Rapists.

           I have often visited Greece and love Athens, having stayed there for months at a time, though I see those who live there, on the whole, as very friendly and welcoming, but patriarchy is a problem. I remember asking a very friendly elderly gent who lived near Athens if he had any family, his answer was "Yes, three --- and a daughter".
       The following report is welcome news as the women of that patch of land known as Greece are now standing up and claiming their right to equality. 

The following From Enough is Enough: 

        It was in response to an incident in which a woman hired to clean a house was imprisoned and repeatedly sexually assaulted by her “employer.” The neighbors called the police but the police declined to intervene. They are always ready to raid a squat or attack people in a public square, but cringe away from breaching the door of a middle-class home, so the rapist was able to escape and remains at large.
       This horror also unfolded in the shadow of an ongoing headline-grabbing case in which a “respectable” Greek man, an airline pilot, murdered his (much younger) wife and then said she was killed by immigrants, a calculated racist ploy which Greek police not only agreed with, blaming “hardened immigrant criminals” on national TV, but acted on by kidnapping an undocumented guy from the country of Georgia and beating him for days in an effort to make him confess.
      It seems almost too obvious to state, but the above is an example of the intersectional ways gender is interlocked with class, race and nationalism, as well as the key role the police play in maintaining these brutal hierarchies.
       As with so many incidents of gendered violence, fatal or otherwise, the perpetrator was that most deadly thing: “the man of the house.” Graffiti spotted in the neighborhood summed him up: “Good kid. Pilot. Orthodox Christian. Femicide.”
        The police responded to the revelation of the husband’s guilt by going back on TV and giving other men who might want to kill their wives advice on how they could get away with it better than he did. This is not a joke or hyperbole.
       While mainstream news coverage of both these cases focused on what might be called a “carceral” angle — why weren’t these men ARRESTED and LOCKED UP? — the women of Athens have gathered in tremendous numbers multiple nights in a row to express not only their outrage but more direct, systemic solutions to the campaign of violence waged daily against women.
       The march on Tuesday night began with speakers and chants. Prior actions had already heavily coated the surrounding blocks with militant feminist graffiti in both Greek and English. Once the march got moving, the amount of graffiti became so intense that artists towards the back of the march had trouble finding any wall space! There were lots of feminist, anarcha-feminist, anti-police and queer slogans and symbols. A few that I noticed were DEAD MEN DON’T RAPE, KILL RAPISTS, ABORT PATRIARCHY, ABORT CAPITALISM, THE POLICE DON’T KEEP ME SAFE – MY FRIENDS DO, and the immortal line INSTEAD OF “I LOVE YOU,” SAY “FUCK THE POLICE.”
      I was also moved by the graffiti reading LET’S ALL BECOME INSURGENTS, ROBBERS, SABOTEURS.
      There were countless stickers and flyers as well as ferocious chants (in Greek). Following are translations of some of these superb chants:

       “Patriarchy rapes and kills, on the street and at home. We will burn the state and patriarchy.”
         “Glorious Greek man, on your grave we’ll hold the biggest festival.”
        “The rapist will not come from the East, he will come from Ekali and Koponi.” (Greek neighborhoods)

“This, this, this is right: kicks with 12cm heels to smarten you up.”
“Die, Greece, so we can live. To hell with the family! To hell with the homeland!”
“Two meters, two meters underground, there is a home for every rapist.”
“Gay, trans, lesbians, priestesses of disgrace. We are proudly the shame of the nation.”
“In the streets, in the squares, in all the neighborhoods: immigrant women, you are not alone!”

        MAT, the riot police, nipped at the heels of the march, but there were no direct clashes, though a few participants practiced the quintessentially Greek multitask of jogging away from police while hand-rolling a cigarette.

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Accepted Violence.

          Why do we need a police force, and if we have one how do you train them? It seems that certain police forces in America use quotes from Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf, trains recruits to kill without emotion, and to see killing as the probable outcome of their interaction with the public. Of course ever political alive person is fully aware of why we have a police force, it's there to protect the managers of the system and their wealth, power and privileges. It is the first line of defence should the ordinary people get pissed off with the gross inequality and try to do something about eliminating that inequality. When you create a state police force, you eliminate any possibility of democracy, democracy and police authority are totally incompatible.

