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published in: OffGuardian, 26.06.2020 https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/26/the-co-opting-of-activism-by-the-state/ It is well documented that members of the police and intelligence communities have been infiltrating activist groups since the sixties. With covert spymasters rising in the ranks to hold influential leadership positions, guiding policy and strategy, and in some cases, radicalising those movements from within, in order to damage their reputation and weaken public support. A judge-led public enquiry in the UK revealed at least 144 undercover police operations had infiltrated and spied on more than 1,000 political groups in long term deployments since 1968. These days, rather than using coercion to suppress sedition, there is a body of evidence to suggest the state has devised more nefarious methods for countering subversion. Involving the co-opting of grassroots movements, in its bid to transform the unbridled ideals of activism into genuflections of corporate and political interest. Indeed, the denaturing of our social movements has engendered a culture of advocacy whereby it is no longer forged in the backyard of community and instead through a series of state sponsored global debates, on authorised issues only, such as climate change. The environmental movement, not to be confused with the ecological movement, appeals to our god-complex, and fantasises that our species holds dominion over nature, that our actions could somehow compromise the planet's homeostasis.
Building on previous research published in Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark, corporate and police spying on activists (2012), the author proposes a new field of research called Activist intelligence and covert strategy. Using exclusive access to previously confidential sources, Secret Manoeuvres showed how companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonald’s use covert methods to evade accountability. The author concluded that corporate intelligence gathering has shifted from being reactive to proactive, and identified a seriously under-researched area: the state’s concern with corporate interests, their close cooperation in collecting intelligence on campaigners, and a shared agenda in dealing with dissent. This paper encompasses an introduction to the published case studies, a definition of the proposed research field, and an exploration of its positioning in a multidisciplinary area as well as its theoretical embedding. The discussion under Methods: Hybrid Projects makes a case for the fusion of journalistic and social scientific approaches to the subject matter.
Sociotechnical Environments: Proceedings of the 6th STS Italia Conference, 24-26 November, pp. 1-18. Edited by S. Crabu, P. Giardullo, F. Miele and M. Turrini. An Open Access Digital Publication by STS Italia Publishing. ISBN: 978–88–940625.
Exploring the Interface of Environmental Activism and Digital SurveillanceThe topic of this paper is the emergent issue of surveillance of environmental activists through new and social media, as interests that potentially threaten the ‘security of the state’. The latter is a frame that emerged post–9/11 to revise surveillance of criminal activities to also include the activities of social movements, including environmental activists. Following a background on environmental activism and surveillance, we find new and social media in contexts that enable both environmental activism and digital surveillance. In regard to the latter, we explore the concept of ‘ecoterrorism’, which frames certain understandings of environmental activism as acts of terrorism. We then briefly refer to recent cases of digital surveillance of environmental campaigners in Canada, Pennsylvania, and Australia. Finally, we investigate the extent to which digital surveillance may influence the protest activities of environmental activists, and how environmental activists (and everyday citizens) respond to surveillance. Summing up, we reflect first on the potential of digital surveillance to curb environmental activism with its aim to protect the environment and move towards strong sustainability and green economies; and second, on the potential of environmental activism to resist or manage surveillance.
In the wake of events of September 11, 2001, State and corporate attempts to suppress and repress dissent have increased, taking a more preemptive turn. Sources of specific types of dissent, as opposed to specific types of dissent, are openly targeted. A number of progressive groups were labeled as domestic terrorists in the U.S. A significant implication of the ideological rhetoric of terrorism, patriotism and national (in)security is the self-regulation it has fostered: a form of “regulated freedom”. This paper explores the implications of governmentality, focusing on radical and revolutionary dissent which seeks to delegitimize capitalism, the property status of nonhuman animals and the environment more broadly.
Proceedings of the 1st Shanghai International Conference of Social Sciences
“Spies Like Us: Paranoia and the ‘Security Culture’ in an Anti-Capitalist Community of Dissent2011 •
On October 15th 2007 seventeen "Maori sovereignty,1 environmental and peace [activists]" (Laugesen 2007) were arrested in one of the largest police operations in New Zealand history. For the first time since the Terrorism Suppression Act was passed in 2002 warrants were executed to search for evidence relating to potential breaches of the Act. Police attempts to charge twelve of the accused under the act were denied, and many of the related firearms charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Police then relayed these charges under a new indictment, participation in a criminal gang. Despite this all but four of the accused have since been discharged without conviction. During the immediate aftermath of these raids I undertook an ethnography of one of the communities most affected, New Zealand’s anti-capitalist community of dissent (Foote 2009). Although the raids themselves were not the focus of this research, all of my co-participants know at least one of the accused and all of them were affected in some way by the raids. By reflecting on the ethnographic data gathered during my fieldwork this paper will more fully address the impacts of these events on the subject community.
