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Posts Tagged ‘Analysis’

There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism: A Condemnation of ITS

Saturday, May 13th, 2017

“When horror knocks at your door, it’s difficult to hide from. All that can be done is to breathe, gather strength, and face it…. I shared news of the woman found in University City. From the first moment, I was angered and protested the criminalization of the victim. The next morning I woke up to the horror and pain that she was my relative.”
– Statement from the family of Lesvy Rivera to Mexican society

“[W]e take responsibility for the homicide of another human in University City on May 3rd….Much has emerged about that damned thing leaning lifeless on a payphone… ‘that she suffered from alcoholism, that she wasn’t a student, this and that.’ But what does it matter? She’s just another mass, just another damned human who deserved death.”
– 29th Statement of Individualists Tending Toward the Wild (ITS)

Some things shouldn’t have to be said, but as is too often the case in this disaster of a world, that which should be most obvious often gets subsumed to the exigencies of politics, ideologies, money, emotion, or internet clicks. The purpose of this piece is to condemn the recent acts of eco-extremists in Mexico and those who cheer them on from abroad.

This critique does not aspire to alter the behavior of Individualists Tending Toward the Wild (ITS), Individualities Tending Toward the Wild (ITS), Wild Reaction (RS), Indiscriminate Group Tending Toward the Wild (GITS), Eco-extremist Mafia, or whatever they will change their name to tomorrow. Like any other deluded, sociopathic tyrant, these individuals have declared themselves above reproach, critique, reason, or accountability. They have appointed themselves judge, jury, and executioner; the guardians and enforcers of Truth using a romanticized past to justify their actions. As absolutist authoritarians, they have constructed a theoretical framework that, while ever-shifting and inconsistent, somehow always ends with a justification for why they get to hold a knife to the throats of all of humankind. In short, they think and act like the State. (more…)

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Posted in Eco Struggle

A letter from anarchist comrade Anna Beniamino about Operation Scripta Manent and more… (Italy)

Tuesday, April 25th, 2017

SCRIPTA MANENT

The prosecution in Turin have decided to put an entire anarchist tendency on trial: anti-organisation Anarchism. This isn’t a sensationalist and defensive overstatement, it’s what Turin’s investigating judge, Anna Ricci, enacted with the arrest warrants issued in July 2016, and enforced in September, probably to avoid disrupting the summer holidays of some pubic official.

The inquisitors’ choice is clear from the ridiculous framework that appeared in the arrest warrant papers, a product of the deleterious encounter between the mind of some cop and the rushed reading of a wikipedia summary.

The framework gives shape to a repressive-Manichean vision of a ‘social anarchy’, a good and harmless one, and an (anti-social and anti-classist) ‘individual anarchy’, violent and palatable to repression, whose method is the ‘anti-organization model’. (more…)

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Posted in Social Control

Radical Mapuche Struggle: Ancestral Resistance Against the State and Capital (Chile)

Tuesday, March 7th, 2017

“Each individuality, group, tribe or original people have their own ways of resisting this system. However they have the same enemy who represses and oppresses them and the ultimate goal of their struggles is to live freely and autonomously.” – Compañero Carlos Gutiérrez Quiduleo

1. Brief journey on a path of resistance.

It is well known that the struggle of the Mapuche people has lasted hundreds of years. Even before fighting the Spanish conquistadors, they had already halted the advance of the Incan empire by preventing its advance towards the south of the territory now called Chile and forcing it to maintain its position in the central zone of ‘Chile’.

