Tag: UK
UK: Civilization is a cancer. Letter by imprisoned anarchist comrade Toby Shone
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Some matters should be denounced in the strongest terms, one of these is the way prisoners health is addressed. Neglect and mistreatment are endemic, if not malice, institutionalised. I was scheduled an MRI scan and blood tests for tumour markers in late October 2023 at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I should have been put on medical hold and provided that treatment, but I was transferred to the long term High Security Estate where I did not receive the blood test by the prison medical team until late December. The results of those blood tests have never been disclosed to me by the prison medical authorities. In fact, I only got the results after a comrade called my Bristol NHS Oncology Unit. Twice the prison team have failed to facilitate a telephone consultation with my doctor to receive the blood test outcome. The prison medical system has totally failed in every way to provide continuity in my oncology pathway. My scheduled MRI scan, which I have not been given any information about, is not being declared to me for fear I will use the opportunity to make an escape. The last time, the despicable cowards of the prison service zip tied my hands before I was placed in the coffin of the MRI scanner, an indignity that I will not accept again even at risk of my health. Prisoners die each day chained to their hospice beds watched by bastards with keys and batons. Prison is an abomination and the only future we are fighting for is one in which it is destroyed forever. I will live and die in the way I choose.
Death to the state!
Toby, 18th of January 2024, HMP Garth
Video: Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – Phoenix Project – An account of the FAI/IRF Project ‘Phoenix’ (Black International) 2015
English subtitled version of the film giving the account of the early part of the Phoenix Project, international project of sabotage and attack with over a dozen hits in a variety of different countries.
Dedicated to Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai, Olga Cell FAI/IRF, who took responsibility for the laming of CEO Roberto Adinolfi of Ansaldo Nucleare.
“We are here, where everything starts now.”
The Project of ‘Phoenix’ is the unfolding of a hidden map marking one of the routes to the Atlantis of practical theory. An unknown and lost continent that exists beyond the edges of the burning cities of the interzone. Created through action, dialogue and ideas and organised informally with anarchic principles of permanent autonomous attack, revolutionary solidarity and internationalism. A sequence of attacks by different radical direct action groups around the world, breaking the silence of isolation and striking back again against the prison societies of the techno-industrial system.
The imprisoned members of CCF are charged with instigation for the attacks, Spyros Mandylas and Andreas Tsavdaridis were arrested and charged for act #4 in the project, sending a parcel-bomb to the former commander of the anti-terrorist agency, Dimitris Xorianopoulos, whilst Christos Rodopoulos is reportedly accused of the mailing of the parcel bomb to Dimitris Mokkas, chief prosecutor in the CCF case, as act #6.
The Phoenix project is now renewed through the 2015 attacks in Chile, Czech Republic and Greece, with the comrades within the territory of Czech Republic initiating the campaign “Let’s destroy repression“. The story of the Phoenix continues to be written…
SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON
NOT A MILLIMETER BACK
NINE MILLIMETERS TO THE COPS’ HEADS
Source: 325
DN Note: Eternal gratitude to the comrade who sent a copy of the English version of video our way that dissapeared from cyberspace.
Below we translate the article from the reposting of the Spanish version of the video that inspired us to repost the English version.
Nothing is over, everything continues…
UK: Letter from anarchist prisoner Toby Shone for comrade Alfredo M. Bonanno
Farewell, Alfredo
I heard today by telephone as the morning winter sun shone through grey clouds into the confines of my cell that our comrade Alfredo Bonanno passed away during sleep surrounded by the love of his close ones. I too send my incendiary embrace to all those who feel his loss and assert that a combative memory will remain. Alfredo’s contributions to the anarchist movement are undeniable, critical, insightful, and prescient. One of Alfredo’s texts, ‘What are Anarchists?‘ had appeared in an investigation file against me for which I was accused of distributing. His booklet published under the title ‘Locked Up‘ by Elephant Editions is one of the most important documents on the topic of imprisonment in my opinion. Alfredo’s writings for which he was investigated and incarcerated are never mere collections of words but emerge directly from lived experiences, his own and that of the comrades that participate in our struggle for freedom. Affinity groups, informal organization, direct action and the critique of technology and systems: these concepts form the most potent section of today’s Anarchy, let’s put them into practice!
