Saxony, Germany – Double Incendiary Attack Against Prison Construction Companies

An Early Easter Egg on Political Prisoners Day

We, as an early Easter egg, claim responsibility for the fires during the night of 18.03.2020 at two companies involved in the construction of the new Zwickau-Marienthal prison. [1]

Today is the anniversary of the International Day of Political Prisoners. This day was proclaimed to remember the many fighting comrades and comrades-in-arms who are in the dungeons of prisons worldwide. The date is based on the day on which the Paris Commune was proclaimed in 1871. For many people, the Paris Commune was and still is a reference point for revolutionary efforts for social justice and political freedom. The smashing of the Commune, the massacre of thousands of Communards and the deportation of hundreds of them to the penal colonies, where they died a slow death, was intended to show all revolutionaries in the world what a bourgeois government is prepared to do when it sees its power threatened.

Even today thousands of revolutionaries are sitting in the prisons of this world. The emancipatory struggle has been going on since the commune, and its children have come and are still coming under the wheels of repression. There has always been a struggle for the liberation and support of the prisoners. A fundamental critique of domination has been linked to a critique of the prison system and the morality of punishment. The demand for the liberation of the prisoners often turned into a demand to abolish prisons and to overcome the principle of punishment completely.

Thus, in the course of the 68 revolt, after many activists were imprisoned, a strong solidarity movement was formed. The prison question also led to a general criticism of the penal system. However, there were different approaches to the issue and the differentiation between political and social prisoners. The differences were also articulated in the demands of the imprisoned urban guerrillas and the support work from outside. Some focused on a special treatment of political prisoners and others preferred to make demands that were important for all inmates. There were some social prisoners who showed solidarity with the revolutionaries and went on hunger strike as well. All this took place in a very politicizing period, but one can also suppose that the political prisoners and their struggles reaffirmed the social prisoners in rebellion. The prisoners’ struggles, in collaboration with outside support groups, received widespread social attention and in some cases even resonance. The first penal code of 1977 would not have existed without this resistance.

Inevitably, our path will not lead us past the point where loved ones are sent to prison. As the confrontation in social warfare grows, the number of prisoners will also increase. On the one hand, because the willingness of the population to take risks will increase, on the other hand, because the organs of repression will intensify their work, both in quality and quantity. A revolutionary movement can thus not avoid dealing with the issue of prison.

We should see prison as a field of social struggle, where we can intervene politically. It can give us the opportunity to meet even more comrades-in-arms who (also) did not have the privilege of growing up in stable conditions and thus fell into the clutches of the state. Especially the lower sub-proletarian classes, the marginalized, the precarious, are affected by imprisonment. They include the low-income earners, the unemployed, migrants, the illegalized, young people and drug addicts, to name but a few. People who have drawn the worst card under capitalism, were not born rich and therefore have something to criticize about the current situation. Probably their whole life has been a struggle – let’s encourage them to continue fighting at our side. Against the system that made them first poor and then “criminal”.

At this moment, there are revolts in prisons in many countries around the world.
The massive restrictions there, due to the Corona Pandemic, have led to riots in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Brazil. In Brazil, 1350 prisoners escaped from three different prisons. In Italy, more than 50 people managed to get past the walls in Foggia. Some of them have so far been able to resist the state’s attempts to be tracked down. In the course of this crisis, the people were deprived of the last concessions of the state. So the possibility to be visited by relatives and friends, to be outside for a few hours during the day and to interact with other prisoners. Also the food supply collapses due to the massive restrictions and the medical care is desolate to non-existent. The repression that followed the riots has already claimed several lives. Eleven people died in the uprisings in Italy. The information situation is difficult, as it has always been a strategy of the state to make revolts invisible. News spread that some of them had suicided. Such news cannot be trusted, of course. The methodology of disguising a murder as suicide

in prison has been a popular strategy of repressive authorities to liquidate resistant individuals under the radar of a public, not only since yesterday.

