Chronicles from the state of emergency No. 6 – Wall paper from Trentino

April 25: Signs of mutiny

The call to violate the confinement measures during the 25th of April was picked up in a rather varied and creative way. In Trento, a group of comrades took to the streets in the district of San Pio X, maintaining safe distances and demonstrating that it is possible to gather on the street, in the open air, protecting one’s own and other people’s health. The group – with the banner “Responsible, non-obedient. Resistance now and always” – remained in the street for a half an hour, with interventions, music and choirs; some supporters and inhabitants of the neighborhood approached, then a large number of law enforcement officers arrived who tried to identify and stop those present. The attempt of the cops was unsuccessful and the group went away singing choirs and waving to the people looking out from the balconies. On the same day there was also a salute to the prisoners of Spini di Gardolo.

From what we have read and heard, several banners and posters have appeared in Rovereto in memory of the partisans, against fascists and capital, in solidarity with the prisoners in struggle, against the logic of the state that wants the factories open and people locked up in their homes… Several parks have been “freed” from the barrier tapes and the prohibition signs have been replaced with others that invite to collectively use the public spaces while maintaining distances between people. In Tierno, music in the square with neighbours who brought pizza pans. In Mori, a tour through the village with music and a sign. In Noriglio, hanging banners, tour through the village with partisan songs and reading a leaflet; in Lizzanella, presence in the square with banners and music; in Fucine, signs and amplified interventions; in Brione, a group of comrades – with masks and distance between them – crossed a part of the neighbourhood with a banner (“Organize in order not to suffer anymore”) and a sound system. The first intervention under the buildings was followed with much interest by people on the balconies, who responded with a resounding applause; about ten people joined the initiative. Among the many speeches (on the structural causes of this epidemic, on the responsibilities of Confindustria [1] and the government, against technological control in the name of health…), an invitation was launched to those in financial difficulties to organize themselves in a rent strike against Itea (whose managers announced a moratorium for shopkeepers but not for tenants). Perhaps because of unannounced appointments and different schedules, police patrols and Digos arrived when the comrades were already leaving. Late in the evening, there were fireworks in three places around Rovereto.

Well said

“While industrial production is affecting the last of the forests, the production of wild food penetrates even deeper into the hunt for delicacies, plundering the last strongholds of the wilderness. And here the most exotic of pathogens, in this case Sars-2 hosted by bats, ends up on a truck – in prey or little workers change – and travels like a bullet from one end to the other of an increasingly dilated peri-urban circuit before bursting onto the world stage”. Thus a group of US epidemiologists summarize the far from mysterious causes of the current epidemic. As they are not state experts, they do not isolate the “enemy virus” from the material conditions of our lives. So they say what you will never hear on television: “The agro-industry is at war with public health. And public health is losing”. The most sensible question follows: “Can we still afford to readjust, simply, the current ways in which we take possession of nature and hope for more than a respite with these infections?”

Giving the numbers

• 20% C.A.

• 18% P.S.

• 20.2% UHT

They are quarantine percentages, but they are not the ones that are poured at us daily on unified networks. They concern the purchase and consumption of ANIMALS, FISH FISH and UHT MILK. It is undeniable how the condition we are experiencing has been favoured by intensive animal farming and the consequent deforestation carried out for the cultivation of food for slaughter. To reconsider the way we look at the world, how we relate to nature, to question our own ideas, to stop considering animals as objects destined to satisfy our whims, masked by necessity. Nothing will ever be the same again. It is up to us to make it better.

“I only followed orders”

After the days of anger that exploded during the March riots in many prisons, the orders given by the Ministry can be summarized briefly: “Don’t let a fly – fly in prison”. While the infected (and the dead) are increasing among both the guards and the prisoners, how do we think certain directives can be carried out? Humiliation, stripped and beaten bodies. Even, in the prison of Caserta, shaved beards and hair. During a risky phone call a prisoner said “From “detainees” we have become “prisoners”, and there is a big difference”.

