To Jean-Francois Martos 25 February 1982

M. Prigent est un provocateur dont le seul but est de nuire en falsifiant Guy Debord: exemple. 
 

Dear Jeff:

It is quite true that Michel [Prigent], having so fully failed to discern the obvious facts of last year, must henceforth abstain from offering other people lessons on lucidity and rigor.

This type of conduct directly derives from the unrealistic spirit of the milieu "that he frequented without knowing it."[1] Nevertheless, this was not difficult. The most recent examples that I mentioned to you, among ten other examples that I have since forgotten, have no importance in themselves; they nearly summarize the tone of their discussions and the quality of the themes that interest them exclusively. Despite their pretentious reading, with which they have no known what to do in ten or twelve years, they fundamentally resemble the most common contemporary spectators in their illusory passivity and their jealous bad faith. They do not so much lack bookish intelligence, nor even intelligence, but all this is nothing to them, owing to a dialogue and a genre of life in which each one hates all the others but covers for them. Fighting against nothing, they understand nothing, and thus never discover anything good, on the theoretical plane or in their daily routines. If they do not know how to fight anything, they also do not dare to love anything. This is the root of the extravagant confusion of all of their "conclusions." If one asks them how they would judge the Palazzo Vecchio,[2] they would say that they take offense at discerning a fly on the marble of the Parthenon, which moreover is not there. It is patent that they are incapable of any practical activity -- personally and even less collectively -- and, whatever they say, they are incapable of friendship. Thus I cannot discern in them anything that would interest anyone else, and this opinion is proven truth (in their own eyes) by experience.

In a few years, such a milieu will wear out for good those who enter and remain in it. And this wear and tear does not merely mark them on the terrain of their political reveries -- the loss would be slight -- but everywhere: one hears the same voice from all of them, just like the stars of power all have the same intonations of Giscard, then Mitterand, sometimes mixed with a little Defferre. Thus I do not believe that people of this kind, even those who better informed, have the obligation or (in a certain way) the right to condemn Arthur [Marchadier], who is, in short, the most talented among them. At the moment, this is a problem for the living, especially in Spain.

One has also told me and, in my opinion, in the same false perspective of imaginary political responsibilities, that it was unfortunate that the cunning Arthur tried again to compromise [your companion] Etiennette by meeting her under diverse practical pretexts. I responded with a sincere optimism that I find that she has the air of a rebel and that I would thus have been quite surprised if she demanded from life nothing better than this lukewarm water. But, above all, this concerns her personally. In the spring of last year, Michel had been the one who showed himself to be the most inclined to give the "Parisian" debates a dangerously organizational form, whereas it was instead a question of discussions among building superintendents. It is more and more inconsequential to want to go on, since there has been confusion here that would have been unhealthy among the simplest band of film-lovers or football fans.

The Sanguinettists of whom you speak are inept fanatics, since they find that posing to their idol questions concerning several very precise and important points would already be "taking sides" against him.[3] By this very fact they confess that these were questions to which their idol could not respond, and thus that it was disrespectful to ask them! It is true that the idol had himself previously made this confession by deciding to not respond to you, and that he had justified the understanding things this way through the same absurd arguments. One can wonder if the fanatics in question (especially the most simple-minded) consider themselves to be Leftists or if they have instead rallied to the type of thinking of the "Moonist"[4] type of sects. I estimate that you have conducted yourself in the best way in this affair and along the road that has led to the greatest clarity. If your letter had been a condemnation that completely rested upon unknown information and documents, one could have -- without needing to completely falsify the meaning of your letter -- reproach you with suddenly taking sides and no doubt expressing the customary hypotheses on the influences that one would like to find at work. But since you did not leave the shadow of a pretext, one can only ask oneself more and more why these cretins who display their dishonesty on this point do not find it more convenient to simply affirm that the letters exchanged in 1978[5] are nothing other than fakes? You do well to resolve to completely ignore all of these incompetent opinions, because one is assured of ceaselessly hearing them (they will become more self-contradictory) as soon as one arouses the slightest envy. And each year the envious will become more delirious and stupider, following the model traced out by the society that sinks itself.

You have seen how, in Italy, one has arrived at the next stage of the use of the "Red Brigades," which I announced without difficulty in 1979:[6] the "repenti" spring up on command and, without trial, condemn to years in prison the thousands of socio-political activists [contestataires] whom they have the desire -- or the task -- to denounce as their "comrades." Thus it is hardly pleasant to have been seen with one once in a cafe; and all the more because the "R.B." have fought against the revolts of the political prisoners with the worst means, accusing them of reformism because they would allegedly like to make the prisons into "a bed of roses." Among so many masterpieces of black humor -- such as the release of General Dozier,[7] which was both quite spectacular and very obscure -- there were the two executioners of the brother[8] of one of the first supposed repenters ("If you were not the traitor, your brother must be"), who, completely changing their roles at the first order, balanced out their recent acolytes by an entire half-brigade.

As for Spain, the Constitutionalists have proclaimed that the military tribunal is their last hope for finally proving that democracy still exists and will continue to exist there, and they simultaneously begin to all to appear in all of their lying texts the fear that they have so bravely hidden for the last thirteen months.

On 13 February [1982], a newscaster on French radio said that the state of siege in Poland had already lasted "three months." A slip of the tongue that clearly revealed an intention to push the accomplished fact back into a distant past. But it is still the present. A journalists from [9]El Pais recently reported that he had seen on many streets and factories in Gdynia and Gdansk -- where the international press had walked for two days in the exact style of the voyages organized by Mao -- the following slogan: "The winter is yours, the spring is ours." I do not know if the French press also mentioned this fact.

The history of the houses occupied on your street -- and precisely by those beautiful squatters[10] who do not much like the judgments of the connoisseurs of their merits[11] -- is very amusing but dangerous as well. Truly, the northeast of what is still called "Paris" becomes even more uninhabitable. Since the time that we squatted the world, which continues to degrade itself, we still cannot say that we have found an environment, nor any good neighborhoods, that are fully satisfying.

Best wishes,

Guy

 

P.S. Do you think of writing a short book on Poland? As there are at the moment commentators who anxiously await the knowledge of the truth of the story[12] -- so as to begin to travesty it -- one can anticipate that soon there will be a flood of falsifications that work in the service of the most varied nuances of repression.

http://www.notbored.org

[1] Translator's note: the "pro-situationist" milieu in Paris.

[2] Powerful fortress situated in the city square of the Seigneurie at the heart of Florence.

[3] Translator's note: in a letter dated 3 June 1981, Martos had addressed some questions to Gianfranco Sanguinetti concerning his book On Terrorism and the State (1979), which Martos had translated from the Italian into French.

[4] Sect founded in 1954 by the Korean Sun Myung Moon, who relocated to the United States in 1972. [Translator's note: the "Moonies."]

[5] Translator's note: See in particular the letter dated 21 April 1978.

[6] Translator's note: "Preface to the Fourth Italian Edition of The Society of the Spectacle."

[7] Brigadier General James Lee Dozier, head of logistics for NATO in Southern Europe, was kidnapped in Verona on 17 December 1980 by the "Red Brigades" and freed on 28 January 1981 by the police in Padua.

[8] Roberto Pecci, brother of a "brigadist" who had collaborated with the police, was killed by the "Red Brigades" on 3 August 1981.

[9] Translator's note: It actually started two months previously, on 13 December 1981.

[10] Members of "Direct Action." [Translator's note: "squatters": English in original.]

[11] Translator's note: including Guy Debord himself, who likened "Direct Action" to the "Red Brigades." For their part, "Direct Action" considered the post-1968 Debord to be a disappointment.]

