protest is pointless, as long as it is only appealing to the 'democratic rules of majority': the mass protests against the Iraq war, the East-German marches against welfare cuts didn't stop the state acting against the wish of the majority, as the recent marches against poverty won't change things as long as they don't hurt the interests of the rich materially. In this social situation politicians and capitalists try to refine their repressive machinery to deal with future conflicts. The 'war on terror' is their main pretext at the moment: they increase the atmosphere of fear, so people turn towards the state; they introduce stricter laws and controls, which effects possible protests and workers actions (strikes, occupations etc.); they shift their spending from welfare towards the military sector; they try to deepen divisions within the working class by anti-immigrant propaganda.

Proletarian Movement against the State of Fear
After the bombings in Madrid people in Spain took the streets in order to show that the terrorist attacks won't isolate them in fear and that they are pissed off about the lies of the conservative government, it's participation in the Iraq war and it's labour reform. The future workers movements for a better life will have to get out of the catch 22: being in fear due to terrorists who respond to the terrorist politics of a state. A state we are then told to expect safety from while at the same time it is attacking our living standards. We will have to develop trust in our own ability to organise ourselves, because the established bureaucratic organisations won't do it anymore. We will have to overcome the illusion that it is enough to petition the rulers or that we could impress them by our mere mass. Our future struggles will have to confront the legal boundaries, which are tightening on a daily basis. We have to refuse the state's 'war on terror' because any of our (strike) actions which are more than symbolic, any workplace occupation, any effective demonstrations will be denounced as 'violent anarchism' and possibly 'terrorist'...

Proletarian Movement for a Better Life - against Bus Bombs and Capitalist Attacks!

www.prol-position.net

anonymous
- Homepage: http://www.prol-position.net

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

listen up u radical blokes

08.07.2005 21:14


see here, if all of you weren't ranting and raving at the g-8, then the special forces could have tracked and capture the fuckers who bombed london. get out of protest mode and grow up already, will you. while i liked general lovely and the fun protestors, you have to stop and find other means, especially now and in the fractured and fragile world we live in today. and yes, i've been to many a protest, but i don't see that they do much good, now. just a party and a passport stamp for boys and girls with existential angst, and yes, the boys just want to get laid like boys everywhere around the world.
IMC HAS TO BECOME DEMOCRATIC IN REPORTING AND INCLUDE ARTICLES ABOUT THE LONDON BOMBING OR IT LOSES CREDIBILTY. IMC OUGHT TO ANALYSE WHETHER THE G-8 PROTESTS CONTRIBUTED TO THE BOMBING. AND THERE HAS TO BE INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION ABOUT FUTURE STRATEGIES. The point was made at Seattle, and there are other ways to make it without the parties of protests.

cheers and condolences to London

mod micah


Few points

09.07.2005 12:25

Protest does work - look through history, there are many examples of protest working (I won't list any as I am not your google slave).

IMC is democratic - anyone can post to it. How is that undemocratic? If you want to get involved with moderation, join the lists and get involved.

IMC is a grass roots news site - we shouldn't just have any news on here. The London bombings do relate to grass roots though.

fredrico
mail e-mail: musteatvegan@yahoo.co.uk


response to mod micah

09.07.2005 13:23

Please Mod......back to school to learn "human rights" and try to find a girl to take Your existencial angst away, and then you could see thw world in a less cynical way.
love
xana

xana


How, exactly, does mod micah think the G8 protests contributed towards the bombi

09.07.2005 18:07

"IMC HAS TO BECOME DEMOCRATIC IN REPORTING AND INCLUDE ARTICLES ABOUT THE LONDON BOMBING OR IT LOSES CREDIBILTY. IMC OUGHT TO ANALYSE WHETHER THE G-8 PROTESTS CONTRIBUTED TO THE BOMBING. AND THERE HAS TO BE INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION ABOUT FUTURE STRATEGIES."

OK, let's analyse it. As far as I can see, the G8 protests could only possibly have contributed in 2 ways.

1) Anarchists from the G8 protests planted the bombs. This has been said by a member of the Australian embassy. To the best of my knowledge, he's the only one who's said it and nobody has even tried to back it up. So it's just another vicious slur.

2) More indirect this. The police, etc. were so busy watchin the G8 they missed the bombers in London. This has been said by a number of people. Two things: a) there are plenty of police in London, even after many were sent up to Scotland. The bombers went past them all, flew under their radar. Anti-terrorist operations rely on intelligence and the bombers seem to have been completely unknown to the various anti-terrorist groups (MI5, Special Branch, etc.) The removal of a few hundered thugs in uniform won't have affected this at all. Unless there was a policy of searching every underground passanger, that is, in which case the manpower might have come in handy. But there wasn't and hopefully never will be; b) Even if there were something to all this (and there isn't), it's up to the government to decide how to use its resources. If it had decided to compromise London's security in order to beat up G8 protesters, whose fault is that?

Ok, analysis over. Let's bring down the government.

steve3742


Te state cannot protect us

12.07.2005 16:17

The very idea that the protests drove cops away from the London streets is laughable - most of us would rather they stayed in London. Even more laughable though is the idea that the cops (more cops, always more cops) could have prevented the terrible bombing. This is the states answer - more repression - as we saw after 9/11. The reality is that the state, having contributed to the climate of terror, cannot protect us. That requires and alternative, a new world based upon new human relations, not those mediated by capital. Many of us in Edinburgh were struggling for that new world and will continue to do so. The cynical bombing of working class Londoners, like that of working class Iraqis, makes our struggle all the more urgent.

Tony