Also known are the battles and clashes with the Spanish conquistadors, where for more than a hundred years a war was fought that put in check the ambitions of the conquistadors to dominate the territory without any major obstacles, forcing them, after periods marked by extermination and captivity, to establish a border that allowed the Mapuche to maintain their territory south of the Bio Bio River. (more…)

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Posted in Autonomy

Comunicado del compañero Joaquín García Chanks (Chile)

Tuesday, February 14th, 2017

Ya han pasado cinco meses desde que volví a habitar las celdas de la Sección Máxima Seguridad del C.A.S y creo que es necesario referirme tanto a lo personal como al escenario carcelario. Las razones para no escribir antes son, obviamente, personales; pero más que nada son debido a la creencia -a pesar de ser un convencido de que el compartir experiencias genera lazos impagables- de que la plataforma virtual y su conjunto de comunicados se aleja mucho de lo real y se acerca a una idea abstracta del día a día carcelario e individual. ¿Irreductible? Sí, exista o no un vaivén emocional, ni la convicción ni la mente flaquean, pero esa asquerosa idea del mártir de acero tras los barrotes debe caer. Por el suicidio de la imagen y el fetiche, por la real complicidad destructora.

“El pesimismo es el opio de los intelectuales, el optimismo pertenece a los imbéciles. Un realismo fanático y soñador, la conciencia de que no cabemos en este mundo, los valores que defenderemos en cada momento, más el calor cómplice de los que queremos y estimamos”.

Hace cinco meses, un poco de la detención:

El 7 de Septiembre, aproximadamente a las cinco de la tarde y a poco más de dos meses del quebrantamiento del arresto domiciliario total dictado por el aparato jurídico, me detuvieron al subir a un bus rural con dirección a algún lugar. (more…)

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Posted in Prison Struggle

‘Tame Words from a Wild Heart’ by Jean Weir (Elephant Editions)

Wednesday, February 1st, 2017

Preamble

Words. Mere Words. The pages that follow are in part transcriptions of the spoken word—‘the wonder worker that is no more’, as Emma Goldman wrote wistfully over one hundred years ago when referring to the inadequacy of the spoken word to awaken thought and shake people out of their lethargy. Here in the twenty-first century anarchists no longer talk about spoken propaganda to awaken the masses, bemoaning the absence of orators such as Johann Most or Luigi Galleani. In rare encounters organized by comrades today ‘the masses’ are noticeably absent, they don’t even enter the equation. Organized meetings or ‘talks’ as they are dully referred to are well-attended if there are 50–100 comrades. But there is no need for panic. Now all but the most disconnected fossilized anarchists have moved beyond aims of a quantitative growth in a hypothetical anarchist movement—where discourses addressed ‘to the masses’ have degenerated into an insulting populism—to the elaboration of ideas and methods addressed towards immediate action and attack on power in all its forms. Numbers have ceased to be important for anarchists as a prerequisite for attack. The illusion of ‘Le Grand Soir’ was a wonderful dream, it kept the flame flickering and thousands of militants waiting in the wings.

No, lack of numbers is no cause for alarm. They are there, the exploited, all around us—are also ‘us’—and could take us by surprise again at any moment (as could we ourselves). In the realm of the quantitative our task is to experiment and spread an insurrectional method for the self-organization of the necessary destruction of power and subjugation. Small groups with intermediate destructive aims based on affinity that can multiply, spread horizontally and coordinate, without limit. The apparent rift between anarchist theory and practice thus disappears along with the false conflict between individual and mass, and not least the conviction that the tenets of anarchism must be espoused by the exploited before they can fight for their own freedom along with that of others. An informal practice of attack leads to freedom revealing itself qualitatively, in leaps and bounds, far from the straight line of quantity, education, progress and waiting. (more…)

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Posted in Library

New archive for Elephant Editions – A work in progress

Wednesday, February 1st, 2017

When words mingle with the passion to deepen our understanding of reality they become indispensable weapons for the self-organisation of the struggle against all that oppresses us. They don’t remain on paper – or the screen – but penetrate rebel hearts and spirits, giving courage and decision – for if many of us don’t act against what offends our dignity it is often not courage that is lacking, but that we simply don’t know where to start.

