Wyatt Earp In Uniform.

 

       The gun totting cop is becoming more prevalent on the city streets across the world. However I think that America still holds that accolade of the most Wyatt Earps in uniform roaming the streets. We must always remember that these macho psychopaths are armed, trained, supported and payed for by the state, (your tax money) as its guard dogs. I must admit that on my many visits to Athens, I always felt a little bit apprehensive when approaching the Greek police. I just didn't like their menacing swagger, usually in twos or threes, all with their guns strapped to their sides. There has been various cases of where the Greek police have shown their idiotic unbalanced macho instincts when confronted with something they just don't like, remember Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15 year old teenager shot dead by an armed cop, while out having a coffee with his friend. 

     Another incident of the Rambo attitude of the Greek police came quite recently and was met with mass resistance from university students and joined by others.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

       It all started on Monday 24 February inside the grounds of Athens University of Economics, when an off duty cop in plain clothes got off his bike and began harassing an immigrant street vendor outside the front gate. The policeman was spotted by anarchist students due to his boots and his helmet that bore the police insignia and was immediately confronted. In his panic, he began running inside the university grounds and managed to trap himself in a dead end corridor, pulled a gun on students and with his finger on the trigger threatened to shoot them while pointing the gun at them for at least 5 minutes, while desperately calling his colleagues on the phone to come and rescue him. The students, not losing their cool, but at the same time not taking a step back demanded he puts the gun down and exits the university grounds. Few minutes later scores of riot policemen stormed the university and attacked students during school hours with flash bang grenades and asphyxiating gas creating chaos because of one imbecile cop that thought he was a cowboy.
       Following these events, that shook the academic community, a protest was called by students on Wednesday 26 February from Athens University of Economics, that the incident took place, to the greek police headquarters, (2.5 km away). Thousands of people took part in the protest, demanding the university asylum to be reinstated (forbidding the police to enter any university grounds, as it was the case for decades, until few months ago, when the new right wing government abolished it).
      When the protest reached the police headquarters and after the main body of the demo had passed in front of the building, several anarchists attacked it with stones, using fire extinguishers to fog the policemen’s vision.
      Riot police brigades and police bikers charged into the crowd with their bikes, ramming people with them as a weapon and throwing them to the ground, chasing, attacking and arresting anyone they could. Many students managed to get into the metro subway station nearby but the police started to throw asphyxiating gas grenades inside the station and while they gave an order for the passing trains not to make a stop, in order to trap hundreds of people down there, in a horrific atmosphere of people breathing with difficulty due to the gas, while at the same time, disrupting the public transport by creating a problem to hundreds more passengers that were planning to get off the tube at that specific metro station.
        Following the events the students decided to occupy the Athens University of Economics on Thursday and Friday, 27 and 28 of February 2020. On Thursday, February 27, 2020, along with many people in solidarity from the occupied “Athens University of Economics” the squatters of “Vancouver Squat” that was evacuated by the greek riot police on November 2, 2019, took the riot police by surprise and symbolically reoccupied the squat lighting flares on the rooftop.

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Religion, A Dictator.

     Because of America's brutal imperialist policies against Iran, some people will side with Iran, but we should never forget, Iran is just another corrupt authoritarian regime that wishes to control the people and enforce its own particular brand of dogma and ideology. Just like our own authoritarian states in the West, it has its secret police, it is riddled with corruption, it has its torturers, its large humanity killing prisons, its brutal minions who carry out the savage dictate of the regime. As in other states across the globe, there is no room for freedom and justice in their agenda. Corporate dictator, or religious dictator, is no choice at all.

This from asrananarchism:

       Only they who have lost their fear of death are in truly in love… My heart yearns for comrades who can hear my voice even though a more a dreadful and torturous prison awaits me for the crime of wanting to be a voice for the oppressed and my fellow inmates. Yet to be human is to endure the hardship of accepting responsibility, and there is no greater responsibility for the rebel than to stand with the oppressed. I must be the voice of people like Meysam, and thus refuse to fear Two Alef, 209, One Alef, and the regime’s other horrific prisons
        Meysam is an 18 year old youth from the Parand district who was arrested by agents of IRGC Tharallah military base for joining the protests against the increase in the price of gasoline that swept the country in November. Facing the charges of assembling and conspiring against the state, he is currently incarcerated in the 5th block of the Greater Tehran Central Prison. Despite his youth, Meysam’s hands are covered in callouses from being forced to be the sole breadwinner that his mother and sister depend on after losing his father to a traffic accident. He would work from dawn until midnight in the freezing cold of winter and the scorching heat of summer, delivering food on a motorcycle and pursuing his studies at night. After the sudden increase in the prices of gasoline, Meysam took to the streets to get his voice heard
       He says, “Even before the price increases, I was barely able to make enough to meet my family’s most basic needs. For me and others like me, traveling and leisure have always been out of reach like a mirage, but after the price increases, I can’t even afford the cost of rent, food, healthcare, and basic utilities. Who will answer our cries of agony with help?” Not only was there no help to be found, but his protestations were answered with blows from electric prods and batons. He was berated and tortured multiple times while his interrogator stood above him with a baton and electric prod and coerced him into confessing that he was taking orders from the United States and Israel and a member of so and so group dedicated to overthrowing the regime. Masyam asks “where the hell are America and Israel? I’ve never even traveled further than Shah Abdol-Azim’s Shrine! I just want to make enough income to live and an economy that isn’t corrupt. How does that make me an insurrectionist----

