Category Archives: Analysis

Madrid, Spain – About the Attack on Our Personal Relationships

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“I’m looking out for mine and you’re looking out for yours, listen to your watch, its ticking is a murmur”

Confinement has disastrous consequences for one of the most important pillars of our lives: personal relationships. These are being forced to distance themselves, to break down, to replace the contact of the flesh with the isolation of bits and screens. It is not like when someone you love marches through life situations to some remote place, where you are certain that the bond will surely be dusty but intact on return, or that it will live on in memory; but there you have the support of all the other relationships on which we rely in our daily lives. This quarantine situation has forcibly interrupted the course of our social interactions overnight, confining our lives to the isolation module. Some people are lucky, and at least (at least because it doesn’t fill the gap left by estranged ties) they can get through the confinement with people they love and on whom they can rely on to support each other, but what about the people who live alone? Who will hear their cries for help when anxiety-ridden suicide knocks on their door? What about the women who have their own jailer at home? It is said that the police will be on the lookout for calls about gender-based violence, but we cannot expect the police to solve these problems, even less so when we know that most of the time they contribute to the humiliation and vexation of the abused woman. Besides, will you really be able to pick up the phone when you’re locked up with someone who dominates you, will you be able to go outside? The femicide figures show us that the answer is no. And what about those who don’t have a place to live? The ones the military will “help” and “relocate”. We shouldn’t trust anything the army says they’ll do when we’re not looking because we’re locked up at home.

And to add another rock to the rucksack, social panic has not only caused individual people to break their bonds, but to try to break those who try to resist. You scold from the balconies for walking together in the street, for shaking hands, hugging, kissing… Collective anxiety on the basis of “I’m staying at home and you’re taking it as a joke”. But talking about whatsapp, skype, social networks and other alternatives provided by technology is not even remotely valid to escape from the swamp of anxiety and madness in which we have been sunk. You need contact, you need to walk with someone without thinking that a patrol car is going to give you a ticket for keeping friendship ties and not falling into hysteria.

What will happen when we can go back out on the street and we don’t know how to relate in a group, face to face in the square? When social anxiety is widespread and we have to unite and fight against the shitty world we live in?

Let’s not let social panic and state control destroy the most valuable things we have, let’s strengthen our bonds to be unbreakable chains that sweep away domination.

https://325.nostate.net/2020/04/09/madrid-spain-about-the-attack-on-our-personal-relationships/

Against the pandemic of capital, social revolution!

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Capitalism is instating terror and repression all over the world in an operation that is unparalleled throughout human history. Confinement of regions, cities and entire countries, massive confinement of human beings who are obligated to remain incarcerated in their own homes, a suspension of the miserable human rights, surveillance, tracking and processing of all movements of the population by means of all kinds of technologies (smartphones, big data, artificial intelligence…) massive lay–offs, the application of States of emergency, of alarm, of siege, etc.

Throughout the globe we are seeing a militarization of the streets spreading in order to control and repress all unauthorized movement. We’re also seeing the eyes of the state being multiplied through submissive and frightened citizens that watch out for any kind of small infringement or questioning of the decrees that are imposed.1

In order to buttress this scenario, the spokespersons of the State smother us with details about the spread of what the WHO has denominated as the “COVID–19 Pandemic”.

The retransmission of the number of infected, hospitalized and dead, as well as the rates of mortality and the predictions for contagion, accompanied by images of saturated hospitals and caravans of funeral hearses lining up at the morgue, transpire frenetically before our eyes in full detail while a constant procession of politicians, scientists, military personnel and journalists thrust us into a war against an external enemy called coronavirus, presented as the greatest enemy of humanity, as a pandemic that puts all human life in jeopardy.

We want to make it clear that in saying this we’re not trying to say that the so–called COVID–19 doesn’t exist or that it’s purely an ideological creation of of the State. What we’re trying to explain throughout this text is that the pandemic is being used as a tool for counter–insurrection and the restructuring of capitalism, and that what they are trying to sell us as a solution is much worse than the problem. In this sense, though indeed the social occurrence of this pandemic as a result of the terroristic deployment conducted by the state is evident, we don’t yet have elements upon which to evaluate the direct incidence of COVID–19 at a biological level on our health. The details we have at have are those that are presented by the different apparatus of global capitalism (the WHO, the States, scientific organs…), which evidently for us are not reliable since any State can inflate or cover up their statistics. Obviously also the proletarians in retirement homes, jails, psychiatric institutions… denounce that these centers are turning into, more than ever, extermination centers.

That said, the fundamental issue to take into account is that global capitalism has never taken similar measures despite the widespread catastrophe that appears and is expressed on thousands of terrains (pandemics, sicknesses, famines, ecological disasters…)2 for us there’s nothing humanitarian in the measures against the coronavirus. The State sows the fear and the impotence in an atomized population in order to present itself as the omnipotent protector of humanity. It makes calls for everyone to unite in order to together take up the struggle against this enemy, to make the necessary sacrifices, to collaborate with everything that the authorities dictate, to submit to the directives and the orders of the different apparatus of the State.

This whole spectacular display creates an indispensable covering. The story about the defense of health doesn’t fit. We know that death and widespread catastrophe are the essence of this mode of production and reproduction, where human life and the planet are mere means for valorization, and capital doesn’t give a shit about human well–being —although the different forms of bourgeois management draw up limits in order to not totally destroy the material support for valorization, the depredation of these mediums, their deterioration and destruction end up clearing every hurdle, since this is the natural form under which life develops under capitalism. The destruction of the planet and its inhabitants, the unstoppable and increasing death of millions of humans because of hunger, war, pandemics, toxicity, work , from starvation, from suicide, and a long etcetera, has never been a problem to solve for capitalism, but just collateral damage, or better said, its specific mode of development.

