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.

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Latest From Police Occupied Exarcheia.

        The latest from the police occupied district of Exarchia, Athens.

     EXARCHIA: Solidarity to squats and all spaces of struggle- ASSEMBLY Announcement 

August 29, 2019 in Events/Global movement/Void Network News 

        The state and capital always attack the freedom of the social base, steal its labor and resources. In recent years we have experienced one of the most violent attacks through the massive impoverishment of people who are already oppressed and exploited.
        On the other hand, there has been widespread social resistance and solidarity. People have created a variety of self-organized spaces such as housing infrastructure, social medical centers, community kitchens, open parks and public spaces which are just some of the main examples. In spite of weaknesses and setbacks, with squats, political groups, base unions, squares and neighborhood assemblies, the movement has created a solid social territory that has gathered significant knowledge and experience, forming communities of struggle with strong social bonds, addressing society with criticism. On many occasions the movement had to use violence to defend and expand the free spaces and territories from state and capitalist interests and fascist attacks. The movement has grown in diversity and vitality, despite the continued criminalisation of solidarity and mobilisation.
        In the context of this socio-class conflict, on Monday, 26/8, the state, armed with police forces, seized Exarchia and evacuated four squats. Two of them were refugees / migrants’ houses, Transito and Sp Trikoupi 17, where they captured 144 refugee migrants by uprooting them from their residences for a second time and isolating them in what they call detention centers.Intrusions-evicted were also carried out in an ongoing housing and political squat in Assimaki Fotila and the Gare squat where three arrests were made. The cops also invaded the comrades’ home from Gare.
        In addition to the squats and the movement itself, this repressive operation is aiming at migrants. They are one of the most oppressed parts of society since their very existence is considered illegal. In a state of illegality there is no access to health and education while working conditions are exploitation and subjugation. The situation of exclusion, which often comes also from a section of society, leads them to violent and wild situations, which are then used by the state and racists to attack migrants. Many choose their self-organization and solidarity structures in order to survive and resist. Together with local and international solidarity they build communities and claim their visibility, posing a direct threat to political and economic power. The solidarity we are building is in contrast to the humanitarian aid of NGOs that victimize migrants and make money from their problems. Real solidarity is at odds with the humanitarianism of the state which is a simple cover up of deaths at the borders and the murderous conditions at the concentration camps. Prisoners do not receive medical care but instead suffer daily from diseases that lead to death. These concentration camps lack basic hygiene, people live with bed bugs and miserable food, constantly being beaten or raped to force them to flee the Greek and European territory or commit suicide. Transferring them from the squats they have chosen to live, undermines their dignity and self-determination, while the excuse that these camps are safer and healthier is one of the most vicious state lies, an absolute reversal of reality.
        As far as squats are concerned, all these years they have responded to a variety of needs and desires. They are free spaces where the social base re-creates its relationships without state control and economic exclusion, over-coming national, gender and other systemic discrimination. They respond to basic needs such as housing, breaking out of rent coercion and wage exploitation. In times of migration, they have offered shelter to thousands of people by making spaces beyond the barbaric so-called ‘detention centers’ which are nothing more than concentration camps. The most important achievement is that people of different backgrounds were organized into squats and formed collective bodies to create projects that reflect the world of equality and freedom we desire. Squats in collaboration with the social and other grassroots forces defend neighborhoods and public spaces from the business and political interests of power.
        The political agenda of the “New Democracy” is a continuation of Syriza’s policy. It aims to transform the entire region into easily exploitable land for local and foreign capital. The result is the further exploitation and destruction of the environment and the aggressive gentrification of urban space that transforms neighborhoods — within cities — into tourist consumption areas, displacing residents and carrying out informal “social cleansing”. The militarisation of public space and the imprisonment of those who are rising up is of prime importance and requires the implementation of repression against migrants, workers, students, the unemployed, women and queers. Some of the state’s first moves were to integrate the correctional system and the immigration ministry under police jurisdiction. At the same time, they hired 1,500 new people to the police force, expanding the state’s repressive army. They further criminalised the means of struggle and abolished university asylum in preparation for the new social class struggles. The struggles that Syriza assimilated and disintegrated paved the way for an even more capable totalitarian state that we saw with the rise of New Democracy.
        As a continuation of the resistance of all recent years, we call on people of struggle, the rebellious, the squatters, the collectives and individuals to step up their efforts for an open front against repression. With the primary aim of defending the squats and of a broader objective of defending all social achievements against the state and capital until they are overthrown. Strengthen social structures and create new ones, further escalate social, class and local struggles. Don’t let the struggle be assimilated by any regime of power. To crush the repressive forces, to break the media propaganda, to bring out the truth of the struggle of the oppressed.

