English

Since the announcement several months ago of a split in the IWA, there have been lots of comments and speculation about the future direction of various organizations. Recently we have been able to read comments of those who favor integration of various types of syndicalist organizations, including the personal opinions of a few individuals in the CNT of Spain who seem to lament that a split in the syndicalist movement ever occurred in that country. However, with these questions and with the upcoming international meeting of the Red and Black Coordination, new questions have appeared more and more often: why do we need a third international initiative? Why insist on creating a parallel IWA when you could just join the existing Coordination? And what will the Coordination do in light of the invitations of some of its members to found something different?

The latest scandalous cooperation and coalitions between left activists and fascists needs to be roundly condemned. The discussion around this is being documented.

Last year we had incidents such as the candidature of Tomasz Zakrzewski, the Warsaw „fuhrer” of Niklot in elections in the organization „Social Warsaw”. The Chairman and Vice-Chairman were Lapski from Confederation of Labor and Ciszewski from Workers' Initiative.

The Polish left, although weak and socially marginal, continues its search to find new variations around which to build electoral vehicles. This means that every few years, a new left party product is created and seeks coalitions. Often these have led to quite unsavoury coalitions. One of the people who has been going through the left has been Mateusz Piskorski, a pro-Kremlin slavophile with nationalist and fascist roots and ties. A number of leftists have gone to political bed with this deal-maker, known to be able to help financially and organize support from Russia. Piskorski and his cronies are founding a new pro-Russian party next weekend. Among the likely founders are characters like Boleslaw Tejkowski, most known in this country for his anti-semitic outrages like taking a large group of skinheads to Auschwitz to make an anti-semitic demonstration in 1996. Figures like these are now coveted by the Russian state; Tejkowski is head of the Polish-Russian Friendship society, Piskorski's foundation is funded by the Kremlin and we understand that organizations like Falanga and the totalitarian-loving Communist Party of Poland are also connected.

The founding Congress of this Party is to be held at the headquarters of OPZZ, the second largest union federation in Poland.

Trying to make political capital in the left and to rally people against this option, which will include totalitarian communists, anti-semites and fascists, the Green Party asked OPZZ not to rent out the space to the party. Such moves, meant to appeal to liberal leftists, have the opposite effect on those which have been more strongly anti-capitalist. The Greens represent pro-EU, social democracy and liberalism – something which more of the left seeks to reject. Censure and disapproval from the Greens has met with comments that they are bourgeois, hypocritical and on the side of the neo-liberals who will now get to work in Ukraine.

The Polish left, although weak and socially marginal, continues its search to find new variations around which to build electoral vehicles. This means that every few years, a new left party product is created and seeks coalitions. Often these have led to quite unsavoury coalitions. One of the people who has been going through the left has been Mateusz Piskorski, a pro-Kremlin slavophile with nationalist and fascist roots and ties. A number of leftists have gone to political bed with this deal-maker, known to be able to help financially and organize support from Russia. Piskorski and his cronies are founding a new pro-Russian party next weekend. Among the likely founders are characters like Boleslaw Tejkowski, most known in this country for his anti-semitic outrages like taking a large group of skinheads to Auschwitz to make an anti-semitic demonstration in 1996. Figures like these are now coveted by the Russian state; Tejkowski is head of the Polish-Russian Friendship society, Piskorski's foundation is funded by the Kremlin and we understand that organizations like Falanga and the totalitarian-loving Communist Party of Poland are also connected.

The founding Congress of this Party is to be held at the headquarters of OPZZ, the second largest union federation in Poland.

Trying to make political capital in the left and to rally people against this option, which will include totalitarian communists, anti-semites and fascists, the Green Party asked OPZZ not to rent out the space to the party. Such moves, meant to appeal to liberal leftists, have the opposite effect on those which have been more strongly anti-capitalist. The Greens represent pro-EU, social democracy and liberalism – something which more of the left seeks to reject. Censure and disapproval from the Greens has met with comments that they are bourgeois, hypocritical and on the side of the neo-liberals who will now get to work in Ukraine.

When we wrote some months ago in our text, “War preparations between Ukraine and Russia – Show or Reality?”i that the conditions for a new war ripen in Ukraine, many comrades expressed doubts or even disagreements with such a categorical statement. Now we can say that the conflict in Ukraine has clearly switched from the “cold” phase to the “hot” one and that what we are currently witnessing in the east of the country is the war by all definitions. From Lugansk on the border with Russia to Mariupol on the Black Sea coast two military forces compete in daily clashes when trying to enlarge the area under their control, they fight on the ground as well as in the air, in countryside as well as in industrial centers, artilleries shell villages, air forces bomb cities (under the pretext that their enemy uses the inhabitants as living shields), men, women, children die under the bombs and missiles… In four months of armed conflict more than 2,000 civilians and militaries have been killed and 6,000 others injured; 117,000 proletarians have been internally displaced and 730,000 others found refuge in Russia. Just as we were on the point of finishing this article dead bodies are strewn over the streets of Donetsk, caught in a government’s offensive stranglehold.

