000-tobecategorised

Reclaiming resistance in an age of surveillance and authoritarianism  https://diem25.org/reclaiming-resistance-in-an-age-of-surveillance-and-authoritarianism/ on 26 March 2025

There is ...an urgency to understand what comes after and alongside the movements and the protests that can help break away from the endless cycle of oppressive State-sponsored institutional tactics. What kinds of political and cultural practices, actions, and organising locate temporary moments of a kind of ‘making visible’, systems of domination? What particular formations and forms of organising have changed in New York, Serbia, Berlin, and India that are addressing the entangled histories of the far right – both in its historical forms and new structures of fascism? What kind of organising is needed to problematise the institution of art, culture, education, and politics?

What does breaking away from operating within the dynamics of these systems look, and feel like? How do we move away from identitarian politics and present the potential for renewed thinking about our futures?

The intention must be to find new ways around collectivity and community. A vocabulary outside of its mass co-option of the language of resistance.

...Many of the answers lie in the histories of cultural production that privilege documentation of vulnerable histories, and have the potential of being erased, lost, and designated to the realm of marginal-centre binaries –  from participatory filmmaking including citizen cinema to radical publishing, exhibition-making, and autonomous collectives that refuse to be legible to state-sanctioned systems to even the simple act of making a reel to tell us a story or writing a statement as political prisoners.

https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/shame-on-you-all-indian-origin-microsoft-engineer-confronts-bill-gates-satya-nadella-over-ai-use-by-israeli-military-11743959570657.html  “50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered with Microsoft technology. How dare you. Shame on all of you for celebrating on their blood,” Agrawal shouted. She condemned Microsoft’s reported $133 million cloud and AI contract with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and accused the company of enabling genocide in Gaza. 

Resignation letter circulates internally
Shortly after the protest, Agrawal sent a company-wide email announcing her resignation, effective April 11. In the email, accessed by The Verge, tech news website, she said, “I cannot, in good conscience, be part of a company that participates in this violent injustice.”

She referenced reports that Microsoft Azure and AI technologies support Israel’s military operations and surveillance, adding that “our labor powers this genocide.”

Calling Microsoft a “digital weapons manufacturer,”

https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/microsoft-ai-ceos-remarks-interrupted-by-pro-palestinian-protester-11743817748192.html

 Hastily pulled down Organiser article on Christian properties triggers a political storm in Kerala https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/hastily-pulled-down-organiser-article-on-christian-properties-triggers-a-political-storm-in-kerala/article69416957.ece
The article suggested that the land owned by the Catholic Church in India far surpassed Waqf properties in the country. Kerala CM, Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan responded by stating that the article testified to the RSS’s impending move to wrest control of Church properties. 

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rahul-gandhi-land-under-catholic-churches-rss-organiser-article-waqf-bill-2704536-2025-04-05 Amid Waqf row, RSS report on land under Catholic churches gets Rahul Gandhi flak The article on the website of the Organiser, which has now been unpublished, claimed that Catholic institutions in India hold 7 crore hectares of land, making them the largest non-governmental landowner.