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FURTHER INFO ON NANOTECH ACTION IN LEEDS

anne bonney | 15.11.2004 14:27 | Bio-technology | Technology | World

update and links re: anti-nanotechnology protest in leeds

INFO ON PROTEST:
On Friday 12th there was an action against Nanotechnology/Convergence Technologies at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. A report was posted but was incomplete.
The protest took 3 main parts. Firstly, an information gathering exercise to gain further details of who is involved in what, for future actions. Secondly, the hall was visited and made extremely unplesant by a well-known substance for stinking out conferences: comfrey in water left to rot for a couple of months, and fish bait. visitors to the hall an hr after said people were holding their noses and not staying, and the smell was hideous. Leaflets were also given out. The third aspect was the seizing of the tannoy and a communique being read out. This coincided with a talk on nanotech which drowned it out, and was heard in every room through the museum. Leaflets were also scattered down. Two of these people were held by security until the police arrived, took down the name and address and date of birth that the two claimed were theirs, quick check to make sure there was no warrant on the names given, and then released.
The communique read:
Nanotechnology is the newest weapon against diversity, rebellion, difference, autonomy and freedom. The US military is, of course, the biggest investor as it tries to ensure total domination of all life on the planet. The British government has also invested £90 million in nanotechnology and most industries and universities* are developing interests in the field.

Genetic engineering was recognised as having massive social and ecological implications and this ensured worldwide resistance against it. Nanotechnology, which has the ability to transform all matter, has far more dramatic effects and needs drastic action to confront this new assault on diversity of life.

Nanotech, and its links to biotechnological, informational and cognitive sciences, provides the state with yet more tools with which to control all dissent and iron out all life into a homogeneous, manipulable mass. Be it advances in surveillance technologies, the ability to disable neural transmitters and break apart DNA strands by remote control, artificially create ‘workaholism’ in labourers, or ‘stamp out’ physical and mental difference, nanotechnology puts mind control, body control, social control and control of the natural world more firmly in the hands of the state, the corporations and the ruling elite.

Just as biotechnology was sold to us as a green technology that would feed the world, so nanotech is being heralded. Both instinct and reason tell us to take action against these new technologies before we lose our last liberties to them.

* These are easy targets

FURTHER INFO ON NANOTECH:
for those who, like many of us, have buried our heads in the sand about this new technology, but have decided it is time to learn and to act, the following information should assist:

 http://www.etcgroup.org - campaigning but non-radical group with info on nanotech
 http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_frontmatter.pdf - info from the "other side"
 http://www.leedsef.org.uk - earth first! website with an 8 page nanotech article somewhere on it!

Anne Bonney.

anne bonney

Comments

Hide the following 11 comments

Education is supposed to eradicate ignorance. It has obviously failed.

15.11.2004 20:24

Wow! You let off stink bombs! That really will advance the revolution, make friends, destroy the evil multi nationals, and give you something to talk about in the pub.
"
Nanotech, and its links to biotechnological, informational and cognitive sciences, provides the state with yet more tools with which to control all dissent and iron out all life into a homogeneous, manipulable mass. Be it advances in surveillance technologies, the ability to disable neural transmitters and break apart DNA strands by remote control, artificially create ‘workaholism’ in labourers, or ‘stamp out’ physical and mental difference, nanotechnology puts mind control, body control, social control and control of the natural world more firmly in the hands of the state, the corporations and the ruling elite."

I am sorry, but this is complete bollocks. Can you verify any of these statements.

Ah yes, and the resource:  http://www.leedsef.org.uk/atomtech.htm [I'm glad to see that your technical expertise extends all the way to not being able to post a link].

If this were a piece of GCSE coursework, it would be failed on two grounds: the writer obviously has no understanding of the underlying physical principles, and wild assertions made without any basisor reference.

I love the opening quote:

‘Capital desubstantialises by a process of bypassing: thus it bypasses the soil and produces food grown in a simple support system. It bypasses women, and babies are produced in vitro. It sidesteps living beings and produces chimerical life. It does away with matter so that it can produce a material reality out of a combination of more or less evanescent particles. Obviously this process is only beginning, but it is well within capital’s basic determination, which is toward autonomised mediation and reflection that is without any real roots’ – Jacques Camatte, Echoes of the Past, 1980.'

