Category Archives: General

From the Preface to “On Terrorism and the State” by Gianfranco Sanguinetti

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So, does On Terrorism and the State contain State secrets?

Indeed it does: this book contains State secrets. The fact that it is the State’s own secret services that organize and pull the strings of terrorism — is this not, then, the main secret of the Italian State? And it is precisely this fact that is broadly substantiated in On Terrorism and the State.

What really is not convincing is not my arguments, but the contradictory behavior of the State and its faithful servants, in respect to my book: on the one hand, they speak about it in order to say nothing about it, if only to have Italians think that what I have to say “is not convincing”; on the other hand, a few days after the televised “account,” the political police and a judge known for the unfortunate zeal with which he tries to make believable all the official lies on terrorism, initiated a complex and obscure judicial-police prosecution of me. So am I to think that I have committed the crime of not having been “convincing”? If our Legal Code were to make provisions for such an offense, there wouldn’t be enough prisons in Europe to contain our politicians, journalists, judges, policemen, trade-union leaders, industrialists and priests. No: it is not about being unconvincing, nor I am accused of being so, but rather it is about the fact that I have been too convincing in accusing the State of these crimes, and that this same State has now attempted to take revenge — but, as one will see, with the embarrassed awkwardness befitting those who are guilty and wish to pose as innocent. The men who govern this State are, as one knows, the same as at the time of the massacre at the Piazza Fontana [in 1969], and, in order not to be placed in the position of being accused, they are, as it were, continually obliged to accuse other men of their own and other crimes as well — as if these men wished to give a supplementary practical confirmation to Madame de Staël’s theory, according to which “the life of any [political] party that has committed a political crime is always linked to this crime, either in ing it or in making it forgotten by dint of power.”
[…]
So Italian terrorism is the last riddle of the society of the spectacle, and only he who reasons dialectically can solve it. It is because of this lack of dialectic that the riddle of terrorism continues to deceive and mow down all the victims liberally sacrificed on the altar by the State, because it is on this unsolved riddle that the State provisionally maintains itself. It is thus necessary and sufficient to solve the riddle, not only in order to put an end to terrorism, but also to provoke the collapse of the Italian State. Only he who has an interest in this collapse will be able to solve the riddle of terrorism practically. But who has an interest in deciphering the riddle of terrorism? Clearly nobody, except the proletariat, for only the proletariat has the necessary urgency, motives, force and capacity required to destroy the State that deceives and exploits it. The aims of the provocations of the last few years and the pedagogic campaign of indoctrination of the masses that followed it were to teleguide people’s thinking, to oblige them to think certain things. With terrorism, the State has hurled a mortal challenge to the proletariat and to its intelligence: the Italian workers can only take it up, and, in doing this, prove that they are dialecticians, or they can passively accept “inevitable” defeat. All those who today talk about social revolution without denouncing and combating the terrorist counter-revolution have a corpse in their mouths.

https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1637973/

These Mountains Fight Back Between Anarchist Commons and Fascist Environmentalism (part II of Dams, Forest Fires, and the Hidden Commons)

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While the recent spree of wind turbine construction across Catalunya does not come with the paramilitary violence needed to carry out the same construction in Oaxaca—in Oaxaca there are still Indigenous communities defending the commons, whereas in most of Europe the countryside has already been depopulated—these wind farms are nonetheless a continuation of the legacy of Franco’s hydroelectric dams. And those in turn were a continuation of the massive deforestation of the Pyrenees in the 19th century, to build the railroads, launch the steel industry, and at the same time impoverish the commons that gave sustenance to the rural peasantry who made up the backbone of so many social rebellions in those years.

Under capitalism, there is startlingly little difference between such vastly different sources of energy. And today’s wind farms and other energy infrastructures, though they seem to lack the explicit violence of their forebears, have already been linked to expropriations and other conflicts that affect the growing wave of people resurrecting the commons. And more than that, they constitute a chess piece played with perspicacity, holding down a position so the enemy—that’s us—cannot take it.

Green energy remonetizes many rural spaces that a cumbersome industrial agriculture had had to abandon, and it architecturally occupies those spaces in a way that prevents us from resuscitating the commons, accessing land, and cultivating food autonomy, a healthy relationship in which we heal the planet and ourselves without any need for State or Capital.

https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2024/09/10/these-mountains-fight-back-between-an-anarchist-commons-and-fascist-environmentalism-part-ii-of-dams-forest-fires-and-the-hidden-commons/

Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction, say researchers

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The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals.

During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”.

The only time a CNS-acting weapon was used at scale was by the Russian Federation in 2002 to end the Moscow theatre siege. Security forces used fentanyl derivatives to end the siege, in which armed Chechen militants had taken 900 theatregoers hostage.

Most of the hostages were freed, but more than 120 died from the effects of the chemical agents and an undetermined number suffered long-term damage or died prematurely.