“Hurry Comrade”
Toby Shone
12-12-2023 HMP Garth
Anarchist comrade Alfredo M. Bonanno has died on 6th December at the age of 86
You will always be alive with us through our action and our lives. “ACTION REPLACES TEARS”
Alfredo Maria Bonanno, born in 1937 in Catania, Sicily, is one of the most prolific contemporary anarchists, responsible for Anarchismo editions and other publishing ventures. In 1977 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his book La Gioia Armata (Armed Joy). This book had been published at a historical moment when the Italian revolutionary movement was openly going on the offensive, while similar conditions existed in other European countries (Germany, Spain, England, Greece, Chile and more) and the question of violence was on the daily agenda. His contribution lies in a celebration of the pervasive class violence that liberates and satisfies the individual, but at the same time he sounds the alarm about the emergence of the armed party, which reduces the class conflict to a militaristic dimension, imposing the mediation of a small minority of armed men on the complexity of tens of thousands of people struggling by all means against the current reorganization of Capital, which at that moment seemed weak.
In the spirit of the book, all authentic liberating and destructive action comes from a logic of satisfaction in the struggle, not a self-sacrificing duty in accordance with the dictates of a micro-bureaucracy. The Italian Supreme Court ordered the destruction of the copies of the book that were in circulation, and sent a circular to public libraries to dispose of any copies they might have had.
Several librarians objected to this Nazi-inspired tactic. Its circulation was generally banned, and copies were confiscated from the homes of anarchist militants in the context of police raids on houses.
Shortly afterwards, the author was accused of being an “instigator” of the Azione Rivoluzionaria, an armed organisation of 1976-79, which operated on the basis of “affinity groups” throughout central Italy, mainly against newspapers and party offices, and similar “manipulative mechanisms of consensus-building”. In 1979 the organisation was practically dismantled with the arrest of 86 people and the arrest of Salvatore Cinieri and Gianfranco Faina. The first went on to die in prison in a scuffle with criminal inmates when he defended a prisoner suspected of submitting an escape plan, while the second was released to die of lung cancer after being diagnosed with a tumour while in custody.
With the retreat of the movement, the author’s interest turned to the critique of traditional trade union and organisational structures, as well as to the new metropolitan uprisings that have been re-emerging in the West steadily since the 1980s, without the guidance of any party, without open demands, etc. Continue reading “Anarchist comrade Alfredo M. Bonanno has died on 6th December at the age of 86”
Greece: POPULATION GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE STRATEGIC THEORY OF TWO OR MORE EXTREMES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEFTISTS AND ‘ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS’ TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS STATE STRATEGY
DN Note: Our collective presents and translates a text written by ‘Assembly against Biopower and Confinement’ detailing a Greek academic who is in alliance with the Greek state, cops and their counter-insurgency tactics against our comrades and any manfestation against the social order. A similar incident in this country of ‘Aufhebengate/Libcom‘ comes to mind when we post this text, how the parasites of academia and its involvement in counter-insurgency, has not only spread to other countries such as Greece, that there is also international co-operation occuring on a far larger scale than before. As seen by the text there is a move to include all theories that are deemed ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’ as one emcomapssing threat especially because of their use of violence. Academia is the breeding ground of the new technoligcal shift that has already arrived, collabaration with cops in order to repress our circles is unforgivable and anyone connected to such scum as Rosa Vasilaki are not our comrades.
POPULATION GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE STRATEGIC THEORY OF TWO OR MORE EXTREMES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEFTISTS AND ‘ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS’ TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS STATE STRATEGY
or
Do we all hate the police? Not all of us…
(on the occasion of the Event-Discussion in Chamadou entitled “The New World Order of the Far Right” by Asymmetric Threat & Opposition Publications)
“I decided to make an international career as a civilian, because Greece doesn’t fit me. Here is my article on the electoral rise of the far-right, hosted by Jakobin…
(Actually, the truth is that without Rosa Vasilaki’s invaluable help I wouldn’t even have made it to Bitola…)”[1]
Nikolai Polykarpov
One year ago, on 13/12/2022, the “Left-Right Lies Observatory”[2] publishes a video with an interview of former Contra Dystopia member Iason Baggeris on the show of the anti-vaccine cop Telemachus Bossios. We all believed at the time that the denunciation of I. B. by the meth/vaccine activists/vaccinators of the Observatory was done in the name of an anti-authoritarian authority: “we never talk to cops and cops’ associates”. The refutation of this erroneous initial impression was not long in coming. A few months later, on 28 August 2023, the main contributor to the Observatory, Polykarpos Georgiadis (Nikolai Polykarpov), published an article on the “coalescence of left and far-right in Greece” in Jacobin, the magazine of the left wing of the ruling Democratic Party in the US. [3] The publication of the article, as he informed his petty followers in a public post on his online profile, was mediated by Ms. Roza Vasilaki, among other “academic ” collaborators of the Greek Police – the latter of course conveniently for him avoided mentioning it. What happened in the meantime? Did Mr Georgiadis renounce his principles in order to make a face to the American democratic readers of Jacobin? No! As we will show in the following text, these “principles” are simply non-existent. But we will not limit ourselves to that. Because the issue for us is not simply the morally unacceptable or inconsistent behaviour of “anti-authoritarian” or “communist”, but the size and depth of the network of surveillance and repression of “dangerous” political activities that the security mechanisms have set up in Greece. And we will start by first answering the question: well, the “prominent member” of the Class Counterattack, Polikarpos is well-known, but who is Ms. Vassilaki?