Read the full article HERE: 

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Self Defence Takes Many Shapes.

      There is no doubt that this world has beauty and pleasure in abundance to offer, but it is impossible to be blind to the violence all around us, we live in a very violent world. The inescapable fact that we should all wake up to is that states are by far the worst offenders when it comes to violence. State authorities far outstrip any individual, group, or gangster mob, in the range and depth of violence they daily administer.

        Their violence takes many shapes from the misery, poverty and early deaths from corporate exploitation, aided and abetted by the state. There is the plundering of the public purse to enrich the already wealth bedfellows of the state, which is responsible for millions living mired in deprivation. There is the state "punishment" handed out to those who would resits this deliberate, avoidable violent injustice. Of course we can never ignore the state's greatest savage, brutal violence, it is when it decides to go to war with one of its fellow states. Which of course is always founded on a false narrative, cajoling the population into following its fluttering coloured rag and sacrificing their lives for the survival and enrichment of the keepers of the state. Wars create mountains of bodies and rivers of blood, and millions of lives that remain steeped in misery for the rest of their lives. However the keepers of the state ensure that the state survives intact.

        How people respond to this violence varies, but due to the scale brutality and breadth of state violence it is difficult to fault anybody's struggles against this continuous onslaught, each of us must choose or own path of resistance, but resistance is always justifiable, it is simply a choice of self defence.

    An anonymous song from Italy depicting someone's choice of resistance, lifted from Anarchists Worldwide:

The Individualist Hymn
Before dying in the mud on the streets
we would imitate Bresci and Ravachol;
anyone who extends a hand to you, bourgeoisie,
is a person unworthy of looking at the sun.
Grinding machines tear the beggars to pieces
and their wives are forever pale and weeping,
The fields remain fallow, the miners buried
and the workers crushed forever by murder.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
France, on the watch with the guillotine,
chops off the head of anyone who wants to punish her.
Cowardly Spain strangles with a garrote and murderous
Italy guns down those who aren’t accustomed to trembling.
Hanged in America, throats cut in Africa,
forever tortured at Montjuich in Spain,
but the individualist still knows how to strike
the sorry breed of gentleman thugs.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
As long as we are a herd it’s appropriate that there’s
a social gang passing laws;
as long as the sun of anarchy doesn’t shine,
we will always see the slaughtering of the populace.
Be very afraid, coppers, when you hear
the dynamite exploding against the oppressors.
We are enemies of all cops and scoundrels,
And one against all, we will scatter them.
And to those who don’t give in, open the tombs,
prepare the bombs, sharpen the knife,
action is the ideal!
******
No Copyright. 100% DIY. Feel free to reproduce.

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Attica Forty-Eight Years On.

       Prisons are inhumane institutions where people are caged and conditions often lead to pent up anger and frustration which invariably leads to violence. They are state tools of repression whose purpose is to turn the individual into a submissive units of society, a place to neutralise dissent.
       I'm a couple of days late in marking the anniversary of this rebellion. September 9th. 1971, prisoners suffering appalling conditions and in an institution that was grossly over crowded, took control of Attica prison in New York. After several days of negotiations, the authorities stormed the prison, the result was described as the worst one day slaughter in America since the America Civil War. Riot at Attica prison. The retaking of the prison was short, and extremely brutal and vicious, and as usual, covered in media lies. This incident should be another reminder that the state will use whatever violence it wishes to keep control of the population, then stamp it with its own badge of legitimacy, under the self appointed law that it alone holds the monopoly on violence to be used at will.

       Statement from the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) on the anniversary of the Attica Rebellion and national prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.