The “solidarity” campaigns, the investigation and the scientific–medical development or any type of legislative measure, are the forms in which capital applies its “solutions” to all the preoccupations that are generated by these grand problems that humanity suffers from under the tyranny of value. Even if we use the same restricted and deceitful criteria that science uses to justify the measures which are now generally taken,3 meaning, the existence of a virus that threatens the health of the society, we know that in each and every one of the countries where these “measures for containment of the coronavirus” are rolled out, the existence, according to the official data itself, of other virus with a large impact on health has never been a motive of much worry. This is not to say that the State hasn’t been obligated to intervene on account of any specific catastrophe, as it has done on various occasions, in which it always takes the opportunity to introduce measures which at other times would suppose resistance and revolts. Therefore, for us it’s clear that all the measures that capitalism is rolling out in order to “fight against the coronavirus pandemic” don’t have the aim of our health, our care and well–being in mind. It’s fitting to ask why capitalism has created this state of war in this concrete case and, more importantly still, what we as proletarians and revolutionaries must do in this situation.

We have no doubt. The war against the coronavirus is a war against the worldwide proletariat. The state measures justified by the coronavirus are a qualitative leap, decisive and homogeneous, in the global counter–insurrection and in the bourgeois intentions to attempt to initiate a new cycle of the accumulation of capital. And in the face of this war the proletariat only has two paths: to sacrifice their lives in it or to oppose themselves to it in order to defend their human needs.

It’s certain that we live in a social system accustomed to confinement. To confining the food and basic necessities, to confine us in flats, in cars, in shopping malls, in centers of domestication of children, in centers of work, in centers for the elderly (retirement homes) , in health centers, in incarceration centers, in centers of recreation or of vacation… and these measures make another turn of the screw in this system of isolation and of privatization, transforming the world into a grand concentration camp.4 But it can’t be ignored that all of this is happening precisely when the capitalist catastrophe is reaching new heights, when the antagonism between life and capital has arrived to levels even more unsustainable than in the past. The destruction of the Earth, the depredation of its resources, the poisoning of all that exists, the sharpening of all the mechanisms of exploitation and plundering of the human being and the whole natural world, which are aspects inherent to this mode of production of the species that is determined by the economy, are reaching unbearable limits for the mere existence of living beings. The very dynamic of the valorization of capital, in which it has ever more difficulties in renovating its reproductive cycles because of the growing devalorization that is congenital to it, is carrying the contradictions of this system to its limits. We’re on the way to a devalorization without precedents. The nosedive of fictitious capital, which sustained the cycles of capitalist production with pins, foreshadows on the horizon. The financial crisis of recent years, the first explosion of which developed in 2008, expresses the exhaustion of the mechanism of artificial respiration that kept the world economy alive. Today, when all capital is sustained on the basis of the incessant reproduction of fictitious capital, of tons of debts and all kinds of financial injections that permit capital to continue sucking the blood out of the worldwide proletariat, the bourgeoisie are beginning to become conscious that the fiction cannot escape the very logic upon which it was built, it cannot unencumber itself from the law of value, and all this gigantesque accumulation of capital precipitates towards its breakdown.

It’s clear that, first of all, we can’t ignore another even more decisive issue. All of this “war against the coronavirus” is happening precisely when the catastrophe which the bourgeois has placed on the backs of the proletariat projected grand upheavals, already promised by the wave of struggles that coalesced in 2019 and the start of 2020 in dozens of countries.5 The unleashing of a conflagration that would raze the whole capitalist order is a problem that returns to being the topic of the day in circles of the bourgeoisie, and a hope that returns to the hearts of the proletarians.

That’s why for years the counter–insurrectional operations have multiplied throughout the world. Though indeed, every manual against the insurrection has as its base the destruction of the autonomy of the proletariat, the forms in which this has materialized throughout history have been multiple. Imperialist war, which has never ceased to develop, has always been the recourse par excellence to transform the antagonism between classes into a fight between bourgeois fractions, reestablishing national unity against an exterior enemy, destroying the indomitable, making another turn of the screw to the miserable conditions of the proletariat —imposing war and post–war sacrifices— and generating a material and human destruction, sufficiently ample to invigorate the process of capitalist reproduction, opening up a new phase of expansion.

The coronavirus pandemic presents all the characteristics of imperialist war: the exterior enemy, the national unity, the war economy, the sacrifices for the homeland or the “common good”, the collaborators, the deaths, the economic restructuring, etc.6 Like every imperialist war it supposes short term losses (although certain sectors see their profits skyrocket), but it contains the material basis to generate a new phase of accumulation. This process of the reanimation of moribund capital, which is applying itself under the cover of the war against coronavirus and which implies the attack on the living conditions of the proletariat, brings along the propulsion of a new phase of accumulation that can only be developed upon a destruction of capital of unusual and unknown dimensions and consequences. It’s clear that in a dynamic where fictitious capital represents the axis where accumulation is sustained, the destruction will commence from this terrain. The current partial and temporary paralyzation of the production and circulation of commodities requires extraordinary quantities of fictitious capital in order to maintain the social fabric, in addition to centralizing a large part of capital in the military and health sectors. Nevertheless, this inundation of fiction in order to alleviate the paralysis of the market, which already contained an unsustainable over–accumulation of fictitious capital but circulated in a large part exclusively through financial markets, implies dumping enormous masses of fiction from these financial markets into actual market exchange, which exposes all this capital to its destruction through the coercive correction which, sooner than later, the market will realize with respect to the symbolic value. That’s to say, the devaluation of the coin, the despotic imposition of a law that the bourgeoisie had thought to have circumvented, will create a devaluation without precedents that will imply the general insolvency of businesses, of States, the massive cancellation of debts, and of course, the bourgeois endeavor for a global restructuration of capital (centralizing itself in new fields, purging others, consolidating new mechanisms of circulation…) trying to resume a new cycle of accumulation. It’s obvious that, before and above all, this context can only be developed by making the proletariat swallow a sacrifice that will beckon them towards a massive breakdown, which will extend conditions all over that make survival increasingly more impossible. On the other hand, it will also push the proletariat to rebel, to defend their interests against the catastrophe of capital. This is the future that worldwide capitalism has reserved for humanity: a sharpening of the catastrophe or revolution.7

In this context is better understood the actions of all the States, the confinement, putting the army on the street, the surveillance of the population, the tightening of the belt of all proletarians and the announcement by the State of harder sacrifices to come. The State is evaluating how the proletariat reacts in the face of the states of emergency and has managed to momentarily cause the retraction of developing protests and revolts like those in France, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Hong Kong, Chile, etc.