Ι. TO WORK OR NOT TO WORK (FOR THE POLICE)?
In broad strokes, R.V. is another career researcher among those who use the language of the state and social movements simultaneously and have knowledge gained from participating in research projects that are at the service of capital, its state and the mechanisms of disciplining labour power and repressing class struggles. As such, it has acquired the capacity to be marketed differently depending on the audience. These days she tends to present herself as a militant researcher of the emergence of far-right discourse in Greece, as she writes in the promotional bio on her personal blog: ‘she has conducted extensive research on the far-right, football violence, religious fundamentalism, immigration and refugee integration, as well as feminism and gender-related issues.’[4]
By this point, one might reasonably wonder where the real problem lies. From the quotation of this autobiography, we seem to be talking about a left-wing researcher, one of many in the academic industry, who is conducting in-depth scholarly research on important issues that inevitably have occupied almost all social movements in recent years. Is there something wrong with all this and with Mr Georgiadis’ collaboration with R.V.? Are we referring to the classic combinations of academics of the antagonistic movement with other “networked” members of the academic community which can provide them with a few extra contacts and some professional and political career opportunities? Are we not referring to the various theoretical all-encompassing “conflict politics workshops”, from which indeed some careerists may later end up in the practical conflict politics workshops of the security apparatus of the capitalist state?
I wish we were just talking about this early stage of a political scientist’s career. In a more explicit, previously posted biography of R.V. on the internet, we read that “she has taught history and sociology at universities in Greece, Israel, and the United States. : we have the feeling that she did not teach anything that glorified the ‘Palestinian resistance’] and in Great Britain” and that her “main research interests focus on the changing place of religion in modernity, the emergence of post-secular and post-Western knowledge and theories, and the manifestations and genealogy of violence in the modern world, such as religiously and politically motivated violence and the particular role of security forces in modern states”. [5] Indeed, her professional activities cover a very broad field that basically centres around counter-insurgency policies and technologies, intelligence gathering and methods of preventing and suppressing activities ranging from youth rebellions to Islamist terrorism. Continue reading “Greece: POPULATION GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE STRATEGIC THEORY OF TWO OR MORE EXTREMES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEFTISTS AND ‘ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS’ TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS STATE STRATEGY”
Brighton, UK: Call For An International Anti-Repression Gathering. March 29th-31st, 2024
In the face of escalated attacks against workers, young people, migrants and the living conditions of prisoners, we call for an encounter to learn how we can combine our struggle and understand how to advance our fight for a world without police, prisons and borders.
In the UK as elsewhere, murderous police kill with impunity whilst politicians make way for a vast prison building program that will affect the poorest and most marginalised parts of society. Anarchists, activists and environmentalists are targetted as “extremists” and “terrorists” with special police teams designed to infiltrate and dismantle their campaigns and organisations.
Our communities are increasingly turned into open prisons, “a prison society”, through new technologies of social control. It’s time to stop wringing our hands and instead get organised. What do we have in common and can we build a common platform of action and discussion that helps us build a better world.
The event will take place over a weekend of Friday March 29th to Sunday 31st, 2024. If you wish to participate contact ABC Brighton at brightonabc@riseup.net
—
Subjects to be covered include:
Operation Adream
Kill The Bill (Bristol) cases
Police Brutality
Deaths in Custody
Migration Detention
Work of IWOC
Participating Group Presentations
Text / Recordings from Prisoners
We also hope to have a set-up to allow virtual contributions too.