In Germany, too, prison conditions were restricted a few days ago; in many federal states, visiting opportunities were radically reduced, and services such as therapy were suspended. The situation will continue to deteriorate.

It is therefore all the more important not to forget the most isolated members of society. The basic need for human interaction must not be further restricted. In times of crisis, the precarious are always hit hardest. Especially in the current situation, they are the ones who have hardly any chance of receiving adequate health care and they are also the ones who will be hit hardest by the coming emergency laws.

Let us support the prisoners and use our possibilities outside the walls to give their struggles more visibility!

Against an unjust life and for freedom! Open your mind to the insurrection!

We salute the 3 from the park bench crew, who are currently in a mammoth trial. We are also happy to hear that Peter Krauth is back in freedom and will not be extradited to the FRG – Love to sunny Venezuela to the three from the committee.

[1] In Bad Lausick, Elektro Lehmann and in Treuen, Scholz GmbH

https://325.nostate.net/2020/03/22/saxony-germany-double-incendiary-attack-against-prison-construction-companies/#more-26532

Umeå (Sweden) – Windows smashed at cop school and at ecocidal company

The coronavirus is sweeping around the world. Death tolls are rising and the capitalist economy is seeing new lows for every day. The nation state apparatuses are using warlike measures to battle the pandemic. Borders closing, blanket curfews, quarantines, forced labour, the only people allowed in the streets are cops. It’s the state apparatus wet dream coming true. For us anarchists it is our worst nightmare turning into reality. What we see is a glimpse of the future. If there ever is a day civilisation falls to ruins this is somewhat how it will look like.

There will be no end of what measures state apparatuses will use to gain control. And in this game, who will be sacrificed? It will be the precarious workers, the migrants, the women associated persons… the others.

The coronavirus is our Earths latest weapon against the humans (Earlier versions were the Spanish flu and AIDS). This pandemic is a population control, a hit back and a revenge for all the wild animals, plants and habitats that the humans have enslaved, annihilated and destroyed. The coronavirus turns the civilisers who
thought they where immortal into mere mortals. What it all comes down to is a show of power. If humans ever thought they had some sort of control the coronavirus clearly shows what illusion this is. Humans and the civilisation have no control, no matter how much they try to annihilate the wild and the free. If our planet decides that our moment of rule is over, in an instant, just like that – people looking pale, some sneezing, some coughing, some deaths… silence…

So to celebrate this mortality and the loss of control, last weekend we decided to grab some hammers and spray paint and go for a hike in the moonlit night in the northern Swedish town of so-called Umeå. We soon came to the office of ecocidal SCA (a company who clearcuts the last oldgrown forests and turns them into toiletpaper) and the ecocidal academic cult SLU – Swedish university of agriculture. Instantly we started to beautify their walls with wild messages. HÖR CORONAVIRUSETS BUDSKAP – EKOMÖRDARE UT UR SKOGEN (HEAR THE MESSAGE OF THE CORONAVIRUS – ECOCIDERS OUT OF THE FOREST). We also improved the aircondition of the building by smashing some windows.

We went on with our hike and not far away we came across the school for cops. The walls were looking very empty so we filled them with cheering messages to the future cops – HELA SAPMI HATAR SNUTEN (THE WHOLE OF SAPMI* HATES COPS) and the classic ALL COPS ARE TARGETS. We helped the building to air out the foul smell of cops by smashing some windows. We hope that the cop students get the message and realise their mistake and quit their education before it’s too late. Before they become our targets.

Although we were lingering in the area for an hour (against better judgement and security culture) there were still no signs of security or cops. This clearly tells how little control the people of control have. At least in this part of the world.

This finished our hike n’ smash tour. What a joyous night under the stars and half moon. Let every night be filled with joy for destruction. Right now is always the best moment for an attack.

The SCA/SLU was attacked in solidarity with all the wild animals, plants and places that humans have enslaved, destroyed and wiped out.

The cop school was attacked in solidarity with all women associated persons. For an anti-sexist, anti-transphobic and anti-patriarchal march.

