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From: kersplebedeb <info@kersplebedeb.com><br><br>
"Joelle Aubron Is Dead<br>
"This March 1st, 2006, Joelle left this horrible world.<br>
"Since her release from Bapaume prison in June 2004, she has devoted
herself to battling cancer and fighting for the liberation of hum
comrades Nathalie Menigon, Georges Cipriani, Jean-Marc Rouillan and Regis
Schleicher.<br>
"Tomorrow, she will be there with us, demonstrating against the
offices of the penitentiary administration to demand their liberation, as
intensely as she ever did. As intensely as her commitment for the social
liberation of the human majority, everywhere in the world.<br>
"Collectif Nlpf !"<br><br>
<br>
I just received the above from the Ne Laissons Pas Faire Collective,
which has been struggling for freedom for Action Directe’s political
prisoners. It is very sad news Aubron died at the age of only 46, after
dedicating her life to the struggle for a better world. Her commitment
moved her to join the communist guerilla organization Action Directe,
which was active in France in the 1980s.<br><br>
AD grew out of the French autonomist scene, drew heavy inspiration from
both the struggles of the Third World proletariat and the intellectual
legacy of the new communist currents of the 1960s and 70s. It carried out
a number of spectacular attacks, many of which were in cooperation with
Germany's Red Army Faction. Aubron was arrested in February 1987, along
with fellow Action Directe members Jean-Marc Rouillan and Natalie
Menignon. She was subsequently sentenced to life in prison for
participating in the assassination of General Rene Audran and Renault
president Georges Besse.<br><br>
On June 16th 2004, at the age of 44, Aubron was released from prison on
health grounds - she was suffering from lung cancer. (According to French
law, those suffering terminal illnesses can be released to die at home.)
“The liberation of my comrades is a battle still being waged,” she said,
as she left the prison.<br><br>
Yesterday Aubron died. She will be sorely missed.<br><br>
Nearly 2 000 people, including politicians from the left and Greens,
recently signed a petition calling with the release of the remaining
three Action Directe prisoners, who on Februrary 26th began their
twentieth year behind bars. For ten years they were held in severe
isolation, conditions calculated to break their spirit. As a result,
Nathalie Menignon now suffers from extreme depression, and is partially
hemiplegic following several cerebral vascular incidents.<br><br>
Below is an excerpt from Short Biography of Action Directe Prisoners,
written by Aubron in 1996:<br><br>
"I was born in 1959. My family came from the traditional French
bourgeoisie, but lived in a working class neighbourhood in Paris. I
learned quickly that social equality was just a word engraved over my
public school doorways.<br><br>
"The other even more important factor was the renewal of the
revolutionary movement that took place in the sixties. Its
anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism infused the
atmosphere of that period.<br><br>
"By the late seventies very radical levels of confrontation had
already been tried out and were still taking place, the Black Panther
Party in the United States, the guerilla movement in Latin America, the
Palestinian struggle… Closer to home, in Italy and Germany other
guerillas were hitting the system at the heart of its cities. While there
were many different struggles with specific demands, they all existed
within a common dynamic against the system. So I lived in squats, in
working class neighbourhoods in Paris that were facing real estate
development. There was the anti-nuclear demonstration in Malville in the
summer of 1977, where a demonstrater was was killed by a cop’s grenade.