UK: HMP Garth Illegally Restricting Toby Shone’s Mail
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: Fireworks at HMP Bristol for Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone + Moved to HMP Garth
Anarchists gathered at HMP Bristol on Friday 21 September at 8pm. As darkness fell, fireworks were launched over the prison to protest the rearrest of anarchist Toby Shone and to let him know he is never alone.
Toby was arrested by an armed police unit while he was driving to Gloucester at 9am on Tuesday 19 September. The arrest was apparently ordered by Ashley Fussell from the National Security Division Wales and South West. The armed police unit is based at Bamfurlong, Gloucestershire, and was involved in Toby’s original arrest in November 2020.
Toby was arrested and recalled to prison for alleged breach of license conditions. He is accused of having an unauthorised phone and of attending an “anti-state” dinner and letter-writing night for anarchist prisoners held by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign at BASE Social Centre in August. These alleged breaches apparently warranted an arrest by an armed counter-terrorist unit. The cops want him to serve the remainder of his sentence which means he will not be released until November 11, 2024.
Toby had just been released from the Approved Premises in Gloucester where he had been forced to live since getting out of prison at the end of December last year. Probation could no longer make a case for keeping Toby there under extreme curfew as the hostel needed the room and also didn’t understand why he was still there. He had been in his new flat in the Forest of Dean for just 9 days.
Donations to his support fund can be made to The Bottled Wasp which can be found at brightonabc.org.uk/bottledwasp.html
Fire to the prisons!
Some Anarchists
Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone moved to HMP Garth
Imprisoned anarchist Toby Shone has been moved 265 kilometres from his home in Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire and nearly 300 kilometres from support in Bristol to HMP Garth in Leyland, a high security prison near Manchester. Despite being in the resettlement part of his sentence, a vengeful probation and counter-terror team are attempting to isolate Toby from his perceived support base and loved ones in the south of the country and deliberately place him at risk of harm in a notoriously violent Category B prison for those serving sentences of 10 years or more. Probation has demanded Toby serve the rest of his sentence which is just short of 13 months, due for release on 11 November 2024.
Toby 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) overseen by a multi-agency team (MAPPA) including the National Security Division (counter-terror) and was 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 when, on the morning of 19 September 2023, he was pulled over and arrested by an armed police unit a few miles from the city of Gloucester. He was accused of being in possession of an [unauthorised] phone and attending a dinner and prisoner letter writing night at BASE anarchist social centre in Bristol in August.
Toby continues to be held as a TACT (Terrorist) prisoner despite being proclaimed Not Guilty of any terrorist offence by a High Court Judge in a court of law in October 2021.
Toby is in great spirits as ever and requests letters and emails. Emails are getting through very quickly on emailaprisoner.com (please get him a reply sheet). You can also write to him at:
Toby Shone A7645EP
HMP Garth
Ulnes Walton
Leyland
Preston
PR26 8NE
UK
If anyone in the north of the country would like to visit Toby, please contact his soli group at forestcase@riseup.net
Books must be ordered and sent direct from Waterstones, Blackwells, Wordery, WH Smiths, Foyles and Mr B’s Emporium Bookshop.
British-run spy tech powers Ukraine proxy war
Reposted for anti-info reasons, be aware of any mainstream/corporate links:
Leaked files reveal the Anomaly 6 spy firm is providing intelligence to the British military through a cut-out involved in the Kerch Bridge bombing and other acts of dangerous sabotage in the Ukraine conflict.
On December 6th, The Grayzone revealed how British military and intelligence agencies were deploying technology created by shadowy private intelligence firm Anomaly 6 to illegally spy on citizens across the globe.
The company’s technology effectively transforms every individual on Earth into a potential target for surveillance and/or asset recruitment by monitoring the movements of their smartphone. Anomaly 6 embeds tracking software in popular applications, then slices through layers of theoretically anonymous data to uncover a wealth of sensitive information about a device’s owner.
Anomaly 6’s services are provided to Britain’s soldiers and spies through Prevail Partners, a private military company which The Grayzone has exposed as Whitehall’s arm’s-length cutout for prosecuting its proxy war in Ukraine. The firm has constructed a secret partisan terror army on Kiev’s behalf, and helped plan the Kerch Bridge bombing by Ukraine’s services.
Now, the Grayzone can reveal that Prevail is exploiting Anomaly 6 to provide “decision-enabling intelligence to the UK’s defence and security architecture.” Continue reading “British-run spy tech powers Ukraine proxy war”