Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers.
…
After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology.
They had come with questions of their own.They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
rich people are fucking terrifying
The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.
On this day, 10 September 1922, the Irish Free State faced its first major industrial dispute and responded by declaring the strike illegal and using troops to attack peaceful pickets. The new Postmaster General, J.J. Walsh, was a former postal worker with a reputation as both an active trade unionist and a militant nationalist. But once in power, his first act was to cut wages for postal workers, while pre-emptively preparing to import scab labour from England. At 6pm on September 10th, workers went on strike at the telephone exchange, leaving only two supervisors inside the building. But soldiers forbade them from picketing in the streets. Captain McAllister fired shots towards strikers in Crown Alley and later shot at female operators who had assembled in Anglesea Street. The violence continued the next day, when the military raided the headquarters of the Telephone Strike Committee with armoured cars and machine gun equipment. On 17th September, a sergeant shot at workers as they were walking away through Merchant’s Arch. Olive Flood was shot in the back of the leg, but escaped serious injury because the bullet deflected off her suspender belt. The violent repression was not confined to Dublin; Dolly Ryder was beaten by soldiers in Limerick, and the same troops raided the Strike Committee Offices and destroyed Union property. Despite this repression, the strike held firm, and on 29 September the government agreed to reduce the pay cut. It was a meagre victory earned at great cost, and despite government assurances those who had gone on strike endured years of victimisation. In his memoirs, J.J. Walsh was unapologetic, arguing that “‘at this critical juncture to smash such a well organised strike was a salutary lesson to that general indiscipline.” This is a history of the dispute: https://libcom.org/history/postal-strike-1922https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1207183449466803/?type=3
As governments around the world become more and more repressive, as cops with the full arsenal of high-tech surveillance tools collude with fascists on a daily basis, and as the alt-right grows its’ army of basement-dwelling incel internet trolls, it has become immensely important for activists to practice good security culture. Here are a bunch of articles and resources to help you get started.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
