Re-born.

          A few weeks ago I posted an article about the Dutch police closing down several anarchist sites by seizing their server. One of the sites closed down was "Act For Freedom Now", you'll be delighted to hear that the site is up and running with a brighter cleaner look. 325 was another site closed down, but we should not point the finger at the Dutch authorities alone, these operations of stifling and trying to silence any voices that dare to speak up against the present economic system of capitalism with all its attendant miseries and corruptions, are done with international co-operation. We see it in Greece, France, Germany, America anywhere where the state reigns, authority will be brutal to any opposition to its power and privileges. At the moment Myanmar is probably the most open scene of state savagery and repression.
        The following statement is from 325, one of the sites the Dutch police, with the approval of other states, tried to silence. 

 

 Statement on the Repressive Attack upon International Counter-Information

         On 29.03.21 the Dutch police raided the data center that holds the nostate.net server, seizing the server itself as the part of a criminal investigation into 'terrorism'. Nostate.net is a collective that provided a platform for international movement websites from prisoner solidarity groups, multiple campaign collectives, anti-summit pages and international counter-information. Significant sites that used nostate.net as a platform that have been targeted by this repressive attack by the Dutch police are Anarchist Black Cross Berlin, Montreal Counter-Info, Northshore Counter-Info, Act For Freedom Now! (now re-activated on noblogs.org https://actforfree.noblogs.org/) and 325.
         We as a collective are aware that this was not just an attack by the Dutch police, but was done in coordination with the Counter Terrorism Unit of the United Kingdom in connection with their recent repressive attacks upon the anarchist circles in this country. Not only have they been threatening ourselves, but recently threatened nostate.net unless they shut down our site. Along with this they demanded information be given to them of the identity of anyone involved in 325. The extent that the authorities will go to attack us and anyone they suspect of aiding us is of no surprise to us, the examples through history of state forces repressing anyone who dares to stand and fight them are numerous.

 Read the full article HERE:

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Pandemic.

         You can call this pandemic what you will, hoax, grand conspiracy, over exaggerated bad flu or whatever. However, what we can all agree on is the the state/corporate system has taken full advantage of the situation. Massive increase in surveillance, greater state control over our activities and movements, curtailing large groups from meeting up, and creating a general submissiveness among the general public, while we all wait for our next instructions, all for our own good of course. Meanwhile the corporate greed machine has been getting the government to pay billions of pounds into it already stuffed coffers, money that we, the tax payer, will be forced to pay back. Then there has been their shedding of labour switching everything to online, and slashing at working conditions, while creating a large pool of unemployment, which in turn will keep wages down. 

       For those who struggle for freedom and justice in this unjust system, where should our focus be. I suppose some things will always hold good, organise mutual aid programs in you community open up discussion groups in your workplace and communities, but then there is the direct action to try and undermine, short-circuit and circumvent the system, and that I suppose is where individual and group choice comes into the affair. 

 

A Pandemic

 
C onfined to barracks no end in sight
O rdinary socialising now forbidden
R eality that doesn’t seem quite right
O pen house all invites hidden
N o hugs, no squeezes, no gentle kiss
A ny close contact, tinged with fear
V oices received through social media
I nvisible enemy prowling near
R epressive laws come with doubt
U ndying desire to be out and about
S ocial contact now told to disappear

The following from 325:

       As we’ve seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, the State takes advantage of the situation with (offline and online) monitoring, controlled by police and also through technological devices, for example CCTV, smart phones, etc. Their reasons for this situation are, as we know very well, is in the name of public safety, which is an illusion repeated over and over.
       We are faced with a situation that is uncertain, we do not know when the pandemic will end and at the same time the State is intensifying its control technology, on which the use is augmented and enhanced, CCTV for example. At the start of the pandemic we found that surveillance of urban space with CCTV increased and active police-army patrols as well. This situation makes the resistance movement decrease, we are “required” to stay put, to isolate oneself. But is this any logical reason not to follow up with the rebels on the streets? We are sure and our answer is no.
      We refuse to be passive in the midst of the control and seizure of living space by the State, government and police. However, due to this pandemic and the situation of contamination, we must seek a gap – without meaning to be arrogant – and to simultaneously maintain the health of oneself and with shared affinity and continue the rebellion (albeit minimal and inadequate). We believe it can be done. Because of this attitude, on November 13 on one of the roads of Pontianak city, we sabotaged the CCTV and take responsible for this action.
      And lastly, we are in solidarity with fellow Italian anarchists in Operation Scripta Manent, Panico, Prometo, Ritrovo, Lince, Renata, Bialystok, Scintilla, who were repressed by the public prosecutor and Brenner Court. And for fellow Belarusian anarchists, and to Monica and Francisco, also to Gabriel Pombo, also to Tanggerang and Makassar fellow anarchists, and for all imprisoned anarchists all over the world. Our attacks are dedicated to you, without terms and conditions.
Fight Control Technology!
Fight the Prison and For the Release of All Prisoners!
Long live anarchy, long live the insurrection!

