THIS LEAP into cyberspace by a group of anarchists on a little island in the Mediterranean poses problems that are problematic and irresolvable. Beyond these electronic pages exists a reality in flux that cannot be conveyed through the flat imagery of a web site, better suited to statements of fact and news (including the alternative versions). We happily leave such tasks to the experts, our quest being elsewhere in the other of the passion for freedom and repulsion for all forms of domination and domestication. Therein lies the contradiction: we are about to use means that are against everything we desire, hoping that we will succeed in temporarily turning them to our ends.

As anarchists we are against all forms of power and authority, including those which claim to be in the best interests of society. This means we are also against the instruments used to exercise this power, whether they are weapons of mass destruction, religion, government, multinationals, banks, or the apparently ‘friendly’ electronic technologies of the present time. Although at first sight the latter open up new horizons for the individual, in the long run they represent a greater threat to freedom than all the others (which they can no longer be seen as something separate from). And if being against means anything at all, it means having a destructive project in theory and in action, starting from now.

Our anarchist projectuality began from individual rebellion against oppression and the apathy and resignation surrounding us. Through the creation of the group, an experiment that took life nearly two years ago, individualities combine and collude, pushing each other to harness their dreams into concrete forms of struggle, thereby opening up insurrectional possibilities in a social terrain branded with some of the worst manifestations of power.

This island, of a population of only 600,000, sees two peoples divided by barbed wire, tanks and soldiers. It also houses a number of British military bases, a reminder of their colonial past but projected into the future of dominion and war with their high tech listening technology and a whole arsenal of sophisticated weaponry which has already been put to use in the Gulf war Afghanistan and exYugoslavia.

In the south, under the superficial glaze of wellbeing lent by tacky consumerism and almost constant sunshine festers a sense of futility and loss of self among many young people. Tales by their fathers, reinforced by school and church push many to identify with national flags and harbour patriotic ‘ideals’ fuelled by an irrational hatred of ‘communists’ ‘foreigners’ and their Turkish counterparts. An important part of our task is to be an active presence in this suppressed social clash, using anarchist means of all times and developing methods suited to the present in order to open up contradictions and put questions in the place of sullen certainty.

In just one year the southern part of the island has seen hundreds of anarchist posters, fliers, leaflets, graffiti, bookstalls, actions, participation in demonstrations and much more, thus attacking the armed peace that penetrates and mollifies this society. Needless to say the forces of repression have not remained indifferent. One comrade, George Karakasian is serving a seven months’ sentence for ‘assaulting a police officer’ during a demonstration outside the Israeli ambassador’s home, another, Sotiris Marangos, was tried on similar charges. Yet another was seriously beaten while in police custody following a flyposting expedition.

The reality of Cyprus with all its particularities also contains, at least in embryo, all the contradictions of modern States as a whole. Our struggle can therefore be understood by comrades and rebels everywhere. It is to them in the first place that we are addressing these few words of presentation: not idle chatter, but a real attempt to widen and intensify the horizontal attack already in course, using all the simple means we have at our disposal.

In this perspective nothing can take the place of direct contact and exchange of knowledge with all those who are actively struggling against domination and oppression in an anti-authoritarian perspective free from the interference of political parties, unions, or any other of the so-called ‘allies’ of the exploited.

Smash the heads of the authoritarians!