Since 1982, it has been illegal for Greek police to step onto university grounds. From an American anarchist context, this is more or less impossible to imagine: it’s like playing tag where you can run to “base” and “it” can’t get you. Because of this, the universities (in Athens, particularly the Polytechnic) have been major strongholds in the ongoing resistance to Greek governmental repression. And on the 24th, they wiped this law clean away.

This is a huge deal for our Greek comrades. There’s an excellent, emotional understanding of the repeal over at From The Greek Streets:

I was born in the year 1982. The year when the first CD player came out, when TIME magazine would name the computer as its “man of the year” and here in Greece, the year when Academic Asylum came into law. It is strange to think how seemingly inane objects and conventions shape so much of our being: just like us and our coevals in countries across the world couldn’t perhaps imagine life without a computer these days, I could equally not imagine life without academic asylum, this peculiar little piece of legislation. But waking up this morning, the asylum was gone.
[...]
Such a strange concept, this demarcation of the spatial boundaries of power, and yet one that we had entirely accustomed ourselves to. As we continued to grow up I cannot even recall how many times we found refuge in a university building, chased or beaten by riot police, demonstration after demonstration. And I cannot begin to think what would have happened if the asylum wasn’t there.

The Asylum was introduced in response to the junta killing of university students during the Polytechnic Uprising of 1973. Rather than a kind commemorative gesture, this was a testament by power that it had gone too far; an effort to curtail its reach for its own good, to preserve its perpetuation.
[...]
As of today this social contract is void. It is an eery, even chilling feeling. Not quite like losing a loved person, more like losing a solid certainty about your ways of acting and interacting with the world.

In more positive news from Greece, the bail money raised from comrades across the world was used to successfully bail Manolis Liolios yesterday after his bail was dropped from 70,000 euros to 15,000.

I got this in my inbox today: the Earth First! Journal is looking for fiction! And what wonderful categories of fiction they’re looking for! I want to write all of these things. Anyhow, the EF!J is being completely revamped these days and I’m pretty excited to see what they’re doing with it now. It’s been around for 30 years: be a part of it.

Apparently the deadline for the next issue is painfully soon, Sept. 1st, but any submissions after that would be considered for future issues.

My friend Tim Nicholas pointed out something about the situation with the UK riots I hadn’t really thought of, thinking in terms of the political context:

[E]ven though I might label a lot of the activity as nihilistic and selfish (I’m talking specifically about stuff like looting small businesses and burning down apartment buildings), it makes perfect sense to me why nihilism and selfishness would seem like the only proper or even possible response to being in that situation. If you’re an 18 year old minority kid living in the slums and you’ve got cops who are ready to murder you and you’re in the middle an “economic crisis” and you’re looking at massive cuts in education funding, 70% cuts to youth services, etc – what the fuck reason do you have to believe that there’s a worthwhile future possible for you?
[...]
What I see when I look at the riots, though, is a country whose government was just two weeks ago in the midst of a massive crisis of legitimacy – a staggeringly huge web of corruption connecting one of the country’s largest media companies, the heads of Scotland Yard, and the cabinet of the Prime Minister himself – and this all happening amidst a massive, and massively unpopular, austerity plan being implemented, essentially a massive wealth grab to add to an ever-widening wealth gap… and then on top of all that you have these murders at the hands of the cops, which prior to the rioting, seemed to galvanize an entire community in opposition to the police force. So I look at all that and I see basically the largest potential for radicalization in the UK in maybe over 40 years.
[...]
But now, after the rioting, I look and I see communities that are completely divided against themselves, and I see people actually cheering fucking cop cars as they pass by in the street. And that’s utterly depressing to me. I’m pretty sure that Cameron’s administration sees these riots as a gift – a distraction from the huge mess they’re in right now and a way to both gain support and to demonize, divide, and depoliticize all opposition.

Forgot how much I love The Ring of Free Trade.

Oh yeah, Tolkien on anarchism:

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inaminate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! [...] Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people. […] [T]he most improper job of any many, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity. At least it is done only to a small group of men who know who their master is. [...] There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamating factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal”

From J. R. R. Tolkien. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 63 -4.

“showing the police we can do whatever we want.”

Right, London’s burning. I’m not there, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know the ins and outs of the class dynamics. I do know that the media is bending over backwards to accommodate the interests of property by de-valuing the riots, so shortly after lauding uprisings in other countries. I do know that people all over the world are inspired by this, and legitimately, and the media is showing its hand as it rushes to bring us news of people who are making tea for the police.

Over at anarchist news, someone reposted an article and some comments from London Indymedia that I think explain the legitimacy of these riots well:

Many commentators decried the lack of a clear political motive in the riots, and seemed worried about how unrespectable the looting makes it all seem. According to this line of thought, poverty is not political.

On the radio, on the web, and in the papers, there’s a lot of talk right now about the ‘stupidity’ of the rioters, burning down their own neighbourhoods. All of the commentators who follow this line of argument haven’t considered some pretty basic facts.

