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The Social Credit System – The New Totalitarian Management in a Technological Key and Social Credit Experimentation has begun in Italy

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

THE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM

“The most effective power is that which cannot be seen. This fact, combined with the reduction of the subject to a mere economic “animal laborans” and the deconflictionalisation and depoliticisation of society, is tending towards constructing a framework in which rules and those who decide them can hardly be challenged.”

“Depoliticisation and economic success are the most effective tools for pacifying society and maintaining control over it, and the social credit system goes in this direction.”

From 2013 Rongcheng, Chinese city in the province of Shandong, started experimenting with the ‘social credit’ system, but the aim is to extend it throughout the country by 2023.

In Rongcheng, each citizen is assigned 1,000 initial points, and each score corresponds to a specific letter: AAA to D. The letter ‘A’ (equivalent to 1,000 points) is the basic score and entails access to certain benefits, such as preferential assistance in employment and priority in school enrolment. One can aim to increase one’s score through behaviour considered by the Chinese Communist Party as ‘virtuous’: paying taxes and bills on time, making certain purchases, sharing and spreading party ideas, etc. a long list of behaviours by which the ‘trustworthiness’ and ‘virtuousness’ of citizens is judged. Of course, reporting people whose attitudes are deemed to be improper leads to an increase in one’s score. The benefits for the highest level (AAA, accessible to those with more than 1,050 points) include: higher pension insurance, subsidies for public transport, the possibility of applying for interest-free loans, being able to rent vehicles without having to leave a deposit, requiring fewer documents for travel visas, etc.

One’s score also becomes a symbol of prestige to be displayed online, as it already is on the Baihe website, which already allows its users to publish their score. On the other hand, those who are in a difficult situation and therefore pay their bills, rent or taxes late will inevitably have their points deducted; the same goes for those who do not cross at a pedestrian crossing, who throw paper on the ground, who express political opinions not in line with the party, etc. The list of behaviour deemed ‘immoral’ is very long. Continue reading “The Social Credit System – The New Totalitarian Management in a Technological Key and Social Credit Experimentation has begun in Italy” →

Spoleto, Italy: The premeptive class warfare of the Italian state

Posted on 2022/07/22 by darknights

THE PREEMPTIVE CLASS WARFARE OF THE ITALIAN STATE

The arrests that took place in the early morning of Tuesday, July 19, on a warrant from the Piacenza prosecutor’s office are indicative of the repressive climate in Italy and the authoritarian turn underway. Four SI Cobas trade unionists were placed under house arrest for the long cycle of struggles that inflamed logistics from 2014 to 2021. Along with them, two USB unionists were also placed under house arrest and two others are the recipients of other precautionary measures. Prosecutor Grazia Pradella’s charges are of criminal conspiracy, private violence, resisting a public official, sabotage, and interruption of a public service, finalized by extortionist intent in order to obtain better wage conditions for workers.

We do not believe that we should be outraged, as is happening in these hours, by this repressive operation, but rather point out that it is an open manifestation, a true confession, of the mentality of the bourgeoisie in this historical period: for the gentlemen of GLS, Amazon, FedEx-TNT, as well as from the arrogant statements that are being uttered every day by the leaders of Confindustria, everything must be granted, everything must be permissible for them. Even putting up a tough fight for a wage increase becomes extortion. The whole loot belongs to them by right, one must not dare to ask, one must not struggle. The charge of extortion is thus not a scandal, if anything, a sign of the times.

This repressive operation stands in open complicity with the murders of Abd El Salam, which occurred, moreover, in Piacenza itself in 2016, and Adil Belakhdim, who was murdered last year in the province of Novara. In both cases, the murders occurred during a strike picket, the same pickets that have been attacked repeatedly in recent years by police charges and assaults by corporate henchmen. Therefore, judicially attacking self-defense practices means acting basically in concert with the picketers and murderers. Continue reading “Spoleto, Italy: The premeptive class warfare of the Italian state” →

Italy: We will not stay warm during the storm

Posted on 2022/07/13 by darknights

We receive and disseminate this text-proposal, which we will gladly return to in the near future:

Let’s be clear: we want Alfredo out of 41bis.

Our proposal is not that of a specialized campaign against 41bis or against prisons: not because we like these institutions or because we think anyone should remain locked up in them, but because we think it is urgent to start from a “simpler” goal, knowing full well that when we have achieved it we will not have even begun in our struggle, which is for social revolution.

A struggle for the destruction of the prison cannot be won as long as there are states and authorities: therefore, these are battles that must be carried on continuously, but we would like, in this case, to try to give ourselves an attainable goal even in the short or medium term.