We need to liberate reality from the fictitious dimension created by the media into one that is tangible and exposed to attack. In order to carry this out we require knowledge of the enemy in all its forms, including those that lie concealed within us, crouching, waiting to pounce to push us back into the fold of consensus or manageable dissent. Reading certain texts becomes an encounter, tensions we feel burning inside us become clearer, making it easier to assimilate them in order to act. (more…)

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Posted in Library

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – FAI/IRF : Nemesis Project – An open proposal (Greece)

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016

”He who speaks of war, must have a plan…”

The most insidious authority is the one that carries the promise of inclusiveness. This is why we transitioned from monarchy to democracy but not freedom. ”Safety” is a word favored by democracy. The more we hear about “safety”, the more our lives and freedom regress. Worst of all, contemporary power and democracy have elicited the compromise and submission of society almost voluntarily. Democracy operates as a transparent factory that produces social relations. People submit to governmental ideology, mainstream standards and disciplined behaviors and consider that what we experience today (the economic tyranny, the extortion of wage slavery, the dictatorship of the spectacle, the technological surveillance) are the inevitable natural world order.

But even in a pervasive authority, bosses, officials, managers and proprietors will always exist. Nowadays, the visibility of people in power is particularly clear. Politicians, businessmen, ship owners, publishers, journalists, judges and police officers are the persons in authority. The Nemesis Project aims to attack those persons. The Nemesis Project is our turn to make fear move into the backyard of the enemy.

Instead of attacking impersonal symbols of justice, we think that it is very important to transpose our hostilities to the personal environment of the enemy, their homes, offices, hangouts and vehicles. We know that to authority ”nobody is irreplaceable” but we also know that a personal hit against one of them would instill fear in another 100. We create a legacy of fear for their kind and whoever becomes their replacement. It is our own minimum counterweight in balancing the terror controlled by the enemy. In balancing the terror caused by the murders of workers by their bosses, the accidental shootings by cops, the thousands of years in prison sentenced by judges, the lies by journalists, the laws and the orders by politicians. In all of these cases, the enemy has a name and an address.

Attacking them proves that people in authority are not invincible. At the same time, instead of confining anarchist insurrection in incidents of occasional conflict with cops, we can make revolution a permanent component of our daily lives by discovering those that hide behind orders and decisions which govern our lives, by studying their moves and routes and by organizing our own offensive cells which will respond to the challenges of authority. We do not anticipate a social short-circuit that will lead in mass mobilizations, but we become the accelerators of history through our actions, by creating the dilemma ”with authority or with freedom”. We create spaces and eras where history is written by our own hand and does not just happen. Anarchist urban guerrilla is a way of looking life straight in the eye, in order to form an authentic collective ”we”. It is the construction of an anarchist process of liberation with courage, consistency and determination. Our actions are not evaluated in relation only to the blow against the enemy but also to the possibility of changing our own lives.

The Nemesis Project is an international proposal to create a list with the names of people in authority so that we can attack them where they feel safe, on the sidelines… at their own houses. The bomb explosion at the house of District Attorney G. Tsatani was the first attack, the first act of the Nemesis Project. We share this plan with all the FAI-IRF cells and all the anarchists of action across the world, wanting to start a dialogue on the diffusion of the anarchist struggle. And we know that the best dialogue for the assessment of an action can be no other than a new action…

Through the Nemesis Project we salute all our comrades that are held captive in the cells of democracy across the world and are no longer by our side. It is especially dedicated to the members of the CCF Olga Economidou, George Polydoros, Gerasimos Tsakalos, Christos Tsakalos, our anarchist comrade Angeliki Spyropoulou and the Italian comrades of FAI Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai.

To all those who did not bury the axe of war…

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / FAI-IRF

We will return soon.

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Posted in Direct Action

Communique from Anarchists from D Wing, Korydallos Prison, Athens, for the struggle in Syria (Greece)

Wednesday, October 5th, 2016

1st of October
A minimum response on the call-out for the day of Rage against the massacre at Aleppo.

Even if there are only ruins left at Aleppo, the bombings haven’t stopped. Even now, after 5 years of bombs and sieges, people still live in this city. Some because they didn’t manage to leave, some because they didn’t see a better future at Mediterranean’s seabed, some because they refused to abandon the revolution against the dictatorship of Assad, that started with the Arab Spring. At Aleppo’s ruins a guerilla warfare is taking place, that until now, Assad with Hezbollah, Iran and Russian military machine haven’t achieved to defeat.

