A few Montreal-area anarchists have just produced a 28-page pamphlet titled "An Anarchist Attack on Global Governance". The pamphlet includes sections on "The G8 and Global Governance", "The War on Terrorism" and "Partnership with Africa" (the table of contents is included below).

A PDF version of the pamphlet, with all graphics, is available on the Take the Capital! website at: take the capital

If you'd like three originals of the pamphlet to photocopy and distribute locally, please send a $5 dollar bill (US or Canadian) with return address to:

la CLAC

2035, boulevard St-Laurent

2nd floor

Montreal, Quebec

H2X 2T3 CANADUH

The money pays for postage and photocopying expenses.

An e-mail text version of the pamphlet will be available soon. Just write to monteal@tao

Copies of the pamphlet will also be available during the anti-G8 Caravan and Roadshow between April 2-17. The Caravan schedule is available at:
roadshow

Le pamphlet sera traduit vers francais bientot!

Included below is the table of contents, introduction, call to action and links from the pamphlet. Enjoy ...

"May your bricks -- and books -- have wings."

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AN ANARCHIST ATTACK ON GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Montreal, April 2002

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction ... 2

The G8 ... 3

The G8 and Global Governance ... 4-7

Economic Growth, Free Trade and NAFTA ... 8-11

The War on Terrorism ... 12-13

State Terrorism ... 14-15

Sustaining the Debt ... 16-18

Partnership with Africa ... 19-23

Call to Action ... 24-25

Sources ... 26-27

INTRODUCTION:

In July, 2002, the G8 will retreat to the hills of Kananaskis, Alberta for its annual gathering. Ensconced in a tiny, well-guarded resort town, the "leaders" of 8 states and their entourages will hide from the protesters who will fill the streets of Calgary and Ottawa and the highways to Kananaskis, from memories of the tear-gas smells of Quebec City and rubber
bullets of Seattle, from the lingering blood and death stench of protests in Genoa, Argentina and Papua New Guinea, as far away as possible from the cries of people rising up against the tyranny of global capital and the logic of local and transnational exploitation and pillage in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chiapas, the Narmada Valley, South Africa, Brazil and around the world, sheltered from the unsettlingly hopeful whispers and rustling of people everywhere who have yet to raise their voices and fists
against crushing poverty and obliterating racism...

... Millions of dollars will be spent to protect a meeting that, when all is said and done, will amount to a two-day photo op and garden party. Press releases will be sent out at timely intervals, announcing commitments made and consensus achieved with regard to the three stated Summit priorities: fighting terrorism, strengthening global economic growth and building a new partnership with Africa. All three priorities will be addressed in terms of a "global governance" mandate. Talk of partnerships and poverty reduction will be used to justify the tenets of
neo-liberal capitalist dogma: privatization, liberalization,
flexibilization. Warm words about aiding Africa will distract from the most grotesque and racist forms of "collateral damage" in the US-led war on terror. Whatever consensus is articulated in Kananaskis will not be new. Its terms will have been dictated in advance by the usual suspects: the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, transnational corporations, and by an elite capitalist class in countries around the world who profit from the global neocolonial pillage. The wealthy G8 states will agree to enforce
these dictates, as they have always done, to protect the interests of their ruling classes. They will subsequently coerce less wealthy and less powerful states to do the same...

...PR sham or not, the retreat to Kananaskis provides us, the people of the world hungry and thirsty for justice, with an apt moment to challenge the state leaders who have been appointed global governors by a global elite and their institutions of global finance. In the streets and in neighborhood assemblies, on squatted land and in back alleyways, in
community kitchens and in detention centers, in each place where people struggle to survive, resistance from below is growing and multiplying. It is everywhere, forcing cracks in the smooth and deceptive veneer of global governance.

We write this pamphlet as part of the resistance. It is an attack on global governance...