In the same text we also wrote that the only reply of the proletariat to the war is to organize and develop revolutionary defeatism, i.e. practically refuse to join one or the other camp, on the contrary to build CONNECTIONS between proletarians from both sides of the conflict through the struggle against both bourgeoisies. As even in this field things developed, our text deserves (three month after publishing) a post-scriptum.

This text is based on information drawn from different sources (that we quote in footnotes) from militant blogs to official media. This short description of events in the Ukraine required hours and hours of careful work, searching information, reading texts, WATCHING VIDEOS, comparing different data etc. We would like to emphasize two things: Firstly, the fact that the events that we describe here were not covered by BBC or Euronews does not mean that they did not happen, that we invented them (various leftist sources and also Ukrainian and Russian media describe them). Secondly, it is clear that the news that we get from the Ukraine are chaotic, incomplete and sometimes contradictory. This however doesn’t mean that we should give up our attempt to grasp what is going on there. We believe that we should face a selective REPORTING of the state with a critical and radical position of anti-capitalist movement; we should develop and share information and analysis that see the world through a prism of revolutionary perspective.

As the Venezuelan situation changes every day, I should clarify that I wrote this on 03/01/14 at 06:00 pm.

- Who are the people who took to the streets? They are only upper middle class people of some housing developments, militants of far-right parties and Colombian paramilitary activists, ("Aguilas Negras")?

- This question can only be answered correctly, referring to the beginning of this cycle of protests in Venezuela. On February 4 students at the Universidad Nacional Experimental del Tachira (UNET), in San Cristobal, staged a peaceful protest against insecurity, caused by the sexual abuse against a student. The protest was brutally suppressed by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), the agency of the Venezuelan Armed Forces in charge of "maintaining public order", and 6 students were arrested. On this episode we should clarify two things: 1) Historically the student movement in Latin America and Venezuela, has always rejected detained students in protests and 2) San Cristobal, capital of Tachira state, is a city located in a border area with Colombia that has been particularly hard hit for several years by interruptions of utilities (water and electricity mainly), price inflation as well as shortages of various consumer products. The arrest of these students led protests in other cities of the country, which in turn were suppressed by increasing the number of students arrested. This created an "snowball-effect", from the inner cities of the country to Caracas. It is in this climate of protests and unrest, which two opposition politicians (Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado), make a call to hold demonstrations to demand the resignation of President under the slogan "the exit".

It is important to say that the rest of the opposition parties, including the coalition "Bureau of Democratic Unity" (MUD), and the governor of Miranda state, Henrique Capriles; rejected the first few days the protests, which have overwhelmed the political parties opponents. When I write these answers (03/01/14) the protest against the government was decentralized, with some violent foci but largely, peacefully. It also has two different dynamics : One in Caracas , starring with middle class students from public and private universities territorially in the east of the city, and basically with political demands (release of the students, the resignation of President and rejection of repression); and in the rest of the country, qualitatively more important than that one in Caracas because it incorporates popular sectors; and in some cities, (such as San Cristobal), rural areas (thus this city was militarized), and including social demands and lack of products, the high cost of living and lack of basic services.

- What is the government's response, (the level of repression) ? It is said that it finally has been very soft, forgiving and respectful of human rights. Truth or propaganda?

- Propaganda. The reality is that when I answer this (there are new events every day), there are 17 people murdered in the context of demonstrations, 8 of they - including the first three - that it have been shown were killed by state security agencies. During protests at the national level , have been arrested over 500 people, and there is plenty of evidence of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detained protesters, plus the number of people injured by firearms, shots and shots to the body of tear gas. The amount of pictures and videos taken by the protesters themselves has forced the government to recognize their responsibility in the killing of manifestants, and there are several members of the GNB arrested for authorship of the shooting. A novelty is the use of paramilitary groups to suppress the protests, that have been armed by the government, and act with tolerance and coordination of military and police forces. I personally know, right now, some people who are out of its house after being beaten and threatened with death by these paramilitary groups....

- What is the popularity of Maduro now?

- Maduro, unlike Chavez, is a very weak president internally in the Bolivarian movement. Already been receiving heavy criticism for making a economic adjustment program earlier this year, devalued the currency, increased some taxes and has allowed to the end of 2013, a 50 % inflation. For a political observer in Venezuela, right now, occurs a very interesting phenomenon: While the opposition is mobilized in protests, the basis of Chavismo doesn´t perform public acts supporting the government as happened during the years of President Hugo Chavez. The strong repression of the protests is rejected by large sections of Chavismo basis, who also knows that there is a malaise due to the economic crisis. The few marches by Nicolás Maduro, - exclusively in Caracas - only been able to mobilize public officials and beneficiaries of social policies.

- The Western media connect the opposition to current scarcity and insecurity. This is reality?