If the things that happened with the repression of Spanish Revolution by Franco and the Nazis were the rehearsal of World War II, probably the war in Syria is an image of the post-industrial future on earth. A future, where the democratic excuses collapse and the absolute violence prevails. A world, that despite the gigantic military power of the tyrants, the most effective way to control the insurrection is still by division. A situation of despair, where people in order to defend themselves and survive, are organized in groups manipulated by generals, who only seek more power and who lead the revolting crowds away from the fight against the regime and into a fight for control of the war zones of their interests.

The result is a constant war, a profitable business for the capitalists, who sell weapons and armament to war zones, where trade and economy still exist.

The example of Syria’s punishment is a clear warning to everyone in the world, who even thinks about revolting.

In this chaotic total war, the reference point for us, are the few guerilla groups, organized outside the control the “moderate Muslims” of Al Nusra, or the “cosmics” of the FSA, who are both manipulated from the dominant powers of imperialistic competition, like USA, and both have the same target, a big piece from the power reallocation.

In a situation where people are cruelly attacked from one imperialist, and seek safety from the actions of its rival, we are affected by some revolutionaries, like the Leon Sedov Brigade, who stand against any imperialist and propose the solidarity and unity among the repressed of this world. We are inspired from the attempts of organization from the Revolutionary Coordination Committees against the dividing of the uprising, from the manipulant organizations.

Those rebels who try to self-organize in a battlefield with bombs and chemical weapons, who are still fighting despite the heavy losses, who prefer to die rather than surrender to the murderer Assad, who define and defend their freedom at all costs, they spread the message that in every condition struggle is possible, if there is the will to fight.

They spread a message that the powerful military machines of Al Assad, Iran, Lebanon, Isis, Russia and USA haven’t achieved to defeat them for more than 5 years.

That explains the cruelty of the attack to Aleppo, the capital of revolution. After smaller towns were besieged and lead to starvation, the same tactic was attempted at Aleppo. But there were dynamic demonstrations where banks were expropriated, actions outside the guidelines of the army parties, which control the masses. That’s why Aleppo is now being totally destroyed.

A major factor for the ongoing slaughter in Syria is the absolute absence of social resistance to this war, from the people of the imperialistic countries that invaded Syria.

European people, not only they do not react to the war, but the majority consent to the closure of the borders for refugees, who, if they survive from the death in the sea, are the only fighting, like the great example of Syrian refugees in Paris who went on hunger strike, demand the termination of the war.

We don’t have a clear picture of what happens in movements in the rest of the world, but we are going to talk for the Greek case. Because after all, the economic crisis and poverty here in Greece, except from radicalizing parts of the people, lead more to the pacification. On the one hand we have people who take care of the refugees, rescuing them with their boats, independently from political parties and non-governmental organizations, and on the other hand there were beatings, fascist attacks and actions against the refugees. No big anti-war demonstration though, as happened in the past, because now economy is the only concern. Using it’s left mask, Syriza combining fear management and harsh repression, lead social resistances, in general, to surrender. And now Greek state is placing refugees to concentration camps, obeying the demands of the European Union. Sadly, the solidarity to the refugees is limited to charity, without any reference to the revolution, that lead to war.

For the lefts, the “anti-american” feelings and the belief that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” doesn’t allow them to stand against Assad, while the majority of the anarchists, lacking analysis, refer exclusively to Rojava.

At the same moment, refugees give their own fights like the uprising in Moria, where after destroying a large part of the infrastructure, they escaped, but rather than run, as usually happens, they gathered and demonstrated, resulting their arrest.

In our opinion, we seek the expansion of the solidarity to the refugees, in a more general context, that will regard the war in Syria as an example of an uprising and how capitalists dealt with it, in order to be able to exclude the proper conclusions from it.

It’s obvious, that the unity of the rebels doesn’t come from the big, centralized, hierarchical organizations, that end up fighting each other for the biggest share of power. The only hope is a horizontal organization, that doesn’t allow to any ambitious leader to sell the fight. The decentralized network of collectives that fight with their one will to a common direction, coordinating when possible, exchanging information, know-hows, arms and political ideas.