        Forty-eight years ago today, prisoners at Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York made history by beginning a days-long riot against their captors, demanding better living conditions and respect of their basic humanity. The rebellion occurred just two weeks after the murder of Soledad Brother George Jackson at San Quentin prison, while he made a bid for his freedom. This uprising forms a critical part of revolutionary history and serves as a constant source of inspiration as we continue to fight against the same horrific institutions that have kept people in bondage for centuries.
       The spirit of Attica lives on in anti-prison struggles of today, including the nationwide prison strikes that occurred in both 2016 and 2018. These strikes began on August 21st, a day on which both George Jackson’s escape attempt and the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831 are commemorated; and ended on September 9th, the final day of the Attica uprising. Prisoners all over the U.S. participated through such actions as hunger-striking, refusing to buy items at commissary, and refusing to report for work. Folks on the outside expressed solidarity with those behind the walls via actions like noise demos, motorcades, statements, letter writing campaigns, fundraising and banner drops.
         Nearly half a century after the Attica uprising, prisoner demands of today very closely mirror those of the 1970s. In other words, nothing has changed. Prisoners are still regularly subjected to solitary confinement and beatings; lack access not just to “healthful” food full of nutrients, but often, even sanitary food that isn’t covered in mold; and have what few “privileges” are allowed, such as visitation, regularly revoked without any explanation. Last winter saw mass mobilization around Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York as word got out that prisoners there had gone without consistent light and without consistent heat for weeks— during one of the coldest winters in recent history, with record-breaking lows and ferocious winds rattling the region.
       These details only fuel the fire sparked by the very act of putting someone in a cage. Whatever such a person is fed, whatever “privileges” such a person is allowed, locking someone in a cage is an inherently violent attack by the State against our friends, neighbors, and communities. This social, political, and economic situation is the continuation of slavery in the US and abolition of prisons and all the institutions making this situation tenable is an immediate goal. Such attacks cannot be tolerated! In the spirit of Attica! Solidarity with revolutionary comrades behind the walls!

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No Pasaran.

       We should not take the resistance that is happening in Exarcheia, Athens, as some little thing that is happening in a small area somewhere else. It is of international importance, and we should give it all the support and publicity that we can muster. It is an area where migrants are welcomed and where possible provided for, an area where people try to live their lives in a sense of mutual aid, self determination and respect for the individual and individual freedom. A place that flies in the face of control by the strangling hand of the authoritarian state. You can rest assured other states are watching and taking notes, as their aim is the same as the Greek state, total control of the population, a desire to have an army of submissive citizens. If the Greek state wins and destroys the ethos of Exarcheia, locks the migrants up in appalling over crowded concentration camps, imprisons those who supported the migrants through humanity, the flower of freedom has further withered for all of us. Authority and control will have tightened its grip, and that affects us all, no matter where we live. The resistance in Exarcheia demands our full support and solidarity, their struggle is our struggle.

This from Anarchist News:

No Pasaran: Thousands take to the streets against the Greek State's attack at Exarcheia.

        (Athens, Greece) Saturday, 31 August 2019: Two to three thousand people (according to different estimates) marched down the neighbourhood of Exarcheia in central Athens, following a massive police raid against 4 squats (mainly housing refugees) on Monday 26 August and the consequent arrest of 143 migrants and 3 others. Following the police raid, the neighbourhood of Exarchia has been turned into a “militarized” zone with constant riot police attacks against people in the area and social centers.
       But what the government didn't expect was that people in the area, instead of “cowering” in fear, they chose to defy the greek riot police and the government's ideological terrorism, also expressed through its controlled mass media. Thus, thousands of anarchists and other activists sent through the protest a message of resistance to the State's repressive campaign, as well as, signals of solidarity to the squats and social centers evicted and those under the imminent threat of new attacks by the greek State.
        To get an idea of the situation in Exarcheia during the last few days, on Thursday 29 of August 2019, during a live gig organized by bookshops and book publishing companies, scores of riot policemen suddenly attacked more than a thousand attendees with asphyxiating gas, flash bang grenades, and baton attacks, whilst in the chaos that followed, they attacked “Vox” social center (located on Exarchia Square), smashing its window screen and throwing an asphyxiating gas canister inside its closed spaces, an action that could have had resulted to death. Many people inside and outside were also treated with serious head wounds. Then, on Saturday 31 August, following the afternoon demo seen in the video, riot cops attacked again the concert on its 3d day, led by a riot policeman that had drawn his gun aiming at people while charging, according to witnesses of the events. But that was not the last of it. On Sunday 1 September the Vox social center was attacked by the greek riot police for a third time in just four days.
        Another big protest against the greek State's terror at the Exarcheia neighbourhood of Athens has been announced for the 14th of September.

More on Exarcheia:

    First they take Exarcheia
Recent evictions of several squats, some housing refugees and migrants, mark the beginning of a new chapter of repression and dissent in Greece.

 https://roarmag.org/essays/first-they-take-exarcheia/

    Exarchia: The struggle continues
From Yannis Youlountas, from Exarchia (31/08/2019) …

 http://autonomies.org/2019/08/exarchia-the-struggle-continues/

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What Is Violence.