Nihilists Hoping for the End of Civilisation cell, FAI/ELF

*Sapmi is the land of the Samis, one of the last indigenous people of so called Europe. Their land is colonised by the Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian states.

https://325.nostate.net/2020/03/22/umea-sweden-windows-smashed-at-cop-school-and-at-ecocidal-company/#more-26529

Nurenberg – Arson of Private car of a Cop/Reservist 

Cops & Reservists out of our Neighborhoods- Arson of Private car of a
Cop/Reservist

On the night of Thursday/Friday (20th March) a car was set on fire in
the neighborhood of Gostenhof in Nurenberg. The car was parked in the
neighborhood with stickers of the reservists’ cop association on the
tailgate and a police uniform in the trunk. It is an act of our
antagonism against the increasing militarization of society and the
dismantling of almost all civil rights during the current corona crisis.

Last Summer forces of the hated USK (Bavarian Police Special Forces)
besieged Jamnitzer Platz on end, the central square in Gostenhof, We
will no longer tolerate such harassment and will continue to
consistently defend our neighborhood against the siege of cop pigs.

Cops Out of Our Neighborhoods!

Long live the liberated society! Death to state Terrorism!

Freedom for the Park Bench 3

War on the State – Not on the Virus

We announce the begging of a new journal; ‘It’s the End of the World as we Know It’- It concerns the Covid-19 virus sweeping through the interior of civilization but not in the way you might expect… We analyze  the consequences of increased militarization, state control, and intervention on our lives. We see this war, as not one against a virus but against the state and all its murderous tendencies. Episode one focus’ mostly on the first signs of the impeding fascism we are all begging to experience on a daily basis- we hope to make more issues- focusing on different aspects of this ongoing conflict…. We have stolen reflections and thoughts from many places, as well as adding our own to the growing body of anti authoritarian literature concerning this pandemic.

We are searching for new stories of the increasing repression, violence, and state control emerging under the guise of “saving” us from this virus; as well as all the stories of rebels breaking the confinement, of prison breaks, attacks on authorities, those denying to be imprisoned at home, and all acts of sabotage against the machinery of death. The next Issue (if it exists) will likely be a documentation of Police and military violence, checkpoints, lock downs, and murders as well as the stories of victories against this new reality from our side. if you have stories to contribute please contact us at:

downandoutdistro at riseup dot net

Quote From the Text:

“We can NEVER trust the state to keep us safe, we can
never trust the state to care about whether we live or die.
All we can trust the state for is the desire to maintain the
broken systems of domination and the religion of the economy.”

“We will build our own measures to protect ourselves, be
they direct conflict: robberies or looting (since most of us
have no access to making money right now and will likely
die of this before we die of any virus), attacks on the
police or surveillance infrastructure, offering food, health
care, and sanitation projects to those most in need, or
providing shelter (such as squats) to those homeless
amongst us who do not have the luxury of quarantining
themselves at home.”

PDF HERE: waronthestate

War On the State- Not On the Virus

‘The new normal’: China’s excessive coronavirus public monitoring could be here to stay

Experts say the coronavirus has given the Chinese government a pretext for accelerating the mass surveillance.
Over the last two months, Chinese citizens have had to adjust to a new level of government intrusion.

Getting into one’s apartment compound or workplace requires scanning a QR code, writing down one’s name and ID number, temperature and recent travel history. Telecom operators track people’s movements while social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo have hotlines for people to report others who may be sick. Some cities are offering people rewards for informing on sick neighbours.

Chinese companies are meanwhile rolling out facial recognition technology that can detect elevated temperatures in a crowd or flag citizens not wearing a face mask. A range of apps use the personal health information of citizens to alert others of their proximity to infected patients or whether they have been in close contact.

State authorities, in addition to locking down entire cities, have implemented a myriad of security measures in the name of containing the coronavirus outbreak. From top officials to local community workers, those enforcing the rules repeat the same refrain: this is an “extraordinary time” feichang shiqi, requiring extraordinary measures.

