strategy of tension
Tarnac 9 and Anti-terrorism: it “positively produces the political enemy as terrorist”
The following interview was published in Le Monde on 25 May 2009 and translated by NOT BORED! 27 May 2009. It also appears in the Tarnac9 blog, and here, as well as in this tag collection. Spread the word!
LeMonde | 5.25.09 – Here are the responses to the questions that we [Isabelle Mandraud and Caroline Monnot] posed in writing to Julien Coupat. Placed under investigation on 15 November 2008 for “terrorism,” along with eight other people interrogated in Tarnac (Correze) and Paris, he is suspected of having sabotaged the suspended electrical cables of the SNCF. He is the last one still incarcerated. (He has asked that certain words be in italics.)
Q. How are you spending your time?
A. Very well, thank you. Chin-ups, jogging and reading.
Q. Can you recall the circumstances of your arrest for us?
A. A gang of youths, hooded and armed to the teeth, broke into our house. They threatened us, handcuffed us, and took us away, after having broken everything to pieces. They first took us into very fast cars capable of moving at more than 170 kilometers an hour on the highways. In their conversations, the name of a certain Mr Marion (former leader of the anti-terrorist police) came up often. His virile exploits amused them very much, such as the time he slapped one of his colleagues in the face, in good spirits and at a going-away party. They sequestered us for four days in one of their “people’s prisons,” where they stunned us with questions in which absurdity competed with obscenity.
The one who seemed to be the brains of the operation vaguely excused himself from this circus by explaining that it was the fault of the “services,” the higher-ups, all kinds of people who want [to talk to] us very much. Today, my kidnappers are still free. Certain recent and diverse facts attest to the fact that they continue to rage with total impunity.
Q. The sabotage of the SNCF cables in France was claimed [by someone] in Germany. What do you say about that?
Read the rest of this entry »
Peru Sends in Army to Suppress Peaceful Indigenous Protests
colonos is reproducing here an Amazon Watch news release. Our comment: no news there.
Date: May 19, 2009
Source: Amazon Watch
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 19, 2009
Media Contacts:
USA – Gregor MacLennan (415) 395-6734 gregor AT amazonwatch.org
PERU – Edson Rosales +511 99-787-6616, +511 265-5011 comunicaciones AT aidesep.org.pe
Oil Production Interrupted as Peru Sends in Army to Suppress Peaceful Indigenous Protests
Dozens Injured in Government Attacks on Protesters
Video footage, photos, interviews available upon request
LIMA, Peru, May 19, 2009— Yesterday, on the 40th day of sustained protests by Peru’s indigenous peoples, the state oil company Petroperu, announced it had shut down the country’s main oil pipeline. On Saturday, the Garcia Government authorized the intervention of the armed forces to crack down on peaceful protests that have swept the Amazon region.
Update on Nottingham “terror” arrest: A lying University will not be an “open and free arena for debate and dissent”
This is a follow-up to the recent case at Nottingham University where the combination of misinformed, xenophobic colleagues, an administration without perspective and law making far beyond the rule of law led to the arrest and prolonged detainment of a student and staff and confiscation of their belongings simply for doing their job: finding, printing and investigating documents.
What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate and a sheepish, dependent and pathetic bunch of business administrators – jacks of all administrative trades, masters of no intellect – who call the anti terror cops on their own students and staff without reflection, without (reasonable) thought and with no sense of reality at all.
Colonos have just written to Alf Nilsen to clarify the exact meaning of the third last paragraph, which commences: “Fourthly, the claim that…” which appears to be written a bit too hastily or merely goes right over my head 🙂
However, for now – here goes, see for yourself where it’s at:
Dear all – some of you may have written to the Registrar at the University of Nottingham, Dr. Paul Greatrix, to protest the recent false terror arrests at our university, and some of you might also have received a reply. My colleagues and I would like to point out a number of inconsistencies in this reply – see below, and as always: please circulate!!
Comments on University Communication on Recent Events
Miembros del Centro de Medios Independientes: Arrestados en Ecuador!
Four independent media activists from Indymedia-Ecuador have been arrested without charges, making the reason for arrest obviously political – and (as such) in violation of human rights and of article 24(4) of the Ecuadorian constitution. It is an attack on the freedom of speech in Ecuador – as in so many other places in the new world order and permanent global state of exception. Spread the word, show your support and keep struggling for human rights and the freedom to speak your mind!
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COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
Ecuador. Francisco de Orellana, 07 de mayo del 2008. (hora: 11:50)
REMITIMOS COMUNICADO DE PRENSA.
Quito /Ecuador / INREDH
Comunicadores independientes víctimas de arresto arbitrario. El día martes 6 de mayo de 2008, entre las 10 y las 12 de la noche, fueron arrestados los comunicadores sociales Carlos Andrade, Santiago Cadena, Diana Cabascango y Francisco Jaramillo. miembros del Centro de Medios Independientes Indymedia-Ecuador.
El fiscal del caso, Doctor Francisco Noboa, encabezó el operativo de allanamiento a los domicilios y captura. Dicho fiscal se negó a informar al abogado de los detenidos sobre las razones de su detención, no quiso informar cual era el juez que conocía la causa, no mostró la orden de detención, ni la de allanamiento.