Since then, research has made significant advances. The academics argue that the ability exists to create much more “sophisticated and targeted” weapons that would once have been unimaginable.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/22/mind-altering-brain-weapons-no-longer-only-science-fiction-say-researchers

Jeffrey Epstein asked US ambassador to Turkey to ‘make him smile’ with ‘child’ photo

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Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein told current US ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack to “make me smile” with pictures of him and a “child”, according to a 2016 email that was released in a trove of correspondence by Congress on Wednesday.

“Send photos of you and child.. – make me smile,” Epstein, the disgraced late financier, wrote to Barrack in March 2016.

Epstein then responded to an email from Barrack, writing, “Photos look good.”

It is unclear what “child” Epstein was referring to in his email and what photos were contained in the emails sent by Barrack.
[…]
‘Smart’ shoes
The trove of emails also shows Epstein’s direct contact with at least one elite citizen of the UAE.

In 2011, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the chairman and CEO of DP World, emailed Epstein about sneakers embedded with GPS tracking devices advertised to monitor children. The email was titled, “Gps GTX Smart Shoe.”

Epstein responded: “thanks, great idea, i really like your friend”.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jeffrey-epstein-asked-us-ambassador-turkey-make-him-smile-child-photo

Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert 2019 [medical publication from 2019]

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Abstract
Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30157295/

Investigative journalist takes Aleksandar Vučić to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office, suspicions that he was the organizer of the “human safari” in Sarajevo

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The investigation launched in Milan aims to clarify the role of Italian citizens suspected of participating in the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians during the siege of Sarajevo.

According to Margeti, the positions held by Aleksi’s unit – where Vučić allegedly served – coincide with the locations identified as the sites of these “human safaris”.

The journalist further argues that Vučić and another member of the unit, Zlatko “Zak” Novakovic, were among the few fighters who spoke foreign languages ??and therefore may have been in contact with foreign visitors to frontline positions.

https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/gazetari-investigativ-con-ne-prokurorine-e-milanos-aleksander-vucicin-i104505

ICE detainee found dead and “hog-tied” in shower at Noem facility

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A Chinese immigrant died under suspicious circumstances at a Pennsylvania ICE detention center, and the autopsy tells a different story than the government’s official report.

Chaofeng Ge, 32, was found dead on August 5, 2025, just four days after being detained at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center run under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Medical examiners found him in a shower stall in what they called a “hog-tied” position — his hands and feet tied together behind his back with bedsheets, with a noose made from bed linens around his neck.

https://boingboing.net/2025/11/20/ice-detainee-found-dead-and-hog-tied-in-shower-at-noem-facility.html

Normalizing Far-Right Ideologies in the Western Balkans: Croatia’s Role at Home and Abroad

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The Croatian government’s normalization of the neo-Nazi far-right is intrinsically linked to its undermining of democracy in post-war Bosnia, a country facing secession threats by a Bosnian Serb leader in its worst political crisis in peacetime, one that has profound security risks, given the ethnonationalist partitionist violence that sparked the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The far-right ideology expressed in July’s concert in Croatia and the sentiment reflected in subsequent Nazi graffiti there that went un-condemned by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) political party were the backbone of the Croatian ethnonationalist war of aggression against central and western Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Today’s leader of the HDZ’s sister party in Bosnia, the HDZ BiH, is alleged to have requested Bosniaks from Croat-run concentration camps to use as forced labor when he was general director of the Soko factory in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, an allegation he denies.

Croatia’s normalization of this ideology suggests it may be turning to the dark politics of the past to shape the Western Balkans of today. At the same time, the region has become fertile ground for Russian influence, including the Kremlin’s support of the Bosnian Serb separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, who regularly cooperates with HDZ BiH political figures and endorses their political objectives.

https://www.justsecurity.org/125043/croatia-far-right-western-balkans/

Roll-back of digital rights prepared in secrecy

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Today, the Commission published its proposal for ‘simplification’ of digital rules, a package intended to deregulate digital laws to support businesses. The deregulation of the EU’s digital rulebook comes at a time when the tech industry is spending a record-breaking €151 million on EU lobbying. Most prominent is an attack on data privacy rules (GDPR) to support the development of artificial intelligence.

Corporate Europe Observatory published a new piece of research documenting how Big Tech has influenced the digital omnibus.

Key findings include:

Key demands from Big Tech firms and their affiliated lobby associations to water down the AI Act and weaken data protection made it into the Commission’s proposals;

Big Tech weaponised the Trump administration to attack the EU’s digital rulebook;

The Commission has opened the doors to business lobby groups in highly secretive meetings. Crucial steps in the preparation of the digital omnibus were five so-called Reality Checks, meetings heavily dominated by industry. Out of 138 invitees, 114 were business representatives. Only 9 civil society organisation representatives were invited.

Corporate Europe Observatory has retrieved a document which shows that the Commission has decided to exempt ‘Reality Checks’ from transparency measures that apply to other meetings with “interest representatives”.

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/11/roll-back-digital-rights-prepared-secrecy