In Chile, before the numerous officials of the State could present even one death, and before any health measure was implemented, the State declared a state of emergency. In such a way the States utilize the pandemic in order to recover the social peace in zones that have seen protests and revolts in recent years, in addition to rolling out in other places an environment favorable to the repression of protests against the exasperating measures that are being prepared, determining the capacity for social control that they have over their territory, where the hubs of rebellion are concentrated, what aspects to improve in order to better assure the surveillance and dominion over the territory, etc. Throughout the history of capitalism, in the measure in which it has come to impose new adjustments and turns of the screw to the exploitation, more or less collective resistance, revolts, and insurrections have occurred. For this reason it was surprising, at first, to see the massive acceptance on part of the proletariat of the measure applied by the States, facilitated, without a doubt, by the new situation in which they found themselves and the mediatic force of the State apparatus. Nevertheless, some proletarians announced by means of their first rebuttals of all of these measures, their refusal to follow the trumpets of the State, to subject themselves to the regime of terror and to accept the worsening of their living conditions. Little by little we see how the gestures, cries, mobilizations and protests begin to reproduce.

Despite the difficult conditions that the State imposes by means of the confinement and isolation, our class tries to organize its response to the attack launched by the State. Not only are small acts of disobedience reproduced, which the State represses with fines, arrests, and accusations of lack of solidarity (like the elderly that walk around with a loaf of bread, the parents that gather children together in the household that has the biggest garden, the youth that traverse the forests with the excuse of searching for firewood, those that question the official version in terms of health issues, those that warn where there are checkpoints and point out the snitches, those that invent all kinds of tricks and ruses… all acts that express our most human need to break the incarceration and beckon to break the isolation), but also protests and confrontations in the streets occur. The province of Hubei, the first location to be subjected to the state of emergency, is experiencing protests and confrontations in many cities. In the Philippines the confinement was challenged by holding demonstrations that demanded food and other basic products. In Algeria, proletarians refused to suspend demonstrations that had been building up one after the other before the confinement. India, the immigrant workers confronted the police. In Italy actions were organized to the cry of “We together must retake what they take away from us”. The riots in the jails and the detention centers for illegal immigrants travel from country to county. The looting and the call to not pay rent, added to the strikes of those that continue to work are beginning to take place in some locations. The networks of mutual aid and funding–pools for resistance as well.

The different national States try to settle or contain these protests by using the advantages that the state of emergency allows them. The president of the Philippines was clear with respect to affirming that he would execute anybody who avoids confinement. On the other hand, they have announced small concessions such as the temporary liberation of 100,000 prisoners in Iran, or the creation of social vouchers for food in Italy. Other States, trying to anticipate the protests, throw miserable carrots which we are convinced will neither serve to placate the hunger nor the necessities that were repressed for centuries by a capitalism which today tightens the screw anew.

These first skirmishes that organize against the worldwide state of emergency advance the notion that the proletariat will not remain enclosed in their homes to watch how they are carried off to the slaughterhouse, nor will they accept being sacrificed for the economy. But we need to organize this whole rebuttal internationally and further it until it pierces the heart of the capitalist beast. To bring the fear to the other side, so that the panic moves on to the ranks of the bourgeoisie. May the fear over the coronavirus pandemic transform into fear about the pandemic of revolution.

The war against the coronavirus is a
war against the worldwide proletariat!

Let’s impose our human needs against
the needs of global capitalism!

April 2nd, 2020

Internationalist Proletarians

1 To clarify, in spite of the state of emergency and the confinement, declared in dozens of countries around the world, capital continues to keep the productive sectors that it considers necessary in function, obligating the proletarians of these sectors to go to work and secluding them in their homes when they have finished. Even in the counties with the largest level of paralysis in production and circulation, the decree of “only essential work”, creating the appearance that it is only for our human needs, is so ambiguous and flexible precisely in order to not create an obstacle for the necessities of capital.

2 We don’t believe it’s relevant in this text to go further into questions related to the concrete origin of COVID–19. Firstly, because we cannot affirm anything with clarity in not having sufficient elements to do so, and secondly, because the most important thing is to understand that the production and diffusion of the current pandemics are a result of the capitalist mode of production and circulation. See: Social Contagion, by Chuang (chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/) and The Pandemics of Capital (barbaria.net/2020/03/29/the-pandemics-of-capital/) by Grupo Barbaria.

3 We want to clarify, although we can not go more into detail in this small text, that we don’t only reject that the healing of a sickness is a medical act, as the health system and the capitalist system would have us believe, but that our conception of what is a sickness, a virus, and more generally, our conception of what caring for health is, is at the antipodes of science. Certainly, science, if it’s for anything, is for developing the necessary conditions for capitalism to continue functioning, to continue annihilating and crushing everything, hurdling obstacles, exceeding limitations, etc. Its different articulations permit capital adaption and phagocytosis.

This is not to say that we endorse or propose an “alternative” system or approach. The techno–scientific system rapidly condemns its critics under the label of “pseduoscience”, but our critique of the dominant and totalitarian system of knowledge under the capitalist system also points out the phenomena that are cataloged in such a way. Furthermore, these “alternative therapies” increasingly act more as escape valves and techniques that complement “official medicine”.

4 Clearly this grand concentration camp is not the same for everyone. It is not only reflected in aspects which we have commented in an earlier note in relation to work, but also the confinement itself is experienced in a totally different way. Remember the “I’m staying home” campaign, promoted through videos in which some celebrities, from their “little gardens” or the interior of their “modest mansions” harangued about staying at home, and which was mimicked by thousands of citizens from the matchboxes in which they live.

