An introduction…

See here for latest “News of Opposition”:

Iraq, Sulaimaniyah (Iraqi Kurdistan): several different offices of various Kurdish nationalist parties torched in riots against unpaid salaries & corruption…Argentina, Buenos Aires: 2nd demonstration of anger against pension, and other, reforms in a week…Honduras, San Pedro Sula: demonstrators against election fix loot sports store…Ivory Coast, Korhogo: dozens of parents take over police station, threatening to burn it down, in order to free their kids arrested for having thrown stones…UK: a politician’s life is not a happy one…Peru, Piura: in protest against forbidding motorbike taxis from the urban area, motortaxi drivers block roads, burn tyres, pelt cops with sticks & stones, puncture tyres of various vehicles…India, Kerala: students clash with cops in protest against Vice Chancellor’s nepotism…Eire: Ryanair to recognise unions to prevent pilots’ strike…Italy, Modena: antifas clash with cops…India, Assam: 15 national highways blockaded as tea plantation workers protest shooting by tea bosses of workers protesting non-payment of promised bonuses…Argentina, Buenos Aires: cops fire rubber bullets & tear gas as bins are torched during pensions demo…Algeria, Bouira: major motorway barricaded with burning tyres & tree trunks…Madigascar, Ikongo: about 600 people armed with spears & machetes, storm prison, take guards hostage & liberate 120 prisoners…Tunisia, Kram: youths block road, chuck stones at cops, after resident is badly beaten by cops…Bouarada: youths protesting suicide in custody get teargassed by cops…Sidi Bouzid: roads blocked with flaming tyres in movement against unemployment…Greece, Athens: more clashes with cops in Exarchia…Roma pelt police station with stones after death of Roma in custody…UK, London: wildcat strike on rail construction site…Tunisia, Sejnane: 200 attack National Guard gendarmerie during General Strike demo against lack of investment & unemployment in area…Argentina, Buenos Aires: containers burnt, stones thrown in clashes with cops at demo against WTO…Ivory Coast, Cocody: heavy clashes between residents & cops as cops brutally evict several houses without court order…Senegal, St.Louis: heavy clashes as students block main highway with expropriated lorry in protest against non-payment of grants…Kenya, Nyamira: villagers protesting dam project burn down 4 houses belonging to dam collaborator…

Dialectical Delinquents

“Taking up the violence of the delinquents on the plane of ideas”

Incorporating:

Rudolf Rockers, Hegel’s Angels, Debord’s Deadbeats,

Vaneigem’s Vandals, the Bakunin and Marx Brothers and Sisters,

Skins for Skepticism, Mods against Post-modernism,

Punks for Proletarian Praxis, Rühle’s Ruthlessly Critical Rude Boys,

Hippy Hooligans Against Hierarchical Hegemony,

Grunge Greasers From Gründrisse,

Teds against tedium, & Crips for Creative Critique

situation grave 2

One of the aims of the ruling show is to get people to believe that they have a better chance of living if they remain on their knees. But realistically, the choice today is increasingly no longer a question of it being better to die on our feet or to live on our knees, but a choice between dying on our knees or living and dying on our feet. Fairly good chance that we’ll be fucked if we get off our knees, but for sure, we’ll be even more fucked if we don’t.

“…that paradoxical feeling …..

of living in a world

without any possible escape,

in which there was nothing for it

but

to fight

for an impossible escape…”
– Victor Serge

Never before has a global revolutionary destruction of hierarchical power seemed so indisputably necessary. And yet never before has it seemed so impossible. The monster created and developed by the various ruling classes and those willingly submissive to them – the commodity society – has never before been so obviously intent on the destruction of everything other than itself. If an increasingly intelligent global community of revolt doesn’t seriously threaten the power of the state and the economy over the next 2, 5, 10, 15 years then future rulers will be ruling over social relations that will make the decadence of Caligula-dominated Rome seem like a beacon of enlightenment and World War ll like an oasis of compassion.

As we advance further into an epoch of what will almost certainly be permanent and worsening crisis, this site hopes to help clarify and extend the revolts that are developing everywhere and help defeat the counter-revolution that is developing everywhere. Theory informs practise and practise informs theory. Neither can make progress without the other. In opposition to all the various forms of determinism vis-a-vis the eventual outcome of a possible future revolution (whether optimistic or pessimistic), a significant part of the struggle is to see what choices are made and what choices are avoided. Practical ideas improve or regress on the basis of the efforts to supersede the past, its strengths and weaknesses, its successes and failures – for ourselves and the whole world: inseparably.

***

This is not an open access site: it has no pretensions to being “democratic” in the sense of being welcoming to absolutely anybody. Anyone who persists over time in dogmatic ideological arguments which go nowhere will be censored and/or banned. Undoubtedly there will be many who have ideologically petrified notions whilst also having some lucid ideas and interesting facts to contribute. But if they persist in pursuing their dogmas impervious to argument, then their comments will be suppressed. The aim of this site is not to get into head-bashing ego-battles, to repeatedly refute the same stale ideas, but to develop perspectives that clarify and help advance social contestation, to bring a breath of fresh air. All texts appearing here will be signed by their author(s) or their pseudonyms.

***

Unless otherwise stated, all texts have been written exclusively by me (SamFantoSamotnaf)

“My request that my writing be read twice has aroused great indignation. Unjustly so. After all, I do not ask that they be read once.” – Karl Kraus

The texts on this site will eventually include all public texts written or co-written by me since I first started writing public texts in 1969 – the Good, the Bad and the Embarassing. Making these archive texts public on the internet is not intended to in any way valorise their importance for present expressions of opposition; it should be obvious that even the good archive texts have to be critiqued and updated, and made relevant to what’s going on now.

Other texts will include links to already online texts that I think are useful, or interesting texts that do not so far exist online. It will also include news items or links to news items in the “news of opposition” section. The texts are organised under various overlapping and oversimplified categories and many might appear several times, though in different sections. There is obviously no copyright on these texts.

(last 2 paragraphs slightly altered on 24/2/13)

THIS SITE WAS ORIGINALLY LAUNCHED AT THE END OF DECEMBER 2012

(updated 20th February 2013: my thanks to Bartleby who, despite preferring not to, provided me with invaluable help in re-organising this site)

Brought to you by “Sam Samotnaf Fantomas”

“…it is necessary to take into account the bitterness of certain servants of power who are imprisoned in roles that are stultifying and humiliating. However, indulgence has its limits. If, despite everything, these people persist in putting a guilty conscience and their bitterness in the service of power by creating the conditioning mechanisms that colonise their own lives, and if they choose power because power has already chosen them then….too bad.”