Italian COUNTERINFO #12 (September 1995) ************ CONTENTS * Instead of an editorial * A summary of the recent debate within the ECN * ECN bologna E-zine n.0 agosto 95 * ECN Padova - News upgrade, 18 agosto 95 * ECN bologna E-zine n.01 agosto 95 * ECN bologna E-zine n.02 agosto 95 * Corsera - by Leoncavallo (E-Zine ECN) * Milano, 29 agosto 1995 - Comunicato stampa del centro sociale Leoncavallo * ECN bologna E-zine n.03 settembre 95 * leaflet on FIAT by CSOA el paso (Torino) ************ Italian COUNTERINFO, a summary of recent postings from the Cybernet and European Counter Network in Italy, is a cooperative venture between the xchange BBS (Melbourne, Australia) and the Padova node of the ECN. You can contact us at pmargin@xchange.apana.org.au or hobo@freenet.hut.fi ************ Check out the ECN's new home page at http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/ecn/ Zero! BBS, which is part of both the ECN and Cybernet, has a home page at http://linux1.cisi.unito.it/zero!/bbs.html ************ It's been a few months since our last issue - a situation which can be explained partly by a trip to Italy during the northern summer, partly by too much work upon our return, and partly by sheer *pigrizia*. The Bologna and Padova ECN collectives, however, has been working hard, producing no less than 4 issues of an e-zine in the last month, as well as a number of news releases. These are summarised below. In the past we have aimed - not always successfully - to mail the original ECN news files to interested subscribers. We are very pleased to announce that these files are now directly available by FTP, at the following site: ftp://pcdigi.unibs.it/pub/ecn/ Finally, readers may be interested to know that there are plans afoot for an electronic mailing list devoted specifically to the political assessment of class composition and class struggle throughout the global work-machine. We hope to make this a bi-lingual list accessible to comrades who have some knowledge of either English or Italian. Never having done anything like this before, we are more than open to suggestions, offers of help etc. The organisers can be contacted care of pmargin@xchange.apana.org.au ************ - Profit Margin August 1995 saw an important debate within the Italian ECN concerning the politics of computer networking. Much of the discussion was actually between Marta Mackenzie of Torino and Sandrone of Milano, although others did chime in now and then. I got to meet Marta along with Luc Pac at the Radio Sherwood festa in Padova two months ago, when I was staying there with Hobo. Luc and Marta have recently produced a fine Italian language 'alternative guide' to computer networking called *Digital Guerrilla* - inspired in part by the book written by xchange BBS's own Will Kemp,(*Messagesticks in Cyberspace*). Luc and Marta are also both involved in Italy's other libertarian computer network, Cybernet. Sandrone is well known within the Italian movement because of his association with the social centre Leoncavallo, which has been very much in the Italian news these past few years. One of the most important points of contention concerned the purpose of the ECN. In an article he had written for the left daily *il manifesto*, and then reproduced as part of the debate, Sandrone had made two central points about the ECN. The first of these was that it expressed 'the desire to create a forum [piazza] open to all', unlike the regulated atmosphere which pervades Fidonet and similar systems. Much more than this, however, the role that he and others had sought to develop in Milano was that of 'a human interface' between various social subjects - he cited a range of examples, from AIDS activists to militant workers - who themselves showed little interest in using the network. This notion of the network as 'a crossroads between subjects' that 'first of all, connects realities outside' itself, was one that he would return to again and again over the course of the month. Marta's position was rather different. More than a simple interface between humans in the 'real' world, she stressed that computer networks represent 'a new medium' fast becoming an important place of 'struggle and resistance' in its own right. As a consequence, attention had to be paid to 'the features peculiar to [computer] networks - anonymity, the loss/construction of ascribed relations and identity, socialisation, the possibilities of experimentation', to see whether these might generate new ways of destabilising power. In other words, it's not a matter of simply seeking to use computer networks as a means to connect the struggles of social subjects in the so-called real world, but rather of exploring the subjects that are forming *within* the networks themselves. For his part, Sandrone's assessment of such subjects was less than flattering. Taking as one example the level of discussion within cyberspace, he told Marta: 'What you call debate I generally would call chitchat. There is hardly ever a decent debate in either Cybernet or ECN. There is almost always chitchat - some of it even interesting - between those who play with computers'. Talk of the net culture's potential for destabilisation was better suited for science fiction novels; so far he had seen nothing to confirm such a view. 