Maverick Cell – Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI)

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Dialogues.

 

       A publication that might prick your thoughts on how do we turn this exploitative economic system that benefits a privileged few, spawns poverty, division, inequality, repression and wars, into a society that sees to the needs of all our people, in a co-operative, fair, just and equitable manner. The dialogue has been going on for centuries, but sooner or later we will have to make up our minds on how to free ourselves from this profit gorging nightmare. Time for us and the ecological system that supports us, and all life on this planet, is fast running out. 

The following from 325:

         PDF: ‘Incendiary Dialogues: For the Propagation of Anarchic Sedition’ (Black International Editions)
Printed copies coming soon…
         We present a new book by Black International Editions, an internationalist project of anarchic diffusion that, from an informal and seditious anarcho-insurrectional intent, resurfaces in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English, with a new title: “Incendiary Dialogues: For the Propagation of Anarchic Sedition”. The title is based on a dialogue on the course of the anarchic war between comrades Alfredo Cóspito, Gustavo Rodríguez and Gabriel Pombo da Silva.
        We consciously decided to launch this booklet on May 22, in timely celebration of Chaos Day, remembering anarchist comrade Mauricio Morales, who, on a day like today in 2009 left this life fighting against Power when the bomb he was carrying in his backpack exploded prematurely, detonating a few meters away from the Gendarmerie School in Chile.
        We dedicate this book to all our comrades in prison around the world, with a special dedication to our comrade Alfredo Cóspito, imprisoned in Italy, and to our beloved Gabriel Pombo Da Silva, who was arrested in Portugal and extradited to Spain at the time this book was published. We send all our strength to comrade Gabriel in the face of this new revenge by the authorities for his eternal irreducible struggle.
       This book will have printed versions that will circulate in affinity spaces, among comrades and diverse anarchic projects around the world. We invite you to actively support its diffusion by sharing its digital version, printing copies and/or making presentations and launches wherever there is a willingness to do the impossible in order to spread chaos and extend anarchic warfare.

Editorial collaborators of Black International Editions. 

EN | Incendiary Dialogues: For the Propagation of Anarchic Sedition
ES | Diálogos Incendiarios
PT | Diálogos Incendiarios
IT | Dialoghi incendiari

 

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The State.

         In state after state the repression goes on, according to their philosophy of total control, dissent must be quashed. Sometimes it is an individual that they attempt to silence, other times it groups, some go unnoticed others get some publicity. If it is mainstream media publicity, the chances are that the theme will be that they are terrorists, looters or just violent thugs, demonise the dissenters is the name of the game. Our publicity should be to show them for what they are, individuals and groups struggling to bring an end to this regime of exploitation and total control, those necessary tools for the capitalist economic system to function.

        The case below is from Italy, but pick your state, and you'll find the repression, methods vary, but the aim is always the same, a subservient population, eliminate those who would dare to resist state authority. Solidarity is the weapon that can free us from the yoke of capitalism and the shackles of the state.

This from 325:

SOLIDARITY MOBILIZATION 9th-24th NOVEMBER
      This autumn several prosecutions, which involve hundreds of anarchists, will take place in Italy. In these investigations public prosecutors and judges want to put the anarchist ideal under trial. The attempts to reduce different tensions and practices in various legal schemes, i.e. the hateful and pathetic division between “good” and “bad” anarchism, aim to repress those who fight, making them face decades of imprisonment.
       In a period in which the imposed living conditions are increasingly harsh, it is essential to fight: to respond to the violence of the State, to the regime of oppression that tries to impose, attempting to attack anyone who expresses solidarity with those who have already chosen on which side to stand.
      We will stand, close and complicit with our comrades, and not only in the courtrooms: we call for two weeks of mobilization from the 9th to the 24th of November, as an opportunity to create moments of active solidarity in the streets or wherever we choose to express it.

ALONGSIDE ALL THE ANARCHISTS ON TRIAL!
AGAINST PRISONS AND FOR THE FREEDOM OF ALL PRISONERS!
FREEDOM FOR ALL!

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Eviction.

   

         The continuous drive by the state marches on relentlessly, it drives on its desire to crush any form of dissent, independent living or thought. State after state proceeds with its heavy handed evictions and closure of autonomous spaces, it will take the relentless drive by all independent thinkers and groups to return this savagery back on the perpetrators. If you desire a fair society with freedom of expression, thought and action, then you must get behind those fighting this brutal drive for a subservient population. Perhaps you think that the eviction of a squat doesn't affect you, but it does, it means that in the society that you live, the right to an alternative thought and way of life has been curtailed by brute force, savage action against people who are trying to create that better life for themselves and others, is that the type of society that you can live with?