[12] Translator's note: An illusion to Martos himself, who founded Editions le fin mot de l'Histoire to publish his own books.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1979-Decembre 1987 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2006. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! May 2007. Footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted.)

A MADEIRA TORTA DA TEORIA

Isaiah Berlin – um pensador problemático do liberalismo no séc. XX O pensamento liberal não pertence apenas aos representantes de uma liberdade radical do mercado, que atualmente estão dando os últimos suspiros, mesmo se com isso os problemas da crise mundial capitalista remanescem sem solução. Isaiah Berlin, cujo centenário de nascimento se aproxima, foi mais um dos representantes daquele liberalismo, que com freqüência é percebido nos países de língua inglesa como “de esquerda“ por preocupar-se mais com os direitos de minorias do que com os direitos dos grandes grupos industriais e comerciais. Para Berlin, o conceito cambiante de liberdade ganhou substância a partir da oposição às ideologias doutrinárias do séc. XX, que ele experimentou por assim dizer fisicamente, na sua condição sofrida de judeu emigrado da Rússia e da Letônia para a Inglaterra. Berlin não quis vincular-se a nenhuma doutrina, também não a de um capitalismo completamente desenfreado. Como todos os pensadores de um liberalismo mais político do que econômico, aderiu à idéia de uma liberdade abstrata do indivíduo, sem refletir sobre as condições históricas e sociais concretas desse programa. Por isso compartilhou também a cegueira do liberalismo diante do caráter totalitário da máquina capitalista, incapaz de ser domada apenas por instituições políticas da democracia. Embora quisesse fazer justiça à teoria marxista no seu primeiro livro, não pôde, em última instância, percebê-la de modo diferente do que sob a impressão do estalinismo, que procurou, à semelhança de muitos outros intelectuais, compreender como conseqüência das idéias de Marx – quando justamente Marx teve em mente uma outra liberdade do indivíduo, que náo deveria ser estatizado, mas liberto das coações de uma finalidade autotélica da economia, assim como da conexa administração estatal de seres humanos. Um traço característico de Berlin reside no fato dele desconfiar, na esteira da tradição cética e antidogmática de Montaigne, em princípio de todas as idéias, considerando-as ao mesmo tempo necessárias. Compreendia-se como adepto da Ilustração, sem compartilhar a “crença supersticiosa na razão“, mas também sem historicizar essa razão como razão especificamente capitalista. No entanto, o próprio marxismo não logrou fazer isso. Inversamente Berlin queria compreender a contra-ilustração romântica como contrapeso necessário à razão doutrinária, embora ele mesmo condenasse seus efeitos doutrinários nos sécs. XIX e XX. Isso poderia lembrar a metafísica pós-moderna da ambivalência e contingência, para a qual todas as teorias estão um pouco corretas e um pouco erradas. Mas o paradoxo de um “relativismo absoluto“ deve afigurar-se verdadeiramente dogmático só à luz da filosofia de Berlin. Por outro lado, ele quis relativizar seu “pluralismo moral“ por meio do postulado de valores universais, que deveriam valer em igual medida para todas as pessoas. Esse dilema remete ao fato de toda a filosofia moral desembocar em uma quadratura do círculo, uma vez que não lança luz sobre as suas próprias premissas sociais. Por outro lado, o ceticismo de uma divinização da razão moderna lembra também Adorno, que desconfiou à sua maneira de uma “derivação“ do mundo do mero conceito teórico e quis pensar “com ajuda do conceito contra o conceito“, para levar em consideração o que não se dissolve na lógica da identidade de um pensamento supostamente esclarecido. Berlin apreciou muito a expressão kantiana da “madeira torta da humanidade“. Transposta para o plano da reflexão crítica, poder-se-ia falar também da “madeira torta da teoria“, que deve conhecer seus limites sem abdicar de si mesma. Ocorre que Adorno sempre virou essa idéia contra as aporias da razão moderna nos próprios Kant e Hegel. A pluralidade liberal de Berlin ficou trancada nessas aporias. Ao criticar o monismo de Marx, ignorou que ele é negativo e critica a falsa unidade identitária do mundo capitalista a partir dos seus fundamentos. Uma sociedade plural, na qual as pessoas “podem ser diferentes sem medo“ (Adorno) só seria possibilitada por uma superação dos ditames imperiais da economia, que o Estado pode tão-somente executar. A distinção berliniana entre “liberdade negativa“ e “liberdade positiva“ tornou-se famosa. A primeira compreende-se como mera liberdade de uma coação exterior, a segunda como liberdade para uma vida autodeterminada. Como Berlin não logrou decifrar a coação interna da sociedade fetichista do capitalismo, essa diferenciação tornou-se interessante para o pensamento neoconservador do radicalismo econômico. Se as pessoas são aprisionadas na “auto-responsabilidade“ justamente sob as coações da concorrência universal e são solicitadas a se conceberem como “capital humano“ com a finalidade da “auto-valorização“, o conceito berliniano da liberdade positiva sofre uma instrumentalização brutal. Na maioria das vezes os pregadores de uma ética tão repressiva da responsabilidade nem conhecem a origem dos seus slogans. Isaiah Berlin remanesce dessarte como um pensador problemático do liberalismo no séc. XX. A liberdade do indivíduo, visada também por Marx na sua crítica radical da economia, não é realizada. Evidencia-se assim que as idéias da época passada ultrapassaram a data da sua caducidade. Isso vale para o liberalismo político bem como para o marxismo tradicional, que representam apenas uma oposição no invólucro comum do sistema produtor de mercadorias. O totalitarismo do mercado e o totalitarismo do Estado constituem os dois pólos dessa “valorização do valor“ (Marx) autonomizada, não acessível a nenhum valor de ordem moral, que esbarra no seu limite histórico interno em meio à nova crise da economia mundial. Enquanto o desejo pela liberdade e autodeterminação for coagido a uma corrida inclemente entre esses dois pólos, deverá esgotar-se até a morte. Robert Kurz Traduzido por Peter Naumann

Montreuil: Un propriétaire lève un commando armé pour évacuer des squatteurs

2 Stars du capitalisme: Hafid Hafed et Medhi Ibanez

Hafid Hafed, criminel,  agent immobilier véreux et nouveau propriétaire du 74 rue des Caillots à Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) a recouru à la manière forte en faisant appel à une quinzaine d’hommes armés de barres de fer pour faire évacuer tout le monde. Avant la vente de la maison, le squat était accepté par la municipalité et par l’ancien propriétaire. Le nouveau semble moins tolérant. Samedi dernier, les squatteurs avaient déjà reçu une première visite du nouveau propriétaire. Accompagné d’une dizaine de casseurs, il avait tenté de négocier, selon les dires de l’un des squatteurs. «Il faisait semblant de vouloir négocier ‘Je vous file des billets et vous partez’ ou ‘J’ai de quoi vous reloger ailleurs si vous voulez’», raconte ce militant, membre d’un collectif pour le droit au logement.

«Des grands gaillards armés de gaz lacrymogènes, de barres de fer, de massues et de pieds de biche en sont sortis. Nous avons à peine eu le temps de réagir qu’ils se sont jetés sur les portes et les fenêtres pour tout casser. Pendant deux heures, ils ont mis la maison à sac. Ils étaient une petite quinzaine. Encagoulés pour la plupart, ils fracassaient les murs, les portes et le mobilier qui restait.»

La maire de Montreuil, Dominique Voynet, s’est dite  «très choquée» par cet incident. Du côté des squatteurs, en résistance, certains ont décidé de rester sur place dans l’attente d’une procédure légale d’évacuation.

