3 ms·
For anyone thinking this is stupid, it's actually a pointer to a very important change in the power structure of the world: "Occupation of the Kasbah in Tunis
by nsns 11y ago
For anyone thinking this is stupid, it's actually a pointer to a very important change in the power structure of the world:
"Occupation of the Kasbah in Tunis and of the Syntagma Square in Athens, siege of Westminster in London during the student movement of 2011, encirclement of the parliament in Madrid on September 25, 2012 or in Barcelona on June 15, 2011, riots all around the Chamber of Deputies in Rome on December 14, 2010, attempt on October 15, 2011 in Lisbon to invade the Assembleia da Republica, burning of the Bosnian
presidential residence in February of 2014: the places of institutional power exert a magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But when the insurgents manage to penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters of institutions, as in Ukraine, in Libya or in Wisconsin, it’s only to discover empty places, that is, empty of power, and furnished without any taste. It’s not to prevent the 'people' from 'taking power' that they are so
fiercely kept from invading such places, but to prevent them from realizing that power no longer resides in the institutions. There are only deserted temples there, decommissioned fortresses, nothing but stage sets—real traps for revolutionaries. The popular impulse to rush onto the stage to find out what is happening in the wings is bound to be disappointed. If they got inside, even the most fervent conspiracy freaks would find nothing arcane there; the truth is that power is simply no longer that theatrical reality to which modernity accustomed us.
[...]
But what is it that appears on euro banknotes? Not human figures, not emblems of a personal sovereignty, but bridges,
aqueducts, arches—pieces of impersonal architecture, cold as stone. As to the truth about the present nature of power, every European has a printed exemplar of it in their pocket. It can be stated in this way: power now resides in the infrastructures of this world. Contemporary power is of an architectural and impersonal, and not a representative or personal, nature."
(Invisible Committee, To Our Friends, Semiotext(e) 2014)
- icebraining 11y agoThe fact that they aren't changing the law is a sign? By the way, for what it's worth, there was no attempt in 2001 to invade the Assembleia in Lisbon. There was a large demonstration, during which a commotion forced the police line to back up a little, nothing more. Curiously, the time where there really was a deliberate (and successful) attempt to break the police barrier (though they stopped before entering the Assembleia) was during a demonstration by other cops.