The State.

         In state after state the repression goes on, according to their philosophy of total control, dissent must be quashed. Sometimes it is an individual that they attempt to silence, other times it groups, some go unnoticed others get some publicity. If it is mainstream media publicity, the chances are that the theme will be that they are terrorists, looters or just violent thugs, demonise the dissenters is the name of the game. Our publicity should be to show them for what they are, individuals and groups struggling to bring an end to this regime of exploitation and total control, those necessary tools for the capitalist economic system to function.

        The case below is from Italy, but pick your state, and you'll find the repression, methods vary, but the aim is always the same, a subservient population, eliminate those who would dare to resist state authority. Solidarity is the weapon that can free us from the yoke of capitalism and the shackles of the state.

This from 325:

SOLIDARITY MOBILIZATION 9th-24th NOVEMBER
      This autumn several prosecutions, which involve hundreds of anarchists, will take place in Italy. In these investigations public prosecutors and judges want to put the anarchist ideal under trial. The attempts to reduce different tensions and practices in various legal schemes, i.e. the hateful and pathetic division between “good” and “bad” anarchism, aim to repress those who fight, making them face decades of imprisonment.
       In a period in which the imposed living conditions are increasingly harsh, it is essential to fight: to respond to the violence of the State, to the regime of oppression that tries to impose, attempting to attack anyone who expresses solidarity with those who have already chosen on which side to stand.
      We will stand, close and complicit with our comrades, and not only in the courtrooms: we call for two weeks of mobilization from the 9th to the 24th of November, as an opportunity to create moments of active solidarity in the streets or wherever we choose to express it.

ALONGSIDE ALL THE ANARCHISTS ON TRIAL!
AGAINST PRISONS AND FOR THE FREEDOM OF ALL PRISONERS!
FREEDOM FOR ALL!

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The Whole Barrel.

        Prisons, those large buildings planted firmly midst the population and sometimes in the countryside, though unwelcoming in appearance they sit quietly as part of the landscape. People walk and drive by and in most cases don't give them a second thought. Though in fact these edifices to state authority and control, house inhumanity in an organised and brutal fashion. Prison after prison in country after country, torment, cruelty, sadistic and deliberate violence and even death are part and parcel of their routine. All those who find themselves entangled in this state repression machine are damaged by it, some physically some psychologically, some both. This is not by accident, these institutions are doing the job of the state control and repression, suppressing dissent, attempting to create a subservient, passive population.
        The case below is not one of those isolated unfortunate happenings, it is part and parcel of a deliberate program of state control, carried out by the paid minions of the state, and those responsible do so with impunity, all under regimes that fly a false flag of "democracy". Like the article says "Not Rotten Apples" it is simply a rotten system and the whole barrel has to be destroyed. There is no place in a civilised society for prisons, in any shape or form.

This from Act For Freedom Now: 

Solidarity poster for anarchist comrade Pierloreto Fallanca (Paska)

 NOT ROTTEN APPLES

       September 17 saw the start of the trial against our comrade Paska, accused of resistance and grievous bodily harm towards some of his jailers during a transfer.
        A couple of pushes against a few of the escort screws was the least he could do after the treatment they had reserved for him on various occasions: the latest being the rally driving of the paddy wagon that caused him a strong blow to his head and ribs during the transfer of October 18, 2018.
      On the other hand, since his arrival at La Spezia the prison management had decided to arbitrarily reserve even more restrictive measures for him such as delaying mail, bans on meeting others, isolation up to the 14bis isolation regime level as well as being forbidden to go to the yard with the other prisoners.
       That doesn’t surprise us. In the year 2018-2019 alone La Spezia prison boasts no less than 5 deaths out of about 230 prisoners, added to the acts of self-harm and beatings as a daily occurrence: the normality of a prison considered to be among the most progressive in Italy. It is, therefore, within the normal execution of their functions that escort guards Luigi Viziello and Stefano Cenderelli covered our comrade in insults, kicks and punches.
      In a climate of constant fear and threats many prisoners avoid talking about their daily harassment for fear of repercussions. And when someone does decide not to stick to the rules of the game the medical staff take care of it – as in the case of Paska, Gouba Abdelatif and Giuseppe Landini – to complete the work of the thugs by liquidating what happened.
      When asked to report the signs of beatings and ascertain the physical consequences, the doctors deny the evidence and dish out psychotropic drugs: yet another weapon to bow the will of those who rebel.
      Unfortunately our comrade’s story is the normality of prison, a story of ordinary detention. The guards appearing as the injured party in this trial are not an exception, they are the most coherent and sincere representatives of every prison and its reason for being.

