Anarchic update news all over the world - 27.03.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Poland, Workers initiative: CzarnyPiatek - information
      materials [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #281 - Undocumented: New
      striker spark (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  [Greece] Video: Anarchists invade German Consulate in
      Heraklion on the island of Crete By ANA (gr) [machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: Workers in Thurrock
      take concrete action + (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  wsm.ie: Cambridge Analytica style tactics are already being
      used by anti-choice groups in Ireland by Andrew N Flood
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  anarchistcommunism AAG: Cambridge Analytica - same old,  same
      old (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





In connection with another attempt to limit access to abortion, we publish information 
materials (leaflet, poster, stickers) devoted to the subject of women's rights and access 
to abortion. The materials were prepared by the Warsaw Environmental Committee of the OZZ 
Employee Initiative.
Download: Plakat_wlepka_strajk_kobiet_aborcja2018.pdf
Download: Plakat_strajk_kobiet2018.jpg
Download: Ulotka_strajk_kobiet2018.pdf

http://ozzip.pl/teksty/informacje/pilne-akcje/item/2356-czarny-piatek-materialy-informacyjne

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Message: 2





In Île-de-France, the CGT launched on February 12 a new strike of 120 workers on six 
different companies. To obtain the regularization of the strikers, but also to denounce 
the overexploitation of these employees without rights and the bill Asylum-Immigration 
presented by the "  socialist  " Gérard Collomb. ---- Many workers and sub-Saharan workers 
work in France thanks to family or village solidarity, with the papers of another. They 
therefore pay their social security contributions without being able to benefit from 
Social Security. And in general bosses, especially in the interim, take advantage of their 
fragility and assign them the most painful work, without respect for personal protections, 
minimum wages, hours of work, the payment of overtime. .. For the bosses, an undocumented 
is above all a worker who can not refuse anything, especially since he must send to the 
country to pay for his trip and maintain his family.

For years, between groups of undocumented, their supporters and the CGT, there has been a 
lot of tension on the strategy to follow: "  Papers for all and everyone  " or "  Papers 
for the workers  " ? False opposition in reality, on the one hand a general objective 
just, and on the other hand the reality of the balance of power vis-à-vis the State.

A paying strategy

With the progressive tightening of the legislation, the collectives of sans-papiers no 
longer obtain victories. In contrast, the strikes organized by the CGT, which organizes a 
preliminary - and contested - sorting of files, have resulted in spectacular percentages 
of regularization. This strike of undocumented has test value against the duo 
Macron-Collomb, which appears very determined on this file whose electoral dimension does 
not escape anyone: expelling African Muslims, it must bring back voices ! But there is 
more. Macron made a deal with the Eastern European states: OK for more posted workers, on 
the condition of better control. By replacing African Muslims with Catholic Poles, it 
would be a double blow !

The Minister of the Interior presents a law on immigration so repressive that it is 
contested even among the deputies macronistes ! Two points are particularly blocking: 
first, the extension of 45 to 90 days of legal detention of undocumented (because beyond 
45 days, if the deportation file is not completed, must be released the undocumented) ; 
secondly, the penalization of work under a false name (fine, prison and expulsion) whereas 
up to now good sense prevailed and allowed precisely to regularize those who had a job 
(even under a false name). The strike is also a reaction to this law.

Act "asylum-migration"

Since this kickoff, dozens of undocumented jostle on the picket lines and union 
headquarters to join the movement. We must therefore expect other occupations. And if 
Macron locks himself into the refusal to regularize, we must also prepare ourselves for 
occupations that really block production.

Jean-Yves (AL 93 Center)

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Sans-papiers-Nouvelle-etincelle-greviste

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Message: 3






Dozens of anarchists stormed the compound of the German Consulate in Heraklion, capital of 
Crete, on Friday in a vigorous protest against the military operation of the Turkish 
fascist state in Afrin. ---- Demonstrators hung a banner on the facade of the diplomatic 
building and used e-mail and fax to send messages to the Turkish Embassy in Athens and 
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The band said "Resistance is life" and "Solidarity 
with Afrin" in Kurdish, German and Greek. ---- Germany's Foreign Ministry issued a 
statement and said unidentified people who entered the consulate caused significant 
material damage, ripped out the state symbols and fled with a German flag, rooms that were 
plastered, and police were notified about the matter. ---- During the action, no one was 
injured and there were no arrests.

> Watch the video (01:35) here:
http://agonaskritis.gr/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/67b8e6b1-981c-4939-b1c8-6102eba85024-720.mp4?_=1

anarchist-ana news agency

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Message: 4





Workers at the Linford site of Tarmac Building Products Ltd at Thurrock in Essex, which 
produces concrete breeze blocks, will come out on strike for 48 hours with workers 
claiming management are out to create a two tier workforce at the site. ---- The strike 
will begin on 28th March at 6am ending on Friday 30th March. This is in addition to two 
one-day strikes on 20th and 22nd March. Seven days of strikes have already taken place and 
now the action is escalating as a result of imposed contracts where conditions for new 
starters are inferior to those of established workers, who fear that their own pay and 
conditions will be undermined. ---- ------------- Railworkers to steam into strike action
March 21, 2018ACG ---- Railworkers in the RMT union on South Western Railway will take 
strike action over Easter over over safety, the role of the guard and the rolling out of 
Driver Only Operation after management continued to refuse to talk and stepped up their 
bullying of workers.

