To the correspondents 

Times of wars comes out of the need to put in touch various experiences of struggle against deportations and their world. Deportations are not only a part of the hideous machinery of repression; they are also the mirrors of the reality we live in. If millions of women and men wander everywhere in the planet searching for more endurable living conditions, as they are pushed in doing so by war, poverty or by the everyday disasters brought about by industrial production; if they are welcome by police, concentration camps, deportation, or the death off our shores - this means that we are all foreigners in this world. If a sense of uprooting is spreading in every aspect of social life, if entire masses of poor people have become useless to their bosses, left to rot in the reservations of the trade paradises or committed to the humanitarian organisations racket, then war is everywhere and we are all involved in it. A society which cannot attack the reasons of such a radical weariness can only create false enemies and make fear a widespread feeling. In the language of propaganda, the immigrant is a ‘terrorist’ or a friend of ‘terrorists’. But is not it the same for the non-institutionalised unionist, the anarchist, the communist or the angry tram driver?  What counts in this total mobilisation ‘against the terrorists’ is that the everyday terrorism of the States and the economy keeps on going.  Whoever disturbs it must be deported or imprisoned, in a way or another.

This bulletin will consider as a main point to be attacked the concentration camps for immigrants  -those that the bureaucracy of euphemism call ‘temporary stay and assistance centres’ and everything that makes them exist and work. We simply find it disgusting that human beings are locked up only because they do not have the right papers. We know that, if this particular infamy is the product of a general infamy, the responsibilities are well concrete and specific and we do not intend to turn a blind eye to them. We do not want concentration camps to be more human, more colourful and more respectful of rights and laws. We want them to be razed to the ground, and that’s that.

Through the pages of this bulletin, we will try to give voice to the ideas and practices of this hostility without mediation, in a perspective that refuses any institutional logic and that brings into question the concentration camps as well as the world which generates them. We will give all the possible documentation about the machinery of deportations -its structures, its managers and its collaborators- so as to make clear that it can be defeated. We will also try to understand how social control over everybody is progressing, also thanks to the new technologies.

Considering the agile format of Times of wars, the texts will be short and deeper analysis will be destined to other kind of contexts. We invite everybody who is interested to send us news, information and considerations, even through simple cuttings. The bulletin, which is supposed to be issued at least four times per years, will try to pay attention to what happens on an international level and, as far as possible, to the experiences of the past.

What do we intend therefore for correspondence? Correspondences in times of war are something different from piling up pieces of information in a meticulous way, indulging in analysis that explain everything, describing the merciless actions, be it open or hidden, of the enemy. It is also something different from listing the hundreds of forms of resistance. It means on the contrary to get aware of the way the machinery works with the aim to block it. It means to bring the various forms of social insubordination out of the social, historical and geographical isolation they are plunged in, so as to catch their common background and aspects. It means to put into relation the different ways of living this present of war and to rebel against its camps, expression of misery and containers of the storm of rebellion.

A correspondence cannot therefore be the product of a political party or group. The individuals who take part into Times of wars simply consider themselves as a part of the correspondence, its ideas and practices. The bulletin might become a link between various realities in struggle, but it is no this yet. For the moment, the question is to take into account this real sense of uneasiness and give voice to its particular and general reasons, so as to bring knowledge, exchange and action.