SOLIDARITY TO SQUATS AND ALL THE SPACES OF STRUGGLE

COMMON STRUGGLES OF LOCALS AND MIGRANTS

       Open Assembly of affinity groups, international solidarity activists and migrants / refugees at Polytechnic University

CALL OUT for actions
THUR. 29/8 – 18.00: Occupied Space Mpoumpoulinas 42 / Info Megaphone
FR. 30/8 – 05.00 ‘o clock in the morning: Mpoumpoulinas 42 / Organized Defense of the building
FR. 30/8– 18.00 Polytechnic University/ Open Assembly for solidarity to Occupied Spaces of Exarchia
SAT. 31/8– 12.00 Exarchia Square- DEMONSTRATION against the organized

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Civilised Society That Treats People Like Cattle.

        Just to hammer home the point that here we are in the 21st. century, and in the so called developed civilised world, the state system that we live by still herds human beings like cattle, strips them of their rights, and in other barbaric ways persecutes them. The crime these unfortunate people have committed is to have crossed those imaginary lines called borders.

 From Turin Italy:

Turin, Italy : In the detention centre for migrants in Corso Brunelleschi: a fire every day…

        The atmosphere remains tense and edgy in the detention centre of Corso Brunelleschi: during a storm on Friday, a young man took advantage of guards and forces of order’s diverted attention to climb bars and walls and conquer freedom.
        Even if the official media present protests and fires with an aura of exceptionality, burning mattresses and the few pieces of furniture left is now a recurring practice to draw attention to the many problems inside, the least being the lack of a barber. Recently prisoners also told us that there was not enough shampoo for them to wash their hair or any fresh water to drink.

Continue Reading →

From Tenerife Spain:

Spain : Revolt and escape at the detention centre for migrants in Tenerife 

      In the detention centre of Hoya Fria, in Santa Cruz, on the island of Tenerife, prisoners set off a revolt while in the yard of the concentration camp on Saturday 2nd August. About twenty people managed to climb the fences and escape from the concentration camp.
The entire police force of the island has been on a man hunt in these hours: seven people have been captured but the others are still on the run.

From America:

            The third week in June began with a broad political discussion on whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s designation of migrant detention centers as “concentration camps” was the correct nomenclature for holding rooms in which 41 detainees live in a cell built for eight. It ended with heinous reports of the conditions at said camps, where undocumented migrant children are being held away from their families in conditions “worse than jail,” according to physician Dolly Lucio Sevier, who wrote up a medical declaration obtained by ABC News after visiting Border Patrol holding facilities along the border in Texas. Here’s everything we’ve learned about conditions in the detention camps in recent weeks.

Continue reading: 

From UK:

       In some senses they look, sound, smell and taste just like prisons: bland food, bleak corridors, standard-issue tracksuits and blue flip-flops, and the mechanical clunk at 9pm when everyone is locked in for the night.
       But Britain’s network of immigration removal centres are a case apart for the 25,000-plus people who pass through one each year: there is no rehabilitation, no criminal sentence, very often no time limit on the loss of liberty. Many of those incarcerated say the conditions are far worse than actual prison.
     The Guardian has spoken to dozens of current and former detainees who have provided grim testimony about what life behind bars in these 10 facilities is like. They describe depression, limbo, occasional hysteria and an all-pervading angst on the part of those detained.
       The internal architecture is bleak. To reach the visiting room at Harmondsworth IRC near Heathrow airport visitors must provide their passports, a biometric thumbprint, surrender themselves to detailed pat-down searches from surgical-gloved security guards and pass through several sets of locked doors.

Continue reading:

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Peopele Of Glasgow Stand With Migrants.

 

       In city after city, in country after country that vulnerable group of human beings that are stripped of their rights, scapegoated and pushed to the margins, is an indictment against this callous capitalist system we live under. I am of course talking about migrants, an ever growing army of people fleeing everything from war, to persecution, from death, to deprivation, but in the eyes of any state, the crime they committed was they crossed those imaginary lines called borders. That somehow gives the state the right to herd them, ignore them, deprive them of all rights and persecute them. We cannot let this continue, they, like us, are human beings struggling to make a decent life for themselves and their families in a quagmire profit seeking big business, they need assistance, not persecution and exploitation. 