Attaques maffieuses à Montreuil

Dimanche 24 juillet 2011 

Hier, Samedi 23 Juillet, le squat dit « la MQP » a été pris d’assaut par une troupe d’hommes commandés par un type se disant le nouveau propriétaire. N’étaient alors présents dans la maison qu’un couple et leur fils d’un an. Les assaillants ont pénétré dans les lieux, y détruisant le maximum de mobilier (vitres, portes, meubles, cuisine, compteur EDF...). De nombreuses personnes ont naturellement accouru sur place, ce qui eut pour effet de faire partir les assaillants. Mais pour un temps seulement, car depuis hier ils reviennent régulièrement et les attaques se font de plus en plus violentes. Il n’y a aucun dialogue possible. Pour exemple, un rendez vous était fixé aujourd’hui Dimanche 24 Juillet entre le habitants et le soi-disant propriétaire : les habitants qui s’y sont rendus se sont fait frappés. Après quoi la petite armée est revenue devant la maison, (s’attaquant aux vitres, portes, meubles, cuisine, compteur EDF...) sans discontinuer pendant une demi-heure sous le regard complaisant des policiers. Résultat de cette dernière attaque : un camarade a reçu un pavé dans le visage : il est à l’hôpital et a très certainement le nez cassé ; une employée de la mairie venue sur place à titre personnel s’est faite gazer et porte plainte. Notons qu’en repartant, le convoi automobile des assaillants était escorté par les flics, ce qui renforce l’hypothèse d’un coup monté en collusion avec des responsables montreuillois.

Il n’y avait et il n’y a toujours pas de procédure pouvant justifier l’expulsion de la MQP. De plus, l’homme qui se dit propriétaire n’a montré aucun titre de propriété jusqu’à présent. Ce dernier travaille en fait pour I@D (Immobilier @ Domicile) , un gros groupe immobilier. I@D se présente comme une agence virtuelle. Leur argent cependant n’est pas virtuel, et les hommes qui les accompagnent ont été vus recevant des billets pour leurs bons services.


Leur chef et patron menace verbalement d’autres squats de Montreuil. Des nouvelles suivront bientôt.

https://paris.indymedia.org/spip.php?article7883
http://chroniquesmontreuilloises.over-blog.com/article-l-etat-de-droit-bafoue-a-montreuil-80116713.html

« Ce que nous refusons, c’est votre enfer »

Du jour au lendemain, sentir que notre petit monde s’écroule, et avec lui toutes nos habitudes. Et avec lui, encore, toute une vie passée qui se transforme en souvenir, où l’on se surprend à vouloir retrouver des photos dont l’on se fichait pas mal auparavant. Et avec lui, enfin, la peur d’être dispersés, la peur d’une nouvelle galère, la peur de devoir tout reprendre à zéro. Notre maison s’est faite attaquer, à plusieurs reprises. Devant la menace, nous avons dû évacuer nos affaires. Et nous nous sommes sentis trop en danger pour y retourner. À présent, des amis, des voisins, des connaissances nouvelles ou anciennes se préoccupent de la maison, la sécurisent. Les attaques peuvent recommencer : le soi-disant simple propriétaire veut à tout prix récupérer son bien.

Les débuts de la propriété, ce fut cela : un type avec un papier dans la main, accompagné d’hommes de main, qui débarque sur un champ ou dans une maison et déclare : ceci est à moi. Aux débuts de la propriété, il a fallu que des salauds se présentent, les armes à la main. En allant contre l’évidence, ils dirent : non, la terre n’est pas à ceux qui la travaillent, pas plus qu’une maison n’est à ceux qui l’habitent.

Nous ne sommes pas naïfs. Nous savions qu’un jour ou l’autre un type allait se présenter et exiger de nous, grâce à la puissance d’un simple bout de papier, que nous nous en allions. Ce lieu, nous l’avions trouvé abandonné, la porte ouverte, il y a presque quatre ans, et nous savions qu’un jour quelqu’un allait se saisir du bout de papier qui va avec. Et reprendre la maison.

Des dizaines de personnes sont passées par cette maison, pour des périodes plus ou moins longues, et un groupe stable d’habitants s’est dégagé avec le temps. Les loyers sont tellement élevés, l’accès à un logement décent est si difficile, que nous sommes des dizaines, voire des centaines de milliers à nous entasser, à passer de canapés en canapés. La concurrence pour le travail, ainsi que ses conditions actuelles, font que celles et ceux qui, pour de multiples raisons, ne trouvent pas la force de rentrer comme des dingues dans ce jeu sont de plus en plus nombreux. Cette maison s’est offerte pour une partie de ces gens-là, c’est-à-dire nous-mêmes. Un toit gratuit, ainsi que la possibilité de vivre à plusieurs, nous a permis de faire face à cette réalité ensemble, de ne pas nous laisser broyer individuellement. Nous nous disions : l’amitié, la solidarité, l’hospitalité sont des valeurs sur lesquelles nous pouvons compter face à la machine économique. Face aux rêves brisés, face aux vies niquées, face aux dépressions qui minent les relations à l’intérieur de cette société.

On nous dira : votre vision est trop noire, il y a des chances pour tous. Mais ce que nous avons vécu ne fait que confirmer cette appréhension du monde. Si le type qui a attaqué a agi pour lui-même, pour avoir son propre pavillon, on ne peut que s’interroger sur la morale de l’intérêt personnel qui ronge cette société, morale qui veut que l’intérêt prime sur toute considération des personnes — car il n’a jamais réellement voulu discuter avec nous. Et si le type qui a attaqué l’a fait pour son biz, pour revendre par la suite comme le veut son métier d‘agent immobilier, on ne peut que questionner ce qu’est, plus généralement, la réalité du travail aujourd’hui : ne serait-ce pas, bien souvent, écraser les autres pour se faire sa place ? On ne peut croire, en tout cas, que cette situation est isolée. En haut, les puissants affirment chaque jour la validité de cette morale. Au commissariat, un flic de base a expliqué au « propriétaire » qu’il aurait dû faire cela cagoulé. Tous les flics présents le justifiaient, se mettaient à sa place. Eux aussi auraient été prêts à acheter un lieu occupé, et à virer les habitants à coups de barre. Comme le disait un autre flic : « quand on a un crédit sur le dos, on fait avec ce qu’on peut ». L’endettement individuel — qui fait écho à l’effondrement des garanties collectives — semble pouvoir justifier la guerre de tous contre tous.

La crise économique que nous vivons a pour conséquence d’accentuer les clivages, et pas seulement entre les classes. Entre ceux d’en bas, les petits, il y a aussi de graves divergences. D’un côté, il y a ceux qui acceptent les lois de l’économie comme des lois naturelles et font leurs la morale du « chacun pour soi et peu importent les conséquences » qui va avec. De l’autre, il y a ceux qui disent : nous ne nous en sortirons qu’ensemble, il n’y a qu’ensemble que nous parviendrons à refuser la loi de l’argent, du travail qui tue, le règne du vice et de la petite méchanceté. Comme le disait une personne solidaire aux assaillants : « ce que nous refusons, c’est votre enfer, et vous ne parviendrez pas à nous faire cesser de croire dans la beauté et la puissance de la solidarité ».

Comme le montre le soutien qui nous est apporté aujourd’hui — face aux attaques, face aux menaces qui pèsent sur nous — nous savons que nous sommes loin d’être les seuls à porter ces valeurs. Des habitants de nombreux autres squats sont venus à notre secours, ainsi que des voisins. Des sans-papiers, des précaires, des chômeurs, des salariés un peu plus installés se sont montrés à nos côtés. Des gens ordinaires, comme nous, qui refusent la loi du plus fort. L’urgence, plus que jamais, est de construire les liens pour faire face à la barbarie de l‘économie.