SOLIDARITY WITH PASKA

FIRE TO THE PRISONS

EVERYBODY FREE

Anarchists

Source: RoundRobin

via: Inferno Urbano

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Solidarity With Anarchist Prisoners.

       Across the whole of the planet states are enacting a concerted attack on anarchists. Those who stand openly in dedicated opposition to the corrupt corporate capitalist economic system of inequality and injustices, are seen by the establishment as the greatest threat to the continuing control and exploitation of the people and the planet. They are seen as a threat to their power and privileges, so must be silenced. Russia, Italy, France, Greece, America are at the forefront of this ferocious clamp down, but they are not alone. This is a world wide war on dissent, an attempt to silence and stifle any call for a change to the economic system that burdens the people of this world.
       Those who find themselves incarcerated in the system's judicial crushing machine deserve our unstinting solidarity. Dissent must never be silenced, or we will forever by slaves to the power of the corporate juggernaut and at the mercy of the financial Mafia. June 11th. is international day of solidarity with all anarchist prisoners. Think of how you can get involved and show that those who have stood up against this destructive system are not forgotten. 

Graffiti Revolt

      June 11th is an international day of solidarity with Marius Mason and all long-term anarchist prisoners. A spark in the eternal night of state repression. A day set aside for honoring those who have been stolen from us. On this day, we share in songs, events, and actions to celebrate our captured comrades and loved ones. In years past, June 11th celebrations have been international and wide-ranging – from potlucks with friends to various inspiring attacks; fundraising benefits and prisoner letter writing nights to all of the untold and unknown ways we keep the flame alive.
       Building up to this day, each year several of us come together to discuss and reflect on lessons from years past and to renew this call for continuous solidarity. This year we invite you to explore and ponder with us how maintaining support for long-term prisoners depends directly on sustaining the movements and struggles we all remain part of.

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Converting Natural Events To Human Disasters.

       Natural storms, escalated to human disasters with the help of human activity. The recent storms, Harvey Imra, Jose, show up the folly of human activity as we tarmac the planet, and build extensively on flood plains, in the belief that everything will be OK. After all, we are superior beings in control of the planet!!!

     An interesting article which highlights the glaring flaws in the capitalist system which puts greed for profit above rationalism and compassion, and shows that the system is cruelly loaded in favour of the big corporations. It is taken form the magazine Dissent.

                An aerial view of Houston in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, August 31