       Violence should be avoided, but is self defence violence?  Is the state the greatest perpetrator of violence on the planet? Is self defence against the vast state institution of violence, violence or self defence? Violence comes in many shades, from physical, to psychological, suppression of desires is violence, stunting the potential of an individual by avoidable poverty is violence. How should we respond to these acts of violence?

Sub.Media: What is Violence?

By

submedia.tv

-

July 17, 2019

280

        SubMedia offers up another video installment in their A is for Anarchy series. This episode takes on violence, what it means, how it plays out in struggles, daily life, and how it is utilized by the State and forces of domination.

 
       Our societies are heavily dependent on violence to function. While states will attempt to hold a monopoly on violence and constantly find new ways to legitimize their use of force, people struggling against domination can also use violence to confront the hierarchical systems oppressing them. While debates around violence and tactics seem to be revived every time someone decides to fight back, the necessity of physical attacks on power cannot be ignored. So, what is violence exactly, and how does it function in the world?

Music: Outspoken Beats & Blaze Audio

Download [HD * SD * Torrent * English Subs] * Translate

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:08 — 41.9MB) | Embed

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All States Have Blood On Their Hands.

      State violence against legitimate and peaceful marches is not the prerogative of right-wing fascist governments. All the so called representative democracies have blood on their hands. Protesters have been shot on the streets of UK mainland and Northern Ireland. It is the states answer to dissent.

     Members of the government in Greece proudly wear the badge of socialist and communist, but willing send their over armed thugs onto the street in an attempt to intimidate those citizens who go on peaceful marches or wish to show dissent. The state can't tolerate any form of dissent, it is seen as a threat to their power and control.

This from Perseus999:

 Published on Nov 17, 2018

         Athens: On 17 November 2018, following the annual protest in commemoration of the student revolt against the military dictatorship in Athens, Greece, (1973), and despite the fact that this year's protest was ending in an absolutely peaceful manner, scores of riot policemen encircled the black block just before it was going to disperse and for no apparent reason, no provocation, no excuse, no justification, they suddenly launched a massive attack and charged against the crowd with batons while firing asphyxiating gas grenades and flash-bang grenades, creating chaos in a residential area of central Athens, just outside Ambelokipoi metro station. This video serves as a reminder that this is what democracy looks like, ie. you don't have to provoke the State or the police to get attacked, wounded, gassed, arrested, intimidated and persecuted. The State and the police will judge you solely on the basis of your political or ideological beliefs. Some people argue that scenes like these are evident of a fascist State and not a democratic one, in spite of the fact that attacks like these take place all over the world in almost every democratic State that exists on the planet, by both left or right wing governments. The government of SYRIZA in Greece is a left one, the vast majority of its politicians or members call themselves socialists or communists and yet you see scenes of ruthless violence by their policemen that are identical to what happens to States ruled by right wing governments. They are not even afraid that people will make a connection between the commemoration of a crushed bloody student rebellion by a military junta and the brutal attack against a protest by policemen armed and dressed like soldiers on the same day years later. The common denominator is power. No Gods, No Masters. Video from a similar riot police attack exaclty on the same day (17 November 2017) in the same street last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f_Ar...

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In Memory Of Lambros Foundas.

       In memory of Lambros Foundas, shot by the police in Athens, on March 10th. 2010. The state will always justify its killings, and demand a sole monopoly on violence, it is its only means of survival. Its existence is built on control, force and repression, to try to eliminate state violence, but leave the state in place, is futility in the extreme.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

 

In life thunder
Charged with
genuine anguish for the choices, the tomorrow, the comrades, the struggle.
With sharp thoughts, forged in the bowels of personal labour and the movement.
With decisive acts, firm, flaming.
You showed with your life that the way of the revolutionary is to say little, to act with rage and devotion. With rage and conscience.
In your memory fists tighten…
Tears become weapons…
And the old Case becomes more imperative.
And in death a wolf
One
breath was enough for you, one decision and the iron will.
With the weapon in your hand and freedom in your eyes you chased your dreams to the end.
As you lived, this is how you left. Wild and free.
When revolutionaries die
they are not lost
They ride a star and draw courses of freedom in the indefinite.
They draw with their blood what each one of us dreams but is afraid to dare.
They are fireflies in the darkness of inertia.
They are the fire, the struggle, the street.
Lets all take the fire from their fire…
lets not forget – lets act.
Honour to anarchist
Lambros Foundas
The struggle continues.

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So The State Repression Continues.

 

       If you like Beethoven, then you'll love this, a rather unusual rendering of his ninth symphony.

 The G20 leaders listen indifferently to a performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony—Bakunin’s favorite musical composition—while the rightful heirs of Beethoven and Bakunin engage in heroic struggle outside the walls.