There will be those who will be indignant about the alleged “human rights” that have been trampled on, but the truth is much more immature. In prison facilities violence is what holds the balance, for it is the nature of power. When (and if) the “rotten apples” are caught among the prison police, it will have to resonate like the lie it has always been, because this is a systematic warfare operation (and hundreds of covert officers entering a section to massacre anyone who can give us an idea). And they will be sadly “right” to say that they have only followed orders feeling betrayed by their superiors. Because prison, by its very nature, is a state of exception without end, where every statement of the “upper echelons” can turn into the nightmare of death. Think about it, when they tell us that a prison guard is a “job like any other”.

Notes

[1] The General Confederation of Italian Industry (Italian: Confederazione generale dell’industria italiana), commonly known as Confindustria, is the Italian employers’ federation and national chamber of commerce, founded in 1910.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Confederation_of_Italian_Industry

Chronicles from the state of emergency – (5)

What a discovery, society!

Faced with the risk of dying from contagion, millions of human beings are discovering that their own actions and those of others have a real effect on society, that is, on themselves and their fellow human beings. After decades of liberal ideology according to which “society” was a sort of black hole into which anything could be thrown, now the principle of responsibility is rapidly being rediscovered. It turns out that workers are meat for slaughter; that profits come before health; that behind the vague “public interest” is the state and its police. Since viruses cause effects even if they cannot be seen, we discover that there is a “materiality of the invisible”. Digital technologies – to which scientists and governments entrust our fate – are anything but immaterial. To keep millions of people connected while they are locked indoors, we need servers, energy, cables, antennas and, above all, metals and rare earth, which means wars, looting of the earth’s crust, nuclear radiation, semi-slaves (often children) forced to work in mines, entire areas of the world turned into waste dumps, i.e. conditions for new epidemics. Can there be a principle of responsibility on command, under the empire of fear?

What do you mean, “can’t go out”?

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this period is the state attempt to bring together responsibility and obedience. If we think of the tragedies that obedience produced in the twentieth century (“I only followed orders” was, not surprisingly, the phrase most repeated by the Nazis in Nuremberg), such an overlap should make our wrists tremble. So why are we at home? Out of a sense of responsibility? Because the government says so? Out of fear for fines? Millions of people would certainly answer in very different ways. What is ethically and socially unacceptable is to confuse obedience and responsibility. Let’s take an example. If you actually read the government decrees – without being terrorized by the loudspeaker announcements – and followed them to the letter, what would happen? If thousands of people were to go out at the same time to do ” physical activity in the vicinity of their homes”, what kind of assembly would be created? If, on the other hand, the same people go for a walk in isolated areas, in violation of the decree, do they put someone’s health at risk? The sanction has never been an argument.

Obligations and bans

While in some “non-democratic countries” it is becoming normal to trace all data on identity, places frequented, meetings, even in the “liberal West” we look at the guidelines for restructuring 4.0 of social life. In several areas of China (where the cases of contagion are close to zero) one does not enter any public place without a smartphone in hand to “guarantee” one’s status. Not having certain tools is starting to look more and more like being an undocumented migrant, or at least a suspicious person. To understand the phrase, just look at who are the 17 specialists chosen by the Conte government to plan “Phase 2” (i.e. “rethink the organization of our life and prepare the gradual return to normality”). The task force (with references to the inter-ministerial committee of ’45) will be led by the former CEO of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao, who will be flanked by numerous technicians and experts including Roberto Cingolani, the current head of technological innovation of Leonardo (the largest Italian arms manufacturer) and director of the Italian Institute of Technology. Meanwhile, 5G is starting to be a reality. “Every technology brings its own secret obligations and prohibitions”, wrote Günther Anders. And what could be more secret and invisible than a technology that is confused with our own everyday life?