Des habitants de la MQP/Kipue/Maison Qui Pue, 74 rue des Caillots
Indymedia Paris , 28 juillet 2011.

Une contamination massive qui s'étend bien au-delà de 80 km et qui va perdurer

Si rien n’est fait, les habitants de la ville de Fukushima pourraient subir dans les douze mois à venir une irradiation externe de plusieurs milliSieverts alors que la dose au-delà de laquelle le risque de cancer mortel est jugé inacceptable par la CIPR (Commission Internationale de Protection Radiologique) est de 1 milliSievert par an, ce qui correspond à 5 décès pour 100 000 personnes
exposées.
Or les autorités japonaises ont fixé une limite de dose de 20 milliSieverts comme critère pour décider d’évacuer définitivement ou non les populations. Ceci correspond à un risque de cancer mortel à terme 20 fois supérieur au risque acceptable. Ceci est d’autant plus grave que les habitants de Fukushima ont déjà été fortement exposés. Il faut également tenir compte des doses liées à la contamination interne que ces populations continuent à subir par ingestion de denrées contaminées et des risques liés à l’inhalation de poussières à partir du sol contaminé.
Dans la ville de Fukushima, la CRIIRAD a mesuré par exemple dans la terre prélevée sous les balançoires de l’école primaire Moriai, une contamination en césium 137 + 134 de 370 000 Bq/kg. Ce sol est devenu un déchet radioactif qui devrait être stocké dans les meilleurs délais sur un site approprié.
Une population déjà très exposée aux radiations: PDF complet

7/07/2011  English version: 

- Extraits de la conférence CRIIRAD du 29 juin 2011, à Lyon: " L'impact des rejets de Fukushima Daiichi en France et au Japon"
Intervention de Bruno Chareyron concernant le volet "JAPON" (durée : 32 min)
Voir la vidéo : "Les Japonais n'ont pas été protégés de la contamination"

http://www.criirad.org 

To Gerard Lebovici

 

Tuesday 19 October 1973
Dear Gerard:

I have read Khayati's letter.[1] Assuredly, it is indispensable to response quite roughly to the insolence of dogsbodies [larbins] who want to be threatening. It is almost definite that it is Bastid himself[2] It has his pompous and laughable bad faith, his exaggerated style that wants to be confused with embarrassing truths ("this text must not be made" -- "to allow it to continue its route through many pirate editions").

I thus send you a proposed response [see below] that, I believe, will strike them quite strongly (one must think about the eventuality of a subsequent publication).[3] If you would like to respond on other points, arrange these phrases as you wish to unify the tone. I have placed marks in the margins to indicate the parts that seems to me to be indispensible. But I believe that the whole thing cruelly puts the accent on their principal motivation, the dogmatic establishment of this postulate: "commercial" publishers are equally ignominious, and the fact that they do not appear in it under their true names ("they are too green"), and thus they can write under ignominious pseudonyms and wigs [perruques]. By contrast, the publishers of pirate editions, gloriously called "savages" and thus washed of the taint of the commercial, are destined to keep -- and fake -- the memory (in the minds of six friends and sixty dupes) of their real names from another time. I believe that it is thus indispensable to show that one has understood them completely: and that one knows that all that they have stupidly hoped to keep obscure. These impudent idiots will be dismayed.

I hope that things go well on the side of our more important projects.

Best wishes,

Guy

Sir [Mustapha Khayati]:

I have indeed decided to re-publish The Poverty of Student Life without asking for your opinion nor that of its first publisher, the U.N.E.F.[4]

If you were, in complete independance, the only author of this treatise, I would respond to you all the same that it is useless to want to play [Georg] Lukacs when one doesn't even have the notoriety, and when all obscurantist attempts at censorship will always be treated with the same scorn.

But you know that you alone didn't write this text, and especially that you have acted in this affair like the delegate of a certain movement, like one of the students it has influenced in Strasbourg. Your nostalgic pretension is vain, given that this is a document that belongs to history, which is something you make yourself forget.

No one today recognizes in you the least authority to say "this text must not be made," and this was already an authority that you did not have in 1966.

There are "Garnautins"[5] who say that you yourself belong to an "official power" (I.S. #11, p. 30); but they deceive themselves. Today you seem to distinguish, in publishing, between "the official commercial form" and the dissimulated commercial form. You certainly have your reasons for this. One will not be able teach someone who is a Marxist that, in a society of commodities, a critical theory can only enter in wide contact with individuals by passing through the means of an object for sale; and that the "many pirate editions" that you applaud are themselves commercial to the extent of their means. Finally, if you specifically evoke Champ Libre, I console myself in thinking that, since you have proposed to me, but without success, to publish Mr [Raoul] Vaneigem in the collection of your [situationist] friends, you do not judge these editions to be abusively commercial and, in any case, not more so than others. Very probably you know that it isn't for an excess of commercialism that Champ Libre is detested and boycotted by the press and the recuperated-intellectual milieu, in which you have associates and no doubt employers.

One sees what pleases you about "pirate" editions and, for example, in the Dusseldorf "pirate" edition[6] in which you have allowed The Poverty of Study Life to be presented as drafted by "Khatayi, Vaneigem and others," while you know better than anyone that, contrary to the accounts of others, Vaneigem didn't write a line of it. And why not, while you are at it, add as author Mr Jean-Pierre Bastid, who -- badly dissimulated by a disguise [une perruque] -- currently works at a literature that would truly like to be salably commercial?

Your letter is of such a ridiculous and dishonest pretension that one believes it must have been written by some Ratgeb or other.[7] You postulate a kind of division of work between, on the one hand, the estimable "pirate" publishers, who will be reserved for distribution to several pseudo-initiates -- or, as in Dusseldorf, for falsification -- of certain critical and revolutionary documents; and, on the other hand, the rest of purely and simply "commercial" publishing, which, symmetrically, will only be the workplace for the more or less shameful subsistance-labor of ex-subversives who have little money. But no one will believe this irreality in order to please you. Your deficiencies are not the general laws of History.

You waste your time enunciating pompuous phrases for which you no longer have the voice. It is comical to see you now identify yourself with "the class consciousness of our era." If someone has something to fear from this consciousness, and its practical means, everything suggests that it is you.[8]

Fuck!

Editions Champ Libre has had the impertinence to re-publish The Poverty of Student Life without paying any attention to the firm protests that have been addressed to it by the most authorized and esteemable people; people who, in Strasbourg as elsewhere, took an eminent part in the contestation movement of 1966 and even a little before that, and who -- one knows, moreover -- never lowered themselves to draw the least renumeration from a commercial publishing house. All those who know the past and present merits of these people will assuredly understand the reasons for their indignation. Their cause is that of those who resemble them.

Actually, unlucky Editions Champ Libre now does not fear to put on sale the celebrated pamphlet of Strasbourg, thus suddenly transforming it into pure and simple merchandise, and by that fact into a counter-revolutionary text. However, one is not unaware, nevertheless, that the obvious destiny of this pamphlet was absolutely free distribution.

The public was warned of this revolting recuperation, perhaps the most notable of the last decade, by a perfectly convincing document that was signed by Mustapha Khayati himself, but which also faithfully expresses the sentiments of several others.

To injure contestation, the bourgeois or the bureaucrats have sometimes insinuated that certain people who represent contestation are not concerned with concrete reality, especially when it embarasses them, and do not believe all that they say, since one most often sees them escape under sophisms that do not even get along well on a single page. One does not know at whom this calumny claims to aim. But the targets are, in any case, those -- and there seem to remain only two -- who do not disguise themselves under Tartuffe's wig, and who quite frankly and honestly expose to the face of the world, when they believe they must take a position on a practical terrain, all that they think and do. They are not satisfied with empty dialectics: they call a spade a spade. And they have perhaps acquired the competence and right to teach those who do not know what a merchant is.

