Freedom to the French Fighters
Yeti | 15.12.2008 15:55
On the arrests of Coupat Julien and his comrades in Tarnac
The events that we will be treating in this leaflet could and would like to be portrayed as the sophisticated storyline of one of Alain Delon‘s movies, but they rather evoke a clumsy script and the dubious fun of a fucking Louis de Funès film. The worst thing is that we are not talking about fiction but reality, if there is such a reality.
For some time, the information services of the French police had been warning about "the resurgence of a sort of terrorism carried out by far right-far left extremists", despite the fact of neither having any specific account on possible “threats" nor knowing anything about potentially “active groups"; However, there is "a small number of individuals" claiming to be involved within "the autonomist sphere of influence", which appears to justify every single “precaution“.
Earlier this year, the French Home Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, insisted on "fears of far-left terrorism resurgence" before signs of such an alarming nature as graffiti painted on public buildings, or demonstrations and actions organised against the building of new prisons. (nouvelobs.com 18-11-08).
No doubt that this explains that in June all investigations related to the "anarcho-autonomous area" were taken over by anti-terrorist judges, with the logical consequence of a wave of arrests of young people accused of being in possession of weapons of mass destruction, or at least "substances that could be used for the manufacturing of small explosives."
Yet in April this year, an investigation about a highly suspicious group, settled in Tarnac, a town of 335 inhabitants in the department of Correze (Central France) had been open. In that city, these people had bought a farm to experiment with a way of life outside the capitalist rule and values. There, they got rid of their mobile phones, began to raise sheep and chickens, reopened the old grocery shop and gave a hand to the elders of the place, without forgetting to keep in touch with the revolutionary environment and participate in a variety of other revolutionary struggles.
In the meantime, as in the world nothing more interesting was happening, the sabotage of several lines of the TGV (“Train de Grand Vitesse/High Speed Train”) occurred since late October and caused the outrage of the public opinion which started to demand “justice“. This apparently forced to open a new investigation… anti-terrorist, of course, no matter at all that the SNCF has been maintaining for several years a tough conflict with rail trade-unions, and that back in 2007 still unascertained acts of sabotage had already happened.
However this time, oh surprise!!! the police have a "certainty" that two members of that group from Tarnac "were in the vicinity of some of the places where the damage was made”, and since the group was "potentially dangerous", the case was overnight solved: This way, on November the 11th, police broke into Tarnac farm and arrested nine people, “dismantling” what has been called an "invisible/sleeping cell", "an structure with terrorist vocation" in which there could be as far as 300 people involved more or less.
Sure, but for the time being the investigation have acknowledged that "there is no material element that link these people directly with the acts of destruction (...) and so they can not be directly accused of this or that specific fact" (Le Point.fr 14-11 -- 08), In fact there are no genetic marks or fingerprints on the rails, no weapons on the farm, just a train timetable and "various elements that could be used to produce and place the devices with which they render useless some sections of rail electrical network”. Devices on the other hand that are not exactly easy to make and use.
Certainly the dismantling of the “invisible cell” did not stop the sabotages: that very same afternoon at the 11th of November other “ghosts” paralyzed the rail line Caen-Tours placing really visible concrete blocks on the tracks.
In Tarnac, the countrymen, who can be thought to be anything but gullible, have not swallowed the accusation of terrorism, and have soon organised a support committee to their young friends that has spread to other cities.
The alleged "leader" of the group is called Coupat Julien, a young intellectual revolutionary and founding member of the collective Tiqqun, who enjoys certain reputation within the French radical environment and has recently published "L'Insurrection qui vien" (“The forthcoming insurrection“), a work in which he disserts with some ease on the technological vulnerability of metropolises and the art of sabotage. It may be because of this that, as in the golden age of Metternich, the book has become“evidence” against its author, and its possession sufficient reason to get arrested these days. .
Anyway, we will stop insisting on the obvious, since even the “Inspector Clouseau” would be able to smell the unmistakable aroma of media intoxication, the made up prosecution, the indecent amalgam between different investigations that have nothing in common but the rush to find someone to blame, and the willingness to terrorize and stigmatize the anarcho-autonomist political sphere by calling terrorism every moving thing under the sun.
The blatant connection between this manoeuvre and the present structural and widespread crisis that advises "organizing a gross operation of diversion because the power is lying to protect financial criminals”, may have more interest, for these times that we are and we will be living in, if we note that it is with no doubt the status of “intellectual revolutionary” which has provided the right profile to incriminate Coupat and hence his friends, at the precise moment in which intellectual activity is increasingly joining the most belligerent revolutionary practice.
