London – Page 2 – Dark Nights

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” →

London, UK: Vandalism at the Italian Cultural Center in London in Solidarity with anarchist Alfredo Cospito

Posted on 2023/03/01 by darknights

Vandalism at the Italian Cultural Center in London

It appears that on 24th February, something unfortunate happened to the Italian Cultural Institute in London.

At this sophisticated outpost of the Italian state, guests are invited to enjoy a current series of lectures, from handpicked academic experts, on the great social and political issues of the day, with the ambassador in attendance. The previous week, the audience was treated to a discussion of the energy transition, and next week the theme was to be Justice.

All this makes it so regretable that the building’s romanesque facade, with elegant white columns and heavy wooden door, seems to have been soaked in paint by some vandal[s] clearly without the capacity to appreciate such things.

Maybe it was some disbeliever[s] in capitalism’s ‘sustainable’ future? Unhelpful people looking to provoke, always making trouble for sensible plans.

It would be a particular shame if the act casts a shadow on next week’s lecture. A gathering of cultured and cosmopolitan persons to hear about such a delicate subject as Justice surely calls for a glass of Italian wine and a canape consumed in peaceful contemplation.

Could it be that the irresponsible[s] wanted to pour scorn on the Italian State for its massacres in the prisons during the 2020 lockdown? Or for its dependable and bloody role in securing the border of europe against the pressure of irregular migration?

But another troubling interpretation remains. After all, Alfredo Cospito, whose struggle by hunger strike against the notorious isolation regime of 41bis is in its last critical stages, had yet another appeal rejected later that same day, by the wise members of the Italian judiciary.

This struggle, having stirred a whirlwind of action sweeping beyond the walls of the prison, even accross national boundaries, is becoming so severe that it is SUPPOSED to have increased the security around diplomatic buildings of the Italian State internationally for some time now.

Whatever the truth, we can be sure that the impulses behind such an act can only contribute to the general atmosphere of indignation and lack of dialogue with power that Alfredo Cospito’s struggle, against the terms of life and death set by authority, seems to have enflamed everywhere.

Source: Act for freedom now!

London, UK : FREEDOM IS NON-NEGOTIABLE. ALFREDO COSPITO OUT OF 41 BIS – SO AS TO CONTINUE TO LIVE PROUDLY AN ANARCHIST IN ITALY HAS DECIDED TO DIE PROUDLY. Two posters for Alfredo Cospito that have appeared in some streets of London

Posted on 2023/02/25 - 2023/02/26 by darknights

Source: Act for freedom now!

London, Two posters for Alfredo Cospito that have appeared in some streets of London.

we receive and spread:

FREEDOM IS NON-NEGOTIABLE
ALFREDO COSPITO OUT OF 41 BIS
Alfredo Cospito has made the choice of hungerstrike to the end against the Italian prison regime 41 bis, a concrete grave, where the law has tried to bury him to prevent the spreading of his ideas of freedom and the need to attack its enemies.
Power needs to model, predict and measure, always trying to avoid the worst for itself. But when people stop accepting blackmail, stop listening to the forecasts, and then even the warnings, and start to act – then things can become unpredictable.
With Alfredo, the Italian State has encountered something it can’t factor into its calculations – it is trying to calculate a struggle without measure.
Alfredo Cospito won’t accept barter for his freedom. His uncompromising demand pours out of the dungeon and into the streets, refueling the social tempest beyond walls and borders.
The cost of losing the veneer of control is enough to bankrupt any authority.
But Freedom is non-negotiable and without limit.

SO AS TO CONTINUE TO LIVE PROUDLY AN ANARCHIST IN ITALY HAS DECIDED TO DIE PROUDLY
using his body as a weapon to attack the judicial conspiracy to distort his person, his struggle and the very essence of anarchism in order to bury him alive under the anti-mafia law 41bis.
with Alfredo Cospito
end 41bis now!
“There are two types of solidarity. A passive one that all too often serves only to wash away conscience for someone’s own inactivity and that does not bridge the gaps between words and deeds.
And then the active, concrete, real solidarity that some call revolutionary, created in silence and anonymity, where only destructive actions speak even through the words that follow. Needless to say which one I prefer.

In final analysis, the best solidarity that i could receive is to see the planning of this new anarchy, in all of its forms, continue to move forward, insensible to the strokes of repression. I will not deny it, in
every action that someone salutes us as anarchist prisoners, both in Italy and the rest of the world, my heart fills with joy.

This is my life today. The war continues, never give up, never give in.” Alfredo Cospito 2014.