The views that see hierarchical organization as a necessary condition to achieve victory in a revolutionary war, were tried in the past and were lead to defeat or to the reproduction of the same social systems that they hypothetically fought.

The example of Syria, where small guerrilla groups and no centralized armies stand against the Russian military machine and the alliance of local armies, proves that what is missing is not the proper leadership, but a new mindset of organization. And that applies to every field of organization of revolutionary action, whether it is guerilla warfare, or the spread of revolutionary ideas, that do not persuade anyone because they are signed by the biggest federation, but are spread through initiative, close human contact, and co-action.

The massacre in Syria won’t stop, unless we do something to stop it.

Unless we face it as a part of the repression that we all have felt. If we don’t feel the tenacity of the rebels who don’t surrender. If we don’t realize that the distance from suffocating because of tear gas in demonstrations to the endless gas chamber of Syria is short. As long as we abstain from the streets, we give our permission to this bloodshed.

When captivity and death become universal condition, we are called to make insurrection and solidarity a universal condition.

EVERY DAY, A DAY OF RAGE
WAR AGAINST AUTHORITY ON EVERY INCH OF EARTH

Anarchists from D’ wing of Koridallos Prison (Greece)

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Posted in Prison Struggle

PDF: “Individuality and the anarchist group” by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – Urban Guerrilla Cell (Greece)

Monday, September 12th, 2016

PDF: “Individuality and the anarchist group” by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – Urban Guerrilla Cell.

Individuality and the anarchist group

Prologue

This title from Black International, “Individuality and the anarchist group”, written by Gerasimos Tsakalos of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – Urban Guerrilla Cell, is about a topic that concerns many of those who are an active part of the anarchist tension. Concerning not just the way comrades negotiate and conduct themselves within minimal organisational structures (clusters, networks, affinity groups) of informality and attack, and the effect of those forms on individuals, it also looks at the problems that can arise and some possible solutions. All this can add to a notional ‘to-be-completed’ mapping of some of the borderlands between the peripheries of the social and the clandestine for those traversing such terrains.

Written from the lived experience of an armed anarchist urban guerrilla who is imprisoned in the isolation dungeon of Korydallos prison in Athens, Greece, this is not a dreamy fantasy but a text which was developed in the furnace of practical theory and it’s consequences. The horizontal forms of organisation which are described here are ones that have been used and developed in practice, not from scriptures, but in the actual chaos of the everyday.

For a black international of anarchists of praxis.

September 2016

–

Individuality and the anarchist group

Instead of a Prologue

About the subject of “Individuality and the anarchist group”, one could say that it’s a timeless issue within the anarchist milieu… Is an anarchist individuality subjugated or liberated within a group? How does the individual encounter the collective? Can disagreements between comrades of the same collective be creative or do they inevitably lead to disputes, rivalries, intrigues, competitions and end up in rupture?

How are friendships and cliques able to bring about a cancellation of an anarchist group?

What is the relationship of an anarchist organization to the expulsions of members who participate? How can informal hierarchies and their members-followers survive in an anarchist project?

These are some of the issues that arise from the explosive relationship between individuals who try to coexist in anarchist groups.

The pamphlet “Individuality and the anarchist group” is an experimental testimony of political experiences from the interior of anarchist illegal infrastructures of revolutionary violence. The relationships that are formed in such cores are acrobatic at the sharp end because they are tested in extreme concentrated conditions and options. (more…)

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Posted in Library

Algunas reflexiones rupturistas a partir del asesinato del compa Salvador Olmos (Mexico)

Sunday, August 14th, 2016

Escribimos esto después de leer el ‘Comunicado del Bloque libertario de Huajuapan”, ante el asesinato a manos de la policía del compañero Salvador Olmos “Chava”‘ ya que pensamos que ante la intensificación de la guerra y el avance de la represión en entornos anarquistas/libertarios se hace necesario clarificar nuestras posturas en aras a identificar las múltiples formas del enemigo, ya que muchas veces se ve reducida la crítica al papel “de las injusticias del gobierno” o simplemente a “pensar que el mal esta encarnado en una persona o político” y no que en realidad es todo el sistema en su conjunto gobernantes y gobernados quienes participan activamente en la manutención del orden social capitalista.