     I'm proud to see that the people of Glasgow are standing up and saying enough is enough, we will no longer tolerate this ideology of abusing those who through extremely difficult situations have had to flee their homeland, leaving their friends and neighbourhood, and cross those imaginary dividing lines, the state calls borders.

      Yesterday, August 20th, the people of Glasgow took their anger to the city chambers and loud and clear, let the powers that be know, that this callous and brutal treatment of migrants must stop and stop now.

Thanks Bob for the film.

Letter to the City Council:

       🔒🔒Today Living Rent "locked-in" Glasgow City Council with HUGE turnout of over 150 members and supporters from various groups across Glasgow!🔒🔒

      We've had enough. Serco is intent on making our friends and neighbours destitute in the search for profit and won't stop until all 300 locks are changed. It is time for Glasgow City Council to stop offering the people of Glasgow empty promises and feckless task forces. It is time for real action. We demand that the council:

        1. Set up an arrangement to provide emergency accommodation to all affected individuals, including those that have received a right to remain status. 2. For the council to make clear the timescale for providing an individual assessment of each person facing eviction.

      Their claim that they cannot legally provide accommodation is false. According to guidelines by COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities), Glasgow City Council have "a duty to safeguard the most vulnerable people in these situations, in many cases this includes providing financial support to meet essential living costs and other help from social workers to avoid destitution."

       Everyone has the right to a decent and affordable home, irregardless of their supposed "status" and when those in search of profit go after those made most vulnerable, we are all in danger. As such, we are no longer going to stand for Glasgow City Council's inaction. We and thousands of Glaswegians are standing by ready to resist by any means necessary.

#NoEvictions #StopSercoEvictions #Lockoutserco

Read more here: https://www.livingrent.org/lock_in_council

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

Freedom Means No Borders.

        Migrants, that group of human beings devoid of rights, demonised by the state, simply because they crossed those imaginary lines drawn across the planet by power mongers. Lines that mark the territory over which a small group of powerful and wealthy individuals claim sovereignty. They will defend this patch of the planet with their subjects blood, to ensure they retain their plundered lands or expand them. These lines, borders, are transient, they shift and move according to the dictates of power, without any consideration for those living between these shifting lines. A country can be on a map one day and then disappear on another day, for example Kurdistan, sliced up and divided among other countries, at the dictate of the European Imperialists. Palestine, rapidly disappearing in a deadly and bloody land grab by the Israeli state. Borders are an anathema of freedom, they place individuals under the tutelage of some fabricated sovereignty, demanding the people follow its drum beat and dance to its song, even to the extent of shedding their blood, the state demands we feed on that poison known as patriotism, which is the abandonment of your will to that of the state.
       Freedom is impossible as long as we have the planet divided into power blocks, states, each controlled by a small bunch of pampered and over privileged individuals competing for the worlds finite resources. No where in this grand scheme of things, is there room for the freedom of the individual, no possibility of equality, the system, to survive, must have leaders and followers, otherwise it collapses. If we desire freedom, justice and equality with a sustainable existence, all borders must vanish and be seen for what they are lines in the sand drawn by the greedy and powerful to their own advantage. 

Patriotism
No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,
if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag
held aloft by some foolish hand
inciting worker and peasant to kill
on some green and wooded hill,
peasant and worker from some other land.
Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag
that brings out fools to stand and brag
of brutal deeds painted grand,
deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still
killed by my brothers' misguided hand.
No allegiance have I for the Nation
this man made autocratic creation
that divides my brothers in a world so small,
binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,
bids us follow its drum, sing its song,
then sheds our blood in some border brawl.
No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,
have no ear for power oration,
though its iron heel is on my breast,
my back feels its leather thong,
at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest. 

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Media Indefference To Migrants Deaths.

 

         I have often stated that migrants, as far as the state is concerned, are beings with no human rights, a sub-human species, to be used as scapegoats, as fodder for the political machinations of their particular ideology. This is a phenomenon from the state created illusion of our superiority, our exceptionalism. There is a litany of cases of migrants being abused, used and denigrated, and being stripped of their humanity. A 1948, in America, one case of migrant herding ended in tragedy with the media adding further insult by treating the deaths of the migrants with indifference. Woody Guthrie marked the occasion with a poem.