5 See our text “International revolt against global capitalism” at http://www.en.proletariosinternacionalistas.org/international-revolt-2/

6 We’re not only referring to the deaths that have been associated with COVID–19 by the States, but we’re including those generated by the state with its measures. Among some comrades it’s being discussed whether to characterize it also as a chemical war directly against the proletariat (which doesn’t imply speaking of premeditation —although we know that our enemy has already used it in the past and has not ceased to develop investigation in this field— but its objective effect), concretely against the sectors that capital considers nonproductive and that pose heavy burdens to the coffers of the States, and these sectors are precisely where the coronavirus is striking: the elderly, prisoners, those with immunodeficiencies…

7 We’re not affirming that this process is immediately developing, but we are indeed affirming that under “the coronavirus pandemic” this process has initiated a qualitative leap towards its unfolding.

http://www.en.proletariosinternacionalistas.org/against-the-capitalist-pandemic/

Covid-19: Murder at the Hands of Capital

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People locked up. Hospitals and intensive care units that cannot cope.
Nursing homes converted into morgues. Breweries and aircraft factories
open. New construction sites empty. Gardeners in the parks and public
transport full of workers. The military patrol whilst police arrest,
fine and raid the immigrants gathered in squares.

We are witnessing the acceleration of an historical era. The coronavirus
hasn’t invented anything. It’s a pandemic caused by the logic of capital
and in turn is speeding up the systematic crisis of capitalism. It seems
important to us to weigh up the catastrophe that we are currently
living.

That which concerns every government is not the people but the health of
its national economy. That’s why, from the beginning, they trivialised
the virus saying that by April it will have been forgotten by the whole
world, insisting on the continuation of normal life. That of production
and commercial activity; that of work and consumption; that of public
demonstrations or sporting events. Everything is fine in the kingdom of
trade, Ada Colau told us whilst insisting on celebrating the Mobile
World Congress.

Governments only take measures when things get out of hand, from Pedro
Sánchez to Conte, Xi Jinping to Boris Johnson, and not forgetting Donald
Trump. That which concerns them is neither peoples’ health nor the
concern that the expansion of the virus will effect production or
commercial activity. What worries them is that which may sweep away
their world, the world of capital, and its immediate collapse by the
death of millions of people. That’s why the Spanish government will not
stop certain sectors of production until 6,000 official deaths are
registered (El País, never suspicious of anticapitalism, already
acknowledges the real death count to be significantly higher) and, of
course, one will have to give back to businesses everything, down to our
last drop of blood.

Whoever may govern, governs the same, with the same concerns and aims:
defence of the national economy, the presence of police and military on
the streets in order to prevent predictable social revolts, collective
dismissals, credit to the companies and other measures in which all the
political factions agree. The state of alarm prevails. Mobile phones are
tracked to control our movements Police on the streets give out more
than 180,000 fines and there have been almost 1,600 arrests in the
Spanish state. All of this under the democratic government of PSOE and
Podemos and not the supposed fascists of Vox. There is nothing
inherently bad within capitalism: capitalism is that which is inherently
bad. Every political party is nothing but an agent of the capitalist
disaster. There is no better or worse for those that vote.

It’s important to understand these lessons with regards to the future.
Not only for the human catastrophy that we are experiencing – much
deadlier in Nou Barris than in Sarria, in Vallecas than in La Moraleja –
but for that which is coming. We are not all in the same boat. They
praise the medical community whilst treating them like cannon fodder,
being infected without means of protection. They save the national
economy and the functioning of companies at the cost of a huge debt to
the Spanish state. A debt that, in the coming months, will be
accompanied by a brutal fall in the GDP and will have to be payed in the
form of tax hikes, interests on personal debts, massive cuts in salaries
and dismissals. The immediate future is one of exacerbation of the
capitalist crisis, of the acceleration of a catastrophe that will come
in the form of huge rebellions and revolts like those in 2019.
Rebellions like those that are sensed in the workers that refuse to
continue their production of death in the factories of Italy, Spain,
Brazil and North America.

We are living in historical times, and in historical times it is
important to make historical decisions. The future is already written
and it will be one of the struggle for life or death, class conflict and
combat between humanity and capital. We will prepare ourselves with
clarity and determination.

29th March 2020
barbaria.net

Covid-19: homicidio del capital

USA – From Solitary Confinement to Coronavirus Quarantine

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The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters.

For 27 years, Keith LaMar has survived solitary confinement in a supermax prison in Ohio, isolated for 23 hours a day in a space the size of a bathroom. From his bed, if he crooks his neck at just the right angle, he can look out through a slit of a window a few inches wide at a parking lot. But in all these years, he hasn’t touched a blade of grass or a tree; the closest he’s come to the outdoors is in a below-ground concrete “rec cage,” covered by a steel grate ceiling. If he’s lucky, he might catch a glimpse of the sun.

LaMar, 50, was locked up as a teenager after killing someone in a dispute during a drug deal. A few years later, he was moved to solitary confinement and sentenced to death after he was convicted of murdering five inmates in a prison riot known as the Lucasville Uprising. He says he did not kill them. Activists in Ohio and around the country have rallied to his cause by writing op-eds and staging solidarity actions. His execution is scheduled for 2023.

After a hunger strike in 2011, LaMar and a few other death row prisoners at the Ohio supermax won the right to hug their family members during visits, instead of just seeing them through a plexiglass barrier, and to make phone calls from their cells. Lately, his friends outside prison have been telling him about the spread of the coronavirus and the new “shelter in place” orders taking effect in many states. His friends wonder how he stays positive during prolonged periods of physical isolation. The social distancing they describe is nowhere near as extreme as the punishment of solitary confinement—a form of torture. But he has tried to offer what insight he can. He called me last week from his cell.

I’ve Spent 27 Years in Solitary Confinement. Here Are Some Tips on Making the Best Use of Time Alone.

 

 

 

I’ve Spent 27 Years in Solitary Confinement. Here Are Some Tips on Making the Best Use of Time Alone.

