10-18-2008, 11:01 PM
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Dubbed Queen Bee by Annie
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Userid: 26 Location: A holler in Tennessee
Posts: 5,763
Rep Power: 8
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Enric Duran, the Good Thief?
This is an interesting form of civil disobedience.  He has done nothing worse than then bankers are doing. 
Quote:
Enric Duran, the Good Thief?
By PETER GELDERLOOS
On 17 September, Enric Duran, an anticapitalist living in Barcelona, went into hiding. He had just admitted to essentially robbing 492,000 euros from 39 different banks, and then published this admission in a free newspaper that was distributed in the quantity of 200,000 copies that very morning.
Enric accumulated this sum through fraudulent bank loans which he announced he will not repay. To add insult to injury, he presented his actions as a searing criticism of the banking industry...
“I robbed 492,000 euros from those who rob so much more,” he claimed in the newspaper, Crisi. The one-time publication was paid for with some of those stolen euros, and the rest of the money went to fund various social projects that are creating alternatives to capitalism. True to the long-neglected tradition of Robin Hood, Enric only kept a few thousand for himself, to aid his escape.
Perhaps even more than his robbery, the newspaper, Crisi, was an attack against the rich. Crisi was filled with articles about the socially irresponsible means with which banks create the majority of the wealth in our society, about the economic crisis, the energy crisis, world hunger, global investments in war and the arms trade, gentrification, a history of the capitalist media, and bios and pictures of the politicians and corporate figures personally responsible for all of the above. The final major article—running six full pages with photos—discussed social alternatives to capitalism. Using real life examples from Catalunya itself, the article presented a coherent view of horizontal social movements creating the means for a sustainable, cooperative society through struggle against the authorities and the proliferation of projects like community gardens, free housing initiatives, bicycle projects, workers' coops, neighborhood assemblies, barter networks, and so on. These changes are possible and necessary “here and now,” according to the publication.
As Barcelona's red and black labor union, the CNT, declared in a recent pamphlet, the “Crisis” is an invention, a story to convince the working poor to accept coming hardships. And it is an excuse to funnel more social wealth to the superwealthy. In the US, the government is using the crisis to funnel $700 billion of our money to the banks—a public robbery of staggering dimensions that will never go punished. Over here, the European Union is using it to justify lengthening the work week to 65 hours. At the end of the crisis, the rich will be richer, and the rest of us will have to pick ourselves up all over again.
Unless we do something about it. World leaders are calling for a new Bretton Woods. We would do well to have a new May Day. In everyday life capitalism is intolerable, and during an economic crisis it will become even worse. But we don't have to accept the crisis. There is another path waiting for us—community gardens that need planting, rent strikes that need organizing, solar panels and localized electrical networks that need installing, and banks that need robbing. The opportunities before us are nothing short of exciting.
Peter Gelderloos: Enric Duran, the Good Thief?
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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson
Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time." 
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