 The following from 325:

Berlin: Liebig34 is evicted (Germany)
October 12th, 2020
9 October 2020
          It feels incredible to type these words into the keys: The Liebig34 is cleared.
          At 7:00 a.m. Robocops started sawing and flexing fences, doors, windows and barricades and at 11:00 a.m. the last inhabitants* of the Liebig34 were dragged out of the rooms.
          We are sad. We are crying. We are exhausted. WE ARE ANGRY.
          They can‘t imagine the determination they have awakened in us. This act of violence will explode in an act of counter-violence and self-defense. Already so much solidarity has happened in the last nights, months, years and has shown what we are capable of doing. This eviction is a moment of radicalization. We can use it and together we can express our hatred for this shit.
          Even if the press, politicians, cops and Nazis are now taking pleasure in our loss, we are turning powerlessness into anger. So many borders have been crossed. We shout NO in your spiteful eats. You can have our house, you will never get our passion. We are so much more than this house – we are anarchists, feminists, queers and antifascists who will now channel their anger and attack capitalist patriarchy to the last.
         We call for the demo from 21:00 in Monbijoupark. We call for decentralized actions. Let us experience a wild and chaotic October together!
34 million property damage – we are already well on the way.
Liebig34 lives. Liebig34 fights.

Liebig34

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Opportunity.

      At the very start of this pandemic I stated that this was a golden opportunity for us to reshape society, I also said that it was a golden opportunity for the various states to push the boundaries of their control over the civilian population. It would give them a wonderful avenue to create that submissive population. I still believe that  and I know I am not alone in that line of thought. What we have to come to terms with is that the state has seized upon that opportunity with a determined single mindedness, but we seem to have fragmented our aims and therefore are failing to to make the most of our opportunity. This could be a disaster for  us all, as the few freedoms that we have will be drastically diminished, to regain them, let alone increase them, will be a monumental and brutal task. 

The following from 325:
By Gianfranco Sanguinetti

        We are sharing, with many thanks to the author, this English translation of an important article written in April 2020.
      The conversion of the Western representative democracies to a completely new form of despotism has, on account of the virus, assumed the juridical features of a force majeure (in jurisprudence, as is well known, force majeure is a case of exonerated responsibility). And so the new virus is at the same time both a catalyst for the event and a distraction for the masses through fear. (1)
      For all the hypotheses I have put forth, since my book On Terrorism and the State (1979), regarding the manner in which this conversion (ineluctable, in my eyes) from formal democracy to despotism would be made, I must confess that I never imagined it would happen on the pretense of a virus. But the ways of the Lord are truly infinite. As are those of Hegel’s cunning of reason.
     The sole reference, it can truly be said, as prophetic as it is disturbing, is one I found in an article by Jacques Attali, former boss of EBRD [European Bank for Reconstruction and Development], written for L’Express during the epidemic of 2009: (2)
     If the epidemic becomes a little more serious, which is possible, since it is transmittable by humans, it will have truly planetary consequences, both economic (the models suggest a loss of three trillion dollars, that is a 5% drop in global GDP) and political (due to risks of contagion). It would therefore be necessary to establish a global police force, a global stockpile, and therefore a global fiscal policy. We would then—much sooner than economic reasons alone would have allowed—come to establish the basis for an actual global government.

     The pandemic was thus already envisioned: how many simulations were run by the major insurance companies! And by the protective services of the states. Just few days ago former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown again returned to the need for global government: “Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.” (3)

Continue reading:

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Up Yours!

      Bristol, is a city with a large content of two  fingers "up yours" attitude to the establishment. I always read with interest and sometimes with a smile on my face, at some of what comes out of that fair city. Long may that spirit flourish and grow. Hopefully it could become infectious and be the next pandemic.

      This latest rendering from that part of our island may not be to everybody's liking, but it does continue that spirit of "up yours", which can be so endearing.

The following from 325

 

PDF: Engaged Combatant (Cover)

PDF: Engaged Combatant (Contents)

This is a collection of poetic ramblings by an anarcho-nihilist hooligan in Bristol, UK.

     Forging some kind of weapon by merger metaphors and poetry from lived experiences, an alternative from quick-fix solutions in the fast lane of instant gratification, stolen and twisted out of meaning, into some spiritual sloganeering which hopefully challenges a life of just material band-aid.

    The author feels like they are tidying up the loose ends in their mind!

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The Crowd.

        I have always maintained, in this capitalist society, that dissatisfaction and anger is always present, simmering just below the surface. Sometime it displays itself in a small burst, isolated and then quietly fades, sometimes it can be a mass display by a large group of people, finds its way into the media, and then disappears. Then there are those times of course when it is an explosion of released energy fueled by anger and fury, thousands take to the streets and, like in Chile recently, attack the symbols of the system, they burn banks, police stations and loot shops. No matter how small or how large, they are all part of that discontent and subdued anger. Sooner or later it will explode and the existing system will not be able to put its exploitative and repressive parts together again. Well that, in my mind, is the aim of all those bursts of anger, large or small.

I Am The Crowd.

I am the crowd

I swim in the quagmire of poverty

its hooks, its barbs, tear my flesh

rupture my dreams,

I hold my breath for centuries

hoping to break through, gasp pure air.

Through the murky mire

I see bright things, shiny things sparkle

I see women in fine dresses, men in silk shirts

I ask myself,

why do I swim in this cesspool?