By Keith Lamar, via AMW.

In solitary, I’m already quarantined somewhat. The only way we would get sick is if a CO [correctional officer] or somebody brings it in. It’s probably inevitable because the guards, even if they don’t have a temperature, can still be carrying the virus. And they are the ones who pass out mail, who give us food. I’m doing what I can in terms of washing my hands frequently, but there’s only so much you can do. You just sitting here waiting to catch it.

I had a strict rule with my family that if anyone is sick please don’t come visit, because once you get the flu [here] it’s just torture. They don’t give you any medications, beyond ibuprofen, so you pretty much have to suffer through. If you catch something as severe as coronavirus, I don’t know how they intend to deal with that. Perhaps they would ship you out to another facility, a hospital. I’m definitely afraid.

They have suspended all visitations, so our families aren’t able to come. Before, I was getting five to six visits a month: nieces and nephews, my uncles, aunts, friends. I realize there’s a pandemic, so I’m all for suspending visits temporarily. My fear is that after this is said and done, they will use this as an excuse to extend the no-visit policy. I went 18 years without being able to hug my family. That’s the only concern I have, besides getting sick.

People have been asking me questions ever since this “shelter in place,” with people having to stay home. It’s somewhat similar I suppose to being in solitary confinement, even though you might be with family and whatnot. Being in solitary confinement is really just being thrown upon yourself: You’re running around, just like people do in your regular life, and now all of a sudden you’re confronted with yourself, and find that in a lot of cases you haven’t really put anything into yourself to occupy yourself. Everything is outward directed. That’s what happened to me 27 years ago, and what happens to a lot of guys who are initially thrown into this situation—it’s like being thrown into the ocean. You have to learn how to swim. You have to learn how to deal with yourself.

I’ve been lucky in a lot of ways. My cell has a bookshelf with three shelves, and there’s a table to sit and write. I have a lot of music, books to read. Not to distract myself from myself, but to take me deeper into myself. I paint, I work out, I do yoga, I meditate.

I didn’t know I could write. I dropped out of high school in the 10th grade. I was 23, 24 years old at the time I was thrown on death row, at a loss of what would become of me. My education, if you can call it that, has come from my own efforts. I just started reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy, over and over. Paying attention to what he was doing and how. Before I knew what a semicolon was, I saw how he was using it. That’s how I learned to write. And I became an author. I’m not the best writer. My book Condemned probably won’t make the New York Times bestseller list. But that is my story, and I wrote it. And in that way I feel somewhat vindicated, that at least I tried to stand up and say something about my life.

I also like reading about the Holocaust. One of my favorite authors dealing with that genre is Primo Levi. Compared to my situation, his situation was much more extreme. You could die or be sent to the gas chamber on a whim. The arbitrariness of being thrown into those situations—I respond a whole lot to his experience. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, is also a big influence on my life. And Ta-Nehisi Coates_, Between the World and M_e. We’ve got three bookshelves, all three are filled with books. Being in solitary confinement, these books are my community. A lot of these guys, I’ve read their books over and over. So I’m intimately connected to these people. James Baldwin, I consider him like a family member.

I’ve watched quite a few people fall apart, lose their minds. But I went in another direction. So 27 years later I’m still sound in mind and body and spirit. I attribute that to just reading and cultivating myself. That’s the thing, when you’re thrown upon yourself, you realize you are more equipped than you realized. A lot of the system keeps us from realizing our own power. It’s a good opportunity for people to tap into that.

Being in solitary confinement, it’s a punishment. But people out in society, it’s an opportunity for your kids to get more in tune with themselves. Because when you’re in school, especially with the internet being what it is, everybody is generally being pulled away from themselves.

The root word of education is “to educe,” to bring forth that which is already there. Education isn’t really about what kind of career you’re gonna get or how you’re gonna make money. That’s not why we were born, to make money for somebody else. To get a big house. To have a nice car. You’re here to bring forth that which is already there. Hopefully young people being forced to stay home outside of the mainstream curriculum are able to get a glimpse of themselves and start pulling on that thread.

https://325.nostate.net/2020/04/07/ua-from-solitary-confinement-to-coronavirus-quarantine/

 

5G Arson Sabotage, Conspiracy Theories and UK

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According to corporate media another four Vodafone cell phone towers were torched in the 24 hours after the recent arson attacks targeting 5G infrastructure took place on April 2nd & 3rd. 3G and 4G towers were also part of those destroyed, although it’s unclear if they were unintentionally sabotaged or not. Information about the attacks themselves has been hard to ascertain due to limited information being issued by the mass media and rapid censorship of corporate social media.

Since the first attacks last week, at least 20 attacks are reported to have taken place across the country and there are reports of engineers also being questioned, harassed and attacked by people worried about 5G. It is clear that whilst everywhere is in lockdown the continued expansion and roll-out of 5G has remained a priority. The UK State regime and communications corporations were forced to issue a statement describing the risks that 5G poses to human health to be “baseless” and blamed the harassment and attacks on “conspiracy theories”. Social media corporation Facebook took down several pages dedicated to recording and apparently inciting the anti-5G attacks and also had their messaging app company WhatsApp limit the forwarding ability of messages. This is part of a cross-platform corporate attempt with Twitter, Google, Youtube etc to co-ordinate efforts together with the State to censor and track what they are describing as “misinformation” about the origins of Covid-19.

The most dominant of these unpermitted ideas being that 5G has a direct correlational relationship to the Coronavirus pandemic, in that 5G has a direct negative effect on humans leading to a weakening of the human nervous and immune system.

Whilst it has already been proven that air-pollution rates have a direct relationship with Covid-19 cases, and for decades the authorities also declared climate change to be a myth, we have to accept at face-value their claims, when even a small research of the background history of 5G reveals the facts.

Without 5G, the governments and corporations of this planet cannot build their techno-prison-world to control us all. The ‘internet of things’, ‘smart cities’, dataveillance, autonomous robots, vehicles and drones, all these things all require the total dominance of the 5G technology. If you do not want that, then you have every reason to see this technology burned to the ground already.