- First, the polarization of the international media about the Bolivarian government remains the same as in recent years , but inwardly in Venezuela the bourgeoisie of Chavismo has been purchasing media since 2002 , so there is now a lot of censorship in TV channels nationwide , and many pressures on radios and newspapers. There is a deep economic crisis and economic adjustment program is doing pay the costs of the crisis to the country's workers. Regardless of how you end this wave of protests, the government of Nicolas Maduro will continue to implement a package of economic measures that affect all people, especially those with limited resources .

- Why a country with a big oil wealth is facing daily shortage of the food?

- The government of Hugo Chavez, and now Nicolas Maduro, has deepened the role assigned to Venezuela by globalized capitalism: Sell oil, gas and other minerals to the global economic market, with the help of transnational companies. The real U.S. embassy in Venezuela is called "Chevron", whose chief business manager for Latin America Ali Moshiri, said dozens of times that "he has not had any trouble doing business with the Bolivarian government". Venezuela sells power to other countries and is importing 80 % of products consumed in the country. As never before the economy depends on the dollar, so having the right contacts in government for receive dollars to the official price, makes possible duplicate that money by 8 times, in few minutes, taking those dollars to black currency market. The dollar has created a "parasitic Bolivarian bourgeoisie" of state, whose main business is to receive money for imports.

- Is it true that there is a conspiracy of businessmen and traders to hide food in warehouse?

- I'm not going to defend a businessman, and surely there are many criminal entrepreneurs, like thieves in other sectors of an economy that depends on the state. But this isn't the main reason for food shortages in the country, what the government called "economic warfare". Two facts: 1 ) The two state food distribution chains (PDVAL and MERCAL), suffer the same level of food shortages that private companies, 2) The largest and most important private entrepreneur of country food sector, Lorenzo Mendoza, has met several times with President Maduro to increase production , which is a public and notorious news.

- Beyond the partisan blinders, are we not also watching the decline of oil revenue system? What is the responsibility of the Chavista state to this corruption?

- President Chavez himself called his project "oil socialism", regardless of the social and environmental consequences of the production of oil, gas and mineral resources for rural and indigenous communities. In fact the so-called "Patria Plan", in the plan of government of President Maduro, states to double by 2019 energy production in the country. Oil money, managed by the state, has corrupted social movements, who have given up independence and autonomy for receive a little bit of oil revenues. In a tight and short review, during the past 15 years power conflicts between the government and the opposition, can be characterized like as a clash between two bourgeoisies equally capitalists , in order to control oil revenues.

-Where are the social reforms and the fight against poverty? They are deepened sufficiently?

- Due to the increase in oil prices in the international market, the government of President Chavez, counted, during 2004 and 2009 with higher state's revenues in Venezuelan history the last 30 years. Despite having so high income and political control of the country, structural reforms were not made to causes of poverty in the country. From 2005 compensatory social policies were promoted, called "missions" that had a positive impact on the living standards of the poorest sectors of the population, in that way, they had a greater purchasing power of products, with the paradox of not leaving poverty. However, these "missions", were sustainable only with a high foreign exchange earnings, as a result of high oil prices on the world market. Since two years, these policies have been phased out or have been stagnated. An example today is the disastrous situation of the network of public hospitals in the country that do not have the equipment, infrastructure or medicines to cure different diseases of the population. This has led to a paradox within the government that calls itself "socialist": In the absence of an effective public health system, all state employees are insured for hospitalization, surgery and maternity in private sector's clinics.

- What is the real level of threat to the ultra-liberal right? Can you say that there is an attempt to destabilize the power?

- To that question, several comments as a response: 1) The opposition is divided and internally facing, and today doesn't have a unanimous position on street protests : One sector supports it and the other one simply criticizes it 2) Venezuela is in the process to transition towards "something else", because of the physical absence of Hugo Chavez, that some political analysts call "postchavismo". Regardless of how that transition could be completed and how these protests finalize, there is no way that the Bolivarian movement, broadly defined, is be completely displaced from power. Chavez has a wide base of support making it a major player in the short and medium term policy in Venezuela. So the result , now or later, will be the negotiation between a sector "Chavista" and another part of the "opposition " when necessary to ensure the country's governance; 3) In 2002 began a purge of middle and senior cadres of the army in Venezuela , so today the Armed Forces are committed to the Bolivarian government project, not only for ideological reasons, but also for economic. Never before have the military, who now exert numerous positions in the public service, have had controlled so many legal and illegal businesses in the country (for example, control of the ports for imports and exports of good ). For this reason there are so many possibilities that a "right-wing coup" - linked to opposition sectors - as a coup "left-wing" - a sector of Chavismo against Maduro -. In conclusion I must say that we the anarchists, along with other sectors of Venezuelan revolutionary left, equally reject the government and the opposition political parties, trying to build a social alternative, which in this case is called "libertarian". At this time we have denounced the government crackdown on protesters and the implementation of a package of economic measures has been downloaded on the shoulders of the people, the crisis created by government corruption and the old and new bourgeoisie in the country.

http://periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-french-questionnaire...