          Weather creates storms. It’s people who turn them into disasters, as this summer has made all too clear—from Texas and Louisiana, facing the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, to India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, where monsoon floods have killed more than 1,400 people in a single month.
         In the United States, Harvey presents perhaps the starkest illustration since Hurricane Sandy of the kinds of disasters we are capable of concocting. And as with all such extreme weather events, the slow disaster most directly precipitating this immediate one is climate change, making storms and floods more frequent and fearsome than they otherwise would have been.
       Unless you deny climate change exists outright—as several members of the Trump administration do—it’s hard to argue that there isn’t something at least a little unnatural about Harvey. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann argues that the storm surge from Harvey was seven inches higher than it would have been just a few decades ago thanks to sea level rise. Harvey benefited from hotter-than-average temperatures in the waters where it brewed: average sea surface temperatures in the Gulf have risen about 0.5 degrees Celsius in recent decades, and as Harvey approached in August, stood at up to 4°C above average. “Not only are the surface waters of the Gulf of Mexico unusually warm right now,” Mann wrote, “but there is a deep layer of warm water that Harvey was able to feed upon when it intensified at near record pace as it neared the coast.” As a result, Houston is now dealing with the aftermath of the third “500-year flood” the city has experienced in the last three years.
          Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, meanwhile, called it “opportunistic” and “misplaced” to talk about climate change in the storm’s wake, telling Breitbart radio that, “to look at things like this and to talk about a cause and effect really isn’t helping the people of Texas right now.” Worth mentioning, too, is that Pruitt has spent the better part of his tenure as EPA director trying to peel back regulations that would cap greenhouse gas emissions. He’s currently gearing up for a government-funded Red Team-Blue Team debate on the reality of climate change—with help from the Heartland Institute, a climate-denying think tank copiously funded by the oil and gas industries.
         Even if Pruitt is right and tides aren’t rising, Harvey still would have hit the Gulf harder than it should have. Storms happen all the time in nature, from solar flares to Martian dust storms. No one would care much if a hurricane of Harvey’s scale struck some unpopulated stretch of land or spun out to sea. The difference when they hit places like Houston—the nation’s fourth most populous city—is that people do live there, and that those people are organized in particular ways: by racism and capitalism and any number of other structuring forces in society, themselves sharing a web of connections to one another.
       In the case of Houston itself: The Magnolia City has long been heralded by libertarians as a kind of case study for no-holds-barred development, un-zoned and untainted by regulations and—by extension—a playground for enterprising real estate moguls. As a ProPublica and Texas Tribune report last year found, there have been 7,000 residential buildings constructed in floodplains since hurricane Katrina. From 1996 to 2011, Harris County (containing the wider Houston area) has also seen a 25 percent increase in the amount of impermeable—that is, paved—surfaces, which displaced absorbent wetlands and prairie grass that help provide a buffer against runoff. That development not only puts more people and property in harm’s way, but drives up the cost of dealing with disasters.
        While developers have been able to move about Houston at will, the same can’t be said for its residents. Houston alone is home to an estimated 575,000 undocumented immigrants, the third most of any metro area after New York and Los Angeles. As thousands began to evacuate, the Border Patrol announced that it would keep its checkpoints in the Rio Grande Valley open so long as the highways also remained open. This left undocumented Texans in Harvey’s path with an unbelievably cruel choice as the storm approached: try to ride it out, or risk deportation. Had it not been temporarily blocked via court order, this past Friday would also have seen the implementation of SB 4, one of the country’s most draconian anti-immigrant laws. Now, many of those attempting to rebuild their lives post-Harvey will also have to deal with the White House’s decision today to rescind DACA, which protects from deportation undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as children.
          There’s nothing natural, either, about the fact that Harvey’s floods inundated thirteen of Texas’s forty-one Superfund sites that are still awaiting clean-up, sites whose toxic contents now threaten their neighbors. A group of AP journalists visited storm-impacted sites around Houston before EPA inspectors, whose spokespeople claimed the sites were inaccessible. Long-term, the administration seems posed to make a bad situation even worse. Trump proposed a 30 percent cut to the EPA’s Superfund cleanup fund in his March budget blueprint, extending the George W. Bush administration’s doctrine that the polluters responsible for creating such sites should no longer have to contribute to cleaning them up.
         Some of those same polluters are at the root of yet another kind of disaster unfolding in Southeast Texas. Storm damage has resulted in an emissions spike from the area’s oil and chemical refineries, which spat out 2,700 extra tons of pollution because of storm damage, and still more from preventative shut-downs. Beginning Thursday, chemical fires at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, about twenty-five miles from downtown Houston, sent a plume of noxious black smoke billowing over the area. The fires lasted through the weekend, as International Business Times reported that the company had successfully lobbied Republicans to block relevant safety regulations—despite being fully aware of the risks.
         A broader analysis from the Center For Biological Diversity has found that Harvey has so far triggered the release of an estimated 1 million pounds of harmful substances from the area’s sixty petroleum plants. On top of storm damage, then, Texans—particularly the low-income communities of color clustered around oil and chemical operations—now face a mounting public health crisis. And that’s without mentioning the risk of infectious diseases carried by sewage and other waste contaminating floodwaters.
          It’s not very many people who create these man-made disasters. That catastrophic weather events are growing more common and severe is owed—in large part—to the 100 companies that have spit 71 percent of carbon emissions into the atmosphere since 1988, including many of those with hubs in Texas. Then there are developers who’ve taken advantage of lax zoning laws, and the members of the GOP eager to gut the budgets of the programs and agencies tasked with helping both prevent and recover from some of the storms’ worst impacts.
          So if the response on the ground to the crisis in Houston has been defined by a sense of collective solidarity—of neighbors helping neighbors—the precipitating causes of that crisis are undoubtedly a product of wealthy elites.
          Like climate change itself, Harvey’s horrors can’t be broken down to any one cause, be it rising warm tides or greedy developers or austerity-addled politicians. Yet what’s most foreboding about the prospect of an increasingly climate-changed reality is that all of those things which are already making life unlivable for so many will get muddled with the new ecological normal of our hotter, wetter world: immigration authorities threatening to deport people as they try to get out of harm’s way; capital swooping in after waters subside for a fresh round of land speculation; a hollowed-out public sphere, growing less nimble with every passing budget negotiation.
         Even a socialist America would have to deal with bad weather, and probably a lot more of it given the level of warming we’re already on track to experience. How we respond to that weather—and prevent more of it from happening than needs to—will mean the difference between a changed climate and an altogether meaner one.