Volume editor: Landon E. Hancock, Series editor: Dr Patrick G. Coy
[2016] Activism, Terrorism, and Social Movements: The “Green Scare” as Monarchical Power2016 •
This paper explores the relationship between social movement protest, economic sabotage, state capitalism, the “Green Scare,” and public forms of political repression. Through a quantitative analysis of direct action activism highlighting the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, the discourse surrounding mechanisms of social change and their impact on state power and capitalist accumulation will be examined. The analyses examines the earth and animal liberation movements, utilizing a Marxist-anarchist lens to illustrate how these non-state actors provide powerful critiques of capital and the state. Specifically, the discussion examines how state-sanctioned violence against these movements represents a return to Foucauldian Monarchical power. A quantitative-qualitative history will be used to argue that the movements’ actions fail to qualify as “terrorism,” and to examine the performance of power between the radical left and the state. State repression demonstrates not only the capitalist allegiances between government and industry, but also a sense of capital’s desperation hoping to counter a movement that has produced demonstrable victories by the means of bankrupting and isolating corporations. The government is taking such unconstitutional measures as a “talk back” between the revolutionary potential of these movements’ ideology as well as the challenge they present to state capitalism.
2009 •
Critical Studies on Security
Criminalisation of political activism a conversation across disciplines2023 •
Fabio Cristiano, Deanna Dadusc, Tracey Davanna, Koshka Duff, Joanna Gilmore, Chris Rossdale, Federica Rossi, Adan Tatour, Lana Tatour, Waqas Tufail & Elian Weizman. This Intervention presents a conversation amongst a collective of scholars who are in the process of establishing a research network studying the criminalisation of dissent. The new UK Police, Crime, Sentencing, Courts Act 2022 is just one recent example of attempts by ‘liberal democratic’ states to criminalise political activism and restrict the right to protest. Similar legislative measures, repressive policing practices, and discourses delegitimating dissent can be observed across a variety of geographic and socio-political contexts. In this discussion, we interrogate both the concept of ‘criminalisation of political activism’ and the practices through which criminalisation is enacted by sharing examples and analyses from our research. We approach criminalisation as a process that changes with circumstances and is shaped by a multiplicity of state and non-state actors and agencies, and question the analytical gentrifica- tion that narrows resistance and rebellion to the exclusionary category of activism. Our different disciplinary and regional foci bring together the historical and the contemporary, the (liberal) settler colony and (colonial) liberal democracy, to reflect collectively on the formal and informal tools, technologies and strategies used to criminalise dissent. The conversation took place in November 2022 and was then transcribed and lightly edited for clarity.
Social Movement Studies
Covert repertoires: Ecotage in the UK2004 •
Ecological sabotage (ecotage) has been a feature of the more radical parts of the environmental movement in the Western world for several decades. While it may be perceived as being the preserve of underground cells of 'eco-terrorists', in the UK those who carry out small-scale acts of sabotage are also often engaged in relatively conventional political activity; view sabotage as a complement to other action, not as an end in itself; and are committed to avoiding physical harm to people. Drawing on ethnographic data from research with British activists, this article seeks to define ecotage and to explain its place in the repertoires of the environmental direct action movement in the UK. It is argued that the self-limiting form of ecotage in the UK has its roots in cross-movement debates that have developed over several decades and that national traditions remain important in understanding the development of social movement repertoires.
Icon of the art and science of the Renaissance
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Orthodoxy in the Agora: Orthodox Christian Political Theologies Across History
Orthodox Theopolitical Philosophies in post-2014 Ukraine2024 •
in Augustus through the Ages Receptions, Readings and Appropriations of the Historical Figure of the First Roman Emperor, eds. P. Assenmaker, M. Cavagna, M. Cavalieri, D. Engels, Bruxelles, p. 317-340
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Research, Society and Development
Fashion Industry 4.0: A Bibliometric Review in the Fashion IndustryEtudes Phenomenologiques/Phenomenological Studies
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Estudios budistas en América Latina y España - volumen I
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Tesis de Licenciatura en Historia
El ocaso de la frontera y la familia Gómez (Tandil,1860-1874)2023 •
«La providencia según Nemesio de Emesa» in: 'Los primeros cristianismos y su difusión', edited by Mercedes López Salvá, Madrid: Rhemata, 2023, ISBN: 978-84-125078-1-2, pp. 185-198
La providencia según Nemesio de Emesa - Divine providence according to Nemesius of EmesaThe Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis
International Corporate Governance2003 •
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Surgical approach to an adrenocortical carcinoma with right atrial extension in a nine-year old male: Our experience2020 •
Wagadu: a Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender Studies
Two: Deconstructing the Ivorian Vestimentary Traditions: New Fashion, Contemporary Beauty and New Identity in Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie's Aya De Yopougon2017 •
Forest Phytophthoras
Host and Habitat Index for Phytophthora Species in Oregon2012 •
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Vip Call Girls in Karol Bagh Budget Friendly 9711199012 No Advance Booking2015 •
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Said Paşa’nın Hatırât’ı ve Modern Eğitim Sorununa Bakışı2021 •
ICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
Just Noticeable Difference Model for Asymmetrically Distorted Stereoscopic Images2019 •