THIS LUCID AND PASSIONATE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT PALESTINE ACTION IS WELL WORTH VIEWING BEFORE STARMER’S “SOCIAL DEMOCRATS” CENSOR IT ~ Rob Ray ~ I can certainly see why the makers of To Kill A War Machine are worried that proscription of the subject of their documentary, Palestine Action (PA), will turn into a ban for them too. The Rainbow Collective have produced one of the most explicitly pro-direct action features I’ve seen in years. Unapologetic in tone, the programme includes interviews with members and supporters, who talk about their motivations, strategies and the ways in which State repression has ramped up since the start of Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. PA hardly needs much of an introduction after a week of intense media focus. But in brief, over the last half-decade the non-violent group has carried out a campaign of sabotage against Israeli arms firm Elbit, which operates numerous sites across the UK and is well meshed with Britain’s corporate and political Establishments. Its tactics have been to target not just the property of Elbit itself – making it as expensive as possible to operate in Britain specifically – but to also go down the supply and financing chain, hitting the likes of Barclays for investing in the firm and Arconic for selling it monitor screens.  Produced in a kinetic, glitchy manner which will be familiar to anyone who has watched many activist film productions, To Kill A War Machine flicks between footage of PA activists smashing through windows and rooftops, interviews, slickly dystopian Elbit advertising bragging about its lethality and accuracy, and blurred but nevertheless horrifying footage of the child victims of such “precision.”  Included in the interviewees are several recognisable figures, in particular eloquent takes from Sukaina Rajwani, mother of Filton 18 prisoner Fatema, Shezana Hafiz of Cage International, and Palestine Action founder members Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard.  The analysis and insights provided are well-presented, lucid and passionate, with Rajwani’s deeply admirable fortitude speaking out in what must be extraordinarily stressful circumstances watching her daughter going through the hell of Kafkaesque persecution being particularly worthy of note.   A minor quibble I might have with interviewee Lowkey’s otherwise solid analysis is his focus on how they draw primarily from the Raytheon Nine and suggestion that their iteration is unique, whereas throughout, I was seeing influences from the animal rights movement of the 1990s and 2000s, which might be useful to draw out a bit. The campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences has strong parallels to Palestine Action’s strategy, particularly “go down the chain, find the weak points”.  They’re also being dealt with in similar ways (with some crucial differences).  In the case of HLS, government repression was more subtle, but used the same playbook – identify, vilify, isolate and shock. Rather than use the wild overkill of anti-terror legislation, in the 2000s Establishment reaction took the form, initially, of information gathering and infiltration by the State, while the media portrayed animal rights activists in the most ghoulish of ways, with the aim of dividing a perceived “extreme” wing of the movement from the cover of broader support.  Legislation was then beefed up, with injunctions being used to physically push legal campaigning away from the gates of the research establishments. Punishments were increased to allow for exemplary sentencing – frighten people off by making it clear political crime in particular was unacceptable, in a way that non-political crime was not. Back in 2015 I interviewed an AR activist from the time about this for Black Flag (p.16-17), who explained: “People had been sent down before, but it became multiple forms of harassment. We’d do a local stall about animal rights and local cops would show up trying to shut us down. They’d stand in front of the stall, intimidating people away. They’d follow activists around, stalk them at demos, anything to isolate us. At government level they changed laws to facilitate crackdowns. Harassment legislation was extended to companies after we challenged the idea in court. In SOCA (section 146-7) they specifically included anti-animal rights rules by banning home demos. That was specifically to stop us from getting shareholders’ addresses and targeting the communities where they lived, which was extremely effective. All the cops who used these laws have moved on now, so they’ve fallen out of use, but these laws are still on the books.” It might seem odd that Starmer, who would be well acquainted with such strategies from his time as a pro-bono movement lawyer in the 2000s, doesn’t simply re-employ them before leaping to terror legislation. Until, of course, you remember that his priority is not to stop a movement, but to outflank his political critics while shoring up his international position. The disastrous effects of proscription on free speech and individual liberty are simple collateral damage in the cause of silencing far-right “two-tier” accusations and brown-nosing the US.   The documentary highlights this procession around 3/4 of the way in, noting the path from an early 2022 meeting between Priti Patel and Elbit (shading into a dodgy inclusion of a rep from the supposedly independent Crown Prosecution Service), through to Labour’s use of arrests for non-violent action under terror legislation and a ghosting of activists within the prison system so thorough that even their lawyers couldn’t reach them. A clear path of private complaint, Establishment mobilisation, and politically-charged escalation towards the moment of outright repression we find ourselves in. The hope in the face of proscription is it might finally break through to the general public that it’s all our rights that are at risk when a political party decides to arbitrarily apply the label of “terrorist” to strictly non-violent forms of dissent. Unlike the bleating of far-right types about university students telling them to get lost, proscription is full-on, indisputable State censorship in the raw.  To Kill A War Machine is a solidly made, inspiring film to watch, but even if it were absolute rubbish, it has already done the job it set out to do. I ended up watching it in a meeting room, on a borrowed projector, via a hastily-organised showing by people intent on getting it out before the proscription vote. Up and down the country this weekend, and again tonight, others are doing the same. It’s already out there, and a State ban would come too late to shut the barn door. Now it’s not just the story of Palestine Action, it’s the story of Palestine Action they don’t want you to see.  To Kill A War Machine is available now and can be streamed or downloaded from their website. The post Film Review: To Kill A War Machine appeared first on Freedom News.