---

Kate Aronoff is co-host of Dissent’s Hot & Bothered podcast on the politics of climate change and a writing fellow at In These Times.

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

DISSENTING VOICES WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

        Now as the financial Mafia put the boot in to the Greek people, it is impossible to even attempt to hold onto the thinest veneer of the illusion of democracy. Day by day the state comes down harder and harder on any form of dissent, more and more the gap between the people and "their" government grows ever wider. The powers that be don't even like to be seen in public, it only generates bad publicity for them. The so called elected representatives of the people don't want to have anything to do with the people, it is all corporate finance that matters.

            We should never lose sight of the fact that how the state acts in Greece is not unique to Greece. As austerity bites here and in other countries across Europe, each state will take the necessary action to force through the dictates of the Troika, that collection of vultures, leeches and parasites in the form of the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) ECB (European Corrupt Banksters) and the EC (Endemic Corruption). Make no mistake, they are the rulers of Europe, the elected governments are there to manage the Troika's plans for the creation of a European sweatshop economy to compete with their Eastern rivals. 

This from the Greek Streets:

Monday, October 29, 2012

    Today the text of the 3rd memorandum of agreement eliminating public provisions was released. Simultaneously today, one day after the arrest of a journalist for releasing a list of tax-dodgers,  a young man was arrested in Corfu island because he published in his web-blog  photos of police officers having very friendly encounters with neo-Nazis. Earlier in the morning the management of the state TV channel (ERT) announced that from tomorrow the presenters of its morning news show are going to be replaced. The reason is that the two journalists commented on the attitude of the Minister of  Citizen Protection (police) who was threatening that will sue foreign newspapers  for writing that the anti-Nazi activists were tortured in the Police HQ. The two journalists were discussing about the coroner’s diagnosis which was released confirming that proper torturing of the 15 anti-Nazi activists did occur in the police HQ.