Through focusing on the most outlandish, reactionary and fascist narratives that are supposedly behind the Coronavirus pandemic (whilst engaging in dark arts of their own), the UK regime tries to defend itself during a peak moment of critical infrastructure vulnerability and people’s refusal to accept the real coup which has taken place.

What cannot be doubted is that other State and non-State actors continue to exploit the crisis to advance their own agenda through unconventional and quiet warfare. The entire world is at a war footing to fight each other and to repress their own people, massive troop and armour movements across all the major territories are reported, the plans of contingency are put in place and 2 billion people remain in lockdown.

This is the “conspiracy theory” – that the rich and the powerful connive with each other to achieve their own ends,- it has always been like this, and unless we do something about it, it will always be so.

All hail discordia.

https://325.nostate.net/2020/04/08/5g-arson-sabotage-conspiracy-theories-and-uk/

 

USA – Anathema – Anarchist periodical from Philadelphia

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Volume 6 Issue 3 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)
Online only this issue

In this issue:

From Future To Present Tense
COVID-19: A Fork In The Road
What Went Down
Earth’s Destruction Deemed “Essential”
Black Socialists In America Approached By The FBI
COVID In Prisons
The Last Assembly: A Report Back
Mutual Aid Toward Freedom

https://325.nostate.net/2020/04/09/ua-anathema-anarchist-periodical-from-philadelphia/

Italy – Proposal for a Day of Liberation on April 25th

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For a few weeks now, almost three billion people have been forced into home detention.
In Italy, as in other parts of the world, the first people who rebelled against the worsening conditions of their survival, the prisoners, have been repressed with dead and wounded.
While science proposes conflicting theses, part of the scientific community states that the quarantine period, although in alternating phases, will last at least until next year.
The state, however, has already chosen which truth to propagate to justify the measures taken. Forced isolation at home is being prolonged, the only proposal-constriction made to the population is to obey and wait by watching and self-surveillance… but for how long?

For now the end of the measures has been postponed until April 13th, but most likely there will be further extensions…

April 25th is the feast of liberation. Liberation not only from Nazi-Fascism, but from all forms of oppression.
The oppression of living in a world where movements are continuously controlled and monitored, with checkpoints, soldiers everywhere, drones, cameras, electronic bracelets.
The oppression of being individually considered as infected if we do not respect the laws and think that socializing and the possibility of going out are not transferable in exchange for the security of survival.
The oppression of living in terror of the invisible, because the problem is not the virus, but the ecological and social conditions in which it spreads.

The problem is climate change that alters natural cycles, it is urban overcrowding, it is the homogenization of food and immune responses, it is the speed of movement over the entire Earth’s surface.
We were told that we should accept these problems, barter our obedience in exchange for certain security.
These certainties have changed.

This virus, after the economic and environmental disaster, is just the latest disaster – to date – of a society imposed on us, a society based on domination, quantitative accumulation and exploitation of the planet and the animals, human or otherwise.

For this reason we propose – in the hope that we are not overcome by events – that on April 25th we return to the streets in as many places as possible to meet again, facing fear, fighting widespread surveillance, attacking the irresponsible rhetoric that sees us all as carriers of contagion.
With the intention that it will not remain an isolated day, we want to escape from quarantine, doing so by accepting the consequences of our actions, covering our faces for the free choice to protect ourselves and others and also because unthinkable things could take place without the freedom of anonymity…

Remaining passive spectators of the disaster by accepting imprisonment will not prevent the occurrence of new disasters, if anything it will prolong the agony we already experience.
Do we still want to trust and obey while the world continues to be a place where life is denied between total control, destroyed sociality and ecological drama?
Or identify the causes of this disaster, stop obeying and act to prevent dystopia from continuing.
And to finally experience the possibility of liberation…

 

https://325.nostate.net/2020/04/05/italy-proposal-for-a-day-of-liberation-on-april-25th/

Rebellion in times of the curfew

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We are in a situation that is absolutely new to us. Our freedoms are reduced to a minimum, similar to wartimes or imprisonment. Only this time the “enemy” is invisible and our prison is our home. Catastrophes, state of emergency, curfew, pandemic, media bombardment, panic, insecurity and isolation … It’s not about minimizing or assessing the deadly consequences of the coronavirus – on a medical level I cannot judge this. But I want to formulate a critique of the authoritarian formation taking place, i.e. the state of war declared by the state and the consequences this has for us and society. While every bill and every restriction is waved through with reference to the relevant experts and no one can predict what the situation might look like in a week, we don’t need experts to know that in times of crisis and war the state of emergency becomes the normality way too fast (you remember the “war on terror” or the “refugee crisis”?)

The social misery: lonely, digital and obedient

In the always-on society, the speed and presence of the news has reached a new level. Live updates show us the number of infected people. Our insecurity grows faster … Fear of being infected, of the sick, of the fellow human being, of the neighbour. Meanwhile, politicians are positioning themselves on the front line in the war against the enemy, assuring us that they know what is best. “Stay home! Stay satisfied” this is all we have to do. Prove unity and follow the orders because after all, now is “the wrong time for critique”. And, lo and behold, we find ourselves in a totalitarian scenario of control. You shouldn’t leave the house and should even report anyone who doesn’t stick to the orders. The good citizen becomes aware of his responsibility and calls the cops when he suspects that the neighbours are having a party. In the meantime the use of internet is rising to new heights. As we are no longer allowed to venture out into the world around us, we are being made to believe that there is another world we can escape in: the digital world. Instead of moving and  taking care of your social relations, life gets transposed into the digital world. Instead of going out and meeting friends, you can chat, watch series, make your home your office, get delivered everything in front of your door, watch porn, publish your critique and argue about something or just play games on the internet. In the digital intoxication, life becomes artificial and alienated. Ultimately we lose any possibility of changing anything about the reality around us. Stressed out, underutilized, overwhelmed and with square eyes bumming around within your own four walls – is this the future? Permanently locked in and scared from new horror-news. The number of those who decide themselves to put an end to such a life generally increases. As does the interpersonal and domestic violence which is mostly exercised by men against women.

