2009-03-13 

Nato Counter summit in Strasburg

April 3rd and 4th — Strasburg.
NATO turns 60.
Let’s celebrate.
An opportunity to seize, a call to be heard.
Counter-summit in Strasburg: not an appointment with the Power, but a meeting with the situation.

Civilization knew it was bound to die someday – but only in theory. After several shocks and attacks, it now feels it through all its fibers, all its vital flows. A feeling of death in the democratic air. It is no longer denied, it has become a threat, a pretext for mobilization. Powers crave for our help – let’s be cruel.

All around the world, it’s all about "building new foundations for capitalism". NATO, as a notable member of the Family, is ready to take its responsibilities. Securing access to vital resources, preventing all appropriations but capitalistic ones, saving a dying Empire. By any means necessary.
There’s a war on.

Counter-insurrection is that military common knowhow that war doesn’t find its outcome on purely military grounds. Its counterpart is political: every aspect of existence is held within the scope of war. It’s not so much a brand new kind of war that is being at stake in this summit but a new idea of war: war as a core principle of existence itself, of any relation.

When this idea of war, of exception, becomes a normative outlook on the world, it gives birth to a new modality of governance. This normalization has a name: antiterrorism. Antiterrorism embraces a variety of intermingled devices, going across justice, police, army and even politics, social and economical issues. Through anti-terrorism, all these fields tend to be undistinguished: on the one hand deactivating and destroying anything that escapes, on the other producing the appearances of normality.

All distinctions between war and politics have disappeared. One may not only say "everything is political" but rather "everything is at war". That’s no reason to complain. The "end of History" is now history. Government, repression, mobilization now explicitly aims at preventing the return of History. In vain. History is always there, already, seeping in through all the cracks, despite everything that’s done to fill all gaps, to seal off all areas, to prevent all risks.
The "eternal return of the market" is such a feeble fiction, facing the truth of the eternal return of History.

On the one hand, the supporters of a new democratic order, ready to exercise antiterrorist terror.
On the other hand, those who don’t want to wait, whose existence already shows that "reality is not capitalist".
On the edge of History, everything becomes clearer.

We,
coming from everywhere,
so-called "terrorists",
let’s get rid of the fear they’d like to see in our eyes!
In Strasburg!
Anywhere!
A wave, a tide to sweep away the terror!
Not only the black tide they’re waiting for!
"Desperate people", "rioters", "terrorists", "anarchists"…
These straitjackets and their mirrors – "citizens", "pacifists" –, they don’t suit us.
A flood, a colorless tide!
Where one cannot separate what strikes from what shields,
Because both are part of the same force!

NO VICTOR BELIEVES IN CHANCE

Strasburg, counter summit: 1st – 5th April.
Two international camps from 1st April.
Saturday 4th April
am: lots of Blockades
1pm: International demonstration