       The following is a quote from an interesting article by World Socialist Web Site:

 

      Killing and a well-known police trainer. Grossman’s “teachings” have been used by the US military to train recruits to kill without thinking.
       Grossman has argued, without evidence, that policing is more dangerous than in previous decades and therefore cops must be prepared to use more, not less, force. During a PBS Frontline interview in 2004 Grossman argued that he was not conditioning soldiers and police to kill without hesitation, but to embrace the responsibility of killing stating: “Killing is not the goal, but we all understand that killing is the likely outcome.”
       He, along with his business partner, Jim Glennon, a Chicago Police officer for 21 years, have been elevated to bring the training and “lethality” they learned in the military to the “homeland” to be used against the domestic working class.
       It is notable that Hall’s training curriculum was used by the KSP during the administration of former Democratic governor Steve Beshear, and was only brought to light years later upon an open records request. There is no doubt that similar curriculums are currently in use by police agencies throughout the country.
     While the Democratic party occasionally pays lip service to the idea of “reforming” the police, the fact is the police are the frontline troops of the bourgeoisie, given immense power and virtual legal immunity to beat, assault and kill workers and youth. It was the Obama/Biden administration that oversaw the militarized crackdown in Ferguson, Missouri and of Native American and other protesters during the Standing Rock demonstrations in North Dakota. They also oversaw the transfer of 460,000 pieces of military equipment to local police departments under the 1033 program.

       The defeat of fascism and the elimination of police violence is bound up with the abolition of capitalism. Those who are interested in joining this struggle must break from the Democratic Party, and all their pseudo-left hangers-on,

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The "Untouchables".

          Simple questions for today's society, who polices the police? How do you get redress against police "misdemeanors"?

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Police Protesting On The Streets!!!

 The friendly face in your neighbourhood.

This from Bordered By Silence:
"Without translation, we would live in provinces bordered by silence"

         A first-hand account of an unpermitted march by the cops in Paris
Translators intro: This article really wants to insist on the actions of the police being illegal and on the problem being “police impunity”, not policing itself. But in spite of these weaknesses, it’s still worth reading and discussing. Although this kind of discourse is annoying, here the talk of legality can be understood a bit differently, because the police aren’t just any group of people. Of course, the police break the law all the time — the law is a weapon in their hands, not something that binds them, and as anarchists we shouldn’t uphold the myth of the just (or the accountable) cop. But it is worth noticing when a mass of police feel that they can openly break the law, disobeying the minister of the interior, to march armed on government buildings at night.

       The police marches are, most immediately, a response to a molotov attack against some cops who were guarding a surveillance camera that had been getting destroyed. The police started rallying in front of the hospital where one of the injured cops was being treated and then leaving from there on marches. Similar rallies by the police outside of their union structure are being held in most big French cities
 Original text: paris-luttes.info

      For the past four days, the police have been illegally protesting in the streets of Paris each night. On Wednesday (October 19, 2016), their meet-up was set for 9:30pm in Republic Square. Some friends decided to go down and show their opposition to the gathering. First off, we were very few, at most fifty, and not nearly enough to confront the growing crowd of police, from 200 to a thousand. Here’s the story of a strange night caught between the state of emergency and the scent of mutiny.
      The atmosphere was strange, there in Republic Square, where on one side a rally of Colombians was wrapping up, while on another a Jewish celebration was being held, and where a skatepark has sprung up in the same place where the General Assemblies for Nuit Debout were held this spring.
      All the police cars that we watched arrive weren’t there to monitor the march, but rather to take part. Then the mobile gendarmerie (1) got their riot gear out and made several attempts to encircle anyone who looked like a counter-protester.
     A strange dance unfolded, there in Republic Square, very silent, lulling us into a daze. The police who were present mostly seemed to be from the BAC (2), with their caps, lanyards, masks, and police armbands clearly visible. These rallies give us cold shivers, and so far no cop has been sanctioned, even though these rallies are forbidden and the profession isn’t allowed to demonstrate while on duty. Tonight, there are both on and off duty cops present.
      In answer to the question, “Just what are you asking for?”, a group of police told me, “For the 35 hour work week. We’re temps at McDonalds and they’re making us put in 38 hours.” Following this answer, as sincere as Cahuzac (3) caught with his hand in the cookie jar, they turned away from me.

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