CALL TO ACTION:

In spite of all the rhetoric, global governance does not provide a
framework for overcoming the vast inequalities that stratify the globe along lines of race and class and gender. And the G8 Summits are not forums in which poverty reduction can be coordinated. When the heads of state of the wealthiest and most powerful countries meet together, they work out how to further their own agenda and that of the capitalists who keep them in power. When the give loans and when they give debt relief,
when they send troops and when they send aid, when they talk about development and when they talk about poverty reduction, it is all guided by the control and profit logic of class war. Their policies and PR all reflect the basic and underlying strategies of capitalism and government: control people, and divide them, so that you can profit off them. Alongside the plainly stated economic and military ideology of capitalism, an ideology of so-called alternatives develops.



Some people argue for a kinder, gentler capitalism. They say that we should strengthen government, national and international, in order to counterbalance capitalism's most oppressive manifestations and predatory tendencies. This line of thinking still falls well within the logic of capitalism that drives global governance and poses no fundamental threat to either. The rulers of government and business appropriate the language of reform and continue the plunder. They talk about poverty reduction while imposing poverty. They appeal to human rights to justify mass murder. They talk about partnerships while perpetuating global apartheid. The rhetoric of global governance becomes the fuzzy mittens on the hidden hand of the market and the iron fist of the military.

Global governance should not be negotiated, it should be attacked.



The attack is already underway. The worldwide struggle against
capitalism is led by movements in the global South where the poverty and the repression are more concentrated. In Argentina, for example, a country that has been in the grip of neo-liberal economic policies for decades, a strong movement of unemployed workers, called the Piqueteros, has developed. Organized in neighborhood assemblies, they block major highways in order to paralyze commerce and press demands on a corrupt and complicit government. They form the backbone of the protest movement that forced the president out of office in December 2001. [1][2] In Brazil, members of the MST, which comprises hundreds of thousands of landless peasants, occupy
land and grow crops to survive, while setting up alternative health and education centers. [3]

Inspired by these and other struggles, anarchists are organizing as part of the grassroots resistance within the global capitalist empire.

[Anarchy? The word "anarchy" comes from Greek and means "no rulers." As a political philosophy, anarchism is based on the belief that organization does not require hierarchy. Society can and should be organized based on mutual aid and free association, without police, politicians and bosses; domination and exploitation should be attacked wherever they exist. Only for those who mistakenly believe that organization is necessarily tied to hierarchy, does "anarchy" mean "chaos".]


We reject the logic of profit, and instead we are organizing toward an economy that produces to fulfill everyones needs. We are trying to create a classless society, without private property, in which economic decisions are made democratically by communities. We are imperfectly enacting decentralized forms of direct democracy in which collective
decisions are directly in the hands of the people and communities who are affected by them. We are pushing the imaginary boundaries that divide people and arguing for a true internationalism that refuses borders that impede the free movement and full dignity of human beings. We hope to create a society without government, based on liberty, equality and
international solidarity.



But we realize that those who profit off of misery and exploitation will do everything in their power to maintain the world as it is, and only through a prolonged struggle on many different fronts will we move toward such a society. Instead of easy answers, we offer a call to action, solidarity and struggle.


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This pamphlet is the product of discussions and debates with a great many people, in Montreal and elsewhere, and we'd like to thank all of you. If you find this pamphlet useful, think of it as one articulation of a collective analysis that we are all building together in the places where we live, work and resist. (If you hate it, well then, we should argue.)



Thanks also to everyone who sent us useful resources and who
proof-read and translated, to the members of the CLAC, to the people who did our shit-work so we'd have time to write, to the roommates and friends who fed us while we worked, to the TAO workers who kept our email flying smoothly, and to the people who told us to quit being such perfectionists.



Finally, gratitude to all who struggle for justice. May your
bricks -- and your books -- have wings.



Love & Rage

to contact us write to: montreal@tao

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LINKS:

Take the Capital!
take the capital

Anti-Capitalist Kananaskis Club
ack struggle

G8 Activist
g8.activist

Ewok Council
ewok council

Anti-Capitalist Convergence, Montreal (CLAC)
clac

Peoples' Global Action
pga

TAO
tao

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TAKE THE CAPITAL!

Ottawa Actions Against the G8

June 26-27, 2002

Web: take the capital

Email: take the capital

613-788-3310 (messages only)

on parle francais.

se habla espanol.