Migrants.

         The plight of migrants so often is well under the radar of the mainstream media, and sadly of the public. This lack of information does not mean that all is well and quiet. The hell that countless thousands of migrants face on a daily basis is a crime against humanity, their numbers are vast, their treatment is deplorable. It so often is a life of harassment, fear, deprivation, brutality and isolation from friends and family. In most cases they are fleeing repression, war, deprivation and death, their journey is fraught with incredible hardship and danger and requires tremendous courage. On arrival at "civilised" and democratic Europe, their misery and danger so often continues at the dictate of the various state's apparatus, shunted from concentration camps to special pre-removal detention centres, brutalised and permanently damaged, continually struggle for their right to be treated as human beings.

      No human is illegal, borders are power mongers weapons of control, this planet has one human race, we are all brothers and sisters. 

(CPR) Pre-removal detention centres. 

This from Act For Freedom Now: 

 

         Tonight 14/8/20, some prisoners are telling us that there were fires following the beating of prisoners in the red area. They tell us that there is fire every night in the CPR of Gradisca. Every night, after a day of heavy abuse, small revolts break out in the Gradisca CPR. However today the repression seems to have been even more violent and the fire a little bigger: in the attached video you can see a boy getting out of a cell and being targeted by two cops one after the other; after he goes back into the cell he remains there bleeding and asking for his rucksack.
          We are also sharing the pictures of another prisoner standing on the floor foaming at the mouth. To protect his identity we won’t include the videos that the pictures were taken from, but this person seems in need of urgent help. We have no idea how he is or where he is now! Someone do something if they can!
We think cell phones may have been confiscated from some prisoners. At 2 the situation appeared more calm but by midnight it was still not over. Wires were being cut with a radial and firemen went into some of the cells. Yet again the local media spread a partial version of events, showing a carabiniere as victim and the prisoners as torturers.
           Without the courage of the prisoners who risk their safety to get news to the outside, we would never know the daily atrocities that go on in the concentration camps and the history of CPRs would be written by the guards alone.
Even when no one dies the CPRs are places of death and oppression, but in Gradisca two people have died already. Today a month has passed since the death of Orgest Turia. Violence is a constant in CPRs, continuous abuse adds to unfair treatment and the fear of being deported (according to what we have been told, food is given out under the bars in the CPR of Gradisca. People are held in cages all day long, changes of clothes and sheets are not given, medical care is poor and is not easy to obtain, the food causes intestinal problems and much more).
It seems that in recent days some people who’d just arrived at Lampedusa were taken to the CPR directly.
CPRs are deadly concentration camps. May the walls of all CPRs fall down and all the prisoners be free!
View video HERE:

        Or HERE: 

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

Resistance.

      The full blown war being waged by the Greek state against any autonomous spaces, any self organising by the ordinary people, any solidarity shown to migrants, has been running for a year now. What this has meant is that the state uniformed thugs and accomplices heaping torment and anguish as well as savage brutality on all who struggle for that freedom and solidarity that is nurtured in these autonomous spaces, self organising groups, and migrant solidarity and support groups. It is all the state can offer to those who seek freedom to organise their own lives, who seek solidarity and co-operation between all peoples. How long will we let these state thugs, puppets of the billionaire corporate beast, chain our lives to their greedy profit drive system of exploitation? Resistance and solidarity are the keys to freedoms door.

   The following on Greece from Act For Freedom Now:

  10, 100, thousands of squats

One year of resistance against state terrorism
     Today 26.8.20 marks one year since the armed hooded men of Chrysochoidis invaded the refugee squat of Spyrou Trikoupi 17 and the neighboring Transito squat. It was early in the morning when they forcibly pulled out families with young children from their beds–people who after much hardship and suffering had found a place to grow roots again in these buildings. They took them from their home and distributed them in miserable camps to live in the dirt and with indifference in canvas tents. Since then, a barrage of state terrorist attacks on refugee and political squats has led to evacuations, snatching of people, beatings, and arrests.
     The refugee squats have functioned for many years as unprecedented experiments of practical anti-racism and anti-fascism, self-organization, and solidarity. These spaces have given thousands of people the opportunity to regain their stolen autonomy and the right to define their own lives away from human guards and charity contractors. And almost all of them were evacuated.Families with babies, single women, LGBTQI+ people, the sick and disabled, survivors of torture were all brutally detached from their daily lives and relationships and were trapped in nothing but state mercilessness.
Political squats that formed cells of social action in neighborhoods, challenging the prevailing ideas of tourism, private property, and commercialization, which turned cities into concrete class pyramids of solitary depravity and social rivalry, were also evacuated. Those who defended these squats faced harsh repression. But this also extended to simple neighbors, as it happened in Koukaki.Bricks were placed where there were open doors.Where once voices, songs, and laughter were heard, only silence echoes now.Where life spread its wings, they left only the dust of desolation.The targeting of squats through the monstrous lies of the media is an integral purpose of the state, which wants to crush any spatial, social, and ideological sphere, that shows and proves that there is another way to live, away from gender, class, ethnicity, and religious hierarchies. That our passage through the world deserves to be more than constant anxiety of survival and a lesson in obedience, that we can throw the weights of artificial suspicion to express, to create, to dream collectively. At the same time, it is an integral part of the most disgusting but also the purest face of power, of raw authoritarianism.
        The plan for mass evacuations of squats coincides with the militarization of entire areas, with the expansion of the supervisory-repressive mechanism, and the police barbarity it inflicts on the bodies of fighters.In the past year, at Notara 26 the housing squat for refugees and migrants, we mourned for every space of struggle that fell into the hands of the enemy. We mourned for every human who lost hope, for every hope for a better life that was tarnished under police boots. We felt anger for those injured with opened heads, the sad looks in the police buses and cages, the locked doors. We were moved by every act of resistance and an attempt to reclaim stolen land. We know very well, however, that no idea, no movement is evacuated. We ourselves accept daily the increasing pressure of the government with threats of evacuation, insulting comments against residents and people of solidarity, thrashings, attempts of invasion, constant harassment, and even Nazi slogans we have witnessed by the sad entourage of the Police shouting outside the squat.A year later we are still here, stronger, more united, more determined than ever with an immense wave of solidarity embracing us, forming a circle of care around us.
We are part of a multifaceted movement that is “not afraid of ruins” because it knows how to rebuild, who finds crevices to escape from all the jail cells, who will always haunt the empty houses and the nightmares of the torturers.The liveliest firework in the thickest darkness!
source