Obviously something given for you to read by a sociology lecturer.

Well, now, how much of the food you eat bypasses the soil? Give us an exmaple or two.

Babies produced in vitro. A technique used for those women who cannot concieve in any other way. Now go out into the streets and proclaim: 'Under socialism, everyone will be able to conceive! Babies for all!' Good rallying cry, isn't it?
But do tell me: what is uniquely 'capitalist' about it?

material reality from evanescent particles. Wonderful evocative phrase! What does it mean/ Perhaps he's refering to electricity and electronics - you know, that stuff which powers the word processor on which you write your essays.

'autonomised mediation and reflection that is without any real roots’
Now I do admit this one baffles me. Can you explain it to someone very stupid, like me, in simple words?

sceptic


we can't ignore nanotech

15.11.2004 23:52

Well done whoever you are for doing the Leeds nanotech action. This is one of the first (if not the first) anti-nanotech actions to happen anywhere in the world and definately won't be the last.

If you look at
1. the health/environmental risks surrounding the first generation of (already commercialised) nanotech products (so serious that even the Royal Society are concerned about it)
2. the nature and history of the major players in developing and commercialising new nanotechnologies (Fortune 500 companies, the military and big venture capital)
3. the scale of the investment involved (over $6 billion annually)
4. the seemingly sci-fi, but well funded, ambitions of some scientists/governments to realise the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive neuro-science

We should all be concerned about nanotech and at the very least disrupting nanotech industry trade shows.

Nanotech is an immensely powerful, world changing technology for the most part being pushed us by profit and power driven corporations and control obsessed states. A technology developed by the powerful for the powerful.

Nanotechnology is not something that we are going to be able to ignore.

nano geek!


You know,

16.11.2004 00:35

everything you have just said about nano technology could have been said about microelectronics twenty years ago. Ooh, scary. Computers ruling the world! Multimillion investment by wicked multinationals! The Pentagon !!

So what has microelectronics brought you? Mind control or Indymedia?

sceptic


skeptic

16.11.2004 02:07

Dear Skeptic,

why are you so aggressive/defensive/insulting? Will you have to reply to this with more scorn? why?

If you actually want to learn about the issue and make your mind up on the facts of the case, read the ETC Group report 'The Big Down' from the website already quoted.

If you want to take action of your own on something, get off your keyboard shortly afterwards.

Till then, go away.

reader


Aggressive and defensive?

16.11.2004 10:45

Love that.

Because the document [which I have read] takes a a few ideas and builds a pyramid of assertion on it whose validity is very doubtful.

Now, if people are concerned, then by all means let us debate it: that's the purpose of conferences. But if your sole reaction is to throw stink bombs at it, then that's not particularly intellectually challenging or rigorous.

sceptic


microelectronics...

17.11.2004 00:12


sceptic said:

"everything you have just said about nano technology could have been said about microelectronics twenty years ago. Ooh, scary. Computers ruling the world! Multimillion investment by wicked multinationals! The Pentagon !!
So what has microelectronics brought you? Mind control or Indymedia?"

real sceptics ask difficult questions..
I would hardly say that indymedia is the most outstanding acheivement of the microelectronics revolution. it weighs fairly light set against many other impacts of large scale embedded computing and the internet. For example how do we feel about:
1) Micro$oft
2) The overwhelming dominance of the Internet by the English language and its role in accelerating the erosion of other languages/cultures
3) the role of e-commerce/cyberspace in speeding up the movement of international capital
4) the ability to swiftly screen, sequence, patent and manipulate large genomic databases (eg of plants, microorganism, human cell lines etc)
5) Total information Awareness and similar info war concepts
6) faster identity profiling, digital recognition and other surveillance technologies

Theres plenty more - I think you'ld have to be a very naive and blinkered techno-utopian to think the awesome power of microelectronics has simply been for good.
so again for nanotech.. we need to examine the politics of technology more intelligently. more sceptically...

questiontechnology


Trying to stop this is masturbation

16.12.2004 23:30

Every time I drop in to Indymedia, I'm amazed by how stupid you people are.

You will not stop these technologies, any more than you stopped nuclear,
or biotech, or computers, or whatever. You may slow them down, but you
won't stop them. You may deter the academics. You may make the corporations
nervous, but they'll wait you out and try again, and eventually they'll
succeed. And if one of your little "actions" gets in the way of the
governments or the military, in any way that's really important to them,
they'll just shoot you. And the public will support them.

What you will do, by fighting this stuff all the way, is to make sure that,
when it gets developed, it'll they get developed somebody else's way. Because
you're not guiding anything, and you're not building anything. You're just
slowing the inevitable. Every time you fail to stop something, it goes in
your enemies' direction. You never do anything to move in *your* direction.
You're all about protest, all about putting on a show, never about producing.

Don't like technology being built to favor corporations, governments,
the rich, the military-industrial complex, or whoever? GET IN THERE
AND BUILD YOUR OWN FUCKING TECHNOLOGY. There's a tech underground
out there, subverting corporate and government ideas into systems to
empower the people. They could use some help. Unfortunately, what they
don't need is a bunch of idiots who are more interested in putting on
shows, making noise, clamoring about how they "speak for the downtrodden",
and making martyrs of themselves, than in making real changes.

Shut the fuck up and do something useful.

Wankers.

evil techno droid


Nano Response

19.12.2004 19:47

It seems to me that as a scientist working in the 'nano' field the campaigners against the nano events have made the classic mistake by misinterpreting what nano really stands for. Sure there are potential problems associated with these technologies and industry and I myself would like to have a clearer understanding of how some of these products could interact with the environment and the human body. If the protestors had concentrated on these issues I think they could have had the researchers over a barrel for the simple fact there is no conclusive evidence either way. I for one would welcome an open debate on some of these issues before we get settled into 30 years of industry and find that to our later detriment that these products are dangerous.

I think it important to understand that nano is NOT dangerous and is nothing more than a commitment to working at a particular length scale. There is a great if potential good that can and will come from the sciences working at this level, but what we should be concerned about is adequate testing of potentially harmful entities such as nanoparticles that may be released into the environment or human bodies.

We need more research and we need this now. There are simply not enough studies of toxicity to allay my fears...and increasingly it would seem those of others.

Nano Scientist


Destructive efforts are futile.

23.12.2004 16:00

I completely agree droid. The protestors were completely clueless, luddites and reactionaries appearing before there is even anything tangible to react to. Protests can only damage the benign commercial applications, not the dangerous military ones. This is world-changing technology that will make this a pivotal moment in history, and all the self-proclaimed guardians of freedom can do is throw stink bombs. In this case creative effort is vastly more leveraged than destructive effort (much like writing Linux was a far better way to attack Microsoft than throwing some eggs at the parking lot). These technologies are inevitable, and the way to make them positive it to make sure the defensive and liberating tools are developed and distributed ahead of the negative ones. Personally I've gone a step further and work for the Singularity Institute ( http://www.singinst.org).

Michael Wilson


Open Source nanotech

27.12.2004 15:53

yeah, i'd go along with that, the only way to make the emerging nanotech industry accountable is to make participants adopt the tried and trusted open-source development model. Strangely enough they were arguing this in the techno-utopia-leftist lists 5 years ago. Where ill-informed, undereducated, science-phobic protest was also predicted a matter of fact.

anarchonano


Top result for nanotech leeds

03.09.2007 12:39

I was searching for a PhD position at leeds, to see what they had to offer, instead the first hit is this page. I agree with nearly all of the comments so far, this protest was aproached with little or no understanding of nanotechnology.

It seems to me that protests against nanotechnology, nuclear and biotechnologies have a running theme; find a negative application or 2 and decide that the whole subject should be written off.

Why are these protesters not sabotaging chemistry departments, if it was not for chemistry we wouldn't have BOMBS! Why not campaign to BAN milling machines and drills because they are used to make GUNS! Oh hold on, that's because there are other uses for those things...

How many researchers attended the protest? or perhaps a better question; how many of the protesters have ever attended a nanotechnology conference?

potential leeds nanotech PhD student
mail e-mail: petjamvine@hotmail.com


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