GREECE: NEWS FROM THE OAE:

The Federation of Anarchists of Greece, the OAE, has recently released a press statement on the upcoming Greek elections being held in the pall of the disastrous recent fires in that country, fires likely deliberately started by land development interests (see 'Who Fiddled While Greece Burned' on this blog last August). Molly reproduces their statement below:

NO TO PSEUDO SOLUTIONS:

Honour to those peasants and citizens who fought against the State fires. The proud and unsubdued peasantry needs neither alms nor genetically modified seeds. The State and the government planned and materialized the fire attacks against forests, archaeological places, farms, poultry and veterinary establishments, houses and people. This government-owned planning vindicates the interests of building contractors, energy production companies, big householders/owners of hotel units, all those who oppose the rural, poultry and veterinary surgeon autonomy of the countryside. During the realization of this crime against nature and the people, the parliament is legitimizing the governmental and private arbitrariness by the declassification of huge forest areas as non-forest and also by the redefinition of land usage.

At the same time the audacity of those in power is astonishing:while they have sensationally failed they talk about successes (!), and while they have complete responsibility for the disaster, they try to charge it to others (!).

This challenge must not remain unanswered. The only solution is the expulsion of the very governmental and state institutions that are looting our lives. The participation of every exploited person is essential in such movements which will take social affairs/issue into their own hands

Do not wait for electoral results ! Let's begin the action one hour earlier !

NO TO PSEUDO SOLUTIONS

ELECTORAL STRIKE

POLITICAL DISOBEDIENCE

SELF-ORGANIZATION OF THOSE AFFECTED

AUTONOMY OF PRODUCTION

COLLECTIVE FARMING OF THE LAND

THE SOCIAL GOODS BELONG TO THOSE WHO WORK FOR THEM

also...

BLACK LETTERS # 11- PAPER OF THE OAE, SEPTEMBER 2007:

The eleventh issue of Mavra Grammata (Black Letters) is out. The main article deals with the current situation in Greece after the fires and in the face of the upcoming elections. There is also comment about the ill advised destruction of a national monument outside the Greek Parliament a few months ago by insurrectionist so-called anarchists, two anti-electoral articles about the Greek Communist Party and a new ecological party, an article about the proposed construction of harmful factories in the town of Livadeia, a critique of the conspiratorial actions of the followers of Nechaev and a joint statement with other anarcho-communist organizations across the world on the 70th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Plus reviews of course.

Contacts for the OAE are P.O. Box 1333, Central Post Office, Patras 26011, Greece. Also email at nafpaktosanarchists@hotmail.com or ngnm55@gmail.com . Queries in English should be sent to the latter email address.

A Little Molly Note:

The OAE are neo-platformists. This is a trend in modern anarchism that Molly sympathizes with, but she is not 100% convinced of its postulates. In particular the demand for an appearance of complete theoretical unity in its public face. This demand can let some rather egregious fallacies slip by. Most of what the OAE says above is non-controversial to Molly, though I am sure it is much more so to other people. What is glaring, however, to me is the slogan of "Collective Farming of the Land". This snuck in because it accords with the anarchist communist views of the OAE, but any sensible person in a country such as Greece would call an immediate time out when this was proposed- unless, of course, they were under the illusion that they had to maintain a fiction of public unanimity. This sort of proposal makes sense in areas of the world where agriculture is carried out basically by hired labour on large plantation like latifundia. It is true that this is becoming once more more prevalent even in countries such as Canada where the small farm is being more and more displaced. Still...most agriculture in most countries is carried out by small independent producers. This is also true of Greece. Calls for "collectivization" are simply non starters. Collective marketing YES. This sort of thing is actually becoming more and more the way that small producers in Greece actually struggle against the corporations- by cooperatives. By the way, I've been to Greece, and I didn't see anything that reminded me of latifundia. Very small, very struggling, farms on what looks like postage stamp properties to somebody from Canada. Very obviously less prosperous than what I saw in Catalonia, north east Italy or Austria all of which were small in Canadian terms.