As the number of new infections in China falls, having infected more than 80,000 and killed more than 3,000, residents and observers question how much of these new measures are here to stay.
“I don’t know what will happen when the epidemic is over. I don’t dare imagine it,” said Chen Weiyu, 23, who works in Shanghai. Every day when Chen goes to work, she has to submit a daily health check to her company, as well as scan a QR code and register in order to enter the office park.

“Monitoring is already everywhere. The epidemic has just made that monitoring, which we don’t normally see during ordinary times, more obvious,” she said.

Others are more emphatic about the future. Wang Aizhong, an activist based in Guangzhou, said: “This epidemic undoubtedly provides more reason for the government to surveil the public. I don’t think authorities will rule out keeping this up after the outbreak.”

“When we go out or stay in a hotel, we can feel a pair of eyes looking at us at any time. We are completely exposed to the monitoring of the government,” he said.

Experts say the virus, which emerged in Wuhan in December, has given authorities a pretext for accelerating the mass collection of personal data to track citizens, a dangerous prospect given that the country does not have stringent laws governing personal data.

“It’s mission creep,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. According to Wang, the virus is likely to be a catalyst for a further expansion of the surveillance regime, as major events like the 2008 Olympics held in Beijing or the Shanghai Expo in 2010 were. “The techniques of mass surveillance became more permanent after these events,” she said.

“With the coronavirus outbreak the idea of risk scoring and restrictions on movement quickly became reality,” she said. “Over time we see more and more intrusive use of technology and less ability of people to push back.”

Many Chinese residents see the extra layers of public monitoring as additional bureaucratic hurdles, more frustrating than sinister, that further demonstrate the government’s ineffectiveness in handling the outbreak.

China’s surveillance dragnet, while proudly promoted by officials, is full of loopholes. An ex-inmate infected with the virus managed to travel from Wuhan to Beijing last month, well after quarantine measures had gone into effect, prompting widespread criticism over how she left.

Citizens are particularly critical of a system called Health Code, which users can sign up for through Alipay or WeChat, that assigns individuals one of three colour codes based on their travel history, time spent in outbreak hotspots and exposure to potential carriers of the virus. The software, used in more than 100 cities, will soon allow people to check the colours of other residents when their ID numbers are entered.

One resident complained on Weibo that he had driven through Hubei without stopping but his colour code changed to yellow from green, indicating he would need to be quarantined. “I can’t even go out to buy bread or water,” another in Jiangsu province said, after his code inexplicably changed to yellow following a work trip.

Many described the app as “for appearances,” or xingshi zhuyi, a way for lower level officials to impress their higher ups with added strictures on citizens.
“I have a health code, a pass for my residential compound, and another certificate of health and still I can’t get into my home,” one commentator said. “This is garbage. Please release us regular people,” another said.

Low-tech security measures have been employed as much as high-tech ones. An army of workers guard entry points to public spaces, ordering pedestrians to log their information or questioning residents about their recent movements. Religious sites like mosques have been closed. Many cities and counties have banned group gatherings, including small dinner parties.

In February, Sichuan province officials broke up a group playing mahjong party and forced the participants to read out an apology, captured on video. “We were wrong. We promise there will not be a next time and we will also monitor others,” the group of 10 men said, heads slightly bowed.

Other videos posted online have shown local officials pushing residents to the ground for not wearing a face mask or tying a man to a pole. Local law enforcement in Wuhan were recently fired after a video of them beating a man for selling vegetables on the street was posted online.

An article by the official state news agency Xinhua last week reminded citizens that those who violate virus prevention and control measures could be subject to three years in prison, and up to seven for particularly serious cases, as outlined in China’s criminal code.

“Intrusive surveillance is already the ‘new normal’. The question for China is what, if any, is a level of surveillance that the population refuses to tolerate,” said Stuart Hargreaves, an associate professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong’s law school, focusing on privacy and information law.

Some worry current measures will continue in part because citizens are growing accustomed to them. Alex Zhang, 28, who lives in Chengdu, refers to Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s theory on the state of exception, and how measures taken during a state of emergency can be prolonged.