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

The Empire Game.

       At the moment every avenue in the mainstream media is shouting VE. This is always portrayed as the gallant British fighting to destroy fascism, when in fact it was the British empire trying to stop the rising German empire, which had been muzzled since the end of WW1 and was now reasserting itself. The British empire couldn't tolerate this threat to its power, and resources. Soon all the other power mongers took sides and engulfed the world in a monumental orgy of slaughter, for power, markets and resources.
 

    Yes I know about the concentration camps, the mass killings and the slave labour by the German establishment. I also know about the British empire's concentration camps in South Africa, its mass slaughter, cruelty and brutality in India, and its fencing in of villages and savagery in Malaya, and the unimaginable savagery of the British in Kenya, and, and, and---. That's what empires do, and for centuries, the British empire was a pass-master at that brutal game.

     We should all know by now, that states don't wage war to save people, to free people from what every despotic regime it encounters. They do it for power, markets and resources, people are the cannon fodder to feed their greed driven orgy. WW2 was no different nor was the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria imperialist ventures. Their so called saving the people from despots has lead to millions fleeing their homes, millions maimed and dead countries in turmoil, poverty and deprivation for the "freed people".

Enjoy:

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

Humans As Things.

 

      Day and daily an army of individuals, families, groups, including children take the decision to try and get out of a raging war area, leave behind their home, possessions, friends and other family members and make the treacherous journey to Europe in hope of a better and safer life. In most cases the death and destruction they are fleeing is a direct result of American and their side-kicks the EU's foreign policy. Many lose their lives in that arduous and treacherous journey, and those who make it to Europe end up being treated worse than cattle, and with less rights than animals. This is the reality migrants are faced with as they enter, so called , civilised Europe. As the article states, "--but the outcry is absent--", why?

     What is happening on the Greek islands is being played out at other locations across Europe
      I am posting this article in full as I believe it should be widely read and spread far and wide.

This from Anarchists Worldwide:

