Trento (Italy) – Chronicles from the State of emergency 2

30 march 2020

Responsabilities upside down

The daily Chronicles of Fear wipe out any general and specific responsability of the epidemic going on, blaming only who does not stay home, «plague-spreaders» to be repressed with heavier and heavier measures (army performing the duties of cops, tracking of the entire population, appeals for spying on each other, authorization for using drones…). Who demolished healtcare for profit, making the situation worse, while it could have been faced totally differently? Who kept factories open? Who shut schools on 20th
february and supermarkets only on 12th march? Who is to blame? Maybe the ones who take a walk on the streets, cycle-lanes or paths? And still; is it single «sharks» or an entire system to make sure that the prices of masks for hospitals are raised b y 600%?

What safety?

It’s been decades since they are deafining us by shouting «Safety!». More cameras, more controls, more cops, more jail! Then comes an epidemic virus and, in our conscience and among the unsaid on television, it emerges that, in case the auto -haulage and the logistic were interrupted, supermarkets would be empty in few days. How sure can human beings feel when they totally depend on a tecnological and production system of which they don’t control a thing anymore? A man doesn’t live by tele -working alone! Let’s benefit by this «pause», for thinking. If we don’t take the land back and self-manage the sources of our nourishment, besides freedom and independence, we’ll give up safety as well.

Tele-working

One of the experiments going on, besides military and police control, is about work: how and how long can economy go on without people going out of their home? What is work, nowadays? It’s mainly multinational companies that own informatic platforms and
Apps the ones taking advantage of all kinds of tele-working (from teachers to office-workers). The «Giants of web» get a huge amount of personal datas from ANY online activity (both for free or fee-paying ones). Datas that is then analyzed and sold.
Everything is a «data» that can be processed and transformed into earnings: tastes, opinions, the tone of voi ce, facial expressions, the book quoted by the teacher, news about health, fears, the reaction for certain news, the students’ level of attention, e tc.
In the best of all possible worlds, an epidemic as well – that means milions of people house-bound but always connected – can turn into a good business. It is a good occasion to justify the introduction of 5G network, whose purpose is not the communications in
case of emergency at all, but to generalize factories, cars, cameras and smart sensors. Fear is the perfect feeling for pushing us more and more towards a world in which human beings are controlled by «smart objects» and by who controls them.

Monitoring system

A piece of new that surely caused a sensation, it was the fact that, by controlling phone cells activated by mobiles, they found out that 40% of population in Milano was found far from their home . What’s new? It is well-known that mobiles companies create massive cataloguing everyday (even though only few feel the effects of it). On the contrary, what’s new is the fact that, availing the oppurtunity of a health emergency, they clearly justify something that exists beyond the emergency and that would raise many social and ethical questions (or, at least… it should!). But that’s not enough. Since days, we are exposed to an incessant propaganda that aims to introduce «Korean style» measures in Italy as well, that means to catalogue the communications between people starting from the cross-control on smartphones, wi-fi and Bluetooth (in order to locate «users» house-to-house instead of only into a certain neighbourhood). «Public» data would be registered and analyzed by authorities; «hidden» data (that any App on smartphones creates, even when deactivated) would feed those «smart machines» by which they check our behaviour and examinate our «purchase intentions». Government’s happy, and so it is digital capitalism. And what about us…?

What is «fundamental»?

What cannot be stopped during an epidemic reveals indirectly what’s the base of society in which we live: informatic infrastructure and war. That’s why all weapons factories must stay open. That’s why, while we are all house-bound, the tecnological progress accelerates and new 5G aerials are installed secretly. In confirmation of the strict link between digital infrastructure and war, Tim (italian mobile company) «is teaching» the army the new potential of artificial intelligence and 5G for the «new world» war.
What’s left to ask ourselves: is it the virus floating in the air the only thing we can’ t see?
In addition, there’s the world they are preparing for us. Some judicious suggestions…
…appeared on several supermarkets glass walls in Trento and Rovereto (cities in north Italy) between 24th and 25th march;

«General strike», «Shut factories», «Reduce prices».
Meanwhile…

On 25th march, there was a wide participation for the call to a general strike from the logistic and factories sector.
On 26th march, in a supermarket in Palermo (city in Sicily), some people filled their shopping troll ey and tried to get out without paying. Carabinieri and Mobile Units intervened on the place and, during the following days, they guarded the entrance of several supermarkets in the city.
The appeals to stop paying are multiplying on social networks. By extending the emergency, maybe after some months without any wage, more and more people will face the problem to satisfy their basic materials needs. Maybe, situations like the one in Palermo won’t be so rare; the necessity for taking what we need to live will be very clear to whom, simply, won’t be able to pay anymore.