While we still have time

There is an accumulation of announcements and plans to transform “social distancing” into something semi-permanent (since pandemics are already integrated as a “side effect” of techno-industrial production). In this way we would be distanced not only from our fellow human beings, but from the individual and collective possibility of defending ourselves against the administrators of coercion. Without being able to meet and organize ourselves, how to react to increasingly totalitarian surveillance measures, or, more banally, to layoffs? If we entrust the “contagion problem” to a technological-bureaucratic apparatus, the most effective solution – the only one that does not question the apparatus itself – is total control. Not because techno-burocrats are evil or because they are part of who knows what world conspiracy, but because technical solutions must structurally disregard ethical-social considerations. Especially in the name of an emergency. Freedom, especially because it is unpredictable, is a disturbing factor for algorithms; value judgement is always human, too human, while calculation is objective. What is the most effective solution if a child makes too much noise? Tie him up, or give him psychotropic drugs. If parents do not do it, it is not because they do not find it effective (cost-benefit calculation), but because they consider it wrong (ethical-pedagogical judgement). Let’s get it out of our heads: the certainty of not getting sick will never be a certainty. The question, which no artificial intelligence will be able to answer for us, is always the same: what are we willing to give up of life to continue living?

They thought that by calling them”heroes”…

While the health personnel of Piacenza declare themselves ready to go on strike if the factories are reopened, two hundred Greek doctors and nurses signed a document with which they addressed seven questions to the “Committee of Experts” of the Ministry of Health. Here are a couple of them: “What scientific approach imposes the circulation of our fellow citizens wearing gloves and masks in the open air and on the contrary it ironically and “doesn’t matter” the question of the absolutely necessary guarantee from the hygienic and social point of view of all means of individual protection of workers in hospitals and clinics?”; “What scientific approach imposes the ban on meeting of more than two people in the open air, but DOES NOT denounce the functioning of companies and industries that produce non-essential goods with dozens of workers assembled in closed spaces and without the necessary means of protection? Recruitment of other health personnel; providing means of protection to all workers; immediate and unconditional requisitioning of normal and intensive care beds, laboratory equipment and clinics from the private care sector: with these claims, gatherings have been organised in front of 25 hospitals in 20 Greek provinces. Workers from many other sectors, pensioners and students participated in the initiatives. During one of the gatherings, the police intervention was rejected collectively and in solidarity. Among the slogans: “We are only slaves to our conscience” and “the lockdown will not stop the struggles”.

Resisting the emergency, defying the bans

March 31, Milan. Picket of workers (those not yet sick) in the Fruttital [1] warehouse at risk of being fired. In full emergency the company had announced the closure and relocation. In addition, in the previous days no contagion protection equipment had been provided to the workers.

April 1, Calliano (TN). For this day, some relatives of the prisoners had invited to make the beats resonate outside the prisons. So, a small group of anarchists, to explain the meaning of the knocking that there would be in the evening, thought to overturn the institutional practice of spreading sinister alerts and warnings from loudspeakers, going around the country with a sound system to make various interventions in support of prison struggles. Within a short time, eight carabinieri patrols arrived on the scene, plus other local police and Digos [2] cars.

April 8, Turin. “Food delivery” is considered an essential activity but the bike shops are closed; companies such as Glovo or Deliveroo have never maintained the vehicles of those who make the deliveries: riders meet in the square, with bicycles and tools, for a “travelling bike shop” that allows to fix their vehicles for those who, despite the “lockdown”, continue to work.

April 14th, Rome. Revolt in the Torre Maura Refugee Center. Operators prohibited to leave the centre, internees responded with fires and damage. In the previous days there had been protests, acts of self-harm, fires, attempts to escape, hunger and thirst strikes in various deportation centres.

April 15th, Carmagnola (TO). Picket of the health workers of a nursing home where 46 infected people out of 50 had been registered. Requests: masks and buffers for employees. The answers: police and carabinieri arrived, the Socialcoop cooperative declared that it had “hired to make up for the absence of staff”… infected.

April 15th, Turin. The street vendors from the Porta Palazzo market, the only one not yet reopened in the city, have gone to the square (keeping safe distances), perhaps because it is in an area undergoing intense “redevelopment” (more and more investments for the rich, less and less space for the poor).

April 16th, Massalengo (LO). Strike of 250 workers in the central warehouse of Carrefour Lombardia against outsourcing to a cooperative that pays 20% less to workers. An agreement is signed that cancels the outsourcing. In the meantime, we learn of the closure of Fruttital in Milan, transferred to Verona. Since Fruttital is one of Carrefour’s suppliers, the workers decide that its trucks will no longer be unloaded, as an act of solidarity towards the recently laid-off workers.