I want the light and warmth of rectitude

to caress my labouring body,

seeds of my dreams to bloom

like wild flowers in a meadow.

One day I will use my boundless strength

to haul this torn, battered being

out of the morass

onto the warm grassy bank,

when I do;

woe betide you, women in fine dresses

woe betide you mister in your fine silk shirt

should you ever try to get in my way,

for I am the strength of the world, I am the crowd. 

       The following is a piece on one of those small bursts of anger, a small display of that underlying discontent that one day will explode.

From 325:

Amazon Vans Sabotaged in Solidarity with Striking Workers by Lorenzo Orsetti Anarchist Brigade: North Carolina (USA)

      We are seldom compelled to claim the ways we choose to attack. We are not specialists, nor anarchists isolated from the acts of sabotage and theft that we know occur daily by employees within the Amazon monster. We generally prefer our actions to be just another strike amongst the many, adding to the already existent chorus of rage and discontent. As the crisis deepens and the feelings of isolation and helplessness appear to be sinking in, it is important to remember that one way of regaining agency in our lives is through attack and disruption.

      It is not only the corona virus that is making our lives unbearable, but even more so, it is our continued daily lives under capitalism and state control. Amazon and other tech companies are exploiting the virus, accumulating unheard- of profits and pushing their nightmare tech world. Amazon claims to provide a safe future for society all the while continuing to put its lowest paid employees in danger of infection, biding their time until they can eliminate those positions completely and replace them with automation and robots.

Along with all these reasons, we chose to sneak into one of Amazon’s parking areas and slash the tires of eight delivery vans – for the sheer pleasure of feeling alive and for the continuation of resistance during a confusing time. We know this is just one drop in a vast sea, but to quote a fallen comrade, “Always remember that ‘every storm begins with a single raindrop.’ And try to be that raindrop yourself.”

In solidarity with the striking Amazon workers!

       For ourselves and towards an eternal mayday for all of us!

– Lorenzo Orsetti Anarchist Brigade in North Carolina

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State Repression.

       I know everybody is preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic, and rightly so. However the state functions at different levels, and the brutality and savagery of its mercenaries continues, pandemic or no pandemic. Migrants are still badly treated and in some cases viciously repressed. Migrant camps are dotted all over Europe and the conditions are far from acceptable, but in some cases it is reminiscent of nazi concentration camps. This latest report from  the detention centre Paranesti Dramas in Greece should not go unmarked because we are suffering from a pandemic. These are human beings, their lives are being made a living hell by the same state apparatus that spouts how it is trying to save us all from this pandemic, of course all, doesn't include migrants. 

 Paranesti Detention Centre.

The following report from 325:

       Following our communication by phone with many migrant prisoners in the Paranesti Detention Center, we were informed of the following events that took place on Friday 3rd of April. In the aforementioned camp there are 6 wings in which are places 7 to 8 containers, and in each one are cramped together 15 persons. The living conditions are terrible and the people are lacking basic resources for survival.
        Under conditions of life threatening detention, the authorities on top of this, ceased to accept any asylum claims a month ago and they ordered confinement due to the corona virus. As a result the migrants were confined inside the containers without any hope of freedom. No information was given to them about the reasons they were quarantined, about what is going on outside or even what they should be doing to protect themselves from the virus.
       In a climate of general upheaval and uncertainty, on Friday 3rd of April they decided to react initially regarding the terrible food that they are given and then, in coordination, 500 to 600 people in all 6 wings refused the meals. They made known to the Administration the reasons of their mobilization and the authorities reacted immediately telling them their demands would be met and convincing them to accept the food temporarily.
       Later the same day they were given the same inedible food to eat and so, realizing the intentions of the Guards, they decided to declare hunger strike not only for the meals but also demanding to be informed about the health situation and the reasons for their isolation.
     The managers of the concentration camp, as true heirs of their fascist predecessors, locked up the migrants inside the containers, aiming to isolate and terrorize them so as to stop their mobilization. Moreover, as punishment they cut the supply of food in the super market.
      What followed is worthy of the Nazi tradition in the concentration camps. After keeping them imprisoned for hours inside the containers, around 9 pm the riot squad came along with the OPKE (heavily armed units) cops and 2 vans full of fully armed cops. Savage beatings followed with the repression forces opening the doors of the containers one by one and dragging out of them the migrants one by one beating them up. They would enter the containers, 6-7 cops together beating indiscriminately everyone in their sight. Then they would drag them outside beating them on the head, the legs, the body and wherever their batons would strike. The migrants say that even tasers were used against them.
     The whole operation lasted 2 to 3 hours, and when the cops took out all their fury, they decided to elaborate their torture, by keeping some migrants outside on the containers in the cold until the middle of the night, while locking others inside.
      Many of the migrants were badly hurt and taken the next day to hospital, some were punitively transferred to other detention centers while some were taken to the cells of police stations. Some were transferred to the nearest clinics for their wounds. In this way they dispersed them, isolating them so as to not have any contact between them and so as to silence the events.
     This violence, the repression against hunger striker migrants should not pass!