“This type of governance and thinking for dealing with the epidemic can also be used for other issues – like the media, citizen journalists or ethnic conflicts. Because this method has been used before, citizens will accept it. It becomes normal,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/the-new-normal-chinas-excessive-coronavirus-public-monitoring-could-be-here-to-stay

 

France / Italy – For The Spread of the Revolt!

About the mutinies in Italian prisons against the state’s measures against Coronavirus

For several weeks now the Italian government has been testing increasingly radical measures to restrict freedom in order to manage the Coronavirus pandemic.
While isolation and control are becoming increasingly harsh on the outside, the situation is becoming unbearable on the inside. For two weeks now, the visits, work and recreational activities have been restricted. In recent days, people who were on day-release are no longer allowed to go out and special permissions are no longer allowed. This also means the deprivation of access to basic necessities and goods (food, clean clothing, money…).

Following these decisions, the first mutinies broke out on Saturday the 7th of March, spreading to around thirty prisons in the space of two days throughout Italy.
The methods of revolt are simple and effective. From the north to the south of Italy, fire spread from one prison to another, prisoners climbed to the rooftops shouting “freedom and amnesty!”, prison guards were taken hostage, bars were twisted, official documents were reduced to ashes. There are no more traces of law enforcement officers in some wings of the buildings. In Modena, the entire prison closed down because the revolts made it unusable.
The figures that are beginning to circulate speak of more than a hundred escaped prisoners. We wish them good luck!

As the smoke rises high in the sky, relatives and people in solidarity gather at the bottom of the prisons, either to shout their support or to organize street blockades, thus blocking the arrival of the police, the GOM (prison police) and the military.

The revolt is intense, the repression is ferocious: water and electricity cuts, helicopters flying over the prison walls, police violence…There are at least 12 dead in several prisons. The bourgeois press and the prison administration speak of overdoses following the looting of infirmaries, however relatives of the prisoners [gathered in solidarity outside the prisons] have heard gunshots. And several prisoners are hospitalized in intensive care.
At the same time, politicians of all kinds are trying to pacify by offering access to telephones or Skype, while asking families to calm their loved ones…but it hasn’t been enough to break their determination.
We send them all our solidarity!

We don’t need to make analyses of the current revolts, they speak for themselves of the attack on a system that locks up and controls through fear and threats.
By relying on an urgency and a generalized fear that they have helped to create, the different states place themselves as saviours in the face of the catastrophe and impose their logic and their measures on us. They compete in inventiveness to deepen control and surveillance and experiment with different tools for population management.
Moreover, France is talking about setting up a specific system for prisons in the coming days.
Apart from these situations, the reality of prisons is always disgusting.
Faced with imprisonment, there are always good reasons to revolt!

Coronavirus or not, in Italy or elsewhere, fire to all prisons!

March 11th, 2020.

[Originally published on Nantes Indymedia on 12.03.2020]

(via Sans Attendre Demain, translated into English by Anarchists Worldwide)

Third Time Lucky

Received by mail anonymous..

We’re in Lockdown. Stay at home, we’re commanded. Only that which is most necessary for economic survival is permitted, but it is never stated of whose survival they speak. Even then we’re greeted by processions of police riot vans – lights flashing, show of force – informing us that we have to go home. Going about the minimum of daily activities is a danger to public health. It’s already been said in Italy that it’s amazing how quickly we forget: what it’s like to speak to a stranger, to touch someone, to encounter an unexpected moment amid the concrete drizzle of capital. The workhouses and temples of consumption are open but the shelves are almost bare. We have a social responsibility, they say. The healthcare system cannot cope and it is us that has to save it. Did someone say something about funding?

An invisible enemy. The stuff of apocalyptic films. The cause is not important, it’s just the flu after all, but the response is crucial. We are not measuring the number of deaths but the capacities of power. Swine flu and SARS failed to take the world by storm but they’ve nailed
it this time. Everything that came before was a mere prototype for the finished product: a perfectly intangible terror that demands our complete subservience. It’s as though The Handmaid’s Tale, in all its controversial success, was a warm-up before the main act.