'The networks are one field of struggle - but only one, however'. Part of the difference between these two positions seems to lie with the legitimacy or otherwise bestowed upon communication between individual as opposed to collective subjects. Again, in an exchange with Ampex from ECN Brescia, Sandrone insisted that discussing the politics of computer networks was something separate from using the net as a means 'to feel good (a positive thing), or to exchange ideas with friends (even more positive)... [or] to send letters to a lover in Boston (better again)'. Marta's response to this consisted of three parts. The first was that, by its nature, the network had so far generated personal rather than collective users - 'so much so that our brawling [scazziamo] is between you/sandrino/me/luc/ampex rather than between groups of people...' Secondly, that while the level of on-line discussion could be improved, it was better than that in face-to-face meetings, such as those she remembered from the Murazzi social centre in Torino, 'where the recognised "leader" spoke first and last, a series of other people felt legimitated to intervene, and the majority of the collective just sat and listened, or got bored, or else rolled joints'. At least on the net, everyone could say their bit and have time to reflect when responding to others. Finally, in noting the failure to date of periodic attempts to use computer networks as archives for movement documents, she argued that the net concerns 'principally communication' in the here and now. Another question which kept popping up was the perennial technical battle just to keep the system functioning. It may hearten fellow members of the xchange BBS to hear that we are not the only ones whose bulletin board malfunctions on a regular basis - this seems equally to be a problem in Milano. How to tackle this, someone asked? Surely there must be some computer nerds involved in the Leoncavallo social centre who would enjoy tinkering with machinery and code? Well yes, perhaps there are, but according to Sandrino, who is also part of the Milano ECN, such comrades like to spend 'their' free time doing things at the social centre itself. Perhaps if the BBS was housed there... Two more themes that arose along the way. The first concerns who actually uses these Italian BBS, and how. According to Marta, maybe 15-30 people call up the Torino board each day - 'not much traffic' by her reckoning. They scan this and that, usually following their own particular interest - software, spunk, news - but 'the majority don't even look at the new files'. According to the Milanese comrades, a certain amount of energy on any given day goes into clearing out abusive messages from people hostile to the very project of the social centres. Even when there was a radio program or station loosely connected to the local ECN, there didn't seem to be much interplay between the two. Finally, there was the question of sectarianism and the network's 'purity'. Here Marta raised a couple of Turinese anecdotes concerning certain intolerant autonomists and anarchists, who had asked, amongst other things: how dare the ECN 'allow' people from the 'refoundation communist party' social centre to use their network? [When I would have thought (Profit Margin concludes, editorialising outrageously) that 'we' would be wanting to engage with, and even contaminate people like that, rather than worry about protecting our 'pure' politics from them]. ************ 1) International Anarchist Demonstration - Sunday 6 August A brief notice publicising a Hiroshima Day demo at the border town of Ventimiglia. 2) Proposal for a National Mobilisation Against the Use of Tornado Bombers and other Italian and NATO forces in the Balkan War - Piacenza, luglio 1995 Today, as in the Gulf War, Italian jets are being used in a military conflict. The Belfagor social centre calls both for debate and organisational work within the social centres and the broader 'self- organised' left, with the aim of a national mobilisation this September or October. In particular, it calls for an opening to green and pacifist circles as well as the traditional left, along with the development of arguments to counter the growing interventionist mood within the latter. 3) RADIO ONDA D'URTO Festa at Brescia (20 August - 3 September) Food, drink, debates, film and plenty of 'antagonistic' information are all promised at this year's festa. 4) Statement of the Roman social centres following the 85 charges made against some of their representatives. 'The 85 charges for "delinquent association", stemming from incidents provoked by the police opposing the occupation of the La Torre social centre, represent the apex of an offensive - by the right, the fascists of Alleanza Nazionale, sections of the courts and police - which aims to isolate and criminalise Rome's social realities..." ************ Debate on the upcoming conference of Social Centres at Arezzo One of the most important polemics within Italy's self-managed social centres at present concerns their place within the evolving social landscape. According to a number of comrades - for example, those associated with the journal *Derive Approdi* - the social centres represent a new form of productive organisation based upon 'immaterial', post-fordist labour. Thus Benedetto Vecchi has characterised the CSOA as 'high points of capitalist development' based upon 'knowledge, science and communicative action,... the most contradictory phenomenon of a possible exodus of labour power from capitalist society, through the constitution of a public sphere that contemplates the synthesis between developed social cooperation and political initiative' [B. Vecchi (1994) 'Frammenti di una diversa sfera pubblica', in F. Adinolfi et al., *Comunit virtuali: I centri sociali in Italia*. Manifestolibri, Rome, p.14]. Similar sentiments were recently voiced in *il manifesto* by those promoting a conference on the social centres to be held at Arezzo. The two postings summarised below beg to differ. 