         The aftermath of the G20 is still being felt by those who took part in the protests and others not really involved, as the German state does what state's do, come down hard on any dissent, useing any excuse to try and stifle opposition to their grip on power and privileges.

This from Crimethinc:

       Police raided more than 20 apartments, collectives, and projects around Germany in the early hours of December 5 in a new wave of repression following their unsuccessful attempts to brutally suppress demonstrations against the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. The “Soko Schwarzer Block,“ the special police commission called “black bloc“ that was formed after the G20, officially announced that the searches pertained to an incident during the G20 at Rondenbarg trailer park—in which the police trapped and attacked a crowd, injuring many people. Solidarity actions and demonstrations responding to the raids took place immediately in Hannover, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Hamburg, Flensburg, Göttingen, and Berlin.
      Fabio, a person who spent four months in prison, became a symbol of the scandalous lies that the authorities have been spreading about the police attack at Rondenbarg. During the attack, police kicked 14 people down a fence, screaming “That’s your breakfast, antifa swine!” All of them sustained serious injuries, including broken bones. Since the police video was published by a TV station, we can all compare the different versions. History is made by those in power and what we witness right now is the fabrication of truth. The truth that the police and the judges are trying to promote is not compatible with the experiences that thousands of people share of being charged without provocation, brutally beaten up, water-cannoned, and pepper-sprayed during the summit.
      The official charge is “Landfriedensbruch,“ breach of the public peace. But even according to the police spokesperson, the searches were not carried out to find evidence to use against people participating in the demonstration. The searches were officially made to find out more about the structure of the protests and the organizers of the riots. In other words, the explicit goal of the police is to suppress dissent via violence and ongoing intimidation.
       The intention of the police is to frame the people they attacked as rioters. But they also raided the apartments of union members. Consequently, even mainstream journalists called the searches a PR bluff. The act that the arrestees are accused of is nothing more than being part of a demonstration from which stones and fireworks were thrown. The police have admitted that they did not expect to identify anyone who had thrown anything.

Truth, Buried In A Sea Of Speculation And Bias.

        I'm no apologist for Assad, nor an applauder for Putin and his military machine, but when it comes to situations like Syria, it is right that we try to find the truth. Syria is a country where millions of its citizens have been displaced, tens of thousands have been killed and maimed, most of its major cities have been turned to rubble, there are thousands of children being born homeless, or being born as refugees, but our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, spews out second hand, unverified western propaganda, while the truth lies buried in a sea of speculation and bias. There are other voices in this imperialist blood bath that is Syria, we have a duty to hear them. 

These Videos from Arrezafe:

      The Western military went into Afghanistan in 2001, since then a trail of death and destruction has moved across a vast swath of that part of the world, here we are in 2017, we are still in there with our military might, and the death and destruction continues at an accelerated rate. Let's not forget, that the vast majority of those displaced, deaths and injuries are of ordinary people from that region. We are talking about bus drivers, plumbers, teachers, shop assistants, doctors, elderly and children. Everybody must ask, why are they paying this price? 

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We Will Not Forget.

 

 In memory of Alexia Gigoropoulos.

      Anyone who is aware of the murder of 15 year old youth, Alexis Gigoropoulos, by a police officer in Exarchia, Athens, in 2008, would be well aware that the people of Athens would not allow the anniversary of his cold bloodied murder to go unmarked. Every year since his murder in 2008, large protests against police violence, have take place on December 6th, in towns and cities across Greece. That evening in, December 6th. 2008, Alexis, like so many youths, was hanging out with his friend Niko Romanos in an open air café in Exarchia. Because of a few words of banter from the youths, a police officer drew his gun and shot 15 year old Alexis, who died on the street in the arms of his friend Niko. Niko went on to become a very committed and involved anarchist, and is now in prison. The state, by its actions, always breeds hate against the state.

 Niko Romanos after his arrest.

     So it would be expected that this year, like the previous years, is no exception, and the people of Greece will shout loud and clear, we do not forget, we will not forgive.

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The World's Eyes On Standing Rock.

 

      The camp set up by the water protectors at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline is facing a critical stage, as December the 5th, is the date set by the Army Corps of Engineers and North Dakota Governor, Jack Dalrymple to evict the water protectors. Solidarity, and publicity are needed now more than ever. Let's raise their voices across the planet. Support is growing in America, there are thousands of US veterans now arriving at the camp, there solidarity is welcome and needed. 

-------the announcement comes as thousands of U.S. Army veterans are expected to arrive at the Oceti Sakowin camp this weekend in anticipation of the Dec. 5 eviction notice given to the camp by the Army Corps of Engineers and North Dakota Governor, Jack Dalrymple. 