The supposed reach and severity of the Corona Virus is almost a mute subject. What’s important is who is going to take benefit, how, and who pays the price. The capitalist economic system is built on investment, but this time it’s starving itself ready for a rampage. When this is allover, when our glorious benefactors have saved us from near ruin and we
welcome back with open arms a depleted economy that was fucking us before ‘the pandemic’, we have to think where we will be.

Waves of migrants washing upon even more hostile European shores. Solitary confinement becoming the prisoners’ permanent state. G4S quietly clean up after the morning matinee as we’re distracted by the charade in the main hall. Physical human interaction reduced to an
Orwellian suspicion whilst the spectrum of human emotion is expressed through Whatsapp’s preset sticker selection. Facebook’s laughing as Instantgram’s rewriting history with all our rebellious quotes.

https://actforfree.nostate.net/?p=36822

An Epidemic of Stupidity & Authoritarianism

COVID-19 – known as the coronavirus – emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It’s flu-like symptoms enabled the quick spread of the virus within the city. It also allowed the spread of the disease beyond Wuhan despite the attempts of the Chinese government to curb it by resorting to drastic measures of arresting and detaining suspected carriers.

Now it has spread globally. As of March 5th, 2020, 97,893 people have been infected worldwide with 7100 cases being regarded as serious. 3353 people have died of whom approximately 3013 were in China and 340 in other countries. The most serious outbreaks outside China have been in northern Italy, Iran and South Korea. The rates in many countries may be under-reported because of health officials refusing to test people reporting flu symptoms, especially Japan. The virus has impacted an estimated 87 countries and territories. 53,786 people have recovered from the virus. (Statistics from various government health agencies as charted in this webpage) According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it takes about five days from exposure before people manifest the symptoms of the coronavirus. Not surprisingly the elderly, very young children and those with respiratory problems are most at risk.

What is noteworthy about the coronavirus isn’t the virus itself. It has been the fear, misinformation and over the top reactions including panic buying that has occurred in many countries including here in New Zealand where there have been five confirmed cases of the coronavirus at the time of writing (1 News, 6th March 2020).

Conspiracy theories and misinformation have not only fuelled racism against East Asians, especially the Chinese and Koreans, but it has also hampered attempts to deal with the virus. Many of the claims being made by conspiracy theorists have included that it is a form of population control, a bio-weapon unleashed by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against various governments currently at odds with the United States (“China coronavirus: Misinformation spreads online”. BBC News Online . 30 January 2020). Alternatively, the coronavirus was created by the United States government to enable American businesses to make a profit on the vaccines being used to fight the virus. (Rubio, Marco: “Marco Rubio: Russia, China, and Iran are waging disinformation war over coronavirus”. New York Post. 3rd March 2020. Considering Marco Rubin is a Republican Senator and Member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Committee on Foreign Relations his comments should be treated with discretion.)

The conspiracy theories surrounding the coronavirus are similar to those that claimed that the Ebola virus, AIDS/HIV and the SARS virus were all secretly created in labs by the CIA. These conspiracy theories have been peddled by various government agencies in the Middle East and Russia for many years as well as thoroughly discredited anti-vaccination campaigners, shock jock conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones (of InfoWars infamy) and various YouTube channels. (Ghaffary, Shirin (31 January 2020). “Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube struggle with coronavirus hoaxes”. Vox .)

Just as disturbing has been the accusations that health authorities have deliberately withheld or downplayed the true numbers of people who have been infected by the coronavirus. Such claims have surfaced on various social media sites and have even been repeated in many traditional media outlets in which it has been alleged that Chinese and Taiwanese officials have lied about the true numbers of people who’ve been infected by the coronavirus. (BBC online, January 30th, 2020)

Most governments have followed the recommendations of the WHO on their website page Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public. That is, for people who have been to northern Italy, Iran, South Korea, and China to be quarantined for about fourteen days and for people who think they may have been infected to get tested as soon as possible. To avoid the possible spread of the virus such people are being encouraged to call their local Health provider rather than turn up in person. People are also being told to be more vigilant about basic hygiene like washing hands with sanitizer after handling food, using the toilet or coming into contact with people who might have flu-like symptoms. If people cough or sneeze they should do so into the crook of their elbows rather than their hands. If they have flu-like symptoms they should wear a surgical mask. People are encouraged to practice social distancing, such as not shaking hands. The taking of such precautionary measures has helped to slow the rate of infections in some countries.

