This post is also available in: Català (Catalan) Español (Spanish)
By decision of the working team and the assembly of Tronc femProcomuns we adhere to the General Strike for Palestine next Friday 27th September 2024. We do it to demonstrate against the genocide that is being perpetrated, against the Catalan and Spanish links with the war industry and also against the drift of digital technologies as technologies at the service of this. During the day, the work team will be doing communication tasks or attending to minimum services if there are serious incidents, but will not do any public activity other than that related to the strike. As on other occasions, social security will be notified that we are on strike and the cooperative will subsequently compensate workers for the reduction in pay.
War and genocide
It has been almost a year since the government of the state of Israel began a war operation that is leading to the genocide of the population of the Gaza Strip, the destruction of homes, services and infrastructure, of everything that sustains life. The war operations are added to the impact of the multiple military blockade as stated in the manifesto “For human rights and peace, to Palestine and everywhere!” promoted by several Catalan cooperatives to which we have adhered:
“Due to the blockade of water, food, electricity and medicine by the state of Israel, the Gaza Strip is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe that is only getting worse. Israel’s attacks in recent months have affected and destroyed basic services, supplies and infrastructure, rapidly wiping out much of the territory, causing displacement and the onset of an unprecedented food crisis”. +
Complicity of governments
The state of Israel alone could not do this genocide, it is not only the lack of action, it is also the constant supply of arms and business with the Israeli war industry that sustains it. As the strike call of the CGT union says, both the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Spanish government are participating and can take action to stop it. As the Manifesto denounces: “Stop the arms trade with Israel”, the Spanish state has sold arms to Israel to the value of 139 million euros since 2000 and these arms are being used in Gaza.
Technology for war
The state of Israel and part of its technology industry have developed a war industry that is tested in real combat situations. Increasingly, digital technologies are being used to facilitate genocide and these technologies are being exported to other states. The Spanish state is also a buyer of Israeli military technologies. As the Tecnosandías manifesto denounces, the use of extractive and colonial digital technologies employs computational logic for the execution of ethnic cleansing.
“The complicity of the big tech companies – Amazon, Meta and Google among them – pre-designs and provides the infrastructure and services that facilitate these operations. Live streaming by the victims themselves takes place in conditions of high dependence on capitalist content production platforms. Deletion and censorship on social media is only the most immediate tangible layer of an increase of the dominant imperialist, racist and Islamophobic world order. However, we write this statement in solidarity with all those individuals and collectives who opt for the tactical use of these platforms as spaces of convocation, communication and action; and we simultaneously express our revulsion at the way this fragility is being used by the murderous military-commercial complex of Israel and its allies.
The application of artificial intelligence in military operations to select targets in Gaza raises not only a political urgency, but also serious ethical and moral questions as an algorithm determines bombing targets without human oversight. A dangerous drift towards the dehumanisation of the conflict is becoming evident, which may increase people’s deaths exponentially. Moreover, the deployment of AI in this genocide involves the establishment of a very violent epistemic system that is turning the mass murder of civilians into a “rational” logic.
In parallel, the intensive use of surveillance technologies — including facial recognition — to sustain a system of apartheid and control over Palestine is unacceptable. These practices violate fundamental rights such as privacy or freedom of movement and attack human dignity”. +
As the manifesto says, to which we agreed to adhere, as people who work with technology we are aware that it is not neutral and that it is shaped by the purpose to which it is applied. “We understand technology as a key part of politics and strongly reject its instrumentalization to increase oppression and violence”. We are committed to technologies at the service of people, solidarity, peace, social autonomy and interdependence in the framework of an eco-social transition.
Call for Strike Strike adherence Join