April 16th. Relatives and supporters of the prisoners protest outside the prisons in various cities (Rome, Bologna, Turin, Bolzano…). In Rome, the police surround them and push them around, not caring about the so called safety distances, and take 8 people to the police station. In the previous days the relatives protested outside the prisons of Secondigliano, Poggioreale, Santa Maria Capua Vetere. In the prisons of Ariano Irpino, Palermo, Crotone, Bologna, Alessandria, Santa Maria C.V., Rebibbia, Secondigliano there are riots, beatings, hunger and thirst strikes.

17 April, Torrazza Piemonte (TO). Strike of all staff at the Amazon facility: the company does not provide information on cases of contagion inside the premises, hiding behind the “privacy protection” shield.

On April 25th

While the government and regions are reopening places of production and trade, the ban on going out in the open air will continue until at least May. This blatant discrepancy does not respond to any “scientific evidence” (unless it confirms what a philosopher wrote more than thirty years ago, namely that the state “cut down the giant tree of science for the sole purpose of making it into a truncheon). On the one hand you have to produce and consume it; on the other hand, before people can go out you want to have planned how to control it upfront. That’s it. So we must anticipate, if we do not want to suffer, in addition to the “health crisis”, also the economic restructuring that will accompany it. And what more evocative date to resist than April the 25th? We launch an appeal to violate the measures. Following the principle of caution for others and our health. And each according to his or her own willingness. It is not only a question of affirming responsibility against obedience, but of making clear that we do not accept the division between expendable and salvageable; that our lives are not “data to be extracted and analyzed”; that there is no health without mutually supportive relationships with others and with nature on which we depend.

We don’t want to “live with pandemics”, but to end the social organization that creates them.

Notes

[1] Fruttital S.r.l, part of the Fruit and Vegetable Import and Distribution business unit of Orsero S.p.A., is a company based in Italy specializing in the trade of fresh produce from every part of the world at all times of the year. https://www.virtualmarket.fruitlogistica.de/en/Fruttital-S-r-l,c44826

[2] The General Investigations and Special Operations Division (Italian: Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali), generally known by its acronym DIGOS, is an Italian law enforcement agency charged with investigating sensitive cases involving terrorism, organized crime and serious offences such as kidnapping and extortion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisione_Investigazioni_Generali_e_Operazioni_Speciali

Originally published by Il Rovescio.

Chronicles from the state of emergency – (4)

«Their virus, our deads»

We are overwhelmed daily with data about the number of the infected, dead and healed. Even though the structural causes of this epidemic never emerge – the industrial plunder of the natural environment and our relational gap with the other animal spieces – , for the ones who know how to isolate the lies in this ocean of information, some truths stay afloat. Over 70% of deceased from Coronavirus suffered from hypertension. Among 95% of the cases are pre-existing risk factors which can leave people predisposed to its development; particularly sedentariness and stress. The prohibition of going out of the house – with the necessary precautions – creates the conditions for a great number of new sick people. Not to mention the devastating psychological consequences for all those living in unbearable house and family conditions, suppressed by the optimism of the State («Everything will be alright. I stay home»). Moreover, if the importance of the sun and of vitamin D for the immune system is «fake news», then why do the protocols ditributed to the carabinieri and the police advise “at least half an hour of sunlight per-day and, in case its not possible, the consumption of vitamin D”?

Expendables

In Rovereto, two cases of Coronavirus among BRT porters have been registered (one of them is in intensive care in hospital). The logistics enterprise, after a quick and secret «sanification» of the offices (storehouses excluded), expected that their porters would have peacefully kept on working, without even testing them for symptoms. The porters refused, by taking sick leave. Meanwhile, Confindustria (italian chamber of commerce) is pushing to open factories as soon as possible (those factories that have been closed after the wave of strikes that forced the government to stop the «unnecessary production»). Someone is speaking about «unequal sharing of risks». Others, who look on the entire planet and on its huge injustices, speak about «discriminated apocalypse».