The fight against prison is – in itself – a fight against the existing, because the end of prisons means the end of the state, similarly the fight against 41bis, in Italy, goes to touch some of the foundations of the Italian state, which since its introduction has made it the workhorse of the “fight against the mafia.” Let’s face it clearly and humbly: 41bis is one of the ideological pillars of the Italian state, which has among its mottos “41bis or death!” The anti-mafia war has shown us this: the state, instead of giving up 41bis, has been willing to make the population pay for mafia bombs, such as the massacre of Via Georgofili in Florence or Via Palestro in Milan. So we find it difficult that on the abolition of that prison regime specifically (as, moreover, of prison in general), we can make pressures, whether harmless or violent. Whereas we think it is different to lobby specifically for the downgrading of Alfredo. This is not to say that our speeches, or our actions, should be watered down. The radicality of our struggle must be ensured, even in the case of a “partial demand” such as Alfredo’s demotion, by never disjointing the goals we can and must set ourselves with the social-political reasons for our anarchist actions. The radicality of action, propaganda, and agitation are the only antibody to strongly reiterate that our struggle is for the destruction of the existent, without mediation, preventing our demands, from that of the liberation of a comrade to stopping this or that project of capital, from being assimilated into a power-compatible reformism. Continue reading “Italy: We will not stay warm during the storm” →

Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/06/18 by darknights

In this umpteenth hearing in videoconference and after many requests, all denied, to appear and attend in person and not in absence to all the hearings of the trial that sees me charged, for the heavy and infamous accusation of massacre, I have to face the issue of videoconferencing, which enters, or to be more precise, was entering, in the infamous logic of the differentiation of the penitentiary circuits, in which the individual prisoner and accused is demonized and dehumanized by the said “considerable social dangerousness”. And I said that I was entering, because the videoconference, the trial in absentia, has been extended to all the prisoners in Italian prisons, who have been left without a real defense and with the marginalization that all this implies for all the defendants who suffer this imposition, through a liberticidal dynamic of the umpteenth emergency, this time for the Covid-19 emergency, which then became law. It is known, it is already evident and unmasked – and I am not only talking about the contradiction of this problem especially, or of one law or another – how the specific problem of the videoconference has reduced the defense to be a farce, annulling in fact the defendant within the trial.

This court will probably say that this has nothing to do with the trial taking place today.

But I believe it does, and what is more, I believe it is a fundamental issue. I am talking about the contradiction that the States possess by their own systemic nature, the fundamental problem is the disintegration and degeneration that dresses itself as emergentialism, and has the objective of breaking and directing the consolidated and ordinary legality at will, transforming it into another legality. We see it with the same dynamics of the perpetual emergency, and the specific plan of the videoconference is only an example of how the systemic authoritarianism liberticidal system expands in a capillary way. It is the exception, the emergency of today, that forges the law of tomorrow, reducing it more and more. The trials by videoconference, that is, in absentia, have been established by the continuous emergencies within the said social dangerousness, which is already the norm, such as the trial by videoconference for all the prisoners in Italian prisons. And it is not that this does not have repercussions on the real conditions of the entire trial, since it hinders the management of a real defense of the accused, creating a contradiction with what your own democratic and bourgeois law argues. Continue reading “Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.” →

Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/07/26 by darknights

The dictatorship of confinement is the mirror of democracy. It is the morbid representation of a tyranny that is not content with its military victories. It wants to see those it subjugates bend, sink into deprivation and decadence. To see in the faces of the captives that laughter disappears and misery takes its place. Power builds mass graves of souls to bury in concrete the voices of the invisible.

And yet some continue to shout. They shout loudly about injustice, inequality, arbitrariness. They shout for freedom and their voices break the concrete, cut the wires and travel free as birds in the sky. They contemplate the meanness of this world and from their proud height they fall like thunderbolts on the heads of the lords.

Comrade Giannis Michailidis belongs to these voices. A disobedient fighter both outside and inside the walls. Intransigent with the demand for encirclement to this day. Humble as a personality as much as a sworn enemy of exploitation, our comrade condenses in his journey the meanings that today we are called to defend collectively. Revolutionary consciousness against subjugation, abnegation against self-interest, the sharpening of the struggle against disarmament and generalized resignation.

In the face of the general decadence that prevails around us, there are people who, with their faith and dedication to revolutionary ideals, have left their own special mark in the militant struggle for total liberation. The lives of these people, whom we are honored to call comrades, weigh like mountains. Therefore, the struggles they wage are the struggles of all of us. Giannis placed a stake on his body to defend the collective current of those who chose to march, from the first to the last day, on the paths of intolerance through the walls. Continue reading “Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.” →

Athens, Greece: Political text by Anarchist Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos

Posted on 2022/05/23 - 2022/05/23 by darknights

Political text by Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos.