1) Centro Sociale Autogestito ex Emerson di Firenze: "Non siamo un'impresa" In criticising the reading of the social centres as 'enterprises', this piece rejects the assumption that market criteria are the most appropriate terms through which to interpret the CSOA. Its authors also reject a logic of social pacification which seeks to divide the 'good' sections of the movement from those which the state deems to be beyond the pale. Opposing all frameworks blind to power relations within modern society, they point out that 'We have been within all moments of class conflict... seeking to act [towards] its social recomposition. This is our horizon. We are not prepared to accept, at Arezzo or elsewhere, what sociologists, entrepreneurs or council officials tell us we are and must become'. 2) Impresa centro sociale? No grazie! (C.S.A. Garibaldi di Milano) A detailed critique of the premises informing the Arezzo conference, the title of which is 'Metropolitan Social Space: Between the Risk of Ghettoisation and a New Enterprise Horizon' [progettista imprenditore]. Setting these premises within a discussion of Italy's changing place within the global economy, the crisis of welfare and the emergence of new forms of production, the author emphasises the thematic of social and political mediation which permeates the conference proposal. ************ 1) Leoncavallo - Press release on the *Corriere della Sera* article A response to a scurrilous article in a Milano newspaper of 25 August suggesting that the Leoncavallo social centre is a site for drug trafficking. 2) Leoncavallo - Press release on Riccione A statement of support for those in Riccione who physically defended themselves from the police when threatened with arrest. Today, the social centre notes, around 40% of people detained in Italian prisons are there on so-called 'drug-related' charges. 3) Brescia: Program of the Radio Onda d'Urto Festa A detailed account of the music, debates, films and food available at the festival of this 'self-managed and self-financed' radio station. 4) Parma: Solidaritay with the Taranto comrades The social centre XXII APRILE condemns the eviction of the CSOA Citta' Vekkia in the Southern city of Taranto, and calls for a demonstration on 10 September. ************ 1) Leoncavallo - fax to Giorgio Bocca and the editors of *La Repubblica* A sarcastic response to a piece that Bocca had written concerning 'A ghetto called Leoncavallo'. 2) Milano 27 August - BRILLIANT POLICE OPERATION AGAINST LEONCAVALLO On the carabinieri raid which netted some 'extra-comunitari' activists and tiny quantities of dope. 'Once again social questions become problems of public order...' 3) GABRIELLA IS FREE! The struggle continues!! After 18 months detention the charge of 'terrorism' against Gabriella Guarino has fallen apart, and she has been released from a Peruvian prison. ************ A number of satirical articles sending up the Milanese daily *Corriere della Sera*, following its campaign against the Leoncavallo social centre and the latter's opposition to drug laws. ************ In response to the authorities' decision to forbid Leoncavallo from demonstrating in front of the *Corriere della Sera*'s offices, this press release 'reconfirms' the social centre's original schedule, and invites all and sundry to three days of mobilisation against the existing legislation on drugs - 8-10 September at their Via Watteau premises. It also condemns the 'Chilean-style' police raids which have hit the local neighbourhood in recent times. ************ 1) TO ALL TELECOM WORKERS AND TO ALL UNION STRUCTURES The telecommunications section of the alternative union FLMU invites all those who oppose the 'shameful deal' just signed by the official unions to meet and organise a campaign of opposition. 2) TORINO BRAVO E BRAVA : THE CITY OF COLOURS In the face of the glitzy razzamatazz 'celebrating' the launch of FIAT's two new product lines, the CSOA Murazzi calls for a demonstration on 10 September by 'all those: the unemployed, young workers, part-timers and casuals' opposed to Agnelli's 'City of Colours'. 3) TOTALLY CONFUSED - OR JUST OUT-AND-OUT LIARS? More from the FLMU on the role of the official Telecom unions. 4) ROSANDRA CROSSING: 5 days of self-financing for Radio Onda Libera Program details for the festa organised by this Trieste free radio station. ************ Leaflet from the CSOA el paso (Torino) A flyer - rather different in tone to that issued by the CSOA Murazzi - expressing opposition to FIAT's media hype. Calling for self-management and the 'free association of individuals', it reminds us that there can be 'NO BOSSES WITHOUT SERVANTS'. ************ Italian COUNTERINFO, a summary of recent postings from the Cybernet and European Counter Network in Italy, is a cooperative venture between the xchange BBS (Melbourne, Australia) and the Padova node of the ECN. You can contact us at pmargin@xchange.apana.org.au or hobo@freenet.hut.fi ************