We are going to talk at lenght about this

According to the official data, since 2009, 37 billion euros have been deducted from healthcare. Is it because of the objective eloquence of this information, that local newspapers have reported that graffiti appeared in front of Rovereto hospital («Thanks to medical staff, but we don’t forget who made cuts to healthcare») without the habitual swarm of criminalising comments? Beyond the quantitative data, there’s another which is qualitative. If we extend the timeframe a bit, we notice that Healthcare has been not only been cut, but also transformed. Indeed, it was provided, until 1978, a trade relation between preventative medicine and the «Citizens’ Committees» (expression by which they were trying to regularize the several Rank-and-File committees for health on workplaces and on territory, that were born extensively during the struggles in the Seventies). From the meeting between doctors and committees arose, few years before, the most serious and in-depth inquiry about the Icmesa environmental disaster in Seveso * (see note below). Since we are living a mass experience that won’t be abolished any time soon – we’re dealing with the heaviest limitation of freedom in italian history ever -, it’s going to be of fundamental importance for the future to create spaces for critical confrontation between people and medical staff in order to analyze, on the whole and in detail, what caused this epidemic and how the governments and the state scientists dealt with it.

«I wish you a wonderful future»

These are the final words from the letter in which the ‘futurist’ Thomas Frey (ex-engineer for IBM) explains to a ‘science communicator’ that soon the actual passwords will be, thanks to 5G, replaced by «vocal sentences linked to a laser spectrum, by touch resonance, identification through heartbeat, infrared signature» («Corriere Innovazione» 3rd april 2020). «Wherever you’ll be – his conversation partner, professor Derrick De Kerchove added – , you’ll be traced and virtually reconstituted into four dimensions in a complete and constant manner, as 5G can do. You will acquire and store each move you do, like a digital personal unconscious outlined and distributed in databases, from which the decisions (choices, purchases, votes, etc.) will emerge. «But that’s not the end of the world – the professor assures -, it’s only the end of our illusionary and pleasant independence». «This emergency provided the push needed to spread digitalization». On the other hand, «never waste the potential of a crisis». For the ones who rebel to this wonderful future made by human-machines, a definition is already prepared: «Talibans of phisical experience».

England advises

Some antennas for 5G mobile telephones have been burnt in Sparkhill, Birmingham, on thursday 2 april, and in Melling, Merseyside, on friday 3 april. The news has run out in Italy too. The actors of sabotage have been defined «conspiracy theorists», complete with a statement by Google and Facebook, for whom the new 5G infrastructure is fundamental, in order that the online surveillance that they exercise will spread, to real life behaviours and to civic surroundings too. Here there’s no conspiracy theory. It is the accumulation logic itself to ensure that the best way to foresee the consumers’ behaviour – and to sell forecasts to the advertisers and to industry – it’s by programming them.

Greetings from Greece

It’s always wise to learn from your neighbours who have already lived a condition that could fall on you tomorrow. A collective in Athens writes: «They are, and we are, speaking about war. And it’s true. Starting from the increase of black market prices. From the empty shelves in supermarkets, to the food stockpiling. From the «recruitment» of some employees in order to reduce the employer’s loss, to the firing of others. From the coercive jobs without any elementary health protection, to emergency overtime. From the hospitals lack of medical equipment and the inadequacy of nursing staff, to the transformation of hospitals into wards filled with «casualties of war». […] So, «war economy» means a new cycle of memorandum, dismissals, cuts in wages, pensions, social expenditures and privatization. What the State is giving today to stop its bankruptcy, tomorrow we’ll pay in blood».

*Seveso disaster, 10th july 1976. An industrial accident that caused the leak of dioxin, with the consequent dispersion of one of the most toxic chemical substance existing and with serious repercussions on the inhabitants health.

Trento (Italy) – Chronicles from the State of emergency 3

6 april 2020

International rent strike

It’s the proposal spreading in several Countries since 1st april (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Chile, Spain…). For example, Gran Canaria tenants union writes in its call that the entire working class and all tenants should support the general strike and the rent strike permanently: «The present situation couldn’t be more alarming, not only about healtcare, but also economically and socially. The measures adopted by the government, who declared the state of emergency as a reaction to Covid-19, it’s clearly anti-workers measures, completely superficial (like the limitation of moratorium on loans) and they don’t give a damn about basic needs: thousands of families living from day to day, who survive thanks to low-paied jobs, people that have been fired illegally, families who lost their income because of isolation; everyone must face the impossibility to pay rent». And he suggests; «The abandoned houses owned by financial and banking society or funds (particularly those saved by public money) must be socialized and rendered available for the thousands of people and families that are today homeless».