FIRE TO THE PRISONS!

poster 1 pdf

poster 2 pdf

London, UK: Against Ecology– A Discussion for the Unmanageable

Posted on 2023/01/27 by darknights

Tuesday 21st February

Against Ecology — A Discussion for the Unmanageable

The catastrophe we face is not revealed in the predictions of a scientific caste, nor in the mysticism of rhythms of nature which we have never known in the duration of our artificial lives.

The catastrophe is the daily dose of poisoning which we drink voluntarily: the world of management, entertainment, democracy, technological progress and merchandise. Its power source is human drudgery and submission, turbo-charged by fossil fuels or no-less ruthlessly exploited ‘sustainable’ resources. This is the polluted wasteland which takes survival for as long as possible as its miserable horizon – at an individual level as much as at the level of the species.

In the past, struggles against the most polluting developments have been orientated by ecology but now it is acting as a brake on their potential.

The fumes of ideology can be more suffocating than greenhouse gasses. If we are not careful, we will be led directly into the embrace of a transformed authority – eagerly drawing on the moral fury of the green movement, and all too happy to continue to govern on a necessarily planetary scale.

We need fresh ideas and action to break with the stifling atmosphere of the moment and to arm the struggles of the near future. We need to move beyond ecology, and enter the dimension of a revolt without excuses, without demands and without return to normality.

Touchpaper Anarchist Library
385 Queens Road
New Cross
SE14 5HD

London, UK: Animal Liberation and Insurrection – Public Discussion

Posted on 2023/01/06 by darknights

Tuesday 10th January 2023, 7pm.
Animal Liberation and Insurrection – Public Discussion

This society is nothing but a row of tightly monitored cages. Non-human animals have been, and continue to be, at the sharp-end of the scientific-industrial system. Locked up, experimented on, artificialised and domesticated – and yet their revolt continues, in escapes, in violent reactions against their capture and on their jailors.

Against this daily misery, what does an insurrection which finds connection with the revolt of non-human animals look like?

What wild horizons of freedom lie at the point where smashed cages meet severed networks of social control, and sabotage and expropriation spreading through the temples of work and consumption?

Tuesday 10th January 7pm
Touchpaper Anarchist Library
385 Queens Road, New Cross
SE14 5HD

London, UK: Your New South London Local; Touchpaper Anarchist Library!

Posted on 2022/08/30 - 2022/08/30 by darknights

“…From under the glitter and glare of London, the prison city, this anarchist library now humbly stands. Not a shop, nor a radical ‘space’, nor the organ of some organisation or other, Touchpaper is a small contribution towards a place for the encounter, for eye-to-eye discussion and for pushing outwards against the grain…”

A new anarchist library in south london, home to subversive publications from around the world including a distro, a library (where publications can be borrowed for a small deposit) and a forthcoming archive of anarchist ideas put onto paper.

ADDRESS:
385 Queens Road
New Cross
London
SE14 5HD

OPENING TIMES:
(every week)
TUESDAY: 4PM- 9PM
SUNDAY: 2PM- 7PM

EVENT:
Tuesday 13th September, 6PM
Against 5G and the World that Needs it!
An anti-authoritarian discussion on digital control and the struggle for freedom.

WEBSITE: https://touchpaper.noblogs.org/

CONTACT: touchpaper@riseup.net

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South London, UK : ‘Life means intervention, decision, struggle, not to be a battery for the machine to work.’

Posted on 2022/07/26 by darknights

This morning 25.7.22, some anarchists interrupted a commuter train on the Docklands Light Railway, connecting the (rapidly transforming) ghettoised districts of Newham and Lewisham to London’s financial centre.

Words from the heart were sprayed on the exterior of the train, especially the name of Giannis Michailidis. A banner carrying a quotation from his public letter from 2013 (‘Tracking my journey in the world of insurrection resistance and solidarity’) was hung from the rail bridge over the central junction of Deptford.

The following text was distributed by throwing hundreds of flyers into the train carrige and off the railway bridge:

Freedom is not an array of consumer choices and ‘experiences’. It consists in the living choice to take your life into your own hands in the struggle.
We can see what happens when, for years, each project of power is left to expand its tentacles over us.
– Neighbourhoods are wrecked to construct vacuum-sealed palaces for the pleasure and profit of the beneficiaries.