More from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ:

    Perhaps it is appropriate that Thessaloniki, which this weekend celebrated the 100th anniversary of its liberation from the Ottoman Empire looked like a city under siege. For three days the centre of Greece's second largest city was the objects of draconian security measures designed to avoid a repetition of last year's peaceful protests which closed down the annual military parade and forced the president of the republic to flee.
      Mindful of the fact that the event lead to the resignation of the then prime minister, Giorgos Papandreou just weeks later the current political leadership decided to make sure last year's events were not repeated.
    As a result 2,000 extra police were drafted to protect prime minister Antonis Samaras and president Karolos Papoulias as they visited Thessaloniki over the weekend. The security measures for the Oxi Day parade were so tight that no even the parents of high school pupils taking part were allowed within the 1 km “dead zone” that surrounded the VIP stand and effectively isolated the parade from the vast majority of citizens who'd turned out to follow it.

Read the full article HERE:

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SPIRIT OF REVOLT.

               I don't know the poet, but I pay homage to him/her, and I can't remember where I got the poem, but I like it very much, it captures the spirit of revolt and the determination of the ordinary people. The title is my own idea as it didn't have a title when I copied it away back. 

WE ARE THE PEOPLE.

If You Beat Us, We Will Revive ourselves.

If You Suppress us, We Will Arise Again.

If You Defeat Our occupation, Of Streets We built,

We Will Occupy Our Jobs, And Our Communities.

You Cannot Destroy Us, For We Are,

Manifest, The IDEA That You Created.

You

Created Us With Your Arrogance.

You

Created Us With Your Exploitation.

You

Created Us With Your Prejudice And Your Greed.

You Created us with Your destruction

Of The World We love.

Your

Ill-considered Occupations

Begat And Inspired Our Occupations.

You

Have Sown The Seeds Of Dissent.

We Grow Like Wildfire,

And We Bring Forth The Whirlwind.

Look To Your Barricades, Your Badged Lackeys,

Your Fawning Courts, Your Corrupt Officials,

Your Long held Illusions Of Divine Right.

None Of These Matter, You’ve Earned Defeat,

And You Will Take The Fall.

We are The people, Newly Awakened.

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"TOTAL POLICING".

  

       With the millionaire ConDem's rapid dismantling of the very social fabric of our society crashing along unabated, it is obvious that there will be anger among the ordinary people. People who have been subservient, compliant and hard working as they tried to have a decent life will soon find, that is no longer possible. Anger will turn to action with circumstances forcing people to come together and organise for their mutual survival, the state however, to protect its authority, will do its damnedest to prevent that coming together. The policing will change, dissent will be stifled and protest will be criminalised. On that theme, the following article is lifted in full from that old war horse of the anarchist movement, FREEDOM, the longest running anarchist newspaper in the UK.

Taken from FREEDOM, vol. 72 December 2011.

The graphics are not FREEDOM's.

     When Oxbridge graduate Bernard Hogan-Howe began his new job as Metropolitan police commissioner in September, he brought with him a quaint PR phrase 'total policing' (that he himself coined when chief of Merseyside police) as a way of introducing himself into the new role as top cop. As a sound-bite it ticked all the right boxes for an insouciant media – enticing, unspecific, and unavoidably non-committal. But what in reality does a change at the top of the police pile mean for anarchists and activists especially during this period of economic disintegration and increasingly fractious social unrest, what can we expect in this new era of total policing?

     Already this year we have seen several examples of pro-active policing taking on a more sinister role – the kind of policing that goes beyond public order and preservation of the peace but designed to undermine political expression.

      When education activists did a banner drop at the Lib Dem party conference in September they were remanded for three days by West Midlands police as their “membership of an organisation showed that they could not be trusted not to cause danger to the public”. In Bristol there was a raid on The Automonist radical magazine where police seized phones, computers and paperwork looking for a connection to the August riots, and it was during the August riots that several people received long jail sentences for simply posting messages on Facebook encouraging participation in the unrest. There were also the pre-emptive arrests and raids on squats in the run up to the Royal wedding and of course the arrest of145 people for the Fortnum & Mason peaceful occupation on 26^th March.