      Another show of solidarity comes from a delegation of Cuban trained doctors, who are heading for the camp to lend their expertise and support. Monday will be a very testing day, will the US state unleash its usual militarised violence against such large numbers, including thousands of its veterans, on its on soil? history should give us a dire warning. If the eviction goes ahead as stated, it will not be a quiet affair. What ever happens, let's make sure the world is watching.

       a delegation of doctors trained at the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba announced they will head to Standing Rock to “serve in solidarity.”
        In a late Thursday Facebook post, a group of U.S.-based medical professionals trained at Cuba’s famous Latin American School of Medicine, or ELAM, announced they will head to Standing Rock “to humbly serve in solidarity with the Sacred Water Protectors on the front lines of the current human rights and ecological crisis occurring right now in North Dakota.”
       Dr. Revery P. Barnes, a graduate of ELAM, said in a post on Facebook, “We answer the call to serve in alignment with the mission and core principles of our alma mater and dedication to our commitment to serve underserved communities in our HOME country.” The delegation will work in collaboration with the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council.
      “While Cuba instilled in us an unwavering commitment to internationalism, with the acceptance of a full scholarship to medical school at ELAM, we made the moral commitment to respond to the needs of our most vulnerable communities here at home in the U.S.,” the statement continued.
          On Wednesday, the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council – which has been providing emergency and chronic health care services to the thousands of water protectors gathered at Standing Rock – issued a warning about the grave health and safety threats posed by escalating use of violence by Morton County Sheriff’s Department and Dakota Access Pipeline security personnel, whom they described as creating “war-like conditions.”

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Where Is Our Righteous Anger?

      Why do we continually put up with our lords and masters' never ending desire to spend our tax money on the destruction of other people's countries. We are in an endless slaughter of innocents, authorised by our so called, democratic government. Cameron is now showing withdrawal symptoms as his sadistic Libyan adventure slides in to history. Come July we will see his excitement rate jump, as he and his imperialist cronies start episode two of his Libyan massacre.

       What most people don't recognise is the extent of the brutal assault on the people of Libya by that minder of Western corporatism, NATO. If we look at the bombardment of Syria, since 2014, not counting Russian air strikes, there has been just under 4,000 allied air strikes. In Iraq, air strikes against Daesh, have numbered approximately 8,500. If we combine these air strikes we have approximately 12,500.  The population of Syria is roughly 22.8 million and the population of Iraq 33.4 million and they have received an appalling 12,500 air strikes. Now let's look at Libya, with a small population of less than 7 million this unfortunate country felt the wrath of Cameron via NATO with an astonishing 26.500. A part from the human misery caused, it should be remembered that each missile fired cost between £500,000 and £1 million. How many hospitals went bang, and how many schools went boom, in  the batting of an eye?

 Syria.

       Not content with that, Cameron and his imperialist cohorts are planning another assault on the people of Libya. Why, well having destroyed the infrastructure of that country and turned it into a quagmire of fighting factions, it is difficult to control the oil efficiently. So they need a subservient, compliant government to run the place. Since there isn't one, they have shipped in a bunch of pro-Western/Saudi puppets, who are holed up in some western protected bunker, and this is what they call the legitimate government of Libya. So now we have to go in and blow the shit out of the rest of the country and build this Western chosen clique an army, so that we can do deals with them to more rapidly extract Libya's gas and oil. 

Iraq.

      They are planning to pour more of our tax money into the destruction of an already devastated country, with the result of countless more deaths of innocent people, we will be supporting a group of people whom the people of Libya have no part in choosing, all to help the Western corporate greed machine.

     We should be angry, we should be very angry, we are being made complicit in the murder of innocents, to feed the greed of Western imperialism. No where in this Dante's Inferno of greed is there a thought for the welfare of the people of Libya. The teachers, plumbers, drivers, grandparents and grandchildren of Libya will be the victims of this bloody greed fest.

Libya.

      Where is our righteous anger, where are the crowds on the streets, this slaughter will continue unless we the people stop it, the powers that be are all in favour of this continuing resource grab, by violence or any other means, and to hell with the people.

Time To Rage.

Time to rage, like a river running wild

Time to rise, to save the child,

Time to rage, like a mountain flood,

Time to rise, to stop the blood,

Time to rage, with righteous anger,

Time to rise, to point the finger.

Famine, misery, sickness,death

Stretch across these pleasant lands;

War, greed, hunger, blood

Sour the lovely desert sands,

Charity, chat, quiet dismay

Is not enough,

Prayers, thoughts,what PM's say

Is useless stuff.

Time to rage, like a river running wild,

Time to rise, to save the child,

Time to rage, like a mountain flood,

Time to rise, to stop the blood,

Time to rage, with righteous anger,

Time to rise, to point the finger.