There has been one exception to this: the United States. Rather than addressing the virus Trump and other members of his administration have been spreading misinformation. In an interview with Sean Hannity on March 4th, he claimed the WHO had exaggerated the numbers of people infected by the virus and that the potential impact of the coronavirus is part of a Democrat plot against him. He has also misled or lied about the United State’s government’s ability to deal with the coronavirus by claiming their measures to contain it are airtight and that the virus is no more serious than the outbreak of the seasonal flu. (Walters, Joanna; Aratani, Lauren (5 March 2020). “Trump calls WHO’s global death rate from coronavirus ‘a false number’”. The Guardian .)

As a result, there has been no consistent response from federal agencies. Apart from Trump peddling misinformation about the coronavirus, it has largely been left up to the various states to decide how to address the problem. The result has been that many people with flu-like symptoms are getting contradictory information, not being able to undertake any tests unless they have medical insurance and not even getting told what self-imposed quarantine involves. This means that many people may be spreading the coronavirus without being aware of it and that the cases that have been reported may be an under-estimate. (The U.S. Response to Coronavirus Is Uneven: It Depends on Where You Live, Wall Street Journal, March 4th, 2020) .The response of the United States government shows what happens when a so-called democracy is in the hands of a narcissist who peddles conspiracy theories and is confronted by a crisis as serious as this.

The Chinese government’s response to the coronavirus went to the other extreme. The full power of the authoritarian regime was deployed to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. According to the livescience.com website article, China gets ‘mixed report card’ in its coronavirus response. How will the US do? (March 2nd, 2020) the initial response was to arrest the doctor who first brought the coronavirus to the attention of the world and to clamp down hard on the reporting of the number of cases and even fudging the criteria of diagnosing cases to make the figures look lower than was the case. They also dismissed Wuhan authorities who raised the alarm about the impact of the coronavirus in Wuhan. They also refused to accept assistance from the U.S Centre for Disease Control and the WHO at a point when the assistance could’ve made a major difference.

The Chinese government was responsible for “instituting the largest public health experiment in the history of humankind, which is the quarantine of Wuhan [city] in Hubei province,” using methods that included arresting and forcibly detaining people who were suspected of having the coronavirus in their homes and censoring any criticism of their methods such as its quarantine measures or the facilities that were rapidly built to isolate and treat people with the coronavirus. Live Science also pointed out that “It’s difficult, however, to see how effective the quarantine is because China hasn’t consistently studied the virus’ spread among subpopulations… According to a Feb. 28 opinion piece in the journal JAMA, “it appears that the strict measures China took may have ‘bought the world some time’ but did not prevent the global dissemination of SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes the disease COVID-19.” In other words, there’s no way of knowing if the methods used by the Chinese government in Wuhan have worked.

From my perspective, the responses of both the American and Chinese governments have been pretty much the same: pretend that the problem isn’t so bad and that there are systems in place to deal with it, use the epidemic to stomp on basic human rights such as being detained without trial and freedom of movement and accuse anyone trying to highlight the seriousness of the epidemic of being part of a conspiracy or plotting to bring down the government. The difference between the Americans and the Chinese is that the Chinese don’t pretend to be a democracy that pays lip service to the notion of being a government “of the people, for the people and by the people”.