A practice that is manifested not only in their contacts with the squatter movement or their participation in demonstrations against the G8 and EU summits, but also in that physical idea of the Revolution that seems to have led them, like others before them, to escape from the industrial prison and the wage slavery in search of a material autonomy which would allow them to experiment in its concrete existence the ins and outs of their utopia: the realization of a different way of life, and an actual release of its intensity and possibilities.
As it happened in the case of Rene Riesel, different in substance and in form but similar in terms of repression, it is this coincidence of thinking and acting that must not be allowed to happen, and must therefore be prevented from transcending into a youth active in these two fields; because its spread by the force of example has to be impeded by the “democratic” power with even more reasons in a period of crisis susceptible of seeing the revolt to become something objective and, who knows if acquiring the character of a widespread and generalised insurrection (fingers crossed).
Finally, whatever the result of this "criminal investigation" that is gripping the Nine of Tarnac, we would like to make clear the following:
• That we deny the legitimacy of the present social dominance to monopolize the language and meaning of social affaires.
• That we express our absolute repudiation for the “criminal” offence of "vocation of terrorism" from which it follows a crackdown unleashed by the State in order to close more and more the scope of repression and punishment over dissident ideas.
• That we insist in that an action which has been limited to reduce the sacrosanct speed of some dozens of trains is not and can not be considered terrorism but sabotage instead, such as the actions carried out by the followers of Gandhi to stop the British railways; typical and recurrent example characterised by its impeccable, highly respectable and well reputed democratic pedigree. Although of course we can think of much more better, exciting and much less politically correct ones.
• That neither the French state nor any other has the right to talk about terrorism and violence for since the world exists power has always splashed in the blood poured by every defeated emancipation movement.
• That terrorism is war and economy, the bills to impose working weeks of 65 hours and increase the age of retirement at the age of 70, the destruction of towns and nature and the transformation of the whole world in fodder for tourists, the industrial society that is devouring itself, the criminal codes which are being hardened to the absurd, this empty life filled with sadness and fear…
• That violence is above all, the capitalist social relationships, the state and the laws and ideology that justify and defend them.
It is true that these simple statements are merely the preliminaries of any criticism and any action, but the fact remains that to abolish the mediocrity of our universe, we must first destroy the manipulative power of those who act as its owners, and that manipulation has already reached the heights of the worst and most feverish nightmares.
Let our sympathy and solidarity go to all those who try to close forever the poisonous mouth of darkness.
Madrid Surrealist group
The events that we will be treating in this leaflet could and would like to be portrayed as the sophisticated storyline of one of Alain Delon‘s movies, but they rather evoke a clumsy script and the dubious fun of a fucking Louis de Funès film. The worst thing is that we are not talking about fiction but reality, if there is such a reality.
For some time, the information services of the French police had been warning about "the resurgence of a sort of terrorism carried out by far right-far left extremists", despite the fact of neither having any specific account on possible “threats" nor knowing anything about potentially “active groups"; However, there is "a small number of individuals" claiming to be involved within "the autonomist sphere of influence", which appears to justify every single “precaution“.
Earlier this year, the French Home Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, insisted on "fears of far-left terrorism resurgence" before signs of such an alarming nature as graffiti painted on public buildings, or demonstrations and actions organised against the building of new prisons. (nouvelobs.com 18-11-08).
No doubt that this explains that in June all investigations related to the "anarcho-autonomous area" were taken over by anti-terrorist judges, with the logical consequence of a wave of arrests of young people accused of being in possession of weapons of mass destruction, or at least "substances that could be used for the manufacturing of small explosives."
Yet in April this year, an investigation about a highly suspicious group, settled in Tarnac, a town of 335 inhabitants in the department of Correze (Central France) had been open. In that city, these people had bought a farm to experiment with a way of life outside the capitalist rule and values. There, they got rid of their mobile phones, began to raise sheep and chickens, reopened the old grocery shop and gave a hand to the elders of the place, without forgetting to keep in touch with the revolutionary environment and participate in a variety of other revolutionary struggles.
In the meantime, as in the world nothing more interesting was happening, the sabotage of several lines of the TGV (“Train de Grand Vitesse/High Speed Train”) occurred since late October and caused the outrage of the public opinion which started to demand “justice“. This apparently forced to open a new investigation… anti-terrorist, of course, no matter at all that the SNCF has been maintaining for several years a tough conflict with rail trade-unions, and that back in 2007 still unascertained acts of sabotage had already happened.
However this time, oh surprise!!! the police have a "certainty" that two members of that group from Tarnac "were in the vicinity of some of the places where the damage was made”, and since the group was "potentially dangerous", the case was overnight solved: This way, on November the 11th, police broke into Tarnac farm and arrested nine people, “dismantling” what has been called an "invisible/sleeping cell", "an structure with terrorist vocation" in which there could be as far as 300 people involved more or less.