Lyrics

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters they working the old church,
They rode the big truck still laydown and died
"Chorus"
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"
"Chorus"

 TEDx Talks published on June 3rd 2026.

        In 1948, a plane carrying 32 passengers crashed in the Los Gatos Canyon, California killing everyone on board. The media, including the New York Times, listed the names of the pilots, the flight attendant and the immigration guard but all 28 of the migrant workers (braceros) were labeled as deportees. This angered folk singer Woody Gutherie who wrote a poem about the crash. Almost ten years later, school teacher Martin Hoffman composed a melody to Guthrie's poem and that song became well known. Around 2010 Central Valley writer Tim Z. Hernandez discovered the story and soon began a project of finding the names and surviving relatives. Soon after musician Lance Canales joined the journey and composed his own version of the legendary song with Hernandez reading all the names of the deceased workers. Thanks to a fundraiser spearheaded by the two artist a new head stone has been built in the Holy Cross honoring all 32 passengers. Lance Canales is a roots-blues musician from California’s breadbasket. He lived the life that so many songs have been written about since the birth of roots music – hard labor, one room shacks and ghosts whispering of a better life. Canales’ guttural vocals combine a hard-edged storytelling approach with stripped down, foot-stomping, acoustic instrumentation that people readily respond to; Canales and his band, The Flood, were a favorite at the 2015 Sister’s Folk Festival. Canales led the initiative to place a memorial headstone with the names of the plane crash victims of the famous Woody Guthrie song “Deportee,” who were discovered buried nameless in a mass grave in Fresno, California. Now and forever nameless no more. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

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Those Pesky Migrants!!

         How many EU citizens live in the UK? How many UK citizens live in the EU? January 2017 figures for the population of EU were 511,522,671, population of UK 65,808,573. If we subtract the population of the UK from the EU figure, giving us a figure of EU population of 445,714,098. Of that vast number of EU citizens, approximately 2.9 million have come to live in the UK. Of our much smaller population of around 65 million, 1.3 million have chosen to live in the EU. 

      The largest portion of UK citizens living in EU have settled in Spain, population wise, a much smaller country than UK, but it has 391,194 UK citizens settled in there.

     The following LINK https://epa.com.es/padron/britanicos-en-espana/ gives a breakdown of where that UK population have settled in Spain, and you can see that in the chart just how high in certain places the UK migrant population is in relation to the local population. Thanks Loam for the link: https://arrezafe.blogspot.com/

       Populations have always moved around and across borders, some by choice, others by necessity. Borders are imaginary lines drawn by power mongers who wish to hold onto what they see as their territory and their power base. The UK is a broth-pot of Roman, Viking, Norman, Saxon, Irish and a large mix of African, Eastern and Middle Eastern populations. However the racist duped element in this patch of the planet called the UK, see any new migrant as a threat, blind to the fact that their own ancestry is made of of a hotch-potch of migrants over the ages. We are all human and belong to the same family tree, if we really open our eyes we would see that the only real division between us is the one created by those same power mongers that create those imaginary lines/borders, and it is one of class. 

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Today's Scapegoats, The Migrant.

           More on the state's brutal savagery in seeking total control, pick a country, and there will be state repression either on its own citizens or as is common place now, the modern scapegoat, migrants. This example is from Athens, but, today, it could be any city in Europe.

This from Act For Fredom Now:

   Freedom For All Migrants.

