[spectre] Committees to support the Tarnac 9 + Petition + Giorgio Agamben tribute (for recall)

Wed Dec 3 01:08:06 CET 2008

FREE JULIEN AND YLDUNE!
FREE THE TARNAC 9 ALL!
LAST INFO from FRANCE (2008-12-02)

At the end of the lawsuit taking place this afternoon in Paris: 3 from 
the 5 staying imprisoned were liberated. But Julien Coupat and his girl 
friend named Yldune stay both imprisoned. Please mobilize from your 
place to help them!

L.

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Recalling the article from Agamben on November 19:
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article17806

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 consc ience 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
http://www.liberation.fr/societe/0101267186-terrorisme-ou-tragi-comedie

Translation into English thanks semiotext(e) forward to:
http://farkyaralari.blogspot.com/2008/11/free-tarnac-9-statement-of-support-by.html

Translated source:
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/terrorism-or-tragicomedy/

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SUPPORT from The USA

TOTAL SOLIDARITY WITH THE ACCUSED!

Information, updates, and how you can help:
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/

Le Monde article on the Tarnac 9 (english translation):
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/le-monde-article-on-the-tarnac-nine/

Le Monde petition: Free the Tarnac 9!
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/free-the-tarnac9/

Letter from the parents of the Tarnac 9 (english translation):
http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/letter-from-the-parents/

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The beginning of a DEBATE on how to do the best (Hey Michael Hardt! 
Where are U?)

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081130161319467

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Other foreign committees to support (ready or in construction)

Moscow
http://komitet11noyabrya.wordpress.com/

Brussels (they have met some problem from the police near the bookstore 
where they met, I hope that it is solved)
soutien11novembre [@] bruxxel.org
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=19

Geneva
gesoutien11.11 [@] gmail.com
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26&Itemid=21

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FR : Soutien aux inculpés du 11 novembre
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/

Tarnac
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=2&Itemid=15

Tulle
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=8&Itemid=11

Rouen
http://www.comite-visible.info/

Limoges
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21&Itemid=16

Nancy
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=10

Strasbourg
claudmey [@] estvideo.fr
http://www.soutien11novembre.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=23

La pétition :
http://www.mesopinions.com/petition-de-soutien-aux-inculpes-du-11-Novembre-petition-petitions-81da97ce3744e2e84a145009aadbc0f9.html

Les personnalité signataires publiées dans Le Monde le 27 novembre :
sous le titre : NON À L'ORDRE NOUVEAU !
http://www.lemonde.fr/opinions/article/2008/11/27/non-a-l-ordre-nouveau_1123915_3232.html

Giorgio Agamben, philosophe ;
Alain Badiou, philosophe ;
Jean-Christophe Bailly, écrivain ;
Anne-Sophie Barthez, professeur de droit ;
Miguel Benasayag, écrivain ;
Daniel Bensaïd ;
Luc Boltanski, sociologue ;
Judith Butler ;
Pascale Casanova, critique littéraire ;
François Cusset ;
Christine Delphy ;
Isabelle Garo ;
François Gèze, éd. La Découverte ;
Jean-Marie Gleize, professeur de littérature ;
Eric Hazan, éd. La Fabrique ;
Rémy Hernu, professeur de droit ;
Hugues Jallon ;
Stathis Kouvelakis ;
Nicolas Klotz, réalisateur ;
Frédéric Lordon, économiste ;
Jean-Luc Nancy ;
Bernard Noël, poète ;
Dominique Noguez, écrivain ;
Yves Pagès, éd. Verticales ;
Karine Parrot ;
Jacques Rancière ;
Jean-Jacques Rosat ;
Carlo Santulli ;
Rémy Toulouse, éd. Les Prairies ordinaires ;
Enzo Traverso, historien ;
Jérôme Vidal, éd. Amsterdam ;
Slavoj Zizek, philosophe.

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A review in EN bellaciao where you can debate too
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article17862

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 From my self part: I make many thanks to the US Committee that makes so 
much work for all the good English translations and the relevant review 
of supporting!

 >>> http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/

L.

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To sign the petition but only French let know the tranlation from the 
site Tarnac 9.wordpress

A recent operation by the French police, intensively covered by the 
media, ended in the arrest and indictment of nine people under 
anti-terrorist laws. The nature of this operation has already undergone 
a change: after the revelation of inconsistency in the accusation of 
sabotaging French railway lines, the affair took a manifestly political 
turn. According to the public prosecutor: “the goal of their activity is 
to attack the institutions of the state, and to upset by violence – I 
emphasize violence, and not contestation which is permitted – the 
political, economic and social order.”

The target of this operation is larger than the group of people who have 
been charged, against which there exists no material evidence, nor 
anything precise which they can be accused of. The charge of “criminal 
association for the purposes of terrorist activity” is exceptionally 
vague: what exactly is an association, and how are we to understand the 
reference to “purposes” other than as a criminalization of intention? As 
for the qualification “terrorist”, the definition in force is so broad 
that it could apply to practically anything – and to possess such and 
such a text or to go to such and such demonstration is enough to fall 
under this exceptional legislation.

The individuals who have been charged were not chosen at random, but 
because they lead a political existence. They have participated in 
demonstrations, most recently against the less than honorable European 
summit on immigration in Vichy. They think, they read books, they live 
together in a remote village. There has been talk of clandestinity: they 
have opened a grocery store, everyone knows them in the region, where a 
support committee has been organized against their arrest. What they are 
looking for is neither anonymity nor refuge, but rather the contrary: 
another relation than the anonymous one of the metropolis. In the end, 
the absence of evidence itself becomes evidence against them: the 
refusal of those who have been charged to give evidence against one 
another during their detention is presented as a new indication of their 
terrorism

In reality, this whole affair is a test for us. To what degree are we 
going to accept that anti-terrorism permits anyone to be arrested at any 
time? Where are we to place the limit of freedom of expression? Are 
emergency laws adopted under the pretext of terrorism and security 
compatible with democracy in the long term? Are we ready to let the 
police and the courts negotiate this turn to a new order? It is for us 
to respond to these questions, and first by demanding the end of these 
investigations and the immediate release of these nine people whose 
indictment is meant as an example for us all.

Giorgio Agamben, philosopher ;
Alain Badiou, philosopher ;
Jean-Christophe Bailly, writer ;
Anne-Sophie Barthez, professor of law ;
Miguel Benasayag, writer ;
Daniel Bensaïd, philosopher ;
Luc Boltanski, sociologist ;
Judith Butler, philosopher ;
Pascale Casanova, literary critic ;
François Cusset, philosopher ;
Christine Delphy, sociologist ;
Isabelle Garo, philosopher ;
François Gèze, La Découverte publishers ;
Jean-Marie Gleize, professor of literature ;
Eric Hazan, La Fabrique publishers ;
Rémy Hernu, professor of law ;
Hugues Jallon, La Découverte publishers ;
Stathis Kouvelakis, philosopher ;
Nicolas Klotz, film director ;
Frédéric Lordon, economist ;
Jean-Luc Nancy, philosopher ;
Bernard Noël, poet ;
Dominique Noguez, writer ;
Yves Pagès, Verticales publishers ;
Karine Parrot, professor of law ;
Jacques Rancière, philosopher ;
Jean-Jacques Rosat, philosopher ;
Carlo Santulli, professor of law ;
Rémy Toulouse, Les Prairies ordinaires publishers ;
Enzo Traverso, historian ;
Jérôme Vidal, Amsterdam publishers ;
Slavoj Zizek, philosopher.

To add your name to the petition go to this site (in french).
http://www.mesopinions.com/petition-de-soutien-aux-inculpes-du-11-Novembre-petition-petitions-81da97ce3744e2e84a145009aadbc0f9.html

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http://www.mesopinions.com/petition-de-soutien-aux-inculpes-du-11-Novembre-petition-petitions-81da97ce3744e2e84a145009aadbc0f9.html#signer-petition

(I translate the menu which appears @ this link by the way you can 
understand how to write in it):
Nom -Last name
Prénom -First name
Adresse -Residential address (number and street)
Code postal -Zip code
ville -City
Profession -Profession (Job)
E-mail -Email
Commentaire -Comments (you can write a comment in your language)

after having sent the request please wait your email then click on the 
link in it to confirm your signature

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+++++++++
L.