GIORGIO GRIZIOTTIEqualize the world

Giorgio Griziotti, Effimera, 16/11/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

The other day, disembarking at Orly airport from Italy, I was heading with other passengers toward the exit when at one point a queue formed in front of a lighted tunnel with doors that let in one person at a time. Yet another automatic control and detection system, as if during air travel the passenger, already checked at boarding, could obtain weapons, drugs or other illicit products. This umpteenth anxiety-provoking airport novelty is one of many manifestations of the ubiquitous securitarian obsession in the real as well as the virtual accompanied by rhetoric that feeds the perception of continuous danger as promoting a culture of fear.

In fact, the danger often exists because proponents of the securitarian narrative and agents of cyberespionage are in the same camp and feed off each other.
Equalize, the now-investigated Italian corporate risk analysis company-read industrial espionage and not just industrial espionage since clients include the Mossad and the Vatican-is exemplary in this regard: its owner, in addition to being president of the Milano Fair Foundation, appointed in 2022 by the League member and Chamber of deputies chairman Lorenzo Fontana, and an advisor to Bocconi University, had close ties with senior government figures including none other than the president of the Senate and the much-investigated minister of tourism Daniela Santanchè.
Equalize is thus a contemporary illustration of the new power dynamics between controllers and controlled in the era of “Surveillance Capitalism”[1]. Zuboff, when she wrote the book a few years ago, hoped that capitalism was reformable; today a striking fact seems to disprove this assumption once and for all: the rise to power of Elon Musk.
As recounted by those who have been able to make forays into the future,[2] Musk's smashing arrival in the spheres of governance seals the entanglement between the state and techno-tycoons or techno-oligarchs, whatever you want to call them. Since the days of the industrial era, big business has been used to acquire and control the then mainstream media but now we are witnessing an unprecedented quantum leap. The seventeen billion impressions generated by Musk alone with his tweets during the election campaign exert a biopolitical influence incomparable even to that of the precursor Berlusconi with his electric media à la Mc Luhan. It is precisely the possession of enormous amounts of data that enables the platforms of neurocapitalism, largely autonomous in defining their own rules of operation, to exert relevant influence on narratives, perceptions, emotions and decisions. This power actively shapes elections, markets and even personal relationships, redefining their dynamics and directing their developments in profound and pervasive ways.
Now, returning to Equalize, it is not surprising that, in such a global context, intermediary actors are also emerging as new centers of private power. Through the use of artificial intelligence, data mining and hacking, they are managing to turn information into a tool of coercion and control.
In this particular case, Equalize's ambition was to become a kind of “Google of intelligence.” To this end, it had developed a platform called Beyond, which allowed for sophisticated reports simply by entering a query about a person or company. These reports offered detailed analysis and suggested further insights or investigation if needed.
Up to this point, Beyond might seem similar to other legal platforms. However, its deeply illicit nature, as discovered by investigators, lies in illegally obtaining information from protected and confidential databases through the use of RAT (Remote Access Trojan) malware, with which to gain full remote control of the target system.
Among the databases attacked are those, of the Internal Revenue Service [Serpico system, measuring the match between taxpayers' standard of living and their tax returns, Transl. note]), Istat (National institute of statistics), INPS (National Institute of Social Welfare), the National Registry Office (ANPR), the Currency Information System (Siva) of the Automobile club Italia (Aci), but above all the SDI,  the Survey System of the Ministry of the Interior[3].
The relative ease, thanks in part to complicity and infiltration, with which Equalize/Beyond succeeds in downloading data directly from the Ministry of the Interior's servers highlights how even the most sensitive databases, managed by the central organs of the State, which should be hyper-protected, are now vulnerable and end up in the black market of stolen data. This is probably also the result of the increasing subcontracting of some of the most critical nodes of state functioning to the private sector. It is an erosion not only of the boundaries between public and private, but also of those between those who control and those who are controlled.
Users, often without being aware of it, voluntarily contribute to their own monitoring through the use of connected devices and digital platforms. This “participatory surveillance” generates a continuous feedback loop, in which the data produced is reprocessed to again influence the very individuals who generated it. An example of this mechanism can also be found in the case of Equalize, where, as one manager explained, detailed reports on site visits were collected daily, including information on who had logged in, from where, with what device and browser. This process allowed in-depth profiling of users, monitoring not only who accessed the platform, but also what they searched for.
Equalize is probably only the first major case to emerge, while others in Italy, Europe and elsewhere continue to operate in the shadows. They are the collateral and local symptoms of the wave of fascist techno-solutionism that gives the coup de grace to the now unreformable Western democracies as Emanuele Braga argues in a recent article in Effimera in which among other things he denounces the (stupid) bad faith of politicians and intellectuals of the late left. In this regard, to conclude, I was struck by the recent interview of David Colon, to the Manifesto with the significant title “The new frontier of the techno-oligarchs.” From the height of his chair at Science Po in Paris, Colon states that “tech billionaires intend to dethrone politics in favor of technology, artificial intelligence, in other words the tools that have made their fortunes.” Babbling, on the very day of Trump's election, about the “good” Western democracies to be saved because they are being seriously endangered by the “bad” autocracies of the rest of the world, the good “leftist” prof. does not even realize the nonsense of his claims. No technology has taken or will take the place of politics while Elon Musk & Co. are already the new political leaders of 21st century capitalism...