In the current affair, the worst malevolence will be reduced to silence, because rarely has revolutionary theory been founded on a basis so solid and the justness of its practical application will be transparent to the eyes of all. One can not deny that whoever sells something at whatever price, no matter if it is a ton of wheat, a copy of a book or an hour of his time, participates in the commodity system, which is bad. Those who have more to sell than others are the worst: small or large owners of the system of venality. All those who sell or cause to be sold revolutionary texts are nothing other than merchants, in the scientific sense of the term, but are the most perfidious of all and are often even the richest. When the Revolution, which could only will itself beyond this unfortunate system, judged it good to communicate its writings, it confided them completely innocently in pirate editions, and it is in this sense that the pirate edition is not a commodity.

This principle marks, one will agree, a decisive progress in revolutionary critique, a progress that at the same time allows for a greatly needed theoretical simplification: one no longer judges books, only publishers. Is he a merchant? Is he a pirate? Here is the touchstone of use value and the credo of global praxis. A commercial publishing house is guilty, whatever the books published. On the contrary, anything at all can be written in the new innocence of the pirate edition or the partial-pirate. The pirate edition, especially when it can use the techniques of modern reproduction, costs very little: it thus allows proletarians to induldge in their favorite practice without constraints, we would like to say the practice of the subversive gift, by offering up texts for free, notably at the bookshops. It would be good to crown the pirate edition of theory with a theory of the pirate edition. We give it here with the collective modesty that we have had for a long time, and that protects us from all star-making systems [vedettariat]. But as each will recognize our good faith and our coherence, one will also recognize in us the rigorous light that we ourselves have created on the spot.

What is actually more shocking than a worker who strikes so as to self-manage the production of watches, though the watch is essentially the instrument of the measurement of enslaved time? It is obviously a rich play-boy [English in original] who engages in the snobism of using his money to publish critical truths, though money is the essential instrument of the society of the lie. History as well as common sense confirm this for us. Has one ever found an aristocrat who supported the Revolution of 1789, or a bourgeois who financed Bakunin? But the recuperators of our times fear no paradoxes.

Sincere revolutionaries are so well-served by pirate editions that, without regret, they can leave the officially commerical publishing houses to the miserable people who read their books, or even compromise themselves by working under their command; the days when they did not ring the doorbells in vain are still happy!

Has there not been, in truth, something bizarre, shocking or never-seen-before about selling a book that condemns the commodity system? Who then believes in the sincerity of the author's unreasonable convictions? Can one imagine, for example, the Treatise on Living for the Younger Generations[9] distributed by something other than a pirate publisher? One would laugh.

But words are sufficient to support the trampled right: it is necessary to act, and the time has arrived.

Does one know that the same text that Champ Libre sells for 8 Francs has been available for eight months in the good bookshops, and for the price of only 6 Francs, as a pirate edition? This pirate edition is due to the courageous Editions Zoe, in Geneva. All real revolutionaries will make it a duty to buy their copies from them, and so boycott and ruin plutocratic Champ Libre.

Editions Zoe, in Geneva, are pirates since J.-P. Bastid, a collaborator with Mustapha Martens,[10] feared exceeding the honest piracy of Editions Lattes and the Presses de la Cite, or that of the ultra-anarchists of the Super-Black Series, devotes a part of its useful production to it. Editions Champ Libre is completely the opposite, since it has previously refused to publish the astonishing From the Wild-Cat Strike to Generalized Self-Management presented to it by Raoul Ratgeb, which forced this rebel to carry his manuscript to Bourgois 10/18, which published it as a pirate edition. Editions Champ Libre having already been unmasked when it refused the services of Khayati himself, and Vaneigem as well, who proposed to it that, for a reasonable sum, they would quickly compile anthologies of subversive texts from preceding centuries, because it is important to make them known to those who will know how to use them. One sees in these examples -- which are varied but which all, as if by chance, offend the most dignified signatories of the pirate editions and a stock of personalities so related to and so resembling each other in all the metamorphoses of their subversive rigor that it is almost impossible to distinguish one from the others -- how the essentially commercial activity of the detestable Champ Libre is finally unacceptable.

O radical-subjective virtue, you are only a phrase! Can one estimate as nothing the immense personal risks that we have run in the past, our years of trouble and constant work in the service of the revolution, and our long-standing refusal of all concessions? If one neglects us, under the pretext that one doesn't know all of our talents, will one object to us at the moment that they are already known? Is it not enough that the vampires of the mines and the rails suck our blood from morning to night in the factories where they exploit us? It is still necessary to tolerate the fact that a rich man is laughing at us, and scoops the money up, whereas he does not even need it, by delivering Cieszkowski, Anacharsis Cloots and Bruno Rizzi to all of the hyper-markets, to the consuming rabble, which just eats it up!

Proletarians

http://www.notbored.org

[1] Translator's note: Letter to Champ Libre, dated 12 October 1976. The context suggests that this letter was either unsigned or "signed" through the use of pseudonyms.

[2] This supposition was subsequently abandoned, although it was in part justified: diverse witnesses had confirmed that the author(s) frequented the milieus of the detective story and the cinema (among others), with whom the film producer Vera Belmont was associated. [Translator's note: Jean-Pierre Bastid was one of the pseudonyms used by Raoul Vaneigem.]

[3] In 1978, these exchanged letters would be published in Editions Champ Libre, Correspondance volume I, p. 31-41.

[4] Translator's note: The National Union of French Students, which funded the publication of On the Poverty of Student Life but certainly didn't know, let alone approve of, its contents. Radical students diverted U.N.E.F. funds to the Situationist International, which wrote the text and helped distribute it.

[5] Translator's note: A disparaging nickname for the Strasbourg situationists who were excluded from the Situationist International in early 1967, in part because of their intrigues against Mustapha Khayati. See Guy Debord's letter to the rest of the SI, dated 15 January 1967.

[6] In fact, an edition of The Poverty of Student Life was published by Editions Zoe of Geneva simultaneously and in competition with this one, as would be mentioned in the text Fuck! which was written by Debord in response to a fake -- signed "G. Lebovici, publisher, film producer and impresario" -- that its author(s) inserted into copies of the Champ Libre edition of On the Poverty of Student Life.Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978, Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005, p. 374.) (See

[7] Translator's note: Yet another of Raoul Vaneigem's pseudonyms.

[8] Translator's note: Click here for the version of this letter that Lebovici used: he hardly changed it.

[9] Translator's note: Famous book by Raoul Vaneigem -- better known as The Revolution of Everyday Life -- that was, in fact, published by Gallimard (a major commercial publishing house) in 1967.

[10] Translator's note: Pseudonym used by Khayati.

(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2007. All footnotes by Alice Debord, except where noted.)

IBM et la société de contrainte

Un matin, dans Le Monde, une pleine page d’IBM « pour une planète plus intelligente ». Puis de multiples placards au fil des mois, des journaux et magazines, développent ce slogan en longs textes programmatiques par thèmes — la ville, les transports, l’entreprise, la santé, etc. — et vous vous rendez à l’évidence : IBM fait campagne pour un projet techno-étatique global.

Si vous avez quelques réflexes, un peu de curiosité, de sensibilité à la question, vous tâchez de comprendre ; vous remontez la trace d’International Business Machines. Éventuellement vous redécouvrez une vérité énoncée en 1943, lorsque IBM collaborait de toute son ardeur et de toute son expertise à la « solution finale » : « L’ensemble des citoyens du monde est sous la coupe d’un monstre international. » Mais encore ?