       Just one month has passed in the new year and it already casts a grim shadow over the months yet to come. Blow after blow, new atrocities occur, and the government issues one fascist decision after another. Public outcry is absent.
      Still, almost every day people set out on the dangerous journey across the straits between Turkey and Europe. Forced by a system that criminalizes and negatively stigmatizes migration, people unsafely have to board boats and leave everything behind, in the hope of a better, normal life – and for the EU (and within it the Greek government) no effort seems too big or too expensive to crush said people, no matter the cost.
     The numerous shipwrecks in this month alone shows yet again how dangerous the crossing is. The Turkish coast guard rammed a rubber dinghy, 4 people drowned, one person went missing – and the excuse of missing safety precautions on board is accepted without comment. A fiber boat broke, 11 people died, of whom 8 were children – but the outcry is absent.
     Driven in desperation by a dehumanizing and exclusionary system, a man finds himself during the first days of January in prison. He is locked away in solitary confinement, out of sight. He is a man with known psychological problems and he is left alone. Nobody will take responsibility for him. Death appears to him as the only way out of this hell.
       In response to this, approximately 150 people took to the streets to protest against Moria Camp and the conditions in its prison. In a public statement (in several languages), the violent methods, which are de facto torture, were criticized, and the release of all prisoners demanded, as well as the closure of Moria camp and freedom of movement for all.
        Towards the end of the month around 300 women protested in the streets of Mytilene with slogans such as “we want to be free, we want to be human”. They criticized the horrible living conditions in Moria camp and the ongoing violence. Meanwhile, another hundred women were prevented from participating in the protest and were blocked at the streets entering Mytilene. More than ten non-refugee women that attended the demonstration were removed and taken to the police station. The police were of the opinion that it was they who organized the rally, based on no evidence and only prejudice, the racial prejudice that the refugee community were unable to organise the demonstration themselves, and that it must have been done for them.
Women have to live under constant fear of assaults and rape. Medical help for pregnant women is barely existent. General medical support is scarce. Children grow up in a hostile environment. They are denied their childhood. But the outcry is absent.
      Over 20,000 people are currently stuck in and around Moria camp, having to call it their home. Basic needs are not even close to being met. The ideal environment for violence has resulted in several attacks. Already more than 10 people have been injured and hospitalized since the start of the year. Among those, two men were killed. Some no longer dare to stay in the camp and see themselves forced to endure the cold winter nights in public places. But the outcry is absent.
       On January 22nd, with the slogan: “we want our islands back!”, thousands of Greek civilians went on strike and protested the government’s refugee policy. The general strike was supported by the broad public, and a poster with their inflammatory demands could be seen in countless shops and stores of Mytilene, resulting in the largest protest in the history of Lesvos. Thus, domestic politics evaporates, and the belief that those who have newly arrived are to blame for the old, structural problems of the country spreads.
         This is a perfect example of the recently formed government confirming its desire to show hardness and “strength” by implementing xenophobic policy. Championing the ideal of “out of sight, out of mind”, the first closed camp is already being built on the island of Samos, afar from any civilization. Men, women and children are to be imprisoned there on a general basis, their only “crime”: they came to Europe. They shall be imprisoned for 25 days. Within this time, it is supposed to be decided who is allowed to stay and who will be deported. The new law, however, provides for numerous possibilities to extend detention – up to 18 months if the asylum application is rejected. In addition to this, the time limits for appeals has been shortened, and any appeal must be submitted by a lawyer. This gives rise to the fear that under these circumstances many will not find a representative in time to appeal against a negative verdict.
          But the government cannot wait for the completion of the closed camps to achieve their goal. Thus, on the last weekend of January, 55 people, most of them families, were locked up in a wing of the prison on Kos island. EU law ubiquitously requires a case-by-case assessment of whether there is a reason for imprisonment, and the Greek government flagrantly shows a clear disregard for such legal principle. If even legal principles are so publicly ignored, how are we to believe that any moral or ethical principles, such as a basic human right such as migration, will ever be followed?
       Help and support will never be close at hand. The dehumanization continues. Imprisonment of the innocent, even children, is legitimized by our xenophobic system. But the outcry is absent.
        The closed camps are intended to accelerate and intensify deportations. By the end of 2020, the government wants to deport 10,000 refugees to Turkey – five times greater than the total number of deportations since the EU-Turkey deal was made. So far, in accordance with former practice, many deportations have been prevented (or at least delayed) with the argument that the horrific conditions in Turkey classify a return as unsafe. However, the Greek government has installed a new judiciary for decisions in regards to deportation, and hopes they will decide differently. But the outcry is absent.
      The European Union continues to fully support and implement the entire system. They don’t only demand more “effective (frequent)” deportation but also demand the doubling of EASO (European Asylum Support Office) staff officials to carry out the heinous act. It is not the only staff increase. The cruel, so-called “defenses” continue. The government announced to have 1200 more border police officers in the coming months. Already 400 jobs are advertised for the borders at the river Evros, and 800 are to be added on the Aegean islands.
Now they also want to install a floating dam system on the water. How exactly this is supposed to keep boats away is unclear to everyone. Considering that Lesvos is roughly 70km long, the 2.7km long barrier with blinking lights does not invoke an effective approach to the “issue”. The half a million-Euro project seems even more senseless when one takes in to account that people who are stopped by the barrier have already reached Greek territorial waters, and would therefore have to be rescued and taken to Greek soil under maritime law. But the outcry is absent.
      As well as this, Stage 2 was closed on the 31st January. Stage 2 was the short-term transit camp to ensure people who land on the northern coast can access safety and receive medical aid and shelter. Over half of the total arrivals on Lesvos are on the northern shore. With closing Stage 2, people arriving will be left waiting for hours on beaches, by the side of the road, or in remote rocky areas, with no access to immediate shelter, protection or medical aid; some may even attempt to walk for hours to the south. But the outcry is absent.
      Irony screams out, with all of the events aforementioned taking place in the same month in which the liberation of Auschwitz was remembered during the 75th anniversary of it’s closure, with politicians from left to right wing parties proclaiming: “never forgive, never forget!”. But they do forget. They forget all people who are not wanted in Europe because of their country of origin. They forget the tens of thousands of people who lost their lives because of the current EU policy. They forget the children who have experienced nothing else in their whole life than war, conflict zones and flight, and now are forced to live in hostile environments which provoke child suicide attempts. They forget all the young people who are condemned to do nothing, full of potential – potential Europe desperately needs, but apparently would be provided by the “wrong” people. They forget humanity in view of their own political and economic interests. They forget that fascism is in our midst and again the majority is not only watching but willfully ignoring. Thus, new atrocities take place over and over– but, once again, the outcry is absent. Deafeningly, forever absent.

United we stay- divided we fall.
No borders
Solidarity will win

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

Borders Mean Deaths.

 

        Everybody by now should be aware that migrants are the scapegoats of the world, a group of individuals and families that are stripped of all human rights and herded like cattle. All this to uphold the states demand for those imaginary lines on the map, borders. Quite often the worst cases of migrants mistreatment seldom reach our mainstream media, as the media doesn't want to upset their various partners, their particular state.

 An Afghan woman outside her "home" on Lesbos.

        One hell-hole where migrants are herded is the island of Lesbos, on this small beautiful spot is one of the many "refugee" camps, proper name would be concentration camps. In this camp built to poorly house 3,000 migrants are crammed 12,000 migrants, mainly those fleeing Afghanistan's many brutal dangers. Such conditions foster psychological and physical health problems fueled by desperation.