IT COMES TO SOMETHING WHEN EVEN VOICING SUPPORT FOR A NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION GROUP RISKS BEING DESIGNATED AS CROSSING THE LINE, BUT LABOUR IS NO DEFENDER OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PROTEST. Tabitha and Andy join us to discuss the decision of former defender of principled dissent Keir Starmer to ban an organisation that he might once have protected, that same MP’s determination to rob billions off the poorest to spend on pointless nuclear bomber aircraft, and self-titled “real opposition” leader Nigel Farage’s bung to rich foreigners. The post Anarchist News Review: Palestine Action Ban, Welfare Rebellion and Israel-Iran-US appeared first on Freedom News.

ISRAEL IS BEING ALLOWED TO MODEL A NEW ITERATION OF STATE POWER BOUND BY NO LIMITS, WHICH ANSWERS TO NO ONE ~ Blade Runner ~ This week, Israel escalated its war tactics to new levels of terror: thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies rigged with explosives detonated, causing horrifying injuries to those holding them and to others nearby. In total, the explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies over two days killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,000. Unconfirmed reports also suggest that solar panels and ATMs were involved in the explosions during the attacks. There is a trap in viewing Israel merely as a “rogue state” or Netanyahu as another terroristic authoritarian. This new level of horror is inflicted by Israel in a laboratory for hegemonic powers’ relentless campaign to maintain control at all costs. The attack had a dual objective: to show Hezbollah that their old-school communication tech gives them no safety, and to brutally terrorise the civilian population. For over a year, Israel has been modelling a new iteration of state power bound by no limits, which answers to no one. Another mistake is to see the weapons manufacturing complex as merely opportunistic, capitalising on conflict to fuel the cycle of violence. In reality, as yesterday’s report by CAAT exposed, the arms industry is an essential cog in the machinery of state violence. The US-Israel alliance is rooted in global capitalism and imperialism. It is not just about protecting US interests but about preserving the entire state-capitalist hegemony and exploiting the Global South. Anyone hoping that removing Netanyahu, halting US arms sales, or intervention from the superpowers will lead to a solution is bound to be disappointed. There is little hope in negotiations or power shifts of any kind. The deep-seated hatred cultivated in this region between the marginalized and the privileged, combined with the ongoing restructuring of the geopolitical status quo, enables the state authority to do what it does best: create conditions that justify its own existence. Anarchists believe that the only real hope lies in dismantling the entire state apparatus, along with the capitalist and patriarchal structures that create the borders dividing people, the militaries that enforce them, and the industries that profit from exploitation and ecocide. Nationalism and religion are divisive myths that obscure the possibility of international solidarity among the oppressed.  The late Alfredo Bonanno wrote decades ago that the only true hope would come from an insurrection by the Palestinian and Israeli people together to destroy the institutions governing them—without intermediaries. Even then, that perspective was more of a dream. So it remains today. But as this tormented region of the world has shown us time and again, we must be prepared for the worst. The post Not just a ‘rogue state’: Israel’s pagers attack in Lebanon appeared first on Freedom News.