I think that the demand for ideological conformity actually blinds the comrades of the OAE to the obvious and that they would be far better served by a less structured plan of organization that would let them look closer at what exactly the small farmers of Greece are doing NOW, and how they could advance THAT rather than an obviously unpopular plan.

STATEMENT OF THE OAE:

ON THE ROCKET ATTACK ON THE USA EMBASSY IN ATHENS:

The OAE, the Federation of Anarchists of Greece, is a platformist organization mostly active in the west of that country but gradually growing in other parts as well. In North America the violent acts of a minority of Greek anarchists, the Autonomists, are given excessive attention, especially by those attracted to primitivism and "post-leftism". This is despite the fact that they constitute a distinct minority amongst the anarchists of Greece and despite the fact that their incoherent politics are often virtually indistinguishable from a Maoism that doesn't know that its time in history is over- just like "insurrectionists" here on this continent. In any case here is the statement of the OAE, pointing out some rather simple things, that the only people to profit from such acts are the ruling class and that real anarchism has to be the work of a majority of the people- or it is not anarchism at all.

.................................

"In a period that the US government sends a little bit more than twenty thousand soldiers to the already occupied Iraq, on the 12/1/2007 in Athens, a rocket by some unknown people breaks a few windows above the escutcheon on the American embassy building.

We believe that the terrorist and fickle policy of the sovereign class of the USA is extremely dangerous for world humanity and for this reason it should be confronted by the class struggle, both inside and outside of the USA.

We do not believe that the government policy of the USA supported by big parts of the ruling classes of other countries can be confronted only by words. The violent revolutionary struggle is necessary for confrontation of the international state terrorism of the USA and its allies. However, it should be effective and not strengthen the enemy against which it is supposedly addressed.

We remind you here that "terrorism" constitutes a means of control of the population of the USA and its allies. Even if the various "terrorist" groups did not exist, the bosses of the world would create them, since their various "revolutionary" activities effectively help the projects of the ruling class. Even under the simple threat of the publication of a travelling directive the military-economic cliques can elicit decisions favourable to their interests from "local" governments.

In 2007 the Greek government has scheduled the application of an enormous program of obtaining lots of military equipment. One does not need divinatory capabilities to forecast the country of origin of the new martial aeroplanes that will supply the Greek state wasting the money of the people and serving the aims of NATO and not, of course, some "national safety". LET'S NOT BE NAIVE !

This certain rocket was so "revolutionary" that the bosses of Phantom now rub their bloodstained hands for the profits ensured.

Also, we believe that in Greece no-one of the sovereign cliques has been socked by the rocket of the unknown. On the contrary, they all snicker behind the artificial panic created by the mass media for they have an interest in Athens becoming like a small London, with cameras and police presence everywhere. We have already seen on the TV channels all these various white collar, university professors and councillors of the authorities propagating the necessity of keeping a digital record of data on all citizens.

We believe that the class struggle should also take the form of a violent revolutionary struggle. However, this struggle cannot be the affair of a certain unknown, but should be organized, prepared and realized by the exploited and oppressed themselves who through their trade unions and local organizations will put an end to the disarray and chaos caused by the state and capitalism.

The Federation of Anarchists of Greece (OAE) is calling every exploited and oppressed person to fight both in the place where they live and also where they work against government sponsored arbitrariness and terrorism. The creation of a free society is the affair of all the exploited and oppressed. Then and only then will a rocket against the American embassy constitute a spark to leave behind all those apes who speak today with such arrogance like they were born to dominate humanity and ,more generally, nature.

The big ones are big because we are on our knees !

Towards class struggle !

OAE Press Office"

Molly Note:

The original text of the above statement is available at the Anarkismo site at http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story.id=3791 . It has been slightly edited here to put the original translation into a more proper English. No editing in terms of content has been done. Molly disagrees with the comrades of the OAE in terms of the need for a "revolution", but she fully agrees with their observation that these sort of half-baked terrorist acts serve nobody but the powers that be.