We don’t forget, we don’t forgive.
Bastards of the police, we are drops of the coming storm.

 

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Insane On A Whim.

 

       The situation is serious, regarding the draconian legislation brought in on the pretext of fighting the pandemic, your basic rights are being eradicated. One individual can now decide who should be sent to a mental health institution, thereby stripped of all their rights, and forced take medication, at the whim of one individual, possible not fully trained in these matters. Difficult individuals, awkward people as seen by the state and its minions, prisoners that are a nuisance to the system, individuals that question authority, all can fall foul of this new legislation. We must ask ourselves, is this authoritarian step necessary to control this pandemic, or is it just another weapon in the state's toolkit for total control of the population, should the public get really angry as this mess drags on, and the aftermath  is rampant unemployment, endemic poverty and a society that is knee deep in deprivation. This was nodded through by a bunch of wealthy political ballerinas that are well protected from the devastating ravishes of the aftermath that will follow on from this collapse of the existing system, that is sure to follow this pandemic.

The following from 325:

Prison-state UK comes into law: coronavirus.

       The Coronavirus Act 2020 in the UK is now in force for the next two years. It is a totalitarian coup by a right-wing government which has already shown it’s utter contempt for the judiciary, for parliament and for the people. Many of the provisions of this Act are already experienced by those on the margins of society, by dissidents, those in the prison and criminal justice system, the poor, and ethnic groups consistently disposed of by the police and the system, through poverty, imprisonment and death. Now the grand experiment is whether the kind of control infrastructure and total suspension of rights already administered to particular groups can be rolled out to the entire population.

     The most manipulable provisions come, as ever, under the Mental Health sections. Always a good catch-all since dissidence, illegality and criticism of the existent is already considered by the system to be tantamount to mental illness, people can now be hospitalised and medicated on the say-so of a single approved clinician. This power of one also decides the fate of those awaiting trial, convicted persons (we wonder whether that refers to anyone with a criminal record regardless of their current status) and those currently serving prison time: the Act allows a single person to sign off on a transfer from a prison to mental hospital. To the cynical, it might imply that unruly prison populations or undesirables (either currently or historically) are now living under the threat of being summarily detained or if already detained, then transferred and sedated with a no-questions-asked decision by a single clinician.

      Under coronavirus, the criteria that elects someone to the status of a person approved to implement these laws is considerably relaxed. Under the emergency laws, a person applying to volunteer as a health worker or social worker can be approved by a single senior administrator who believes the person is “fit, proper and suitably experienced”. Moreover, this administrator can approve a group of people who have organised themselves as such, presumably concerned ‘citizens groups’, without assessing each individual within that group. While the public health sections appear not to allow forced medical treatment, although it does allow for forced screening and assessment including the taking by force of biological samples from your body, the mental health provisions do allow people to be medicated by force, again to be decided by a single officer.

Dissidents and undesirables will also fall foul of the sections dealing with Potentially Infectious Persons (PIP), again this designation to be the whim of a single official. As they roll out their totalitarian nightmare under the guise of coronavirus, all civil liberties are suspended. They do not expect this strange compliance to last. It cannot last. In the UK, there is barely any social welfare for people being rolled out and a huge swathe of the population, already broken by a decade of Tory rule, are hungry now. There have already been riots.

       There are infectious diseases and there are infectious ideas: it is the latter that they are most keen to contain. For either, just read ‘Potentially Infectious Person’! The new Act allows for arrest and detention, new search and entry laws, and retention of an potentially infectious person’s things. Detention has a time limit but can be extended… and extended… and extended with no legal rights. Restrictions on a potentially infectious person’s movement, place of residence, activities and social contact, previously reserved for those leaving prison but still on licence, could now be rolled out for anyone with potentially infectious ideas under the guise of public health concerns.

       We are witnessing the building of a new wall where borders can be and are closed at a moment’s notice. Countries are being sealed off overnight. This is how the horror happens. One day you enjoy “free movement”, the next it is punishable by the law, if not death. The same status that refugees and undocumented people fleeing wars and shot at the borders have, blamed and vilified for the problems of the capitalist society.

      The new laws surrounding the registration of death and disposal of bodies are some of the darkest pieces of this legislation. In essence, there is no longer a need for an inquest, no investigation into suspicious deaths, there is no safeguard surrounding the recording of a cause of death which can simply be written by a temporarily registered medical practitioner (not the doctor attending the death), no medical certificate is required for cremation or burial and the disposal of remains and the place of disposal is taken out of the hands of relatives and given to national or local authorities regardless of the wishes of the deceased or relatives. How easy it would be to disappear us under such conditions.