In October, at the same time in France was getting ready to extradite the
lawyer Klaus Croissant to Germany, the RAF prisoners were executed at
Stammheim. I was not a member in any group, but at these times I was
going to demonstrations armed with molotov cocktails and took part in
minor actions (against Ecuador’s embassy after the bloody repression of
sugar workers in Guyagil; the truck that was rigged to look like it was
booby-trapped and left in front of the Minister of Justice following the
sentencing of revolutionary activists….) Revolutionary violence was
integrated into the everyday praxis of activists, guerilla attacks showed
us that we too would have to engage in armed struggle in our class
warfare, it was a period full of discussion about the armed experiment,
specifically the Italian situation.<br><br>
"To give a very short summary, one of the things we discussed was
whether or not it was necessary to have a political-military
organization. In 1980, even though the autonomist group that I was a part
of participated in AD actions and lent our logistical support, its
members were not members of Action Directe.<br><br>
"I was arrested with a comrade from AD in 1982 while leaving a place
where there were arms. I did not declare myself to be a member of AD. I
continued to think about things while in prison. It was a period marked
by the cowardice of the French extreme left in general and the inanity of
the French autonomist movement in particular. Imperialism advanced in all
its splendor: the Israeli intervention in Lebanon, Thatcher in the
Malvines, the French bombing of Beeka in Lebanon, Reagan’s attack on
Grenada, the mining of Nicaragua’s harbours… The supposedly left-wing
French government’s policies revealed the social-democrats’ submission to
the neoliberal line that was dominant around the world. At the same time
the former revolutionary movement was going to pieces. On the one hand
were those who would jump at any chance of acquiring power, on the other
those whose who did nothing but recite the old formulas that left the
proletariat just as defenseless against the attacks of the bourgeoisie. I
now saw not only the usefulness of armed struggle, but also the necessity
of the strategy of having a guerilla organization. Despite this, when I
was released from prison in 1984, at first I only engaged in legal
activities : support for the organization’s prisoners, book distribution,
newspaper. Even though I had decided to get back with AD I did not want
to go underground as soon as I got out of prison. It was almost a year
later, when the repression was intensifying, that I went
underground.<br><br>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
In 2002-2003, while still in prison, Aubron was interviewed by the
anarcho-punk webzine Future Noir (the entire interview was translated and
is available on the web at
<a href="http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/texts/aubron_1992.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/texts/aubron_1992.html</a>); she was
asked what she thought of activism today, and what she thought had
changed from the 19702 and 1980s when Action Directe and the RAF carried
out their attacks. While the entire interview is worth reading, his is
how she answered that one question:<br><br>
"When I look at activism over the past few years, it is from a very
particular point of view. My perspective basically consists of two
things.<br><br>
"First, the years in prison. My relationship with what is going on
today is necessarily very intellectual. I can’t see, or hardly, the
living contributions, how people actually come together in the different
situations and, along with that, the connections, the emotions… in short,
that collective subjectivity, an essential part of the struggle and of
life. I am in a certain sense out of touch, kept in an involuntary ivory
tower where what people are theorising is more important than what they
are doing. Given the way in which I lived out my own politics, it is not
a very comfortable place to evaluate things from.<br><br>
"Secondly, the “defeat” that we suffered. When I say “we”, I am
referring to far more than just those Action Directe activists who are
still in prison. In 1968 I turned nine years old, so I am not of the
generation of ’68. Nevertheless, I started from that revolutionary surge
“there”.<br><br>
"There were many different expressions of the strength of the desire
for liberation and emancipation in that surge. They were present
throughout the different experiences of men and women:<br><br>
"* The struggles, whether armed or not, in the three continents,
which confronted local dictators supported by the imperialist powers, or
else directly confronted the armed forces of the latter, and the
struggles of the oppressed in the very heart of those imperialist
powers.<br><br>
"* The struggle of women to act and think critically against all
those institutions where human beings are molded to serve capitalist
social relations and the reproduction of alienating submission…<br><br>
"By the end of the 1980s, this surge was “finished”. In quotation
marks though. It was a defeated at the hands of a bourgeois
counter-offensive that we had seen getting stronger and stronger since
the 1970s. In the long war between exploiters and exploited, a battle was
lost. Yet the undeniable historical break which is the cruel result of
this surge ending should not be confused with being finished once and for
all. It is simply a cycle of struggle which was finished.<br><br>
"The 1990s, especially the first half, were a nightmare, as we fled
from the naturally oppressive march of history. Our oppressors were in a
position to brag.<br><br>
"Today, that phase is behind us, and over the past years we see the
outlines of what we hope may be a new surge.<br><br>
"Within which there is of course what the media calls the
anti-globalization movement. At first it seemed to me to be monstrously
dominated by social-democratic assumptions. Nostalgia for a “social”
State, demands for “better redistribution of wealth”, which don’t really
question the foundations of the system. Indeed, in this way they limit
the hopes of life, pull them down inexorably into the rut of reformism,
all the more senseless given that the decay of this very system is
characterised, amongst other things, by a deep reactionary impulse (see
what I said about the ATTAC and other partisans of global citizenship).