Outraged Guardian readers, I say to you: you’re only partially correct. It’s true that the guy carrying that cash register past Brixton Academy last night probably didn’t conceptualize his actions according to rational choice economic theories. However, when compared with four years of failed state capitalist attempts to catapult us out of the economic crisis, his maneuvers were in fact the height of rationality. Destroying evidence by turning on the gas cooker full-blast and burning down the Stockwell Road Nandos is pretty crazy. But it makes a lot more economic sense, for Brixton, than anything so far attempted by Labour, the Conservatives, or the wizard brains of the City of London.

Smashing windows in Brixton is probably a surer road to prosperity for most people than any of the more respectable paths already explored.

[...]

[R]etail profit is a kind of theft. It’s economic value which is hoovered out of a local community via corporate cash registers. The decisions about where to re-invest the profits are the preserve of corporate managers and shareholders, not the decision of the people from whom the value was extracted. The whole process is fundamentally anti-democratic.

This daily denial of basic democratic political rights is “normal”, and may last for years, decades or centuries. Corporations may steal from poor people – but any attempt on the part of poor people to steal back must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

But of course, the same commenter points out that:

[T]he fact that people are running around burning things down isn’t a positive thing. I’m much rather live in a society where this sort of thing doesn’t happen. There *should* be better ways for this kind of frustration to be expressed. Right now, though, it’s unclear to me what the formal political options are for people who live on housing estates in places like Brixton.

Vote Labour? Vote Tory? Get really wild and go with the Lib Dems? This has all been tried, and it’s not really working out.

What we’re seeing all over the UK are massive spontaneous outbursts of frustration on the part of the poorest people in British society. I would think that this should be obvious to anybody.

But the point I was trying to make, is that it’s not *only* hatred and desperation, at least not with the crowd I was with in Brixton on Sunday night. People were thrilled that the cops were helpless. They were happy at the prospect of getting free stuff – there are reports that one of the people arrested in Currys worked there.

[...]

With only one exception, a Portugese cafe, every target in Brixton was a major corporate chain store. It may of course be different in other neighbourhoods. It could also easily change, if people go back out tonight, or if the conflict escalates into major streetfights with police.

Lastly, as someone who lives at the intersection of about 4 different housing estates, I’m only too keenly aware of the potential for my house to be burned down tonight, so don’t tell me about that guy in Croydon. It’s awful what’s happening. The first step towards really solving this whole set of problems is in understanding why the riots and looting are happening.

The best analysis I’ve found thus far of the whole global uprising that seems afoot is this BBC commenter, from back in February when it was safely someone else’s problem:

Twenty Reasons Why It’s Kicking Off:

1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future.

And finally, social snitching. londonrioters.co.uk is a website you can go to to help identify rioters. It seems like some people have started trolling the good fight, though, which makes me glad.

Cory Doctorow over on Boing Boing brings us to the attention of the following:

The City Of Westminster Counter Terrorist Focus Desk publishes a weekly briefing on safety called Griffin Weekly, full of useful advice. For example, this week’s briefing contains these helpful tips on Anarchism: “Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local Police.”

In the comments that ensue, there is a fun (read: boring) back and forth in which communists and progressives race to see who can make anarchism seem the most infantile, but there are some real gems. David Smart, however, wins:

Seeing this news this morning made me burst into tears. Today is my 21st birthday. I just spent an hour and a half of it in my local police station. I suited up and put on a V mask, which really freaked out the coppers when I refused to take it off. “HANDS OUT OF YOUR POCKETS” etc. Apparently they don’t understand the value of anonymity, despite the fact that “we’re always suspicious of people” (direct quote). I asked if I was breaking any laws, and said I had information on Anarchism as requested in this Griffin publication. They said they wouldn’t talk to me unless I came in with them, and I couldn’t come in unless I took off the mask. I maintained a high degree of civility the whole time but refused. There was about half a dozen of them around me; eventually a more senior policeman said I could come in with the mask on.

(read the rest of his anecdote on boing boing.)

Two tree sitters have set up on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia to stop the people who are in the process of literally leveling the mountain (and filling the nearby valley with its rubble). If you want to imagine an anime-esque cartoon villain of an activity, think about Mountaintop Removal.

The group that has taken credit for the action is RAMPS: Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival. Here’s from their press release:

MARFORK, W.Va. – Two protesters associated with the RAMPS Campaign halted blasting on a portion of Alpha Natural Resources’ Bee Tree mountaintop removal mine on Coal River Mountain today by ascending two trees. Catherine-Ann MacDougal, 24, and Becks Kolins, 21, are on platforms approximately 80 feet off the ground within 300 feet of active blasting on the mine. [...] The activists demand that Alpha Natural Resources stop strip mining on Coal River Mountain and that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection prohibit future strip mining in the Coal River Watershed.

Eneko Gogeaskoetxea Arronategui has been arrested in the UK over a 1997 plot to kill the king of Spain, Juan Carlos.

I’m sad that he failed (though not excited about his proposed method, which could easily have harmed others) and I don’t know anything, really, about his politics. But I just want to say that anyone has the right to kill monarchs. A monarch is and always will be the symbol of tyranny and any the only ethical choice a monarch may make is to abdicate power. There are regicides that are not necessarily good ideas, strategically speaking, but there are no unwarranted ones.

For what it’s worth, my favorite regicidist was Gaetano Bresci, who took down King Umberto I in Italy. Who’s yours?