Words and barriers

«A tyrant upset our life, and it’s called coronavirus». The hospitals become «trenches», and dead people are carried with military transports. Therefore, a war scenario appears in our mind, with all its symbolic and emotional significance. Because metaphores evoke images, and words evoke ideas. The language is anything but neautral: it shapes opinions, it express relations that extend over time. Words create the world. They act on us and they make us act/behave in a way rather then in another. Treating a disease as if it was a war, make us obedient, mild and, in perspective, intended victims. The choice between the use of this or that word it’s not just a matter of language, but also a political decision. Politicians: you are the promoter of fear and hate against each other. With the virus, you took a further opportunity to outline borders and erect barriers.

Now that we are potentially infected

The containers in Brennero (Italian- Austrian border) prepared by austrian State with aims against migration have been used since some weeks for anti-Corona controls for the ones arriving from Italy. The «extraordinary measures» going on should push us to think about what has been happening to the most vulnerable since forever, to the undocumented, to that part of humanity that’s good for being exploited until necessary and then to be repatriated or left to die. Beyond the privilege we forget to recognise, there are those who sadly know too well an everyday reality made of distances, controls, visa, of «who knows when we’ll be able to meet again». While commodities travel for kilometers and thousands human beings are kept out of european frontiers, maybe, we could notice that borders virus won’t be gone in few weeks.

Beyond borders, about jail struggles

Regarding the rebellions that broke out in jails on 7th march, the newspapers and television hastened to speak about direct actions conducted by «organised crime». (As chance would have it, the same script has been then used to criminalize who tried to go out from supermarkets without paying). Someone spoke instead about an «organized plan» made by a not-better-specified «anarchist hand». It is inconceivable for the State to admitt that they are spontaneous revolts able to communicate quickly between each other, grown in the captivity of torture places, during years of beating-up, endemic overcrowding, repulsive hygienic conditions; because they would have spoken about it differently, and they would have spoken about this more. The fact is that riots are breaking out also in Spain, France, Brazil, USA, Belgium, Venezuela, Iran, Perù, Sri Lanka, Colombia (where, only in Bogotà prison, 23 prisoners are dead)… Now they have to speak about this for sure. Even States like Iran or Turkey have freed 110thousand and 90thousand prisoners respectively. Even Secretary of ONU is requesting the governments to adopt urgent measures against the spreading of contagion in prisons worldwide, where 12,5 millions of people are shut. It’s the prisoners first of all to advise us that the huge state of emergency that keep us imprisoned must bring the occasion to free ourselves and the rest, by seeing beyond our own limits.

Trento (Italy) – Chronicles from the State of emergency 2

30 march 2020

Responsabilities upside down

The daily Chronicles of Fear wipe out any general and specific responsability of the epidemic going on, blaming only who does not stay home, «plague-spreaders» to be repressed with heavier and heavier measures (army performing the duties of cops, tracking of the entire population, appeals for spying on each other, authorization for using drones…). Who demolished healtcare for profit, making the situation worse, while it could have been faced totally differently? Who kept factories open? Who shut schools on 20th
february and supermarkets only on 12th march? Who is to blame? Maybe the ones who take a walk on the streets, cycle-lanes or paths? And still; is it single «sharks» or an entire system to make sure that the prices of masks for hospitals are raised b y 600%?

What safety?

It’s been decades since they are deafining us by shouting «Safety!». More cameras, more controls, more cops, more jail! Then comes an epidemic virus and, in our conscience and among the unsaid on television, it emerges that, in case the auto -haulage and the logistic were interrupted, supermarkets would be empty in few days. How sure can human beings feel when they totally depend on a tecnological and production system of which they don’t control a thing anymore? A man doesn’t live by tele -working alone! Let’s benefit by this «pause», for thinking. If we don’t take the land back and self-manage the sources of our nourishment, besides freedom and independence, we’ll give up safety as well.