– “Economic Strategies”, like raising the prices of food and fuel to discipline everyone back to work post-lockdown, are greeted meekly like a natural law and, accordingly, accumulate astronomical profits for global corporations. Continue reading “South London, UK : ‘Life means intervention, decision, struggle, not to be a battery for the machine to work.’” →

London, UK: 11/07/22 Intervention at the Greek embassy in London for G.Michailidis and the struggle of the migrants in Elaionas

Posted on 2022/07/12 - 2022/07/12 by darknights

Intervention at the Greek embassy in London for G.Michailidis and the struggle of the migrants in Elaionas in Greece.

the text given out:

FREEDOM TO HUNGER STRIKER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS

SOLIDARITY TO MIGRANTS IN GREECE

Giannis Michailidis is an anarchist prisoner on hunger strike since 23/5. He has served 8.5 years in prison and, while he fulfils all formal conditions for his release, he is kept in preventive detention. The Greek judges backed by the Greek state refuse to release him on the pretext that he does not meet the substantive conditions of release. This additional detention is being used at will to punish him for remaining unrepentant and maintaining a militant stance within the prison walls. This is not the first time Michailidis faces the vengeance of the Greek state. His heavy prosecution began in 2011 when an arrest warrant was issued against him for involvement in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, for which he was later acquitted. He chose the path of illegality and was arrested in 2013 in Velvento Kozani, after expropriating a bank together with 3 other anarchists, where he was tortured by the police. Continue reading “London, UK: 11/07/22 Intervention at the Greek embassy in London for G.Michailidis and the struggle of the migrants in Elaionas” →

London, UK: An Invitation to Deflate the System

Posted on 2022/02/10 by darknights

act for free received by anonymous email:

————————————————————

An Invitation to Deflate the System

As the walls of control close in its hard not to feel a sense of despair. As an anarchist inside the Great British Prison Island, with apathy and inaction the main pillars of the anarchist ghetto, its hard not to feel deflated. Daily humiliations tend to extinguish your burning desire to attack the system. Every time you try to get a fire going another excuse puts it out. Too much risk for that action This action is inconsequential The atmosphere of trepidation is paralyzing.

You end up stuck between a fantasy of burning the whole edifice down and the reality of your limited abilities which seem to you to offer very little. But this is where you are wrong. You already have everything you need to begin. Besides, you can’t do anything with what you haven’t got. You can only do something with what you have got. Inabilities become abilities along the way but only if you take that first step.

Be realistic about your situation! The targets for attack are everywhere and within reach. The simple weapons needed can be found in shops on every high street. Alone or with others, all you need is the will to put one foot in front of the other. So what if you can’t get your hands on an Amazon server or some other privileged target yet? The infrastructure of control is also sustained by simple and unguarded technology.

As well as wanting to demonstrate this point, we are sick of feeling deflated. So over the last few days we went out and deflated the system instead. More than 30 vans that maintain the network of online communication, surveillance and data mining were put out of action. These vans are necessary to service the system and to fix glitches in the matrix of control. Without these vans, disconnection proliferates. These vans are parked in streets up and down the country, unguarded and easy to attack. You can identify them by the various corporate logos (Virgin, Vodaphone, BT, etc.) that have been conveniently painted as targets.

We invite you to join us in deflating the system.

How many decommissioned vans would it take to seriously disrupt the system? We have seen recently how power outages, downed servers and broken apps can have unpredictable and detrimental effects on the system. When disconnection is liberation, its not just about financial losses but also about a loss of control. What if, in a particular area, the internet connection goes down the same night a significant number of vans are put out of use? How many hours in delayed repairs equals how many millions wiped off the stock market? What chain reactions can be set off by the most modest of actions? The answers are unclear but that’s not the point: the joy is in discovering and overcoming the limits of the questions.

Insurrection never happens tomorrow. Neither is it something done by others. It is what you do tonight before the dawn. It is a journey into the unknown, a journey that begins right now where you are. There is no such thing as a predetermined future and there are no limits that can’t be overcome. There is no need to calculate outcomes. When every thing is increasingly connected to everything else, every attack reverberates beyond itself. As you watch the sun rise you know yourself a little deeper. The quality of your affinity with your co-conspirators is richer. As old limits are overcome, new possibilities emerge organically. There is no need to worry about what you don’t know or can’t do. Start simple and the rest will follow.

Anarchists.

Dysorganism: London 11th Sepetember 2021 for the Destruction of the Existent for the Self-Organisation of the Struggle

Posted on 2021/09/23 by darknights

pdf: for print

pdf: for reading

DYSCONTENTS

A Day at the Barracks …1

Allez Allez Allez! …7

Abolitionist Futures or Insurrection Now? …9

Children of Grey Squirrels Poetry Corner … 18

United States of Emergency …19

Source: Act For Freedom Now!