Guards, Commercial Guards and train drivers will not undertake any rest day working. In 
addition guards and commercial guards will take industrial action over the Easter period. 
This is in line with the company refusing to have safety guards on board trains.

---------------------------------------
United Utilities workers strike to stop watering down of pensions
March 21, 2018ACG

Thousands of water workers at the United Utilities plant in Barton, near Salford, went out 
on strike on 16th March and again on 19th March against plans by management to impose 
pension cuts rom 1st April, with younger staff losing £10,000 a year in retirement. The 
company has an actual surplus of £248 million!

The workers, who repair pipes, and treat waste water , note that United Utilities paid out 
more than £1.25billion to shareholders over the past five years and has a target of 
increasing its dividend payments each year by at least the rate of inflation. The Chief 
Executive, Steve Mogford, was paid £2.8million last year.
----------------------------------------------------------

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2018/03/21/workers-in-thurrock-take-concrete-action/

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Message: 5





We've seen a number of Irish journalists wondering if Cambridge Analytica style tactics 
could be part of repeal referendum. In fact they already are and have been for over a year 
- we are going to demonstrate this in what follows. ---- But first its useful to 
understand that Cambridge Analytica is not just a for profit company but also an 
ideological tool for the hard right and far right. It's owned by the billionaire Mercer 
family who also funded the far-right site Breitbart. Journalists already understand that 
Robert Murdoch buys newspapers for influence over elections as much as to make profit out 
of them. He's credited with making sure the Tories got elected in the UK and playing a 
major role in elections elsewhere through running scare stories on election Day. Cambridge 
Analytica and similar are the same sort of ‘duel investment' but in the social media world.

To return to Ireland. March 8th 2017 saw #Strike4Repeal take place in Dublin, 1000s of 
people took part in a day of civil disobedience demanding a referendum to Repeal the 8th 
amendment. Very quickly after the day a professionally made video where ambush interviews 
were conducted on mostly young people to make them look clueless appeared all over Irish 
facebook - a lot of money was spent pushing it. What do we mean by ‘ambush', well here's 
how two people interviewed described the experience
A: "As a person who had a microphone shoved near their group I can testify that this video 
is preposterous. My friend was asked a question (not shown) and then her answer was cut 
short. It turns out that the only people not willing to participate in sensible debate are 
the video makers. I didn't sign a release form for my image to be put out, nor did my 
friends or anyone else in the video. Unethical and ludicrous"
B: "I saw a group of young protestors being interrogated on camera by the alt-right - I 
got blindsided. At first the questions seemed normal, then escalated into 'should a woman 
abort a child if she doesn't like its gender?' rapid fire queries"

A crew of two posh sounding young English men came to Dublin to shoot this ambush video 
but they were not working alone. They clearly had local anti-choice contacts but they 
revealed on Twitter they were funded from North America. Shortly after the video was 
circulated the crew became officially part of Canadian alt-right Youtube channel called 
the Rebel - its funded by an oil industry billionaire. Perhaps the Rebel spent 100,000 
promoting this video online, perhaps the funding was from elsewhere in America, we don't 
know and there is no way of finding out unless Facebook reveals this.

This is the video - It appeared on ‘FlipsideIreland' a Facebook page that was was set up 
for this purpose and has almost no other content. This is a ‘dark ad' tactic familiar from 
the Cambridge Analytica coverage of the sort of method that was used in the Kenyan 
election. The Strike4Repeal ambush video has a million views, 100,000 euro minimum in 
paid-for reach. Who paid?

We do know a little bit about how that reach was obtained. We tracked the ad and we saw 
that they were paying to reach people & friends of people who followed the National 
Ploughing Championship page. Some 87,000 people in rural Ireland follow that page so its 
probably quite an effective audience to target. We'd take that as a demonstration that ad 
placement was advised by local anti-choice campaigners. The National Ploughing 
Championship page is a great way of reaching rural Ireland but not something a Canadian or 
Brit would know about

Facebook could tell journalists who paid - and they should ask. Save 8 should certainly be 
asked which of their campaigners was advising this group even before the campaign was even 
set up.

We said the video crew moved on to work for The Rebel - they were in fact the crew for 
hate preacher Tommy Robinson. After the alt-right Finsbury park van attack in 2017 in 
which one person was killed and 8 injured the then UK counter-terrorism police chief said 
said there was "no doubt" that far-right material posted online by Tommy Robinson drove 
Osborne to target Muslims. In fact the Srike4Repeal ambush video crew fell out with the 
Rebel in the rows that swept that Youtube station after coverage of the far-right rally in 
Charlottesville last August. There was another far right vehicle attack there which killed 
one women and wounded many. None of this sounds very 'pro-life' does it but it's going to 
get worse as we dig deeper.