Post-scriptum
As we know, platform capitalism bases its profitability in the transformation of data from use value to exchange value (the so-called network value). The Equalize case is no exception. The democratic issue has relatively little to do with it. It is capitalism, my dear! The sale of data manipulated, managed, selected and profiled by the Beyond platform is in fact the main business of the operation. From what could be read from telephone intercepts published in some newspapers, a simple and single request for information (requiring no special ad hoc investigation) had an average cost of about 200 euros. The cost of retrieving such information was more or less 60 euros, with a certainly significant profit margin. The fact to remember is that this information is gathered from the profiling of the acts of daily life of each of us, bar none. In fact, recent algorithmic and cloud computing technologies make it possible to catalogue, select, manipulate, and classify the raw data that comes from the use of apps on cell phones, tablets, and computers into readable and saleable data, depending on the needs of the customer and the business. Not surprisingly, this is referred to as business intelligence. What is relatively new (at least for Italy) is the particularity of the data processed by the Equalize/Beyond platform: it is, in fact, extremely sensitive data that have to do with the issue of privacy and security, thus data with very high added value. We are no longer only faced with life being directly put to value and the becoming annuity of profit, but with the “political” becoming of profit, with all the implications that this entails (Andrea Fumagalli)

NOTES
[1] Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.
[2] Griziotti, Giorgio. Cronache del Boomernauta (Chronicles of the Boomernaut) Mimesis Editions, 2023 (to be published in English in 2025)
[3] The complex and extensive interagency information system, which is divided into 13 main application areas into which all kinds of information flows from complaints and investigations, from weapons management to foreigner control, from police intelligence to tender monitoring.

VANESSA BILANCETTIPain, anger, and shame in Italy’s Pontine plainSikh farm labourer left to die by his boss after having arm severed and legs crushed by machine

Vanessa Bilancetti (text & photo), dinamopress.it, 24/6/2024 Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Vanessa Bilancetti, staff writer at Dinamo Press, writes about social movements, feminism and European issues. She received her doctorate in political studies from Sapienza University in Rome with a thesis on critical analysis of the Fiscal Compact. In Rome she teaches Sociology of Political Phenomena at the online university Uninettuno. She has long traversed the assemblies of self-managed Esc Atelier Autogestito she is a thai boxing and poetry enthusiast. Vane Bix

Satnam Singh was killed in the countryside of the Pontine plain by a boss who did not even have the courage to take him to the hospital. But he left him agonizing in front of the gate of his home, with his wife Sony in tears. Report from Saturday’s demonstration in Latina, in the lands of corporals, masters and resistance

 To get from Rome to Latina, the “capital” of Agro Pontino, you drive all the way along the Pontina, one of the most dangerous state roads in Italy. Potholes, piles of garbage on the sides of the roads and then warehouses, warehouses, retailers. From Pomezia, the first cultivated fields begin, and one can see labourers walk along the crop side roads. There are people from Central African countries, the Maghreb, and Indians, like Satnam Singh.

Singh comes from Sanskrit sinha and means lion and is an essential element of a Sikh’s male name. For women it is Kaur, princess. The Sikh religion, born in the 15th century in the Punjab region (now divided between Pakistan and India), used these names to eliminate the use of Indian caste-identifying surnames.

According to estimates, in the Agro Pontino, the Indian men and women from Punjab number around 30,000; less than half have regular residence permits.

The Agrilovato cooperative of farmer Renzo Lovato is located near Sabaudia, Satnam Singh, 31, and his wife Sony lived not too far away in Borgo Bainsizza. “Hosted” by a local family, as the newspapers write, but “widespread hospitality” is a common practice in the area: in shacks, tool repositories, unfinished houses, without a contract and with payment in black, sometimes in agreement with “the master.” It was precisely “the master’s son” Antonello Lovato who dumped Satnam in the back of the white van, with a severed arm, his legs crushed and bleeding, while his wife screamed in despair and other workers whose phones had been taken away so as not to call for help. 34 kilometres separate the farm from the Borgo [Borough], at least half an hour of road, of screaming, of blood, minutes that if spent going to the hospital could have saved Satmam’s life.