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

Democracy and The State, Opposite Sides Of An Unbridgeable Divide.

      Another couple of examples of how democracy works in the Western world. We preach democracy across the world, bomb countries into submission and call it democracy. While at home we keep locking up more and more of our citizens, and the treatment delivered to those unfortunate to be confined within its cages, can be brutal in the extreme. 
This example is from Contra Info: 

Athens: Beatings inflicted on anarchist prisoner Panos Aspiotis for refusing to give DNA sample

      Anarchist Panagiotis (Panos) Aspiotis was wanted since March 2013 on firearms possession charges (“violation of the Arms Act”). In October 2015, he appeared voluntarily before the authorities. He was remanded and sent to a prison located far from Athens (his former residence). During these months in prison, he has refused to give the police a DNA sample.
       On Saturday, February 6th 2016, Panos Aspiotis was transferred from Nafplion prison to Athens, where he is scheduled to appear before the investigating judge Eftichis Nikopoulos (special appellate judge against terrorism) on Monday the 8th. The comrade was expected to be moved to Koridallos prison, but was brought to the Prisoner Transfer Division instead. He was separated from other prisoners and taken into a cell without surveillance cameras, where he was attacked by hooded cops of the anti-terrorist unit, who tried to take a sample of his DNA by force. He was beaten and kicked repeatedly in the head, ribs and body. The comrade resisted their first attempt by swallowing the DNA swab. The cops continued beating him, even after they forcibly took DNA sample from him.

SOLIDARITY WITH ANARCHIST PRISONER PANOS ASPIOTIS.

       This video from US, is extremely sickening as we know that this sort of thing is all part of the violence the state inflicts on its own citizens, through the medium of its trained keepers of the cages.

Published on Apr 5, 2013
        "You're never going to win... Bottom line is the house wins every time." That's what Maine Correctional Center Captain Shawn Welch said to a prisoner who was strapped into a restraint chair, his face coated with pepper spray and his legs shaking in pain and fear. The entire ordeal was captured in a disturbing video that recently hit the internet. After Captain Welch pepper sprayed prisoner Paul Schlosser in the face, Captain Welch ignored Schlosser's plea that he could not breathe; at one point, Captain Welch responds to Schlosser's pleas for help with the taunt, "Last I heard, I was as useless as tits on a bull."
        A former military medic, Paul Schlosser has received treatment in prison for both bipolar disorder and depression. After being held in solitary confinement for two months, he began to cut himself -- a common response to such long-term isolation. On June 7, 2012, Schlosser pulled off his bandages and refused to be treated. He was then strapped to a restraint chair and confronted by Captain Welch.
       In the video, we see Schlosser immobilized in the restraint chair and surrounded by officers in riot gear. Schlosser remains compliant until one of the officers pins Schlosser's head to the back of the chair; Schlosser responds by squirming and then spitting at the officer. Without warning, Captain Welch suddenly coats Schlosser's face at close range with pepper spray from a canister only intended to be used on large crowds from a distance of twenty feet or more, according to an investigator's report. Schlosser chokes and fights for breath. He pleads, "I can't breathe, Captain," but Welch does nothing. Instead of following accepted professional standards and rinsing away the liquid, Welch puts a spit hood on Schlosser, effectively trapping the pepper spray against the man's face. For over 20 minutes, Welch, with canister in hand, paces in and out of the small area where Schlosser is being restrained, and refuses to let him wash the burning spray from his face and eyes.
        Sadly, this is one of many examples of corrections staff abusing restraints and pepper spray, at times with deadly results: • Nick Christie died in 2006 after being pepper sprayed twelve times and spending six hours naked in a restraint chair. There, too, guards placed a spit hood over Mr. Christie, ensuring that he would breathe the liquid as long as he wore it. The case was later ruled a homicide. • Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio discontinued the use of restraint chairs in 2006 after three wrongful death lawsuits. • Jesse Lee Williams, Jr. was restrained when guards sprayed an entire can of pepper spray into a hood before putting it over his mouth as part of a savage beating. He died two days later.
      Openness and accountability are two of the strongest bulwarks protecting prisoners from abuse. This is true whether the abuse occurs in a matter of minutes, such as when Arizona guards beat, tased, stripped, and left Marty Atencio to die in a cell, or days, like when Michigan guards strapped Timothy Souders to a cement slab until he died of hyperthermia and dehydration.
       Unfortunately, instead of promoting openness and accountability, the Maine Department of Corrections has closed ranks to protect one of its own. Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte ignored the recommendation to fire Welch despite an internal investigation which found that Welch acted on a personal vendetta against Schlosser and not for any legitimate security reason. Now, the Department has focused its attention on ensuring no more videos are leaked, instead of ensuring no more torture happens.
        Paul Schlosser is lucky to be alive. The next Paul Schlosser might not be so lucky.