          Hicham, is a North African-born migrant, living in Athens for the past 10 months. He is a member of our squat community of Exarchia, and an active participant in the free public bath initiative. Hischam was arrested in June this year on Kallidromiou st. in a police control check.
He has been held in the dungeon cells of Kallidromiou police station ever since. Hicham, who is a Europe-wide organizer of unions and activists of unregistered refugees, was held completely incognito for the first ten days, and denied any contact with the outside world, including his Belgian wife and child. Like so many migrants he gets no regular access to visitors, no legal advice, no translation, no information about his case and future. Instead he gets constant humiliation, violence and psychological torture from the repressive, racist organs of the state. Conditions in these police cells are inhuman, more like lightless, airless underground pits, conditions that are designed to crush the prisoner, leading to severe depression and mental illness.
        Combined with denying them any information about the length of detention, this amounts to torture. Though Hicham has legal papers in Belgium, he is caught in the trap of the state judicial system. Indefinite detention means what it says – indefinite.
         The state’s fascist politics unfolds in its full magnitude in its treatment of migrants. They are the scapegoats, stripped of all dignity. The scope is international, the borders of Europe now an untold war. Daily killings, torture, mass imprisonment and abducted deportations have all become commonplace. New concentration camps are planned outside of Europe, without regard for the humanity of their inmates.
        Hicham’s case is only one example of thousands of migrants and refugees imprisoned in administrative detention around the country. The only reason, not having the right papers! This is the fascist nature of the system which categorizes and criminalizes people in order to exploit them. Only solidarity can make these people visible, and their cases known. This occurs in Exarchia at a time when the state is implementing a plan for total control and subjugation of this neighborhood, because it is a neighborhood of resistance!
         Renewed police sweep operations have become a weekly routine, and many refugees and members from our squat communities have been controlled, beaten and detained. Exarchia is and should remain a place of direct political action, of self organization of the oppressed, a site of diversity and freedom. Militants, migrants and prisoners alike, we can only defend our community through unified action against the state. Solidarity is our weapon, and our key.

And much nearer home, Glasgow.
        Sorry a bit late with this for the protest, but you can still take action and join one of the support groups, links below.

Protest - Stop The Mass Eviction of Refugees Tonight 6:00 Buchanan Street.

      PROTEST: Glasgow stands with 300 refugees facing mass eviction from
their homes over the next week.

        The mass eviction of 300 refugees is set to take place across Glasgow
city over the next week. Serco who are the private housing firm who deal with accommodation for refugees have deployed beyond disgusting tactics to displace people from their homes. Serco will issue "lock change" notices on Monday giving residents a week to get out with nowhere else to go.
       With the night shelter and housing schemes already massively stretched, hundreds of people in Glasgow will be facing street homelessness and will be extremely vulnerable.

        "This is, ultimately, a brutal consequence of Home Office using deliberate destitution and homelessness as a key immigration enforcement policy. Alongside the use of private asylum accommodation providers" - Stuart McDonald, MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East

This display of a brutality is not the values of the citizens of Glasgow and we are urging people to join our protest against this mass eviction. Speakers on the day to be announced. We also recommend writing to your elected representatives urging them to take action and sharing this with friends and family. If you want to learn more about organisations working on these issues or find out more about what it's like to go through the asylum process - here are some useful links:

Refugee Survival Trust - http://www.rst.org.uk/

Glasgow Night Shelter - https://glasgownightshelter.org/

Glasgow Asylum Destitute Action Network -

https://destitutionaction.wordpress.com/

Positive Action in Housing - http://www.paih.org/

Scottish Refugee Council - http://www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk/

Govan Community Project - http://www.govancommunityproject.org.uk/

Unity Centre - https://unitycentreglasgow.org/

Ubuntu Women's Shelter - http://ubuntu-glasgow.org.uk/

Scottish Detainee Visitors - http://sdv.org.uk/

Maryhill Integration Network - http://www.maryhillintegration.org.uk/

Refuweegee - https://refuweegee.co.uk/

Maslow's Community Shop Govan -

https://www.facebook.com/maslowsgovan/?hc_location=ufi

Scottish Afghan Society - http://www.scottishafghansociety.org.uk/Home.aspx

Right To Remain Toolkit - https://righttoremain.org.uk/toolkit/

Report on Asylum Destitution in Scotland:

https://digitalpublications.parliament.scot/Committees/Report/EHRiC/2017/5/22/Hidden-Lives---New-Beginnings--Destitution--asylum-and-insecure-immigration-status-in-Scotland

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Humans, Surplus To Requirements.

 

       The labels vary, refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, but these labels are usually badges of misery. People, human beings, uprooted forcibly, or fleeing hurriedly, in fear and desperation. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2017, 65.6 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations alone. Think of that figure, approximately the population of the UK hurriedly uprooted and moved on, usually in fear and desperation.

       A river of misery flows from Africa and washes over the graveyard that is the Mediterranean Sea, the inscription “We are not all there – The drowned are missing” is a bitter one. Those who survive that passage find themselves locked in groups at various borders, living in deprivation or in detention centres. Held at the vagaries of the autocratic states, who see them, not as suffering human beings, but as a problem of control. 