Tele-working

One of the experiments going on, besides military and police control, is about work: how and how long can economy go on without people going out of their home? What is work, nowadays? It’s mainly multinational companies that own informatic platforms and
Apps the ones taking advantage of all kinds of tele-working (from teachers to office-workers). The «Giants of web» get a huge amount of personal datas from ANY online activity (both for free or fee-paying ones). Datas that is then analyzed and sold.
Everything is a «data» that can be processed and transformed into earnings: tastes, opinions, the tone of voi ce, facial expressions, the book quoted by the teacher, news about health, fears, the reaction for certain news, the students’ level of attention, e tc.
In the best of all possible worlds, an epidemic as well – that means milions of people house-bound but always connected – can turn into a good business. It is a good occasion to justify the introduction of 5G network, whose purpose is not the communications in
case of emergency at all, but to generalize factories, cars, cameras and smart sensors. Fear is the perfect feeling for pushing us more and more towards a world in which human beings are controlled by «smart objects» and by who controls them.

Monitoring system

A piece of new that surely caused a sensation, it was the fact that, by controlling phone cells activated by mobiles, they found out that 40% of population in Milano was found far from their home . What’s new? It is well-known that mobiles companies create massive cataloguing everyday (even though only few feel the effects of it). On the contrary, what’s new is the fact that, availing the oppurtunity of a health emergency, they clearly justify something that exists beyond the emergency and that would raise many social and ethical questions (or, at least… it should!). But that’s not enough. Since days, we are exposed to an incessant propaganda that aims to introduce «Korean style» measures in Italy as well, that means to catalogue the communications between people starting from the cross-control on smartphones, wi-fi and Bluetooth (in order to locate «users» house-to-house instead of only into a certain neighbourhood). «Public» data would be registered and analyzed by authorities; «hidden» data (that any App on smartphones creates, even when deactivated) would feed those «smart machines» by which they check our behaviour and examinate our «purchase intentions». Government’s happy, and so it is digital capitalism. And what about us…?

What is «fundamental»?

What cannot be stopped during an epidemic reveals indirectly what’s the base of society in which we live: informatic infrastructure and war. That’s why all weapons factories must stay open. That’s why, while we are all house-bound, the tecnological progress accelerates and new 5G aerials are installed secretly. In confirmation of the strict link between digital infrastructure and war, Tim (italian mobile company) «is teaching» the army the new potential of artificial intelligence and 5G for the «new world» war.
What’s left to ask ourselves: is it the virus floating in the air the only thing we can’ t see?
In addition, there’s the world they are preparing for us. Some judicious suggestions…
…appeared on several supermarkets glass walls in Trento and Rovereto (cities in north Italy) between 24th and 25th march;

«General strike», «Shut factories», «Reduce prices». Meanwhile…

On 25th march, there was a wide participation for the call to a general strike from the logistic and factories sector. On 26th march, in a supermarket in Palermo (city in Sicily), some people filled their shopping troll ey and tried to get out without paying. Carabinieri and Mobile Units intervened on the place and, during the following days, they guarded the entrance of several supermarkets in the city. The appeals to stop paying are multiplying on social networks. By extending the emergency, maybe after some months without any wage, more and more people will face the problem to satisfy their basic materials needs. Maybe, situations like the one in Palermo won’t be so rare; the necessity for taking what we need to live will be very clear to whom, simply, won’t be able to pay anymore.

Trento (Italy) – Chronicles from the State of emergency 1

23 march 2020

Virus don’t come from other planets

Disease always reflects a societies lifestyle (how and what it produces, food quality, ways of transports, etc.) A medical science that doesn’t consider this as a matter of fact – and that would imply a debate on the whole industrial system – can only slap a bandaid on the effects of diseases, ignoring their causes. As chance would have it, first Coronavirus nidus spread starting from a big urban concentration area in China, heavily polluted by industries. It so happens that, first focus in Italy started from the most industrialized and polluted zone of the country. Until toxicities, and the consequent environmental devastations , aren’t suppressed, healt emergencies will repeat.