HILO GLAZERIn Italy's Alpine Foothills, Israelis Are Starting an Expat Community. Similar Initiatives Aren't Far Behind

Editor's Note

A joke circulated a few years ago in Tel Aviv bars, “An optimistic Israeli Jew learns Arabic, a pessimistic Israeli Jew learns English, a realistic Israeli Jew learns to swim.” It seems that what the Palestinians or Arabs have failed to do (if they ever really intended to), Netanyahu and his government acolytes are causing: a stampede has broken out among Israeli Jews. Indeed, hundreds and thousands of Israelis of various socio-economic conditions and all ages are scrambling to find an alternative to the life in the Jewish state. And in this way a new business, which could be called the relocation industry, has emerged. Hilo Glazer's article tells of the Baita Project, launched in the Sesia Valley, in the province of Vercelli, and other projects, including ambitious plans to create “Israeli cities” in Europe, from Cyprus and Greece to Portugal, and elsewhere. One of them even speaks of creating a “settlement community”, which is reminiscent of the so-called settlements (colonies) in the West Bank. It's legitimate to wonder whether these projects can constitute a definitive overcoming of Zionism and tribalism, or whether they will simply create "little Israels" scattered like confetti across the world.-FG

Hilo Glazer, Haaretz, Sep 2, 2023

In the wake of the judicial coup, Israeli discussions about relocating abroad no longer stop at social media groups. In a lush valley in northwestern Italy, ideas of collective emigration are being played out on the ground – and similar initiatives are taking shape elsewhere as well

“As the number of hours of light in their country’s democracy keeps diminishing, more and more Israelis are arriving in the mountainous valley in their search for a new start. Among them are young people with babies in carriers, others with children of school age, and there are the graying-balding people like me. A teacher, a tech entrepreneur, a psychologist, a dog groomer, a basketball coach. Some say they’re only exploring, still ashamed to admit that they are seriously considering the option. Others look purposeful and motivated – looking into how to get a residency permit, how much a house costs, how to open a bank account and transfer your provident funds while it’s still possible. Underlying all this is a layer of pain, the pain of good Israelis who believed that after 2,000 years they could rest on their laurels, but were now taking up the wanderer’s staff once again.”

The writer is Lavi Segal, the mountainous area he is describing is in the Sesia Valley (Valsesia), in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, at the foot of the Alps. Segal, the owner of a tourism business from the Galilee, shares his experiences with members of a Facebook group called Baita, which offers information to Israelis seeking to immigrate to and create their own community in Valsesia, many of whose original inhabitants have left in recent decades. The group’s name is an amalgam of Bait (Hebrew for “home,” or “house”) and Ita – short for Italy. Baita in Italian also translates as “hut in the mountains.” And these are not just any mountains: Valsesia is known as “the greenest valley in Italy.” Segal says what he’s presenting is a case of truthful advertising.

“With all due respect for the talk about ‘the beautiful Land of Israel,’” he tells Haaretz in a phone interview, “Israel is perhaps beautiful compared to Syria or Saudi Arabia [but] Europe and the Alps are a different world. The landscape is breathtaking, the weather is marvelous, and all the well-known troubles of Israel – wars, dirtiness, overcrowding, cost of living – simply don’t exist here.”

Segal has lived in Valsesia with his wife, Nirit, for two months; both are in their 60s. “We’re on a journey of familiarization and exploring,” he explains. “We’ve rented a house here, and every so often we talk to real estate agents about the possibility of buying one. At the moment we’re not talking about permanent uprooting, though that could happen if life in Israel becomes intolerable. For the time being we’re looking for a place where we can divide our time between Israel and overseas. Israel is very dear to us: When we’re there we’re active in demonstrations” against the government’s plans for a judicial overhaul.

Nirit, who organizes art retreats, is of two minds: “This place is a dream when it comes to creating art, but I’m very attached to Israel, and like many people in my circles I feel it today especially. I’m apprehensive about the implications of the wave of migration for the protest movement.”

For the time being, she’s decided not to decide, she admits. “I want to hold the stick at both ends. To take part in the protest, but also to stay here for long periods. To move between the two. We have been received here cordially. Despite the language difficulties, we’ve developed some pleasant and natural ties with people. It’s odd, but I’m getting attached.”