On April 1, a friend wrote an good April Fool's article for this anarchist service. 1 Like all good April Fools' jokes, the article had to look plausible and people should be fooled by it. The „news” that some anarchists had gone into an electoral coalition was realistic enough to make the joke effective. Unfortunately. Because the facts are that there are people we were making protests with one day, who became candidates the next and that in Warsaw one of the most influential people on the „anarchist scene” recently ran for the Senate. And as we speak, some self-styled anarchists are trying to get some lists together for the upcoming elections.

The article thus was not only an April Fool's joke, but for those of us disgusted with this situation, a way to make a criticsm without naming names and unleashing the furry of the reformist troll army.

On April 1, I also came across something interesting: a (new?) pamphlet about joining the „alternative” union, Workers' Initiative. At first I thought it might also be an April Fool's joke – because a lot of the stuff inside it was so obviously untrue, that it read like a good satire. However I quickly recognized a well-known pattern of bullshit and came to the conclusion that, no, it was not meant to be a joke. Nor was it published just for April Fools. Rather than being for April Fools, it is just for fools, or people made fools by the misleading information. A monument to fools, so to say.

What are some of the points in the brochure which don't match up with the facts. The first two things are the claims that they „avoid bureaucracy, don't have professional unionists and are independent of bosses, governments and political parties”.

The first chairman of the union infamously was a member of the management board of the Ciegelski company in Poznan. 2 2 For such work, board members are entitled to extra remuneration and „motivational bonuses” if the company is more profitable. And during disability or retirement, very high pay, like the other board members. It is hard to imagine that a union which started its legal activity in such a way can claim to be „independent of bosses and bureaucracy”. The bureaucratic element was put into the statutes of the union, giving the chairman sole powers to do things such as join international federations. (This „power” has been since moved from the chairman to the national committee.) But the definition of a union bureaucrat is a person who has executive power such as this, and, as a member of the management board, he also had discretionary power that did not need to be consulted even with his minority union – let alone the whole staff.

Those aboard the ship of fools might argue that „this was a long time ago”, etc. etc. This type of retort to these criticisms are commonplace. However, at the same time that this union claims to not have professional unionists, the official page of the union prints instructions on how to get „union hours” at work. 4 For those not aware of the system, this means that union leaders who have a certain number of members can take hours off from work for „union business” and will be paid. The amount of union hours is determined by the membership rate. The Polish term used in the brochure „etatowy związkowcy” means the people who do not work their full time or any time, because they do „union business” all or part of the day. The union who is marketing itself as not having „professionals”, instructs its members how to get paid for doing union work. In addition, it does something that we haven't seen others do. It also says that if there are not enough workers in some place, you can make an inter-company union and the leaders of that can take hours. And even people from the National Committee and editors of the newspaper can get time off work.

This is the first big contradiction between what they write and want they do. In their brochure they say that the majority of their commissions (groups) do not use the offices or phones of the bosses and or not professionals. This could be true – after all, the many of the commission are just local groups, not workplace unions. And many of the unions are inter-company, without a minimal amount in one workplace, or with too few people to qualify for full-time professionalism. But anybody who reads this and thinks that this is related to the official tactics of this organization is being made a fool. If an organization doesn't believe in this, they can say that being on the management board is forbidden, that taking union hours is not allowed, etc. But they suggest just the opposite.

Returning to the topic of bureaucracy, a union bureaucrat is not only a person who gets paid. Bureaucrats are also people who make decisions. Any union which has a small executive organ which has wide ranging decision making powers has a bureaucracy.

About the claim of people independent of politicians, the jokers who wrote the brochure write that „people who fulfill functions in the union's national powers...cannot run for elections to the Parliament, Senate, Europarliament or President of Poland”. Knowing all the history behind this rule, it is hard to keep a straight face. First of all, let's look at their claims that they are something like „independent of politicians”. In fact, what the rules mean is that those in the Union's National Committee, etc. CAN run for Mayor, City Council, Local Council, Wójt (a local political office, hard to translate) soltyś (like a mayor of a small town), head of the Voivodship (region) and a number of other political offices that carry an incredible amount of power. The decision is part of the left-reformist ideology of the leading figures in the union who have for years been arguing for participation in local elections. According to them, all the other political positions are „devoid of real power” and that „on the local level, you can make a real difference”. Of course this is hogwash. Positions like President of Warsaw carry with them much more discretionary decision making ability than an MP, and well, if you DID believe in making a difference through being in government, then we can see that you can get more done at the higher level. For example, none of these people like Mayor, City Council person, etc. has any influence of the labour law, whereas people in the Parliament do. So the argument that workers' activists should run for City Council to „make a real difference” is completely devoid of logic.

Now if such a limitation is set on union leaders, what about on the regular members? Of course they have no limitations, not even if they were elected.

This is unfortunately not a theoretical question. A number of different members have been candidates at different times, using the union to promote themselves politically.