We are in a daily war, a war with the status quo, with every form of power that eats away at our lives, and in this war I realized where I belong. In a world where patriarchy rapes and kills us, where capitalism crushes us, impoverishing what we call life, in this world where humanity itself dominates nature and animals, perpetuating anthropocentric thinking and speciesism. So I chose sides. For the power complex will not destroy itself, no social change will come about unless our action transcends reformist logics, having a will to believe and a commitment to our ideas, putting theory into practice.

I proudly declare myself anarchist, proud that in this rotten society, the society of submission and spectacle, I did not bow my head before exploitation and power and chose to stand next to comrades who, by supporting the multiform struggle, also wrote their own page in the revolutionary historical memory. So far, living my new life next to them, in squats, through their common struggles for freedom, I learned what solidarity and comradeship is, what it means to give everything for what you believe in even if you are going to lose your freedom. I take the political responsibility that is due to me for my complicity in the incendiary attack that took place on 8/2 at the Foundation for National and Religious Reflection. A fragmentary action, which was not carried out by an organisation, namely the Anarchist Action organisation of which I am accused as a member, but was motivated by the desires and anger of two people against religious obscurantism, patriarchy and state power. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Political text by Anarchist Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos” →

UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

This statement from Toby Shone on prison abolition was recorded and transcribed from HM Prison Parc in Bridgend, Wales, UK. It was his contribution to a prison abolition event due to be hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign on 8 May 2022 but which was postponed until a later date yet to be decided.

Hello Everyone

This is Toby Shone. I’m an imprisoned anarchist held in G4S Parc. It’s a slave labour camp holding 1,800 men in South Wales run by the security multinational on a government contract providing dirt cheap labour for private companies.

I was captured by the anti-terrorist unit during Operation Adream in November 2020. First I want to thank you for listening and also the opportunity provided by Bristol Anti-Repression Coalition. Moments like this break the isolation we feel as prisoners and they also give us a chance to participate and to speak out. There are many reasons to oppose prisons and the current judicial system and as an anarchist I can’t separate the anti-prison struggle from the struggle against the State and civilisation and I’m going to return to this later. But now I’ll briefly give an account of some of the joint struggles inside prison.

I’ve never sought to hide my perspectives while I’ve been here and I’ve been subject to a lot of State intimidation and scrutiny because of that and I’ve never backed down. The prisons in the UK are mostly filthy and overcrowded, lacking basic resources, degrading and decaying.

In London I was held in the prison within the prison alongside Jihadis, Russian-Italian-Ukrainian mafia, postcode war gang members, high level money launderers and so on. Overall we all got on well with each other, even with high levels of violence and on average one death or suicide each month. There we had a laundry room where we could meet, play cards, and talk. We’d exchange books and ideas as well as our hopes and fears. And because of this social area, the administration moved to shut down our laundry and move it off wing. So we had a small struggle to keep it open, spreading a unity between all the groups, collecting 200 signatures for our petition and also it was almost every man that signed it there on H block. It might seem a minor struggle but in prison everything small becomes of a huge significance because you have almost nothing but your dignity and only you can give that away. And it’s important for our decency to have clean clothes and bedsheets, pillowcases and so on. And if the laundry was moved off wing this couldn’t be guaranteed and nobody wanted to have their clothes stolen or damaged and it’s almost impossible to get any more. And it would also mean that we would have to suffer the inability to wash our clothes more than once a week and that’s even if the scheme ran correctly. In practice, in prison, nothing works as it should and it’s intended to be that way, to make life as difficult as possible. Suffice to say, our petition was completely ignored by the authorities and the imprisoned fellow in charge of running the laundry lost his job and was moved prison as a kind of punishment because he was blamed for stirring up trouble. In prisons, the administrations are very scared of anything even slightly challenging to their power. We have to consider these intermediate struggles very well, but we must never give up our stances. Continue reading “UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign” →

Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – During a witch hunt, pride is hidden in the fire beam

Posted on 2022/04/23 - 2022/05/18 by darknights

Thanos Chatziaggelou – During a witch hunt, pride is hidden in the fire beam

Since the first day of my arrest, I have consciously chosen to keep a consistent position and refused to cooperate with the prosecution and interrogation authorities. Every time I spoke, I did it to claim certain historical and political responsibilities. Responsibilities towards my individual and collective path in the acts of revolutionary violence, as well as towards two of my comrades, on whose names from the very first moment the anti-terrorist unit tries to personify the lost pieces of the puzzle of the so-called deracination of Anarchist Action.

In this case, beyond what is objectively true and what is a lie, the greatest danger lies behind the political goals of the anti-terrorist unit. So, what are the shocking pieces of evidence of the service, infamous for its methodical lies: A ridiculous anonymous phone call that names me personally as the one responsible for a set of arson attacks in the region of Thessaloniki (a phone call whose number I assume is going to be missed in the trial by the hackers of the service), surveillance of ambiguous quality and origin taken from my personal daily life, my arrest together with my companion Georgia Voulgari in the house of Panos Kalaitzis, where I had in my possession a set of confiscated items that are named as “arsenal” and two clear political statements: the common responsibility claim of one and only arson attack at the FNRC from me and my companion and my personal responsibility claim of being a member of the Anarchist Action. Continue reading “Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – During a witch hunt, pride is hidden in the fire beam” →

Athens, Greece: Text of two imprisoned comrades Fotis D. and Iasonas R.