What people need is accurate, openly available and reliable information about what is going on so that we, as individuals and local communities, can take the necessary steps to protect each other. That means paying attention to the people who have expert knowledge about flu epidemics. It means not listening to some ignorant pissant sitting behind their computer peddling the latest piece of crap from the 8chan website, an anti-vaccination website or from a President who thinks the answer to dealing with an epidemic that has killed over 33,000 people worldwide is to hold a prayer meeting and to blame his opponents. It means using science and sense, not stupidity and authoritarianism.

https://awsm.nz/?p=4870

Coronavirus, Agribusiness and the State of Emergency

Much is said about the Covid-19 coronavirus, and yet very little. There are fundamental aspects that remain in the shadows. I want to name some of these, different but complementary.

The first refers to the perverse mechanisms of capitalism to hide the true causes of the problem so as not to do anything about them, because it affects their interests, but it does deal with the apparent cure for the symptoms. Meanwhile, the State spends enormous public resources on prevention, containment and treatment measures, which do not act on the causes either, so this way of facing problems becomes a captive business for transnational companies, for example, with vaccines and medicines.

The dominant reference to viruses and bacteria is as if they were exclusively harmful organisms that must be eliminated. A war-like approach prevails, as in so many other aspects of capitalism’s relationship with nature. However, due to the ability of viruses to jump between species, viruses and bacteria are a fundamental part of the coevolution and adaptation of living beings, as well as their balance with the environment and their health, including humans.

Covid-19, which now makes global headlines, is a strain of the coronavirus family, which causes generally mild respiratory diseases but can be serious for a very small percentage of those affected due to their vulnerability. Other coronavirus strains caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), considered an epidemic in Asia in 2003 but since disappeared in 2004, and Middle East Acute Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has also virtually disappeared. Like Covid-19, they are viruses that can be present in animals and humans, and as with all viruses, affected organisms tend to develop resistance, which in turn causes the virus to mutate again.

There is a scientific consensus that the origin of this new virus – like all those that have been declared or threatened to be declared a pandemic in recent years, including avian influenza and the swine flu that originated in Mexico – is zoonotic. That is, it comes from animals and then mutates, affecting humans. In the case of Covid-19 and SARS it is presumed that it came from bats. Although the consumption of bats in Asian markets is blamed, in reality the consumption of wild animals in a traditional and local way is not the specific problem. The fundamental factor is the destruction of the habitats of wild species and the invasion of these by urban settlements and/or expansion of industrial agriculture, thereby creating specific situations for the accelerated mutation of viruses.

The true systematic factory of new viruses and bacteria that are transmitted to humans is the industrial breeding of animals, mainly birds, pigs and cows. More than 70 percent of antibiotics worldwide are used for fattening or preventing infections in non-sick animals, which has produced a very serious problem of resistance to antibiotics, also for humans. The WHO has called since 2017 for the agricultural, fish farming and food industries to stop using antibiotics systematically to stimulate the growth of healthy animals. Added to this mixture, large agricultural and food corporations add regular doses of antivirals and pesticides within the same facilities.

However, it is easier and more convenient to point the finger at a few bats or civets – whose natural habitats have certainly been destroyed – than to question these factories of human and animal diseases.

The pandemic threat is also selective. All the diseases that have been considered epidemics in the last two decades, including Covid-19, have produced far fewer deaths than common diseases, such as influenza – of which, according to the WHO, up to 650 thousand people die each year globally. However, these new epidemics motivate extreme surveillance and control measures.

As stated by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, the growing tendency to use the state of exception as a normal paradigm of government is thus affirmed.

Referring to the cases of Covid-19 in Italy, Agamben points out that “the law decree approved immediately by the government, for reasons of health and public safety, gives rise to a real militarization of the municipalities and areas which are named as the sources of transmission, it is a formula so vague that it allows the state of exception to be extended to all regions.” Added to this, adds Agamben, “is the state of fear that has spread in recent years in the consciences of individuals and that translates into a need for states of collective panic, to which the epidemic once again offers the ideal pretext. Thus, in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for security that has been induced by the same governments that now intervene to satisfy it.”

Silvia Ribeiro

https://325.nostate.net/2020/03/13/coronavirus-agribusiness-and-the-state-of-emergency-by-silvia-ribeiro/