Lavi attributes less importance to the political upheaval back home when relating to the decision to investigate other options. “I didn’t need to witness current events in order to grasp that Israel is heading in directions that aren’t good,” he says.

The path of the Segals, who have three grown children, to settle in the valley is being paved thanks mainly to Lavi’s Lithuanian passport. “With it, we can stay indefinitely within the boundaries of the European Union, and the children can study and work. Who would have thought that after everything that happened to our people and to my family on Lithuanian soil, that a Lithuanian passport, of all things, would make this freedom of movement possible for us?”

In the meantime, they’re living in a quiet town that’s 650 meters above sea level.

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ANNAMARIA RIVERAOn racism: let’s bring some clarity

 Annamaria Rivera, Comune-Info, 20/1/2022
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala  

As a premise, it should be noted that the term "racism", in the singular, is preferable to "racisms", if we want to grasp the unitary character of the concept, beyond the historical and empirical variations of the phenomenon. Paradoxically, to name such a system, we are forced to use a term whose etymology refers to the belief in the existence of "races", criticized and then abandoned by a large part of the same social and biological sciences that had contributed to its elaboration. "Race" is, in fact, a pseudo-category as unfounded as it is paradoxical, since it is based on the postulate that establishes a deterministic relationship between somatic, physical, genetic characters and psychological, intellectual, cultural, social characters.

In short, racism can be defined as a system of beliefs, representations, norms, speeches, behaviors, practices, political and social acts, aimed at devaluing, stigmatizing, discriminating, inferiorising, subordinating, segregating, persecuting categories of people who have been othered, and this up to massacre and extermination.

I write "othered" because in reality, the "color" or the actual cultural and/or social distance from the us are quite irrelevant in the choice of victims, as the tragic history of anti-Semitism proves. The stigma applied to certain categories of people can disregard any somatic, phenotypic, cultural difference or related to the origin, being the result of a process of social, symbolic, political construction.

  

Fascist group Vox's racist propaganda in Spain against  unaccompanied foreign minors, supposed to get eleven times more from the State than a poor indigenous retiree ("your grandmother")

Achille Lollo: farewell to a fighter

Fausto Giudice, Basta Yekfi!, 4/8/2021
Translated by Andy Barton

I have just learned, via common Brazilian comrades, of the passing of Achille Lollo, yesterday in Trevignano Romano, to whom I wish to pay tribute.

 

Achille was born in Rome on 8th May 1951. Salvatore, his father, had been a resistance fighter, a deported communist and an anti-fascist guerrilla fighter in Italy and Yugoslavia. Should Achille have been born just 30 years earlier, he too would have taken up arms against fascism. And yet more, should he have been born 130 years earlier, he would doubtless have been an Italian Redshirt, among the Garibaldini defenders of Montevideo besieged by the cruel Argentinian general Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Yet his actual biography has little to envy of the adventures of the heroes of Alexandre Dumas or Victor Hugo. He belongs to a long Italian tradition of causing trouble in every corner of the world. His 50 years of adult life played out on three stages: the suburbs of Rome, Angola and Brazil.

It all began in 1973 in Primavalle, a volatile suburb in Rome. Achille, together with some of his comrades from the operaista movement Potere Operaio, was accused of having started a fire in the apartment belonging to the local head of the fascist party, the Italian Social Movement, in which two of the fascist leader’s sons died. Achille was arrested. He denied having wanted to kill anybody; rather, his aim was to intimidate the local fascists with whom leftists were locked in an endless conflict. After two years of preventative prison, he was paroled, going on to seek refuge in Angola in 1975. Achille participated in the anti-colonial struggles together with the MPLA, the SWAPO and the ANC. In 1986, with his Angolan wife and their four children, he emigrated to Brazil. There, he was an active member of the PT (Brazilian Worker’s Party) as part of the Força Socialista tendency. Later, he would participate in the founding of the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party) in 2004. A few years prior, in 1994, he was arrested after an extradition request from Italy, being freed after one year in prison.

In 2005, the 18-year prison term he had been sentenced to in Italy expired, but the damages and losses he had been sentenced to pay (1 million euros) had not. This prevented Achille from owning anything (which perhaps is not such a bad thing).

In 2010, now with health problems, he returned to Italy, where he devoted himself to ecological agriculture. The irruption of COVID-19 would seriously compromise this activity. However, it was not the virus that eventually killed him: as a diabetic with cardiac problems, he was struck by pancreatic cancer, known for its aggressive development.

Achille leaves behind him an immense body of work, both written and audio-visual, primarily about Latin America, and scattered across many different media platforms. Hopefully, one day, someone will be able to draw it all together. 

 One of Achille’s last photos, with his son Achillinho