Healt care

Medical staff making overalls out of rubbish bags and masks out of sheets; the constant alert on the limited materials for intensive care. What has led to this? That’s what you won’t find written in the daily fear chronicles of media, which hush up responsabilities.
Since 1978 on, Healtcare has been subjected to cuts in expenditure and privatizations by both left and right- winged governments. The progressive transformation of Healtcare into a an enterprise has cut off profitless structures, staff, departments and therapy, especially decimating what concerns preventive medicine. That’s the reason why sleeping places in hospitals are halved and the emergency ones are reduced to less than half. While medical and political allusions are clearly more and more military (virus is the aggressor, body is under siege, society is at war, government marshals army), what’s the true enemy of individual and collective health disappears: logic of profit.

Containing virus means to free everyone

Since saturday 7 march and during the following week, protests rise up in fourty italian jails. Into at least thirty of them, proper revolts break out. Over 6’000 prisoners take part to rebellions; prison sections destroyed and set on fire, penitentiary cars burnt, prisoners on the roofs, massive jailbreak, jailers taken hostage and the prison in Modena shut down thanks to damages. The State shows its muscles: riot police and special penitentiary police detachment intervene, jailers surround prisons with guns drawn, in Puglia (south italian region, translator’s note) troops are put on streets to block the escaped, in Modena relatives of prisoners refer to have clearly heard shots coming from the jail. And then the beating-up and the massive transfers. The result is definitively heavy: 15 dead prisoners. Their deaths are quickly covered up, they talk about deceases mostly due to psycotropic drugs and methadone overdose (mostly; and the others…?). The spark that caused riots is the interruption of meetings between relatives and prisoners as a ridicolous control measure for contagion (relatives may be potentially infected….and jailers aren’t?) linked to the awareness to be like a rat in a trap in case of epidemic (there are already cases in Brescia, Milano, Voghera, Pavia, Lecce, Modena e Bologna). But the ticking bomb was formed by inhuman life conditions: the endemic overcrowding, the jailers violence, the impossibility to access to alternative measures. Amnesty and pardon: the prisoners demands are now nothing more than a public healt precaution, in order to limit the contaminating effects in overcrowded places (up to 8 prisoners per cell). While in Iran, in order to contain infection, 70’000 detainees with penalty under 5 years have been released from prison, in Italy, after protests, riots and a proper «State massacre», there has been given the possibility for house arrest to the ones who have penalties under six months, and house arrest with electronic bracelet for penalties under 18 months. Actually, the situation got worse instead of better ( the current law provides house arrest, by authority received, for whom has penalty under 3 years and without electronic bracelet). Not to mention, the 34,5% of prisoners in Italy who are awaiting trial, they have no sentence to serve. Anyway, not even these weak provisions would have come true without a decisive and brave test of strength from prisoners, aware that reality leaves no escape: either detention and death, either riot and life.

General strike!

Although institutions proclaimed that all the unnecessary activities must stop, several factories are still open, including those with high a concentration of workers, in close proximity during the production and in the canteen too. (Meanwhile, law enforcement are searching cycle lanes, parks and woods, hunting for «plague-spreaders». Meanwhile, mobiles companies create mass cataloguing, in order to «track» individuals moving). Nationwide, many strikes in several factories have been reported (Dana, Pama, Fly, Siemens44, Mariani, Sapes, Tecnoclima, Ebara…), added to the many workers who decided to stay home even in abscence of strikes. It’s not only about an understandable reaction of fear for the virus, but also an aid for the healt of everyone. These strikes need to be supported and axpanded to all the not-strictly-necessary productions. If health doesn’t permit profit, too bad for profit.

We are all on the same boat?

These days, we are witness to the massive injection of the rhetoric of patriotism on all medias: «All together against the common enemy». In this tricoloured tale, magically disappears the material life conditions that are NOT the same for everyone (to stay
home, i need to have one and be able to keep it…) If it’s impossible to clearly foresee what will happen next, one thing it’s sure. The economical effects of this «sanitary crisis» will have a different weight for any of us. Millions of people will have practical problems to make a living. Loans from European Central Bank won’t be for free at all, but new austerithy measures will be established, hitting the poorest first. It’s going to be who is already half under water to push the boat on. Remember this, when the notes from the Mameli anthem will be gone …