TERRORISM OR TRAGICOMEDY?

Please find a petition written by the publisher Eric Hazan, which can be signed (name, occupation, city) and returned to:
lafabrique@lafabrique.fr

A statement of support by Giorgio Agamben is pasted in below.

TERRORISM OR TRAGICOMEDY?

On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350 inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and “accused of criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions.” The newspapers reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State “had congratulated local and state police for their diligence.” Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let’s try to examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of this “diligence.”

First the reasons: the young people under investigation “were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho autonomous milieu.” As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior specifies, “their discourse is very radical and they have links with foreign groups.” But there is more: certain of the suspects
“participate regularly in political demonstrations,” and, for example, “in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws restricting immigration.” So political activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as “anarcho autonomous milieu”) or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political conscience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration laws.

As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons, explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in
Millevaches. Far from it. SDAT officers discovered “documents containing detailed information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times of trains.” In plain French: an SNCF train schedule.
But they also confiscated “climbing gear.” In simple French: a ladder, such as one might find in any country house.

Now let’s turn our attention to the suspects and, above all, to the presumed head of this terrorist gang, “a 33 year old leader from a well-off Parisian background, living off an allowance from his parents.” This is Julien Coupat, a young philosopher who (with some friends) formerly published Tiqqun, a journal whose political analyses – while no doubt debatable – count among the most intelligent of our time. I knew Julien Coupat during that period and, from an intellectual point of view, I continue to hold him in high esteem.

Let’s move on and examine the only concrete fact in this whole story. The suspects’ activities are supposedly connected with criminal acts against the SNCF that on November 8 caused delays of certain TGV trains on the Paris-Lille line. The devices in question, if we are to believe the declarations of the police and the SNCF agents
themselves, can in no way cause harm to people: they can, in the worst case, hinder communications between trains causing delays. In Italy, trains are often late, but so far no one has dreamed of accusing the national railway of terrorism. It’s a case of minor offences, even if we don’t condone them. On November 13, a police report prudently affirmed that there are perhaps “perpetrators among those in custody, but it is not possible to attribute a criminal act to any one of them.”

The only possible conclusion to this shadowy affair is that those engaged in activism against the (in any case debatable) way social and economic problems are managed today are considered ipso facto as potential terrorists, when not even one act can justify this accusation. We must have the courage to say with clarity that today,
numerous European countries (in particular France and Italy), have introduced laws and police measures that we would previously have judged barbaric and anti-democratic,and that these are no less extreme than those put into effect in Italy under fascism. One such measure authorizes the detention for ninety-six hours of a group of young
– perhaps careless – people, to whom “it is not possible to attribute a criminal act.” Another, equally serious, is the adoption of laws that criminalize association, the formulations of which are left intentionally vague and that allow the classification of political acts as having terrorist “intentions” or “inclinations,” acts that until now were never in themselves considered terrorist.

Giorgio Agamben
Libération, November 19, 2008

Save Southbank

Official petition text:
Since the early seventies ‘the Undercroft’ (the sheltered area beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s Southbank) has served as the home of the skateboarding community in the UK. It’s an open public-space that has brought together thousands of young people, from various backgrounds, over the last 35 years to form a harmonious and positive community. This type of positive and ‘unorganised’ activity for young people is very rarely seen elsewhere in the UK today… However the area is now being rapidly redeveloped and the future of ‘the Undercroft’ is uncertain. Already a large part has been partitioned off behind large wooden hoardings. Please join us in petitioning the government to guarantee that the site is: (A) returned to its previous state (allowing the general public and skateboarders open access to the full area), and (B) officially protected and preserved for future generations of the skateboard community to use.




From Jeremy Abbott, London, UK.