      In the early hours of Sunday morning in an act of desperation to try to further there demands to be transferred to better conditions on the mainland, migrants lit a fire in an olive grove outside the camp and one inside the camp and struggles with the police ensued. The result is one person dead, burnt to death, and later it was confirmed that a mother and child had died. 

       No matter how this is written up, the truth is that these deaths can be firmly laid at the feet of those who deem it is alright to cram 12,000 desperate fleeing people into a space not fit for 3,000. 12,000 migrants is the wrong term, it is 12,000 human beings, who for no reason of their own are relabeled stripped of all human rights and treated worse than wild animals. 

      Despite the plight of migrants when they reach Europe, conditions are such that thousands still try to flee their homeland because of destruction, death and abject deprivation, usually brought about by Western foreign policy. According to the Greek coastguard, on Sunday, a baby and a toddler were among seven people who died when a boat carrying migrants and refugees sank in the eastern Aegean Sea. Such desperation not only deserves, but demands compassion and support. However the state's insistence on borders will only prolong this human tragedy.

A human cry for help.

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

Those Sub-Human Beings, Migrants!!

         Most countries propaganda wing paint their particular plot on the planet as a wonderful place to live. However their state mentality of borders, those imaginary lines drawn on the planet's surface by power-mongers, means that they create a new class of beings. They are called migrants, and somehow this group are deemed to have no human rights, to be suspect of all manner of crimes, to be undesirables and therefore can be herded like cattle and enclosed in over crowded concentration camps, in appalling conditions, men, women, children, aged and infirm, it matters not, they are migrants and the state so deems them to be "different".
        Ask people what Australia is like, and in most cases you will get a glowing report of a vast land with lots of undeveloped areas, and a great place to live. Beaches, cities and of course the outback. Few will mention concentration camps, but like all other states, concentration camps are part and parcel of the Australian state's make up.

        From Amnesty International:

        From the the BBC: 

       From The Post Magazine:

        
          The following is a book review from Revolutionary Feminism In Action, The Freedom Socialist Party:

      A hush falls over the thousands-strong crowd at 2019 Melbourne’s Walk for Justice for Refugees. Behrouz Boochani is giving the keynote speech by phone link from Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where he’s been illegally imprisoned for six years. An award-winning Kurdish journalist who refuses to be muzzled, Boochani is now a household name in Australia. He draws large audiences wherever he speaks and his writing is widely published.
        Faced with imprisonment in Iran for his journalism and advocacy of Kurdish rights, he fled for his life in 2012. Having made it to Indonesia, he boarded a boat to Australia where he hoped to start a new life. Although Boochani meets all the criteria for refugee status, according to the UN Convention on Refugees, Australia has locked him up indefinitely, with more than a thousand others, on Pacific island hell-holes.
        No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison is Boochani’s first book. He wrote it in defiance of the Australian government, which goes to great lengths to silence refugee voices — and fails. The impact of this powerful exposé is unstoppable. Boochani was awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. His book is now a best seller in Australia and gaining international attention.
        How this work was written is extraordinary — it was crafted as thousands of individual text messages! Boochani did not dare commit his ideas to paper lest they be seized in one of the regular prison searches. No Friend is an intense collaboration between the author and his translator, Omid Tofighian. The depth of their partnership is revealed in the translator’s introduction and afterword. Boochani wrote in Farsi, the language of his oppressors. Tofighian then translated the Farsi into English, the language of Boochani’s jailers and torturers.
       Refugee reality. In the opening four chapters, Boochani narrates every detail of the dangerous journey from Indonesia. Each passenger, desperate for a new life, is acutely aware of boats that have sunk and he captures the fear on their faces. The journey is a mixture of anxiety, sheer terror, discomfort, hunger and exposure to the elements and rough seas.
        After a brief detention on Christmas Island, Boochani and hundreds of others are exiled to Manus. And then begin the days, weeks, months and years waiting without news regarding their status which fuels periodic rumors throughout the prison. The despair, boredom, humiliation, hunger, thirst, pain, toothache, heat, humidity, filthy conditions, insomnia, and psychological pressure — all combine as tools of torture. But there’s also the larger-than-life personalities, the hope, resilience, the sharing of cultures, friendships and solidarity.
        Boochani describes the jail’s pecking order. At the bottom are the incarcerated refugees; the Papuans who work in the center are only slightly higher than the prisoners. He calls them Papus. They wear different colored uniforms and must follow orders from Australian officials without question. The Papus are paid a mere fraction of what the Australians get. At any opportunity, says Boochani, they will display some kindness and empathy. He explains, “The reason I don’t really see the Papu as a real officer and consider him as just a kind of extra person is because Papus are basically stripped of any kind of autonomy of power in the prison. They are only there because the system is obliged to accept them as part of its agreement.”
       The book’s characters are composites of Boochani’s fellow prisoners: Mani with the bowed leg, the irascible Iranian, the father of the months-old child, the young Rohingya boy, the comedian, the insomniac, the hero, the man with the thick moustache, and many others. Just a handful of refugees are named — those who have tragically died in custody. Their stories are woven throughout the text. Twelve have died, seven of them in Manus prison.
       Reinforcing resistance. This unique book is a beautiful work of art combining narrative and poetry. Woven throughout the lyrical text is Boochani’s sharp political analysis. He characterizes Manus as a “kyriarchal system,” that is, one built on multiple types of discrimination (e.g. sexism, racism, ethno and caste superiority, colonialism etc.) based on domination, submission and oppression. He calls it Australia’s border industrial complex. The government pays corporate profiteers millions to run its offshore prisons.In essence, Boochani spotlights Australia’s punishing imperialist role in the Pacific.
        The book reaches its climax during the two nights of prison riots in February 2014:
       Violence expressed through the chanting of pithy slogans/ Violence, rechannelled in questions by prisoners gnashing their teeth in rage and indignation/