      The lot of the refugee, asylum seeker, migrant, is one of being stalked, and if found to be lacking the necessary piece of paper, locked up in some inhumane detention centre, with the constant threat of being thrown back into the hell that they tried to escape. A hell, in most cases, caused by the foreign policy of the host nations, who treat them like cattle. They will be stalked by uniformed gangs of thugs, paid members of the state's protection squad, whose duties are to protect the rich and powerful. These paid minions of the state with complete lack of morality will always obey orders, they are part and parcel of this corrupt and dying system.

       The so called "refugee/asylum seeker/migrant" crisis will only disappear when we end this system of capitalism, that sees humans as productive units or surplus to requirements. This system that spawns wars as a means of profit, that destroys vast swaths of the planet for control of resources, creating that 65.6 million "displaced persons". History tells us a bitter story written in letters of blood, of the dismal failure of this man made system. The future is yet unwritten, we can write that future, a future of humanity, mutual aid, co-operation and sustainability. A future where no one is a refugee, or an asylum seeker, where those power drawn lines known as borders, melt and fade into the dust of history. Only the ordinary people of this world can write that future, but only when they discard the man made cancer that is capitalism and abandon any belief in "leaders" and party "messiahs" who offer to guide them to that "pie-in the-sky" illusion of the promised land. 

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

Every Day You Die Many Times.

         So we think we have a lot on our mind, what with austerity, Brexit, and the Indy-ref 2. Well perhaps we should spare a thought for those hundreds of thousands of refugees herded like cattle in various points on the continent of Europe. In Greece, in particular, their conditions are deteriorating rapidly from appalling to utterly inhumane and unbearable. Having managed, through grit, courage and determination, to extract themselves from the bloody dystopia that is the imperialist slaughter house of the Middle East, they find themselves trapped in a living hell. Just the other day, "an asylum seeker was found hanged in an apparent suicide at Greece’s largest port, shortly after aid agencies warned of mounting desperation among refugees trapped in the country. The 25-year-old Syrian man was carrying refugee application papers when he was found dead near passenger ferry departure gates in Piraeus, outside Athens." More than 1,500 refugees are living around the Greek port of Piraeus, but there are over 62,000 refugees trapped in Greece in concentration camps and elsewhere by the idiotic impractical EU-Turkey deal and other border closures across Europe. Of course this is capitalism, so there will be those standing by to make a profit from exploiting this trapped and desperate group.

         Research by Save the Children found more than 5,000 minors are living in “appalling conditions”, driving a mounting mental health crisis. It found that children as young as nine were self-harming and 12-year-olds attempting suicide, sometimes filming themselves in the act. A spike in drug and alcohol abuse by teenagers was also recorded, as dealers exploit them in the camps.

       The root of this "refugee crisis" is  of course, the world imperialists' blood stained foreign policy, their brutal, savage drive for control of the oil rich territory. Those unfortunate individuals and families, caught up in this mayhem of death and destruction, who see their homes, villages, towns, and cities being obliterated, and their families and friends being killed, and decide to try to make it to a safer place, are further hindered by those imaginary lines dawn on the planet's surface, borders. This is where the minders of the various states, stop the hungry, the sick, the maimed and the desperate, then make the arbitrary decision, which to accept and which to reject. Decisions that can mean, in many cases, the difference between life and death.
       The plight of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the bloody fireball that is the Middle East, has somewhat, disappeared from our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, that does not mean that the problem has been solved, far from it, it just means that they have lost interest and have moved on to their usual bilge splurge of candy-floss and bubble gum, peppered with the odd cash and sex scandal.
       What is going on in the Middle East is still there, the misery is still being created, the death and destruction is still going on, and the hungry, the terrified, the desperate, are still trying to flee to a safer place, and the developed world, the cause of the problem, is still turning its back on them.

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

Coffins From Derry.

       Sometimes the Glasgow dialect can be difficult to grasp, and the magic of words lost even though the passion may shine through. This may have been the case in the last post, so for comrade Loam and those others who might not have been able to grasp all the words, here is a transcript of Victoria McNulty's poem Coffins From Derry. Thanks Victoria.