Sure, but for the time being the investigation have acknowledged that "there is no material element that link these people directly with the acts of destruction (...) and so they can not be directly accused of this or that specific fact" (Le Point.fr 14-11 -- 08), In fact there are no genetic marks or fingerprints on the rails, no weapons on the farm, just a train timetable and "various elements that could be used to produce and place the devices with which they render useless some sections of rail electrical network”. Devices on the other hand that are not exactly easy to make and use.
Certainly the dismantling of the “invisible cell” did not stop the sabotages: that very same afternoon at the 11th of November other “ghosts” paralyzed the rail line Caen-Tours placing really visible concrete blocks on the tracks.
In Tarnac, the countrymen, who can be thought to be anything but gullible, have not swallowed the accusation of terrorism, and have soon organised a support committee to their young friends that has spread to other cities.
The alleged "leader" of the group is called Coupat Julien, a young intellectual revolutionary and founding member of the collective Tiqqun, who enjoys certain reputation within the French radical environment and has recently published "L'Insurrection qui vien" (“The forthcoming insurrection“), a work in which he disserts with some ease on the technological vulnerability of metropolises and the art of sabotage. It may be because of this that, as in the golden age of Metternich, the book has become“evidence” against its author, and its possession sufficient reason to get arrested these days. .
Anyway, we will stop insisting on the obvious, since even the “Inspector Clouseau” would be able to smell the unmistakable aroma of media intoxication, the made up prosecution, the indecent amalgam between different investigations that have nothing in common but the rush to find someone to blame, and the willingness to terrorize and stigmatize the anarcho-autonomist political sphere by calling terrorism every moving thing under the sun.
The blatant connection between this manoeuvre and the present structural and widespread crisis that advises "organizing a gross operation of diversion because the power is lying to protect financial criminals”, may have more interest, for these times that we are and we will be living in, if we note that it is with no doubt the status of “intellectual revolutionary” which has provided the right profile to incriminate Coupat and hence his friends, at the precise moment in which intellectual activity is increasingly joining the most belligerent revolutionary practice.
A practice that is manifested not only in their contacts with the squatter movement or their participation in demonstrations against the G8 and EU summits, but also in that physical idea of the Revolution that seems to have led them, like others before them, to escape from the industrial prison and the wage slavery in search of a material autonomy which would allow them to experiment in its concrete existence the ins and outs of their utopia: the realization of a different way of life, and an actual release of its intensity and possibilities.
As it happened in the case of Rene Riesel, different in substance and in form but similar in terms of repression, it is this coincidence of thinking and acting that must not be allowed to happen, and must therefore be prevented from transcending into a youth active in these two fields; because its spread by the force of example has to be impeded by the “democratic” power with even more reasons in a period of crisis susceptible of seeing the revolt to become something objective and, who knows if acquiring the character of a widespread and generalised insurrection (fingers crossed).
Finally, whatever the result of this "criminal investigation" that is gripping the Nine of Tarnac, we would like to make clear the following:
• That we deny the legitimacy of the present social dominance to monopolize the language and meaning of social affaires.
• That we express our absolute repudiation for the “criminal” offence of "vocation of terrorism" from which it follows a crackdown unleashed by the State in order to close more and more the scope of repression and punishment over dissident ideas.
• That we insist in that an action which has been limited to reduce the sacrosanct speed of some dozens of trains is not and can not be considered terrorism but sabotage instead, such as the actions carried out by the followers of Gandhi to stop the British railways; typical and recurrent example characterised by its impeccable, highly respectable and well reputed democratic pedigree. Although of course we can think of much more better, exciting and much less politically correct ones.
• That neither the French state nor any other has the right to talk about terrorism and violence for since the world exists power has always splashed in the blood poured by every defeated emancipation movement.
• That terrorism is war and economy, the bills to impose working weeks of 65 hours and increase the age of retirement at the age of 70, the destruction of towns and nature and the transformation of the whole world in fodder for tourists, the industrial society that is devouring itself, the criminal codes which are being hardened to the absurd, this empty life filled with sadness and fear…
• That violence is above all, the capitalist social relationships, the state and the laws and ideology that justify and defend them.
It is true that these simple statements are merely the preliminaries of any criticism and any action, but the fact remains that to abolish the mediocrity of our universe, we must first destroy the manipulative power of those who act as its owners, and that manipulation has already reached the heights of the worst and most feverish nightmares.
Let our sympathy and solidarity go to all those who try to close forever the poisonous mouth of darkness.
Madrid Surrealist group
Yeti