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.

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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.

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Ask Your Gaoler For Paracetamol.

        It becomes more and more obvious that we can't get the type of free and just society we want without a hard and bitter struggle. As state repression crawls further and further into our everyday life, enforced by a well armed police force backed up by a loaded judicial system, more and more people are drawn into conflict with the state. The endless attack on the social fabric of the population by the plundering of the public purse, by the state's money and business orientated policies, while pampering and subsidising their corporate friends, it becomes obvious that the state and big business are not on our side. We stand diametrically opposed to each other in what is clearly a class war, the rich and power with their self protecting state apparatus versus the ordinary people armed with nothing more than solidarity and a desire for a fair and just world for all. To get there will never be done by appealing to the rich and powerful political and corporate Mafia, you are asking them to give up the wealth and power and join us in shaping an equal and fair society, to give up their pampered and privileged life to join us the ordinary people in a building a society that sees to everybody's needs fairly. Such requests are based on an illusion peddled by the political parties, who in reality benefit from the existing unjust and corrupt system.

       The misery, poverty, deprivation, inequality and violence encapsulated in this capitalist system backed up the state is so glaringly obvious, it is crime to look the other way, it's an abandonment of your humanity, it's giving consent and being complicit in perpetuating the injustice. Appealing to your gaoler for an extra pillow to make a your life little bit more comfortable, or asking for a paracetamol to ease your pain, is not an answer, we have to break down the prison walls and free ourselves.

This from AMW:

 

 We are tearing down walls for freedom

         The recapture of Matrozou 45 and Panetoliou 21 is an act against the fear imposed by state repression. It is a signal of resistance and a rallying cry for escalation. Let us not leave our neighborhoods and nature in the heat of development plunder. Do not accept the displacement of our lives. Keep the parks, squares and hills free. Let us oppose the mercenaries of the state. Let us intensify the struggles against the exploitation of labor. Let us completely take up the struggle for survival and freedom. The struggle is neither legal nor illegal.
        Together with dozens of anarchist / antisocial companions, we are taking back the community’s homes in order to meet housing needs that would not have been possible without this occupation, to re-open solidarity structures and re-establish free-living relationships without hierarchy, reopen homes in the neighborhood and in the movement with events, celebrations and organization.
        We occupy buildings and connect illegal electricity and water. We are working to make them sustainable and we are taking on the cost of repression. It is a conscious choice to blackmail with rent and bills. Meeting the basic needs must be a given to all people and not a tool in the hands of the bosses to give us the dilemma of submission or misery.
        Housing seizures are a logical response to the irrationality of a financial system that forcefully keeps people in huts, roads and concentration camps at the same time as there are thousands of vacant buildings. In a suffocating metropolis drowned in cement and drinking places, occupations are places of socialization without institutional and financial control, places where people can redefine their relationships on the basis of solidarity and respect, outside the dominant standards.
         And for those who are complaining about the unpaid occupation accounts, it would be good to dig a little deeper into all that has been stolen by state and international economic policies, all those unpaid party accounts, factories and, of course, the millions in euros. In a forest-burning state with the collapse of the health system and bleeding education system, the state chooses to hire 1,500 cops with extra money for equipment. Because all they care about is protecting their friends and their friends’ investments from an uprising.
       On the other hand, the Greek police and media, the urban propaganda system, are on the verge of collapse after the last operation in Koukaki. They still do not want to admit that high-profile journalists and politicians and the anti-terrorism unit itself condemned without any evidence an “innocent Greek family.” Because this will undermine social trust in the foundations of the urban system and give us space to say once again that THIS IS NOT ABOUT AN INDIVIDUAL CASE. They prepare and construct the next culprits… All this is done to instill fear and terror into people’s minds about squatters and anarchist / antisocial sites.
         The squatters are attacked by the entire state apparatus and not only by the “right government.” The disagreement between SYRIZA and ND is about what is the most effective way to suppress the movement. Police democracy throughout the area with the involvement of anti-terrorism also existed under SYRIZA with thirty examples. One example of extreme repression was when they sent two MAT squads to Philopappou Hill to prevent tree planting. Whether left or right, such an unjust and contradictory system cannot survive without repression, and repression is something that will always exist and we will have to go through it to get what we need.
         The occupation of all the necessary resources, productive forces, spaces, and ultimately our own lives, is the one-way street for the struggles of the oppressed and exploited, and our small occupations foreshadow this happy future.