Posted on 2022/04/14 by darknights

Athens, Greece: Text of two imprisoned comrades

Comrades, we are writing to you from the penitentiary hellholes of Korydallos and Avloras, two more detention centres, both of which aim at our physical confinement and remorse of our political conscience. By making our case public, we would like the reason for our detention and evidence of the practices of the EΛ.ΑΣ National Police used against us to come out.

In the early hours of 14 November 2021 we didn’t stop during a check carried out by a DIAS cops bikes team in the area of New Faliro. Immediately a chase was launched against us by a civilian vehicle that did not bear the characteristics of the service. As white people, we did not receive a plethora of bullets, but in the area of Moschato, the car rammed us while we were moving and threw us on the road (with a high risk of being fatally injured). Our arrest was linked to an attack on the Piraeus traffic police earlier that night, which took place more than three kilometers from the checkpoint (the checkpoint was being controlled by fixed units outside the stinking Skye channel). We were taken to the ΓΑΔΑ, (Athens Police HQ) where we refused to give fingerprints, which, as well as genetic material, were ordered to be compulsorily taken a day before we went before an interrogator in an attempt to identify us with the evidence found in the attack and with previous cases. With invalid evidence against us, it was decided to remand us in custody on the pretext of identical clothing, as shown by video footage from the department.

This case is a fiasco and a desperate attempt by the police to win a major victory and legitimize the new criminal code in the eyes of the public. A decisive role in this is played by the state disinformation media, which first ran to prejudge us, using against us evidence with no legal basis – they talked about a yafka house(safe-house), an explosives manufacturing plant and spread false news about the first Molotov cocktail detention in Greece, thus exaggerating the work of the police and the necessity of the changes in the criminal code. The changes to article 272 and how they relate to the changes to 264 and 270 are intended to spread terror in the anarchist/anti-racist movement, to anyone who resists or questions the sovereignty of the state and its partners. As anarchists we are not surprised by this case and how it has developed so far, we do not believe in bourgeois justice and have no illusions about who it serves. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Text of two imprisoned comrades Fotis D. and Iasonas R.” →

Reclaim Your Mind : Manifesto – An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill

Posted on 2022/04/08 - 2022/04/08 by darknights

Above: Chilean uncontrollables clash with riot police in Santiago, Chile, during widespread rioting on July 14, 2011.

“There they were, the voracious youth again, destroying everything, erecting barricades, clashing with police, nothing could stop them… There is fire and passion in their hearts, love and hatred on their insides, courage and decision. The beauty of chaos has returned to grace the streets, it is not only fire that adorns the asphalt, it is also the energy of the youth, the abolition of the sexes, everyone in the struggle… Will this struggle bear fruit? To want to study just to be someone in life? The individual who goes searching for real happiness, does not stop at so little, she knows that she can educate herself, and although that path is longer, that doesn’t make it less interesting, because everything else is interminable…” (Circulo Individualista Aves del Fuego)

Download: PDF zine version by Dark Matter Publications.

+ Spanish translation: Cover & Contents.

Urgent message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill

Selling cures for the problems they created
It is well known that depression has been on a steady rise in the past few decades. This increase apparently isn’t about to stop since the World Health Organization (WHO) recently predicted that, by 2020, depression would be the second most prevalent health problem in the world, just below heart disease, and offered as an explanation that this was due to a previous underestimation of the number of people suffering from this “illness”.

Couldn’t the increasing feeling of emptiness and worthlessness characteristic of depression be related to the society we live in, at a time when people lose themselves in consumption and mass entertainment to avoid thinking about their miserable life, their economic survival or the ongoing destruction of the planet? While the “experts” paid by pharmacology corporations will invariably answer that depression is a brain disorder due to a “chemical imbalance”, the result of some faulty genes they have yet to identity, we cannot help to wonder how this could not be environmental considering there was no such thing as depression in Africa before colonization?

Depression has widely been touted as endemic to the 20-something generation. Severe depression is 10 times more prevalent today than it was 50 years ago, and it strikes a full decade earlier in life on average than it did a generation ago. Such feelings and behaviours testify to frustration and despair that have nowhere to go when the social landscape is so frozen. Disaffection or even opposition are quickly marketed into sellable style images; alienation as fashion. Meanwhile suicide, perhaps the ultimate regression, has been on a steady rise for several decades.
– John Zerzan

Continue reading “Reclaim Your Mind : Manifesto – An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill” →