      Totalitarianism is born under the pretence of necessity, of protection, of security. This moment is no different. Whatever the truth of the deadliness of this virus, the world created by this new legislation, the willingness of the people to accept it and the potential abuses written into it, are sobering. It reveals if not the plan then the opportunism of the totalitarian project which underlies the techno-industrial civilisation: immediate suspension of elections and referendums, no right of assembly or protest (which lockdown conditions have already illegalised), the implementation of the virtual and cashless surveillance society, the army on the streets as a matter of course, a police state whereby every move is monitored, absolute and unmitigated powers of detention (which must be experienced in isolation) and subjection of the individual to medical intervention, complete and punitive control of the movement, activity and association of individuals and groups, and a dismantling of safeguards over causes of death, recourse to an inquest and disposal of bodies. As scared and confused as people are by this pandemic, we must remember that the measures introduced by dictatorships to control populations often seem reasonable or even laudable at the time and are born of an irresistible logic that is embraced by the good citizen, whether that is the logic of communism, nationalism, protectionism or the logic of infection.

       We must also remember that throughout history people fought back against the false logic of their social and political reality. They also risked being detained, medicated, tortured, and killed. The states of emergency being rolled out by our national governments are in danger of becoming the new normal if we do not fight back. We are always facing death, both physical and metaphysical. This is an extraordinary moment in which we may find we have more comrades than we know as the system’s collapse reveals not only people’s crippling dependence on it, but also the forms of our potential liberation as critical masses experience new ways of being, new priorities and desires, that will not be met by a post-pandemic return to business as usual and also will not tolerate this state of emergency for long. As ever, our task is to find our leverage in this situation, to find our opportunities to engage according to our own anarchic principles, to organise against and despite of the tightening of control, to expose it for what it is and to break out of our isolation and the state of fear that is the real virus.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Now Or Never?

       It must now be obvious to even the most the apolitical and apathetic of our society, that the way our society is structured has failed miserably to protect the vast majority of our citizens. This economic system has allowed our pampered privileged parasite class, through corruption and greed, to plunder the public purse and exploit the majority, for nothing more than personal gain. They have squandered the tremendous ingenuity, productivity and industrious effort of the vast majority on nothing more than personal opulence and phony grandeur.

    We are now faced with a choice that has to be made quickly, do we continue to allow this to happen, or do we call a halt, and take control of our lives ourselves. The coronavirus has not brought about society's failings, it has merely shown them in great detail to the vast majority of our people.

      As always in times of disaster and upheaval, the public react with mutual aid and co-operation, despite the failings of the system. This time we have the opportunity to expand these groups and link up, spreading this human idea of mutual aid to all aspects of our society, shaping that society in a more fair and humane manner. Capitalism, the cause of inequality, injustice and wars, is in crisis, it is up to us to ensure it dies, and is replaced with a society that sees to the needs of all our people, one based on mutual aid, co-operation, sustainability and free from the profit motive. Let's see this pandemic as an opportunity to rid ourselves of the real disaster of capitalism and all that it entails, from corruption, inequality, unbridled greed and endless wars.  

The following call from Greece:

Anti-Covid19: Network for Mutual Aid and Struggle (Greece)

       In the unprecedented social conditions we are living in, the spread of coronavirus has taken critical dimensions for the national healthcare systems and the capitalist mode of production as well as social organisation in general. For the system to survive, state and bosses implement totalitarian politics and a further devaluation of our lives.

– Lack of health facilities for the big majority of the population

– Militarisation of our everyday life, with a ban on transportation enforced through economic, surveilled and penal repression

– Mass layoffs, intensification and dire conditions for those working in hospitals, super markets, fast food restaurants, telecommunications

– Creation of concentration camps for migrants and mass incarceration in prisons without any health provision

– No meaningful measure for the homeless, drug users, sex workers

– Increase of domestic and gender violence cases as well as psychological breakdowns due to the prolonged confinement of people in their homes

       All of the above make up a dystopia to which we deem necessary to respond to in a direct and collective way, self-organised and in solidarity with every subject that is experiencing the physical, psychical and mental consequences of totalitarianism; and at the same time to fight to break the unproductive and totalitarian management of the present crisis by the state. For these reasons we want to communicate and create a network for solidarity and struggle, with initial aims the following:

         Food and medicine collection and delivery; or meals from social kitchens

Psychosocial support. Converstation through phone and even face-to-face private meeting, adhering to the healthcare measures

       Reporting domestic and gender violence cases and direct interventions

Collect and publish information from concentration camps and prisons

The responsibility is not collective as the state is shamelessly trying to manipulate us through the horror-loving coverage of the virus by the media, but it is first and foremost the state’s responsibility. The pointed shifting of responsibilities from the state and its representatives to each individual for the acquittal of the systematic underfunding and understaffing of the healthcare system is unacceptable and vile. We are not to blame for the shortages of permanent medical staff, intensive care units, medical equipment but the particular governements that spent thousands of euros to save banks or for military equipment instead of staffing undervalued public hospitals.

       We put forward as a direct collective action a freeze in payments, debts, rent, electricity, water, internet, public transportation. According to us these basic services should be free anyway and let alone in a situation of financial destabilisation like this. All people of the exploited and non-privileged class have to spare their money for basic consumer goods like food and medicine, since the future is uncertain.

WE DEMAND FROM THE STATE AND THE BOSSES

        Permanent socialization of all private healthcare facilities and health products units.

         Unemployment benefit to all laid-off workers and the unemployed.

All goods to be sold at cost price, super market bosses do not profit off our backs.

       Compliance with the demands of workers for pay, working time, even the cessation of employment for their self-protection.

       Closure of all capitalist structures (factories, shops etc.) that don’t cover basic needs.

       Compliance with the demands of prisoners and release of all high-risk individuals, prisoners with charges of less than 5 years, and all those who await trial. Setting up healthcare facilities for prisoners and provision of sanitary products.

        Closure of all concentration camps and papers to all migrants.

Transformation of airbnb and hotels to self-containment facilities for people with symptoms, high-risk groups, people affected by domestic and gender violence and people facing housing issues.

       Tsiodras shed crocodile tears for the people who are to get sick and invited us all to assume our responsibilities for the protection of public health. Recognising that public health includes also people in factories, prisons and concentration camps, we announce that if the state doesn’t care about public health in total, we have the collective responsibility to take actions to ensure this. We also inform that we will necessarily move on to organise and escalate similar actions in case the state continues the exploitation of the state of emergency to repress its political enemies, anarchists and fighters, and to pass laws that it wouldn’t be able to pass in times of mobilisation. The movement and the people of the social base are already organising mutual-aid and resistance structures for the current crisis and the upcoming impoverishment and no martial law can stop them. The survival of the repressed and the exploited in times of a general crises depends directly on their self-organisation, thus any attempt to repress must be answered in defiance of any restrictions.

Phoneline: 00306945276127

Email: synsquat@riseup.net

FB: https://www.facebook.com/AntiCovidAidNetwork/

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

State Of Emergency?

 

       At the risk of information overload, here are some more thoughts on the coronavirus, the state's response and the state of emergency. I still maintain that it is up to the communities to organise and protect themselves in a rational and humane manner, rather than wait for the state's instructions and to quietly follow. Yi pays yir money an yi takes yir pick.

 This from Anarchist News:

Anarchists in Italy Report on the Spread of the Virus and the Quarantine        From one side, our lives are threatened by a new virus; from the other side, our freedom is menaced by nationalists and authoritarians intent on using this opportunity to set new precedents for state intervention and control. If we accept this dichotomy—between life and freedom—we will continue paying the price long after this particular pandemic has passed. In fact, each is bound up in the other, dependent upon the other. In the following report, our comrades in Italy describe the conditions prevailing there, the causes of the escalating crisis, and the ways that the Italian government has taken advantage of the situation to consolidate power in ways that will only exacerbate future crises.
       At this point, the strategy of the authorities is not aimed at protecting people from the virus so much as controlling the pace at which it spreads so that it doesn’t overwhelm their infrastructure. Crisis management is the order of the day, as in so many other aspects of our lives. Our rulers don’t intend to preserve the lives of everyone—they already wrote off concern for the destitute long before this crisis began. Rather, they are determined to preserve the current structure of society and their perceived legitimacy.

Continue reading:

This from Act For Freedom Now:

     INTERRUPTIONS …         There is nothing new about social life taking place at a distance. For a long time now people have been persuaded that the best way to communicate and relate is through the use of a device. Prostheses of the human being, the smartphone and its like, have transformed the way of being together, of being informed, learning, communicating, writing and reading.
      The next step is the robotization of living, technique pervading every place, every aspect of daily life. An overcoming of nature and the natural in favour of artificial beings and places. Such a scenario needs no social life, it does not need relationships, feelings, thoughts, it only needs order, discipline, regulation, machines. Maybe Dominion is trying to take a step forward and use a health problem, the spread of a virus, to reach generalized regimentation at least, the rest will then take care of itself. Science fiction comes to mind, but States have centuries old instruments to draw on without having to resort to the unknown.
       The social distancing imposed by laws prohibiting kisses and hugs and the suppression of most social activities, recalls states of emergency in which the rules of social life are imposed and must be obeyed so as not to run up against getting charged or being arrested. And indeed the establishment of red zones and checkpoints, limitation of freedom of circulation, obligation of home isolation for those coming from areas considered infected controlled by police, but above all the ban on gatherings, i.e. public meetings, is the police management of a health problem. Not surprisingly it is foreseen in the ten rules recommended by the Italian State to avoid the spread of the virus that in case of fever the carabinieri must the first to be contacted. But states of emergency are also the measures provided for in situations of conflict or insurrection, as happened recently in Chile.

Continue reading:

This from 325:

Coronavirus, Agribusiness and the State of Emergency’ by Silvia Ribeiro
       Much is said about the Covid-19 coronavirus, and yet very little. There are fundamental aspects that remain in the shadows. I want to name some of these, different but complementary.
      The first refers to the perverse mechanisms of capitalism to hide the true causes of the problem so as not to do anything about them, because it affects their interests, but it does deal with the apparent cure for the symptoms. Meanwhile, the State spends enormous public resources on prevention, containment and treatment measures, which do not act on the causes either, so this way of facing problems becomes a captive business for transnational companies, for example, with vaccines and medicines.
      The dominant reference to viruses and bacteria is as if they were exclusively harmful organisms that must be eliminated. A war-like approach prevails, as in so many other aspects of capitalism’s relationship with nature. However, due to the ability of viruses to jump between species, viruses and bacteria are a fundamental part of the coevolution and adaptation of living beings, as well as their balance with the environment and their health, including humans.