What is my crime?/
Why must I be in prison?/
And other questions more like demands/

         The power was cut, the prison stormed, hundreds beaten, and Boochani’s best friend, Reza Berati, was murdered. No prison authorities involved have been called to account.
       The voice of global refugees. Those marooned indefinitely in Manus are refugees escaping homeland persecution, resistance fighters through sheer survival. They are Rhohingya fleeing Myanmar government atrocities, Tamils persecuted in Sri Lanka, and peoples from all parts of the ravaged Middle East, many of them Kurds. Boochani reflects on the home he fled: “These were the days when war was part of our everyday lives and ran like blood through our identity … A war that devastated our families and sizzled and incinerated all of our vivid, green and bounteous homeland.”
        His magnificent book symbolizes the broader Kurdish struggle and makes a stand for refugees in every hemisphere, up against the cruelties of collapsing capitalism.

Send feedback to FSnews@mindspring.com.

 TO LISTEN TO THIS AND OTHER ARTICLES FROM THIS ISSUE, CLICK HERE.

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

The World's Largest Concentration Camps.

        I, like so many others, refer to Gaza and the West Bank as the largest open air prisons on the planet, well I think we should rename them as the largest open air concentration camps on the planet. These two parts of the planet are controlled by a regime of racist, Zionist, brutal, ruthless guards, lacking in any humanity and under the direct control of the apartheid Zionist state of Israel. The aim of this regime is the elimination of the people of Palestine and the taking over the ethnic cleansed land.

 

Photo courtesy of Jewish Voice For Peace.

       Apart from, all the glaringly obvious injustices, brutalities and sadistic cruelties and the vicious attacks that kill and maim thousands of Palestinians, there is another more sinister attack on the people of the West Bank. The West Bank is festooned with a secret network of hidden cameras that is linked up to the latest Israeli state cutting edge facial recognition software. There is no such thing as privacy for Palestinian people in the West Bank. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, these cameras track and log every Palestinian face they can trace. All the information is logged and profiles built, from lovers holding hands to mothers feeding the babies, from kids at play, to people at work, where and when you were at a particular spot and for how long, all the faces and this information are noted and logged for future reference by the Zionist apartheid state of Israel in its end game of grabbing the last of the Palestinian lands. Incidentally, Microsoft is a major partner in this technology, you have been warned.
       Despite this glaringly obvious savage cruelty and inhumanity being directed at the Palestinian people to further Zionist fundamental ideology, the world looks the other way and invites the perpetrators into the marble halls of power. Sups with them at the financial Mafia's banquet and considers profitable arms deals worth more than human justice and dignity. How else would you expect capitalism to work. This gross injustice will continue as Israel is doing the job of the West's policeman in the Middle East, and is a profitable member of the capitalist club. Only the will of the people can end this festering cesspool of capitalist/nationalist/religious insanity. When will we come together and exert that will? 

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

Concentration Camps, Detention Centres And Democracy.

        The Trump guy is flag waving America into raw fascism, his "America uber alles" comes with all the trappings and dangers of blind nationalism. There may be those who disagree with the label "fascism" in this case, but if we take the words of that well know fascist Benito Mussolini as a guide "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power", then there is no doubt that America is well and truly standing that vile dehumanising swap of fascism. Of course if we use Benito's quote as a guide, where does the UK or the EU stand? There is no doubt that the corporate juggernaut exerts considerable power over the states in both these cases. Have we sleep walked into fascism? America has already got its militarised police, its mass surveillance and its concentration camps, we in the UK have our mass surveillance and our "detention centres", places where those ever so nasty foreigners are locked up, before they can taint our purity. This in spite of the fact that we are all a form of mongrel human animal. Of course most people will agree that concentration camps and detention centres are an anathema to a free democratic society, but they are there.
        In my humble opinion, if we continually allow capitalism to exist it is inevitable that we would end up locked the tentacles of fascism. Capitalism is a system devoid of humanity, it does not in any way consider human well being. Its whole existence is for the purpose of amassing large amounts of wealth in the hands of the few. To do this it must conceal its true purpose from the public and control the legislation that allows it free rein to do so, certainly not the basis for a free and democratic society.  

        The following is an article  from "Birds Before The Storm" on America's concentration camps and the need to tackle these and other abominations head on. Of course it applies to our own particular patch of soil on this planet.

 

What Are We Going to do About These Concentration Camps?

magpie
        The first time I saw the Klan, I was ten years old. My brother and one of my sisters were in the car, and my dad was driving. We were stopped at a light and maybe five Klan members in full regalia were offering leaflets to white drivers. My father, a white man, rolled up the window, locked the doors, and grabbed the steering wheel in a death grip. When the light turned green, we drove away. “Those people carry guns,” he told us. He was excusing himself for not getting out of the car and physically confronting five large men, an action which could easily have put him in the hospital or worse. He probably did the right thing. He had three children in the car. There were five of those guys. The cost/benefit analysis of starting a fight was all wrong. But the Klan, wherever it shows its hideous face, should be confronted. Should be fought, through whatever means.
Sometimes we have to fight.