In 2007 we observed the first political spectacle, when an infamous member of the union, known for writing diatribes against anarchists in its official publication, took the number one spot on the list of the Self-Defense Party. http://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/ikonowicz-lokomotywa-samoobrony... It is important to know that not only is there nothing against doing so, but also there is no consideration of what party anybody is actually running with. The Party at this moment in time was infamous for a number of things including the coalition with fascists in the government and rape incidents. When a member of the Party was arrested in Brussels for rape, the leader of the Party laughed and said „how can anybody rape a prostitute”. The leader of the party went about promoting this guy's political campaign, paid his overdue rent bills and gave him a campaign manager: a well-known former neo-nazi who turned Euroasianist (also a form of fascist scum). "a href="http://www.khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1394946269" 8 9 When feminists publically upbraided the candidate for being with the rape apologist, he strongly defended him as not being a sexist.

What was the reaction of the union to their member running for Parliament and going around with a rape apologist and a fascist? The reaction was that on the day before election day, the head of the union made a public appearance with the two, sitting on the panel of a conference. 10 Which was moderated by the questionable Okraska 11 and opened by Marek Jurek, an extreme right politician (whose new party was also running that year). 12
He is always attacking the limited abortion rights that women have in this country (for example if they have been raped or were victims of incest). Not only did the union not try to distance themselves from this, but instead their trolls spent most of their time harrassing anybody who criticized this.

The second incident at least drew more of a protest from inside the union. This time the union advertised the political campaign on the official webpage, publishing a bank account number where people could send money. The members of the union used it to promote themselves in local elections which they participated in with some nationalists. 14 Reading into the biography of one of the nationalists, member of the union, one could also find out that he was the owner of three driving schools. It is curious how the owner of driving schools in three different towns could also be a union member – but with that organization, clearly anything is possible.

At that point, the remaining decent anarchists made a loud exit. 15 That doesn't mean that some anarchists still didn't stay there. They got convinced that this type of stuff is „normal” and some of them convince themselves that they are there like „boring within”, trying to „radicalize” it. Except it looks to me that those people just got to uphold the status quo.

Finally, to discuss „independence from politicians”, one can also look at the more recent Chung Hong conflict. Instead of immediately organizing actions around Poland and abroad against Samsung (whom the factory was producing for) the union made just a couple of small actions – some of them actually made by our union, not theirs. Instead, the head of the union went with the workers to the Sejm for a press conference with the Speaker (Vice Marshall) of the Parliament. 16 17 There she did her PR bullshit – and nothing happened for the workers. Some time later, workers were asked what they were planning – but they were doing nothing but waiting to see if some politicians would help them.

It is amazing to consider such actions as having anything in common with „independence from politicians” and the union did almost nothing and put the fate of the workers in the politicians and (for a couple) in the courts.

The brochure also says that the union defends workers rights „without compromise”. OK – that is our slogan. And they do it without going „over the heads of the workers”. But how true is that? First, it is interesting to know that workers actually cannot defend themselves in court in that union – they have to be represented by a member of the National Committee. About not agreeing with bosses without the workers, we know of cases, like Chung Hong, where the chairman of the union was negotiating and where they even openly describe how the chairman changed the postulates during the negotiations. We also know of how they set up a new union in the town of Torun after we started with a work conflict there. 18 The freshly-baked unionists then went to „negotiate” with the boss and wound up signing a false statement claiming that all workers had been paid. In fact, many workers were not paid and this was just a result of people shitting in their pants when the boss threatened them. So the union that does not „go over the head of the workers” actually has signed off on the claims of workers who they didn't even represent.

One last inconsistency coming not so much from the brochure, but in general their propaganda. At the end it claims that it has been systemically developing the union. Well, that's true – we see that they have gained some new people here and there. However, let's look at the propaganda of success they have been pushing, especially since the time that our union was founded (2007). After the founding of our union, with a tiny group of activists around the country, that organization, which had no more than a few dozen activists and another few dozen on paper (including a long list of dead souls), started with amazing claims that it had over 2000 members. I remember quite interestingly the fooled guests arriving from different unions such as CGT, ESE, IWW and CNTF who sat down to an audience of less than 10 of that union's members to give a talk and the then chairman of the union claiming to have over 2000 members. It was a laugh, but even more laughable were the people from other countries who had existed for decades in countries with large social movements hearing how this paper organization from Poland was supposedly a bigger than most of them.

Such claims were repeated many times, usually by their small clique of not-so-anonymous trolls.

Nowadays they only claim a few hundred members, which is closer to the truth, if you include all the paper members. At least this is what some foreign comrades have been told recently. (Of course the numbers always do change depending on who you talk to.)

So the question is: did this union lose well over half its membership while it was „systematically building” or were they just bullshitting to everybody with their numbers for years? If you have been reading attentively, you can already figure it out.

For some the union may be a „leftist alternative”, but for others we can only look at it as a monument to fools for anybody who actually wanted to get away from bureaucracy, politicians or vertical structures and chose that organization wound up with something very different and are just riding on the placebo effect.