IBM, à l’origine de l’essor des nanotechnologies grâce à l’invention, en 1981, du microscope à effet tunnel dans ses laboratoires de Zürich, travaille maintenant à la numérisation du monde grâce aux puces, capteurs et connexions rendus possibles par ces mêmes nanotechnologies. Un projet de pilotage du monde-machine (cybernétique), qui complète celui de l’homme-machine sous implants électroniques. Bref IBM travaille à la société de contrainte.

Si la police est l’organisation rationnelle de l’ordre public, et la guerre un acte de violence pour imposer notre volonté à autrui, cette rationalisation et cette violence fusionnent et culminent dans la technologie, par d’autres moyens. Le nanomonde, ou techno-totalitarisme, est l’une de ces vérités qui ne peuvent se regarder en face. Peut-être parce que ceux qui s’estiment au fait, militants, journalistes, scientifiques, croient aussi n’y rien pouvoir ; et donc ils parlent d’autre chose pour s’étourdir, faire diversion et sauver la face.

Habitant Grenoble, nous n’avons pas ce loisir. C’est ici, en ce moment, que le Musée Dauphinois présente une exposition luxueuse et retorse, à la gloire de Vaucanson et de l’homme-machine, « augmenté ». C’est ici qu’IBM s’est implanté en 1967, dans les locaux de l’Institut de Mathématiques Appliquées (IMAG) et s’acoquine aujourd’hui avec le Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique, dans le plan Nano 2012. C’est Michel Destot, maire de Grenoble, ancien ingénieur au CEA, qui contribue au projet d’IBM de « planète intelligente » et fait l’apologie de la cité-machine de Singapour. Ce papier était en cours de rédaction quand nous avons appris l’arrestation en Suisse de trois anarchistes accusés d’avoir voulu faire sauter un laboratoire d’IBM, à Zürich. Nous ignorons leurs motifs et le détail des accusations, mais une chose reste sûre à nos yeux : quels qu’ils soient, ces révoltés ne se sont pas trompé de cible.

Pièces et Main d’Œuvre, 16 mai 2010.

pdf COMPLET:

https://juralib.noblogs.org/files/2011/07/IBM_scte_de_contrainte_A5.pdf

Proletarians of all nations: caress yourselves!

Founded in 1970, the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action brings together more than 4,000 militants in France who have decided to show themselves. Everywhere and by all means. "Class struggle goes through the body."

"Having no reason for being other than desire, homosexuality is the living negation of false values, sacrosanct institutions and all roles. It is the absolute negation of the world such as it is."

"Lesbians and faggots, let's raze the walls. Let us leave the dumps and the ghettoes!"

Every Thursday for the last two years, in a hall at the Ecole des beaux-arts, 300 to 400 young men, several dozen young women, very young for the most part, meet up, recognize each other, speak with each other. Each evening, newcomers, a little lost because they have suddenly been placed outside of their solitude or their province, seek each other out. We are a general assembly of the Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action (FHAR [Front homosexuel d'action revolutionnaire]). For two hours, and sometimes longer, we don't do anything [special]. Several young men make an announcement or provide information; someone writes a slogan on a board; another passes around photos of the most recent demonstration in which the FHAR participated; yet another get made-up. Such is (or, rather, was) the nocturnal life of the Beaux-Arts this past June [1972]. Because certain waterfront dwellers have signed to petition to ban them, the Thursday general assemblies will no doubt not be convened this autumn, at least, not in the same place. . . .

These open, general assemblies, which recall the smoky general assemblies of May 68, were quite different from the atmosphere of the "dumps" ["boites"] traditionally reserved for homosexuals: ghetto-dumps.[1] Also very different from the Arcadie club, which -- founded 19 years ago by Andre Baudry -- was long the only spot in which homosexuals could get together so as to fight against the conditions that society imposes upon them: today, Arcadie includes 15,000 members, who are involved in its journal and its club, who organize conferences-debates and receive medical benefits and social assistance. At FHAR, there is no membership card, only badges, and quite recently a newspaper produced by a working group. But almost everywhere, in the provinces, in the high schools, FHAR groups are being founded and FHAR descends upon the streets at every demonstration. Several thousand people, scarcely 0.2% of French homosexuals, [this is] a revolutionary fringe, but [also] an international force, because there currently is a liaison between all of the revolutionary homosexuals in the form of the Revolutionary Homosexual International. From 9-11 September [1972], there was a seminar in Denmark on the sexual minorities, and FHAR was invited to attend. On 15 October, on the initiative of the Italian Front, a large meeting took place in Milan to prepare for the 1973 Congress at Paques. An international newspaper, International Politico-Sexual Information Sheet,[2] was founded. This newspaper is a liaison-paper produced in Paris and distributed in a dozen [other] countries. Like the American G.L.F. (Gay Liberation Front[3]), from which it issued, the FHAR participates deeply in the myth and its activists do not refrain from entertaining it, because they have charged themselves with liberating themselves from other myth, a very powerful one, which is that of homosexuality. It is more against received-ideas and the form of society that guarantees them than against the laws that the FHAR decided to struggle, and in this the FHAR goes even further than its sponsors, the G.L.F., by resolutely placing itself outside of all "unionist" or "reformist" perspectives.

Of course, everyone seeks to aid each other and, from the provinces, FHAR receives many appeals in distress. Of course, everyone fights against the institutionalized repression of the "hetero-cops" ("those who erect their heterosexuality as the only form of love and profit by repressing those who do not imitate them") that is manifested by [legislative] ordinances and sub-amendments. The ordinance of Vichy, promulgated in 1942 and confirmed on 8 February 1945 in fact declares that anyone "who commits an immodest act or an act against nature with an individual of his sex, less than 21 years old," will be sentenced from six months to three years in prison, and fined from sixty to fifteen-thousand francs. But the model of the genre remains the Mirguet sub-amendment voted upon by the National Assembly on 30 July 1960, which decreed that homosexuality was "social plague" like alcoholism or procuring for prostitutes. And if the newspaper of one of the political groups (the French section of the Revolutionary Homosexual International [I.H.R.]) took The Social Plague as its title,[4] this choice strangely recalled the Communards' slogan "They are the rabble and, well, so I am"[5].

What in reality is the FHAR? We have posed this question to the activists, the "political ones," the members of the I.H.R., the "spontaneous" (the Gasolines)[6] and the lesbians (the Red Dykes).

The "political ones" participate in "initiatives" or assemble following their affinities into groups numbering between six and 30 people. There are five such groups in Paris (three of them constitute the French section of the I.H.R.) and 15 such groups do the same work in the provinces. Some of these groups publish newspapers: Le doight au cul ["Finger in the ass"] in Nice and The Social Plague by the I.H.R.

Remi, 25 years old, employee (I.H.R.): "Before the FHAR existed, for many of us it was solitude, isolation, and guilt. Before the FHAR, I did not belong to a political group, [because] none of them gave a place to sexuality and wouldn't accept me. What the FHAR provides is the faculty of struggling without compromise for the revolution, without putting sexuality aside, without denying who one is. One of the great strengths of the FHAR is that it mobilizes people who have no need of making an intellectual effort to understand why they fight. All the Leftist groupings need a few workers to fight for them! But we do not need to seek out homosexuals, we are all homosexuals, we are all proletarians!

Alain, 30 years old, graphic artist (I.H.R.): "Our revolutionary ideal is alive and not content with phrases. It isn't because I have read Marx that I have more to soak up! The Leftists who rejected us at the beginning now try to recuperate us, just as they did with the women. . . . But we have already passed the stage of Leftism and we must take a position that is critical with respect to it. Not marching to a cadenced step, like the O.A.J.S. Do not take us too seriously."

