Fascist UK State – Dark Nights

Cardiff, UK: Demo at Probation Office For Toby Shone

Posted on 2024/03/21 by darknights

DEMO AT CARDIFF PROBATION OFFICE FOR TOBY SHONE

On March 6th 2024, anarchists demonstrated outside Cardiff Probation Office to show their solidarity with Toby Shone as his parole pre-hearing meeting approaches. For the last 3 and a half years, probation officers including Lewis Thomas, Ashley Fussell, Gillian O’Brien, and Paul Smith amongst others at Cardiff probation office have collaborated with police such as Philip Gay at the National Security Division (NSD) and SouthWest Counter Terror Police (SWCTP) to target Toby for his anarchist beliefs and his alternative lifestyle. The UK police state is trying to criminalise such beliefs.

Toby was initially arrested on terrorism charges related to the 325.nostate.net website. This case fell apart the day before the trial in 2021. The Crown Prosecution Service had no evidence to offer the court. He was instead sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for a minor drugs charge. Released on licence in December 2022, Toby was recalled to prison on 19th September 2023 after attending a prisoner letter-writing night and dinner at the anarchist social centre BASE in Bristol. This meeting was being watched by two Counter Terror Officers. Toby’s licence conditions prevented him from contributing to or organising events at places like BASE. They also included a gagging order to prevent him speaking out about his case and his licence conditions. His attendance at this event was not a breach of his conditions but was used by his probation team, the National Security Division (NSD) and Southwest Counter Terror Police (SWCTP) to justify his renewed incarceration in a long-term high security prison 170 miles away from his home. Isolating him from his community and loved ones by sending him out of his area and by censoring his mail is a stated aim in police and probation paperwork and Toby’s treatment is apparently being signed off personally by the Secretary of State for Justice Alex Chalk.

Red and black smokies were set off, flyers were distributed inside the probation offices and to people in the street and comrades spoke in support of Toby and demanded his freedom from this revenge recall and from the whole rotten prison industrial complex including the probation service.

Soldarity with Toby

Solidarity with all imprisoned comrades

FUCK HMP!

The Final Straw Radio Podcast Interview With Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone + A Request By Solidarity Group For Toby Shone

Posted on 2024/03/05 by darknights

The Final Straw Radio Podcast Interview With Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone

US web-based The Final Straw Radio Podcast has a new interview with imprisoned anarchist Toby Shone in which he gives a background to Operation Adream, his arrest and trial and his recent recall to prisons plus the involvement of the security services in his case and the ongoing harrassment that he has suffered in HMP Garth.

https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2024/03/03/…

A Request By Solidarity Group For Toby Shone

The solidarity group for Toby Shone would like to ask that anyone writing to him could also take a moment to let us know that you have sent him a letter by dropping an email to forestcase@riseup.net

HMP Garth are telling him – as have other prisons he has been in – that he has no mail. The State and the pigs are desperate to isolate Toby and to make him believe that he has no support. This is stated in his probation paperwork as a goal of his probation team and the National Security Division.

Let’s not let them win! We have no control over whether the prison gives Toby his mail and books. We do however have control over writing to him and letting his support group know that you have so that even if he doesn’t receive it, he knows it was sent to him. A letter sent by recorded delivery so that we can tell Toby that yes, this letter arrived on such and such a date is even better.

Toby is very resilient and is always in good spirits. However, he has been very unwell, has lost a considerable amount of weight as a result of the lack of food and calorie count typical of Britain’s jails and now faces a month of no visits due to confusion over bookings. So now would be a really really good time to send Toby a postcard, a letter or an email (and then let us know that you have).

Thanks a million.
The State is the Terrorist.
No one is Alone!

Forest Case Folks
forestcase@riseup.net

Toby Shone A7645EP
HMP Garth
Ulnes Walton Lane
Leyland
Preston
PR26 8NE

Source: Brighton Anarchist Black Cross

UK: HMP Garth Illegally Restricting Toby Shone’s Mail

Posted on 2023/11/21 - 2023/12/03 by darknights

Toby Shone, currently incarcerated in Category B prison HMP Garth, is receiving no mail – including his legal mail from his lawyers – and any money being sent into him to be added to his prison account is being restricted to only those persons on his approved contact list. If you are intending to send him a letter, it is suggested that you send you message via https://www.emailaprisoner.com/, which he is currently able to receive. If you want to send him money and are not on his approved contact list, Toby suggests you send it to his support group (bank account details below).

If you have sent him mail, books, etc. at HMP Garth and have not received a reply, Toby asks that you contact Brighton ABC [brightonabc@riseup.net] so that you can be added to the complaint that his lawyers are putting together to challenge the prison’s actions.

The Bottled Wasp
Co-operative Bank
Sort code: 08-92-99
Acc. No.: 65601648
BIC: CPBKGB22
IBAN: GB 35 CPBK 0892996560164

UK: Anarchist comrade Toby Shone abducted by armed cops & sent back to prison!

