Multiple Arsons: Olympic torch returns to Bristol

On Mon­day 31st we lit up the open­ing week of the Olympics with an attack on two vehi­cles (and all the equip­ment they con­tained) belong­ing to British Tele­com (BT), an “offi­cial Olympic part­ner”.  It’s a small reply to the height­ened repres­sion in Lon­don. 

In Long­well Green this week we then sab­o­taged a mast owned by BT’s par­ent com­pa­ny, O2, the mobile phone net­work.  We burnt out the mast by set­ting fire to the cables at the bot­tom.

While the thou­sands who can afford to swell the econ­o­my are wel­comed by the state for the Olympics, O2 prof­its from the exploita­tion of a lit­er­al cap­tive audi­ence of “ille­gal” migrants who are forced to use O2 phones with extor­tion­ate pric­ing in a pilot scheme at Yarl’s Wood “Immi­gra­tion Removal Cen­tre” (prison) which is run by Ser­co.  The author­i­ties can mon­i­tor calls with ease, and the net­work is eas­i­er to shut down in the event of a dis­tur­bance or as pun­ish­ment for rule break­ing.  There are cur­rent­ly mass hunger strikes in Ger­many and the UK (in ?Mor­ton Hall, a for­mer open prison now specif­i­cal­ly des­ig­nat­ed for “for­eign nation­als”), these hunger strikes are an expres­sion against deten­tion, con­trol and iso­la­tion. 

While O2 prof­it from their deal­ings in deten­tion they are also fur­ther­ing the encroach­ment of the mar­ket into the fab­ric of our social lives.  “Giff Gaff” is a mobile phone net­work owned by O2 and a brain­child of their head of brand strat­e­gy.  Their mod­el of oper­at­ing encour­ages con­sumers (or “mem­bers) to par­tic­i­pate in aspects of run­ning the ser­vice such as cus­tomer sup­port, mar­ket­ing and sales in return for mea­gre incen­tives and forms their “hor­i­zon­tal­ly run” busi­ness image.  Under this mod­el your friends become mar­ket­ing tar­gets and your rela­tions are degrad­ed in their val­ue as com­modi­ties, bring­ing us even clos­er to a world where every human inter­ac­tion con­sists of buy­ing and sell­ing.

O2 also sup­ply radio and phone sys­tems for the UK police through a net­work of TETRA masts.  G4S also use O2 sim cards to run their elec­tron­ic tag­ging sys­tems.

BT sup­ply the UK pris­ons (as well as invest­ing mil­lions in the arms trade).  Inmates are charged upto 7 times the aver­age call rate, pay­ing for the priv­i­lege to be spied on.  In BT’s words, “pay­ing for the lev­el of ongo­ing invest­ment in secu­ri­ty”.  BT now run com­put­erise infor­ma­tion points on prison wings, “aid­ing the pris­on­er dur­ing set­tle­ment”.  There’s even employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties upload­ing infor­ma­tion and per­for­mance sta­tis­tics.

Behind the scenes of Olympic grandeur, our dai­ly expe­ri­ence is that mod­ern life becomes more and more like a cage.  Britain jails more adults than any oth­er Euro­pean coun­try, and comes 3rd for jailed young peo­ple, but it’s gold medal is in extend­ing the author­i­tar­i­an man­age­ment of the “inside” to the “out­side” with its induced cul­ture of cow­ardice, con­for­mi­ty and snitch­ing.  The devel­op­ing social con­trol struc­ture has many ten­ta­cles and is always deep­en­ing them through tech­nol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, sur­veil­lance, polic­ing and archi­tec­ture.  In short, the mech­a­nism of jail dif­fused through­out the urban envi­ron­ment.  This soci­ety is already one giant prison for all but a priv­i­leged few and the mod­ern cit­i­zen is already being trained to be the mod­el pris­on­er.

But some cells are still more con­crete than oth­ers.  In April this year Car­la Ver­dugo and Iván Sil­va were arrest­ed in Santi­gao trans­port­ing an explo­sive the night before their com­rade Juan Alistes tri­al prepa­ra­tion hear­ing.  We want to con­tin­ue what they start­ed.  Yes­ter­day the “secu­ri­ty case” tri­al against Juan, Fred­dy and Mar­cel­lo began in Chile. 

Strength to all unpaci­fied cap­tives from last sum­mers riots.  Sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those resist­ing the depor­ta­tion machine.  None of these hostages are for­got­ten.  Sol­i­dar­i­ty is our weapon and we can use it.

We also take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to wel­come ELF Switzer­land pris­on­er Sylvio Guerin back to the streets.

Attacks on com­mu­ni­ca­tion struc­tures are a nec­es­sary part of the mul­ti-formed strug­gle towards the col­lapse of cap­i­tal­ism.  Where soci­ety means mis­ery we chose rebel­lion.  Fire to the pris­ons, bor­ders and deten­tion estate.