Occupation Community of Koukaki

Original publication January 11, 2020

via athens.indymedia.org

From: https://mpalothia.net/athina-anakatalipsi-ton-katalipseon-matrozoy-45-kai-panaitolioy-21/

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The Usual Police Brutality.

 

      Police brutality is a fact of the state system, there is no other way that the state can keep control of the population. What the people want and what the state want are irreconcilable. People want freedom to choose their way of life, to enjoy the fruits of their labour and to share in an equal and civilised manner. The state wants total control to keep the wealth flowing to the few wealthy power mongers at the top. The moment people challenge that position out comes the iron fist, Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador, Haiti, Bolivia, Iran, Iraq, France, Spain, Hong Kong and lots of places elsewhere.

   Let's not forget Greece, a short video of Greek democracy at work today:

αλλού τον βρίσκει αλλά δεν έχει σημασία που θα σε βρει ο πυροσβεστηρας ...

— Konos (@Kon0s) December 6, 2019

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Invisible Ears And Eyes.

       There can be no doubt that we live in a surveillance society. Surveillance is a necessary tool for the state to keep control of the population, knowing where you are, what you are doing and who you are with, is information the state needs to survive. What we see of this surveillance apparatus, the CCTV cameras etc., in and around our towns and cities is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a plethora of hidden devices, small pieces of equipment hidden away in unsuspecting places, listening, watching and recording, someone's activities, how do you know it is not you?

      All this equipment is not due to spontaneous birth, it is manufactured by large and small companies across the globe, producing ever more tiny, ever more sophisticated, ever more intrusive means to track and record your every movement, without your knowledge. These companies are not the friends of the people, they are another branch of the population control and management system operated by the state. We should know more about these companies, what they are doing, and why, who is the money behind them. Like the arms companies, they are not for a free and democratic society. 

This from Ears and Eyes:

        When cops decide to spy on us using surveillance devices, they need to get the devices from somewhere. It seems that they often buy these devices from private companies. The companies that manufacture and market surveillance-related products and services to law enforcement agencies, governments, and armed forces, form what we can call the surveillance industry.

         Although on this website we limit ourselves to the study of hidden physical surveillance devices, the surveillance industry develops all kind of repression tools to be used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide. Internet monitoring, interception of cellular communications, counter-surveillance equipment and biometrics technologies are only a few examples.

The companies participating in this industry aren’t spread evenly on the world map. In their 2016 report about the global surveillance industry, Privacy International commented on the geographical breakdown of the 528 surveillance companies taken into account in the report :

These companies are overwhelmingly based in economically advanced, large arms exporting states, with the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), France, Germany, and Israel comprising the top five countries in which the companies are headquartered.

        Despite this, many of these companies export their products, so that surveillance devices manufactured in one country can sometimes be sold everywhere in the world.

        Due to the nature of the industry, these companies often work in relative secrecy and it is sometimes hard to obtain reliable information about their activities, their clients, and their products. Documents leaked by whistleblowers, such as the Spy Files, a large collection of documents about the surveillance industry published from 2011 to 2014 by Wikileaks, are a precious source of information.

       We think that understanding how the surveillance industry works, who sells the surveillance devices to the cops and what the devices look like will help us to oppose this surveillance. On this website, you will find a list of companies that sell physical surveillance devices to law enforcement agencies, a list of the trade shows and other events of the industry, a glossary of the specific terms of the surveillance industry, and a list of other resources on the subject.

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The Cyborg Society.

       Have the Swedes gone mad, not only in having more trust in their government than most citizens of other countries, but by jumping on the "chipping" bandwagon with greater enthusiasm? The Swedes don't seem to carry all the fears that once chipped it can open doors for you, but perhaps it can also close doors, shutting you out of certain benefits etc. I suppose with a few tweaks it could also be used to track you. Of course when it comes to tracking in our society, we should not be too complacent. Forgetting the almost total CCTV surveillance here in the UK, as we walk around with our smart phones in our pockets/purses we are being tracked, your phone is an excellent tracking device. However, I feel a chip in your body to be able to get in touch with technical gadgets is a gateway for the authorities to continue their desire to control your every action. Is the chip the gateway to the cyborg society? Perhaps in the near future we will see lots of Swedes with small holes in their hands where they pulled the chip out.