On Oct. 13, residents of Warsaw will have the chance to recall the despotic neoliberal President of the city. This raises many questions from the anarchist point of view. In general, we often face a situation where a politician is unpopular and there is a misconception promoted amongst proponents of government that if a bad politician is gotten rid of, a better one can go in its place and the situation will be improved. As anti-capitalists and anti-statists, we see that this is not necessarily the case. However, as members of society and of social movements that have fought this President for years, we see what this vote really means for many people around us.

When you fight with a criminal state, you can expect them to make you a criminal.

The public prosecutor's office is considering whether to press charges against an activist from the ZSP for supposedly threatening to kill the president of Warsaw. This is the latest in a string of attempted repression and intimidation tactics used by capital and the state against those fighting their power. The prosecutor has already bothered this same comrade a few times a year on other matters, even more ridiculous and not directly related to his activity.

The subject of the investigation relates to a discussion on Facebook related to the decision of the city to cut down the trees in Krasinski Garden in Warsaw, called “revitalization” of the park. This decision was highly unpopular and controversial; it turned out that the city awarded many contracts to one company to rid the city of thousands of trees. Somebody wrote: ”after the revitalization of Krasinski Garden, let's revitalize the city office, using the same methods ;)”. Another person replied that she is going to look for blade sharpeners. That's when our comrade joked “A lumberjack competition in City Hall – that would be something! I had this dream that I had the chopped off head of HGW (the president) in my hand and I was showing it to the crowd outside the palace”.

On January 19th, 39 activists were arrested in central Moscow, with anarchists among them. They were involved in a campaign protecting tenants from raiders. Next morning they were released, but two activists were re-arrested and taken to the Khamovniki police station. They are detained for 48 hours with a criminal case under article 213 - hooliganism (5 year imprisonment) opened against them. The detainees' surnames are Pogosov and Polozenko.
Some context.
A halls of residence in central Moscow, inhabited by 10 families, is targeted by private eviction raiders. Legal means of eviction failed due to the families' registration. Instead, the buildings' status was changed from residential to industrial. This allowed the private security raiders to harass the tenants by other means. The raiders insist that the tenants have been provided with flats outside of Moscow, but those are still in possession of the “Moscow Silk” firm, which is threatening eviction.
On Janurary 14th, stoves and tables were removed from the kitchen. Audio and Video surveillance was set up, a security guard was stationed at the premises and a coded lock installed at the entrance.

On January the 15th the halls were stormed by security. They took a door away and broke through a wall of a room inhabited by a women and her 6-year old child. Activists and lawyers were barred from access. Only one activist to get inside. Talks with security broke down, and the tenants remained imprisoned in their own homes.
On January the 18th the water supply was cut.
On January the 19th the 39 activists were arrested on Bolshoy Savvinkiy street. Prior to this, they had assembled at the halls' entrance and attempted to break through to the tenants, which were still trapped inside. The Moscow Silk raiders is attempting to evict its former workers and their families with the help of hired security. The social and political activists, which included libertarian communists, left communists and anarchists, organised a 24-hour watch at the halls, but security erected grating at the entrance. On the 19th, activists were met with gas and steel girders, but nevertheless broke through into the halls.
Police was at first reluctant to intervene, and only removed some journalists from the stairwell used by activists to access the tenants. After that, the police negotiated with the Moscow Silk raiders to switch electricity in the halls back on.
Then, at 20:15, the police received an order to storm the premises. Everyone but tenants and journalists were arrested and taked to the Khamovniki police station. No cases were filed, but some activists were at times separated for “talks”. The next morning, everyone was released. However, as the day went on two activists (Pogosov and Polozenko) were re-arrested and were returned to the station, and have been accused with article 213, which may lead to a 5 year sentence.
This is not the only instance of tenants being raided for eviction and of anarchists and left communists coming to their aid.
We call for an end to bourgeois and police harassment! Freedom to the prisoners!

CNT update pickets around the state. The general trend: fairly quiet day in many cities and fulfilling the goal of stopping the activity in the industrial areas and major markets. Widespread impact of the pickets also in the city centers. Massive demonstrations followed in the afternoon. Anti-repressive alert in Logroño and Granada!

Translation from: CNT, Cobertura informativa: Huelga General 14N

A Coruña:
Little supprot of the strike. Picket of CNT formed by 50 people. Statement denying the incident awarded by the tabloids to the union.

Alicante:
High up than previous strike, but still little seconded. In the afternoon demonstration of about 500 people in the CNT block.

In a mass demonstration that media calculate 100,000 attendees, is organized from the local CNT a libertarian block at the end of the demonstration with a stake of around 500 people. The day ended without incidents.