Towards a permanent open-air prison

While I am writing this text, a police car is driving around in the parallel streets with speakers loudly announcing that one should stay at home. At the same time, some of the leading politicians sit down together and discuss how the curfew can be adapted nationwide. On the roof of a neighbouring house there is radio mast which collects the movement and contact data of all mobile phones in its radius. The companies Telekom and Vodafone will then pass this on so that can be analysed with whom infected persons have probably had contact and to what extent the exit restrictions are being observed. In a few days, the state will probably turn the curfew into an outright ban and abolish rights such as the secrecy of correspondence and the integrity of the home. All to examine who has contact with whom and where, who lives where and is where. The state subjects get categorized, divided and ordered or separated. Furthermore, under the call for total obedience, a global militarization of society is being achieved that has never existed before like this. Closed borders, soldiers preparing for action on the streets, prohibition of any gathering of people and helicopters searching for them with thermal imaging cameras. The fact that China is used as a model state in the fight against the epidemic shows in which direction the journey goes: drones flying above our heads, giving us orders, barcodes on our smartphones which allow us to go to the supermarket or force us into quarantine based on some incomprehensible algorithms, the lockdown of entire cities and checkpoints on every corner. The suggestion of one “expert” in Italy that people in quarantine should also be given electronic shackles to ensure that they do not leave the house, illustrates that the city has now been turned increasingly into an open-air prison and that the methods of discipline, control, administration, punishment and monitoring are applied to all citizens. Some are now content to wait for this brief period of restriction to pass and try to find amusement online. They demonstrate not only that freedom is worth nothing to them, but they also don’t understand that this condition will last more than a few days.

Normality is the real crisis

From the perspective of the ruling class it makes no sense to maintain this state of emergency for only two weeks. If you want to freeze society to stop a virus, it has to be for at least one year from a virological point of view. The consequences will be enormous even if the restrictions will afterwards be relaxed or lifted. Once you live lonely, digital and obedient, you will train yourself to behave in this way. Just a few months ago we saw protests and uprisings exploding globally, but the means of counterinsurgency and social stupidity will cause deep scars. Because those who live lonely and digital also let themselves be robbed of their possibilities and tools to discuss, revolt and self-organize with their friends. The state forbids us any social life while it puts itself in the role of protector of life and limb. But we know that it is the state and its industries that constantly kills, that disseminates wars all over the world, that lets refugees die at the borders and that for hundreds of years has been destroying and exploiting the earth. The state pretends to be the guardian of the common good, but actually it wants us to be work slaves and obedient soldiers – producing profits for its polluting industry and willing to die in its wars. First and foremost the state protects the rich and if in this economic crisis someone thinks of just taking from them what he or she lacks, the public servants will not hesitate to shoot the looters and thieves. Capitalism and the state need crises and states of emergency to increase and strengthen their power over us. The virus is not the reason, but the trigger. The state is calling on us to take our responsibility. But it forbids us to self-organize, to meet and to help each other. We are supposed to sit in front of the screen and say “yes” and “amen”. But when we abandon the role of subject, it declares war on us. If the state wants to control and prevent any of our movements and relations, we have to find ways to move and meet despite all of this. If we lack the essentials of life, we have to take it from where it exists in abundance. When we are separated from each other and locked up, we shouldn’t see ourselves as competitors or enemies, but as people with whom we can relate – as possible carers and accomplices. And as the eyes of the state become more and more omnipresent and the noose of capitalism becomes tighter and tighter around our necks, we must look for ways to cut them out and sever them.

“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded – by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation and at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It means to be exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, deceived, robbed under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest; then, at the slightest resistance, by the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, offended, dishonoured.

That is government, that is its justice, that is its morality. The government of man by man is slavery. Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant. I declare him my enemy.”

(Originally published in the anarchist Newspaper Zuendlumpen on 24.03.2020)

To Unknown Waters

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We’ve been in a state of emergency for over a week now. The destructive
capacity of the virus is no longer in question. But we would like to
make some notes on its non-clinical consequences and on its origins.

Whether the COVID-19 virus came about because of a bat or an American
attempt that has gotten out of hand, to disable the Chinese economy, we
think is irrelevant now. This virus, like others before in history that
massacred entire populations in the Amazon, Mesoamerica, Africa and
Oceania, is a biological phenomenon. But the context in which it was
born, how it spreads and how it is managed are social issues. This virus
is the result of a system that commodifies every process, object,
relationship or living being on earth. Spread rapidly across the
macro-concentration of labour and the consumer corpus of cities, which
feeds itself from agro-industry and intensive livestock farming. A flow
of human assets (5 billion people fly around the planet each year) at
frenetic speeds, reflected in 200 characters and 5000 likes.

It is precisely this effort to artificialize everything, even our
emotions, everything being driven by profit, seeing the world through a
screen, allowing our mind to be colonized by “efficiency”, which has led
to a gradual loss of the “human”, of the “living”. Facilitating such
extreme measures, in which there are only two reasons to get out of the
house (work and consume) have entered in a way that is not exaggeratedly
traumatic. At the same time, it is proposed to us as a way to escape the
same technophile dynamics that have led us to disaster. If we add fear
to it, the rule of fear, we end up losing our way and reinterpret
concepts like responsibility or solidarity.

You’ll be labeled irresponsible, for example, if you don’t submit to
voluntary house arrest. What a perversion of meaning, in reality it is
nothing else, than embacing between the heart and the head, between
analysis, decision and action. With that cry of “unconscious,” which you
will receive from the window if you go, for example, hand in hand with
your partner on the street, actually people are shouting to you, “obey
the norm!” The same is true of calls for solidarity that are translated
by collective voluntary servitude when make an acritic #yomequedoencasa
[1].