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Our Quiet March To Fascism Continues.

         The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.   Benito Mussolini

         About six years ago I wrote a wee piece, "Inch By Inch We Lose Control", about how I believed we were taking a quiet march to fascism, the following is just a rehash of that article, as I believe we are still taking that quiet march in the same direction, though we are now much closer to that destination.

      Like a tape-loop message, I keep repeating, that we are marching quietly towards full blown fascism. It won't be recognised by the jackboots on the streets, nor by people being locked up for not living to the laid down norms. No, the state has moved on from from those days, though that method will still be held in reserve to be used if needed. It will be much more subtle than that, just slowly bit by bit, the state introducing ever stronger legislation to control every aspect of your life. The establishment making more and more arbitrary decision over our heads. They have already neutered the spontaneity of the trade unions by legislation, and tied protesters in legal loops. There other things that pass almost unnoticed, but show state power acting out what can only be called dictatorial acts, unchallenged. The ever creeping CCTV surveillance, advanced facial recognition, trolling through your phone and internet activity. The interweaving of state and corporate bodies in the interest of “growth” and to the detriment of the people. The introduction of the “minimum wage” gave the employers a low legal standard to adhere to and moved the struggle for improvement away from the employer to the state. Wars are and will continue to be waged, despite the will of the people saying otherwise, remember Iraq, millions on the streets in protest, but the war went ahead. Hardly the hallmark of democracy.
      Surreptitiously and brutally, the all knowing, all powerful, all for your own good, state, reaches in and controls every aspect of your life, for no other purpose than to safeguard its own power and privileges, and it can do it at will, through its various agents, backed up by its own biased judiciary. Who do you believe has the right, the benevolent character, and the humanity to take control of your life? No doubt your answer will be nobody, then why do we tolerate the faceless ones, behind closed doors in their marble corridors of power, to control all avenues of our life?

And another quote from one of the masters of fascism:

       It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

Benito Mussolini

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Your Government Knowingly Damages Your Health.

          The following is a comment by Loam on my recent post, Co-operation Between Oppressors. It once again highlights the every increase repressive nature of the state as it continually adds to its armoury in an attempt to prop up its control over the people. On this occasion it is a technique developed in UK and employed by the Zionist apartheid state of Israel, but now finding its way into the French state's callous repressive tactics. A method that has unknown effects on the health of those exposed to these nano-particles. once again the state shows little regard for the well-being of its own citizens. Thanks Loam for the link. 

     In France, the government uses chemical markers and nanoparticles on protesters.
      Yellow vests and bystanders have become, unwittingly, guinea pigs for the world’s first experiment on human nano-particles and chemical markers whose effect on biological organisms is still poorly known.
      For the French government, these are harmless “coded chemical marking products” that permeate the skin, hair and clothing of targeted people for a period of time varying from several weeks to decades.
       Officially this fuzzy technology has never been used against human beings. However, accurate information gathered from some security professionals indicates that in Act 18 of Yellow Vests (16 March), water cannons and gases containing DNA markers and nano-particles were used. protesters without the latter having been warned beforehand.
        In addition to the chemical markers and nanoparticles, the effects on human health of which are very poorly known, the addition of new psychotropic substances to CS gases is similar to a large scale experimentation with new social control techniques similar to those the worst dystopias of science fiction movies and novels.
        These “DNA weapons” developed in Britain and widely used by Israel contain chemical and biological substances whose harmfulness to human health has been deliberately ignored, especially in Israel where Palestinian detainees claim to have contracted various types of cancer following their DNA labeling or the use of other control techniques involving nano-particles that may have damaged the genetic material of the cells of their organisms.
Read the full article HERE:http://iuvmpress.com/40950

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Publish And Be Damned.

         You believe strongly in justice for all, equality of opportunity, freedom as a basic right, you are vehemently anti-exploitation, anti-war. You sit at your computer writing up leaflets, flyers and texts, to distribute to all and sundry, hoping to influence them to change society towards these ideals. However, are they legal? For the word legal, substitute, "controlled". The state lives by control, if what you are doing is not controlled, you will be deemed a threat, and no doubt, appropriate action can and will be taken. In this society, freedom extends only as far as you are subservient, and you make no attempt to change the structure of the power arrangements within this society.