As journalists should already be aware there are deep links between the anti-choice 
movement in Ireland and the far right here and elsewhere. Infamous British far-right 
personality Nick Griffin even tweeted in support of the Save 8 rally falsely claiming 
"Massive #pro-life rally in #Dublin 100,000 (out of total population of only 4.8 million) 
marched to defend the 8th Amendment & the unborn children of #Ireland who #GeorgeSoros & 
the liberal elite want to" blah blah blah.

But here is a video of another Irish based anti-choice campaigner welcoming the Brevik 
murders back in 2011 ... He was photographed on the 2012 Rally for Life

Fast forward to the last couple of weeks and we have an alt-right student distributing 
placards with the (obscure) fascist BUF logo on them on the Dublin International Women's 
Day march. A far-right page publishes a video with these logos at about 2am and then next 
morning anti-choice Save 8 spokesperson McGuirk finds the video online & tweets it out. 
He's immediately told it's a far right smear but refuses to delete or correct his initial 
tweet suggesting pro-choice people were marching with fascist signs.

This isn't the first such video McGurk discovers, there were two more, one targetting a 
sex worker, the other an extract from a young black migrant women 'on a rant' on the day 
the terrible news about 'Migrant X' emerged.

We suspect these videos will appear again in the last week of the campaign but this time 
with a massive paid reach pushing them out from some obscure new page that no one has a 
clue who is funding - journalists need to consider how they will cover this.
Back to Cambridge Analytica - the Save 8 campaign has already admitted a connection 
through a company called Kanto. From a piece published in The Times (Ireland edition) "Mr 
Borwick has also worked with Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining company owned by Robert 
Mercer, a reclusive right-wing billionaire who bankrolled the Trump campaign and several 
"alt-right" operations including Breitbart News"

If you watched last night's C4 expose you'll have seen Cambridge Analytica CEO saying 
"we're used to operating through different vehicles, in the shadows, and I look forward to 
building a very long-term and secretive relationship with you." Another staff member told 
the undercover team "if we are working then we can set up fake IDs and websites, we can be 
students doing research projects attached to a university, we can be tourists, there's so 
many options we can look at."

So far only The Times (Irish edition) has made any effort to cover the dirty tricks that 
have already emerged. Even pro-choice journalists on the Irish papers seems far more 
motivated to write opinion pieces on campaign messaging than to expose this. Which is what 
happened with both Trump & Brexit - mainstream media mostly ignored the available evidence 
of a vast dark ads campaign, allowing these ads to do their work without a cost to those 
behind them.

Lets end with a key point from the Channel 4 undercover video of Cambridge Analytica where 
they explain. "we just put information into the bloodstream of the internet.. & then watch 
it grow, give it a little push every now and again... like a remote control. It has to 
happen without anyone thinking, ‘that's propaganda', because .. the next question is, 
‘who's put that out?'"

The next question as they say is indeed "who put that out"?

Author: Andrew N Flood

https://wsm.ie/c/cambridge-analytica-style-tactics-are-already-being-used-anti-choice-groups-ireland

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Message: 6





Facebook is a highly profitable way of garnering information from individuals and then 
selling it on to advertisers and other companies who can then target individuals. It is a 
highly effective way of gathering such information, far better than the methods used by PR 
consultants for many years. ---- What the Cambridge Analytica uproar is about is that that 
that outfit got hold of the profiles of 50 million Facebook users via a psychology 
professor and then used the information in various political campaigns like the Trump 
election and Brexit. ---- This is hardly new information but papers like the Guardian have 
used the so called scandal to mount attacks on social media. They do this partly due to 
their liberal outrage over a perceived attack on the liberal wing of capitalist democracy, 
but also because they regard social media as a threat to their circulation.

But in this society politicians and the rich have always used the media, whether it be 
"traditional" media, radio, television, the press, or new media like Google and Facebook, 
to distort and disinform, withhold information, tell outright lies and conduct bigoted 
campaigns against those it sees as threats.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the newspaper media to cry "manipulation" when they 
themselves have been involved in the manipulation of ideas and information for very many 
years! As for the press in general, who can forget the Sun's lies about Hillsborough? Why 
else do 51% of people in Britain distrust the media, the highest percentage in Europe?

There has been no uproar when other market research companies use information gathered 
from the Internet to apply targeted advertising. That's business as usual as far as the 
press is concerned. It's also okay to spend vast amounts at elections, as the Tories did 
at the last election, spending £18.6 million, which included £2 million to Facebook.

The rich own the media in all its forms. They use it to maintain themselves in power. The 
nasty manipulation by Cambridge Analytica is nothing new. Only the fact that it is done 
via the Internet makes it any different.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2018/03/24/cambridge-analytica-same-old-same-old/

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