       But perhaps the most pronounced indication that we are enterig a new era of political policing was the excessive and overt role of plain-clothes police during the November student demonstration in Central London.

      Despite the tightly regulated route of the march – each side street blocked by a small army of well defended barriers – gangs of plain-clothes police, acting independently of uniformed police, embedded themselves in the demonstration and sought to impose themselves upon the crowd, only revealing their identities when people grew hostile towards them. Whether this was to provoke a reaction or simply target individuals they wanted to arrest, the gang strategy highlighted a new and potentially dangerous example of things to come.

     This new approach to the management of political dissent and public protest will impose itself more and more as the crisis deepens, where the legitimacy of government is constantly questioned and the role of the state relentlessly challenged, where ordinary people, angry and disillusioned with the current state of things, become active political subjects.

      For the state to maintain its authority and control over an increasingly embittered population they must ensure not only a compliant protest culture but the continued separation between political activists and the rest of society. Policing now has taken on a form of dissuading us from expressing a common purpose. This is is the political policing of the future.

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SCHOOL OF AMERICAS - SCHOOL OF ASSASSINS.

School of Americas.

      Many of its graduates have been implicated in serious human rights abuses and manuals used at the school appear to condone if not promote the use of torture. This has resulted in a grassroots human rights campaign to close the SOA, led by the organization SOA Watch. Activists opposed to the SOA often refer to the school as the "School of Assassins" and the "School of Coups." 

       Abuses SOA graduates have alleged to have committed include "the death or disappearance of 200,000 Guatemalans and innumerable other atrocities... In Colombia 2 million have been displaced and thousands are still reliving the horrors of their torture - not surprising since, with 10,000 graduates from the SOA, Colombia is the school's largest customer and has the worst human rights record on the continent."

Dear SOA Watchers,

…on the 5th day the mail arrived! And, oh my it was good. So many people wrote wonderful words of support and encouragement. I was just astounded by the wealth that just fell on me!

     I’m in a dorm of 32 women, 4 to a room, with double-bunk beds. The facility here at Ocilla (GA) is clean, modern, warm (most of the time) with lots of heavy doors that bang shut throughout 24 hours. Food is inexcusably bad, but it comes regularly 3 times a day and a vegetarian like myself can usually trade the (what passes for) meat for (what passes for) vegetables.

     The next stop will be a transfer to a federal prison. Or not. Some of the women have been here for over a year and expect they might just serve their full sentence here. Or not. And it’s the not knowing that keeps everyone on edge. The stories are heart breaking to hear; many get in trouble through drugs, pills or because their boyfriends committed an offence. Many have small children at home, no financial resources, no job skills, no support system, no education, and some face very long sentences. Hold them in your heart; light a candle for them. They need you very badly.

    There is a common room for the women in this unit, metal tables with attached benches, a TV set and microwave. The ceiling is very high and gives the feeling that we’re underground. There are three space openings leading up to small skylights. That’s our only glimpse of what’s outside. I saw a small beam of sunlight this morning.

     I talk about SOA all the time. Because I’m such an oddity here, many want to know what I did to get here and I tell them. They are horrified of course, when they hear what SOA graduates have done and we have some good conversations about governments and abuse of power.

       And we also joke a lot, sitting around laughing, passing the time. You may be interested to know that I’m developing a southern accent. Not good enough to pass, but I’m working on it. One of my room mates says if I let my hair grow out a bit, she will braid it for me (corn rows?)

Great warm hugs to you all, wherever you are.

Nancy.

You can write to Nancy at:

NANCY H. SMITH #7059
IRWIN COUNTY DETENTION CENTER
132 COTTON DRIVE
OCILLA, GA 31774

School of Americas Watch, PRESENTE.
 
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