For the working group that meets in the IIth arrondissement, the retreat from Leftism is less great.

Rene, 22 years old, student (Group 11): "What we want is to pose the problem of sexuality in the context of a general questioning of society. We are not a union of homosexuals; we address ourselves to the people who are aware of society's problems and want to transform it. One can pose the problem of sexuality as such, but it is necessary that sexuality is relative to a historical situation and that the roles attributed to the different sexes are transformable. The heterosexuals impose on us a neurotic perception of our sexuality and, in fact, they oppress our heterosexuality. At the limit, we can cultivate the homosexuality that we take up as a provocation, but I no longer consider it as a point of departure. We refuse to guarantee a uniquely sexual approach."

How do these groups conceive of their work? Refraining from giving an alibi to the Communist Party or the Leftist groups, they try to find means of expression that are their own and in which they can mock the "irony" of L'Aurore or Minute[7] (which speaks of the "pink" front without recalling that the homosexuals condemned to death by the Nazis were forced to bear a pink triangle on their uniforms in the camps) or the accusations of L'Humanite[8] (which likens homosexuals to perverts and sick people). Addressing itself to "professional revolutionaries," The Social Plague (organ of the I.H.R.) presents the following program.

Several propositions.
1) Homosexuality doesn't exist (only in the heads of those who believe themselves to be heterosexuals or those so-called heterosexuals who have managed to persuade [us] that they are homos).
2) Heterosexuality also doesn't exist; sexuality can only be global and cannot suffer partition or division; any specification is arbitrary and illusory, and behaviors are fixed according to archetypes that our culture has proposed.
3) Any specialization is invented and flattered by the dominant class to favor some to the detriment of others, and vice versa, so as better to impose itself; moreover, transgressions that do not involve a modification of social status are perfectly tolerated.
4) Homos and heteros have equal title to being victims of the system; they are simply utilized, exploited and oppressed in different ways. . . .
5) "Normal" and "natural" are words to be banned; nothing that concerns mankind is natural; by leaving the animal kingdom to become social, the human biped has abandoned everything natural; he/she is freed from nature. Nothing that is specifically human is natural.
6) [We must] Rethink the raising of children in a non-authoritarian way, assuring their free development (nothing in common with the bidon experiments, of either the Freinet or Summerhill types).
7) Destruction of the family as a repressive and hierarchicalized mini-society.
8) Destruction of all roles.
9) Destruction of all "scales of value"; value is a bourgeois notion.
10) Culture is a bourgeois notion.
11) All physical or intellectual domination of one individual by another is a deviation from the sexual instinct (domination of men over women, of adults over children).
12) The goal of the revolution isn't the seizure of power by the "proletariat," it is the destruction of the very ideas of power and proletariat.
13) The concept of "class struggle" is to be completely re-thought.
14) Democracy is a latrine.
15) The generalized self-management of life.

The Gasolines: "Getting made-up is a way of life."

Refusing the "recuperation" of the political groups, refusing all hierarchy and all authority within the FHAR, and having a genius for provocation, the Gasolines (or the "crazy" partisans of spontaneity) within the FHAR are not a political group but a group of "behavior." No structure, no meetings, no newspaper. But they know how to fight; three of them overturned a police car during the confrontations in Charonne after the murder of Pierre Overnay.[9]

Marlene (Alain), 20 years old, student: "I have had it with activist relations! Discussions about the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the short works by Lenin: that's the University! What we want is the total transformation of life. One only makes revolution if one lives it permanently, in everyday life. We are not social revolutionaries; we are revolutionaries of the current moment. We will construct the next barricades in evening gowns."

Zohra, 25 years old, journalist: "We are activists who have problems with the fashions, with coiffure, with make-up. Getting made-up is a way of life, of expressing oneself immediately. Verbal expressions are gratuitous. The gesture is efficacious and in the streets the Gasolines are ingenuous."

Marc, 26 years old, worker at a marketing firm: "We have a communal trunk and we get made-up for all the demonstrations. Obviously those who adore going to Madame Arthur or Alcazar[10] cannot tolerate seeing the same [type of] thing in the streets, which means we are often harassed at the cafes in Montparnasse. . . . But our make-up is neither a travesty nor a provocation."

Daniel: "One doesn't play with madness. One lives it. There is no journal. If there is one, one is behind in one's revolution. Personally, I work in an administrative office. I have a rose in my ear, I call my colleagues 'Dear.' People end up loving us and not only accepting us. Gasoline means 'revolution of the peas.' There is a kind of catharsis or dynamic in finding oneself together and it aids in the liberation of one's workplace and oneself. But what is effective and enriching is what each person does and not what he says here. The FHAR is useful as a forum, as a dimension without dimension. If it was an end in itself, it would be completely stupid. . . ."

The Red Dykes: "The heteros are happy to reproduce us."

As we have said, there are few women in FHAR. (This is striking during the general assemblies.) At the beginning, things weren't this way, but the general assemblies quickly became masculine for two reasons: 1) the difficulty of integrating young women into a group, because they aren't used to it; and 2) the different degrees of oppression that have been lived, double in that it affects them as women and as homosexuals. The Red Dykes say the young women in FHAR assume their physical sexuality but still aren't liberated. They still have a way to go. They are at the stage of self-defense and thus often at the stage of provisionally closing themselves off. They have the courage to respond to aggression with aggression. But they still haven't reached the level of verbalizing with the others.

The Red Dykes (this is the name that homosexuals have given to the group that they constituted within the M.L.F.[11]) have abandoned the general assemblies to work in groups. There are two hundred of them in total. In Nice, Marseilles, Caen, Lille and Lyon, many of them participate in the creation of FHRA groups because, in the provinces, the M.L.F. cannot support them (the M.L.F. is too reformist!). On 13 May 1972, they participated in the Days Denouncing Crimes Against Women by showing up and engaging in debate with the audience:

"There are homosexuals onstage but also in the audience. If we mount the stage, it is because we are no longer ashamed. One has buried us in silence; one has insulted us because we refuse to submit to the laws of the phallocrats and the hetero-cops. We are fundamentally subversive. We are homosexual by choice of pleasure. Our pleasure is neither masturbation for two, nor psychosexual infantilism, nor a caricature of male/female relations. We are creatures of pleasure outside of all norms. We are lesbians and we are happy to be lesbians."

Catherine, 22 years old, student: "Thirty-five percent of women whom one calls heterosexual haven't any sexuality. They practice coitus but feel no pleasure. I have seen heterosexual women who are more anti-male than lesbians. Homosexuality is a myth in the sense that it is a word attached to a practice that is in itself like all the practices, perfectly partial with respect to what the individual is. One cannot say that there exists a homosexual personality, a homosexual social comportment, or a family structure that produces homosexuality.

"The myth creates separate existence, particularity. There are homosexuals who imitate the myth and who use it. Very different in attitude. If one must take up the myth in part, it is only so that the [other] people truly believe in our homosexuality. If it is enough that a young man wears a beard or is accompanied by a young woman for one not to believe that he is homosexual and that this demolishes his discourse and possibilities of action, then it is necessary that he should put a carnation in his hair! The myth is so strong that we are obliged to make use of it ourselves, but as a weapon against the dominant heterosexuality, to destroy people's defenses."

Anne-Marie, 27 years old, administrative executive: "The FHAR, being a homosexual front, is a sexual front. Heterosexuality isn't sexual, it is reproductive. Forced to confront the image of sexuality as pleasure and the blossoming of the individual that we have proposed to it, heterosexuality can only find itself transformed.

"The FHAR is not structured. It is a myth and will remain one, among the small groups of people who continue to maintain that myth. It is more important that this is a myth than a party organized like the others, because homosexuality is itself a myth. It would be quite comic to organize it in a bureaucratic fashion! Any 'structure' of the homosexual movement could only be an inverted world in which the heterosexuals would be 'anormal.' Has someone attempted this? I belong to the movement to liberate heterosexuals! As a frenzied sympathiser. . . .

"It is heterosexuality that feeds us and produces us. But by constituting ourselves politically, we recreate our own forces. But the heterosexuals are happy to produce us! We will raise ourselves and we will raise their children, who will be like us!"

http://www.notbored.org

[signed]
  FRANÇOISE TRAVELET[12]

[Author's] Bibliography[13]

Francoise d'Eaubonne, Eros minoritaire (Balland, 1970).
F.H.A.R., Rapport contre la normalite (Champ Libre, 1971).
Daniel Guerin, Autobiographie de jeunesse (Belfond, 1972).
Phillippe Naboun, Sexe en prison / Plaisir contre les principes
Special issue of (Nouvelles editions polaires, 1972) (no billposting and prohibited to people under the age of 18).Partisans: Sexualite et repression (Maspero, 1966).
Reimut Reiche, Sexualite et Luttle de classes: Defense Contre La Desublimation Repressive (Traduit De L'allemand Par Catherine Parrenin Et Franz Josef Rutten) (Maspero, 1971).
Maria Sylva Spolato, Les Mouvements homosexuels revolutionnaires (1971).

(First published in French in Gulliver, #1, November 1972. Translated by NOT BORED! 31 May 2008. All footnotes by the translator.)

[1] See "the 'dump-city' phenomenon" in From a Supper of Ashes to Embers of Satin (On the Riots of November 2005 in France).

[2] English in original.

[3] English in original.

[4] See Patrick Cardon's essay History of a Journal: The Social Plague (France, 1972-1974): The marriage of the situs and the queers.

[5] See the song "L'Eveil de la classe ouvriere," words and music by J. Darcier and J.B. Clement (1871).

[6] The "Gazolines" splintered off from the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action in 1972. Folded in 1974. Among their members were Marie-France, Helene Hazera and others. Known for dressing in drag and playing upon madness, the group also engaged in confrontational behavior, including overturning a police car during a demonstration against the destruction of les Halles.

[7] French rags.

[8] Communist Party rag.

[9] Young Maoist shot dead by security forces at Renault in 1972.

[10] Presumably ghettoized gay hot spots.

[11] Women's Liberation Movement.

[12] Best-known for her books about the French anarchist musician, Leo Ferre.

[13] We have corrected the many typos in this list and have filled in publication data when missing.

Techno, le son de la technopole

Technopoles, habitat des nouvelles élites, ingénieurs, techniciens, chercheurs ; parcs des nouvelles technologies, robotique, biotech, informatique. Partout, depuis les années 1980, prolifèrent les colonies de la cyberville globale, postes avancés du techno-monde unifié. A cette époque triomphale de l’histoire du machinisme, et à ces hommes-machines si bien de leur temps, il fallait nécessairement une bande-son, expression et célébration de cette fierté machinale, du besoin de donner la cadence et d’y régler leurs organismes, et peut-être de celui de s’éclater, se défoncer, se déchirer, afin de fuir dans la possession leur mécanique condition post-moderne. Sans blague. Entre techno-musique et technopole, il y a bien davantage qu’un préfixe.

Le prélude est à télécharger ci-dessous en PDF.

http://www.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com/IMG/pdf/Prelude_Techno.pdf

Prélude

Février 1968. « La France découvre qu’elle a une métropole de l’an 2000. Grenoble, c’est Brasilia », s’enflamme Paris Match1. Un coup de pub monstre, que la ville doit aux Jeux olympiques d’hiver. Le pays découvre le « laboratoire grenoblois », que les sociologues et économistes à gages n’ont cessé depuis d’ériger en modèle, et qui fait la fierté des élus locaux. Ce « mythe grenoblois », c’est la technopole, cette « métropole de l’an 2000 » fondée sur l’alliance entre la recherche, l’université, l’industrie et les pouvoirs publics, civils et militaires, et dont l’innovation, à la fois moteur et but perpétuel, impose ses lois au territoire et aux habitants.
Grenoble, c’est Brasilia – voyez le monolithe de béton qui lui sert d’hôtel de ville – c’est « la Silicon Valley française », la capitale des ingénieurs et techniciens, pionnière inter pares de la technification du monde. De la « houille blanche » domestiquée par Aristide Bergès en 1869, aux laboratoires de robotique et aux technologies convergentes de Minatec, NanoBio et Clinatec – nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, informatique, neurotechnologies ; de l’Association des producteurs des Alpes françaises des années 1920 au pôle de compétitivité mondial Minalogic de 2010, elle a fourni le mode d’emploi de la technopole, aux avant-postes de la modernité et du Progrès triomphants, prête aujourd’hui pour la « planète intelligente », interconnectée, numérique, cyberpilotée.
En 2008, la ville de Grenoble se porte derechef candidate à l’organisation des Jeux d’hiver de 2018, décidée à réitérer son « bond en avant » de 1968 grâce à la manne étatique, à coups de rocades urbaines, de gratte-ciel et de technologies de pointe. Afin de séduire le Comité national olympique français, la municipalité organise pour deux millions d’euros des « Jeux de[NDE : Le Dauphiné libéré] neige » en pleine ville, avec compétition de snow-board sur neige naturelle transportée par camions et grande fête techno sur la colline de la Bastille, site emblématique de la ville. « Une formidable vitrine », explique la mairie aux Grenoblois qui renâclent à ces dépenses. Le Daubé [NDE : Le Dauphiné libéré], partenaire de l’événement, interroge avec une impertinence inédite la vedette locale – à la renommée internationale – de la soirée électro, le DJ The Hacker : « L’événement “Jeux de Neige”, c’est de la com’ ? » Réponse de l’intéressé : « Je m’en fous. J’aurais pu faire la fine bouche il y a quelques années. Maintenant, pour une fois qu’il y a une bonne grosse soirée électro à Grenoble, je ne vais pas cracher dans la soupe.2 »

http://www.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com

Un pays tranquille

 Le vrai visage de la Norvège ?

«Les gens doivent savoir ce que les merveilleuses doctrines multiculturalistes ont fait à l'Europe : la destruction systématique de la chrétienté européenne, des traditions, de la culture, de l'identité nationale, et de la souveraineté»

Fameux penseur ce bisounours norvégien nourrit au biberon de la rente pétrolière, ancien diant-diant en business   et plein de haine confuse, un pur produit de son époque...

"...Le père d'Anders Breivik, divorcé de la mère du suspect peu après la naissance du garçon, explique dans un quotidien norvégien avoir perdu contact avec son fils depuis 1995, lorsque celui-ci avait 15 ou 16 ans. "Nous n'avons jamais habité ensemble, mais nous avions quelques contacts durant son enfance", explique le retraité norvégien. "Lorsqu'il était plus jeune, c'était un garçon ordinaire, mais renfermé. Il ne s'intéressait pas à la politique à cette époque." 

Le père biologique et sa nouvelle femme, qui habitaient à Paris, ont alors demandé la garde du garçon, mais ils ont été déboutés par la justice norvégienne. "J'ai eu une bonne relation avec lui et sa nouvelle femme jusqu'à mes 15 ans", écrit le meurtrier présumé, qui dit leur avoir rendu de fréquentes visites en France..."