¡Que quede bien claro! las siguientes palabras no son para nada dirigidas a manchar la memoria del compañero Chava o empezar polémicas de dimes y diretes, ni andarnos peleando entre nosotros, esto es ante todo una reflexión de compañeros para compañeros y esperemos que sea tomada como lo que es. (more…)

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Posted in Social Control

“So far, so good” – Racial identity politics, Islam, Anarchism and the Left

Sunday, August 7th, 2016

So far, so good ?*
Wednesday, July 13, 2016

“10 years ago, in the same kind of meeting as today, if you’d said « white » [1], people would have broken the furniture. Today, thanks to the Indigenous of the Republic, thanks to Houria [2] one can say « the whites ».” – Eric Hazan [3]

Unfortunately we are still unable to prove wrong what Eric Hazan has said above. He is the publisher, classified as extreme left, of the latest explicitly anti-semitic pamphlet by Houria Bouteldja, Whites, Jews and us, whose enormously repulsive character has not caused as many reactions as it would deserve. The categories and vocabulary of the ideology of racialisation, which for some time has been taken up in political organizations and milieus that range from the extreme left to the libertarians, are now becoming the norm and are establishing their hegemony. This vocabulary is being imposed insidiously, without being either discussed or argued. Moreover, many people are unable to politically support these untenable positions, except through affirming tautological assertions and false evidence. A semantic shift is already, for the most part, being operated : the terms “race”, “white”, “non-white”, “racialized,” “racialization”, “decolonial” have overnight become analytical categories considered relevant, necessary, and are even promoted as tools with a perspective for emancipation, whereas we see this as a catastrophic failure. (more…)

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Posted in Cognitive Liberty

Berlin: Black July – Text and actions against the social peace (Germany)

Thursday, August 4th, 2016

While the situation in the rebellious Northern Part of Friedrichshain is calming down for the moment and we find time to build Rigaer 94 back up again, the social war around us is continuing with its normal intensity. We received news about the state attacks on people and squats in Thessaloniki. Here and there we are fighting against the social democracy and confront the social war with polymorphous struggle. Whether in the black july or in our daily local conflicts, we are involved in a common fight that gains power in its mutuality.

In this very moment, the greek state seems to be striking out with a general attack against autonomous structures. In Thessaloniki and in other cities, self-organized structures of migrants are especially becoming more and more endangered. While fullfilling its function as a manager of migration-streams, the state attacks those who try to move, self-determined, through a world of exploitation and oppression and who won‘t bow to it‘s authority.

Three occupied houses in Thessaloniki were affected and over a hundred people arrested. One person was killed during the eviction [Correction received: one day after the three evictions, a young migrant woman died due to medical negligence at one of the state’s detention facilities in Thessaloniki.]. In Athens, squats which are being used by migrants are also threatened with eviction. The goal is to create an atmosphere of fear, while oppressing those who are self-organising and attacking the authority of the state. (more…)

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Posted in Autonomy

Anarchist report about prison hierarchy and conditions by comrade Mikalay Dziadok (Belarus)

Thursday, July 21st, 2016

Belarusian prison – Untouchables in the prison hierarchy

The topic of prison caste system is often raised in the media in recent times, it is often discussed in connection with the political prisoners. However, almost all who write on the subject, know about it at best from the stories of former inmates or use common social stereotypes. As a result, there are often a lot of blunders and false representation.

The aim of this article is to illuminate some aspects of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon the informal hierarchy in Belarus prisons.