Esta actuación es violatoria al artículo 24(4) de la Constitución, el cual señala: Toda persona, al ser detenida, tendrá derecho a conocer en forma clara las razones de su detención, la identidad de la autoridad que la ordenó, la de los agentes que la llevan a cabo y la de los responsables del respectivo interrogatorio.
Por esta razón, el INREDH presentará una denuncia en contra del agente fiscal mencionado. El personal de la Policía Judicial no permitió que los detenidos se entrevisten con su abogado, por lo cual se configura una situación de incomunicación, por lo que el INREDH denunciará ante asuntos internos de la Policía Judicial esta falta para que se impongan sanciones a los policías responsables.
Estos hechos configuran una detención por conciencia, es decir una detención cuyo móvil es político. Las actividades comunicacionales de los detenidos eran de constante crítica al sistema constituido y de denuncia por los atropellos del poder a los derechos de las personas. Los bienes incautados de sus domicilios fueron computadoras, documentos de trabajo y afiches alusivos a su tendencia política.
Este arresto arbitrario esta siendo denunciado ante organismos internacionales como Amnistía Internacional, la Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos, la Organización Mundial Contra la Tortura y la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos.
Exigimos que se frene la incomunicación de los detenidos, que se señalen las causas de su detención, que se sancionen al Agente Fiscal y a los oficiales de la Policía Judicial por la violación de los derechos
humanos de los detenidos y que si los supuestos legales no se cumplen se los deje en inmediata libertad.
Pedimos a la opinión pública que se mantenga vigilante de estos hechos que parecen configurar un ataque a la libertad de expresión en nuestro país.
Más información: Comunicación INREDH
Amanda Trujillo: 2526365 / 088994039
Ana Cristina Vera: 096200423
Governor of Orellana arrested under terrorism charges – repression continues
Guadalupe Llori, governor of the Amazonian province of Orellana, was seized from her home and arrested on December 8 by the Ecuadorian military and charged with terrorism and sabotage for her support of the local strikes and protests. Locals who assembled at her house to contest her arrest were dispersed with tear gas.
For the last couple of weeks, protests and road blocks have been taking place particularly in the oil-producing community of Dayuma, on ancestral lands of the Huaorani and Tagaeri peoples who were displaced in the 1960s and 70s by the oil companies, paving the way for many poor settlers from other areas in search for a better life. Especially inhabitants of Loja in the Andes and Manabí at the coast which experienced a severe drought at the time moved to this part of the Amazon when the Agrarian Reform opened up the rainforest as no-man’s land to be claimed by anyone able to cut down 50% of the trees of a given piece of land.
Repression in Orellana
In the night of November 30 – December 1, over 50 people (including 3 minors), mainly from the community of Dayuma near Coca in the Northern Amazon region of Ecuador, were violently arrested by the military acting on orders of President Rafael Correa who pronounced a State of Emergency in the Amazonian Province of Orellana (Decree 770) due to protests in the oil producing province for improving road infrastructure and basic services and against feared quasi-privatisation of the state-owned oil company PETROECUADOR.
Communities criminalised for defending nature – summit in Quito
A grassroots summit.
On November 16, indigenous, mestizo and African-Ecuadorian community leaders, farmers, environmentalists, activists, and individuals affected or concerned about the environmental situation in Ecuador gathered at the Catholic University in Quito for the First Summit of Communities Criminalized for Defending Nature.
Over recent years, violent confrontations, repression and human rights violations have increasingly characterised environmental conflicts in all parts of the country. The summit was organised by a variety of social movements in order to publicly highlight political, juridical, and extra-judicial persecutions and abuses of social and environmental activists.
Testimonies of persons jailed, criminalised, shot and stories of those assassinated were shared and collected and the social, political and economic reasons and consequences of the persecutions analysed. The global nature of repression against movements opposed to environmentally and socially damaging projects was emphasised, and the summit declared solidarity and support for all social and environmental grassroots movements worldwide.
The summit participants later marched to hand members of the National Constitutional Assembly a petition for amnesty for the over 200 community leaders currently imprisoned for the execution of their right to protest and to live in a healthy environment. The petition also demanded an end to the ceaseless violations of human rights and community rights to ancestral land generated by mining, oil exploitation, logging, hydroelectrical power stations, and shrimp farming.
(Freely translated and abridged from Javier Mazeres’ article of the same title, published in the newsletter of the Catalonian Association Ali Supay – www.alisupay.org)
Modern Shamanistic Practice in a political context: reflections on indigenous struggles.
This entry comes from a post to a thread on Tribe.net that became much too long winding – perhaps even for the blog, haha, well, not really – this should give some political ideas that might be useful for anyone performing shamanic practices (the links, abbreviated by Tribe, look funny but work 🙂
These statements are interesting (and the comments they afforded long):
The pre-G8 perspective: time for reflections.
This is a time for reflection – the actions are over and they were in many ways a great success. Now we have to look back upon what happened, and why not start from the beginning, from before the G8?
“Moving against the G8“, an article featured in the June edition of the Red Pepper magazine and written around a month before the G8 Summit, offers a bit of background to the 2007 G8 mobilisation and the conditions on which it could perhaps be judged a success — all of which were fulfilled or exceeded last week. Another good way of getting a bit more background information for the reflective time to come is the Wikipedia entry for “Strategy of Tension”, because the media distortions do not stop when the summit ends – they are only just about to begin. See also an illuminating interview with Daniele Ganser and download -and read- his book to be prepared for the aftermath of the G8:
colonos 