tragicoptimist

1. There was no need for Mario Draghi’s words to understand that the crisis has already reached an irreversible threshold in Europe. A crisis of “systemic dimensions” was what Jean-Claude Trichet said a couple of months ago. Now Draghi, his successor at the European Central Bank, tells us that “the situation has worsened” (January 16th). It is difficult to understand what the worsening of a crisis of “systemic dimensions” might mean.

What is certain is that the scenarios for the coming months are quite dark, not only for those who have already been paying for the crisis for years and the medicine that aliments it – austerity or, more “soberly”, economic rigor. Even consistent sectors of capital and European ruling classes are starting to doubt that, in the gigantic process of global readjustment of the equilibrium of power underway, they risk becoming one of the losers. The specter of “decline”, even if it hasn’t stopped haunting American metropolises, has started showing up in Europe’s squares more persistently – or at least in entire European regions. And there is no lack of pundits that foresee military reasoning behind the actions of rating agencies, the first maneuvers in a “global debt war” where the goal of saving the dollar as the sovereign currency on a global level (consequently maintaining the current command centers of financial markets) can justify disintegrating the Euro. In the background, the news coming from the Strait of Hormuz reminds us that, facing a crisis of this profundity and length, war can always be an attemptable “solution” not only through finance and “sovereign” debt. » Read more «

“Internationally young”. Saturday morning, Tunisians read this title in the headlines of La Presse. This newspaper is the French voice of the old regime and only until a few months ago was never published without a large photo of Ben Ali. Yesterday, however, despite pre-electoral political tensions, it decided to give ample space to the first Transnational Meeting of Tunis, which concludes today. Last fall this would have been science fiction, but after the Tunisian movement’s extraordinary struggle of last winter and spring, it is a reality: “We, students, precarious workers, unemployed and activists of the world call for a transnational meeting in Tunisia to share and build strategies for common struggles”. This call out – sent by the promoting committee together with other networks of struggles like KLF and NoBorder – worked, with Thursday’s plenary assembly seeing more than 400 participants, from international delegates to numerous collectives and organizations from the Tunisian movement.

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By Giorgio Griziotti

The simultaneous fall of the Murdoch and Berlusconi media empires – symbolic of an epoch – is not a coincidence but part of a deep global change in which the exponential growth of horizontal communication networks plays a central role. In this global epoch, despite the thin line between new democratic opportunities and the old threats of control, unforeseen democratic movements are demanding a new kind of democracy.
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What follows is the copy and paste of the daily reports that the Knowledge Liberation Front wrote during our 5 day “Liberation Without Borders Tour“. Short schematic notes for a journalistic glimpse into post-insurrectional Tunisia ; more imaginative texts on the way… » Read more «

On Saturday May 7^th, following the City of Paris’ decision to violently evict the occupation of 51 Avenue Simone Bolivar last week, the impromptu collective “Tunisians From Lampedusa”, together with Parisian activists, have now occupied another building in Paris. The new occupation is a public gymnasium “Fontaine-au-Roi” at 100 Rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi that is property of the City of Paris and located a short distance from the last occupation. » Read more «