Faced with this, the more radical expressions were put on the defensive,
people dusted off their prayerbooks (whether communist or anarchist) in
an attempt to to counter this falsified and falsifying view of reality.
This was a high point in sect-like behaviour and competition between
different brands in the marketplace of the protest spectacle. Over the
last little while, I have the impression that things have started to get
better. The opening of spaces for critical discussion and actions and all
sorts of interesting things. You’ve got to admit that reality really
helps us here. Especially since September 11th and the pretext that the
new “holy crusaders” made of it.<br><br>
"Already, in light of the series of events that have transpired over
the past months, it is difficult to continue to reject the analysis of
imperialist relations. Globalization is the name of the new form of
imperialism. In the same was that the means of accumulation changes
within an “eternal” capitalist mode of production, the forms of
imperialism change. On the one hand, a clearly visible pyramid with the
United States sitting on top; on the other hand, the utterly reactionary
nature of this relationship of forces where its pretentions of acting on
the world seem to be exhausted by the very spectacle of its
powerlessness. It is definitely a very dangerous situation. For at least
two reasons: the impressive attack power that imperialism has developed
and the temptation of miracle-solutions with their scapegoats and
heaven-sent politicians.<br><br>
"But despite myself, despite being well aware of these dangers and
what they mean for the different spaces where life and creativity exist,
I am not convinced that the desire for liberation and emancipation has
been destroyed. A while back I wrote a text about commitment where I
compared it to the old myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods
so that men would no longer be at the mercy of their blind and arbitrary
power. An insurrection where perseverance turned lost illusions into
power for the future. The goal of developing liberatory relations between
people is at the heart of the human adventure. Throughout the ages its
ideological, political and social aspects are expressed differently,
there are often mistakes made about how to realize it, but nevertheless
it is always reborn from its own ashes. It is intimately tied to life, to
its surging forth there where it was least expected.<br><br>
"I am thinking about really a lot of things that all have in common
the desire to change the situation and change it concretely. In a
maquiladora town close to Tijuana, faced with the desertion of the
so-called public authorities from this free trade zone, the women are
creating popular education initiatives, they set up as school with 300
places, and set up a university of knowledge and philosophy. Recently a
Civil Mission for the Protection of the Palestinian People succeeded,
through the presence of internationals, in allowing Palestinian workers
to fix the water-pumps in a camp, abandoned for 15 days and under fire
from Israeli snipers. A film-maker makes a film with street-children in
Daker after having set things up so that his project helps the kids in
the long term. I have chosen “small scale” examples, carried out in
situations where death is never far away. There are countless others. Day
after day, they deconstruct the destruction and the unfavourable balance
of power, even if they are not enough to reverse this balance.<br><br>
"There are more and more people resisting around the world. For
those of us who persist in fighting for the future, having experienced
defeat may be an advantage. We have lived through the exhaustion, the
death of an upsurge. Today, we are seeing and living the budding new life
behind that phase. These situations where the invisible recreate the
consciousness of being the only creative multitude, they reinvent our
ability to function while asking questions.<br><br>
"From various things I have been reading, I am seeing things coming
together. It seems that anticapitalist critiques and actions are once
again taking place. After having thrown out lots of babies with their
bathwater, notably in the way of concepts and grasping reality in a way
that serves the oppressed, we are leaving our defensive positions. Calls
that “we want it all and we want it now” can once again be heard. In any
case, nothing else is possible. What I am saying here is very vague but
there are so many realities where once again we can see global
understandings of struggles, resistance and hope. In any case, it is
going better than it was in the mid-nineties."<br>
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