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/

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/

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/

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/

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)

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/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anarchists

Prison-State UK comes into Law : Coronavirus