Which brings us to the concentration camps in America.
      My entire adult life, I’ve been politically active. I’ve gone to countless demonstrations. I’ve been in jail in two countries for fighting against things I consider deplorable. These past couple of years, I’ve been more of a cheerleader for antifascism than a street warrior, to be sure, but when Nazis come to my small town I’m out there with everyone else ready to tell them that it’s a shame their lungs are functioning. Yet this morning here I am, at home, just trying to live my life. I’m going to play a show later tonight, and I have to practice my harp.
       I have a lot of experience trying to just live my life while horrible shit is happening. Maybe you do too. Maybe you’re trying to drag yourself out of poverty while millions of people are in prison. Maybe you’re raising your kids while carbon pumps into the air and the US refuses to consider any agreement to limit the effects of climate change. Maybe you’re used to this.
       Every day, we make cost/benefit analyses and most of us decide not to do anything that would get us thrown in prison or gunned down by the armed forces of the state. We sit and think about that poem; you know the poem. “First they came for the communists and I didn’t say anything because I was not a communist…”
      That poem is derived from the post-war confessions of a pastor, Martin Niemöller. A conservative, he initially supported Hitler’s rise to power; he only decided to oppose the dictator when Hitler insisted the state was more important than religion. By the time Hitler came for him, of course, there was no one left to speak out.
        So what the fuck is wrong with our cost/benefit analyses? There are concentration camps on the border. By and large, they aren’t holding American citizens. So in the short term, it’s safer to do nothing. Maybe complain on Twitter. Maybe write articles like this. In the long term, though?

When is it time to act?
        It’s easy to feel like I have my hands full dealing with the local Nazi problem where I live. The paramilitaries that are crashing pride parades with guns and burning down community centers and doxxing antifascists eat up a lot of my brain space.
       It’s also easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of problems confronting us. The war on people with wombs. The war on trans people. The war on people of color. Climate catastrophe. The United States has always been a Bad Thing, from when slaving colonialists founded it all those years ago to when it became the police force of the world a hundred years back to when it declared a “war” on drugs to when the prison system—and its literal, legal slavery—became a for-profit industry. It’s always been a Bad Thing and we’re kind of numb to that. We suffer from a kind of disaster fatigue. Our ability to be outraged has already been heavily taxed, and sometimes climate change and concentration camps are simply Too Much Problem for us to wrap our heads around. Problems have this way of terrifying us into inaction, into numbness. Collectively, right now, we’re a deer in the headlights.

I, we, need to work our way through that. Fast. Now.
       They’re not coming for me today. I’m a trans woman, so yeah the right wing is working its base into a fervor blaming me for all our social ills and to be certain I’ve gotten a lot worse attention from strangers since Trump came into office. But no one is trying to put me in a camp. I could keep my head down. A short term cost/benefit analysis says that I should.

Fuck that.
        When mass action is called for at these camps, consider going. If you can’t go, support the actions. Support the people who take action who aren’t taking the kind of action you might take personally. Support pacifists who lock themselves to the gates of these places. Support rioters who break glass, cut fences, or physically fight the forces who are locking up children. Support the activists who target every aspect of this murderous machine. Support them all vocally and support them all financially. Do not let them play us off each other. Do not let them divide us.
       Any study of successful social movements in history is a study of how peaceful strategies and militant strategies, which seem opposed both tactically and ethically, complement each other very well. We need people who resist peacefully. We need people who resist less peacefully. And most importantly, we need to not get caught up fighting one another instead of our enemies.
       We need to take action. To be clear, voting is not action. Voting, very specifically, is a way of asking someone else to act for you. Engage in electoral politics however you would like. But never let the state strip you of your agency. You’re a human. You’re a person. You have the capacity to take action, to effect change. You have the capacity to work with others to do… well, pretty much anything.
It is completely possible for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of us, to surround these camps and force them to release the detainees. It could work with fewer people than that, too, though I have a feeling there’s an awful lot of anger, an awful lot of power, waiting to be unleashed against the machinery of oppression right now. Mass action is risky. It’s messy. It’s terrifying. It’s also the right thing to do, and it’s perhaps only way out of this mess. There are a million problems, but this is one of them. And to change everything, you pick one problem and start there.

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

Legalised Plunder And Murder.

        The Greek situation has fallen of the agenda of that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, their short concentration span has moved on to “the refugee crisis” to terrorism in Europe then on to that dangerous nut-case Trump. That doesn’t mean that things in Greece are fine and dandy, far from it. The people of Greece are still suffering poverty and deprivation at the hands of the financial Mafia. Some of the figures are staggering. Take the population of Greece, since the financial Mafia took dictatorial control of Greece, the population has gone from 11.1 million in 2011 to 11.0 million in 2015, for a small country, that’s a remarkable drop. Unemployment shows an equally devastating trend in the opposite direction going from 17.9% in 2011 to 25% in 

2015. Looking at the volume of money the Troika, ( EC, European Commission, ECB, European Central Bank, IMF, International Mankind Fuckers) have poured into Greece, you would imagine that its problems should be sorted. Of course we all know that the money shuffling is an illusion, though they say they are giving it to Greece, it doesn’t actually stay there. Around approximately 80% goes back to the financial Mafia in interest payments, so the problem of Greece’s debt remains. In fact the amount of public debt, (state debt) has risen from 172% of GDP in 2011 to 177% of GDP in 2015.