 

          This from leccoriot, translated for Act For Freedom Now:

 IF EVEN PUBLISHING IS CLANDESTINE ACTIVITY…

          On 7th July a comrade was stopped in Lecco station by the Railway Police. After searching him and examining the books and pamphlets he was carrying, the police decided to raid his home and that of his parents on the pretext that they had found ‘La salute è in voi’ [Health is within you] among the books, a manual for lovers of direct action edited in 1906 and recently reprinted by some comrades. 
        Following the searches more anarchist printed material was seized as it had been printed illegally, and the comrade was charged with ‘clandestine printing’. To this charge another was added, that of ‘insulting the armed forces’, because of a poster where the Alpini [Alpine Troops] were specifically attacked in a proposal for a debate.
         Unfortunately this episode is not an isolated one and raises several points for us to think about.
           First of all it reintroduces the charge of clandestine press from out of the armoury of repression. Although claiming the publishing and distribution of material outside the rules imposed by the market (and the State) would be superfluous, it might be useful to dwell on the potential of this repressive instrument for a moment.
         In fact, in any documentation centre or squat there are dozens of texts that have been ‘freely’ published without any authorization or copyright; all this material could end up being locked away in police station store rooms.

What to do in the face of this?

         Without even considering the question of legalization, which, if it were possible, would allow books and pamphlets to continue to circulate without any legal consequences, one preventive response to future repressive crusades in the name of clandestine printing could be to open up a debate on the significance of ‘free’ publishing, its potentialities, perspectives and difficulties.

The charge of ‘contempt for the armed forces’ also deserves a mention.

          Certainly not because of the penal question in itself, which is minimal, but rather for comrades to think about. Attacking the armed forces directly, whichever way one prefers, should be a good habit not to be lost in our opinion. Especially as some of these forces, the Alpini for example, disguise themselves as pacifist entities that are beneficial to the community and, thanks to their fake folkloristic character, their nationalist, racist and sexist aspects are passed on unsuspectingly. Hence the decision to unmask them explicitly and openly criticize them in any situation whatsoever, no matter who their interlocutor, so as to tear away the veil of ambiguity that lets them move around freely. 
         May there be contempt! This could be a good starting point for looking beyond the single atrocities perpetrated by Alpini, police and carabinieri, and finally getting to the root of the problem. That is to say the State’s need to increase its repressive or preventive apparatuses, the existence of the armed forces as functional to maintaining the status quo. And no less important, especially in these ominous times, the increasing push for every ‘good citizen’ to become police informers, blindly obedient with an acritical respect for the law seen as absolute truth, characteristics that are undeniably linked to the militarist ideology.
          Certain that their intimidations won’t have any effect, we need to build as many occasions as possible so that words printed in black and white cut through our pages and come out into the open, expressing a radical critique that can’t be recuperated by the democratic yoke.
          To bring alive the tension against all authority, against assassins, minions of power and the indifferent, increasingly accomplice to everyday atrocities.

Centro di documentazione anarchico l’Arrotino [Anarchist resource centre l’Arrotino]

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Trees Or Tarmac, Autonomy Or Control?

  And more on the ZAD struggle. This from Contra Info:

       A CALL FOR INTERGALACTIC SOLIDARITY ACTIONS EVERYWHERE TO END THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ZAD OF NOTRE DAME DES LANDES

We are writing with the smell of tear gas rising from our fingers. The springtime symphony of birdsong is punctuated by the explosive echo of concussion grenades. Our eyes are watering, less from the gas than the sadness; because our friends’ homes, barns and organic farms are being destroyed. Bulldozers, supported by 2500 riot police, armored vehicles, helicopters and drones, are rampaging through these forests, pastures and wetlands to crush the future we are building here on the to the zad (The zone à defendre).

We are calling on you to take solidarity actions everywhere, it could be holding demos at your local french embassy or consulate, or taking actions against any suitable symbol (corporate or otherwise) of France ! And if you are not too far away, bring your disobedient bodies to join us on the zone. If the French government evicts the zad, it will be like evicting hope.