Warsaw - The past days following the Nationalist riots of November 11, 2012 have been a time of solemn reflection for those of us in Poland and our friends watching around the world. We have awoken to a new reality, not in a hyperbolic or theoretical sense, but to a practical new reality of fascist terror on the streets of our cities, escalating exponentially. With burned out apartments, hospitalized anti-fascists, murders, mass nationalist marches through our cities, and now the formation of nationalist militias, and a call to overthrow the republic, we’re asking ourselves, just as our grandparents asked 80 years ago, ‘how could this be happening in our times?’

Historical Context

The fall of the “communist” dictatorships in the 1990’s led to a breeding ground for new political ideologies arising in former one-party states. Where once history was given to the people through Stalinist propaganda, the war over historical truth has returned, and nationalists have done everything in their power to re-envision history to their own sinister benefit. Today we see the trend all across the forgotten side of Europe. In Dresden, the nationalists organize marches to commemorate the victims of Allied bombings; In Hungary, pre-war nationalists (and Nazi allies) are glorified as the true defenders of freedom; In Ukraine, monuments are erected for the terrorist organization UPA and their leaders granted ‘national hero’ status. We are living in extremely uncertain times, and the black and white narrative offered up by the nationalists is resonating with a generation suffering the realities of the modern economy.

In Poland the nationalists have spent the last 20 years co-opting soccer fan clubs in an attempt to take-over working class culture and identity. This is a tactic we’ve seen all over Europe, and the BBC’s documentary criticizing fascist violence in Polish and Ukrainian soccer came as a shock to those outside the region considering a holiday trip to the EURO 2012 tournament. But nationalist culture and ideas are no longer just found around football stadiums, they are creeping more and more into everyday life, into mainstream media, in church sermons, even on university campuses.

The radical nationalists have traded in military garb and football club politics, for suits-and-ties and coalition building. Establishing alliances across the right, including with major media publications, they have gone from Nov. 11 marches of 300 nazi-skinheads in 2009 to 20,000 ‘patriots’ in 2012 ready to ‘overthrow the system’. But we are not only talking about propaganda and marches, we are also confronting a new era of organized and coordinated violence unseen in years. Their strategy being two-fold, to clean up the public image of extreme politics (claiming the narrative of eternal victims, ‘true patriots’ condemned by an oppressive system), while at the same time, creating a culture of violence just below the surface of their organizing. Their strategy culminating this November 11.

We have sat by in horror as gangs of nationalists terrorized Polish cities, and street fighting that accompanied the main march was simply written off by nationalists and their mass of conspiratorial sympathizers as, “provoked by undercover police.” The completely incompetent Polish media began to echo ONR’s claims, matching the long, pitiful history of ‘National victimhood’ which now seems to be the major myth of November 11. Last year’s fairytale of ‘foreign antifascists coming to fight Polish patriots and demolish Warsaw’ has been replaced by a new paranoid theory of ‘undercover police in ski-masks provoking riots in Warsaw.’ The reality remains to be recognized by the mass of society, Polish nationalist violence is spiking and Polish antifascists, immigrants, and LGBT are experiencing it firsthand.

A short summary of the coordinated Nationalist violence in 2012

The wave of violence has not only occurred in recent days, over the past year we’ve seen one murder and dozens if not hundreds of attacks around the country. Easter night in Białystok: A gang of nationalists screaming they would ‘cleanse the city of leftists and faggots’ murdered one student and stabbed several others. Stalking the streets for hours, the police failed to intervene. In Poznań, a children’s art festival hosted by the Rozbrat squat was attacked by groups of men with stones. Opole, a small Kurdish restaurant is attacked by thugs with bats and knives, police ignore repeated complaints from the workers about nationalist threats. In Piła, 2 youths beaten for hanging up posters to a punk concert by 5 men, calling them dirty faggots. In Warsaw, repeated attacks following workers solidarity demonstrations on local labor activists; Attacks on the LGBT-friendly bar “Brave New World” during nationalist marches; Threats against left-wing activists following public demonstrations. In Lublin, an attack on the cultural center Tektura Collective and weeks later on ‘Free Tibet’ demonstrators in the town square. In Sopot, a young man attacked waiting for his train home for ‘wearing colorful pants’ accused of being gay and beaten. In Wrocław, attacks on the equality march by the nationalist “March of Balaclavas”, on the CRK anarchist community center, the local synagogue, etc. A Cuban-Polish soccer player threatened and his motorcycle vandalized with the words “white power” and “KKK.” Attacks on cemeteries, synagogues, monuments, symbols of multiculturalism, cafes, social centers, squats, the list goes on, all in the last 11 months, in towns across the country. And then there is what has happened on November 11.

November 11 was a day the nationalists are triumphing as a great victory; the beginning of a new national front and the beginning of the end of the Polish republic.