         To show how little concern the Troika have for the people of Greece you just have to look at their response to the Greek government’s meagre Christmas handout to to pensioners earning less than €800 a month. They have said that Greece has broken the conditions of its loans and they will have to look at what to do.

          To grasp the reality of the situation of the people of Greece, all you need do is focus on the fact that the poorest 20% of Greece’s 11 million people have suffered a 42% drop in disposable income since 2009, and during the “Greek crisis” the country has lost over 25% of its GDP – the biggest downturn to be experienced by an advanced western economy in peacetime. All this because the European banks, mainly German, threw too much money into the gambling casino that was Greece’s “economic bubble”. It was all done to make lots of money for the financial Mafia, and when the bubble burst, the gamblers started to cry, and wanted their money back. In steps the Troika, and under the banner of austerity, it starts to stripe all the wealth out of Greece, plunging the people of that unfortunate country into poverty, deprivation, unemployment, stress and trauma, with the resultant effects such as massive increase in suicides, substances abuse, homelessness, mental and physical health problems, confounded by the collapse of social services, including health and education. This year will see more cuts to salaries and pensions in real terms, as far as the people of Greece are concerned, the storm is gathering pace. All of this is a human tragedy happening here in super rich Europe, but to our babbling brook of bullshit, it is old news and not worthy of reporting.

         To compound the situation of the people of Greece, while the financial Mafia is mercilessly plundering all assets from that unfortunate country, we should remember that Greece is the main landing point of those hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the imperialists’ blood curling adventures in the Middle East. Greece is now home to thousands of refugees who are herd up like cattle and detained in concentration camps. Greece, a country because of the financial Mafia’s brutal policy of austerity and plunder, is probably the least able of the EU countries to cope with this traumatising, and avoidable human tragedy. The agony of the people in Greece is nothing short of legalised plunder and murder.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

         Nine months after the EU-Turkey refugee agreement and the official closing of the Balkan route towards north Europe, thousands of refugees and migrants are being forced to live indefinitely in concentration camps across Greece, in horrendous conditions, with no hope for tomorrow, being exposed to below zero temperatures, in inadequate and unacceptable dwellings or even tents.
         The tragic images of refugees living in tents covered with snow and barefoot toddlers in the muddy water of the camps, waiting in long queues for a plate of food under unbearable temperatures, are still fresh. Despite government claims that the measures for the protection of refugees from the adverse weather conditions have been successfully completed, the preparation for protecting migrants and refugees who are trapped in the Greek islands has failed, despite the millions of euros that have been given to prepare for the winter, which recently has been harsh even for Greek weather standards. And it’s no wonder, since the Greek government, local municipalities and NGO’s see refugees as a business opportunity.
        And for these reasons for many months since the initial wave of refugees coming to Greece in 2015 the government and the police -through media propaganda and arrests- managed to demonize and barred all the hundreds of volunteers that in a self organized manner were helping the thousands of refugees arriving to Greece. Then they imprisoned the refugees into camps guarded by the police, from which they are allowed out of them for few hours a day, (which is pointless in most cases since they are situated far away from villages or cities, so that contact with people and necessary services is avoided or prevented), forbidden outsiders to visit the camps, even reporters or photojournalists without supervised permission and directed all the money to NGO’s to run the camps (many of them were set up just a bit after the first refugee waves sensing the flow of money to the European entry point of Greece). There have even been situations were local authorities used the money they got to hire people to help the refugees indeed to hire employees but use them for completely different duties serving the local authorities, based on the excuse that greece is under financial crisis, thus we see these appealing conditions in camps were already to refugees have died in January.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

European Democracy At Work.

      The Greek police probably rank as the most brutal police force in Europe, a very high percentage are members of Golden Dawn, the Greek right wing fascist group. Immigrants come in for some very brutal treatment from both Golden Dawn and the police, and thousands of immigrants end up in concentration camps dotted about the country. Of course it is not just immigrants that feel the harsh hand of the police, protesters old and young take a very high risk of injury if they take their protests to the streets. This is democratic Europe at work, repression by riot police tooled up like military units.

    Today students in Greece were heading to their university only to find it occupied by riot police, and were met with violent confrontation. The students gather in thousands in the centre of Athens, where they were again met by a massive riot police attack.
     Greece has been the financial Mafia's first stage of the experiment in creating a sweatshop Europe, and obviously the people will not take to this without resistance, and that's where the state's police brutality and repression come in. If they can beat the people of Greece into subservience, then the rest of us can look forward to the sweatshop Europe experiment spreading more rapidly to the rest of us.

This from Roar Mag:

     Schools in Greece have been occupied for a week. After today’s student protest, riot police blocked access to the university and attacked the students.

      It’s been some time since we last heard from the Greek movement. But, thanks to the Greek government and its riot police, today became a day of large student demonstrations, clashes with the cops, injuries and rising tension. First, let’s see what happened. Early in the morning, the Athens Law School students arrived at their university in order to carry out their assembly decision, which included a symbolic occupation of their university until the 17th of November — commemoration day of the 1973 student revolt against the military dictatorship.