For fifty years, this unique chequerboard landscape was the site of a relentless struggle against yet another climate wrecking infrastructure – a new airport for the nearby city of Nantes. Farmers and villagers, activists and naturalists, squatters and trade unionists wove an unbreakable ecology of struggle together and three months ago on the 17th of January, the French government announced that the airport project would be abandoned. But this incredible victory, won through a diversity of creative tactics from petitions to direct action, legal challenges to sabotage, had a dark shadow. In the same breath that declared the abandonment, came the announcement that the people occupying these 4000 acres of liberated territory, the 300 of us living and farming in 80 different collectives, would be evicted because we dared not just to be against the airport, but its WORLD as well.

Read the full article HERE:

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Locked In A Cage Of Cameras.

         Our cities and towns are festooned with CCTV cameras, your every move is recorded, where you were, who you were with, what you were up to, all data stored for use by the state. Dates, times, and frequency of visit to this and that, without your consent, you are under total surveillance. You would be a rather naive fool if you thought this was all for your protection. Each city and town in this country spends millions of pounds of public money on installing and manning this state surveillance monster, no austerity there. Its main purpose is control, and protection of the established power structure. We pay to protect our over lords and masters' power and privileges.

      Communities are well capable of looking after themselves, if they come together, and organise how they want their community to be shaped, they don't need big brother to do that for them. We have allowed ourselves to be slowly trapped in a cage of a million cameras, each camera is a bar in your cage, our over lords and masters are not going to open the cage door and let us be free, we will have to do that ourselves, assuming you wish to be a free individual in a free society, rather than a possible suspect to be monitored and controlled. 

         This from Act For Freedom Now:

        Yesterday, 13.12 (ac.ab), we decided to honor the night by interfering with our neighbourhood by destroying 4 cameras on Zaimis Street. One of the reasons we live in Exarchia is certainly the avoidance of technofascism and avoiding being watched on a continuous basis without our will.
          We do not want security cameras to protect property, which will end up in the hands of the police in case of thivery.
      We promote autonomous patrols, communication between residents and solidarity. And we would like to tell you that the cameras you put,put them in your house or they will end up broken as yesterday and tomorrow. With a small walk we saw around 20 cameras …!
           Our move is in solidarity to the hunger strikers Nikos Maziotis Pola Roupa,to the tortured by security forces arrested on December 6, and people who realize that a free neighbourhood is won by struggle.
       Autonomous Politically Conscious Residents of the Neighbourhood of Exarchia.

Surveillance Society.

 

        We all know the state spies on its citizens, we all know that the state passes legislation that it doesn't want it citizens to know about, we all know, or should know, it does all this with one aim , control over our lives. To hold onto its power it needs to know where you are, what you're up to, and be able to intervene and stifle any form of dissent. "Big Brother" is not a story of fiction, in today's society, it is a reality. We are surrounded by profiling, face recognition, CCTV, spied on, monitored, infiltrated by undercover agents, and there is a constant drive by the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, to manufacture our opinions, to mould our perception of reality to their liking.     

       All of these things are not exceptions, they are the norm of our modern way of life, who are they protecting?

       As far as the state is concerned, nothing is personal in this surveillance society, the state claims the right to be privy to ever aspect of your personal life. Your right to privacy is something the state doesn't recognise and will continually attempt to find ways to circumvent that right. All of this is to protect the established power, and protect its wealth and privileges. No matter where we are in this "Big Brother" society, the state will always try to take us further along that route. We must fight to put a stop to this whole malignant, repressive state apparatus, it is in the interest of us all to do so.

This from Open Media:

       Leaked docs reveal the UK Home Office’s secret plan to gain real-time access to our text messages and online communications AND force companies like WhatsApp to break the security on its own software. This reckless government plan will make all of us more vulnerable to attacks like yesterday's ransomware assault against the NHS.

Act now

        A shocking leak scooped by our friends at Open Rights Group has made this information public.¹ Home Secretary Amber Rudd has made it very clear that she thinks no one should get to use safe and secure messaging apps.² Now she has set on the path to make her wish come true.

       Yesterday a massive ransomware attack hit the NHS, blocking off access to patient data and endangering lives. This horrific story tells us why companies need to be able to develop security software without any backdoors that can be exploited this way.³

     Can you speak up right now and send Amber Rudd a powerful message to defend our privacy and online security?

      The Government’s proposals will force tech companies and Internet providers to allow “near real time” access to all your private online communications.⁴ Clearly, the only information Amber Rudd believes should stay hidden is the Government’s own powers! We need to make it clear that secretive laws that break our tech and strip away our privacy have no place in a democracy.

       What's even more worrying is that the Home Office is not expecting to hear from the public. They planned to keep this entire process secret — including a “consultation” they didn’t publicly announce, even to tech businesses!⁵

           Because of this secrecy, we now have fewer than 10 days to get our voices on the record — we don’t have a moment to lose!

Tell Home Secretary Amber Rudd: Encryption keeps us safe. Do not weaken everyone’s security by creating backdoors that hackers and malicious actors can exploit.

       The UK Home Office already has some of the most aggressive surveillance powers in the world. This is nothing more than a power grab for even more invasive powers — but if enough of us speak up we can stop this. They won’t be expecting a big reaction in so little time — can you speak up now?

Thank you for helping us fight back!

Ruth

       P.S. Strong encryption saves lives⁶ — Vulnerable groups will have their safety compromised if services like WhatsApp and Signal are forced to build backdoors. Lawyers will lose client confidentiality, victims of police misconduct will be spied on, journalists will be unable to protect sources, and domestic abusers could be gifted further ways to exploit tech vulnerabilities to spy on their partners.⁷ Can you add your voice to save the tools and technologies that keep us safe?

Footnotes

[1] LEAKED Draft Statutory Powers, Source: Open Rights Group

[2] Investigatory Powers: 'Real-time surveillance' in draft update, Source: BBC

[3] NHS cyber-attack: GPs and hospitals hit by ransomware. Source: BBC

[4] Winning the debate on encryption — a 101 guide for politicians. Source: Privacy International

[5] Plans for extensive Government spying powers revealed in leaked report. Source: Telegraph

[6] Encryption saves lives. Source: Jon Camfield

[7] This Software Company May Be Helping People Illegally Spy On Their Spouses. Source: Forbes

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Let's End The Bullshit, Now.

          I’m 82 years old, and I wonder how many of you can tell me how often I’ve heard our political ballerinas spout, “ We are going to end child poverty”, “We are going to solve the housing crisis”, “We are going to tackle inequality”? Every election, every new leadership battle, this kind of bullshit gets spread over our heads, and sadly on the basis of who says it with the best acting performance, usually gets onto the gravy train.
       Here we are in the 21st. Century, so with all those reassurances from the political careerists, where are we on those three points, child poverty, house shortage and inequality?
       Child poverty, 2014-15 there were approximately 4 million children living in poverty in the UK. That is equivalent to more than 25% of all our kids, in some areas it is much higher, where I live, in Springburn for example, it is 52%. While this is a crime, what is worse is that we have 1.7 million kids living in severe poverty. Of course we will hear the mantra get a job and lift yourself out of poverty, well, 63% of those children living in poverty are in a home where someone is working.
       Housing crisis, not enough homes being built keeps the price of houses high, and rising. More and more people can’t afford a mortgage and with the slashing of social housing, they are forced into expensive private rentals or crap private rented accommodation. The number of homeless households has risen to more than 50,000 a year. Many of these people will wait years for decent accommodation, and many will have dependent children, they will spend years shuffling around temporary accommodation. Approximately 2,000 will have no roof over their heads and will end up sleeping rough. (figures for England)
     Inequality, over the last decade the poorest tenth of our population have seen a fall in their real incomes, while the richest tenth has seen their incomes take a much larger proportional rise than any other group. The vast majority of extra income money has gone to those with above average earnings, with approximately half of this extra money going to the richest tenth of earners.

  The overall message from these various analyses is simple: income inequalities have been increasing, both recently and over longer time periods.  These inequalities have been increasing at both ends of the spectrum.  In other words, the poorest have fallen further behind the average, and the richest have moved further ahead.

       So I have lived for 82 years of being fed pure unadulterated bullshit, though I don't remember the fist five or so, but I imagine they were filled with just the same crap.

        One encouraging feature of today is that the vast majority of the public have absolutely no belief in, or respect for, our established system. They see the political parasites for what they are, a bunch of self-centred, greedy careerists, and the establishment is worried. The growing discontent, and anger is a threat to their control over our lives, and they will go to any lengths to try to reassert that control. One feature of this fear is the latest onslaught against the Corbyn wave of popularity, they can't tolerate anyone with even a faint hint of socialism any where near the levers of control. Their hysteria has gone from reds under the beds, to Trots in the toilets.

       So now would seem the right time to really get aggressive with our anger, with our disgust, now would seem the right moment to take our anger to the streets, to the work places, to the communities. The hysterical parasites are on  the back foot, they are losing control. Perhaps that one large push of organised anger, of well supported direct action, can bring this whole stinking cancerous system tumbling down. 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Teachers And Police.

      Anybody that looks at the structure of this society can see that is an extremely unfair, unequal arrangement. The question is how and why does it survive? It survives because the powers that be, the state, have several lines of defence to prevent any real change taking place. One of the first lines of defence is the standardised education system, teachers are the soft police of society. Where they fail to get acquiescences and acceptance of the system, the second line of defence comes in, the police, followed up by the judicial system and prison. When these lines of defence fail, the state will have no hesitation in bringing troops onto the streets to repress the people and any demands they make for real change to the structure of society.

        It is obvious that the first line of defence, the "education system" is failing, as we are seeing more brutal and militarised policing taking place in countries across the globe. The police's duty, first and foremost, is to protect the power and property of the wealthy and the status-quo.

     This is an extract from an article on the police, from the latest issue of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. 

      Anarchists know (or should know) that individuals who enter institutions usually come face to face with possible conflicts between institutional norms and their personal integrity. Those who remain end up perpetuating those norms regardless of any possible intention to alter them. But the observation that institutions change people is not the whole story. Power corrupts, but the already corrupt and the easily corruptible seek to join powerful institutions precisely so they will have professional opportunities to exercise their corruption.
     The laughable institutional excuse of supposed bad apples continues to be deployed at press conferences. These supposed bad apples are the ones who join the police in order to harass queers, beat up detainees, demand freebies from sex workers, steal from dealers, frame suspects, punitively deploy crowd control weapons, exercise disproportionate violence, and antagonize and terrorize non-compliant people — up to and including murder. .And who then have the bad taste to get caught. But no Field Training Officer has to teach them how to do these things. When there’s a too-big- to-be-ignored episode of alleged misconduct, all the good cops and their supporters line up with the bad apples, making every person standing with them complicit. Institutional self-preservation doesn’t dissipate even a little in the wake of embarrassing multi-million dollar settlements to survivors of police abuse.

Read the full article HERE:

Whose Justice?

         Received this from comrade Loam at arrezafe, another example of the charade of justice under capitalism, a graphic display of representative democracy at work. Although it took place in Ireland, it is the same attitude throughout the system. A judicial code that is based on fuck the people, with the state's bully-boys doing their usual rough stuff.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

I'm Not Charlie.

        You can rest assured, the state will use any and every event to tighten its grip over the people. This "Je Suis Charlie" event that is sweeping through Europe like an epidemic, will be used to attempt to turn us into some sort of homogeneous sponge, with one opinion, or your a terrorist. Fit in, say the mantra, or you are worthy of investigation by the state apparatus. To stand up and say "I'm Not Charlie", in no way diminishes the horror and revulsion felt by the barbarity of that act of pointless brutal murder. However to acquiesce, en masse, to a uniformity of response, orchestrated by the very state that represses freedom of speech, or be singled out as, against "freedom of speech", is surely a contradiction.

     This article by Richard Seymour posted in Lenin's Tomb, if true, emphasises the points made above.

     In fact (a correspondent tells me, referring to this article), the provisions of recent legislation (13.11.2014) on the monitoring and reporting of school pupils' speech and behaviour appear to have been put into effect for the first time as the names of children who failed to observe the minute's silence were reported by teachers or supervisors to the head, then to the rectorat - the regional education administration - and on to the police and prosecuting authorities, to be analysed by the intelligence services, who decide whether the facts in question are serious enough to warrant formal investigation of the pupil and his/her family and social network.  

    More widely, there are a series of arrests and sentences being handed down for "justification/gorification of terrorism", including that of a 28 year old man diagnosed with learning disabilities.

     If you are not Charlie, would you please speak up so that we can have you arrested and flung in jail, or re-educated?

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

A BETTER WAY OF DOING THINGS.

      An interesting and informative film from ANARKOS it would be nice to see it more widely circulated.

ann arky's home.