What about the hundreds of people who pile up in Atocha and Chamartin
between 6.30 and 8.30 a.m.? Why hasn’t construction work on buildings
stopped in a city that has an exorbitant surplus of houses? Are the
people crowded into IFEMA [2] no human beings? Is it shocking to be
locked up for a week and five, 10, 15, 30 years pass by and now you
can’t even see them? Is it crazy to be locked up for a week and spend
five, 10, 15, 30 years and you can’t get even receive a guest, not even
a short visit and in many cases calls and mail are absolutely
restricted? To refer just a few painful examples.

For those who are homeless it is no longer possible to survive
anonymously. Survival, can no longer be unnoticed when the jungle of
glass has become a concrete desert. They are, even more than they used
to be, forbidden people [3]. Which at best will be herded into plots
like IFEMA. It has also unleashed the, already exacerbated, police
impunity against other forbidden people, who cannot prove by means of
bureaucratic papers that they are people with “full rights”, or because
the color of their skin induce torturers in uniform not to think. (
Mainstream media reported numerous cases of police brutality in Lavapiés
[4], the city centre and other cities). Because a pandemic is still a
matter of class, of privilege, of not-so-random deaths.

We do not have the power of augury like Cassandra had, but we do, in
exchange, have the oath of Apollo. I mean, we don’t know for sure if
these forecasts are coming true (although there is unequivocal evidence
where he points out the power and shows, this kind of measure are
already in effect), however, we fear that we will hardly be heard. We
think that all these control measures will become permanent, or
recurrent like it already happened with the anti-terrorist laws after
9/11; No wonder that we will be called in confinement again in the
future
in circumstances such as storms, hurricanes and all kinds of climate
crises, which are sure to come, or new and old epidemics that will come
knocking at our door again. Tracking movement by phone, biometric and
temperature controls, limitations of movement according are a reality
already and have come to stay. In addition to this, the widespread
precariousness of the life that will come in the medium term, the
socialization of poverty…

At this point we would like to share the idea that the present, or
rather the past, world as we know it: based on domination, with its
structures perpetuating misery, its orthodoxy, its desire for freedom…
is not good enough for us. And in no way we want to go back to it.

Let’s start trying. Considering that there are people who don’t would
like to get infected, let’s break the isolation. Let’s act, if
necessary, on an individual level. In this reality even with a blind
strike it is very easy to hit the right target. Let’s communicate, talk,
share information and be critical, force curfews, map control (where and
when it is patrolled, what spaces have been banned, where having
supply…). Let’s encourage strikes and company closures. We don’t want
crisis management. We want to experiment, crash, fight, conflict…

Let us strive to influence the present even when when we do not see the
horizon when we look up. Perhaps it is precisely here that we will find
the key, let’s leave behind truths, convictions and securities, we will
sail with passion for adventure towards unknown waters, towards dawns of
freedom and revolt.

Notes

[1] #yomequedoencasa the spanish version of #StayAtHome

[2] IFEMA Ifema (short for Institución Ferial de Madrid; “Fair
Institution of Madrid”) is an entity charged with the organisation of
fairs, halls and congresses in their facilities in Madrid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFEMA

[3] Forbidden people, people without documents, like for example
migrants.

[4] Lavapiés is a city district in Madrid.

 

https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/03/28/madrid-quarantine-city-new-anarchist-pamphlet-from-madrid/

In may. let’s play: a call to conflict

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Here we can easely realise that the hydroalcoholic gel can be used as hand disinfectant but also to start a fire.
In other terms : that we don’t need the state guidelines to take care of our friends, and, once we have done with the survival thing, we have nothing better to do than going out searching for evil plans. More than ever we need revenge and true friendships.

Now that we are stuck into this futuristic system, our only solution is to declare war to normality, if we don’t want to die in a aseptic boredom.

We face a dual movement. On one side it seems that the power never has been so strong, winning the compliant citizen’s hearts and minds. On the other hand, it seems that it never had to manage such a complex situation (at least since we are born).

Therefore, we can maybe conclude with two things :

First of all, it is not about waiting for any masses that would wake up to confront it.

Secondly it’s look like just the good moment to attack.

The good moment here doesn’t mean the ONLY good moment. It’s always the good moment to fight.
No, good moment here means that our opponent is totally busy with other things, and we cannot know what are exactly the consequences of our action (in such unprecedented situation), neither if we will have an other opportunity soon.

It looks like an interesting wager for all the ennemies of the power. To seize the opportunity and see what can happen.

Now that the control forces who canvass the territory with vehicles, drones or just by foot have never been so in the place and overworked, what could happen if they were threatened inside their fortress, death threats with spray bomb ? Regularly attacked by some stones/cocktails/fireworks/firecrackers in the middle of the night during their sleep ? If they were ambush during their patrol ?

Now that the cages are chock full and that we slowly die behind the bars, what could happen if the cars’guards would unfortunately meet a screwdriver/hammer/fire starter ? If the people who lock up and guard, already under constant pressure, were hit and beat coming back home ?

Now that almost everyone work/study/share/relax/learn/rebel/have sex/… in front of a screen, what could happen if some easily accessible fiber optic cables were sabotaged ?

Now that almost everyone « communicate » using cellphones. Order/command/planify/organize to produce (and sometimes to militate) or to « take care » using applications or incessant phone calls ; what could happen if some relay antennas, sometimes located in some no man’s land, were been put out of service ?

Now that almost everyone lives confined in domotic nests hyperconnected to the matrix, like an substitute of life. What could happen if a high voltage pylone went to fall down ?

We absolutely do not know what could happen. And that’s precisely why we should imperatively try it.

Disseminate and translate this text if you liked it. Attack and conspire if you wanna participate.
Claim and develop your ideas if you want to dialogue with other rebels.

This short text is an invitation for a dangerous may.

Note n°1 : if you are too impatient to wait for the month of may and if you liked this invitation, you can just attack in april and saying it in a potential claim.

Note n°2 : if you are too impatient to wait, you can attack in april AND may !

Attaque