Posted on 2023/09/22 by darknights

Toby Shone is an anarchist who was imprisoned in Wandsworth, Bristol and G4S Prison Parc for nearly two years accused of being the administrator of counter-information project 325.nostate.net. After the political prosecution failed and the cops had to drop the case 5 days before trial in October 2021, Toby received a sentence of 3 years 9 months for possession of psychedelic medicines. He was released on 28 December 2022 under heavy restrictions (license conditions), oversight by a multi-agency team (MAPPA) including the National Security Division (counter-terror) and forced to live in a filthy bail hostel in Gloucester for 9 months. He had just moved back into a flat in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire 9 days ago.

On the morning of 19 September 2023, he was driving to an appointment with his probation officer when he was pulled over and arrested by an armed police unit in-between the Forest of Dean and Gloucester. He was taken to HMP Bristol. He is awaiting more detailed information, but his legal team say that the allegations are that he breached two of his license conditions: being in possession of an [unauthorised] phone and attending a meeting in Bristol in August.

Toby is in great spirits as ever and requests letters and books. ■

Please write to him at:
Toby Shone A7645EP
HMP Bristol
19 Cambridge Road
Bishopston
Bristol
BS7 8PS

Update:
Let him know he is not alone and we stand with him.

WHEN: 8pm this Friday 22nd Sept.
WHERE: The Golden Lion, 244 Gloucester Road, BS7 8NZ

Bring banners, noisy things, and friends

UK: London’s secretive “smart stations” roll-out

Posted on 2023/03/25 by darknights

The digital slave-system of the Fourth Industrial Repression is being imposed on us by stealth.

Various aspects of the sinister technology have gradually crept in over the years under the excuse of fighting crime or terrorism or, more recently, of combating the spread of a so-called pandemic.

As we saw in our recent article on “15 Minute Cities”, we are now being told that it is all about urban planning and making life generally more pleasant for everyone by reducing traffic congestion and pollution.

Anyone who sees through this greenwashing attempt is dismissed as a paranoid fool or as a dangerous conspiracy theorist spreading fear and disinformation.

And yet the whole premise of this official spin is blown out of the water by the fact that smart infrastructure (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is being rolled out in contexts that have nothing to do with private vehicle use.

We have got hold of a very interesting document from Transport for London on the current testing of smart surveillance at Willesden Green tube station, which is due to continue until March 31, 2023.

If this project were really about “providing the best possible service” to passengers on the British capital’s underground railway network, as claimed, then you would think that it would be loudly and proudly announced and discussed, with information widely available in a democratic public consultation.

But the fact that the document, entitled “Smart Station Proof Concept”, is marked “restricted” for internal TfL use reveals the secrecy being deployed to sneak through this new stage of the incremental theft of our freedom.

In the public interest, we have decided to publicise its contents.

The “exciting” project for the Jubilee Line station combines existing CCTV cameras with “visual analytics technology” to provide 24-hour real-time monitoring, via a “Smart Stations Dashboard”.

As well as counting everyone entering and leaving the station, the smart spies will be issuing “notifications” for a range of “triggers” including not just gate-jumping or smoking, but also “loitering” or a “person sat on a bench (Excessive Time)”, which turns out to be anything more than ten minutes! Continue reading “UK: London’s secretive “smart stations” roll-out” →

UK: Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone Fights New Battle Against Fascist UK State

Posted on 2022/10/28 - 2022/10/28 by darknights

Imprisoned anarchist Toby Shone is fighting a new battle as he counts down the weeks to his halfway release on December 28th 2022.

As the UK collapses into something resembling a tin-pot dictatorship and a Victorian poorhouse, Toby continues to be targeted by the Probation Service and their colleagues in the Counter-Terror National Security Division and MAPPA (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements) for his ‘thought crimes ‘, ‘anarchism’ and ‘alternative lifestyle’.

In September, Toby was informed that Cardiff-based probation officer Paul Smith had booked a series of interviews for him (without communicating these to his lawyers as instructed) with forensic psychologist Dr Harriet Chapman from the Centre for Forensic and Criminological Psychology, University of Birmingham. Dr Chapman’s intention was to interrogate Toby under the Extremism Risk Guidelines formulation tool, ERG22+. This assessment which is “intended for use with people who have been convicted of any extremist or extremist-related offence” (which he hasn’t been) considers at least 22 factors by which an individual can be regarded as an extremist and thus be subject to de-radicalisation measures. We could find no public paper detailing these 22 factors or the format of the interview.

These largely experimental and deeply authoritarian de-radicalisation measures, which appear to be rolled out on a one-to-one basis, include the Healthy Identity Intervention, Desist and Disengagement Programme, Motivational and Engagement Intervention and Developing Dialogues. All of these are highly invasive, intensive programmes designed to investigate and dismantle a targeted individual’s personal narrative, childhood and influences, to attempt to undermine their critique of the existent, to isolate them from their relationships and affinities and to re-mould them into the perfect citizen under conditions of duress. Think re-education camps and political indoctrination. In effect they are seeking to “pathologise” the holding of anarchist beliefs: anarchism as a psychological illness. This tactic of “punitive psychiatry” has been used by other authoritarian states, most notably Soviet Russia, China and the USA. Continue reading “UK: Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone Fights New Battle Against Fascist UK State” →