Coffins from Derry

A thousand flood
Could have burst The Clyde
Each day of 1848
Had it not been for people.
The undead
Sailed in coffins from Derry.
Irish fever
Spilled from the Foyle, to
Boil the banks with Typhoid, the
Young scratched with fleas from starving rats
To be sacked -
Abandoned in Scotland's slums,
Feared and greeted by no one.
When my family crossed to Scotland,
They didn't flea famine,
But civil war.
The Gaeltacht already Black An Gorta Mhor,
Their names now warning signs on windows.
No work or trade gave way to
Forgotten faiths
And altered names; just tags of tarrier, terrorist and taig.
Coffins aren't made of mahogany today,
Just tarpolin and waves.
Not Killkenny's mass graves
But the beds of the Aegean Sea-
The road from Damascus stacked with similarities
Even Saul could see,
Floatsome children line beaches,
Their flesh all bloated and grey like typhus
Their parents, skeleton faces
Line security gates and fences -
Wire poked with frail famine hands-
Lips stitched and stomachs pitted
As Joe McDonnell, Bobby Sands....
And still we say they're not like us,
Don't belong like us.
I can never forget,
Scotland is cut from refugees,
And I am privileged.
My mothers made their journeys for me,
So now I watch from couch
And TV,
Miles from pipe bomb and peace walls.
Yet I will not fall silent,
I stand tall I stand proud
In welcome and unity
I stand in solidarity
With displaced people now residing in Scotland.

 

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

Migrants Are People.

        Migrants may be reported in our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, but never as people. They are this band of figures that cross borders “illegally”, but behind every mention of a migrant, there is a person and in most cases a person suffering. They are individuals and families, in search of a better life, or worse fleeing death and destruction. Despite their plight, they are herded like cattle, shunted into detention centres, intimidated, humiliated and often abused. Million of pounds are spent on immigration officials, transport and detention centres, but little in trying to alleviate the individual’s problems. The normal procedure is, gather them up, lock them up, and ship them back to what ever horror they came from. We are one people, we live in one world, would should treat each other as such, migrants are people, just like you and I.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

 Let’s break isolation
       CIEs are prisons for immigrants destined to be deported from Italy. They are part of the system of control, selection and ruling of migration flows throughout Europe. A system that by either giving or denying a document decides who can stay on the European soil in order to thicken the ranks of the exploited, and who must be taken away because they are not needed. In other words, those destined to stay as clandestine, subjected to even more blackmail and exploitation.
There have been struggles both inside and outside the CIEs in the course of the years, the struggles of those who are locked up and of people in solidarity who have decided that a stance must be taken against all this: the CIEs are to be razed to the ground for the sake of everybody’s freedom.
      One of the CIES currently operating can be found in Brindisi, hidden in the countryside of Restinco.
       Many testimonies of violence and abuse have been coming from inside the centre, directly from the prisoners, in the last month. It seems that whoever protests against the humiliating conditions of detention – if the threating wasn’t enough to dissuade him/her – will be taken by force to a little yard by the guards, away from his/her companions, and beaten up by scores of them.
     Against isolation, against all prisons, in solidarity with the imprisoned immigrants:
Demo outside the CIE in
Brindisi-Restinco
Monday 8th August 6pm
(4pm meeting point at Villa Matta squat, Lecce, via San Nicola 1)

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

Solidarity In One Big Fight.

 

       It is great to see that the racist policies of this government, (and the previous ones) are being resisted and that resistance is growing, not just with meetings and leaflets, but by direct action. This latest action was in London and shows solidarity and ingenuity. It is all linked, migrants, workers conditions, social cleansing, austerity, it is one large fight against an all encompassing system of repression and exploitation.

This from Rabble:

       On Monday afternoon the neighbourhood of Deptford, South East London, chased away a Home Office “Immigration Enforcement” raid team. The Home Office bullyboys had reportedly been spotted several times in the previous week doing so-called “intelligence gathering”. I.e., trying to harass shopkeepers into giving them permission to carry out “operations” in their premises so they don’t have to go to the hassle of getting a court warrant. On Monday they came back in greater force, but people gathered and sent them away empty handed. They drove off in several unmarked cars but abandoned their marked “racist van” in a back street, which was then refurbished with the windows smashed and messages written in spray paint (see pictures).

     Deptford market is a regular target for Home Office raids, often working in conjunction with police, the local council and other agencies. The most recent major raid was in April. As with other London street markets (such as East Street), there are clear links between these attacks targeting migrants and wider attacks on the neighbourhood, as property developers and state authorities combine to “socially cleanse” the area, and clearing out those they consider undesirable. But resistance is growing. In Deptford, there is now a regular “Deptford Anti Raids” information stall every Saturday in the market, and Monday shows that people are ready to fight back.

Check the AntiRaids twitter account for raid alerts and other live updates.

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