The nationalist seizure of power and formation of Nationalist Militias

“We are now living in a new reality – and hardly anyone seems to realize it,” the Antifascist coalition of November 11 has declared. Besides the nationalist riots which rocked Warsaw for the evening of November 11, a range of attacks took place that day to commemorate “National Independence Day.” The Nationalists have announced a new militant strategy against democracy. ONR (Obóz Narodowo Radykalny, the National Radical Camp) and Młodzież Wszechpolska (All Polish Youth) MW, the groups responsible for organizing the march through Warsaw have now officially united and subsequently called for the overthrow of the Republic and the formation of paramilitary groups into a so-called “National Guard.” The call sounds strikingly similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts who patrolled German cities and broke opposition groups in the 1920’s and 30’s. Mussolini had similar backing with his “Blackshirts” who took over Rome marching street by street routing political enemies. This is the reality we are talking about, fascist militias coming to a town near you.

We will see how this call is heeded by the Brownshirts of ONR and MW, but if November 11 is any indication, they’re already here. In Wrocław on Sunday night, directly following the “Patriots March” a group of one hundred men forcibly entered the Wagenburg social center and began severely beating people into unconsciousness then fleeing the scene. One man was rushed to the hospital just escaping death, he is currently in critical but stable condition following a number of operations. Cars, houses, and the building itself were also smashed and destroyed. On Facebook, the leader of NOP (another major nationalist organization) congratulated the attackers and cheered for more. The four men arrested following the attack have since been released without charges. In Białystok, the apartment of a Chechen family was firebombed. Also in Białystok, the mayor has now openly said he would like to lobby for ONR. In Warsaw the offices of non-profits were attacked, including those of Lambda as well as attacks on individuals around the city and mass media outlets. In Wieluń a cemetery was vandalized with ONR graffiti. In Ostrołęka, tombs of unknown Russian soldiers were destroyed. These are just some of the attacks we are aware of thus far.

This is an obvious campaign of terror across the country, and we are seeing similar campaigns organized in neighboring countries by neo-fascist groups, some of whom attended Sunday’s March in Warsaw, including Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Swedish, and Norwegian nationalists. We remember that Anders Breivik, the nationalist who terrorized Oslo in 2011 killing 77 people, cited Polish nationalists as a great “inspiration.”

Apathetic Public, Incompetent Police

With a wave of violence and calls for the overthrow of the government, you may ask yourself where is Polish society and the state in all of this? As mentioned above, it seems as if history is indeed repeating itself. As had happened in pre-Fascist Italy and Spain, the state is arming itself not to protect against a fascist revolution, but repressing left-wing, anarchist, and antifascist organizations that pose more of a threat to economic peace than any fascist takeover could. Furthermore, a culture of apathy and silence has been built in a society which is struggling more to deal with the questions of poverty and identity than the question of Politics. In a system that creates a surplus population of disillusioned poor, it’s no wonder the state would rather see them fighting for the nation instead of fighting for justice. A measurement of just how little the Polish police and government understand of what is happening can be seen by their approach to November 11: harassing antifascists this past week asking ‘if people were planning on any fighting for November 11?’ Of course the antifascist march passed through Warsaw without a hint of violence, while riots raged through the city center in a nationalist show of force, and yet the police spotlight remains against antifascist activists.

And the media? Nationalist and populist ideas are abound in mainstream discourse, ONR has capitalized on the medias uncritical approach to propagate their rhetoric. Even the president, in a populist photo-op, was seen laying wreaths this Independence Day to the Nationalist icon Roman Dmowski. Civil organizations are now open allies with ONR and MW due in large part to the lack of media scrutiny of them or their extreme politics. And any press that does take an active role in criticism? Labeled communist, elitist or Jewish, and attacked in a right-wing media boycott, “I won’t read, I won’t watch.”

And so with all sides covered, it looks to be open season for a new nationalism to spring forth from the ashes of the failed economic experiments of post-communism. The Nationalists are claiming to have the “third road” neither communist nor capitalist, but as they will find, it will be a road riddled with antifascist blockades.

How much longer can we tolerate the growing threat of a nationalist revolution? With nationalist propaganda thriving, and the clever ‘coalition building’ paying off, the shadow of fascism is steadily creeping over this country. As we have seen in the past 2 years the nationalists “third road” will be one paved in our blood. We cannot wait any longer. It’s now or never.

For the memory of our grandparents who liberated the death camps and brought the fascist monster to it’s knees. Let us never again return to that place! No compromise in the struggle against modern fascism ¡No pasarán!

Against evictions, charging the costs of the crisis of society, such as direct democracy under such slogans began the occupation of the Market Square today in our city. The action will continue without a break for a week.

Live coverage http://fakrakow.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/trwa-okupacja-rynku-glownego/

The impulse given to the occupation of tenants, who for years were Leading the nose by the city in large-scale public consultations organized under the banner of the Housing Round Table. Despite initial promises of the authorities, none of the city authorities did not take into account the opinion of tenants on issues that directly affect them.

May day to fight againts capitalism and goverment also has historical advance since 1886 up to day has possed with loudly and colourfull protests of antiauthoritarian and the others. Beside festive celebrations ,nervy attack against goverment and capitalism has broken out from Istanbul, Amed, Dersim (Turkey - Kurdisyan) to Seattle, Oakland, Montreal and Berlin.