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

Beware, The Dogs Of War Are Howling.

 

           The “Migrant crisis” in Europe, translate as millions of people fleeing the chaos and carnage initiated by Western imperialists foreign policy in the Middle East, has started the dogs of war howling in earnest. The baying for blood by the political pundits and pseudo academics is reaching a maniac shrill, and it is all shaded in the illusion of helping the people of Syria. Somehow we are to believe that you can compassionately bomb civilian populations into liberty. Those hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children, elderly, men and women, that will die under the rubble of their towns and cities as collateral damage, will somehow be grateful. Syria is practically a destroyed country, the last thing the people of that country need is the destructive might of Western imperialism sending in its weapons of mass destruction. What ever the answer to the problems of that area are, it is not marching in an all conquering imperialist army behind an avalanche of cruise missiles and so called “smart bombs” creating Armageddon across the country, and calling it “freedom” for the people. 

 This is how we brought freedom to Iraq and Libya, we can do the same for Syria.

         What ever action the Western imperialists take in this area, you can rest assured that it is not out the love of the Syrian people, it will not be the result of their love of humanity. It will always be for power and wealth. States that are cutting social spending in their own countries, claiming, we can't afford them, will quite happily spend countless millions on weaponry on the people of Syria, killing and maiming thousands, out of pure love and compassion. The dogs of war know that there is oil and gas in Syria, and they want their blood dripping claws on it, Their cheer leaders are of course the powerful arms industry, with their ferret lobbyists scurrying around the marble halls of The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, handing out favours and charms to the inmates. 

 People being liberated by the bomb.

This from ROAR Mac:

       The predicate of the arguments is that the West, despite calling for Assad to step down since 2011, has done nothing to get rid of him and as such has “abandoned” the Syrian people. We must now step up and bear this burden, so the pundits say.

    The Guardian’s editorial last week berated Europe for its “paralysis,” “inertia,” and “years of failure to confront Syria’s bloody collapse.” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof largely agrees, while his colleague Ross Douthat sees Syria as “an ugly crack” in the otherwise admirable and “very consciously accepted stewardship of global stability” that is Pax Americana.

      The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum agrees too, and calls the refugees a “security crisis,” the “consequences” of Europe’s inaction. Edward Luce, in the Financial Times, repeats the claim that the US bears responsibility for this crisis as well, since it abandoned its role as “beacon”, abstaining rather than intervening, having done “almost nothing” to oust Assad.

Never mind reality.

     Reality is, as Adam Johnson of media watchdog FAIR reminds us, that the predicate that Western states did nothing in Syria is pure fantasy: “The US has been ‘intervening’ in the Syrian civil war, in measurable and significant ways, since at least 2012—most notably by arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces.” Johnson cites a Washington Post report from just a couple of months ago:

Read the full article HERE:

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

Turkey Is Smouldering.

A delegation being prevented from entering Cizre.

          We are all aware of the bloodshed and savagery that is taking place in Syria and Iraq, it is a tragedy that has been going on for some years now. But what is not being reported in our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is the savage military violence that is taking place against the civilian population, of a city in a country that aligns itself with Europe and has been trying to join the EU for some years. The country is Turkey, and the city Cizre, the Turkish state has decided that, for some reason or other, the citizens of Cizre have to be punished. It has released the full fury of a military war machine against its own citizens, and the situation is deteriorating daily, if not hourly. Once again we see the savagery of the state, and it its total disregard for the citizens of its own country. 

The road to Cizre, September 9th. 2015.

This from ROAR Mag:

     Tanks shelling the city center. No-one allowed in or out. Electricity and water have been cut, as well as phone lines and internet access. The people have dug trenches to stop armored vehicles from entering their neighborhoods and have hung sheets in the streets to prevent being seen and shot by snipers.

     While the above reads as a report from Kobane, from when the Syrian town was still under attack from the so-called Islamic State (IS), it is in fact a description of the current situation in Cizre, a predominantly Kurdish town in southern Turkey.

Cizre under attack

      Since the Turkish government imposed a curfew in Cizre last week, its citizens have been forced to remain indoors, risking being shot by snipers as soon as they step out. The city is under total lock down, which means that for at least a week people have had no access to fresh food or water, medical services, or anything else for that matter. Even the wounded are not allowed to be transported to the hospitals, as a result of which a number of civilians have died from non-lethal injuries due to blood loss and infections, among them a baby of less than two months old.

     Due to limited phone and internet access in Cizre news from the besieged town reaches the outside world only piecemeal, meaning that reports of what is going on inside the town are difficult to confirm – a very worrying sign in and of itself.

Read the full article HERE:

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