The Save Southbank campaign has all been initiated by two major legends on the UK skate scene: Toby Shuall (does Suburban Bliss clothing label) and Winstan Whitter (now a video director who produced the Rolling Through The Decades documentary). They've constantly been campaigning over the years to set up a dialogue between the skaters and the Southbank Centre, the organistation which is an arts charity that owns the Southbank complex of venues. They essentially want to make it official that the covered undercroft down by the Thames under the QEH is going to be preserved for use by skateboarders and bmx'ers for as long as the demand is there. They've regularly gone along to local council meetings and discussion groups to try and voice their opinions and have generally always been shutdown. The pair have also both been attempting to set up an official dialogue with the directors behind the Southbank Centre which dictate the future of the area; this has also in the past generally been rebuked. Over the last year since the Royal Festival Hall re-opened following extensive refurbishment there have been chain restaurants popping up along the riverfront. This has immediately raised concerns about the future of the area the skaters use and how long the Southbank organisation could resist taking the opportunity to develop the undercroft for further commercial use. A couple of years ago a third of the space was closed off for storage behind hoardings and the undercroft has still yet to be restored to it's original size. It was all looking very bleak, so i-D decided to do a story on the skaters down there with photographer Tyrone LeBon while it still existed.

Over the years the undercroft has been essential to elevating UK skateboarding. Everyone knows that. There's a powerful almost primal spirit saturated in that concrete which has birthed and grown many a UK skate legend as well as welcomed visiting stars from around the world and includes a role call of: Curtis McCann, Ben Jobe, Morbid, Mark Boyce, Shane O'Brien, Jason Maldini, Mike Manzoori, Femi Bukunola and Aaron Bleasdale. New school UK pros Blueprint’s Neil Smith and Nick Jensen can be spotted down there now alongside Joey Pressey (aka Joey Crack) with recent visits from Stateside teams including the Spike Jonze co-owned Girl skate squadron. Winstan s highlighted snapshots include: “Off the little banks we used to put a jump ramp, and we'd fly out over a cone on top of the bank and I remember seeing my friend Harvey doing a 360 nose grab ollie out of it, and he was a little munchkin, it was amazing. And Lex used to rip it up and use the loading bay, which was our favourite place, and he used to get six-foot ollie grabs and ollie melancholies out of it before anyone really used to have that style going on. Then there were the bank to wall days, which were some of the best sessions and I remember seeing Natas doing a frontside rock n roll slide on it, which was amazing. Morbid doing frontside wall rides and always skating at 100mph. Then watching Curtis (McCann) was literally one of the best things I ever saw.”

During the 90s, when skateboarding fully gained the nuisance label, and global anti-skateboarding measures were readily factored into municipal areas including raging security guards and bolts and plugs that prevent skaters riding ledges and rails to curtail building damage and accident and insurance issues. Relationships also appeared to sour between then management at the Southbank Centre and the skateboarders, with the lights being switched off throughout the evening, gravel being scattered to hinder riding through the undercroft and eventually imposing bars being placed within the area to completely attempt to prevent skating the banks once and for all. Those bars eventually became something to conquer in more ways than one initially pushing skaters to hammer ollies over the bars, but they went one stage further as Toby explains: “That was when we were eventually trying to cut them off with hacksaws. Then we figured out if there were enough of you there’d be whole crews of people shaking the barriers off together and throwing them in the river and they’d be welded back on the next day!”

With the help of Winstan and Toby, we covered the Southbank skaters during the summer for i-D and during the same period the pair re-activated their own campaign which culminated in a new 20 minutes documentary Save Southbank which comprehensively outlines their many arguments for maintaining the space for skateboarding. It included commentary from skaters, locals, tourists and eminent architects. The film premiered to a sold out audience of skaters who showed solidarity for the cause at the Prince Charles Cinema in central London. Toby introduced the film with a statement from the Southbank organisation re-iterating their intentions from two years ago which claim they have no plans to develop the site for the foreseeable future. Which is great, however there still needs to be an active intervention from the Southbank organisation to invest money in maintenance and just to embrace it as much as they do any of the other arts performances which skating and bmx-ing deserved to sit alongside, going on in any one of their other venues. The feature and film has raised a lot of media interest throughout London and the country, the Evening Standard, Londonpaper and Time Out all ran features on the campaign. Most importantly, there is a UK government petition which needs to be signed by all, when an adequate number of people have signed it (3000), then it needs to be taken into serious consideration by the government. It's at 2,818, so not far to go. SAVE SOUTHBANK!!!!!!!

Sign the Petition (UK only)

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