       The problem was that the school was already occupied by the riot police. The Athenian Universities’ rectors had decided to apply a peculiar “lock out” of------

Read the full article HERE:

 

  

Visit ann arky' home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The White Knight Of British Imperialism.

      Our British imperial state is gearing up for another military outing. This time on the myth of our high morality and ridding the Middle East of its bad men. There is no doubt what so ever that ISIS is a very brutal, fundamentalist religious group, but they are not alone, nor are they unique. The myth that helps to put the British imperial state, on the high moral ground is the one that, as the biggest empire the world has known, we willing helped put our colonies on a democratic footing when they were ready to look after themselves. 

      The truth of course is that we could show the ISIS mob a thing or two about brutality. As the people of our colonies fought to rid themselves of the exploiting, brutal British empire, we turned really nasty. The colonies emerging into the world, free from the British empire, paid dearly for their desire to be free. 

 Something to smile about.

         Aden, in what is now Yemen, an important port to the British empire, in 1960 it became known as the Aden emergency, as the locals were determined to rid them selves of their brutal imperial overlords, the British, they organised strikes demonstrations and protests and resulting riots. To sort this out the British set up torture centres. In these centres prisoners were held in refrigerated cells, bring about frostbite, and pneumonia, among other problems. It was not uncommon for prisoners to have their genitals crushed by guards hands, cigarette buts to be stubbed out on their naked flesh, to mention just some of the brutality inflicted on people seeking independence from the British state. Amnesty International in 1966, issued a report on this barbaric treatment, creating international outrage. The British imperial state had been rumbled. In the face of international condemnation, it apologised, but continued useing the torture centres for another year. 

        Amritsar, India, 1919. The people of that area, men, women and children, on April 13, 1919, pissed off by the brutish rule of the British imperialists, decided to march in a peaceful protest to the walled Jallianwala Gardens, there they hoped to make their voices heard. Late afternoon the troops blocked the exits of the gardens, and then opened fire on the protesters, they kept firing until they ran out of ammunition. The total deaths from ten minutes of relentless rifle fire varies from 379, to 1,000, with more than 1,000 injured. More than 100 women and children sought safety in a well, and drowned. Back here in Britain, the man responsible, Brigadier Reginald Dyer, was labelled, "the man who saved India". 

 

       The catalogue of British brutal imperialism is endless. We could go on and on. In the 1920's, the crushing of Iraq. The Boer war, where 10% of the entire Boer population died in British imperialist concentration camps, among them 22,000 children.

A Reminder.

       And now we are supposed to swallow the British state, painting its armour white and riding out on its white charger, with its white knight companion America, as the saviours of the Arab world. You and I know, the British state doesn't give a shit about the people of the Arab world, they have other motives.

     For more on the British imperialists morality, you could visit, 10 Evil Crimes Of The British Empire.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Welcome To Greeece.

       Greece, despite having a very successful tourist season, is not a welcoming country for those foreigners labelled migrants. That group can be beaten-up on the streets in broad daylight, and locked up in inhumane concentration camps. Not matter if you enjoy the hospitality of the average Greek citizen, Greek government is fascist.

       A poster that has been making an appearance on the streets of Athens tells part of the brutal story that is modern Greece.

From Contra Info where you can read the poster more clearly:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

European Prison System At Its Worst.

        Today sees the start of a mass hunger strike by prisoners in Greek prisons. The conditions in Greek prisons are sub-human, to refer to them as “third world” would be insulting to those “third world” countries. Every prison in Greece is massively over crowded, as the government gets on with its crushing repression of any resistance to their “austerity” plans, at the dictate of the Troika, (EC European Commission, ECB European Central Bank, IMF International Mankind Fuckers).

        Forget about Golden Dawn, the present Greek government is marching along the road to fascism all by its self, and needs no lessons from that band of thugs. It has instituted mass concentration camps for immigrants, where conditions are deplorable.

          Prison hospitals in Greece are are without doubt the worst in Europe. All this is quietly accepted by the European Union, as they are fully aware that for their austerity and privatisation plans to continue, all resistance must be crushed. Greece is the experiment that is being watch carefully by the financial Mafia, if they get away with it, it could become their preferred template for the rest of Europe, if and when needed.

          It is not just the conditions that are driving the victims of the Greek prison system to take drastic action, it is a raft of new legislation that will condemn some to life in prison without hope of release. If ever there was a case for pan-European solidarity, surely this is it.

This from Contra Info:

ANNOUNCEMENT OF HUNGER STRIKE
      From June 18th, 2014, prisoners in all Greek prisons have abstained from prison meals as a way of protest against the fascist bill for type C prisons, and in defense of the right to furlough and release on parole.
      However the minister of Justice and the government insist on ignoring our protest. They have not responded in any way to our just demands, and provocatively aim to pass the bill in summer sessions of the parliament, in their attempt to prevent people’s reaction.
       Against this bill which condemns us to remain prisoners for life without rights or hope, we put our bodies and souls as a shield. This is the only thing we have left.
     From Monday, June 23rd, 2014 we start a mass hunger strike in all prisons across Greece. We claim our rights, and we fight to remain humans, instead of human shadows locked up and forgotten into despair.
We demand:
     1) The withdrawal of the fascist bill for type C prisons. We say no to the Greek Guantanamo, a prison within a prison, without furloughs, without visitations, without tomorrow…

Read the full article and the full list of demands HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk