Showing posts with label Lisbon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lisbon. Show all posts

Sunday 30 June 2013

Democracy And Prison Without Trial.



       We are all aware that the state makes rules to defend itself, and punishes those who break those rules, but we also know that it has no problem with breaking those rules when ever it suits the state apparatus. On June 29 in Athens more that 6,000 people took to the streets in solidarity with Kostas Sakkas, who has been on hunger strike since June 4. Kostas is an anarchist who has been in prison for two and half years without trial, when the Greek state says that 18 months is the legal limit anyone can be held without trial. There has been demonstrations in solidarity with Kostas in cities across the world. In Lisbon on June 27 over 400 posters appeared and hundreds of fliers thrown around and pasted on walls in support of Kostas, during a demonstration in support of a call for a general strike in Portugal.
        Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainsteam media, will always trumpet such cases when they are taking place in some far away country that Western capitalism doesn't like, but are silent on this case which is right here in Europe. How can there be justice for the people when one party makes up the rules as it goes along, then breaks them at will.
       State repression manifests itself in many ways from locking people up without trial, to dictating your standard of living. It can "legally" destroy the quality of your education system and empoverish your health service, while protecting the wealth and power of the few, and call it democracy. If we the people want freedom, one thing that stands in our way is the state. It represses it own people and then marches them off to some war, where the ordinary people are meant to start killing ordinary people of some other country, with the spoils of war going to that pampered parasitical few who hold the levers of power in the "victorious" state.
        Across the world there are many Kostas Sakkas languishing in state prisons and their only crime is that they will not be repressed by the brutal state. So across the world, let us call for the release of all Kostas Sakkas's and an end to the state.

PATRIOTISM.

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ‘tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.
Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.


No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.
No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.