27 years old, an activist of the anarchist movement. He was born in the town of Bragin, Gomel region. He graduated from the Belarusian State University College of Law, worked as a judicial custodian in the court of Tsentralny district of Minsk and legal adviser in a private company. In 2009 he entered the European Humanities University (Vilnius) specializing in Political Science and European Studies. On September 201, he was detained in Minsk on suspicion of the attack on the embassy of Russia. He was convicted of participation in a protest actions near the General Staff, the House of Trade Unions and the casino “Shangri-La” in the “case of anarchists“, he received 4.5 years prison sentence. Three months before his release he was sentenced to another year of imprisonment under Art. 411 of the Criminal Code (willful disobedience to prison administration). Released on August 22, 2015 by presidential decree “On presidential pardon” (he did not write a petition for clemency, although it was repeatedly offered). Now he is a first year student at the European Humanities University, specializing in world politics and economics.

There are scientific works on this subject. And, of course, I do not aspire to consider the phenomenon in all its diversity in one article. The question will be mainly about one prison caste, the existence of which characterizes the system as a whole, and the knowledge of which is critically important for any falling prisoner in Belarus, especially for a political prisoner. The so-called “petukhi” (“roosters”) ( also “downcast”, “bugger”, “cockscomb”, etc.).

So, from this text, you will learn:

– How did the “downcast” appear in prison;

– How do people become one;

– What are conditions of these people in jail and prison;

– What functions are performed by these people in prison;

– Why is the existence of this caste vital for the administration of penitentiary facilities.
(more…)

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Posted in Prison Struggle

“Ethnic” anarchists in Belarus: Debunking the Myths

Thursday, June 23rd, 2016

Groups that combine anti-authoritarian and nationalist ideas are nothing new. Though they are new for Belarus, where anarchists have always been anti-nationalist and viewed themselves as part of a global movement for freedom. These groups would not deserve your attention if they weren’t trying to disguise themselves as anarchists and make connections to the left-wing and anarchist movement in the West in order to get access to different resources: financial, informational etc.

What follows is a list of facts proving that one cannot be an anarchist believing that patriotism is a vital feature in the anti-state struggle. This text is an attempt to warn our comrades from possible contacts with these groups and give information about what they really are.

For now there are two groups in Belarus that call themselves ethnic anarchists – Poshug (“Flash”) and Khaurus (“Fellowship, Cahoot”). Judging by their pages in social networks (http://vk.com/psh_soc, http://vk.com/union8x9) both groups appeared in 2013.

Looks like Poshug’s adherents have their roots in a patriotic (sic!) wing of antifascist football hooligans of ‘Partyzan’, former MTZ-RIPO (http://vk.com/nasasprava). The background determined what they were fighting for – veganism, straight edge, animal liberation, ecology, anti-imperialism. (more…)

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Posted in Anti-Fascist

Bristol, Britain’s Flagship ‘Smart City’ (UK)

Thursday, June 9th, 2016

“We’re creating an environment where in a year or two, not five, the whole world will look at Bristol for the future of smart cities.”
– Dimitra Simeonidou, High Performance Networks Lab, Bristol University

The city of Bristol, south west U.K., has begun a multi-million pound experiment to create the ‘smart-city’ of the future, which would cement Bristol as a global leader in the telecommunications world. The wider area of Avon (mainly the ‘post-industrial’ estates of Bristol and Bath) already hosts the largest digital technology sector in the British Isles outside of London, and receives funding from the government as such.

City authorities and allied technological entrepreneurs are working to kit out Bristol with a city-wide ‘digital fabric’ of the very latest in sensor and connectivity technology, to make it the world’s first open ‘programmable city’. A high-speed fibre-optic network (making use of disused cable ducting owned by the council) is being combined with a new ‘city operating system’ that will power an experimental network. In the coming spring of 2016, 1,500 sensor-equipped lampposts are being launched around the city; the vast majority of Bristol will be covered in a Radio Frequency (RF) mesh. This is predicted to revolutionise the way that emergency response, traffic management and other municipal services are handled, and track certain vehicle locations, with eventual alleged trickle-down ‘benefits’ such as informing residents of parking spaces and air pollution (ahem, from those parking spaces) in an increasingly mechanised and technified environment. (more…)

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Posted in Social Control