through europe

I'll be brief  and almost telegraphic, because I have many things to say and little time.

1. Let's have a look at the landscape at the end of the year 2010. The Obama hope has dissolved, and the European crisis has broken out. A new Logic has been installed at the heart of the European life, since the financial crisis of Greece: Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Trichet resolved that European society has to sacrifice its current levels of life, public school system, its civility, in order to pay the debts accumulated by the financial elite.

This question, appearing on most newspapers after every riot, such as the one in Rome on December 14, deserves an answer. Do you want to see what our faces look like, when they are not hidden by scarves, helmets and balaclavas?

They are the same faces that pay the rent for your scruffy flats, the faces to whom you offer unpaid internships or full time employment for £800 a month. They are the faces that pay thousands of pounds to attend your lectures. They are the faces of the kids that you slap when you catch them with some weed in their pocket. They are the faces that have to run out of the bus when the inspectors appear, as they couldn’t afford to travel otherwise.

What is happening in Rome and in many other Italian cities, what happened in London only few days ago, marks the beginning of the decade. It's going to be a decade of conflict and self-defense of society, against a ruling class that is violent and corrupt, against financial capitalism that is literally starving the social sphere, against mafia, that is using power to embezzle social resources.

In Rome, on December 14th a Parliament of corrupts celebrates the Godfather's victory. In London, on December 9th, a Parliament of liars has ordained the destruction of public education.

The arrest of Julian Assange sounds the death knell for Western democracy. They caught him, they cut off the wires and the funds. But what did this man exactly do? Simply demonstrate the power of the Network. Western authorities, despite their disdain for Chinese Censorship, behave exactly like Hu Jintao as soon as the power of the networks threatens to introduce Glasnost, to suggest any form of transparency or even, perhaps, expose the realities of power.

Days, in London, always pass fast. This city embodies the very essence of late capitalism. Its illness. Working over-time, running along underground platforms, eating late at night, pills, kebabs, sleeping drunk on buses, waking up at the last stop or already late for work.
There couldn’t possibly be a better city for activism.