Continue reading: 

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Anarchists First!!

 

       Prisons, by themselves, are barbaric institutions of state repression, no matter the treatment the inmates receive. However it is within these institutions that the state sinks to the lowest level of depravity, callous cruelty and inhumanity. Those incarcerated in these swamps of inhumanity, see their very basic human rights abandoned at the whim of the state's mercenaries. Inside these state repression units, the normal rules of humanity no longer apply, you are there to be made an example of, you are used to deter you and others from any form of resistance to the state's control. Anyone who finds themselves enmeshed in this vicious inhuman system deserves all the solidarity and support that we can muster. At the moment it seems that, in many countries, anarchists are at the sharp end of this savage state treatment. "First they came for the anarchists---". Freedom can only rise when prisons crumble.

This from 325: 

Urgent news about comrade Ilya Romanov (Russia)

March 8th, 2020

IT/FR

       On February 18 and 19, there were rallies in Moscow in solidarity with Ilya Romanov, who, at the moment, is locked up in a penal colony in Mordovia [Eastern European Russia, near Nizhny Novgorod; NdAtt.]. In October 2019, Ilya had a stroke. Since then, he has been locked up in the penal colony hospital, a facility which is not suitable for treating his condition, which is still very critical. Indeed, the comrade is partially paralyzed (apparently half of his body is paralyzed). Ilya still has difficulty speaking, eating and being independent, even in the smallest gestures of everyday life. Ilya’s family and his lawyers were made aware of the stroke days after it happened, and the neurologist’s visit took place only two and a half weeks afterwards. He is not in any rehabilitation process and all the lawyers’ requests to have him transferred to a suitable hospital have been rejected; for weeks neither his family nor his lawyers were able to meet him or understand the gravity of his situation. It was not until November 28 that one of his lawyers was able to meet Ilya; The lawyer said that Ilya is paralyzed down one half of his body and cannot speak. He urgently needs the help of a speech therapist, as well as other doctors, but he is not allowed any specialist. Ilya is left to himself in a bed on a ward where he is locked up and he has been fed porridge for months. His neighbors on his ward in adjacent beds said that even the nurses in the ward never take care of him, but the inmates working there do it. On December 4, the medical commission of the penal colony again gave a negative opinion regarding Ilya’s transfer to a suitable hospital, because his condition did not seem serious enough to be incompatible with detention (!!!). The lawyers continue to use the legal channels and apparently his family has called to the European Commission of Human Rights.

     For those who do not know Ilya, some words on his journey: Ilya has participated in anarchist actions and demonstrations since the end of the 1980s. In 2002, he was arrested in Ukraine, accused of arms trafficking and of terrorism, as well as the preparation of an explosive device which was to be placed in front of a building of the Ukrainian secret services, to protest against the violent expulsion of a rally, Place Maidan, carried out by the police in October 2002. For this, Ilya was sentenced to 10 years in jail. On his release in 2013, he returned to Russia and had an accident during the manufacture of a firecracker [according to other sources, the device exploded while he placed it in front of a recruitment office of the army, in Nizhny Novgorod, October 26, 2013 ; NdAtt.]. Because of this accident, he had his left hand amputated and was condemned to another 10 years in prison, for terrorism, the sentence of which was transformed into nine years in a penal colony. He still has six years to serve. The way Ilya was treated is just one more sign of the brutality the Russian state has been using lately against anarchists. Ilya is a comrade who has never compromised with power, and that’s why they want to silence him.

Those who would like to help him and his relatives will find below the account number of his ex-wife and companion Larisa Romanova, as well as the Paypal account open for Ilya. Letters, postcards, expressions of affection are appreciated (when Ilya cannot read, there are bed neighbors in his ward who can help him. For obvious reasons, however, he will not be able to answer letters).

       For economic support: account n. 5368 2900 5608 4546 (holder Larisa Valerievna Romanova, bank: VTB)
Paypal account address: abc-msk @ riseup.net

To write to him:

FKU LPU num 21 UFSIN Rossii po Respublike Mordovija,
431200, Respublika Mordovija, Ten’gushevskij rajon, p. Barashevo,
Ul. Shtabnaja, d. 1,
Romanovu Il’e Eduardovicu (Bol’nica N. 2)
Russia

The address in Cyrillic letters:

ФКУ ЛПУ № 21 УФСИН России по Республике Мордовия,
431200, Республика Мордовия, Теньгушевский район, п. Барашево,
ул. Штабная, д. 1,
Романову Илье Эдуардовичу (Больница № 2)
Российская федерация.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk